Chapter 7
Rome, Italy
When Rachelle returned home from her frantic run through the city, she found Riccardo at the kitchen counter, shimmying his hips to an old Italian pop song as he spread Nutella across a slice of white bread.
She kissed him, laughing at how comically Italian he so often was.
“Just another cliché,” she joked. He swatted her and took a bite of chocolate-y toast, then turned it around so that she could take her own bite.
“Oh!” he said as she chewed through the melted chocolate. “My mother’s invited us for dinner tomorrow. Can you make it?”
Rachelle considered her schedule, considered that she hadn’t done anything for herself since the fire, and nodded. There was a twinge of fear in her gut, as ever, when she agreed to anything with Riccardo’s family. But she was marrying into his family, for goodness’ sake. She had to get over that.
The following afternoon, Rachelle began her preparations for the big family dinner by shaving her legs, doing her hair, perfecting her makeup, and changing her outfit three times.
Rachelle had learned the hard way that Riccardo’s mother scrutinized everything she wore, her lipstick shade, the way she did her nails, and how she carried herself.
Since she and Riccardo had gotten serious, Rachelle had forced herself to take her self-presentation more seriously—shoving away her previous laissez-faire “island attitude” to become an Italian woman in the big city.
High heels were a must, unfortunately. That was the way the Russo family did things.
Riccardo’s mother sent a car to pick them up at their Trastevere apartment.
Riccardo and Rachelle slid into the back seat, holding hands as they were ripped out to the villa on the outskirts of Rome.
His mother’s driver, Benicio, spoke in a rapid, frantic Italian as he drove in a rapid, frantic style.
Riccardo laughed many times and asked Benicio questions about his family.
Rachelle felt too nervous to enter into the conversation.
When they arrived, Riccardo’s mother, two sisters, and father waited for them on the immaculate veranda, with a view of the rolling hills surrounding the city and the sea at the far end of those same hills.
It felt like a castle in the sky. Riccardo’s mother, Valeria, kissed Rachelle three times, gushing in quick Italian about how pleased they were to welcome Rachelle into the family.
“And look! His grandmother’s ring!” Valeria extended Rachelle’s hand out approvingly.
Rachelle thanked her lucky stars that her nails looked all right. They suited the ring.
Riccardo’s sisters, Teresa and Gia, were similarly enthusiastic.
They looked up to their older brother and wanted the best for him.
The fact that he’d fallen in love with an American and dared to bring an American into their ritzy Italian old-money family was probably confusing for them, Rachelle guessed.
She smiled nervously, then told them the story of the engagement, because they pressed her to give them every detail.
“Suddenly, the kitchen exploded,” she said, messing up the Italian slightly. “It was before Riccardo had time to put the ring on my finger!”
Riccardo laughed. “I thought the heavens had come down to earth, all because she was going to be my wife.”
Riccardo’s family cackled, clearly pleased with the cinematics of it all.
One of the family’s employees came to make them drinks: Negroni or an Aperol spritz.
Rachelle sipped her Aperol, hanging back conversationally as Valeria and the father, Tony, talked about the day they’d gotten engaged.
It wasn’t a very good story: a beach party, a barbecue.
But they told it as though it was better than any Italian film.
They kissed right there in front of their children and Rachelle, closing their eyes, as though they’d forgotten they were there.
“We’ll have a big wedding!” Valeria said, raising her Negroni toward the sunset. “We’ll celebrate you with everything we have!”
Rachelle was sort of miffed that none of them had mentioned the fact that her restaurant had burned down.
To her, that was the biggest thing on her mind, the thing that kept her up at night.
Her engagement felt secondary, as though it were always going to happen, something she could forget about. But everyone wanted to fixate on it.
As far as Rachelle knew, Riccardo’s family’s wealth dated back centuries, passed down generation after generation.
Valeria had never worked, and Tony worked with his brothers in finance, Rachelle was pretty sure.
She knew that Riccardo’s decision to go to culinary school had boggled their minds, at least initially.
But now, they thought it was rather “cute” that Riccardo wanted to work his nights away in a kitchen. They were pulling for him.
Over dinner that night, Tony asked Riccardo to describe the food they were eating and what he thought their personal chef had done to the dishes.
Riccardo described the processes in perfect, almost poetic detail: the glazing, the fermentation, and the pressure cooking. His family was rapt with attention.
Rachelle interacted to say, “I was so excited to have him as my sous chef at Coleman.”
Valeria blinked at Rachelle, surprised. It was as though she had no idea what Rachelle was talking about. “I beg your pardon, darling?”
“At my restaurant. The one that burned? Riccardo was my sous chef. We worked together so, so well. I’ve never had a more fluid relationship with someone in a kitchen.
” She smiled at her beloved, but Riccardo didn’t smile back.
“I’m hoping I can reopen sooner rather than later.
I’m trying to hold on to that space as best as I can. ”
Valeria hesitated, then said, “Oh! Of course. I’d forgotten that he was going to be your sous chef.” She said the term “sous chef” as though it were a criminal position. As though the idea of a man working under a woman in the kitchen was sinful.
“And what are you doing now?” Tony asked his son. “Now that you’re not going to be your fiancée’s sous.”
Riccardo laughed. “Not a whole lot, Papa.”
“It’s time to rest,” Valeria agreed. “These are your last months before marriage! You have a lot to think about.” She eyed Rachelle.
“I think it’s best that you rest, too. I know how frantic you can be.
