“You’re serious.”
“No worries. They’ll do the cabbage diet and be down to fighting weight in six weeks. They won’t have the muscle strength to lift a fork, but they will be thin. It’s the Roncalli girls’ seesaw. When the teeter goes up, the totter must go down. It’s all about the dress size.”
“I have a daughter. I know all about it.”
“Anything important that ever happened in the history of my family required a new outfit and therefore a diet to get into the outfit. You’ll see. The first thing my mom will say is, What will I wear? And the second thing she’ll say is, Have you set the date?
“For a woman who never worked in corporate America, she runs our family like the Ford Motor Company. This wedding will become her rollout of the new models. Or the old model, as it is.”
“Do you want a big wedding?”
“God, no. But here’s the problem: my cousins. I went to all their weddings, and now it’s payback time. If I don’t reciprocate, they’ll stop speaking to me.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“Depends. You’ve got pluses and minuses either way. I really love some of them, but there will be a caravan of three buses from just Youngstown, Ohio, alone.”
“If you want them to come, then we invite them.”
“There will be negotiations.”
“For what?”
“Who will run the show? Will it be Trish Meiser, the wedding planner, or Vincenza Napoli, the event coordinator? My mom will make a big deal out of choosing the best woman for the job and waste three legal pads making lists of why she should choose one over the other.
“Then there’s the venue. That’s always a tussle. What borough, do they have valet parking, and what is their version of the Venetian table? For the passed hors d’oeuvres, do we go with the mini cheeseburgers or chicken sate on sticks? What do you do with the sticks? Go with the burgers. Skip the sushi. Italians don’t digest it well. Mini crab cakes? Yes. Eel roll? No.
“Then there’s the parting gift. The souvenir. In the old days it was an embossed pack of matches with your choice of a cigar or cigarette case loaded with Lucky Strikes, but that was killing people, so we switched to the goody bag.”
“What’s in this bag?”
“Something to nosh on the way home. It’s not enough that you just ate a nine-course meal, God forbid you drive three miles and have nothing to eat. Do we give a sack of hot doughnuts on the way out, or is there a sampler box of Godiva chocolate? Or do we get creative and give them the Sunday paper tied with a ribbon and a brioche? Come to think of it, I may get Hillary Clinton to do the negotiations. We need a big gun. My wedding planning committee will be one man short of a hostage situation. Do you have cookie trays in Italy?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Another Italian American institution. Every woman in the family bakes cookies, dozens of them. They box them up and meet at a disclosed location where they stack the cookies on trays lined with gold doilies. They wrap the pyramid of cookies in cellophane and tie it with curling ribbons that, once again, match the bridesmaids’ dresses. As dessert is served, the flowers are removed from the tables and the cookie trays become the centerpieces. They’re pretty and delicious, but never forget, it’s also a competition, fig bar against fig bar, but no one sings the National Anthem and gets a medal in the end—you just get bragging rights.”
“I see,” Gianluca said as he pondered the insanity of our cookie competition.
“Dress gloves are not for style—they were invented in the third century in Italy to hide the burn marks from pulling five hundred hot cookie sheets out of the oven the week before a wedding. The women bake as though their lives depend on it. It’s cookie-lookie! You got snowballs, pizzelles, amaretti, sesames, chocolate biscotti, mini cupcakes, jam-centered thumbprints, peanut butter rounds with a Hershey kiss hat, seven-layer cookies, coconut bonbons, and confetti—don’t forget those candy-coated almonds. They’re good luck, even when you crack a molar when you bite down on one.”
“I’ll avoid the confetti.” Gianluca smiled.
“While you’re at it, don’t eat the coconut cookies. They put something in the frosting dye that could survive a nuclear winter.”
“Frosting dye?”
I was beginning to lose patience with him, so I spoke slowly. “The frosting on the cookies is dyed to match the Barbie dolls dressed as the wedding party that become hood ornaments on the convertibles.”
“Convertibles?”
“Borrowed cars that carry the wedding party from the church to Leonard’s.”
