The Supreme Macaroni Company

  The empty buses from Ohio were parked caravan-style in front of the church as though it was a tour stop at Howard Johnson’s on the L.I.E. They had already loaded in for the fried clam special.

  I paused before going up the stairs and remembered riding my bike on Queens Boulevard to go to the candy store when I was ten years old. My brother would watch from this vantage point on the church steps. I turned to see that the old neighborhood had changed, but I bet I could still find the candy store. I would always end my candy run with an Evel Knievel–style jump off the wheelchair ramp at the side entrance of the church. Funny the things I remembered while wearing my wedding gown.

  Dad opened the door for me. I was immediately ushered in by Gabriel, who pulled me into a room in the back of the church. I looked over my shoulder and saw that the church was full of our guests.

  “I’ve held your stepdaughter hostage in the cry room,” Gabriel whispered.

  Orsola was waiting for me. Tall, willowy, and classically beautiful, she had a serene countenance like Gianluca. She was her father’s daughter in every way. She wore a pale silver dress and matching shoes. We embraced.

  “I’m so happy you’re here.”

  “Me too,” she said.

  “I’m sorry the rehearsal dinner went so late last night.”

  “We had so much fun. Matteo loved meeting everyone.”

  “I have something for you.” I reached into my purse and gave her a gold gift box with a ribbon tied around it. “I wanted you to have something from me.”

  Orsola opened the package and lifted out a simple gold bangle bracelet. It had been engraved with the words daughter and friend. Orsola slipped it onto her wrist.

  “Thank you. I love it!” she said.

  “You have a wonderful mother, so you don’t need an extra one. But I will be here for you whenever you need me. I’ll always be your friend.”

  “Valentina?” Orsola seemed nervous.

  “Yes?”

  “How do you feel about being a grandmother?” Orsola took my hands. “I’m having a baby!”

  I was stunned. I figured that Orsola and Matteo would have a baby someday, but I didn’t think it would happen this soon. I’m barely a wife, and now I’m almost a grandmother. What kind of a hayride is this life?

  “Congratulations! Does your father know?”

  She shook her head. “I’ll tell him after the honeymoon.”

  “You will not. He’ll be thrilled! This is wonderful news! We should go and tell him right now!”

  “No, no. This is your moment, and it won’t come again. You go get married, and then we’ll tell Papa.”

  Gabriel poked his head in and motioned for me to join him. Orsola slipped out and up the aisle to join her husband.

  “We could’ve used her legs in the bridal party. We need the height,” Gabriel said. “We got a low flow in the canoe with your crew.”

  “She didn’t want to be a bridesmaid.”

  “Good call. Maybe she didn’t want to get lung cancer from the hair spray.”

  Gabriel guided me into the sacristy, where baptisms were performed years ago. Mom and my sisters had taken over the holy space, turning it into a dressing room at a beauty pageant.

  There was a curling iron heating in a plug under a stained glass window. There were makeup kits with open trays of lipstick, brushes, eyeliner palettes, and mascara tubes. Michelangelo used less pigment to paint the Sistine Chapel. There were last-minute beauty preps happening all around me. Whoever wasn’t rubbing rouge was powdering down, and whoever wasn’t spraying her updo was pulling tendril curls down for some drama around the face.

  This wasn’t a wedding. This was an opening night.

  The only person who wasn’t beautifying was Aunt Feen, who sat on a bench by the baptismal font leaning on the crook of her cane. Even in a room filled with heavenly light pouring through the stained glass windows, Aunt Feen managed to suck the air right out of it.

  “Mike, Father wants to speak to you,” Gabriel said to my mother.

  My mother put down her compact mirror. “You know what your father always says to me. At a certain point, too much futzing results in diminishing returns.” Mom gave me a quick kiss and followed Gabriel into the foyer.

  When my mother returned, she had a look of panic on her face, which she tried to mask with a smile so broad it reminded me of the sample choppers dentists use to demonstrate proper flossing. “Val, we thought we had Father Drake.”

