Gabriel and I are so close we have no trouble living together and working together in the shop. He redecorated the apartment above the workroom, and for my Christmas gift this year he made the roof garden into a Shangri-La on the Hudson, complete with a sound system and awnings. “I dragged this timbale to New Jersey like a wagon wheel, and by God, we’re going to eat it!”
“We’ll eat it!” I hollered back.
“Yeah, like your brother-in-law eats failure,” Feen mumbled.
“Aunt Feen, where’s your filter? You shouldn’t say everything you think! Boundaries!”
“Oh, boundaries. Big deal. I watch Dr. Phil, too. I know from boundaries. It’s like those candy canes up the walk. They look like a railing, like they’re sturdy, but they’re cheap plastic. I leaned on one for support and almost keeled over and tasted cement.”
“I caught you, Auntie,” my father piped up.
“Yeah. So what.”
“So what we’re not at the hospital with your head sliced open like a kiwi,” my father fired back.
Aunt Feen ignored him. “The fact is, your brother-in-law is not only unemployed, he’s drunk.”
“Oh, and you’re sober?” Charlie countered.
“I can hold my liquor, Buster, and you can take that to Citibank and get a second mortgage, which you probably need, since you got shit-canned.”
“Feen, your tone!” Gram interjected.
“I can’t abide a drunk in this family.” Feen banged her cane. “I won’t have it!”
“Really, Aunt Feen? You’re on your third tumbler of Maker’s Mark. And I know because I’m pouring them,” Jaclyn said. “You’re tanked up too!”
“It takes one to know one,” Feen shouted.
“Okay, now we’re veering toward complete chaos here,” I said evenly. “We’re now agreeing with the disagreements.”
“But Aunt Feen is hammered,” Jaclyn said.
“It doesn’t matter. Feen’ll sober up. She always does.” My grandmother put her arm around her sister. “She’ll have some bread and butter and she’ll be fine.”
“In the meantime, I’ll get the tarelli.” Mom headed toward the kitchen for the tarelli, best described as bone-dry bagel-shaped crackers we make around the holidays that no one eats, so they languish in a ziplock bag until Easter, when they’re fed to the ducks. “Tarellis sop up the alcohol like gravy.”
“What the hell does that mean?” my father yelled at her.
“I don’t know. I’m trying to make things nice.” My mother’s voice broke, and she looked as though she might cry. “I’m trying to get us through this party! It’s like pulling a plow in ten feet of manure! Stop arguing with me!”
“You’re the one who wants to be nonmandatory!” My father pointed his finger at her.
“Noninflammatory!” we corrected my father in a chorus.
“What the hell do you want from me? They’re only words!” my father thundered.
“Take it down, Dutch. Take it down,” Mom growled.
There was a momentary ceasefire where all that could be heard was the low buzz of Aunt Feen’s hearing aid.
“Aunt Feen, you getting AM or FM over there?” My dad attempted humor to break the stronghold of family pain.
Gianluca sensed an opening and went for it.
“Valentina and I are getting married,” he announced.
If you needed proof that the members of my family are, despite their flaws, supportive of one another, you’d just have to see how quickly they switched from all-out war to unification. My family rejoiced at the news as if they’d won the lottery in three states. After all, I’d beaten the odds. I was closer to forty than thirty, and I was engaged to be married. The scent of relief wafted through the house like the cinnamon in the sachets hanging from the chandelier.
I looked at Gianluca, the smartest man in the room. Here was a guy that understood how to handle my people. They acted like children, so they had to be treated as such. When a toddler throws a tantrum, the parent in charge must divert the child’s attention to diffuse the rage.
Gianluca had made our engagement a bright orange squeeze toy.
What a tactic!
Sheer genius!
No sooner had I removed my glove than my left hand was grabbed as the diamond was ogled, assessed, and blessed. The comments ranged from, Wow, big stone, to Flawless! No carbon. I love an emerald cut! The baguettes really sizzle. Nice. Better than yellow gold. Platinum goes with everything.
Gram kissed me. Dominic gave me a hug and then embraced his son.