You’re a busy American worker bee. But think about the wedding!
Think about the pictures! We’ll need you as pretty as can be. ”
Rachelle blushed. It annoyed her to think of herself as a bride, someone meant to be doted on and cared for. “I started working again in the kitchen I was in when I met Riccardo,” she said firmly. “I can’t work.”
Valeria giggled. “Once you stop working for real, you’ll understand how wonderful it is. You’re going to be one of us! You’re going to enjoy the most beautiful life.”
“La Dolce Vita,” Tony agreed, raising his glass of wine.
Rachelle didn’t know what to think. She tried to smile, but she kept her private feelings to herself, feelings her in-laws would never understand. She supposed that wasn’t such a rare thing.
Later on, the women and the men separated.
Tony and Riccardo went to Tony’s study to talk about Tony’s business (whatever that entailed), which left Valeria, Gia, Teresa, and Rachelle in the living room, sipping wine and talking about the wedding.
Rachelle ached, suddenly, to be back at the Coleman House, where her mother and aunts and grandmother and cousins would all be in the kitchen, cleaning up after a big dinner.
Here at Riccardo’s family’s place, they had maids and chefs to do the cleaning up.
They wanted for nothing. There was never any discomfort.
“How many guests are you thinking, Mama?” Teresa asked.
“At least three hundred.” Valeria frowned.
“Maybe four hundred? We’ll have to put together a list by next week.
” She flipped her hair. “Rachelle, you’ll have to meet our wedding planner.
She’s the very best in Italy. The one most sought after.
She already dropped another two weddings to work exclusively on yours. ”
Rachelle raised her eyebrows. She couldn’t believe that Riccardo had neglected to tell her this. Was it possible that Valeria hadn’t told him?
“Look at her face.” Gia laughed. “She’s shocked.”
“I’m not! I just didn’t know,” Rachelle said. She felt foolish, but also a bit angry.
Since when was this wedding not hers and Riccardo’s, but theirs?
“We have a reputation to uphold,” Valeria told her.
“It’s difficult to understand if you don’t come from a family like ours.
An old, old Italian family. But we’re going to work everything out.
You’ll have plenty of choices to make, darling.
There will be things to do. I’m sure you’ll have plenty to say about the food. ” She laughed.
Rachelle didn’t know what to say. She sipped her wine and prayed for the night to end soon.
After that, Gia asked her mother about an uncle of theirs, a man she called Tio. “Is he really coming back to Italy?”
Valeria’s eyes wide with excitement. “I believe he is.” She turned to look at Rachelle.
“My uncle, my Tio, left for the United States many years ago. He grew tired of all this ‘old Italian money,’ as he put it, and wanted to make something of himself abroad. He wanted to make a name for himself among Americans. Now, for reasons we don’t fully understand, he’s coming back. ”
“How long has he been gone?” Rachelle asked. Now that she’d been away from the United States for seven long years, she was fascinated with people who’d spent so much of their lives away from home.
“Goodness, he must have left fifty years ago,” Valeria said.
It was mind-boggling to think of being away from home for that long.
Rachelle filled her mouth with wine and reminded herself that she was marrying an Italian, that this was her family now, and that fifty years in Italy were probably in her future.
She shuddered with fear. Or maybe it was excitement? How could anyone tell the difference?
“He abandoned the family.” Valeria sniffed. “His parents never forgave him, and my mother and father never did, either.”
“Something awful must have happened to him in America,” Teresa said. “Is he getting divorced?”
“I believe he’s already divorced,” Valeria said. “Maybe twice or three times already. Americans get divorced left and right, it seems like. Rachelle, didn’t you say that your mother is divorced?”
Rachelle felt resentment crawling up her neck. “She is, yes. She divorced my father about eight years ago. But it was a long time coming.”
“Do you still talk to your father?” Valeria asked.
“I hear from him on birthdays. I call him on his,” Rachelle said softly, although this hadn’t been true for a few years. The fact of her father’s abuse of her mother was something she’d confronted, sort of, in therapy. But she wasn’t sure she would ever fully get over it.
“There you have it. Divorce! It’s everywhere in America,” Valeria said.
“Italians don’t believe in divorce. We’re Catholic, all of us.
When your father wanted to have an affair, I said, go on!
Do whatever you want to! Know that I will make your life miserable forever, because we can’t get divorced on this.
I laughed! And he didn’t ever have that affair, did he, girls? ”
Gia and Teresa laughed with their mother.
Rachelle didn’t know what to say. She thought of her Great-Grandpa Chuck, of the divorce that had splintered the Coleman family.
Was divorce really something that Americans were drawn to?
She didn’t buy it. It felt like a story that Valeria wanted to tell herself to feel superior.
But that night in the car going home—after a painful final hour during which Valeria peppered Rachelle with more details about the wedding—Rachelle asked Riccardo what he thought of divorce.
“I think it’s a sin,” he said simply.
“But people sometimes need to get out of bad situations,” Rachelle said, surprised at his answer. “People need to regroup, to step away legally.”
“Oh! I didn’t know this would affect you so much.” Riccardo threw his arm around her and kissed her on the cheek. “You’re so sensitive!”
“I’m not!” But Rachelle had begun to cry. She couldn’t understand it. Where had all these emotions come from? Oh, but she missed her mother. And she was suddenly frightened. What if, one day, she wanted to divorce Riccardo? And what if he didn’t let her?