Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“This fruit is wrong,” I tell Miles. We’re standing in a ludicrously expensive Italian market. T minus one hour until we’re due on my parents’ doorstep.
He blinks at me and then at the assortment in his grocery basket. “How could fruit be wrong? It’s fruit.”
“She didn’t mean apples and oranges. She meant fancy fruit.”
“Fancy fruit?” He pulls out his phone and squints at the text my mother sent to him. “She said to bring after-dinner fruit. That means fancy fruit?”
“Where are your glasses?” I don’t let him answer because I can’t actually chat about his super hot glasses right now. I’m doing a barely passable job of not acting like a panicky, lovestruck fool and I don’t want to blow it. “My mom was raised proper Italian. Well, the Brooklyn kind. We’re doing the full-course menu tonight, my friend. And that’s not a euphemism. The fruit course is after the main course but before the cookie course.”
He’s gaping at me. I take pity on him and bodily turn him back toward the produce section. “Go ask somebody what’s in season and buy the prettiest ones,” I advise.
He toddles off and I wander the store, rubbing my palms on my pants and trying to forget the warm-soft of his shirt under my hands. I make accidental eye contact with an obviously DTF cheesemonger behind the counter, and he and I engage in a brief and intense affair. But he turns quickly back to the wheels of cheese when Miles appears at my shoulder.
“The apples are in season,” he tells me. “So I kept them, but she also recommended…” He holds them up one at a time. “Plums, persimmons, and pomegranate.”
“That’s a lot of P s.”
He frowns. “I didn’t get any peas. Should I get some—oh. P s. Right. Hey, are you sure I don’t look stupid? I feel stupid. These pants are way too tight.”
He’s wearing freshly creased jeans and a dark blue flannel button-down. He holds his hands out to his sides, basket of fruit and all.
“You look nice,” I assure him. Trying very hard to play it cool. “Fresh out of a J. Crew catalog.”
“Oh.” He frowns down at himself. “That’s exactly what happened.”
“Huh?”
“I went to J. Crew and bought this outfit this morning so that I’d have something to wear.”
This news is literally painful for me. My chest is tight and achy. I’ve never had anyone dress up to meet my parents before.
“Well, you look nice,” I eventually say again.
Miles cocks his head to one side and studies me. “Lenny, should we talk about why you’re—”
“We’re gonna be late!” I chirp, pretending to study the time on my phone but actually seeing nothing at all.
We make it out to Brooklyn in record time, not even close to being late. The two of us stand outside my parents’ apartment door.
My mom, a recovering Roman Catholic, has given up almost all of her family’s Sunday traditions except for the gigantic, sprawling meal starting at about four p.m. I’ve tried to warn Miles about what he’s set to endure.
I still don’t think he’s prepared.
Miles and I are barely through the threshold before my mom is yanking our coats off and bustling us toward the living room. There are already aperitifs sweating on coasters on the coffee table.
“Sit. Sit!” she commands. Then she sprints off to the kitchen.
“Your mom is…” Miles blinks.
“Energetic,” I supply.
“This apartment is…” He slowly looks around at the potted herbs spilling off the top of the never-used piano, thegilded map of Italy, the red velvet couch we’re sitting on, the framed needlepoints of our deceased Siamese cats, my dad’s corner of the room with its two years of half-read newspapers and two-decades-old television.
“Unique,” I offer.
“This drink is…” He holds up the bright red concoction.
“Campari and soda with an orange peel,” I inform him. “The only—”
“—suitable drink for the cocktail hour,” my mom finishes, bustling back in with a platter of olives.
“Where’s Dad?”
“Picking up the cookies from the bakery.”
I blink at my mom. It’s not like her to outsource the baking. Is she trying to impress?
“So.” My mom has finally settled herself on the armchair across from us. She reaches across to Miles with one hand out. “Eva. And you’re Miles.”
“Yes, hello.” Miles shakes her hand, and then, in a moment of brilliance, quickly picks up his drink and holds it out to cheers my mother.
Her eyes flicker with approval and she takes a hearty swig. So does Miles. I watch him carefully for reaction to the flavor of the drink. I love Campari, but he’s a lifelong beer drinker. He does nothing but lick his lips and set the cup back down.
Just then we hear the front door opening and my typically quiet father absolutely shouts down the hall. “Elena? Elena!”
