The Supreme Macaroni Company (3 page)

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 brother 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.

Gabriel and I are so close we have no trouble living together and working together in the shop. He redecorated the apartment above the workroom, and for my Christmas gift this year he made the roof garden into a Shangri-La on the Hudson, complete with a sound system and awnings. “I dragged this timbale to New Jersey like a wagon wheel, and by God, we’re going to eat it!”

“We’ll eat it!” I hollered back.

“Yeah, like your brother-in-law eats failure,” Feen mumbled.

“Aunt Feen, where’s your filter? You shouldn’t say everything you think! Boundaries!”

“Oh, boundaries. Big deal. I watch Dr. Phil, too. I know from boundaries. It’s like those candy canes up the walk. They look like a railing, like they’re sturdy, but they’re cheap plastic. I leaned on one for support and almost keeled over and tasted cement.”

“I caught you, Auntie,” my father piped up.

“Yeah. So what.”

“
So what
we’re not at the hospital with your head sliced open like a kiwi,” my father fired back.

Aunt Feen ignored him. “The fact is, your brother-in-law is not only unemployed, he’s drunk.”

“Oh, and you’re sober?” Charlie countered.

“I can hold my liquor, Buster, and you can take
that
to Citibank and get a second mortgage, which you probably need, since you got shit-canned.”

“Feen, your tone!” Gram interjected.

“I can’t abide a drunk in this family.” Feen banged her cane. “I won’t have it!”

“Really, Aunt Feen? You’re on your third tumbler of Maker’s Mark. And I know because I’m pouring them,” Jaclyn said. “You’re tanked up too!”

“It takes one to know one,” Feen shouted.

“Okay, now we’re veering toward complete chaos here,” I said evenly. “We’re now agreeing with the disagreements.”

“But Aunt Feen
is
hammered,” Jaclyn said.

“It doesn’t matter. Feen’ll sober up. She always does.” My grandmother put her arm around her sister. “She’ll have some bread and butter and she’ll be fine.”

“In the meantime, I’ll get the tarelli.” Mom headed toward the kitchen for the tarelli, best described as bone-dry bagel-shaped crackers we make around the holidays that no one eats, so they languish in a ziplock bag until Easter, when they’re fed to the ducks. “Tarellis sop up the alcohol like gravy.”

“What the hell does that mean?” my father yelled at her.

“I don’t know. I’m trying to make things nice.” My mother’s voice broke, and she looked as though she might cry. “I’m trying to get us through this party! It’s like pulling a plow in ten feet of manure! Stop arguing with me!”

“You’re the one who wants to be nonmandatory!” My father pointed his finger at her.

“Non
inflammatory
!” we corrected my father in a chorus.

“What the hell do you want from me? They’re only words!” my father thundered.

“Take it down, Dutch. Take it down,” Mom growled.

There was a momentary ceasefire where all that could be heard was the low buzz of Aunt Feen’s hearing aid.

“Aunt Feen, you getting AM or FM over there?” My dad attempted humor to break the stronghold of family pain.

Gianluca sensed an opening and went for it.

“Valentina and I are getting married,” he announced.

If you needed proof that the members of my family are, despite their flaws, supportive of one another, you’d just have to see how quickly they switched from all-out war to unification. My family rejoiced at the news as if they’d won the lottery in three states. After all, I’d beaten the odds. I was closer to forty than thirty, and I was engaged to be married. The scent of relief wafted through the house like the cinnamon in the sachets hanging from the chandelier.

I looked at Gianluca, the smartest man in the room. Here was a guy that understood how to handle my people. They acted like children, so they had to be treated as such. When a toddler throws a tantrum, the parent in charge must divert the child’s attention to diffuse the rage.

Gianluca had made our engagement a bright orange squeeze toy.

What a tactic!

Sheer genius!

No sooner had I removed my glove than my left hand was grabbed as the diamond was ogled, assessed, and blessed. The comments ranged from,
Wow, big stone
, to
Flawless!
No carbon. I love an emerald cut! The baguettes really sizzle. Nice. Better than yellow gold. Platinum goes with everything.