“Who is Leonard?”
I put my hand on Gianluca’s face. He had the bone structure and profile of an emperor on a lucky Roman coin that turned up in my life and changed everything on a dime.
“I’m getting ahead of myself. Forget all this. Let’s go to Tess and Charlie’s. But step on it, or we’ll miss the crab legs. They’re always the first to go.”
Montclair is a sweet village on the coastline of the Hudson River on the Jersey side. We laughed when Tess and Charlie moved to another state but still picked a place where they would be close enough to look across the river and find the Angelini Shoe Shop. It’s a comfort to me that I can reach any of my immediate family by phone, car, or canoe.
Gianluca maneuvered deftly into a small space next to the driveway on Tess’s lawn.
“God, I love Christmas,” I told him.
My sister Tess knew how to throw around the merry. There was a big Christmas tree in the bay window clustered with tiny blue lights that twinkled like sapphires. She had settled a series of big red-and-white candy-cane decorations up the front walk. On the roof, Santa in his sleigh and Rudolph with a glowing red nose clung to the slates, fully lit and ready for takeoff. There was a wreath on the door with giant brass bells and red velvet ribbons. Two ceramic elves the size of my nephews flanked the door. This Santa Village was so elaborate, it needed its own zip code.
Gianluca turned off the car. I took a deep breath. He leaned across the seat and kissed me. “Shall we go inside?”
“No. Let’s sit in the car all night and make out.”
“Your father is watching.”
I looked up at the bay window, and there, next to the tree, was my father’s silhouette, with its big head and square, trim body. As he turned, you could see the outline of the Roncalli schnoz I’d inherited, but which had somehow magically skipped my sisters.
The sight of my father alone in the window reminded me of all the times throughout my life that he’d waited for me.
I remembered him sitting alone on the bleachers of the Holy Agony gym when I didn’t make the cut for JV basketball, at the foot of the sidewalk with the video camera when I emerged from our house in my First Communion dress and veil, and the night he came over to my studio apartment when I broke off my engagement with Bret Fitzpatrick, the perfect man for somebody else. Dad stood in the doorway, knowing that I was breaking up with a wonderful man, but didn’t stand in my way when I decided to take a different path.
No one in my family had wanted to speak to me back then, they were so furious. I had caught a big fish who happened to be my childhood sweetheart, but I threw him back into the river like an old shoe instead of the Wall Street wonder he became. It was typical of me to throw away something good without an alternate plan in mind. No one understood—no one but my father. Dad only wanted my happiness, whatever that meant.
When Bret pivoted a few months later and married a beautiful blonde named Mackenzie from East Eighty-First Street, hit it big on Wall Street, moved to Chatham, and had two children, my father was the only one who pulled me aside and told me I had done the right thing.
Bret and I remain friends—we even work together on the financials for my business—but on the personal side, my father understood why I chose learning to make shoes over becoming a Wall S
treet wife. My dad wanted me to make my own destiny, instead of helping Bret realize his. At the time I couldn’t do both, but only my father understood.
Dutch Roncalli was the last of his breed, the strict Italian father with a heart made of mascarpone.
“Why are you crying?” Gianluca asked.
“In the very worst of times, or the very best, my dad has always been there for me. He may not have said anything, but he’s always stood by me. He’s been my witness. I never thought that I’d find someone who loved me as much as he does.”
Gianluca and I walked up Candy Cane Lane. The air had the scent of freshly cut balsam and the oncoming snow. When we reached the porch, my father threw open the front door. The diamond on my finger was nestled inside my black suede glove like a secret. I was about to embrace my dad when he body-blocked us from entering.
“It’s bad,” he whispered. “Go.”
Instead of the Dean Martin Christmas album playing, we heard shouting. “How bad is it?”
“I’d turn back if I were you.”
“Dutch? Who is it?” my mother shouted over the fight. “We feel a breeze in here!”
