I scan the table the way I scan every room. Who is looking where. What the energy is. Whether my presence has changed the temperature or whether it was already set before I walked in. I know they know what I look like but I still navigate the uncertainty.
Teo's dad is the first to greet me. "Hi, I'm Tony. It's nice to meet you." He holds out his hand for a firm shake.
“Isaiah. Call my Mary.” Teo’s mother is on her feet before I’ve finished shaking Tony's hand. She is shorter than I expected and the energy coming off her could run a generator. She reaches upand puts both hands on my face. “Look at you.” She holds me and studies me and she is not asking a question. She is rendering a verdict. “Sit. Eat. You’re too thin.”
“Ma, you said that to me two hours ago,” Teo says.
“You are also too thin. Everyone is too thin. Sit, Isaiah.”
She lets go. I sit. The chair is close to Nonna’s. Nonna turns to me, slow, deliberate, and puts her hand on my forearm. One squeeze. She doesn’t say anything. She decided at the team dinner in Atlanta, and the decision was apparently final. Teo makes the introductions, though we all know each other’s names
“So.” Jackie leans forward, both elbows on the table. “You’re the one doing his shoulder.”
“I’m the assistant athletic trainer, yes.”
“The assistant.” She holds the word like she’s entering it into evidence. “Not the head guy.”
“Gary Miller is the head athletic trainer. I handle the clinical work. Rehab protocols, manual therapy, return-to-play assessments.”
“He has a DPT from South Carolina,” Teo says.
“I wasn’t asking you, Matteo.” Jackie points at him.
“I’m providing context.”
“I don’t need your context. I’m getting his context.” Jackie turns back to me. “South Carolina.”
“Yes.”
“And before that?”
“Georgia State. I worked with the football program.”
“Football to hockey.” She tilts her head. “That’s a jump.”
“The bodies are different. The principles are the same.”
Ma waves her hand once. The gesture has the authority of a gavel. “Let the man eat. He just sat down. Have you eaten today? Eat.”
The bread basket is in front of me because someone moved it while I was being interrogated, and I realize it was Nonna, who pushed it three inches toward my plate without a word.
The waiter arrives and Ma orders for the table without consulting anyone including her husband. It's been clear from the first minute who was really in charge of this family. She does this in a mixture of English and Italian that I follow maybe sixty percent of. Nicole adds a modification about the sauce. With a nod, Ma confirms that Nicole’s modification was already implied. Gina orders more wine. Nobody asks if I have preferences.
Teo here is not the Teo from the team. His hands move more. His voice is louder. He argues with Jackie about an incident from 2019 and his whole body leans into the argument, shoulders forward, palm flat on the table, gesturing with a bread roll. These are the only people on the planet who know him this way.
“Matteo tells us you’re from Georgia,” Ma says.
“Born and raised.”
“You still have family there?”
“My parents are in south Georgia. My grandmother’s in Atlanta too.”
“Your grandmother.” Ma’s face shifts. Softens. “She’s close by?”
“About twenty minutes.”
“Good. A man should be close to his grandmother.” She says this like she’s issuing a municipal ordinance. Teo catches my eye. The look is brief and saysI knowandI’m sorryandare you okayin a single glance. I give him nothing back because I am not going to communicate with him while five women with investigative instincts are watching every angle.
