All This Talk of Love (3 page)

IN THE BALLROOM
of the Wilmington Country Club, Prima buzzes from table to table. Each round holds eight of her gussied-up friends and family, whom she hugs and waves at in a blur of kisses and smiles. Before each course goes out, she rushes to the kitchen to scrutinize its preparation: first the arugula salad with its crispy Parmesan ring, then her father’s lasagna trucked in from the Al Di Là, then lollipop lamb chops with a mint sauce and sides of asparagus and rosemary potatoes.
Th
e chef and servers shoot her dirty looks, but too bad. She is Antonio Grasso’s daughter.

She goes over again and again how she and Tom will bring the confirmation to its dramatic close. She’ll wait until the desserts and coffee are cleared, and then just as her family considers heading for the coatroom, she and Tom will join hands and tell them to hold their horses. We have a second gift to give you today, she will say. By that point, the other guests will have gone; the three-piece orchestra will be packing up; the sunset will be spilling its pink light through the French doors of the terrace; the only missing element will be a film crew, a sound track, a bubbly host/model/reporter shoving a microphone in each of their faces, asking, How do you feel? What does this act of love and generosity mean to the Grasso family?

All that, and Frankie.

Prima can’t help looking for her brother in the crowd, but she sees no shock of dyed jet-black hair, no John Lennon glasses, no silver bracelets. She should know better than to expect Frankie to rise to the occasion. She regrets having bribed him with the promise of the surprise, but at least she didn’t reveal it. Besides, it’s not Prima’s role to begin with—or at least it shouldn’t be—to enforce Frankie’s obligations, to make him a better man. It’s her father’s. It would have been Tony’s. Whatever the case, once you prompt a person like Frankie to do the right thing, it’s impossible to gauge his sincerity; and then you have to put up with his sullen “I’m here, happy now?” whiny self-righteousness. Who needs it? And what would Prima even say to him? Even though you’ve ignored your nephews all your life, I appreciate your presence at Patrick’s official transition into Christian adulthood?

But that would be stooping to his level. Sarcasm. It seeps into you like a stain; it blinds you; it makes you think you’re superior, but Frankie is not superior to anyone, not even to Prima, who might never have gone to graduate school but has just as much of a college degree as he does, and in something practical. She shouldn’t have to defend herself or her choices to anyone, let alone Frankie, and another thing—

Zach, her quietest, appears. “Ma,” he says, “dance with me?” He holds his arms out. He wears the suit she bought him on his sixteenth birthday, made of imported English wool hand-cut by their Italian tailor, Ernesto, who looks proudly over from his seat near the grand piano. Like every Ernesto suit before it, this one infuses Zach with strength and pride in the way it hugs his arms and slims his waist and falls sculpturally at his ankles, announcing its quality to even the most casual observer. If you didn’t know Zach, you’d think he was the teen heartthrob from your soap opera or the class president; you’d be surprised to hear he’s just a kid, not a man, barely a young man. He has his
nonno
’s ambition and long legs and his father’s freckles; from his mother he has practicality and deep brown eyes and a head of unruly curls; with his twin, Matt, he shares not an identical face but a delirious faith that life is a carnival designed to amuse and delight them. Prima shared that same faith once.

Mother and son hold their hands on each other’s waists, sway back and forth to “As Time Goes By.” Four or five couples join them on the large square of hardwood: her mother with Tom; Mark Krouse from the firm with his new wife; and, on the periphery, ancient Aunt Helen with her son, Michael.

“So, Ma,” Zach says, “don’t get mad, but Dad told me the secret.”

She stops moving for a moment, looks at his overeager eyes, then gets back to the sway. “No, he didn’t.”

“He did!”

“OK, then you tell me.”

“You first.”

“Son,” she says, “you really think I’d fall for that old trick?”

“What old trick?”