I went up on my tiptoes and looked past Dad down the long hallway to the kitchen. I was suddenly famished as the scent of buttery broiled lobster wafted through from the kitchen. What’s a little throw-down before lobster? My father tried to close the door, but I placed my hand on it.
I will always choose food over personal safety.
Gianluca tightened his grip on my arm as we heard yelling, followed by the banging of fists on the table. “What happened? Did Aunt Feen cheat at cards?” Aunt Feen is my grandmother’s only sister, her baby sister. Feen has lived in my Teodora’s shadow since she was born. It is not uncommon for Aunt Feen to attract attention by any means necessary, whether it’s complaining the most or starting small fights that turn into brawls, triggered by her passive-aggressive comments. It isn’t any help when she deliberately wears a muumuu and orthotics when the event is black-tie. “Did she pick a fight with Gram?”
“I wish. That’s a bonfire you could contain. No, Tess and Jaclyn served the third fish, and all hell broke loose.”
I could picture my sisters with steaming plates of fresh fish, clams, and oysters, navigating the small dining room like a military front, hoping to deflect a fight with good food.
“Your sisters served the shrimp while your sister-in-law Pamela followed them with the lemon wedges. Charlie was ejaculating—”
“Oh, Dad, you must mean gesticulating—talking with his hands?” My dad’s malaprops get worse when he’s nervous.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever the word is. The sauce went flying. Let’s just say it looks like a crime scene in there.”
“Okay, so we lost the sauce. But don’t tell me she ran out of crab legs.” I shouldn’t have been thinking about food at a time like that, but I like to think about food, especially at a time like that. “I told her to order a crate from Sarasota. I made shoes for the guy who owns Joe’s Crabs.”
“There’s enough fish. But there’s more agita. Charlie had a couple of drinks and announced that he’d lost his job, and Aunt Feen called him a loser, and now it’s all over but the weeping. Once Feen attacked Charlie, he came out of his corner like an animal, and your sister had to be restrained.”
“Charlie lost his job?” My heart sank. Tess had married a good working-class man who was solid and stable. He also had so much body hair that at the beach he looked like he was wearing a brown Slanket.
“Company is leaving New Jersey,” Dad explained. “They left the building behind as well as Charlie and about thirty-two other people.”
“Poor Charlie.”
“He’s soaking his sorrows like a gas rag in a nozzle.”
“He’s drinking?”
“Like he’s parched. Your brother-in-law downed a bottle of prosecco like it was mother’s milk and his name was Romulus. Now they’re all screaming at each other, airing issues that go as far back as 1983.” Dad cocked his head. “Uh-oh, they just climbed into the time machine. I heard 1979 mentioned.”
“We’re outta here,” I said to Gianluca.
“Make it quick. They saw your headlights flash through the bay window.” My father reached to close the door.
It was too late.
We heard the stamping of feet, the shoving of chairs, and the tinkling of glasses as my family got up from the table and headed to the foyer. On cue, as dramatized in the biblical epics, the Israelites came pouring out of the living room as they did during the parting of the Red Sea. In this sweet, small house, they appeared like a cast of thousands, except that unlike the people of peace, my family was arguing. They shouted. They shoved. They threw their hands in the air. Alfred tried to reason with Aunt Feen (mistake) while Tess tried to soothe Charlie (won’t happen).
The children charged past the grown-ups.
My nieces Chiara and Charisma embraced me as my nephews Rocco and Alfred Jr. fist-bumped Gianluca. They ran up the stairs to the playroom. Even they knew retreat was the best tactic when it came to a Roncalli family battle.
“Don’t wake the baby!” my sister Jaclyn yelled after them, her volume certain to wake the baby.
My father raised his hands in the air like Moses without the tablets. “Silence!” he shouted.
The last thing I heard was the clickety-click of Pamela’s stilettos against the wood floor as she joined the throng. I was so happy she’d decided to come for Christmas Eve. She and my brother were working on their marriage, for her sake, for his, and for their sons. Marital therapy was helping them, and tonight, I was jealous.
