Season of Salt and Honey (27 page)

“Vinnie?” I ask.

“Yes. He is bringing a long table,” Papa says. “Apparently a good friend of his owns a very successful party-hire company.”

“Of
course
he does,” Bella says, rolling her eyes.

I find myself laughing. Bella glances at me, surprised, and joins in.

Papa looks baffled. “It is quite handy. He supplies trestle tables, marquees . . .”

I pat his back again. “Yes, very handy, you're right, Papa.”

Bella smiles and shakes her head while looking through the contents of the box.

*  *  *

Caputos amble down the driveway carrying food, as if it's a common occurrence to lunch in the middle of a forest. There are
plates of
arancini
, jars of pickled zucchini and eggplants, a platter of provolone and
galbanino
cheese in big, thin circles. Vinnie arrives in a pickup truck with a couple of tabletops and frames in the tray and flat-pack chairs that spring open easily. The chairs are white, probably rented out for weddings. Vinnie avoids my eyes while he works. He mumbles something to Bella, who slaps him across the back of his head. Daniel notices and glances at me with alarm, but Vinnie and Bella are soon laughing. I'm not so quick to forgive.

The aunties take the sturdiest chairs, the ones that Papa brought, at one end of a table. They direct the others to bring this or that, set out plates, tell everyone where to sit. They are still wearing their clothes for Mass. Rosa is in good pants with a knitted, mint-colored twinset, and Connie is wearing a linen dress and pumps, with pearls.

Uncle Mario talks with Papa and Uncle Roberto, Rosa's husband, all three of them standing off to one side, probably to avoid being ordered about. Mario's wife, Lisa, is herding her three sons, all in their teens and twenties, like they're toddlers. Cousin Giulia lifts her eyes from her phone and gives me a wink. She's wearing those tight jeans again and a light pink fluffy top that makes her breasts look like Sno Balls. Cousin Cristina, Vinnie's sister, has baby Joseph on her lap and looks tired. Her husband is chasing their other two, Emma and Marco, around the trees. Mama's ancient cousin Teresina, a widow, sits straight-backed and po-faced next to her fiancé, Cosimo, both of them in their seventies.

Aunty Connie calls for me to sit next to her and Aunty Rosa.

Rosa pats my leg. “We missed you at Mass this morning,
Francesca. Father Gianni gave a very good sermon on forgiveness, didn't he, sister?”

“He did,” Aunty Connie agrees.

“Cristina was there with the children. Marco is going to be an altar boy.”

“He'll do a fine job at it. A well-behaved child,” Aunty Connie adds.

I nod, and don't mention that Cristina gives Marco Milk Duds as a reward for keeping quiet during church. The kid is a menace by the afternoon but the aunties don't see it. The arrangement keeps almost everyone happy.

For a brief moment I consider telling them what I have learned. “Alex had an affair.” But I don't. I probably never will. Is it an affair if they only kissed? Is loving someone else worse than sleeping with someone else? What are the rules? How upset am I allowed to be? With a dead man.

“Gabriella Favano had a beautiful jacket on this morning, didn't she, sister?”

“She did.”

“Lilac. A kind of linen.”

“Mauve.”

“Yes, perhaps mauve.”

It seems as though life is going on exactly the same, as though nothing ever changes. I watch Vinnie and Daniel at the other end of the table. Vinnie has rolled up his pants to show Daniel the scar on his leg where he broke it as a kid, the place where the bone had come out through the skin. Daniel is nodding but he's also glancing around the table at all the people, most of them
talking loudly, some—Papa and Uncle Mario, for instance—in Italian. He seems a bit bewildered. I remember him looking the same way at our engagement party.

“How are you, my girl?” Aunty Rosa asks, carefully watching my face.

I shrug and smile. “I'm okay, Aunty.”

“She's having some time out,” Aunty Connie says sharply.

“I was just—”

“She's been through a lot,” Aunty Connie adds, chin lifted.

“Bella's here with me,” I reassure them. “And Daniel.”

They both look over at Bella and Daniel, who are both peering at Vinnie's leg while he gesticulates wildly, Bella then rolling her eyes.