“Sono tanto contento per te!” Dominic kissed both of Gianluca’s cheeks.
My nieces came running down the stairs, jumping up and down, begging to be junior bridesmaids.
My mother pushed through the crowd, put her arms around me, and then pulled Gianluca close. “God bless you! Welcome to the . . .” Mom didn’t want to use the word family in the current environment, so she said, “It’s wonderful. What a perfect romantic note to end the year 2010! Now, when do you want to get married? What will I wear? Do you have a date?”
“However long it takes me to build a pair of shoes, Ma,” I told her.
Gianluca looked at me and smiled. My future husband had just gotten the first bit of living proof that I never lie.
“We need a photograph. An official engagement picture!” My mother looked at my father, who hadn’t leaped up to capture the moment on film. My mother would tell you that in all of our family history, my father is never ready with the camera unless she insists. “Damn it, Dutch. Get out your phone!”
“I’ll take the picture!” Gabriel said, pushing through the crowd. He’s been around my family for so long that he knows about my mother’s photo obsession. My mother handed him my dad’s phone. Soon my sisters, Gram, and Pamela handed their phones to Gabriel as we assumed our positions. The adults formed a long standing row in front of the tree, and then a kneeling row in front of the standing row. The children sat in front of the kneelers. We looked like the Latin Club in the yearbook from Holy Agony. I watched as Gabriel backed down the hallway, trying to get everyone into the shot. “Squeeze, people! I need to see a squeeze.”
“Wait! The baby!” Jaclyn got up from her kneeling spot and sprinted up the stairs for the baby. We remained crammed. The scent of Aqua Velva, Jean Naté, Coco cologne, and Ben-Gay wafted up from my family like sauce on the stove. I turned around to get a good look at them.
My sister Tess, the second eldest in the family after our brother Alfred, looked pretty, her jet-black hair in a bun on top of her head. She did the full Cleopatra with black eyeliner to bring out her green eyes, which were bloodshot from the crying jag she went on in defense of her husband. From the neck up, she was a movie star. From the neck down, she was dressed for kitchen duty, including a white apron splotched with red gravy. She looked like a dancer in the musical version of All Quiet on the Western Front. Charlie, her burly bear of a husband, had unbuttoned his shirt down to the pocket, exposing more fur on his chest than went into making my mother’s mink jacket.
Jaclyn returned with the baby.
Jaclyn, the youngest of our family, mother of one, apparently still had time to go for a blow-out at Fresh Cuts. Her chestnut brown hair had not a crimp, and she still could fit in her pre-baby sweater dress. Her husband Tom still had the Irish good looks of an innocent Kennedy. He’s all freckles, thick light brown hair, and white teeth.
Aunt Feen stood next to him in a Christmas sweater embroidered with two cats playing with two blue satin Christmas balls. Her pink lipstick had worn off except for the ring around her lips, which matched the kittens’ pink tongues perfectly. My sisters and I call her lipstick look “the plunger.”
My gram, Teodora Angelini Vechiarelli, wore a white winter suit. Dominic looked very dapper in a white shirt, red tie, and forest green Tyrolean vest. Gram had her
hair cut short in feathered white layers, while Dominic’s silver hair was combed back neatly. It occurred to me that my grandmother and Dominic actually looked younger since they’d married. Maybe the slow pace of life in Tuscany kept them young. Whatever they were doing, I wanted some of that.
My sister-in-law Pamela’s long blond hair looked white-hot against the simple turquoise wool sweater she wore with a black leather pencil skirt. She makes forty look like thirty-two. Her stilettos were laced with turquoise ribbons—I had to find out where she got them. My brother Alfred knelt dead center in the middle row, looking exactly like the photo from his basketball team at Holy Agony, aging aside. He’d been the captain then, and he was still the captain.
The children were decked out for the holidays in matching ensembles. Chiara and Charisma wore blue velvet party dresses. Tess had given them French braids in an upsweep with giant bows on the nape of their necks. Alfred Jr. and Rocco wore dress shirts with bow ties, miniature versions of my brother when he was eight and ten years old.
