Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
By the time we have it all laid out, it’s quite an array—probably too much if I’m honest—but everyone chips in for the costs. We might all be working class, but scaling back Sunday family dinners isn’t an option. Tradition is tradition.
By the time Nonna blesses the meal, there are twenty of us crammed in at the dinner table and the card tables flanking either side to help accommodate everyone. Checkered tablecloths are overlaid on top of one another, stretching over the length of all three tables. Lit candlesticks act as centerpieces, and my little cousin shoves the end of his buttered bread into the flame, trying to get it to light until his mom, my aunt Amara, smacks him in the back of the head. Lo stupido.
A cacophony of chatter fills the room, and there are no less than ten conversations going on at once, encompassing an array of topics, everything from baseball to politics to the new bunion on my uncle’s foot. It will only devolve more with each drop of alcohol consumed.
I have plenty of food on my plate, but with my mom on one side of me and Aunt Amara on the other, for every bite I take, another gets piled on.
My arguments fall on deaf ears.
“You’re too skinny,” my aunt says. “Men want curves. Maybe that’s why your man—”
My mom curses at my aunt, telling her to hush.
She does, for two minutes, and then she feels compelled to ask me if I was servicing my man enough in the bedroom. Just, you know, your average dinner conversation.
My brother Gio gags as if he’s about to throw up, but this does not dissuade Amara.
“Men, they’re dim creatures,” she continues, to which even the men at the table all nod in agreement.
You’d think this would be borderline traumatizing, all of it, but it’s oddly comforting. My life might be imploding before my eyes, but Sundays at my parents’ house will always remain the same, overbearing relatives and all.
Later, after the meal, we’re spread around the apartment, fending off our food comas. Well, not all of us… Uncle Nico is already passed out in one of the recliners, snoring so loud it’s a wonder we haven’t received a noise complaint from the city. My aunts gossip together in the kitchen as they clean and do dishes. My cousins fight over control of the old Nintendo console that only works half the time. I sit, alone on the couch, trying to stay in the moment rather than worrying about my plan for the future.
My mom comes over to collect my empty espresso cup, and then she nudges my arm with her elbow. “I know you said you would only be here for a day or two, but you could always move in for a while, share the back room with Nonna.”
Nonna gives me a wide dentured grin from her spot across the couch.
Tempting…
“I’ll land on my feet,” I insist.
She pats my hand and walks away. I have no doubt she’ll present her offer no less than a dozen more times.
I watch my cousins playing their video game for a few minutes, laughing at their whispered curse words. None of them want to get their mouth washed out with soap. Then Uncle Antonio comes over and takes the seat beside me.
Compared to most of my family, Uncle Antonio is nearly mute. He’s content to sit back and listen, merely existing in the chaos rather than helping to create it. We’re similar in that way. He’s big like my dad, their faces similar too, but my uncle is losing his hair much faster than his older brother. It makes his face look rounder. His cheeks are ruddy, his eyes a kind, dark brown and a match for mine.
Antonio always wears black suits, even to family dinners. It’s part of his job. I asked him about it once, and he told me it’s important to present yourself the way you want to be perceived.
“You doing okay, kiddo?” he asks me now.
I nod and smile.
“No more fancy restaurant?”
“No more fancy restaurant,” I confirm.
“No more uppity boyfriend?”
“Hey, you liked him, I thought.”
I brought Miles to Sunday family dinner once. He loved it, of course. We’re good cooks in this family, and he was lucky to have been invited. It gives me great pleasure to know he’ll never get to enjoy Nonna’s pasta sauce ever again. Now that’s a real punishment.
“He was…” He shimmies his hand back and forth as if his mind isn’t made up. “Eh, I liked his food.”
Miles and I treated some of my family to dinner at Fig & Olive once a few months back. I remember him making such a stink about it. He was put out to have to give up a few seats for them. I had to talk him into it for weeks, and then afterward, he still hung it over my head like he’d done me this huge favor.