  “Who do we have?”

  “Father Nikako.”

  “Who is Father Nikako?”

  “He’s a sub.” Mom kept the Mr. Sardonicus smile going as though nothing was wrong.

  “What happened to Father Drake?” Tess asked.

  “He’s giving last rites at Queens County Hospital,” Mom explained.

  “There’s a full-time job for you,” Aunt Feen piped up. “You better be bleeding like an animal when you go over there, otherwise you got a nine-hour wait. I saw a man holding his liver over there when I went for my flu shot.”

  “Why didn’t they send the sub over to the hospital?” Jaclyn wondered.

  “Because they didn’t.” Mom gritted her teeth. “It’s not the end of the world. A priest is a priest.”

  “Yeah. But Nikako? Jesus. I can’t understand a word he says,” Aunt Feen groused.

  Gabriel came in and closed the door behind him. “Where’d you get the priest?”

  “He’s from Nigeria,” Mom snapped.

  “Don Cheadle could play him in the movie,” Gabriel said.

  “I like Don Cheadle,” Jaclyn said as she pumped her mascara wand. “He’s a great actor.”

  “This is his first wedding,” Gabriel said.

  “Who invited Don Cheadle to the wedding?” Pamela asked.

  “Not Don Cheadle—the priest.”

  “What?” Tess blurted. “What do you mean, it’s his first wedding?”

  “He’s never done this before.” Gabriel shrugged. “He just got ordained.”

  “Don’t they practice in the seminary?”

  “I have no idea what they do in the seminary.” Gabriel put his hands in the air.

  “I don’t care that he’s never done this, I care about being able to understand him,” Tess said.

  “Well, you won’t. I come over for daily mass, and I fall asleep as soon as my ass hits the pew. He is incomprehensible. Where do they find these people?” Aunt Feen complained. “And he’s a baby. How old is he? Nineteen? Twenty?”

  “Black people look younger.” Tess checked her lipstick.

  “I know. Cousin Roberta is in her forties, and she looks, like, twenty-five,” Jaclyn said.

  “Father Cheadle is at least thirty,” Gabriel said.

  “How can you tell?”

  “He has a very mature look of stultified anxiety on his face that only comes when you know for certain that you’re in over your head.”

  “Great.” I pulled my bouquet of red roses from the florist’s box.

  “I’ll call Father Drake’s cell and see if he can’t hurry the last rites along.” Mom fished for her cell phone in her purse. “I’ll hunt him down.”

  “Don’t. Never pull a priest from a deathbed. At the very least, it’s rude. At the most, it’s horrific karma,” I told her.

  “What’s the difference if we have a young black African priest instead of an old white Irish one? We got black people in the family,” Tess said.

  “The Brazilians.” Aunt Feen’s dentures clicked on the Z sound.

  “Argentinian,” I corrected her.

  My father poked his head in the door. “We’re up!” he said.

  The wedding party filed out. Aunt Feen rose with her cane. “I guess we’re going with the black guy.”

  Gram entered the room. “There you are,”
she said to Feen.

  “You found me,” Feen said. “I’ve been sitting in here with the Real Housewives of Nowhere. My left lung is filled with goo from the hair spray. I’m lucky I can still draw a breath.”

  “You’ll sit with Dominic and me. We’ll process in together.”

  “Whatever you say. Just as long as I have a seat.” Aunt Feen brushed past me. “Good luck, kid.”

  Gram took my hands now that we were alone. “You look magnificent. The dress is perfect.”

  “Gram, you know we’re double family now. You’re about to be a great-grandmother.”

  “Are you pregnant?”

  “Not me. Orsola.”

  “How wonderful! Does Gianluca know?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Life is crazy, isn’t it?”

  I followed the bridal party up the aisle on the arm of my father. I took a moment to look at the guests, faces from my days as a teacher, cousins from Brooklyn and Jersey, cousins from Ohio who clustered together in the same configuration they’d formed on the bus, customers who’d become friends, and even Bret, who winked at me from the end of a pew. My old fiancé and lifelong friend was there for the small stuff, but came through in the major moments too.

