The Supreme Macaroni Company

  I held up my hand and let the beams from the headlights behind us illuminate the facets of the diamond. “The tectonic plates of my family structure shifted tonight.”

  “How so?”

  “I’m legitimate.”

  “You weren’t before?”

  “Not really. You made me legit. I’m going to be a wife.”

  Gianluca smiled. “That’s all it took?”

  “A little velvet box. See, in my family, they believe married people have real lives. Single people are in a holding pattern until they become night nurses for the older generation.”

  “We may have to do that anyway. My father. Your grandmother.”

  “I won’t mind because I won’t be alone on the shift. This ring changed everything. I will no longer be the single daughter with time on her hands. I’m not going to get that call from Mom on a Saturday morning asking me to come home and help her clean out the garage.

  “Dad won’t send a replacement part for his car to Perry Street because it saves him on the shipping. From now on, he’ll pick it up himself. I won’t be the aunt who is happy to be the extra pair of hands at Great Adventure on opening weekend. I won’t take Rocco on the Tilt-A-Whirl because his father throws up on carnival rides.

  “I won’t be the sister-in-law who gives up a Sunday afternoon to pour cement when Pamela gets a yen for a new patio in Jersey. I won’t be asked to drop everything and take Aunt Feen to her doctor appointments. You will be my excuse. I have a fiancé now. You’re the love of my life, but you’re also my get-out-of-jail-free card.”

  Christmas Eve is the one night in Greenwich Village when you can find parking on the street. Gianluca pulled into an empty spot on Perry Street close to our front door. He got out and opened the door, lifting the tower of Tupperware out of the car.

  The scent of the fresh Christmas tree upstairs greeted us in the foyer below. I looked up the landing and could see the soft blur of the twinkling white lights on the tree.

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” Gianluca said.

  “No, come up. You can stay here.”

  He smiled. “You have a roommate.”

  “So I’ll come to the hotel.”

  “No, my father and stepmother will be here in the morning. We have lots of time. The rest of our lives.” Gianluca pulled me close.

  “Years and years and years.”

  Gianluca kissed me good night. He turned to go through the door, and I threw my arms around him from behind. I closed my eyes and held him. He laughed and turned around to face me.

  “Merry Christmas Eve,” I told him.

  Gianluca kissed me again, and this kiss would be the one I would always remember. It was like the last button fastened on a topcoat against the cold.

  “Took you long enough. Did you walk back from Queens?” Gabriel asked as I made my way to the kitchen with the leftovers. He was already wearing his bathrobe. “Where’s Gianluca?”

  “He went to the hotel.”

  “Too awkward with me here?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Liar.” Gabriel poured water from the kettle into a mug. “I’m not going to feel bad. You have the rest of your lives to spend together.”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Want a cup of tea? Laci Le Beau’s Super Dieter’s Tea. After that meal, my liver needs an intervention. While I’m at it, I’m cleansing my colon and resting my pancreas.”

  “Make me a cup, too. Now I have to worry about looking good in a wedding dress.”

  My cell phone buzzed in my purse. I fished it out. “Hi, Ma.”

  “Did you get Auntie home all right?”

  “Yes. And that was our good deed for the year.”

  “Hon, I know it’s too soon to talk dates—”

  “Ma, seriously. After that meal, you want to talk about a wedding date?”

  “Well, it’s never too soon. At your age, you shouldn’t have a long engagement.”

  “We’re not that old.”

  “You’re not particularly young either. You don’t have a decade to spare like a twenty-something couple. Let’s face it. You need to bust a move here.”

  When my mother uses phrases that she overheard on the crosstown bus in 1985, like “bust a move,” it makes me want to do the opposite. “Let’s talk after the New Year.”

  “I gave Carol Kall a jingle.”

  “It’s Christmas Eve!”

  “She picked up. They’re Jewish.”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s still a holiday.”

  “She didn’t mind at all. I have her home number from the breast cancer benefit. She had the kids in bed, and she and her husband had ordered in Chinese.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Well, somebody has to take the bull by the horns.”

  “I got engaged at eight p.m. There’s no bull, there’s no horns, and the ring isn’t even warm on my hand yet.”

  “You have to be strategic if you want to book Leonard’s.”

  “We don’t want Leonard’s.”

  “Carol offered the Venetian Room.”

  “God, Ma. Seriously?”

  “I know. Is luck on your side or what? And get this. She has an open date in February.”

  “A year from now is too far off.”

  “No, no. This February.”

  “Six weeks from now?” I pulled my stomach in. I couldn’t possibly get down to a size 8 in six weeks. Well, maybe I could with the cabbage diet. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I am! She has a runaway bride who just canceled out on February fourteenth. Valentine’s Day—okay? If this isn’t God coming down off a cloud and offering you a gift on your feast day, I don’t know what is. This is fate at work. We should grab it and run like the wind. She’s got a waiting list you know.”

