by Peggy Jaeger
Never hold back.
Two members of the Moglidiani family wheeled Vito’s coffin out of the church, behind the priests, the incense wafting in the air like pot at a college kegger, and placed it in the waiting hearse.
All the mourners piled into the ten limos Nonna had insisted we hire to ferry us to the cemetery. Daddy balked at the unnecessary expense, but as usual Uncle Sonny knew a guy who knew a guy who ran a limo service, so we got “a great deal” on the rentals. As we’d been divvied up in the church, we were again in the limousines, with me, thankfully, with Chloe’s clan.
The drive took a mere five minutes, and then once again we all met as a unit and surrounded the open grave, the casket on risers, waiting to be lowered. The cold December breeze had a decided icy bite to it. One of the Moglidiani brothers handed white roses to each mourner as we gathered around the casket.
Chairs were set up in front of the open plot for the oldest members. Nonna elected to stand, clinging to Mama’s arm for support for once, instead of mine. She was bundled up, wooly hat to sensible shoes, in somber black. Of all of us, she looked the toastiest, garbed as she was against the frigid day.
When we were all graveside, we bowed our heads as Fr. Mario led us in one last prayer.
After he finished, we were each encouraged to approach the closed casket, say a silent prayer or a good-bye, and then toss the rose on the top of the coffin, which would be lowered into the ground once we exited the cemetery.
The caterwauling started up again, louder and more intense than during the church service, as the mourners made their way to the grave. I fully expected one of the geriatric set to throw themselves onto the casket.
Don’t laugh. Again, I can cite precedent.
Nonna, of course, remained her stoic, always composed self, but she darted squinty-eyed, malocchio-filled glares at the more bombastic of her relatives.
In my twenty-four years, I had never seen my grandmother cry. Not once. Not when her husband died and she’d forced me to kiss his cold, lifeless cheek. Not when her oldest son was killed in a car crash by a drunken driver. Not when her favorite sister succumbed to her hard-fought battle against colon cancer.
After ninety-three years, five global wars, poverty, immigration, ten children, and too many family tragedies to name, Constanza Maria Louisia D’Paolo Chiccolini had seen enough to be immune to grief-filled tears.
The one tradition my family didn’t partake in during burials was waiting and viewing the coffin as it was lowered into the ground. This, to me, was the final, heartbreaking good-bye, and I couldn’t bear it. Neither could anyone else, so we were escorted back to our cars and taken back to my parents’ home before the interment.
The street in front of our house looked like a holding company for shiny black limousines. Alighting from ours, Lorenzo’s hand in hers, Chloe quipped, “Think the neighbors will assume Uncle Sonny got a great deal on a new fleet of family cars?”
Laughing felt good after the doleful way we’d spent the morning.
Inside the house, food awaited, and for once, Mama had allowed the majority of it to be catered instead of slaving away in the kitchen making enough to feed our army of relations.
Per custom, Frs. Mario and Santini had been invited back to the house. I said a silent prayer of thanks to St. Gregory of Neocaesarea, the patron saint of wonderworks, for keeping the younger padre occupied at St. Rita’s. I knew I could keep out of Fr. Mario’s way during the postburial gathering, but I wasn’t all together certain I could avoid them both.
Mama and the aunts took over the kitchen, organizing the food distribution, heating up things that needed heating, and generally making sure all the food ordered had arrived as requested. Mama asked me to continue to keep an eye on Nonna, but it was an easy job, because the moment we walked into the house she’d divested herself of her martyred outwear and plopped down into her favorite chair in the sitting room, feet raised on the ottoman, ready to receive. I brought her a plate filled with food Mama had prepared for her, along with a tumbler filled with her favorite sambuca. She deserved it.
Luckily—and thank you, St. Gregory—I was able to keep Fr. Mario in my line of sight so whenever I sensed him getting close, I shot to the other side of the room, hid behind the Christmas tree, or skulked off to help Mama or Chloe.
And so, as a family, we drank a toast to Uncle Vito’s life, his soul, and his memory, and did what Italians do better than everyone else: eat and talk.