“He's Alexander's brother, isn't he?” Aunty Rosa asks.

I nod.

“Quite a handsome young man,” she says approvingly. “He's taking some time out too?”

I nod again. Daniel is smiling at something Bella's saying, staring at her face, watching her lips move.

“That's good,” Aunty Rosa replies, satisfied.

Aunty Connie straightens in her chair, smooths her dress, and nods too.

As the food is passed around, crusty bread getting stuffed with salami and roasted peppers and pickled eggplant, oil and vinegar dripping down fingers, paper napkins being dispensed, I see Merriem stepping towards the gathering. She's wearing one of her long dresses with a cardigan, and sandals with a silver anklet. Her red hair is piled on top of her head, the white strands catching the light.

Papa springs to his feet and the aunties put down their forks in almost perfect synchronization.

“Merriem,” Papa says, beaming.

She accepts a kiss on the cheek with a wide smile. “Giuseppe. Great to see you again. Hope you've been enjoying the honeycomb.”

“Oh, yes. Yes, it's delicious.”

Bella brings over a chair and Papa makes room between him and the aunties. Uncle Mario introduces himself and pumps Merriem's hand. She laughs in that booming way of hers.

“Hi, Frankie,” she says to me, her face cautious, testing.

“Hi, Merriem.”

She doesn't ask if I'm okay, as though she already knows I don't want to be asked.

Papa gestures to Connie and Rosa. “These are my sisters.”

Merriem reaches out her hand. She has a silver ring on every finger.

Aunty Connie blinks and shakes her hand. “Concetta.”

“A real pleasure to meet you.”

“And my other sister, Rosaria, Rosa,” Papa says.

“Hello.”

Aunty Rosa clears her throat. “You live nearby?”

“Very near. I'm just down the road.”

“You've been here long?”

“Quite a few years now,” Merriem says, and adds her standard explanation. “I followed a man . . . you know . . .”

“Oh. Well.” Aunty Rosa looks to her sister. Aunty Connie is unmoved.

“Merriem grows vegetables,” I say.

“She keeps bees too, just like Nonno,” Papa adds.

“Yes, you said that,” Aunty Connie replies.

“It's very nice here . . . with the trees. . . . Very . . . rustic,” Aunty Rosa says to Merriem.

Merriem gives another full laugh. “Rustic, yes. Well, we like it. Darwin and me, I mean.”

Aunty Rosa looks dismayed.

“Her cat, Zia. Darwin is a cat,” I explain.

I catch Bella staring at me from the other end of the table. She smiles knowingly. I suddenly have a memory of hiding vegetables I didn't want to eat in my pockets at Aunty Connie's house. Surely that was Bella, not me. But when I search my memory, I realize they were my pockets, my fingers tucking the cooked vegetables, broccoli from the orecchiette perhaps, right down into the seams. Bella saw me do it and smiled, just like she is now. I return the smile.

Merriem settles into her seat and I watch as Vinnie passes her the bag of fresh bread rolls. Papa touches her elbow and begins asking her about the garden and her system of crop rotation.

The smells of the forest—the damp dark of the soil, the bleeding sap of the trees, the lemony cedar smell—all vanish in the company of the Sicilian food: the pungent garlic in Zio Mario's salami, the vinegar pickling the vegetables, olives bobbing in brine, roasted peppers, the ubiquitous, sunshine-colored olive oil. It's a kind of colonization. The forest is one of ours now.

After the rolls there is salad, and after the salad there is fruit. Cristina's older children become unruly so Vinnie and Bella walk them down to the water. Daniel stays with Cristina and baby
Joe. Cristina talks on and on, and jiggles baby Joe till he falls asleep, and then continues jiggling out of habit so his fat cheeks bounce up and down, his bottom lip hanging open and glistening with drool. Giulia takes her leave; she has a friend to meet, to the consternation of her brothers, who protest that they should be able to leave too. Uncle Mario clips Cousin Luca, the one who wants to join the army, across the ear and tells him for the hundredth time that Nonno took his children away from Sicily because of military service and here he is, the
imbecille,
wanting to join voluntarily. Merriem talks to Zio Roberto, the aunties speak to one another, Sicilian and Italian and English filling the spaces between the trees, silencing the birds.