Gianluca and I stood at the center of the back row, his arm around me. I placed my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes, taking in the scent of his skin, fresh lemon and cedar, and imagining years of burying my face in his neck.
“Get a room, Val,” Gabriel said as he snapped away.
“Here,” Tess said, handing him her phone.
Soon Gabriel was juggling the phones, snapping the group shot for each of us. He handed the phones back as he finished. Finally, he snapped a final photo with Alfred’s camera. “That’s it! Francesco Scavullo is done. I need carbohydrates. We’re all done here.”
“I want you in a picture, Gabe.”
“I have a thousand pictures with you.”
“But you’re my best man.”
“I am? I’m too hungry to be excited.” Gabriel lifted his phone to the best angle, put his cheek against mine, and snapped. “Got it.”
“Everybody back to the table. We’ve got plenty of time to plan the wedding,” Jaclyn said. “But two more minutes on the stove and the linguini will be gruel.”
“Throw it out if it’s not al dente,” Aunt Feen ordered. I guessed she’d decided not to call Carmel after all.
“Nothing worsh than mushy homemades,” Charlie slurred. He was definitely drunk, and there was no way to sober him up with the overdone pasta. Maybe the clams would cut the insulin spike. Here’s hoping.
“Red or white sauce?” Tom asked.
“Both,” Tess replied. “Everybody gets to have what they like on Christmas.”
Mom and Gram grabbed Gianluca and herded him into the dining room. The remaining Israelites turned tail and returned to the far shore as though the Red Sea had never parted. So went the biblical Roncalli/Vechiarelli family epic on that night before Christmas. No loss of life, but no miracles, either.
I was about to join the family when I turned and saw my father standing alone by the twinkling tree, which was encrusted with more sequin crap ornaments than you could find in a January sale bin at the Dollar Store. He was checking his phone to make sure the photo was good enough. Satisfied, he turned off the phone and slipped it into his back pocket. He stood back and watched as the family took their places at the table. There was a small smile on his face, a look of near contentment. Dad is a man of peace, and for the time being, we had a sliver of it.
Dad buried his hands deep in the pockets of his winter-white Sansabelt trousers that he ordered from the ad in the back of the Sunday Parade magazine. A New Yorker through and through, in his black dress shirt and white Christmas tie he looked like the holiday version of a black-and-white cookie. The expression on his face was just as sweet. No matter what, as long as I was making my own choices, my father was happy for me. What more could I ask for?
2
The family was crammed around Tess and Charlie’s dining room table, extended to the max with three leaves, covered in white damask, and lit with tiny blue tea lights. Tess had hung Christmas ornaments from the chandelier. The glass angels shimmered over the holiday table as though it were an altar.
My sisters and I, as always, took the worst seats near the kitchen—we’d be up and down, serving the food and clearing the dishes between courses. The seat levels of the extra chairs around the table varied wildly from piano stool to lawn chair, making my family look like a row of mismatched tombstones. There’s an email chain amongst my sisters before every holiday about the possibility of renting a proper table and chairs from a party supply place, but we never do. Somehow, this weird mash-up of furniture is part of our holiday tradition just like Gram’s ricotta cake.
Gianluca was wedged between his father and Aunt Feen in the chairs that actually went with the Ethan Allen classic six suite of formal dining room furniture. In proper chairs, they loomed over the rest of us like a billboard. Tess had set the table using every piece of her wedding crystal, so for most of the meal, from my low-flow ottoman seat, I was looking at my family through goblets that distorted their features like an abstract landscape by Wassily Kandinsky.
“Are we on a clam diet around here?” Aunt Feen swished the noodles on her plate. “I can’t find any clams in this linguini.”
“That’s because they’re shrimp,” Tess said as she swirled the ladle at the bottom of the pasta bowl and dumped a school of shrimp swimming in butter sauce onto Aunt Feen’s plate.
“You didn’t toss. You have to toss, otherwise all the chunks sink to the bottom,” Feen said.
Tess shot me a look like she’d like to toss Aunt Feen out the window.
“We should call the cousins in Youngstown with the news,” Mom offered.
