“You’re right, Mabel,” Jo said weakly.
Uncle Dom poured himself a small glass of bitters. “Women always stand together, and it starts early. Don’t ever play Red Rover at Sacred Heart School. Those girls form a line like a chain-link fence—believe me, the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame couldn’t cut through it.” He downed the glass.
Nicky got a whiff of the Fernet Branca, and it invigorated him. “She’ll understand. I’m not doing this to be selfish.”
“Oh, now it’s a generous act of a loving heart?” Mabel was mystified. “Nicky, for the love of God, pick a side here.”
“You’ll ruin her life for sure by not marrying her,” Aunt Jo said softly.
“How? Besides the ring, the new house, and the party, what is the big deal about getting married?” Nicky was exasperated.
A pall came over the room. Nicky could hear his Uncle Dom’s heart thumping in his carotid artery.
Mabel raised her hand. “May I speak?”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” Gio said under his breath.
“Nicky,” Mabel began, “I’ve been in this family for twelve months, and if I may, I’m gonna explain this to you once. So listen carefully. From the time she has thoughts, a girl dreams of her wedding day like a little boy dreams of becoming a famous baseball player, getting rich, conquering the world, and being important.”
Gio groaned.
“A woman holds her virtue like a prize,” she continued. “It’s her way of securing her future with one man under one God in one house of her own design. In exchange for that life, imagined in her dreams, and promised by the man of her choosing, secured with a decent ring, the woman gives the man a joy he has never known.”
Uncle Dom belched on his bitters.
Mabel went on, “Look at what the man gets. He gets a life! He is taken care of! He gets a house full of children, hot meals, the laundry done, waxed floors, clean sheets, and a foot rub every other Saturday night or whatever particular request the husband makes of the wife, that’s for the couple to sort out in private. Now, let’s look at what she gets. She gets a purpose. A woman aspires to be a bride in order to be a wife, which gives her a job, which gives her a place in this world that is indisputable, irrefutable, and wholly and uniquely her own in the eyes of God and the law. When you yank that away from a woman and you rescind a proper offer of marriage, you have fired her from her own life.”
“She’ll find somebody else,” Uncle Dom interjected. “She’s a pleasant enough–looking girl. She’s a very lean tomato.”
“That’s not what we look for in a tomato.” Jo didn’t try to hide her annoyance.
“Doesn’t matter. Won’t happen. She won’t find anyone else if Nicky wrecks the deal,” Mabel assured him.
“How do you know?” Lena asked.
“Peachy waited too long for Nicky. Our group is married off. Whoever might have been a potential replacement died in the war. Only the odd duck here and there is available, and you don’t want a specimen from that pool. Peachy is finished.” Mabel dumped three teaspoons of sugar into her coffee.
“I agree with Mabel.” Aunt Jo patted Nicky’s hand. “You’ve never done anything wrong, Nicky, until now.”
“Look, I want to be Joe DiMaggio, but I’m not angry because I can’t throw a baseball. I’m not going to marry Peachy because she’s wanted this since she was a little girl. I won’t marry her because it makes all of you comfortable or because the DePinos want to use up the free champagne they won at a carnival or because they feel badly about their cousins who got thrown into an internment camp.”
“Then don’t.” Aunt Jo removed her hand from Nicky’s.
Mabel picked up the empty dessert plates. “Fine. Don’t marry her, Nicky. But you will hate yourself for the rest of your life. At night, when you close your eyes, you’ll see Peachy’s face—like a martyr on a Holy Card. You’ll think of those big eyes of hers that look like manhole covers and the image of her face will make you shake like a live electrical cord in the bathtub. I couldn’t live with the constant reminder of the pain I inflicted. But of course, it’s up to you.” Mabel picked up the dishes and went into the kitchen.
“God almighty, she’s like an anvil.” Uncle Dom threw back the rest of his drink.
“I married a strong girl,” Gio said with a shrug. “She can pick up a car with her bare hands.”
“We have a lift in the garage for that,” Dom reminded him.
“Gio, help with dessert. Daddy will want a dish of gelato. There’s peach in the freezer.” Aunt Jo motioned with her head, averting a father-and-son argument. Gio complied, and Dom sat back in his chair.
“Mabel is gigantic. I’ve never seen a woman that big.” Dom ate a chocolate turtle from Stuckey’s.
“Your mother.”
“She was large-boned in her youth.”
“So, Mabel is large-boned too.”
“From sfogliatelle. Not from bones.”
“It doesn’t matter. Everyone ends up thin in the end. We all shrink. Bones or not. So knock it off.”
“Mabel may have triplets in there. Nicky, we may have to camp a couple babies with you.”
“No babies in the basement,” Aunt Jo said to Nicky to reassure him. It reminded him that he had put a down payment on the house on Wharton. What a mess he had made, what a pile of details to untangle, if he even could. He hoped that he woke up in the morning having changed his mind and decided to marry Peachy after all.
“Don’t marry her,” Nonna said from her rocker, under her afghan.
The family turned to her.
“No good!” she said, then closed her eyes again.
“Or. You listen to my mother-in-law. When she’s not senile, she’s a seer.” Uncle Dom cracked a walnut and fished out the meat of the nut and chewed. “To me? That’s a sign.”
*
“Pop, you need a sweater,” Calla said through the screen door.
“I like the air,” Sam told her. The breeze ruffled the leaves on the old elm that shadowed the porch as the blue night settled in around him.
Calla pushed the door open with her hip, handed her father a demitasse cup of espresso, and placed one for herself on the small side table on the porch. She reached into the pocket of her apron and pulled out a cloth napkin. “Biscotti.” Calla offered one to her father, almond with glints of pistachio. He took one and sat down.
“You’re getting to be a pretty good baker.”
“You think so?”
“These are as good as your mother’s.”
“I’ll tell the folks at the bakery you said so.”
Sam laughed. “And here I thought you were going to tell me you’re ready to get married to that nice Frank Arrigo and make a home of your own and start baking from your mother’s recipe box.”
“Come on, Dad.”
“Don’t you want to get married?”
“Someday, maybe.”
“He wants to marry you.”
“Did he say something?”
“He didn’t have to. He circles you like a hummingbird. It’s how men do.”
“I like him.”
“He seems like a nice guy.”
“It’s happening too fast.”
“Your mother was eighteen years old when we fell in love. We got married when she was twenty.”
“I know.”
“I’d like to see you settled.”