The Supreme Macaroni Company (20 page)

Gabriel was manning the shop on Perry Street, which always has a lull after the month of June. There was nothing to worry about. We’d had an uneventful flight to Italy, and now, it was time to relax.

As we pulled up to the Vechiarelli homestead in Arezzo, Gianluca relaxed. He was not a high-strung person, but New York City made him tense. I often found him on the roof or taking a long walk on the promenade on the Hudson River. He needed space to think. Even though we were blessed to live in a place with an expansive view of the river, Staten Island and the Atlantic Ocean beyond, it was still not enough for my husband.

“Valentine!” Gram threw her arms around me. “How far along are you?”

“Five months. Doesn’t it look like eight?”

“No, you’re right on schedule!” she said, looking me over from head to toe.

“Gram, this is all so new for me. I was sitting reading the paper, and I watched my fingers swell. It’s like those time-release movies they used to show in science class, except it’s not a frog laying eggs, it’s me expanding to fill whatever space I’m in.”

“She’s beautiful,” Gianluca said. “Tell her, Teodora.”

Dominic and Gianluca embraced. I could see how much Dominic missed his son. I wished they could come and live with us in New York.

“Have you heard from Orsola?”

“Any day now, we’re told. Dominic spoke with Mirella. She’s there with her now.”

Even though Gianluca and I had met each other long after his divorce, any mention of his first wife gave me a chill. I was sure she was a good person, and her daughter was certainly magnificent, but whenever Gianluca heard her name, his mood changed.

Having only been married once, I have no idea what it must feel like to have built a life with someone, only to have it end. I can understand how it happens, but the truth is, no matter how much two people want to stay married, you never really know what the other one is thinking.

Gianluca once told me that he was surprised when Mirella asked for a divorce. There wasn’t an ongoing fight. They had slipped into a routine, and the routine of being apart, living separate lives, began to feel better than the marriage itself. At least, that’s how he explained it.

It’s a big deal for Italians to divorce, and I imagine that Mirella had an idea of what she wanted next while she was still married. She remarried a doctor about six months after the divorce was final.

Of course, when I got angry with my husband, I imagined that was why his first marriage ended. He could be very controlling, but so could I. He made decisions and consulted me later. I did the same, but I felt I had an excuse. Marriage was new for me. I was beginning to understand the art of compromise.

We were doing plenty of that. We decided to raise our baby on Perry Street because we needed to keep the custom business going while we built the factory in Youngstown. Our goal was to spend time in Italy, but keep our base in New York.

Dominic and Gianluca went into the shop, where Dominic showed Gianluca the inventory. The first time I met them, they had been arguing over leather, and now I saw that it was a lifelong battle. A friendly battle, but it remained one.

Gram and I headed to the back, where she had put out a spread of local delicacies. My pregnant body craved mozzarella, fresh tomatoes, and bread. She had all three for me on a silver platter.

“How are you feeling?”

“Besides huge?”

Gram laughed. “It’s an experience, isn’t it?”

“Oh, a real hayride. Gianluca couldn’t wait to get here. I haven’t been easy to deal with.”

“I worry about how hard you’re working.”

“Can you believe we’re opening a factory?”

“Your grandfather’s dream.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“We never got ahead in the shop, we always hoped we’d reach a point where we could expand, but we never did. But he would be thrilled. Gianluca is supportive?”

“I think so.”

“When Gianluca talks to his father, he confides that he really wishes you could live here.”

“Well, maybe someday, but not now. I want the baby to be born at NYU Hospital. I mean, what if he or she wants to be president of the United States someday? And I love my doctor, Alicia DeBrady.”

“I understand about the doctors.” A look of concern crossed over Gram’s face.

“Are you all right, Gram?” I panicked.

“I’m good. But Dominic . . .”

“What’s the matter?”

“He’s going to tell Gianluca, but he’s been having some trouble breathing.”

“Oh no.”

“No, no, it’s nothing to worry about. But he does have a diminished capacity from the chemicals he was around all of his life. They did some damage to his lungs.”

“Is there anything they can do?”

“He has to rest, but of course, he doesn’t.”

“Make him.”

“Not easy. We’re old dogs, Valentine. We have our ways. I knew when I married him that he had a mind of his own. He’s so stubborn.”