  I thought of June Lawton as my heels tapped against the marble. She liked shoes that made noise. She fought for embellishments that jingled and liked metal taps on the sole for whimsy. From her years as a dancer, she liked anything that moved. I wondered if she would have been surprised that Gianluca and I married. She would have been there, in one of her dance skirts and a cashmere bolero sweater. She’d have worn a secondhand fur and a new hat.

  When I eventually made it to the altar on my father’s arm after Chiara and Charisma littered the aisle with rose petals, I saw Gianluca. He was breathtaking in his tuxedo. It’s a good thing I like old movies, because today, he’s my William Powell.

  The light from the rose window bathed Gianluca and Saint Michael on his pedestal in the alcove with a single gold beam. Everyone else, including the priest, the bridal party, and his best man, his father, fell into shadow. The crisp white shirt and the black tie framed his blue eyes and gray hair so beautifully that I almost couldn’t take it all in.

  My father held me tight before letting me go. He wiped away his tears with a handkerchief that had been pressed and starched so stiffly, I was afraid it would cut his eye. My mother believed in a hard crease. He dabbed his tears and joined her in the pew.

  Gianluca took my hand and whispered, “Ti amo.”

  Instantly, the moment, planned from afar and quickly, was real.

  Father Don Cheadle was not only young and inexperienced, he was a nervous wreck. He gripped the prayer book firmly, but the satin ribbon that marked the pages shook.

  I leaned forward and whispered, “Father, don’t worry. You’ll be fine. This is my first time too.”

  He seemed slightly relieved, but I can never tell about these things with holy people, so I whispered, “Now him”—I indicated my husband to be—“not so much.” Father Nikako smiled at me. Now that he was certain we were not the perfect couple, he could let go of having it be a perfect ceremony.

  As Father began the mass, the familiar words fell away. I wouldn’t remember the sound of the music, the drone of the prayers, or Father Nikako’s thick accent.

  All I would remember were Gianluca’s polished black wingtips as he stood in a puddle of red rose petals.

  When we pulled up to Leonard’s in Great Neck, Gianluca looked at the grandeur of the wedding hall with the same sense of awe a visitor might feel when he first happens upon the strip in Las Vegas. His refined Tuscan sensibility had never been barraged by the likes of the Romanesque Leonard’s. When you’re from the place with the original antiquities, the plaster versions can be overwhelming. At first Gianluca was in awe, and moments later, he went numb.

  My husband grew up on streets paved with stones that were over a thousand years old, and here at Leonard’s, they are painted to look that old. Every element of the facade—the white marble stairs with their hand-painted gold veins, the columns with their crackled marble veneers, the palazzo-style windows—is a copy of the real thing, without chips, cracks, or faded metals. Every aspect of Leonard’s is old-looking but in fact brand-new.

  There is no history, just the dazzling patina of the stucco that resembles white teeth. Even the tiered fountain looks as though it has been dipped in Polident. As we pulled up the circular drive to the entrance, we were temporarily blinded by the bright lights nestled in the flower beds, throwing streams of white-hot klieg light on the entrance.

  The last of the buses had unloaded.

  We saw the defensive line of women, our Jersey cousins, going up the stairs in full-length fur coats. They conjured the glamour of old Hollywood or poker night in Bigfoot’s Cave.

  I kissed Gianluca. “Forgive me in advance.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re about to enter the set of a Fellini movie, except we speak English.”

  Carol Kall had outdone herself. Every possible extra had been thrown in for my wedding. I know every tier of what Leonard’s offers, and we’re talking first class all the way.

  The food stations were a version of International Food Day on Ninth Avenue. The stations featured every nation and cuisine. She packed them into the Venetian cocktail lobby like stands in downtown Marrakesh. I was surprised there wasn’t a pig on a spit or roasted duck hanging from the chandeliers Chinatown style, because there was everything else. There was even a free-flowing fondue fountain that made a river of cheese, with fresh rolls shaped like gondolas for dipping.