Chapter Nine
Sunday, Mama issued me a reprieve, and I didn’t have to work at the festival booth. I had my final accounting exam the next morning, and Daddy convinced her it would be more productive if I stayed home and studied. I could have kissed his feet.
The relatives who’d traveled to bury Vito all went back to their homes, and our lives could now get back to some semblance of normal again.
If the San Valentino family could ever be called normal.
All the stress and tension about taking the exam flew from me once I’d done my last calculation. I’d know by the new year if I passed, and when I found out, I was going to start looking with some serious intent for a job. But for now, there was a week until Christmas and I was ready to start enjoying the time. No more tests, Uncle Vito waked and buried—God rest his soul—and the holiday shopping could commence in full.
One week before Christmas and the weather had at long last decided it was time to declare an official start to winter. A frosty arctic blast from our Canadian siblings had the upper northeast of the United States blanketed with a frigid cold front. By rights it should have been called a front, back, and two sides. Swirling winds and chilly temperatures abounded, and still the festival was packed every afternoon and evening until closing time.
Chloe and I were working together at our booth on the Thursday before the twenty-fifth, Mama and Daddy happily taking care of their two youngest grandbabies.
“I feel like I haven’t talked to you in forever,” Chloe said. She took a huge sip—more like a gulp—of the hot chocolate the nuns had made to warm the gaggle of booth workers on this chilly day.
“It’s been a busy couple of weeks.” I smiled at the elderly woman who’d just purchased two quarts of sauce as I handed her change back. “My exams, Uncle Vito. This.” I slashed my hand in the air, indicating our surroundings. “I feel like I’ve been going full speed since Thanksgiving.”
“No lie.” She put her cup down and graced me with the look she was blessed to receive from Mama at birth. Her tell-me-all-your-secrets-or-else stare: eyes narrowed slightly and lasered onto mine, chin pointed downward, head cocked to the right, and lips moist and pursed.
“So,” she said, her usual opening when she was about to grill me like a raw hamburger. “What’s new in your life? Man-wise?”
I prayed she couldn’t see the heat brandishing up my cheeks. I took my own sip of hot chocolate, a diversionary move I realized too late she wasn’t going to tolerate.
“Spill, sorellina.”
I may have been her little sister, but I had my own tricks I could use. “When have I had time for anything lately, especially guys?”
“No one in school you like?”
I shook my head.
“The aunts haven’t fixed you up with anyone new?”
“Well…” I shrugged. “Aunt Ursula set me up with Eddie Piscaponi back near Halloween. Remember him?”
Chloe squinted. “Pimply, short kid with red hair? He was in your class in high school, right?”
I nodded. “He works at a nightclub owned by one of Uncle Sonny’s friends. He’s the bouncer.”
“No kidding? He must have grown, ’cause he was always height challenged. Nice, but not exactly a teenage dream.”
I told her I’d agreed to meet Eddie for drinks after school one night in Tribeca.
I almost fell off my barstool when he walked in. His hair was still flaming red and his face pockmarked from the cystic acne he’d suffered from as a kid, but that was where th
e similarity to his teenage self ended. He’d grown about ten inches since high school and stood towering over me at six five. And he’d filled out. Considerably. Like steroid-induced filled out. His arms looked like Popeye’s after a can of spinach, and his head continued down to his shoulders without a break where his neck should be.
After fifteen minutes, I was glad I’d only agreed to drinks and not dinner because I couldn’t wait to leave the bar.
I’d liked Eddie Piscaponi a whole lot better when he’d been a geeky, skinny, pimply teenager.
The new supersized adult version was obnoxious, narcissistic, and blessed with an amazing ability to be condescending.
Here’s an example.
Me: “So you definitely got a gym membership after high school. Ha-ha.”
Eddie (with a self-deprecating chuckle): “Yeah. After getting the crap beat outta me one too many times, I figured I’d start working out, build a little muscle, and maybe I wouldn’t be such an easy target.”