Soon the song ends, Zach, defeated, kisses her on the cheek and strides off, and dessert arrives: generous sampler plates of pear-and-ginger tarts, apple cobbler, and chocolate-pecan truffles.
Th
e expression alone on her guests’ faces when they notice the supplemental buffet with fresh fruit and cake and ice cream swells Prima’s already bursting heart. Across the room, her mother catches her eye, mouths “Beautiful!” and folds her hands as if in prayer, as if the sweet little delights before her are too perfect to touch. Still Prima can’t relax enough to sit with her. She paces in the back of the ballroom near the kitchen, watching and waving and occasionally crossing the dance floor to wish the early departures good night.

“A lovely affair,” they say. And to Tom: “First class, Buckley. First class all the way.”

“
Th
ank you,” they say as she squeezes their hands and kisses the cheeks of the overcologned accountants and their jittery wives. “
Th
ank you so much.”

All her life, Prima has put her faith in the grand gesture. In middle school she organized elaborate study parties with themed food and music and mnemonic games. As a child she reenacted Lucille Ball skits in the basement for her mother and Tony, memorizing the jokes and the pratfalls. On Tom’s twenty-first birthday, after they’d been dating only a month, she filled his dorm room with twenty-one presents of various shapes and sizes.

“Excuse me,” someone says, behind her. “You must be the mother of the bride?”

She turns and—no mistake this time—there’s Frankie. Frankie in a wrinkled shirt, no tie, and khakis with frayed cuffs. Frankie after all. Her first instinct is to throw her arms around him, but she stops herself. He’s two hours late.
Th
e look in his eyes is smug. She checks her watch. “How’d you get here?” she says. “You couldn’t have called?”

“I drove,” he says. “I got up at the crack of dawn and sat in traffic all day.
Th
at’s why I’m late. But maybe I shouldn’t have bothered.”

Prima has steeled herself to fight her mother today, not Frankie. So she says, “You know what? You’re right,” and apologizes, thanks him for making the effort to drive all the way down, and offers him gas money, which he refuses. Finally she throws her arms around him like she wanted to when she saw him. He is her only brother. She’s happy he’s here, even two hours late, even smug.

“Did I miss the big announcement?”

“You’re in luck,” she says.

She takes him by the hand and leads him toward the head table. When they reach the dance floor, their mother spots him. It occurs to Prima at this moment—as Maddalena jumps out of her chair and runs to greet her son—that all Frankie needs to do to fill his mother’s heart is walk into a room.
Th
ere are tears in Maddalena’s eyes like he’s a soldier stepping off a warship. She’s seen him as recently as the Fourth of July, when he came down to Prima’s beach house for a few days, but it might as well have been a decade. When you have lost one of your own children, every day apart from the ones who survived seems endless. Prima lets go of her brother’s hand, steps to the side as their mother embraces him, and searches the room for other early departures to bid good night.

Before long, the guests have all gone, taking with them the heavy glass vases of orange dahlias, the cake in wax-paper bags. Prima and Tom stand at the head table, her arm around his waist, her head on his shoulder.
Th
eir family sits before them: her mother and father, three of their boys, Frankie eating a warmed-up plate of lasagna. Behind them, the violinist snaps his case shut and shakes hands with the cellist. It is six o’clock, nearly dark, and through the windows they can see the last of the golfers carrying their gear to the parking lot.

“Oh well,” says her mother, rubbing her arms and standing. “
Th
ey’re going to kick us out, I guess.”

“Hold on one second, Mamma,” says Tom.

Antonio puts his hand on his wife’s leg. “What’s your rush?” he says.

Ryan, shirt untucked, returns from the men’s room, glances around at his parents and brothers and grandparents and uncle all sitting quietly. “What’d I miss?” he asks.

“Your mother has something to say,” Tom tells him.

“Oh, right!” says Ryan. “
Th
e big finale.”

Th
e folded papers in Prima’s hands suddenly take on a weight. For weeks she’s been eager to hand them to the seven people gathered around the table, but now, inexplicably, she wants to keep them to herself a bit longer.

“Can I guess?” asks Matt.

“Sure.”

“Really? OK, hold on. Let me think.”