  “I have to talk to Gianluca. We may want to elope.” A few seconds went by. “Ma, are you there?”

  “I always have problems when I call Queens,” Gabriel said as he thumbed through a magazine.

  A few more seconds of silence. I was about to hang up, and I said, “Ma? Are you there?”

  “Not for long. I just had a stroke. Do not say the word elope to me ever again! You might as well slap me in the face with a shovel!”

  “I can’t take histrionics. I just drove through two states with Aunt Feen.”

  “Valentine, you listen to me. You’re going to have a proper wedding. No running off. That’s not even real. Catholics do not go to city hall. We marry in cathedrals. You get a white carpet from the foyer to the altar. Pews marked with ribbons. For the love of Mary, we festoon. We make a sacrament. It’s holy! We get blessed and re-up our baptismal promises. Besides, we need to welcome Gianluca into the fold.”

  “He’s seen our fold.”

  “All the more reason to put this planning period on frappé. You want to marry Gianluca before he goes on social security, don’t you? Or do they even have that in Italy? You know, you ought to check. For down the line. What kind of coverage does he have? Your father’s meds practically put us in hock every month.”

  “I give up. Book it.”

  “Fabulous! I already put a deposit down.”

  “Of course you did.” I almost threw the phone across the room.

  My mother was elated. “It’s a little breezy in February, but so what? You’d never go strapless, and I’d never go sleeveless, so February is perfect. Silk shantung for you, and a bouclé bolero for me.”

  “As long as you’re covered, Ma.”

  “As long as my arms are covered. I’ve still got the cleavage. Gonna show it with the big jewels.”

  I threw down the phone and sipped the bitter cup of Super Dieter’s Tea slowly, like I was Juliet and it was poison.

  “What was that all about?” Gabriel asked.
br />   “Mom booked Leonard’s.”

  Gabriel made a face. “How retro. That’s like going to the Poconos for your honeymoon.”

  “Don’t say that. Carol Kall will have me booked at Mount Airy Lodge in the bridal suite with the bathtub shaped like a champagne glass. I’ll get my leg stuck in the stem like my cousin Violet Ruggiero did on her wedding night, and my first night of married life will end up with a stay in the emergency room.”

  “You know, instead of getting upset, why don’t you just go with whatever your mother wants?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “You’re busy. You have a business to run. Plus there’s something very seventies kitsch about all this. Leonard’s. The Poconos. Your sisters can wear palazzo pants—hides a multitude of sins, and believe me, Tess won’t be able to drop ten pounds in six weeks. I say, hand your mother your wedding on a silver platter.”

  I texted Gianluca. “Do you want to get married on February 14, 2011? Valentine’s Day.”

  Gianluca texted me back. “Yes.”

  “How do you feel about a big wedding?” I texted.

  “As long as you’re the prize at the end of the carnival, I don’t care.”

  I read Gianluca’s text aloud to Gabriel.

  Gabriel’s eyes welled with tears. “I don’t know if I’m emotionally moved or if the tea has formed a firewall in my colon around the cannolis I ate at your sister’s, but what a wonderful man you’re marrying. God bless us everyone.”

  I texted Gianluca, “I love you.”

  “I love you,” he texted me back.

  “You realize you could have an entire marriage on your phones,” Gabriel said. “That’s my dream, a mutually satisfying committed relationship that takes place over iPhone. Just odd symbols and snippets of thoughts and feelings punched into the phone with my thumbs and no one in my face bugging me for actual conversation. That, I could sustain. I could do that. A text-y marriage.”

  “I need air.” I grabbed the tin of biscotti. “Come on. Let’s go up to the roof.”

  “No, thanks. It’s cold up there.”

  “I need to show you something.”

  We grabbed our coats, and Gabriel followed me up the steps to the roof. I pushed the door open and inhaled the cold air deep into my lungs.

  “Okay, what do you want to show me?”

  “Something bad happened tonight.”

  “I know. Aunt Feen put Charlie’s manhood in a Tupperware container and burped it.”

  “No, not that. It happened here. On this roof. Tonight. Before we came out to Jersey.”

  “Oh boy. Did it have something to do with Bret? He sort of blew past me before he left tonight.” Gabriel dragged two chaise longues to the center of the roof. He placed my cup of hot tea in the holding cup, and his in the other. He plopped down in his coat and folded his arms.

  I stretched out on the chaise next to Gabriel. “He was upset about Mackenzie. She wants a divorce.”

  “She thinks she can do better than him?”

  “She already has. Met another guy at church.”

  “Oh the piety!”

  “And the pity. Look, Bret signed on for that life. That fancy life. And she wants out. So he came over here.”

  “You’re his best friend, Val.”

  “What happened up here was a little more than friendship.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Bret was so upset he cried. I’ve never seen him cry. Ever. So I hugged him, and then he kissed me.”

  “Where?”

  “Here.”

  “No, I meant cheek or lips.”

  “Both. Gianluca came out onto the roof and saw everything.”