“So is Gianluca. Is that Italian, or is it their Vechiarelli genes?”

“I don’t know. But it’s a challenge.”

“Do you want to bring him to New York to see a doctor?” I offered.

“No, he likes his doctor. He wants to be home.”

“Who doesn’t?”

“We’ve talked about the possibility . . . the inevitability of one of us passing before the other, and what we would do.” Gram fixed me a sandwich. “Look, let’s forget about all this and have our lunch. You’re a young bride, you don’t have to think about all of this!”

“I always think about you. I miss you. So tell me, what’s your plan?”

“Well, if Dominic goes first, I’ll return to New York.”

“You can live with us!”

“I don’t know. Your mother offered to have me, but I’d die early from the fumes of the wallpaper glue.”

“She just redid the hallway. If redecorating was crack, she’d be in rehab.”

“I know. She’s a fixer. Anyway, the alternative is for me to stay here. And I like the idea of that.”

“Okay, I get it. If we moved back, you would have family here.”

“I don’t want you to do it for that reason, but there’s a big house, and the town is wonderful. We love the people.”

“Hey, in a hundred years, by the time anything happens, who knows?” How cavalier I was, but I couldn’t see past the moment. And the truth was, I didn’t want to. “Let’s just enjoy the summer.”

Gram smiled. “Of course.”

Gianluca and Dominic joined us. Gianluca’s face was flushed with color, and the tension in his jaw was gone. This was the face that had captivated me when I came here on my first visit.

The warm breeze ruffled the cloth of the canopy over the table, as well as Gianluca’s hair. He looked like a kid to me, with nothing ahead but days of summer vacation to fill.

G
ianluca guided me up the mountain path outside Assisi, where Saint Francis and Saint Clare lived, she with the nuns, he with the priests, surrounded by a forest sanctuary filled with woodland creatures and the music of birds. He took my hand on the path.

“How many prayer cards did you buy?” Gianluca wanted to know.

“I wiped out the gift shop.”

“That can’t be good.”

“We have so much to do that I doubt we’ll get back here. Do the math. Do you know how many First Communions and confirmations we have ahead of us? Including our own kid? Nothing like a prayer card tucked in the card with the check. Or the iTunes card.”

“Very spiritual.”

“I’m doing my best.”

“I think it’s this way.” Gianluca pointed to a divergence in the path. I was hoping he would choose the path heading downhill instead of the one going up.

The Umbrian hills were carpeted in the palest green while the olive trees’ gnarled branches were golden brown in the sun. The pungent scent of palm nettles and sweet honeysuckle filled the air.

Gianluca put his arm around my waist and guided me down the path. Soon we stood at the edge of a large field filled with sunflowers. Beyond the sunflowers was a Tuscan palazzo, its beige stucco pitted and cracked. Its clay roof, baked by the sun to a soft orange, looked like frosting on a cake.

“She lives there,” Gianluca said.

“Who?”

“Alma. My mother’s first cousin. She’s the last living member of my mother’s family.”

“Besides you.”

“Besides me—and our baby.” Gianluca smiled.

As we walked the path through the sunflowers, I reminded myself to plant these on the roof of Perry Street. Every year I meant to do it, and every spring, I chose the tomatoes over the sunflowers. There is something about their brown faces offset by the bright yellow petals that make them look like a choir.

Gianluca pulled his cell phone from his pocket and made a call. He spoke Italian and motioned to me as he talked into the phone.

“She’s waiting for us,” he explained.

“Does she speak English?”

“Your Italian is fine. It’s actually getting better.”

“Do you think I’ll master it between here and her front door?”

“I am filled with hope.”

We laughed as we climbed the steps into a simple marble foyer. The high ceilings and windows let in lots of light. Beyond the main hall I saw the living room full of overstuffed old furniture draped in colorful cloth.

Gianluca called out to his cousin, who appeared in the doorway. Alma was around eighty years old, striking and tall. Her white hair was piled high on her head. She wore simple black pants and a flowing pink blouse, with jeweled gold mules on her feet. Her lipstick was hot pink. Gianluca rushed to her, and they embraced. As they had an urgent, warm conversation in Italian, I took in the grand proportions of the old house.

“Come, Valentina.” Gianluca motioned for me.

I hugged Cousin Alma, seeing that she had set up a tray with coffee in a French press and biscotti in the living room.

