Nonna picks up on the third ring. She always picks up on the third ring because the first ring is for finding the phone, the second ring is for putting on her glasses even though she doesn’t need glasses to answer the phone, and the third ring is when she’s ready.
“Caro.”
“Nonna.”
“You sound good, Matteo.”
“I am good.” I’m sitting on my couch with the kitten on my thigh, her small body vibrating against my leg. “I’m calling about the visit.”
“I know. I am packed already. Three days early. Your mother says I am impossible. I tell her I have been impossible for eighty-one years and she should be used to it.”
“She should be.”
“She should.” The phone rustles. I can picture her adjusting it. The chair. The blanket at the same angle. “Tell me about the dinner.”
“It’s at Avi’s house. The whole team. Staff too. Some of the guys are bringing family. It’s going to be big, Nonna. Loud.”
“Good. I will make the polpette. How many?”
“Nonna, you don’t have to cook. Avi will have food.”
“Matteo. I will make the polpette. How many people?”
“Maybe twenty-five or thirty.”
“We will need to go to the store when I get there.”
I scratch the kitten behind her ear. She pushes into my hand and the purring gets louder, a small motor running on nothing but attention.
“Nonna. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
“The trainer.” She says it without hesitation. No question mark.
“How do you know about the trainer?”
“Your sisters have been talking about him since Christmas.”
I close my eyes. Of course they have.
“His name is Isaiah.” I say it the way I said it in the Jersey kitchen, except this time I keep going. “He’s smart and he’s funny when he lets himself be and he takes care of the guys better than anyone I’ve seen….And he’s black.”
The pause is Nonna’s pause. She does not fill silence the way the rest of us fill silence. She’s listening the way she listens to everything, which is completely. And I wait for her reaction.
“If you like him, Matteo, I am sure I will too.”
There it is. Not a speech. Just my grandmother telling me the only thing that matters to her, which is whether the person makes me happy. She does not ask questions about his family or where he’s from. She says what she says and the simplicity of it lands the way her simplicity always lands, which is heavy and warm and final.
“Okay, Nonna.”
“Okay. Tell your captain I will need the kitchen by four.”
I pick her up at the gate and she puts both hands on my face before her bag hits the ground. She’s smaller than she was at Christmas, or maybe the airport is bigger, or maybe I’m just seeing her outside of Jersey for the first time in years and the scale is wrong. She holds my face and looks at me and says “caro” and then asks where we’re eating tonight, and by Friday morning she’s sitting on my couch with the kitten in her lap, both of them watching me make coffee with the same expression of quiet judgment while she makes the shopping list for the polpette she is making.
Hours later, Avi’s kitchen smells like garlic and basil and the polpette that have been rolling in a cast-iron pan since four fifteen, when my grandmother walked into a stranger’s house, assessed the stove, nodded once, and took over. Avi handed her the apron without a word. Ash tried to help. Nonna gave him a tomato to hold and never asked for it back, and Ash stood in the corner of the kitchen holding a tomato for six minutes before he realized it was busywork.
The team fills the house the way the team fills every room, which is loudly and all at once.
Zay is at the counter with a plate. He’s wearing a dark blue shirt I haven’t seen before, the sleeves pushed to his forearms. He’s been here for forty minutes and he has spoken to Hájek about a knee protocol, to Thompson about fishing, and to my grandmother about her cane. Nonna asked about the cane because Nonna asks about canes and bad knees and whether people are eating enough. Zay answered with the easy, careful warmth he gives to everyone. She already has opinions. You could just tell by how she held his hand for a second too long when they met, and the way she looked at him, then at me. That look told me everything.