He charges into the living room, shoves the box of cookies toward my mother, and then yanks me off the couch and into his hug. I press my face into his familiar brown cardigan. He hugs me so tight I can’t breathe and then pulls me back just far enough to kiss my cheek. His eyes are red and glossy with tears. “Oh, sweetheart,” he murmurs.
Yeah. I’m the worst.
My parents have been missing me so much that all they can do is hug me and cry and meanwhile I’ve been sleeping on the Q train and sending their calls to voicemail.
My dad glances down at Miles and, without unhanding me, shakes his hand. “Kevin. I’m Lenny’s dad,” he explains unnecessarily.
My mom is crying now too, just watching our reunion, and it’s all a big soggy mess. “Kev, will you help me with the—”
“Yes,” he says, wiping at his eyes and immediately following her to the kitchen to compose himself.
I plunk back down on the couch in a heap. I don’t know if I can even remember the last time I saw my dad cry at something that wasn’t Field of Dreams.
“Elena?” Miles asks, looking fully confused.
“Oh. Right. My full name is Helen Elena. My dad wanted to name me after his mom, Helen. And my mom wanted to name me after her mom, Elena. So they gave me both names, only now my mom usually calls me Helen and my dad calls me Elena. Go figure.”
He considers this. “And Lou only called you Lenny.”
I nod with a little smile. “Yeah. I guess the people who love me the most all have unique names for me.”
“All of them?” His brow immediately furrows as he stares into nothing. I have the distinct impression he’s racking his brain.
“Eat up!” My mom is back from composing herself in the kitchen and she’s realized that the olive plate has gone untouched.
“Miles,” my dad says, reemerging as well. “Do you play Hearts?”
I snicker and Miles barely restrains himself from glaring atme.
“Yes. I do.” He clears his throat and takes another sip of his drink.
“The last time we played Hearts, he almost threw me in a river.”
“Dunked,” he quickly corrects. “I almost dunked her in a river.”
My parents are delighted with this information. “Oh, Lenny is the absolute worst sport when it comes to Hearts,” my mom says.
My dad is digging in the desk drawer. “Losing to her in anything has always been miserable. Who raised you?” he demands as he turns back around with the cards in hand. “They did a terrible job.”
“I really like that everyone here has already agreed they’ll be losing to me.”
Miles is ignoring me and scrubbing his hands together, mentally preparing for battle.
“What should the teams be?” I ask the group. “Girls v. boys? Geminis against the world?” I gesture to myself and my dad.
My mom cracks her knuckles. “Let’s show ’em how it’s done, Kev.”
“Ah,” I say. “Good call. Youngs v. olds. If we’re on the same team then he’s far less likely to throw me in a river.”
“ Dunk, ” Miles asserts again. “I would have gone in with you.”
Of course he would have. This makes me chest-tight and achy and I gulp at my aperitif to soothe the burn.
We eat olives and play Hearts and my parents wheedle bits of information about Miles between hands of cards.
My parents absolutely spank us at Hearts, and Miles is stunned. I try to yank him to a stand but he just sits there in a pile. “I win at Hearts,” he insists. “In my normal life.”
“Welcome to your new reality.”
“Come eat!” my mom shouts from the kitchen, and Miles finally resurrects.
There are goblets of wine and garlic bread and a trough of spaghetti, homemade, in marinara sauce, also homemade.
“Serve yourself!” Mom calls, her head in the fridge, hunting down the Parmesan.
Miles takes a humongous scoop of pasta and I quickly reach over and scoop half of it back into the bowl. “Pace yourself,” I warn out of the corner of my mouth.
He sort of follows directions, but agrees to another serving when my mom offers it to him. He’s just scraping the last of the sauce with the side of his fork when my mom stands up with an evil grin and dons her apron. She opens the oven he hadn’t realized was warming the actual main course.
She turns with the baking dish between two oven mitts and his fork squeaks against his plate.
“That’s…” he says dimly. “That’s an entire duck.”
And it is. Complete with roasted potatoes and olive gremolata.
This one is not a “serve yourself” dish. Mom piles Miles’s plate with food. I’ve learned the hard way to yank my plate away from her the second I’ve gotten the amount I want to eat. My dad has passively come to accept reality and just takes it upon himself to top off our wineglasses while my mom tortures us with ancestral cooking.