Gram kissed me. Dominic gave me a hug and then embraced his son.

“Sono tanto contento per te!”
Dominic kissed both of Gianluca’s cheeks.

My nieces came running down the stairs, jumping up and down, begging to be junior bridesmaids.

My mother pushed through the crowd, put her arms around me, and then pulled Gianluca close. “God bless you! Welcome to the . . .” Mom didn’t want to use the word
family
in the current environment, so she said, “It’s wonderful. What a perfect romantic note to end the year 2010! Now,
when
do you want to get married? What will I wear? Do you have a date?”

“However long it takes me to build a pair of shoes, Ma,” I told her.

Gianluca looked at me and smiled. My future husband had just gotten the first bit of living proof that I never lie.

“We need a photograph. An official engagement picture!” My mother looked at my father, who hadn’t leaped up to capture the moment on film. My mother would tell you that in all of our family history, my father is never ready with the camera unless she insists. “Damn it, Dutch. Get out your phone!”

“I’ll take the picture!” Gabriel said, pushing through the crowd. He’s been around my family for so long that he knows about my mother’s photo obsession. My mother handed him my dad’s phone. Soon my sisters, Gram, and Pamela handed their phones to Gabriel as we assumed our positions. The adults formed a long standing row in front of the tree, and then a kneeling row in front of the standing row. The children sat in front of the kneelers. We looked like the Latin Club in the yearbook from Holy Agony. I watched as Gabriel backed down the hallway, trying to get everyone into the shot. “Squeeze, people! I need to see a squeeze.”

“Wait! The baby!” Jaclyn got up from her kneeling spot and sprinted up the stairs for the baby. We remained crammed. The scent of Aqua Velva, Jean Naté, Coco cologne, and Ben-Gay wafted up from my family like sauce on the stove. I turned around to get a good look at them.

My sister Tess, the second eldest in the family after our brother Alfred, looked pretty, her jet-black hair in a bun on top of her head. She did the full Cleopatra with black eyeliner to bring out her green eyes, which were bloodshot from the crying jag she went on in defense of her husband. From the neck up, she was a movie star. From the neck down, she was dressed for kitchen duty, including a white apron splotched with red gravy. She looked like a dancer in the musical version of
All Quiet on the Western Front
. Charlie, her burly bear of a husband, had unbuttoned his shirt down to the pocket, exposing more fur on his chest than went into making my mother’s mink jacket.

Jaclyn returned with the baby.

Jaclyn, the youngest of our family, mother of one, apparently still had time to go for a blow-out at Fresh Cuts. Her chestnut brown hair had not a crimp, and she still could fit in her pre-baby sweater dress. Her husband Tom still had the Irish good looks of an innocent Kennedy. He’s all freckles, thick light brown hair, and white teeth.

Aunt Feen stood next to him in a Christmas sweater embroidered with two cats playing with two blue satin Christmas balls. Her pink lipstick had worn off except for the ring around her lips, which matched the kittens’ pink tongues perfectly. My sisters and I call her lipstick look “the plunger.”

My gram, Teodora Angelini Vechiarelli, wore a white winter suit. Dominic looked very dapper in a white shirt, red tie, and forest green Tyrolean vest. Gram had her hair cut short in feathered white layers, while Dominic’s silver hair was combed back neatly. It occurred to me that my grandmother and Dominic actually looked younger since they’d married. Maybe the slow pace of life in Tuscany kept them young. Whatever they were doing, I wanted some of that.

My sister-in-law Pamela’s long blond hair looked white-hot against the simple turquoise wool sweater she wore with a black leather pencil skirt. She makes forty look like thirty-two. Her stilettos were laced with turquoise ribbons—I had to find out where she got them. My brother Alfred knelt dead center in the middle row, looking exactly like the photo from his basketball team at Holy Agony, aging aside. He’d been the captain then, and he was still the captain.

The children were decked out for the holidays in matching ensembles. Chiara and Charisma wore blue velvet party dresses. Tess had given them French braids in an upsweep with giant bows on the nape of their necks. Alfred Jr. and Rocco wore dress shirts with bow ties, miniature versions of my brother when he was eight and ten years old.