Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Bianca
Nonna’s house smells like lemon oil and old paper, the church bulletin basket by the door still holding last Sunday’s copy with her notes in the margins—circled names and stars where the bake sale announcement was, a little arrow to remind her to bring biscotti.
The ceramic rooster on the kitchen windowsill stares out at the fig tree like it’s on guard duty. The lace runners on the dining room table are the ones I ironed with her when I was twelve; the iron scorched one corner then, and if you look closely, you can still see the faint brown kiss of it.
The couch is not wrapped in plastic—Nonna would rather die than squeak when she sat—but the armrest covers are perfectly square.
Mama fusses with a vase of lilies on the buffet until Zia Loredana catches her hands and folds them into her own. “Enough,” Zia says, softly. “He’ll be here any minute.”
“He should have been here already,” Mama says. Her eyes are raw. She didn’t sleep. None of us did. The only sound in the house is the cousins whispering in the hallway, with the clink of someone nervously pacing in the kitchen.
There’s a tray of sliced provolone and salami sweating on the counter because in this family, grief equals food, even when you can’t stomach it.
I stand at the edge of the dining room and press my fingertips into the seam of the table leaf. The wood is nicked where we did homework and rolled out pasta, and once, when I was sixteen and dramatic about it, carved a tiny heart with my initials on the underside where Nonna couldn’t see.
She saw. She saw everything. She pretended not to and then made me sand it smooth with the same patience she taught me with dough: even pressure, no tearing.
“Bibi, sit,” Mama says, using a nickname I cherished as a child, hated as a teenager. And cherish again as an adult.
I sit. The chair creaks a little and makes me think of when I was small and dangled my feet and swung them.
Nonna snapped my ankle lightly with a dishtowel and told me to behave.
I fold my hands in my lap because it seems like the kind of occasion you fold your hands in your lap for.
Zia drops into the chair beside me and puts a glass of water in front of me so I don’t forget to drink.
The knock at the front door is three polite raps.
The room holds its breath. Mama’s mouth goes thin in that way I recognize from the morning rushes at home when the restaurant’s dishwasher is late and the espresso machine is making that cough.
She wipes her hands on her skirt even though they’re clean. She’s always wiping, always smoothing.
Zia is at the door and opening it.
Mr. Caruso steps in with a leather briefcase that matches his shoes. He’s been our family lawyer since before I was born. He is not related to us, but he has eaten at our table for years as if he were. He was here the night my grandfather died, or so I’m told.
He is a thin man, always, even thinner today, as if grief has shaved him down at the edges in just these few days. His gray hair is carefully combed back. He smells faintly of aftershave. He stops just inside and takes off his hat.
“Francesca,” he says to my mother. “Loredana.” His eyes find me. “Bianca.”
“Mr. Caruso,” Mama says. “Thank you for coming.”
He puts a hand on his chest briefly as if her thanks is too heavy to take in a handshake.
“I am sorry for your loss,” he says, and means it.
He looks at the miles of lilies we don’t know what to do with, at the photographs: Nonna young with hair like a darkness spilling down her back, Nonna older with flour on her wrists, Nonna holding me as a baby, Nonna at the restaurant under the new sign that said REGALIA in letters my cousin painted.
“The reading,” Mama says, because Mama is a forward motion kind of woman. “Let’s do it.”
“We can wait for whoever else you want to be present,” he offers. Polite. Professional. He knows there is almost always one aunt who is late.
“They’re here,” Mama says, and the hallway produces cousins like a magician with scarves. Marco and his wife, Talia, with the baby.
Zio Enzo—technically not my blood uncle, but in our family that line is too thin to matter.
More aunts drift in. Voices drop when they see Mr. Caruso’s case. The room fills up but feels bigger, even with all of us in it, like grief has thinned us all.
Mr. Caruso sets his case on the table, unbuckles it with small, old clicks.
He takes out a manila folder and a small stack of envelopes with names written on the front in his precise, neat hand.
He also takes out a tin of butter cookies—the Danish kind that are different shapes but all taste the same—and sets it just to the side, like an offering.
Nonna always had a tin in the pantry. She kept buttons in the empties.
“I will keep this brief,” he says, though we all know that the law cannot help itself from being long. “Sabina kept her affairs in order.” He touches the folder like it might be an animal that needs calming.
“We spoke a month ago. She updated some things. She was very clear.”
Mama makes a sound that could be a laugh if it weren’t a sob. “Clear,” she repeats.
