“You’re hopeless.” I laughed. “C’mon. I’m hungry. Let’s go eat.”
We walked down the hallway. I skipped ahead, the aroma of spices, tomatoes, and basil calling out to me. The landline started ringing. Papà ignored it and beelined for the kitchen, the urge to annoy Mamma too strong. But I paused at the half-moon table near our staircase, housing an antique rotary phone.
Before picking up the handset, I already knew it was my grandmother. She was the only one who called here and usually around the time Papà visited to make sure nobody had killed each other.
“Ciao, Nonna!” I announced in a TV show host voice, twirling the cord of the phone around my index finger. “It’s your favourite granddaughter!”
“Ciao, piccola.” She chuckled at my silliness in her smoker, gravelly tone. I liked making her smile and laugh. “You’re my only granddaughter.”
“Still your fav.”
“That you are.” She coughed a bit. “Is everyone still alive?”
“For now,” I whispered conspiratorially. I heard Mamma barking at Papà, probably for tasting the sauce.
“Good,” she said. “Also, I packed some tiramisu for you. Enzo should have brought it when he came over.”
I loved her tiramisu. “Thank you, Nonna. I adore you.”
“Me too, Gabriela. Now tell me, how’s everything with you?”
I didn’t want to tell my grandmother about the break-in. She’d throw a fit if she found out. And if I thought my parents were overbearing, she could be worse. Nonna would strap herself to a chair in my apartment with a grenade and rifle, ready to kill whoever was messing with me. “Everything is going well. Just, you know, busy with—”
My sentence was cut off by the loud ruckus stemming from the kitchen.
“Merda!” Nonna cursed. “What’s all the noise, huh? If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were living in a zoo.”
“Close enough,” I muttered. A loudvaffanculorang in the background, followed by the swift crack of a spatula hitting flesh. Papà screamed. Mamma screamed louder. “They’re having another passionate fight.”
“Gabriela, some idiots are doomed to be together. Namely your parents. They just need to get their heads out of their asses and realize it. Your mamma was wrong and impulsive to ask for a divorce, and your papà was even more foolish for giving it to her. Now they’re both miserable because they still miss and want each other. Their kind of love never really dies.”
I wholeheartedly agreed with her. “I know, but who’s going to make them realize it?”
“They’ll come to that realization themselves. Whether it’s tomorrow, next month, next year, or decades from now. But they will.”
“Enough about them, Nonna. How is your book club going? What’s this month’s pick?”
“That blasted Arlene influenced Jenna to pick another alien romance this month.” She sighed. “Can you believe it? I just finished reading about an immortal tentacle demon railing a sweet librarian. When I was young, literature like this would have never existed. It’s all so…blasphemous!”
I guffawed. Arlene was a seventy-year-old tree hugger who dressed like a neon highlighter, cursed like a sailor, and drank too much coffee. She was my favourite lady from Nonna’s gang. “But you enjoyed it, didn’t you?” I jested. “Next thing you know, you’ll have an entire shelf filled with alien romances—”
“Gabriela, dinner is ready!” Mamma hollered from the kitchen, exasperated.
“Yeah, okay, fine. I did enjoy it,” Nonna begrudgingly admitted. “Anyways, go eat, Gabriela. I’ll call you again later this week,va bene?”
“Va bene,Nonna. Speak soon. I love you.” I felt the need to relay those three words to her, today having frightened me more than I’d like to admit.
What if I had been home when the intruder came in? What if they had hurt me? What if I never got the chance to tell my loved ones how much they meant to me because I was gone?
Those thoughts were a slippery slope and I needed to put a stop to them right now. The best I could do was count my blessings that I was safe and healthy and pray that it stayed that way.
After my call with Nonna, I went to the kitchen, finding my parents with flushed faces and throwing half-assed glares at each other from across the dining table as they waited for me to join them.
We said grace and I dove into the pesto pasta, garlic bread, and caprese salad with gusto. My family could be a little chaotic at times, but they were mine and I loved them with all my heart.
Once dinner was over, Papà hightailed it out of there before he was late for his meeting. Though not before two of his men arrived. They were currently patrolling the perimeter of our home, their guns hidden underneath their suits to avoid scaring off our neighbours.
Papà said to call him if we experienced any sort of distress or disturbance. He was also planning on coming back tonight to sleep under the same roof as us, a fact that pissed off Mamma.