“Maybe the Pipinos are having a peaceful holiday and we should hold all calls,” Jaclyn offered.
“Good idea,” Dad said.
“How’s Cousin Don?” Gram asked.
“We’re planning a cruise to nowhere in the spring,” Dad said.
“Where are you going?” Alfred asked.
“Nowhere.” Dad laughed at his own joke, but no one else did. “Don is still working. I told him we need to take a few days off and have some fun. So he came up with the idea of a boat that goes from Miami and does a loop out in the ocean.”
“It’s a floating crap game.” Mom smoothed the linen napkin on her lap. “They go out on the ocean, drop anchor, play cards, and lose their shirts.”
“You only see water?” Aunt Feen asked.
“And the top of a green felt card table.” Dad sighed. “It’s bliss.”
“I’d kill myself,” Aunt Feen said.
“I hear cruises are very relaxing,” Pamela said, speaking up for the first time that evening. That third glass of wine really turned my sister-in-law into a conversationalist.
Pamela almost walked out on my brother when he had a brief affair last fall. Somehow she’d found a way to forgive him, and in so doing, forgave all of us for being lousy in-laws. Pamela had never forgotten that we’d given her the nickname Clickety-Click behind her back because of the sound she made when she walked in high heels.
My sisters and I went to a priest to discuss how we could better build trust with Pamela. The first thing he said was, “Stop calling her names behind her back.” The bulb blew in that lightbulb moment. We don’t always acknowledge the obvious. Since then, we’ve poured love all over her like an alfredo sauce, thick and heavy. My sisters and I leaned forward toward Pam with big smiles of support on our faces. We wanted her to know we were on her side.
“Maybe we’ll go on a cruise sometime,” Alfred said, placing his hand over his wife’s.
“Why would you waste a cruise on Pamela?” Aunt Feen barked. “That’s an eating vacation. Look at her. When was the last time you had a meal? She looks like a breadstick.”
My sisters, mother, grandmother, and I quickly blew a chorus of compliments Pamela’s way to compensate for Aunt Feen’s rudeness. Pamela fl
ipped her long blond hair and plastered a smile on her face. Tess wasn’t the only one who would like to throw Aunt Feen out the window.
“No vacations for me until after the wedding. We have a lot of planning to do,” Mom said. “The last Roncalli to marry is an excuse to pull out all the stops.” She suddenly sounded out of breath, like she’d just finished the final meter of the New York City marathon. “We have to make this the best wedding ever.”
“No, we don’t. We need a priest and a cake,” I told her. “You know. Simple.”
“Simplicity is not my thing,” Mom said. Through the years she had announced a list of things that were not her “thing,” including household budgets, driving moccasins, black diamonds, and skinny margaritas.
“Whatever you decide, don’t invite your cousins Candy and Sandy to dance at the reception,” Pamela advised. “I cleared them to lead the Electric Slide, and instead they appeared in crop tops and did a belly dance.”
Perhaps had our cousins been better dancers, the number wouldn’t have come off as lewd. A table of nuns were so offended they put their dinner napkins over their eyes as though they were in a dust storm in a spaghetti western. That’s the last time we saw the Salesians at a family party.
“No worse than Cousins Sophia and Vivianna doing ballet en pointe at the rehearsal dinner,” Jaclyn remembered.
“At least that was tasteful,” Mom said. “Ballet is elegant.”
“Anything French is elegant,” Aunt Feen said as she chewed with her mouth open.
“There will be no entertainment at either the wedding reception or the rehearsal dinner. No standup routines or magic acts.” I laid down the law. “No spontaneous comedy, no Tricky Tray, and no door prizes.”
“You’re no fun. Sometimes the entertainment is good,” Jaclyn said, remembering Rose Lena Littlefield’s tap-dance routine at her own rehearsal dinner.
“If people want to be entertained, they can go on the TKTS line and see actual professionals in a Broadway show. My wedding is not going to be a circus.” I instantly felt guilty because Tess had had a circus theme at her wedding shower. “I like pups in skirts and a clown car, just not on this go-round.”
The Supreme Macaroni Company Page 3