Chapter 5 — TEO
“Matteo! Matteo is here!”
Nicole yells it from the kitchen and doesn’t look up from the onions. Forty-five minutes of text updates from the road and my mother is in the doorway like she hasn’t seen me since birth.
“You lost weight.”
“Ma. I didn’t.”
“Your face is smaller.”
“My face is the same face.”
“Your face is smaller. It’s the flying. You fly too much.”
Her hand goes into my hair and pushes it off my forehead the way she’s been doing since I was four. My coat is still half-on. Someone has already stacked my boots by the door.
“Stop smothering him, Ma. Let him get in the house.” My oldest sister Gina says, wine glass in one hand, the other out to take my coat. She hugs me and pats my back twice.
“You look tired.” My mother is still hovering around me.
“I flew three hours, Ma. I didn’t cross an ocean.”
“You look tired.”
“Everyone looks tired to you.”
“Because everyone is tired, Matteo. We are all tired. We are a tired family. Go say hi to your dad and Nonna.”
Nonna is in her chair in the living room and Dad on the couch watching the football game. Nonna puts both hands on my face. Looks at me. Doesn’t say anything for a second.
“Caro.”
“Nonna.”
“Sit.”
“I have to say hi to everyone in the kitchen.”
“The kitchen will be there.”
I sit. She gives me biscotti. Dad asks me about the team, about practice, where we are with respect to the playoffs.
Nothing has changed in this room since I was last in it.
Same couch, same blanket folded at the same angle, same conversations.
The kitchen is loud behind us. Gina and Jackie are arguing about the gravy and neither of them is making it, which is how this family does it.
“You look good, Matteo.”
“Ma said I looked tired.”
“You look good.” She pats my cheek twice and lets me go.
In the kitchen, Ma is at the stove with a wooden spoon pointing at Jackie, who is pointing back with the salt shaker. Nicole is at the cutting board with the onions and her eyes are streaming.
“Matteo, tell your sister the gravy is fine.”
“The gravy is fine, Jackie.”
“You haven’t tasted it.” She swipes back.
“Ma’s gravy is always fine.”
“Unhelpful.”
“Tell her, Matteo.” Ma is already fussing over the stove, trying to make everything perfect.
“Ma, Jackie is right.” I put my arm around her, thinking back to the summer when I was last here and the same conversation, almost word for word, was happening.
“You just said it was fine.”
“It is fine. But Jackie is also right.”
“You cannot have it both ways.”
Gina sets her wine glass down somewhere she’s already going to forget and puts a potato and a peeler in my hand.
“Work.”
“I just got here! Don’t I get a minute to unwind?”
“You got here eight minutes ago. Peel.” She turns and walks away.
The peeler is the same peeler from when I was a kid. It was my grandmother’s. Now, my mother has it. We will bury it in the yard when it finally gives up. It doesn’t fit my hand anymore but I use it anyway.
“How’s the arm?”
“It’s fine. Brooks has me on rotator cuff four days a week. Shoulder’s better compared to September.”
“Hm.” Ma keeps stirring.
“Brooks.” That one word from Nicole says like five different things. None of which I want to respond to.
Jackie is looking at Gina. Gina is looking at Jackie. Neither of them is looking at me.
I finally ask, “What?”
Nicole speaks after a long look at me. “You said his name twice at Thanksgiving. Then you corrected to ‘my trainer.’”
“I didn’t correct anything.” But I can’t look her in the eye either. Not if we are talking about Brooks.
“You did.”
“Wait. Which trainer? Who are we talking about?” asks Gina, like she doesn’t know who we were talking about.
“THE trainer. The one doing his shoulder.”
“The one with the face?” Gina asks.
“You’ve seen his face?” I never should have sent the team website to the family chat.
Nicole tips her knife toward Gina, eyes still on the cutting board. “Gina’s been looking.”
“I’m allowed to look,” Gina says, like it’s a civic duty. “Matteo, he has good bones.”
“He has good bones,” Nicole agrees to the onions.
