“She works in art restoration,” Matteo says. “She has a small apartment in Lincoln Park, two cats, and a brother in Denver she dislikes.”
Tomasso stares at him. “Do you have no respect for privacy?”
“I have excellent respect for my own privacy.”
“Papà,” Tomasso says, turning to me. “Do something about him.”
“I am enjoying him.”
Matteo smiles faintly and reaches for his glass of water.
Tomasso mutters something in Italian that would have earned him a sharp correction at twelve and earns him nothing now except my raised eyebrow.
He sees it and smiles wider. “What? I said it respectfully.”
Matteo responds, and that sets them off bickering like children instead of the men they are.
Instead of finding irritation in it, I simply let the familiar arguments roll over me.
Though they bicker, they are close. In Italy, they had moved out of the family home and into an apartment of their own. Their own schedules, their own women, their own lives. Yes, they came to see me often, and I was never left out of their lives, but it’s not the same as having them under my roof.
They did not need to return to my table at night or cross paths with me in the kitchen or leave books and shoes and half-finished coffee where I could find them.
Here, they do.
For now, anyway.
I know better than to hold too tightly to things that cannot stay.
Still, I will take what I am given as long as I can.
I won’t be the same as my father and rule my family with fear and a hard hand. I rule my empire with an iron fist, but I would consider it a personal failure if my children looked at me with fear in their eyes.
Tomasso points at him. “Enough from the house monk.”
“I’m not a monk.”
“You are staying in on a Friday night with a book about postwar economic policy.”
Matteo looks down at the book. “It’s interesting.”
Tomasso gestures to him as if the case has argued itself.
I switch to espresso, pour it into a small cup, and watch them over the rim.
This, too, is a kind of wealth.
Not the house or the accounts, the companies, the men who answer when I call.
This.
My sons in my kitchen, insulting each other because they are comfortable enough to do so. Matteo pretending not to be amused. Tomasso pretending not to want approval.
Both of them grown, but still very much my sons.
Anna would have laughed.
The thought comes before I can stop it.
