All This Talk of Love (31 page)

“It’s not nothing,” he says. It’s almost a scold. She needs to understand him, to hear him loud and clear on this. He holds her by the shoulders. “It’s beautiful,” he says. “It’s your work. It’s everything.”

TH
E WAITERS HAVEN’T
brought the antipasto, and already Prima’s a little drunk. She’s not the only one. Frankie, too, keeps refilling his glass, and the twins aren’t shy, either.
Th
ere will be no surprises tonight. No speeches or tricks. No arguments.

On the table are candles and the good white linens and fresh flowers. “All Ryan’s idea,” Prima’s father told her, when the sight of it, and her son standing in front of it in his black graduation suit, took her breath away. Ryan’s at the head of the table now, explaining the dinner, as if the Grassos haven’t eaten here a hundred times, as if the carpets and the ovens and the very air aren’t in their blood. But it’s charming. Her son will charm the diners here for years to come.

When Prima can train her focus on Ryan, on not only his summer at home but the other Al Di Là restaurants that he and his charm and his business degree will open and scatter over the tristate area, she is happy. Otherwise it’s a great deal of work for Prima to convince herself that the battle she’s fighting is worth it. She talks to herself like this now, like a soldier, and she hates it.
Th
e talk has led her here, to the rocky border between one kind of life and another. Rage comes in waves, and though Tom won’t tolerate self-pity, she has to lash out every once in a while, at him or at one of the boys, or at her mother. It’s unfair, but she has no control over it. Prima waited all her adult life for another terrible thing to happen to someone she loved, but instead it happened to her, and she wasn’t prepared.

Tomorrow morning, Tom will pack her into the car and take her to a rehab facility in Princeton. She’ll be an outpatient for a month, three weeks if they’re lucky. Her doctor is optimistic that his new idea, which he explained to her and two other doctors in incomprehensible detail, will work. She and Tom will stay in a hotel nearby, one of those efficiencies with a kitchenette, where Tom will work from the room. So much for a second honeymoon.

He sits on one side of her, Patrick on the other. Her mother across. Frankie and his shockingly normal-looking girlfriend and the twins are with her father at the other end. Prima forbade Allison Grey’s presence, and Zach didn’t fight her.
Th
e girl has sent Prima at least a dozen cards since the accident, but Prima hasn’t opened a single one. Did she not know from the start that somewhere, somehow, the girl would ruin her? Zach’s lucky that Prima still lets him talk to her, let alone call her his girlfriend.

Ryan’s explaining about the complexity of the wine.
Th
en he brings the pasta—“Penne
ah-ma-tree-cha-na,
”
he says, in forced but technically correct Italian—and then veal Milanese, and then bowl after bowl of sides: roasted peppers, sautéed onions topped with bread crumbs, peas, broccoli rabe, all of which they scoop up with thick cuts of warm bread.
Th
e restaurant fills around them. Music piped through the corner speakers—crooners from the fifties—gets louder, and Tom, of all people, sings along. He must be drunk. Prima looks at him with a bemused pride, nudging Patrick in the ribs. Frankie tells a Clinton joke that nobody quite gets and that may be too dirty for a family dinner.

“I have a joke, too,” Maddalena says. She raises her hand like she’s in school. “How does a cat eat spaghetti?”

Th
ey all look at her.

“He puts it in his mouth,” she says. She throws her head back in full-throated laughter. No one else laughs. “You don’t get it?” she says. “
Th
e cat eats spaghetti like everybody else!”

“Stick to making drapes, Ma,” Frankie says playfully, and he flicks a bit of crust at her.

“I’ll get you!” she says, still laughing at her joke, and she flicks one back.

“It’s a little corny,” says Patrick.

“
Th
e priest told it,” she says. “I was going to save it for
Th
anksgiving. I’m glad I didn’t!”

“Yeah, stick to dancing, Nonna,” says Ryan, now seated at the table beside his father.