We eat and chat and eat and chat. Miles clears his plate, but I detect a bead of sweat running down the side of his face. The remains of the duck are cleared away, and Miles pats his stomach and sits back.
My mom stands and with the flair of a magician pulls a kitchen towel off the top of an enormous vat of salad. “To help you digest,” she explains when Miles catches some of the salad in one hand as she overfills his plate.
“You don’t have to eat it all,” I say out of the side of my mouth a few minutes later. He’s three quarters of the way through and is chewing like a cow on cud.
The salad and salad plates are cleared away and Miles gets up to help with the dishes. “Sit down, sit down,” Mom says, waving him away. “You can help when we’re done eating.”
He turns to me, eyes wide with horror. When we’re done eating? he mouths.
“There’s two more courses,” I whisper.
He clunks into his chair, hands flat on the table. Mom plates the fruit that Miles brought and hands out the tiny dessert forks for us all to eat from the plate at once. Dad goes to the cabinet and emerges with half skinny/half bulbous cordial glasses.
“Dad. No.”
“It’s a digestif,” he explains to Miles. “Would you like some?”
“Oh. Sure.”
“Just say no!” I whisper to him. I try out this tactic myself. “Dad! No!”
He ignores me and sits back at the table, handing out the glasses to everyone but me. “Miles, are you Italian by chance?”
Miles shakes his head.
“Well,” my dad says. “You will be by the end of this meal.”
He and my mom laugh heartily, as if my dad hasn’t been making that joke for thirty years.
“Dad’s not Italian either,” I explain to Miles. “But he’s a big fan of grappa.”
Dad pours the clear liquid for each of them.
“Seriously,” I whisper to Miles, “You don’t have to—”
But he shoots it back in one go. He does not (1) grimace, (2) gasp, or (3) cough. But I’m pretty sure he’s not breathing and his eyes have gone glassy. He might be having a brief tête-à-tête with God.
Mom and Dad drink their own grappa and eat fruit and gab. Dad fills Miles’s grappa glass twice more before I’m surreptitiously able to swipe the grappa bottle and restore it to the cabinet before a fourth round can be dispensed.
By the time the cookies course (final one, I swear) comes out, I’m the only one who’s not drunk as a skunk. We move the party back to the living room.
“So, you’ve been keeping an eye our Lenny-girl, huh?” Mom asks, plunking down in between Miles and me on the couch.
Dad emerges balancing a tray of piping hot espressos and passes them around. I immediately set mine aside. Miles tries to figure out how to hold the tiny cup without burning his fingerprints off and settles on taking the coffee down in one scalding swallow. He’s looking a little woozy over there.
“So…” Mom nudges Miles to answer her question.
“Hm? Oh.” He’s fanning his tongue and sort of sliding to one side of the couch. “She keeps an eye on me too.”
I get up to retrieve a glass of ice water in order to save his life so I miss the next few moments of conversation, but when I return Miles is glancing at me, a blush on his cheeks.
“Quit interrogating him,” I say, handing him the ice water and reclaiming my seat.
Mom ignores me completely. “She’s a total and complete mess but there’s no one else like her.”
Miles’s brow furrows. He’s drunk, but not so drunk he’ll stand for that. “She’s not a mess,” he says in a low voice. “She’s perfect.”
Mom scowls right back at him and leans across the couch to throw an arm around my neck, pressing our temples together. “Of course she’s perfect. Who says she isn’t?”
“She means it as a compliment,” I assure Miles. “They think I’m charmingly free-spirited.”
He’s still frowning at my mom and she’s still frowning back.
“Mess y, ” he concedes. “But not a mess.”
Mom turns to me—I’m still in a headlock, by the way. “I like him.” She turns back to him. “Do you know how to turn on the GPS in someone’s phone? Will you turn on Lenny’s and make it so that I can see it on my phone?”
She’s picked my pocket and is handing my phone over to Miles.
“Oh! Good idea.” Dad is handing his own phone over to Miles as well. “Hook her up to mine, too.”
I’m yoinking phones and handing them back to their owners. “You don’t need to surveil me! I swear I’ll start calling more often.”
“If you can’t catch Lenny you can always call or text me,” Miles offers, and my mom’s face immediately slinks into a knowing smile. This was what she was hoping for all along.
“Wonderful.”