“You’re buying a boat,” says Maddalena. She’s sitting up straight in her chair, ready to be proud of what her daughter can afford.

“Nope,” Tom says. “But that’s not a bad idea.”

“You bought both those plots in Greenville,” Maddalena guesses again. “So me and your father can live with you.”

“Colder,” says Tom. “We’re selling that lot for a nice little profit, by the way. We’ll need it.”

“
Th
is news involves us all,” Prima says. “Not just me and Tom.”

Maddalena narrows her eyes. “Why does that make me nervous?” she says. “Don’t tell me you’re moving somewhere far. You can’t go chasing your kids—”

“No, of course not,” says Prima. “But actually, yes, temporarily we’re
all
moving. Far,
far
away.” She takes a deep breath, locks eyes with her mother. “We’re going back to the Old Country, all of us. To the Grassos’ ancestral village, Santa Cecilia, where it all began. For two weeks.”

“Awesome!” says Matt.

“Talk serious,” Maddalena says, crossing her arms.

“I’m very serious,” Prima says. “It’s not difficult. I buy the tickets. I call a few relatives. We get on a plane.”

“I’m there,” says Ryan.

“Oh yes, it’s very easy,” Maddalena says. Everyone’s looking at her. She shakes her head, folds her arms more tightly across her chest, the way Patrick used to do when he wouldn’t eat his peas. “You knew about this, Frankie?”

Frankie shakes his head.

“I didn’t think so.”

“It’s like a resort now,” says Tom, gently. “
Th
ere are five or six hotels, right smack in the village of Santa Cecilia. And even if there weren’t, there’s so much to see in Italy. Prima’s mapped out a bunch of day trips. We want the family to learn its history.”

“I know my history,” Maddalena says. “So does he.” She ticks her head toward Antonio. “I don’t tell you enough times I’ll never go back there? You call it a gift to force me?”

“You weren’t kidding,” Tom says to Prima under his breath.

“I knew you wouldn’t be thrilled,” Prima says to her mother. “But this isn’t only about you.
Th
ere are other people at the table here today. Do you ever think about what Dad wants? How about your grandsons? Us? Do you know how embarrassed I get every time I tell somebody I’ve never been to my homeland?”

“Embarrassed?” says Frankie, again with the smug face.

“She’s got such a sad life, doesn’t she, Frankie?” Maddalena says. “She wants to go to Italy so bad, why doesn’t she go herself?”

“I’m still here, Ma,” Prima says.

“Nobody’s stopping you, Prima. You’ve got money. I tell your father all the time, ‘Let your daughter take you back. Don’t drag me into it.’ ”

“You haven’t heard her say that, Prima?” mutters Frankie. “Did you two just meet?”

Prima shakes her head at her brother. “I’ve heard it,” she says. “I live here. I know her better than anybody. Without her in Italy, though, it won’t be the same. And what, she’s supposed to stay here by herself when we all go?”

“I don’t have to go,” Frankie says.

“I’ll say one thing,” Antonio says. He leans back in his chair, presses his fingertips to the edge of the table. “
Th
is is the best idea I’ve ever heard.”

“Finally!” Tom says. “Somebody likes it.”

“
We
like it!” Ryan adds.

“
Th
ere’s only one mistake you made,” Antonio continues. “No way in the world you’re spending all that money on us. I’m paying the tickets for everybody.”

“Save your breath, Dad,” says Prima. “Because—and hear me on this—it’s
already done.
” She waves the folded envelopes at them. “Right here, eight prepaid travel vouchers. Nonrefundable. Departure date: August tenth, 2000. Return date: August twenty-fifth.”

“No shit!” says Patrick.

“I told you I was serious.”

“But Frankie has school,” Antonio says.

“In August?” Prima answers. “Even Frankie doesn’t go to school in August.
Th
e details we can work out as we go forward, but for now we’re all going to clear our schedules for August tenth.
Th
at’s ten months away, plenty of time to plan, cover the restaurant, knock some sense into you, Mom, whatever we need to do.”