  Gianluca was amazed and befuddled. I forgot he had never been to a world’s fair or even knew what one was. Ours was the world’s fair of weddings.

  “What do you think?” Mom said.

  “Mom, I didn’t know Leonard had it in him.”

  “I know! Carol really rallied. She understood when I said last child, last wedding. I don’t think there’s a steam table left in Great Neck,” Mom said proudly as she adjusted her bra strap.

  “It’s insane. We didn’t need the sit-down dinner.”

  “Oh, we say that every time, but believe me, they’ll eat the prime rib, and the Venetian table will be nothing but crumbs in ten minutes. Come on. Come see the ballroom.”

  Mom snuck me into the ballroom, where the tables had been set in red, with giant hearts dangling overhead. The band was tuning up.

  “I can’t believe I got the Mario Geritano Orchestra. They’ve got William Richard, who does his salute to Sinatra. He sounds just like him. And he wears a palmetto! And then, Lisa Puglise, you know, the bombshell from upstate? She does a salute to Nancy Sinatra. She’s going to lead the line dance to ‘These Boots Are Made for Walking.’ ”

  “The crowd will go wild.”

  “I know! I just wanted it all to be perfect for you.”

  “It is, Mom.” My mother’s idea of a great wedding was unfolding before our eyes. She has to have her serious sacrament, but afterward, she goes for Talent Night at Grossinger’s. We’ll have everything but a plate-spinning juggler.

  Gabriel poked his head in the door. “Everybody’s looking for you, Val. They want pictures.”

  I followed Gabriel to the bridal room. The moment I could, I slipped out of my shoes and sat down on the sofa. I thought of Gianluca, stood, and slipped them back on.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I can’t leave Gianluca alone out there.”

  “Your mother had a cigar bar set up in the garden room. He’s fine. He’s in there puffing away with the Ohio Players and having a scotch. He’s with his father and your dad.”

  I slipped out of my shoes and sat back down on the couch.

  “I’m very proud of you.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “You pretended to under
stand every word Father Nikako said.”

  “I sort of did understand him,” I admitted.

  “You’re being kind. No one could understand him.”

  “I don’t remember much of the ceremony.”

  “The mind has a way of shielding us from disaster.”

  Tess pushed the door open, followed by Jaclyn. Tess handed me a plate of fried things. They could have been vegetables, or mozzarella or ravioli, but whatever they were at the center, they’d been dipped in batter and fried.

  “What is this?”

  “It’s from the Morocco station.”

  “Yum.”

  “I think they’re stuffed with chickpea,” Jaclyn guessed. “Don’t you want it? Then hand it over.” Jaclyn bit and chewed as Tess sampled a piece.

  “If I could be a superhero, I’d be one who could eat anything and not gain weight,” Tess said.

  “No such thing, so watch your carbs,” said Gabriel.

  “You’re cruel!”

  “No, I know what it’s like to overeat and have to walk around with my pants unzipped for a week.”

  “So you’d be the superhero who doesn’t wear pants.”

  “Okay, then if I can’t be the eater who stays skinny, I’d want to be invisible, so I could eat whatever I want and no one would look at me,” Tess said.

  “That’s called marriage,” Gabriel said. He looked at me. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “You’d get married too if you saw the loot that Gianluca and Val got for their wedding,” said Tess.

  “Yep, I organized it in the storeroom at the shop. There’s a list for the thank-you notes, and a little system I like to call the dot technique. You have repeat gifts, and when you do, they get a dot in the same color, so that the returns are organized. Of course, you have to see the gift to send the thank-you, but once you have, we take the dot boxes and return them to the stores.” Jaclyn smiled proudly.

  “Why don’t we hire you girls to do the shipping at the shop?” I wondered.

  Tess looked at Jaclyn. “I don’t know, why don’t you?”

  “Let me get through the wedding and I’ll talk to Alfred.”

  “I could commute into the city with Charlie!” Tess said.