When the salad and fruit are finished, Papa and I go into the cabin to make espresso. Aunty Rosa calls out to bring the sweets too. We find them in a box placed by the counter: almond-paste cookies,
brutti e buoni
, even
lingua di suocera
, mother-in-law's tongue. I put an almond-paste cookie in my mouth, let the sweet dough melt on my tongue. It's flavored with orange and cinnamon. Aunty Rosa is a great baker; no one makes treats like she does.

Papa smiles at my satisfied face as he fiddles with the espresso maker. “Rosa wanted to make your wedding cake. She did ours, you know.”

“Aunty Rosa made your wedding cake?”

He nods. I think of a photo on their dresser: Mama and Papa and their cake; Mama holding the knife, Papa with his hand on the small of her back. They are both looking at the crowd beyond the photographer, grinning. Love and food: the Italian equation for bliss.

“What was it like?” I ask.

“Ahhh. It was . . .
bedda.
” He sighs and smiles, and his gaze drifts off.

I wonder which part of their wedding he is remembering. The tables full of food, the kiss in the church, or Uncle Mario forgetting the rings and having to rush back to get them before the ceremony started. Perhaps his mama, Nonna, arguing with the waiter about the bad coffee. The sky being blue and perfect, even though it was April and the weather could go either way. I'd grown up on these wedding stories, little details ever so slightly changed in each recounting. The priest becoming more drunk, Mario more bumbling, the coffee more and more undrinkable. I felt as though I'd been there, amid the color of it, the music of it. The swish of bright polyester dresses, the tinkling of ice in glasses, the roly-poly singsong sounds of Italian and sharp bursts of American laughter.

I imagine Mama and Papa set apart, in a bubble of their own
vero amore
, whispering into each other's necks. Mama has a veil that she doesn't take off because it makes her feel like a bride, and Papa keeps his palm against her all night, thinking,
she is my wife.
They can't stop smiling.

Aunties and uncles come to kiss their cheeks and grab at their faces, saying, “
Tanti Auguri!
” Their American friends try out the new words they have learned, like
cassata
and
gelu di muluni
.

These stories were how I fell in love with a wedding. The idea of a wedding, the daydream. Crisp, pure, and white as a snowdrift. Elegant and flawless.

Papa nudges me. “Are you sad,
cara mia
?”

I nod. “
Sì.
I am sad.”

But what I want to say is “disappointed.” “Papa, I am so disappointed.” One day I will tell him the whole of it. One day, but not today.

“I'm sorry, Francesca,” he says, as though it is his fault, and stares at me, troubled, till I force a smile and look out the window.

He finally gets the espresso machine working, then hunts for extra cups.

I see Bella and Vinnie come back with the children, who are wet from the pants up. Merriem is laughing—I can hear her from inside.

I watch a charcoal-colored car, clean and shining as a seal on the rocks, glide down the driveway.

Mrs. Gardner squints from the front passenger seat.

A traditional Sicilian sweet-and-sour treat for serving with espresso

Makes about 24 pastries

³
/
₄
cup semolina flour

1 cup all-purpose flour

¹
/
₂
cup granulated sugar

¹
/
₄
teaspoon salt

7 tablespoons butter cut into pieces

2 egg yolks

2 to 3 tablespoons cold water

About 1 cup marmalade (any citrus fruit of your choosing)

Powdered sugar, for dusting

In a food processor, process the semolina for about 5 minutes, until fine and silky. Add the all-purpose flour, granulated sugar, and salt and pulse to mix. Add the butter and process until crumbly. Add the egg yolks, one at a time, pulsing to mix. With the processor running, add just enough water so the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl. Do not add too much water or the dough will be difficult to work.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and form a disk. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

On a floured surface, roll the dough out to no more than
¹
/
₄
inch thick. With a 3
¹
/
₂
x 2-inch fluted oval cookie cutter, cut out ovals of dough. If you do not have a cutter you can make your
own template and cut around with a knife or a fluted pasta cutting wheel. Gather and re-roll scraps and cut another 3 or 4 ovals.