Gina picks her wine glass back up and gestures with it. “He has a strong jaw. Matteo. He has a strong jaw and nice cheekbones.”
“Ma.” Gina holds her phone across the island. “Look.”
Ma wipes her hands and takes it. Looks at the screen.
I tense. Can’t help it. She’s seeing Zay for the first time, a Black man on a team website, and she’s putting that together with everything her daughters just said about bones and jaws and their brother’s trainer. I watch her face.
Ma studies the photo. Looks up at me then back at the phone. I can feel her taking all of him in. Then she nods once. “He’s handsome,” she says, and hands the phone back.
Jackie hasn’t said a word yet. She’s at the edge of the island with her arms crossed and a dish towel over one shoulder, watching me peel my potato with the look she had when I was twelve and lied about who broke the kitchen window.
“What?” I ask.
“You’re blushing.”
“I’m not blushing.” I can feel my face heat up.
“He’s blushing, Ma.”
Ma doesn’t look up from the pot. “He is, Jackie.”
“How’s the shoulder, Matteo?” Jackie asks again, slower this time.
“Jackie, why are we going backwards?”
“Because you didn’t really answer. Is it fine?”
“I already told you. The shoulder is fine.”
“And the man doing the shoulder?”
“He’s good at his job.” My voice comes out more careful than I want it to.
“His job,” she repeats.
The potato is almost done. I can feel the four of them waiting for me to say something.
“His name is Zay,” I say finally, because the silence is worse than giving them an answer. “He’s an assistant athletic trainer. The head AT brought him in because he’s great at what he does. His protocol works and the shoulder is a lot better since September. That’s the answer.”
“That is not the answer,” Gina says.
“That’s a press release,” Jackie cracks.
Nicole doesn’t look up from the onions, but adds, “He hasn’t said one thing about the man.”
“Matteo,” Ma says, and her voice has the specific weight it has when she’s about to make me tell her something I don’t want to tell her.
“Ma.”
“Matteo.” She stops what she is doing and gives me the look.
“I know what you’re asking.”
“Then answer.”
I’m looking at the potato. The peel is coming off in one long jagged curl and I keep going because the alternative is looking at my sisters.
“I like him.”
A beat. Not big, but real. Jackie’s mouth doesn’t move. Gina sets down the spoon she picked up for no reason. Nicole, for the first time since I walked in, looks up from the onions. Her eyes are red from the cutting, and she doesn’t wipe them.
Then they all start at once. Jackie wants to know how long. Gina wants to know who else knows. Ma gets there first with the wooden spoon in the air, which is how Ma stops a kitchen.
“One at a time. Jackie first.”
“Why?” Gina asks.
“Because I said so. Jackie, go.”
Jackie accepts it with a small nod. “How long has this been going on?”
“Since September.”
“When in September?”
“When I met him.”
“When you met him like when you shook his hand?” Gina says, drawing it out, “or when you shook something else?”
“Gina!” Ma swats at her with her dishtowel.
“What? He’s being cagey about the timeline.”
“Don’t make me say it in Ma’s kitchen.”
“In my kitchen you can say whatever you want, Matteo. Say it,” Ma adds, not helping me at all.
“Ma.” But she nods her head for me to answer. I am not getting out of this. “We sort of met before we officially met. Okay?”
Gina puts her wine glass on the counter and does not pick it back up. “Oh. Oh. Ma, do you understand?”
“I understand, Gina,” Ma says without turning.
“They hooked up,” Nicole announces to the onions.
“They hooked up,” Gina repeats, because Gina wants to make sure the people on the next street over hear.
“He hooked up with his trainer,” Jackie says slowly, piecing it together, “and then?”
“And then he was my trainer.”
“And what happened?”
“Nothing happened. He’s my trainer.”
Jackie plants both hands flat on the island and leans in. “Matteo, you are being an idiot.”
“Trust me, I know.”
“So what are you going to do about it?” She’s counting on her fingers like I don’t know how many four is.
“He’s said no, Jackie.”
“Did he say he doesn’t want you?” Nicole asks the onions.