He peered at me in the bar’s mood lighting, eyes squinting, nose crunched up a little. “You know, Gia, you could stand to lift a few pounds, build some muscle of your own. Don’t get me wrong. You look okay, but you kinda lack tone.”
He wrapped his index finger and thumb around my upper arm and touched them together. All I could think about when I looked down at his huge hand was the last time Mama cooked a ham for Sunday dinner.
“I could set you up with my trainer. He’ll whip you into shape in no time. Or even better, I could take you on. Nothing like getting to know somebody better than sharing a little workout, a little body fluids like sweat, and other things, if you know what I mean.”
I had a mental flash of those huge hands crushing me alive when he squeezed my arm again.
I practically inhaled my diet soda, smiled, and then seeking a quick escape, shot a look at my phone. “Oops, I’m late. I’ve got an appointment uptown,” I fibbed. “Gotta go. It was nice seeing you again, Eddie. Take care and say hi to your mom for me.”
He tried to kiss me, but I’d seen the move coming, so I pretended to drop something, stooped out of the way to pretend pick it up, and then snaked around the guy seated next to us and out of Eddie’s reach.
“I’ll call ya soon.” I heard him yell as I went flying out the bar door.
I waved over my shoulder and sent myself a mental reminder to make sure Aunt Ursula hadn’t given him my cell number.
“So that’s the last date I had,” I said to a laughing Chloe.
“Gesu, Gia. It’s like watching my life repeated through you.”
The aunts had been famous—or is it infamous?—for setting Chloe up before she was married with all types of men from bookies to kneecap breakers, or as Uncle Sonny called them, employed enforcers. Providentially, Matt showed up in her life at just the right moment so she was now a very happily married Italian girl with two kids, and the aunts had diverted their matchmaking attentions to me.
“Damn.” Chloe wiped a laughter tear from her eye. “I was convinced it was a guy making you so distracted lately. I guess my romance radar is off.”
Before I could respond, I heard my name. I’d been about to blow on my hot drink and take a sip when I recognized the voice. Because all logical thought flew from my brain, I took a huge gulp and scalded my tongue and the roof of my mouth on the aptly named hot chocolate.
Santini was standing at the divider of our booth, that weird green skullcap on his head, the matching mittens on his hands, watching me burn myself. In a very unladylike move, one which would have earned a head thwacking from Nonna, I spit the hot liquid back into the Styrofoam cup, wiped the trail of it from my lips with the back of my hand, and stared up into a pair of deer-colored eyes.
“Are you okay?” He grabbed my upper arm. My mouth had been scalded from the liquid, but my arm where his hand rested felt burnt to a crisp.
A really hot—and by hot I mean it in a totally erotic way—crisp.
I nodded and put the cup down.
“Hi,” Chloe said to Santini. “I’m Chloe D’Amore, Gia’s sister.”
He took off a glove and shook the hand she stuck out. “Tim Santini.” He smiled at her, then immediately turned his attention back to me. “Do you have a minute?”
I looked over at Chloe. Her face was sixteen different expressions of curious.
“N-no. Sorry. No, I don’t. I need to help with sales. We’re swamped tonight. Chloe needs me here to help.”
Babbling brook, thy name is Gia Gabriella Bernadetta San Valentino.
He glanced around our immediate outside area, as did Chloe. Festival-goers were moseying from hut to hut, smiling, talking, and having a good time. No one was waiting on line outside our booth.
Santini looked back at me, his eyebrows almost kissing in the center of his forehead.
“I’m good,” my traitorous sister declared, her gaze ping-ponging between the two of us. “Take a break, Gia. You deserve one. It’s okay.”
I’m not as good as Nonna in the malocchio-throwing department, but I did my best. Chloe ignored my steely, narrowed-eyed glare.
“Gia?” Santini said.
Here’s the thing. What could I do that wouldn’t make my sister uber-suspicious? If I continued to refuse to go with him, she’d light into me no end about it. Or worse, she’d question Mama about my behavior, and then I’d be done for.
