He lifts his hands in surrender. “So, I grabbed the wrong package. There’s going to be enough gluten at the table to smother a hippo. A gluten-free breadstick ain’t going to kill anybody.” He motions to me with an aged, muscular hand. “Open that, and put them in a basket before your mother sees the package.”
I tear open the extremely loud plastic wrapper and sniff the contents. “Mmm.” I take one of the grissini and give it a bite. “I don’t care what these are or are not made of. They taste damn good,” I assure him. “You get these at the specialty market the other day?” I smack my lips and dig in a cabinet for the woven cloth basket Ma likes to serve bread in.
My dad nods. “Probably the last time I’ll drive that far until I get my eyes looked at. Don’t get old, son. Aging’s a bitch, and not the good kind.”
“So, go to the eye doctor,” I tell him. “It’ll get Ma off your back, and then you can drive all over the state looking for cooking stores. It’s a pair of glasses. What’s the big deal?”
Dad’s bent over the stove stirring one pot, checking the contents of the oven, and clicking off the kitchen timer just as it dings. “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “I’ll go, I’ll go. I’ve been busy. Open the wine, Franco. Two bottles tonight. Your mother invited a guest.”
I rummage in the junk drawer for the bottle opener. “About that,” I grumble, turning to face my pops. “Why the hell is Ma inviting somebody to dinner?”
My father echoes his favorite catchphrase as he turns to check on the braciole. “What’s the big deal? It’s one more person.”
I can’t tell if my father is in on Mom’s plans to hook me up with her definition of a “sweet girl,” or if he’s choosing when and how exactly to battle his wife. An invitation to dinner is one thing. I can grin and be civil, but what Ma doesn’t know is a meal with the Bianchis is probably the worst way to entice Chloe to go out with me.
One evening with all of us at the table and the woman will go running back to wherever it is she came from before she moved to Star Falls.
I’m in the dining room uncorking our family’s favorite wine when Vito comes tumbling up the basement stairs, a pair of flowery oven mitts on his hands.
“Hey, asshole.” I nod at him. “What’s for dessert?”
One of the reasons my parents bought this house just after Gracie was born was the second kitchen in the basement.
“What’s it smell like, dicknose?” Vito rushes past me, headed for the kitchen.
I shake my head. He never learns. I uncork the second bottle of cab and wait for my dad to yell.
“Vito, where do you think I’m going to find room for the cake to cool up here? Take it back downstairs, and put it on the cooling rack like I told you.” My father isn’t really mad. More like impatient.
Vito, like I said, ain’t nothing like me. He doesn’t always think and mostly just runs around like a clueless, curious puppy.
After more than thirty-five years as Mario Bianchi’s son, you’d think he’d know not to bring dessert upstairs until some space has been cleared after the meal.
“Shit, yeah. Yeah. Sorry, Pops.” Vito comes shuffling back, his bare feet in a pair of open-toe house slippers dragging along the tile floors and a pair of threadbare flannel PJ bottoms sagging at his waist.
“You going to dress for dinner?” I call after him. “Ma invited a guest.”
He throws a scowl over his shoulder at me. “A guest? What the fuck?”
“Language, Vito.” My mother is still on the phone but manages to hear my brother curse from someplace deep inside the house.
I stifle a grin and set the bottles of wine on the table to breathe. I’m about to head back to the kitchen to help Dad when there’s a soft movement against my ankles.
“V!” I shout, bending down to pick up another of Ma’s rescues. “One of the cats got out of the basement.”
I pick the thing up, and it immediately melts into a vibrating engine of purring as I rub behind its ears. I stalk down the basement stairs, pulling the door closed behind me. “Dumbass, you know to keep the cats locked up down here while Dad’s cooking.” I set the cat down gently on the cool tile floor of the basement.
Vito is setting the pineapple upside-down cake on the cooling rack on the basement kitchen counter—which he should have done in the first place. “Yeah, yeah, it’s fine,” he grumbles.
He covers the cake with parchment paper and then grabs a cat toy that looks like a feather at the end of a fishing pole and coaxes the cat back into my old bedroom.
I pull back the paper and sniff the cake. The buttery brown sugar topping is perfectly glazed, locking the bright red maraschino cherries right in the centers of the canned pineapple rings.
It ain’t fancy, but it’s a taste of home. Of tradition. Of family.
“Go change,” I tell him. “You’re going to give our mother a heart attack in that getup.”
“It’s my day off. Just want to be fucking comfy.” Vito stomps up the stairs, and I hear him slam the basement door before he clomps through the house.
