I move forward in the line until I’m looking down at Nonna. The mortician has done what he could. It’s close but wrong. Her mouth is too polite. There should be a smirk there, a ready insult. I want to scold her for leaving me like this and apologize for not being here at the end.
“Ciao, Nonna,” I whisper. “Sono qui.” I press my fingers to the rosary, cool and hard, and feel the little bump of rosemary under my palm. My throat closes. I wish I had brought salt to throw over my shoulder.
The pallbearers line up. Three cousins. The neighbor who has kept snow off Nonna’s walkways for years. A busboy fromRegalia who is eighteen with a straight back, trying to be worthy of such a task.
We follow the casket out into a wind that tastes like salt and smells like rain. Cloud cover presses down on the casinos until the big glass faces look sulky. On the steps, people fumble with umbrellas, but the sky holds.
It’s that quiet just before the rain breaks. Mama clutches my wrist like she thinks I might float away. Or maybe she’s scared of floating away herself.
At the cemetery, it’s less ceremonial than I expect. The dirt just looks like dirt. Mourners huddle under a canopy while the priest says more soft words, and the wind lifts the edges of the tarp with a rattle. Mama kisses her fingers and presses them to the cool wood. I do the same, and for a second, I swear I can smell tomato leaves and the faint peppery cut of arugula like the kitchen on a summer evening. Then it’s gone and there’s only damp earth.
Afterward, we go back to the restaurant because that’s what people like us do. Death is hungry work. Regalia’s front windows are fogged but lit. Someone—probably Zia—has turned on every string of tiny bulbs so the whole place twinkles.
Trays of food cover the bar. I recognize Nonna’s handwriting on some of the labels: caponata, peperonata, polpette.
People crowd in with plates. They say, “She taught me to roll ravioli with a wine bottle.” They say, “She was the only one whotold me I could make it.” They say, “She saved my marriage,” and I think they mean with food, and also not.
Mama migrates toward the kitchen, likely seeking the quiet. I follow because this is the room that taught me more about faith than church ever did.
The big pot is on, steam slicking the air. I lift the lid and the smell hits me—tomato, garlic, basil, the split-second sweetness before the acid wakes it up. I pick up the spoon and stir because someone should. Because stirring is something to do.
“Don’t you start working,” Mama says, appearing beside me with a wooden spoon in hand like a queen with a scepter. Her voice is rough around the edges. “You’re a guest.”
“I’m never a guest here,” I say, and her mouth does that almost-smile again, the brave kind.
“I know.” She lowers the flame by habit, checks the salt, lifts a spoon to my mouth the way Nonna used to. I close my eyes. It needs a handful of something.
“Parsley,” I say.
“Always with you,” she says, but she goes to get it anyway.
I should be out there with the family so people can pass through, touch my arm, say my name like a prayer of sympathy.
Somewhere near the door, there’s a deep laugh, male. I don’t look. I’m not ready for any of it yet.
I should be thinking about my return flight. About the kitchen in Florence with its steel and light, the work that fits me as well as my chef’s jacket.
Instead, I stand over this pot and stir, and the sound is the same one I have heard all my life, a circle on the bottom of a pan, the scrape that says we live, we feed, we keep going.
“Eat,” Mama orders, tipping a spoon toward my mouth again. “Then go sit with your cousins. I’ll handle the rest.”
“Liar,” I say, and kiss her temple. The hairspray is already failing, little wisps escaping the net. “Wehandle the rest.”
She breathes in like she’s going to argue and breathes out like she can’t. “For today,” she allows.
For today, I tell myself. Not forever. I’m only here for the funeral. I repeat it until the words lose meaning, until the pot boils and settles. Until the door opens again and more voices pour in.
Time to face it.
Chapter Two
Giovanni
Roberto drums his fingers on the dashboard to a song only he can hear. I kill the engine and sit with sounds of Atlantic City moving around the car. The hiss of buses braking, the gulls squawking in the distance, voices moving past on the sidewalk.
Regalia’s front windows glow like a living thing, fogged from heat and too many bodies. A black ribbon hangs crooked on the door. Somebody taped it up there quickly.
“You sure about this?” Roberto asks, voice easy, eyes not. “We send flowers. We send a card. We don’t usually send… us.”