Mr. Caruso clears his throat. Zia reaches under the table and finds my hand. Her fingers are cool and dry.
“There are several small bequests,” he says.
“To friends, to the church, to Saint Michael’s soup kitchen.
To the Ladies’ Auxiliary, may they finally replace the coffee urn that shorts out.
” A ripple of chuckles; even now, St. Michael’s coffee is a scandal.
“She has left modest sums to each of the grandchildren.”
He nods toward us cousins. “Five thousand dollars, to be placed in accounts for the children and, in the case of those of you over eighteen, to be released at the discretion of your mothers.”
Marco’s eyebrows lift. Talia rubs the baby’s back. Someone says, “That’s Sabina” under their breath, and it is. Generous but not foolish. Money as both love and lesson.
“Her jewelry is to be divided by Francesca and Loredana, with the understanding that Francesca receives their mother’s cameo and Loredana receives the St. Anthony medal that Sabina wore every day.” He looks up to make sure they hear it. They do.
Mama’s hand goes to her throat like she can feel the cameo there. Zia’s mouth softens at St. Anthony, finder of lost things. “The rosary goes to Bianca,” he adds. “She asked me to say, ‘the one with the rosemary knot.’”
My throat closes fast enough to make me swallow wrong. I cough. Mama pats my back automatically, a rhythm from childhood that calms me even now.
“And now,” Mr. Caruso says, and the room tightens like a muscle. “As to the house and Regalia.”
Mama sits straighter. Zia lets my hand go. The room goes even quieter somehow.
“Sabina leaves her residence—this house—to her granddaughter, Bianca Marcelli,” he says.
Everything in the room blurs just a little on the edges. For a heartbeat, I think I have misheard him, that my brain is still stuck on lilies and cameos. Then it clears up suddenly, giving me a head rush.
“To me?” It comes out small.
Mr. Caruso meets my eyes. His are gentle, and so is his smile. “Yes.”
Mama is very still. So still the lilies behind her seem to move. Her mouth opens and closes and then finds a shape that is not a smile and not not a smile. “My mother,” she says. “My mother’s house.”
Mr. Caruso looks at her with a man’s helplessness in the face of something he can’t fix.
“Sabina was explicit,” he says. “It is Bianca’s.
There is no life estate granted, but—” He looks through the paper as if it might help soften the blow.
“She wrote a letter to accompany her wishes.” He touches the stack of envelopes but doesn’t pick them up. “We will come to those.”
The room breathes again, in and out. Zia’s hand finds mine again, squeezes like she’s trying to ground me.
“And the restaurant,” Mama says, her voice low like a stove turned down so it doesn’t boil over. “Regalia.”
Mr. Caruso nods. He clears his throat, checks the page even though he knows. I can see he knows. “Sabina leaves Regalia—its assets, its name, and its debts—to Bianca as well.”
It’s like the word “Bianca” is a stone thrown into a pond, and I am all ripples and no water. The room wobbles. The house. The restaurant. The two pillars that are our family. I grip the edge of the table because I’m afraid I might tip right out of my chair.
“Mr. Caruso,” Mama says. “No.” She says it plainly, like she’s correcting something simple. “No. That’s not—it’s a mistake. I have been running it. For years. You know this.”
“I do,” Mr. Caruso says. His eyes are kind. He might be the kindest man I have ever seen. “Sabina did not take that lightly.”
“She didn’t take anything lightly,” Mama says, and her mouth twists into something that might be a smile if the world were not falling. “But this has to be a mistake.”
“She included a provision,” he says, and there is relief in the word “provision,” like it might smooth things over.
“There is a compensation clause for services rendered—Francesca, you are to be paid a salary for the last three years at the rate she determined was fair, plus a bonus. It is to be paid out of the restaurant’s accounts.
Additionally, she has left you—personally—a sum, separate and apart, in appreciation. Fifty thousand dollars.”
Fifty thousand dollars. It’s a lot and it’s not enough, and the money is both and neither. Mama doesn’t blink. She looks at me, but she’s not really seeing me. Like she’s looking through me.
“No,” she says again, but it isn’t to Mr. Caruso now. It is to the room, to everyone and everything in it, to the ghost of her mother who must be standing in the doorway with her arms crossed, waiting for someone to argue so she can swat them with a dish towel. “No.”
Zia leans forward. “Francesca,” she says. “Listen.”
“I am listening.” Mama’s voice shakes. “I am listening to a joke.”