It vexed me that he sounded exactly like my therapist, so I only pursed my lips and stalked forward to grab my purse. It occurred to me as I turned my back on Dante to leave that Dante’s sunken living room had five people in it. The men all stared at me with varying degrees of amusement on their faces at having witnessed my altercation with their Don.
I kicked my chin into the air and glided past them with my eyes trained on the entry hall, refusing to be cowed by their humor or ashamed of Dante’s bossy disregard.
It was only when I was pushing the button to call the elevator that Dante called out, “Oh, Elena? I ordered some of your mama’s famous tiramisu. Bring it with you when you come back tonight. Eight o’clock sharp.”
Giving in to a childish impulse I hadn’t indulged in since I was a girl, I leaned around the wall hiding the entryway from sight of the kitchen and flashed Dante my middle finger.
Laughter erupted in the main room, and I stepped into the elevator with a smug, grim smile.
Little Italy transformed for eleven days every September from an urban mecca with faintly Italian leanings, some of Chinatown’s ever-expanding influence popping up here and there, to something straight out of the Old World. Red, white, and green everywhere, from streamers to awnings and elaborate arches of balloons. Saint Gennaro himself stared at the tourists and locals gathered to celebrate him from posters, banners, and arches set up over the teeming streets. Over the course of eleven blocks for eleven days, there would be parades, floats, concerts, and so much food there was no possibility it would all be consumed.
Typically, I avoided Little Italy at that time of year even more staunchly than I usually did. It was impossible to skirt entirely because Mama’s restaurant, Osteria Lombardi, was situated on the edge of Little Italy and SoHo, and for years, the family had congregated there for Sunday lunches. In the past year, Giselle and Daniel had given me those lunches, not daring to show their faces around me. Instead, they hosted the family at their mega-mansion apartment in Brooklyn every Sunday evening for drinks or dinner.
They’d invited me a few times, but I’d rather skin my own flesh than attend, and that was before they’d had baby Genevieve. Now, I never wanted to witness my sister living the exact dream I’d once wished for myself.
It wasn’t surprising that Mama, like many other Italian cooks and delicatessens, had a stall on Mulberry Street where she served cannoli stuffed full with fresh ricotta and cones brimming with her famous tiramisu.
I watched from a distance, jostled by the festival-goers as my mama interacted with her customers. She was a gorgeous older woman, though still fairly young because she had basically still been a girl when she’d given birth to me. A few older neighborhood men flirted with her shamelessly as they bartered for food and maybe a kiss, but Caprice only ever offered them a soft, secret smile that said more than words could that she would never be interested, but she wasn’t offended by their attention.
It was the babies, though, that she loved the most.
I watched as a young Italian-American mama with baby fat still in her cheeks and a toddler on her hip approached Mama. The baby was fussing, and Mama didn’t hesitate to pluck the girl off her mother’s hip and plunk her down on her own side. Though I couldn’t hear the words she spoke, I knew she was cooing in Italian as she bounced her and swayed back and forth.
The baby girl laughed and hit Mama in the chest excitedly as they danced together beneath the red, white, and green streamers rippling in the warm Indian summer breeze.
Sorrow wrapped around my heart and constricted like a serpent, squeezing so hard tears popped into my eyes.
I wanted so badly to give her a grandchild, to watch as she cooed to my daughter and taught her all she knew about cooking, about motherhood, about the secrets of being a strong woman in a culture that valued subservient women.
An arrow of agony pierced through my chest as I thought of Giselle and Daniel’s Genevieve. I realized inevitably, one day, I’d have to bear witness to Mama, not only my parent but my closest confidant, loving and cooing over the baby they’d conceived while they had been cheating on me together.
Someone elbowed me in the side so painfully I gasped, jerking me out of my self-pity. When I turned sharply to bark at the offender, I was face-to-face with a slight auburn-haired man with close-set eyes and a soft, full smile. There was a bad scar at the corner of his jaw, puckered and still pink with healing.