“I’ll get you, too,” Maddalena says, tearing out a big chunk of the bread. “You watch out!”

“Have another drink,” Antonio says with a smile. When Maddalena tries to protest, she knocks her glass of wine into the bowl of onions. Kelly Anne starts laughing, too, and soon so does everyone.

“She’s invented a new recipe,” says Zach.

“Who says I don’t cook?” says Maddalena.

Prima thinks she should be enjoying this laughter, and this celebration, and this teasing of her mother, who has her very good days and her very bad days, and the food fight with her sons and the buzz that’s warming her in her chair, but she’s so tired, and this celebration’s not planned the way she would have planned it. If Prima had had her way, they’d have taken Ryan to a nightclub, to make up for not doing anything for his twenty-first, and invited some of his friends down from Syracuse. If she’d had her way, they’d be here retelling stories from the trip to Italy, passing around photos of the Grassos in front of various monuments, of her mother with her arms around her brother and sister.
Th
ey’d have memories of arriving in Rome, driving first to Terni for a day, then Rieti, then Santa Cecilia in time for the feast on the fifteenth, then Florence, then down to Assisi, and finally back to Rome for three days of guided tours. Prima had it all organized. Ten magical days it would have been.

Instead, the guidebooks and brochures, once arranged in personalized gift bags in the backseat of her car, have become the trash run over daily by tractor trailers and motorcycles on Route 41.
Th
e tickets and reservations are partially refunded, the Buckleys are out thousands of dollars, and doors are shutting and dead-bolting around her. In the thin air of the restaurant, all the laughter and love that surround her—it’s the happiest she’s seen her family in a year—is a cruel kick in the gut. She’s doing an adequate enough job passing for happy for the sake of her sons and husband.

From her seat she can see cars pass on Union.
Th
e occasional driver looks over, catches her eye for a moment, then moves along.
Th
e headlights make shadows on the windows, which are open on this warm June night.
Th
e honking horns rattle her. Coffee appears, and plates of tiramisu, and a bowl of sliced fruit passed around family-style. When the plates are cleared and someone mentions grappa, Frankie stands.

“I know this day is half in my honor,” he says, “and it’s probably bad form to make a speech, but since Ryan’s working on his birthday, I guess we’re not following any rules.”

Oh my, Prima thinks, is he going to propose to this girl? Right here in front of everyone? She watches Kelly Anne, who looks as confused as the rest of them. Frankie is not the speech-making type, and Prima can think of nothing else important enough for him to say. Kelly Anne seems nice enough, and not wild in any way, rather like Tom; when Prima realizes this and sees her mother and father light up at the sight of their son, her love of surprises kicks in. No one can resist a man getting down on one knee in a restaurant. But how could he afford a decent ring?

“I just want to say happy birthday to Ryan and a big thank-you to Dad and Mom for the delicious dinner, and for, well, the free rent the next couple months.”

“
Free?
” jokes Antonio. “Who said it was free?”

“
Stai zitto,
” says Maddalena. “Let him talk!” She’s thinking, With that shirt on, and your hair not a mess, and standing tall with your hands in the pockets of your dress pants, you look like a professor, Frankie, like someone who knows things. “You can stay a hundred years for free!” she calls out.

“I also want to say”—here Frankie turns to Prima and Patrick—“how lucky we are that you guys are all right.” He picks up his glass. “To the Grassos!”

Th
ey all fumble for whatever’s on the table in front of them: coffee mugs, water glasses, half-empty glasses of wine.
Th
ey reach toward the middle and hold there, until everyone’s touching.

“To Ryan and Zio Frankie!” Zach says.

“Welcome home and
buon compleanno
!” says Antonio.

“To my beautiful wife,” says Tom.

“Yes, beautiful!” says Maddalena.

Prima wants to say something, the right thing, to convince them, and herself, that she’s grateful, too, but she can’t, not yet, and so she’s left with only a feeble “thank you” fading on her lips.

“She’s speechless,” says Tom. “
Th
at’s a rare sight.”