  “I knew something was up when I was packing up the timbale. Gianluca came down to the kitchen and went to the windows and stood there.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “I tried to make small talk, but he didn’t hear me. Or he was ignoring me. Then Bret came through and went down the stairs without saying anything to Gianluca.”

  “I wish they would have spoken.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I love them both. I mean, I really love Gianluca, you know, as a wife, but I’ve known Bret since we were kids, and he was devastated.”

  “So now two men are devastated on your behalf.”

  “No, everything is fine with Gianluca.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Don’t make me feel worse.”

  “What you ought to feel is lucky. Gianluca still asked you to marry him after he caught you kissing another man? He’s a man of steel, that one.”

  “He said he understood. You see, that’s why I have to marry him.”

  “You make it sound like an ultimatum.”

  “No, no, I didn’t mean it like that. I love him and I want to marry him. I can see myself getting old with him.”

  Gabriel let out a long sigh. “Are you going to have children?”

  “I’d like one.”

  “One? The man is Italian. They have a farm mentality. He’ll want six.”

  “He’s a tanner, not a farmer.”

  “Where do you think leather comes from? You need cows. And a cow lives on a farm. Besides, he’s a man. He’ll place the order, and you’ll deliver. Trust me. He’ll want a few.”

  “But he only has Orsola.”

  “Fluke.”

  “Can you believe I’m going to be a stepmother?”

  “I hope you turn evil. They’re the only interesting ones. You ever met the first wife?”

  “No.”

  “I bet she’s a piece of work.”

  “I have no idea.” Actually, when I agreed to marry Gianluca earlier this evening, the farthest thing from my mind had been that I was going to be his second wife. Clearly his first wife was not a keeper, and here I was, attempting to be the one who would last. I wondered if I had the goods or if he did.

  “How are you going to do this?” Gabriel looked up at the sky.

  “Do what?” Now Gabriel had me nervous, like I might have to actually address the situation with Mirella, the ex.

  “Marriage and the shop and the shoes and Roberta and Argentina and me.”

  “I’m getting married, I’m not dying.”

  “Are you going to live in New York?”

  “Of course.”

  “You discussed it?”

  “No, but he knows the deal.”

  “Oh, you sad, naive girl. Men never know anything. They have to be told.”

  “Seriously?”

  “He’s probably got ideas of his own about where he wants to live.”

  “I can’t live in Italy.”

  “You might have to, at least part-time.”

  “I can’t! I took my brother on as a partner to hold on to this business and this building.”

  “I’m not the one you need to negotiate with. You have to talk to Gianluca.”

  Gabriel has a funny way of going round and round with me and getting to the pith suddenly and without intention. I hadn’t asked Gianluca any of the hard questions, so I really didn’t know why I thought my marriage with him would work more than, say, his marriage with his first wife. I know that these were the things I should have focused on, how to proceed with my creative life while also taking on the new role of wife. But that night wasn’t a typical night. It was Christmas Eve. There was a big family party and a whopper family fight. There was no long, intense conversation where we shared our dreams for the future. I washed dishes, we drove Aunt Feen home, and he dropped me off. It was a night full of revelations and strange surprises and not necessarily the good kind.

  My phone buzzed. I fished it out of my coat pocket.

  “Who is it?” Gabriel lay back in the lawn chair.

  “Bret.” He
texted, “I’m sorry. Hope you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine. Sorry about everything,” I texted back.

  “Are you going to tell him that you got engaged?” Gabriel asked.

  “I can’t text that.”

  “I would.”

  “Why?”

  “Otherwise he’s going to think that kiss was something other than friendship.”

  “It was friendship.”

  “He doesn’t know that.”

  “I think he does.”

  “You better write a disclaimer then. Say something about Gianluca without saying anything too specific.”

  I texted, “Went to Jersey with Gianluca.”

  Bret texted, “I am at my parents’. Kids are with Mac in the city.”

  I texted, “Hang in there.”

  “ ‘Hang in there’? After what the man has been through, you act like he lost his wallet?” Gabriel sipped his tea.

  “What am I supposed to say?”

  “I don’t know, but not that. That’s a platitude you find on a poster at Denny’s.”

  “It’s all so bizarre. All of it.”

  “You can’t change history. You were once engaged to Bret. And now you’re engaged to Gianluca. All these threads tie together.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “You’re not being clear. You have a diamond ring on your hand, and you didn’t discuss the conditions of the agreement to wed. You kissed one guy and got engaged to another in the time it took your sister to boil a lobster.”

  “What do you recommend I do?”

  “I don’t know. I can only identify problems. I don’t solve them.”

  “Gianluca forgave me for the kiss. He didn’t assume the worst about me. He figured I had my reasons.”

  “And what would those reasons be?”

  “History.”

  “You should erase your history, if you ask me.”

  “No, it’s the opposite. When you marry someone who’s been married, or someone like me, who’s been engaged, the history part is a gift.”