“What a beautiful home you have,” I said.

“Grazie, grazie,” she said as she put a pillow behind me on the chair.

“I’m fine,” I told her.

“Alma was my mother’s best friend and her favorite cousin,” Gianluca explained.

“Magdalena’s mother and my father were brother and sister,” Alma said as she poured a cup of lemonade for me, an espresso for Gianluca.

“I’d love to know about Gianluca’s mother.” My husband spoke of his mother only occasionally, but I knew he was devoted to her memory. He had a small framed photograph of her holding him when he was a baby that he placed on the nightstand when we married. The photo of mother and son is in vivid 1960 Ektachrome. Her blue eyes and his look like sparkling agates. As much as my husband looks like his father, he has the soul of his mother. He will mention her and something she said or wore offhandedly, as though his mother is in the forefront of his thoughts and some small thing will trigger a memory of her. He also carried a photograph of her in his wallet, along with the memorial card from her funeral. The small card had an illustration of Mary Magdalene at the tomb of Jesus on Easter morning. It is traditional to have a person’s patron saint on their memorial card, but my mother-in-law’s was particularly lovely.

“She was very shy. But she was a strong woman. Dominic was good to her.”

“They make good husbands in the Vechiarelli family.”

Alma did the strangest thing. Instead of agreeing with me, she shrugged. I shot Gianluca a look.

“It’s been hard for Alma since my father remarried.”

“Oh.” Gram never mentioned Cousin Alma. “Has Alma met Gram?”

“No,” Gianluca said. “And she hasn’t wanted to.”

I had very little experience in the etiquette of remarriage and blended families, even late in life, so I took the British approach. I ignored the topic entirely.

“Cousin Alma, did you grow up with Magdalena?”

“Oh, yes, we went to school together. She came here most days and played. We swam in the lake.”

“You have a lake?”

“A very small one.”

“I’ll take you there,” Gianluca promised.

“This home belonged to my parents. And I moved in with my husband to take care of them.”

“Did you have children?”

“No.” She shook her head. “A married woman without children in Italy has to find a purpose. It fell to me to take care of my parents and my husband’s parents. They all lived to be very old.” She looked at my stomach and smiled. “But I wanted children. They just never came to me.”

Alma showed us around the main floor of the house. We went outside onto a lovely portico where she had set up rattan furniture. Her reading glasses were perched on top of a stack of books on a side table, next to a chaise longue. The pillows were arranged for Alma’s comfort.

“Do you spend a lot of time here?” I asked.

“Every day.”

“No television?”

“No. I listen to music.” She smiled.

We followed her back into the house. As I stepped up to enter, I saw a mezuzah anchored to the door. I got up on tiptoe and touched the inlaid work on the brass.

“That was my father’s,” Alma said.

“Did he travel somewhere and bring it home?”

“No, he was Jewish.”

“Gianluca, your mom was Jewish?”

“Yes.” He smiled.

“Why didn’t you tell me we were Jewish?”

“I don’t know. I’m not very religious.”

“We would have had the blintz cart at Leonard’s had we known.”

“We had enough at Leonard’s.”

“I hear you. That’s not a cocktail hour over there, it’s a food court.” I explained the concept of Leonard’s as best I could to Cousin Alma. She seemed entertained. “So you see, I wished I was Jewish, at least partly, and now my baby will be!”

“I had no idea you wished you were Jewish,” Gianluca said.

“Every kid that grows up Catholic in New York wants to be Jewish.”

“And why is that?”

“We wanted Sundays off. Well, that and the latkes.”

Cousin Alma takes her siesta every day at three, so we left her and headed down the path to the lake. We invited her to join us, but she has a routine, and that was that.

Gianluca began to run ahead as soon as the palazzo disappeared in the woods behind us. I didn’t even try to keep up, lumbering carefully through the brush. Gianluca disappeared on the path ahead. I stopped and looked around.

The golden sunlight came through the trees like wide satin ribbons, illuminating the path. I followed it past a grove of thick trees. Ahead, I could see the clearing where Alma’s lake must be. I climbed over a small hill to find the lake of Gianluca’s youth in the distance, shimmering like a pool of blue sapphires, softly hemmed by long green grass. Gianluca was already in the water by the time I got to the shore.