Maddalena looks at each of them, all of them together, here in this circle, half-drunk and silly. She wants to hold them here as long as she can. But the moment doesn’t last. Just a few minutes later, the waiters take the last of the plates and glasses away, and Antonio and Frankie are yawning.

“Already?” she says to no one in particular.

“It’s late,” someone says.

“It’s only ten o’clock!” Maddalena says. In the early years, Saturday nights like this, they used to push the tables against the wall and make room for a few couples to dance. All the men liked dancing with her. She knew how to follow in a way that made them feel like Fred Astaire. She’d try to sit down and they’d come after her, sometimes two at a time, with their hands out. She won’t suggest dancing now, not with Prima how she is, but she wishes she could. “When’d you all get so old?”

“I’ll stay,” Matt says. “Nonno?”

“Whatever she wants,” Antonio says.

“I’ll put music on,” says Ryan, and he disappears into the kitchen.

Tom takes his wife’s hand, squeezes it, checking in, the way couples do. One squeeze asks, Is it OK if we stay another half hour? Are you tired? Will we be OK? She squeezes it back, saying, Yes, yes, and yes, I guess we will.

Music comes on, and Ryan returns from the kitchen to take a bow. Taking charge suits the kid. It’s as if he’s always been here, calling the shots. Maddalena gets up and stands beside him. She sings the words. Eventually he joins in.
Th
e others stand around them, and then Antonio joins in, too, and the customers turn to watch, whispering. Crazy Italians, they must be thinking. But isn’t this why they come to a place like the Al Di Là? Why they’ll keep coming to the Al Di Làs that her son will build for them? To sit among people so full of life. To soak up the color and the drama and the love.

Th
e song is “Volare.” Frankie puts his arm around his girlfriend’s shoulder. Neither of them sings along.
Th
ey must not know the words. Prima does, but she’s too embarrassed. She hasn’t sung in public since high school.

Let’s fly way up to the clouds . . .

Antonio walks over to Maddalena, takes her hand in an invitation to dance. She says, “No, no, I can’t.” She looks over at Prima. She’s asking for permission.

“You should dance, Ma,” Prima says, and, no argument, that’s all it takes.
Th
e bus boys move the chairs on the other side of the table and push it against the wall to make more room. Maddalena and Antonio dance a fox-trot or a cha-cha, Prima doesn’t know the difference.
Th
e entire restaurant watches them. Tom keeps holding on to Prima, squeezing her hand with more questions, but it’s OK, she can handle it. She’s aware that other people will keep dancing whether she can or not. She keeps her eyes on Zach and Matt and Patrick, who stand beside each other, clapping along to the beat.
Th
ey sing a little bit of the chorus, the only part they know—all those
oh
oh oh oh
s—then Matt grabs Zach by the belt, and they’re dancing, too, with the customers laughing and pointing.

Patrick flicks the chandeliers on and off, rapidly, to make a strobe. Service comes to a halt.
Th
e kitchen guys come out and wave their spatulas at Antonio and Maddalena, the owner and his wife, the reason they are all there in the first place.
Th
e flames from the grill leap up behind them.
Th
e honking of the horns from the cars on Union is in beat with the music.
Th
e headlights are fireworks on the windows.

Penso che un sogno cosi non ritorni mai piu . . .

Th
e song speaks the truth, Prima thinks.
It will never happen again, such a dream.

She is right.

It is the last time she will see her family together like this, fully alive, happy enough. When she gets back, in five weeks, from New Hope, she will be walking, as back to normal as will be possible, but everything else will have changed.

Th
e music stops, and after the clapping the place returns to its dull roar. Ryan hasn’t cued another song. He’s occupied, cheek to cheek with some girl who showed up at the front door asking for him, whispering into her ear. “More!” Maddalena calls out.
Th
e customers go back to their pastas and desserts. Antonio sits down. Frankie and Kelly Anne are chatting with one of the chefs.