Had I gotten the psychotherapy I desperately needed all those years ago—instead of building the shoe business—I would have taken a deep breath, turned back down Candy Cane Lane, and said, “When things calm down, and you all decide to act like adults, Gianluca and I shall return,” but instead I lost control, and so went my temper.
All my emotional trigger points jammed, and my gut spasmed. All I could think was that the happiest moment of my life was being ruined by these nut jobs. So instead of behaving with maturity, I sank to their level, buckled under the pressure like a hormone-enraged tween, and shouted at them in my highest soprano, “What the hell is going on here? What’s wrong with you people? You’re ruining Christmas?”
Tess actually put her hand on her heart. “Aunt Feen ruined it.”
“Don’t blame me that your husband lost his job. I didn’t fire him,” Feen said.
“Downsized. He was downsized!” Tess yelled.
“Shit-canned. We called it shit-canned in my day.” Feen rapped her cane on the floor.
“Charlie, what happened?” I asked him quietly.
“I was laid off.”
“So? This is a family where there have been layoffs. We’ve all been let go or fired or downsized. It’s part of life. Okay, it’s worse because it’s Christmas, but that’s on them, not on you. You were a great employee. Weren’t you District King or something?”
“Best Salesman in Monmouth County,” Tess corrected me.
“See that? You were on top. And now you’re not. But you will be again. Come on. This is life. You’re not alone in this family. We all have a story to tell. I was fired from Pizzeria Uno in college.”
“I was let go from Macy’s,” Tess offered.
“The Parks Department took a powder on me for six months in ’87,” Dad remembered.
“I’m sure you have people on your side who were let go,” my mother chimed in. She has spent a lifetime trying to be fair, but somehow, this wasn’t her moment. Tess glared at her.
“Look, Charlie. It happens. Jobs come and go. We get laid off, and we figure something out. Come on, people.” I threw my hands up.
“Valentine is right. We always figure it out.” Alfred looked at Charlie.
My brothe
r Alfred straightened his tie. It occurred to me that my brother is never out of a tie. He even wore one on a family picnic while roasting weenies on a hibachi. He’s a tie guy. Most occasions are formal for him, and it suits him, as he has always been prim. His jet-black hair, now streaked with the occasional gray fleck, was slicked back with a side part that was so clean from years of combing, his hair actually grew in the right direction.
He gave Charlie a quick pat on the back. “It’s going to be all right, Charlie.”
“See there? All better. Thank you, Alfred. Now, let’s all go back to the dining room and finish our meal and talk about something of a noninflammatory nature,” my mother suggested as she tucked a loose strand of hair back into her upsweep. Her hair reminded me of a similar style worn by Joan Collins in 1985, when big hair meant big style. However, Mom made the look her own. She had embedded a rhinestone Christmas tree brooch in the braid around the bun.
Reason ruled for a moment until Aunt Feen pushed through the crowd with her cane. “Take me home!” she thundered.
“You’re not going anywhere, Aunt Feen,” my mother said as she yanked at the thigh-binding Spanx under her red velvet chemise. Michaela “Mike” Roncalli was decorated for the holidays, and by God the party would continue. My mother considered a party an utter failure if any person left it before the crystal was back in the cabinet. “You’re not going home.”
“I sure as hell am!”
Mom closed her eyes and simultaneously patted down her false eyelashes with her forefingers. “Well, you’ll have to call Carmel. And they are not likely to have any drivers on Christmas Eve.”
“Damn them!” Aunt Feen snapped.
“We’re not taking you home until we’ve served the four remaining courses and the cannoli and espresso,” Jaclyn said.
“And the sweet timbale!” Gabriel said from the back of the room. I could hear him but couldn’t see him.
Gabriel Biondi, my best friend of a thousand years, is perfectly proportioned but petite. He’s one of those Italian men who has the face of a gorgeous general but the stature of Jiminy Cricket. The entirety of the Biondi family but for him is dead, so we adopted Gabriel and he adopted us. My father calls him his second son.