I don’t answer that for a second. The potato is done. I’m just holding it.
“Matteo.” Jackie’s voice drops a notch. “Did he say he doesn’t want you?”
“No. He said he can’t.”
“Those are not the same thing,” Nicole says.
“Those are not the same thing, Matteo,” Jackie repeats, harder.
“What are you listening to?” Nicole asks, over the onions.
The whole kitchen stops.
She’s looking at my phone on the counter next to the potato bowl. I didn’t know it was playing. It’s been playing the whole time, low, under the noise. One of the songs he sent me in November. I put it on in the rental car this morning and forgot it was still going.
“It’s a song,” I say.
“Who sent it?” Nicole asks, knowing full well how sent it.
“Nobody.”
“He’s lying,” Gina tells Jackie.
“He’s lying,” Nicole confirms.
“Who sent it, Matteo?” Jackie asks.
“Brooks.”
“When did he send this song?” Jackie is like a dog with a bone here. Though if I am honest, none of my sisters are going to let this go.
“November.”
“And you have been playing it since...?”
I don’t answer.
Jackie breathes out through her nose the way Ma does when she’s trying not to say something.
Gina tilts her head and studies me over the rim of her wine glass. “What did you give him?”
“What?”
“For Christmas. You gave him something. I know you, Matteo. What did you give him?”
“Pens.”
“Pens,” Jackie repeats, flat. “I expect better of you Matteo. We have standards here for gift-giving.”
“They are nice ones. I had the Atlanta Firebird logo engraved on the clips.”
“You gave this man engraved pens,” Jackie says.
“Why is everyone shouting at Matteo?”
We all look up. Nonna is in the doorway with her cane, and is looking at the five of us like we are a problem she is considering.
“Nonna,” I say.
“I am in it. I was in the chair. Why is everyone shouting?”
“Nonna,” Jackie says, “Matteo is being an idiot.”
“Yes. I heard.”
“For four months,” Gina adds.
“I heard.”
“Mama. Sit down,” Ma says.
Nonna does not sit down. She comes to the island, slow, cane first, and sets one hand on the counter. Then she looks at me.
“You have never waited for anything, Matteo.”
She isn’t asking me anything. She isn’t waiting for me to confirm or deny.
She is telling me what she sees, the way she has been telling me what she sees since I was old enough to understand her voice, and she has never once been wrong about what she sees.
Jackie is still by the island. Gina has stopped moving. Nicole has put the knife down.
“Okay,” I say, which is the least Marchetti-kitchen thing I have said in this room in my life.
“Okay.” Nonna pats my cheek. Once. “You peel your potato.”
She turns and goes back to the living room.
The kitchen takes a breath. Ma goes back to stirring. Gina picks up her wine glass without looking at me. Nicole starts cutting again. Jackie pulls the dish towel off her shoulder, wipes her hands, lays it back on the counter, and doesn’t look at me either.
“What are you going to do?” Gina asks, quietly.
“I don’t know. He said we can’t. I have to respect that.”
“You know what you want though,” Jackie says.
“I’ll go back to Atlanta and see him for my usual sessions and get my shoulder better.”
“And then what?”
I don’t have the answer. The answer is not in this kitchen. The answer is somewhere back in Atlanta, but I am not sure where.
“He’s thinking,” Nicole says, over the onions.
“Matteo.” Ma turns from the pot. “I am proud of you. Whatever you do. Be proud of yourself too.”
“Okay, Ma.”
She lets me go and turns back to the pot. “Set the table. Somebody. Who’s closer?”
“Matteo’s closer,” Gina says.
“Make him,” Jackie adds. “He took off too much potato.”
I pull the forks and the knives and the big silver spoons out of the drawer and start setting the table.
The song Zay sent me in November is still playing low under the kitchen.
Nicole is cutting at the board. Gina is at the stove now, tasting the gravy she swore was fine.
Jackie is yelling at Ma about something neither of them will win.
Somewhere in the living room Nonna is in her chair again.
I set another fork down on another napkin and I miss someone that I have no right to miss.