MY MOTHER TOOK ME TO see Love Actually for my sixteenth birthday, popcorn smuggled in from the discount store. A trip to the movies was a high-days-and-holidays-level treat on our roster. Every time I catch the film on TV I remember my mother laughing beside me at Hugh Grant’s terrible dancing and the pin-drop silent audience heartbreak for Emma Thompson when she cried in her bedroom. My mother sang Joni Mitchell songs as part of her set for a while afterward, a heaven-sent match with the melancholy smoke of her voice.
Bella is sixteen in a few days. There’s to be a surprise party at the gelateria after closing time tomorrow and I offered to make the cake. It’s been pure joy to flex my baking muscles again, especially in the gleaming kitchens at Belotti’s—the temperamental stove at my apartment is far too risky for something as special as a sixteenth birthday cake. The temperature dial is more a request at home, it’s a moody old beast that burns on a whim.
Gift-buying was a whole new world of angst for me. I’ve no clue what sixteen-year-old girls are into, so I’ve picked out a simple silver trace chain bracelet with a tiny piano charm. I’m trying to strike the right note for “family friend who’s also Dad’s girlfriend, of sorts,” if there is such a category. There probably isn’t, it’s fairly niche.
Gio and I have paid another visit to the Monday Night Motel of Dreams, trying to pack enough into one night to see us through the week ahead since we’re no longer “working” on the recipe together. It’s a little like a long-distance love affair, a long week punctuated by one bone-meltingly good interlude. He calls me sometimes after midnight when Bella has gone to bed, hushed conversations in the dark, my phone on my pillow where I wish his head could be. And then I close my eyes to sleep alone, dully aware of the ever-present coil of tension in my gut, the low, insistent tick of a clock I’m ignoring at my peril. It breaks through into my dreams, changing them to nightmares where Gio turns to me in the coffee shop but it’s Adam wearing a Belotti’s apron, or the ripped napkin with their recipe across it falls from my pocket onto Maria’s polished mahogany floorboards. I wake in a hot panic, always with a sickly dread of having let them all down, cast out of the painted gelateria door surrounded by the shoddiness of my lies.
Are you sure Shen can cover my shift tomorrow?
I press SEND on my message to Bobby, hoping he’s remembered to make the arrangements. His reply comes back unsurprisingly fast—the man’s phone is in his hand at all times.
Green light, songbird.
I smile, relieved. I don’t see enough of him at the moment, he’s caught up in the whirlwind of opening a new Very Tasty Noodle House location and preliminary plans for another in Queens. Even so, he never lets me down.
* * *
—
“IS SHE TOO OLD for a surprise party?”
Gio looks at me and Sophia, doubt all over his face.
“No way,” I say.
“You’re never too old for a surprise party,” Sophia says.
“Maybe it’s just that I don’t like surprises,” he says, checking his phone.
I file that information away for examination when I’m alone later. All of Gio’s sisters and their various partners and children are packed into the gelateria, plus Maria of course, all waiting for the guest of honor.
“She’s coming,” he says loudly so everyone hears. “Quiet!”
Sophia knocks off the lights and a hush falls over the jittery gathering, excited whispers from the smallest family members. Gio’s hand finds mine in the dark, a momentary connection.
“Shush,” someone says, as we see Bella’s silhouette move into the doorway and hear her key in the door. Sophia flicks the lights on as the door swings open and everyone leaps from their place, shouts of surprise and “Happy Birthday!” filling the gelateria with noise and excitement. Bella’s double-take makes everyone’s clandestine effort worth it: she lights up like the star on top of the Rockefeller tree when she realizes this is all for her.
This is family, I think. This is what it’s like.
The kids break into a rendition of “Happy Birthday” and the family join in, English with a smattering of Italian, and Gio moves forward to hug his daughter so tight that her feet leave the ground. She’s laughing as he sets her down and pulls her bobble hat off, and for a moment they are a bubble of two contained within the snow globe of their family.
“Let her through, we all need a hug,” Maria says, a prettily wrapped parcel clutched in her hands.
There’s holiday music on the radio in the background and the gelateria has been decorated for Christmas, white fairy lights glowing around the family gallery on the wall, a festive wreath on the kitchen door. It feels as much like a holiday party as a birthday, until someone shouts for cake and Sophia cranes her neck to look for me. I follow her into the kitchen where the cake stands ready to go. The family left the design up to me, and after much deliberation I went for a huge, double-layered rich chocolate cake laced with Bella’s favorite cherry filling skimmed with white chocolate frosting. I’ve piled chocolate truffles and plump fresh black cherries high on top with a dusting of gold glitter for the birthday girl.
I am pretty pleased with it, and nervous too now it’s time to carry it out to the waiting family. We lift the board between us and someone dims the lights as we crab carefully sideways to place it down on the counter, resplendent with its lit candles.
The family sing again, and I feel Gio’s eyes on me as everyone exclaims at the sight of the blazing cake.
“Buon compleanno, mia nipote,” Maria says, her arm around her granddaughter’s shoulders. The candles illuminate Bella’s face as she holds her curls back to lean forward and blow out all the candles on one long breath, earning herself a ripple of applause, and Sophia’s phone flashes as she captures the moment.
“Iris made the cake,” she says. “Isn’t it amazing?”
I feel heat creeping up my neck as everyone looks at me.
“I like to cook,” I say, shrugging away their effusive praise. My mother would be deeply unimpressed to hear me reduce my years of training and kitchen experience to “I like to cook,” but here it’s accepted on face value.
“I like to cook too but it never turns out like that,” Francesca says, her eyes on the cake.
Pascal, her husband, nods sagely but doesn’t dare say a word.
A knife appears, the cake is cut, and champagne flutes are found and filled. There’s a groan of horror when Pascal produces a bottle of his lethal limoncello, but he just smiles and shrugs, nonchalant as he tips a little into everyone’s champagne.
I find myself beside Bella, and I reach down into my bag and dig out the small gift-wrapped box.
“Happy birthday,” I say, and she grins, excited.