But I was still nervous from my last solo encounter with the good almost-priest and couldn’t trust myself not to say or do something that would embarrass me even more than I already was.
Stay or go? A lousy choice either way.
“Okay. But just for a minute.”
I’m such a coward when it comes to being tattled about to Mama.
Santini lifted the shelf divider, and I went through it.
“Let’s take a walk,” he said, reaching for my hand.
I snatched it back with a force that knocked me back a step. “You can’t hold my hand,” I whispered, horrified. “People will see.”
His eyebrows met in the center of his head again.
“Good evening, Timothy.”
“Hi, Sister Agnes.” He turned toward her and smiled.
The elderly nun aimed her eyes that saw all at me. “Gia.”
“Merry Christmas,” I mumbled, wanting the manhole to hell to open again so I could get it over with and just be dropped where I belonged.
“Are you enjoying your first St. Rita’s festival, Timothy?”
“Yes, Sister. I haven’t had much of a chance to visit every booth yet because my work schedule has been nuts. But I’m planning to.”
Sister Agnes nodded and turned her attention to me. “Your aunt Grace was telling me you’re all done with your licensing exams, Gia.”
“Yes, Sister, I am.”
“Well, I’m sure you did well. You were always a wonder in my classes.”
She should know since she’d been my sixth- and seventh-grade math teacher. In fact, she was the first teacher to encourage my math abilities, giving me extra work to do to help me skip ahead. As soon as she recognized my natural ability for numbers, she did everything she could to enhance and support my math skills. Sister Agnes was the person, in fact, who put the drive in me to aim for an occupation where I could use my talents, and for that I’ll be eternally thankful.
Right now all I was, though, was uneasy and anxious.
“Well, enjoy your evening, children.” She smiled and went into her own booth.
Something niggled at the back of my mind, but I lost it when Santini reached for my hand again.
“Don’t,” I said. “Please.”
Something resembling regret danced across his face as he nodded.
“Let’s go back here.” He pointed to the area behind the booths where the electrical generators were stationed.
I had that heretic-shuffling-her-way-to-the-hangman’s-tree stoop to my body again as I walked a little in front of him.
The alleyway behind the festival booths
was dark enough so I knew no one could see us, but lit enough from the Christmas lights so we could see each other.
With the quiet whirr of the generator as white noise, Santini stopped. “Thanks for coming with me.”
“I can’t stay back here for long,” I said, a little note of nerves breaking in my voice.
“Okay.” He stood, rock still, staring down at me.
Something aside from the subtle hum of the generator buzzed in the cold air around us as he looked at me. It took me a moment to recognize what it was, and when I did, I almost bolted.
I swear on a stack of Bibles and holding Nonna’s rosary beads blessed by Pope Pius XII in my hands I could feel sexual tension palpating in the air.
There was no mistaking the charged energy bouncing between our bodies, though we were dressed head to toe in parkas, gloves, hats, and scarves.
I could smell it, pungent and spicy; feel it, hot and steamy; taste it, honeyed and sweet.
This is how animals must recognize their mates in the wild.
I was so glad it was dark because I knew my face looked as red as Mama’s tomato sauce when it’s coming to a soft boil.
Neither of us said a word. We just stared at one another. Even in the dark, I could make out the moisture flickering in his soulful eyes. His breath steamed into vapor with each expiration, a white puff of clear smoke veiling his face, and from the looks of it, he was breathing as hard and fast as I was.
My girlie parts suddenly got quite warm, the sensation not only shocking me, but exciting me as well.
I don’t know how or why, but something pushed me from behind, actually shoved me forward with such force I landed in his outstretched embrace, arms circling and tightening around my waist.
“I—”
I couldn’t speak because his arms around me felt like absolute heaven. I can honestly say being held by him was the most exciting sensation I’ve ever had in any guy’s arms.
I took my time drifting my gaze up his neck, across his hard-as-concrete jawline, to his lips. From there it was a quick hop up to his eyes. And, Holy Mother, those eyes.
“Gia.”
I took a deep breath and then sighed it out.
