a foot and a half shorter than I am, with a bosom that could double as a tray if she would ever eat in bed, a luxury, I was sure, she would never permit herself. With her steel-grey hair pulled back into a severe bun and a floral patterned dress, should could have been posing for an ad for pasta sauce. ‘Tastes like Mama made it!’
“There you are. Finally. These boys have missed you so.”
Yes, while Nonna was warm and basically sweet, was there a mother-in-law alive who would miss a chance to distribute a little guilt to a working daughter-in-law?
“Now Natalie. You know she keeps better hours these days.”
Marco’s father was behind us, seated at the built-in breakfast nook under the kitchen window. I was surprised he could still fit between the bench and the table. Since his retirement last year, Marco’s father, Vincent Ginelli, had probably put on a good twenty pounds or more. And that was on top of the weight his six-foot frame had already carried. The beer bottle in front of him looked like it was almost empty.
I turned and winked at him. Vince winked back. He loved it when we shared a joke on Natalie.
Marco’s father had also been a cop. He and Natalie had both been devastated by Marco’s death; I was surprised he hadn’t retired right after that. But he’d stuck it out—not just for the pension increase, but I thought because he had to continue or he would have been consumed by the anger as well as grief.
He had certainly approved of my leaving the force since he’d never really approved of my being on the force to begin with. Not a woman’s job, though he’d also been a little proud of me. At least I hoped he had been.
Now, both he and Natalie really liked it that I was a professor. They would have preferred I stay home, of course, but they found my ‘studying all the time’ a source of pride and a little awe. I was in Religion (never mind the Philosophy). Very respectable. (If they only knew). Marco had seen to it that the boys had been baptized Catholic, but we didn’t go to church. They knew that, but didn’t nag. As long as I mourned their son, they seemed willing to forgive me anything.
“I thought you two were still in Wisconsin with Vince, Jr. and Marilyn.”
Vince and Natalie had had five children, all boys. They spent their retirement now visiting the four boys and their families in turn in a large motorhome. I wondered where they had parked it.
Vince, Jr. was Marco’s oldest brother. He and his wife had four kids.
“Marilyn’s mother came on the weekend and we came on back,” Natalie explained without turning from her sauce.
Well, that was why they were here. Daughter-in-law Marilyn was from California, and her mother Beverly, several times divorced, could not have been more different from Natalie. They were from different planets, different galaxies even. Not that Natalie would have had to share the kitchen with Beverly. Beverly knew exactly how to order take-out in any city she visited.
On the other hand, I did know somebody who minded that Natalie took over the kitchen when she came.
“Where’s Giles?” I asked.
“Oh, he took that stew he was making up to their apartment.”
Natalie knew she’d driven Giles out and her uncharacteristically short sentence revealed it. And she was probably still upset over Beverly’s unexpected arrival at Vince, Jr.’s.
Great. I sighed inwardly. Giles took his cooking very seriously and did not like to have dinner plans changed at the drop of a hat. Now we were going to have someone in a French African funk for a few days until we ate enough Giles-cooked food to make it up to him. Fortunately, the boys would eat literally anything you put in front of them.
They were over by the stove now, behind Natalie, sniffing around like hungry puppies.
“When do we eat? When do we eat?” they chorused together.
I wondered vaguely if their simultaneous talking, something they had done since they had learned to speak, as I’d learned twins did, should continue to worry me. I’d raised it as a concern with their pediatrician several times over the years, and been waved off with ‘they’ll grow out of it.’ Fine. But when?
“Can we eat soon, Natalie? We have Tae Kwon Do class tonight at seven and I like them to digest a little before class.”
Three nights a week the boys and I took classes in Korean martial arts at the local Y. They loved it and so did I. I’d learned some self-defense techniques at the police academy, but this was different.
Taw Kwon Do meant “the art of hands and feet.” It was much more graceful than Karate, emphasizing quick kicks and jump turns to get out of an assailant’s way. The boys needed the structure of the class and a release for their nearly inexhaustible energy. I needed the chance to kick and punch the blue pads we used. I would imagine specific faces on the bags. I always felt like a rag doll after class, but more alive, more human.
“So, show your old Nonno what you learn in this class of yours.”
Vince extracted his bulk from the banquette and stood up, mimicking a martial arts fighting stance.
With a whoop, the boys were on him, throwing kicks and punches at his knees and thighs. Their high-pitched yells, called a “kihap” by our teacher, attracted Molly, our golden retriever from outside where she’d probably been napping in the last of the sunshine. She banged through the kitchen dog door and jumped up on poor Vince’s back.
“Ah, oh—coming to get me are you? Down, Molly, down. Think that will get me, huh? Oh, Sam, not so hard—Molly!”
Vince was sounding out of breath and increasingly desperate.
“Kristin! Get this . . . dog off me!”
Vince always had trouble moderating his natural swearing in front of the boys.
“Charyuht!”
I yelled that command for attention directly behind the boys. One of the first things we’d learned in class was that not to obey that command could get you thrown out of class. Since the boys would rather be deprived of all video games for a month rather than being denied Tae Kwon Do class, they had learned to respond immediately.
Commands of any kind had no effect on Molly, so I grabbed her collar and forced her to sit. Luckily she’s so docile most of the time it doesn’t matter.
“Say, that’s, that’s . . . pretty good,” Vince puffed.
His face was starting to return to his normal ruddy color rather than the mottled purple it had been a minute ago. His breathing was still ragged, though. I was increasingly alarmed at how little stamina he had these days.
“Eat, eat!”
Natalie was ready to serve.
At least she no longer said, “Mange, mange.”
When I first met Marco, his mother’s Italianisms used to drive him crazy. I had found it sweet and harmless. Of course, I could afford to, they weren’t my parents. Our own parents can get to us in ways no one else possibly can.
Natalie staggered across the kitchen with a huge platter
