14. The Meatball meets la Famiglia
The Meatball meets la Famiglia
Trust likes to play games. Like a wolf inviting you into its den and promising that dinner will be strictly vegetarian.
The house was big enough that Japheth wasn’t entirely sure it wasn’t two houses stapled together.
White stucco with tall arched windows, a sweep of steps leading up to an oversized front door with frosted glass panels etched in swirls and hanging grapes.
Stone stags flanked the stairs, their marble hooves politely pointing the way.
Every available exterior surface seemed to have either a column, a balcony, or a potted plant that had been ambitiously manicured into a swooping spiral or a spirit animal made manifest.
Somehow, it stopped short of tacky and had an unexpected homeyness.
The lights in the windows glowed with a golden warmth.
There was a wrought-iron balcony with bougainvillea crawling up it, dressed in an abundance of white flowers, like the set of a community theatre production of Romeo and Juliet.
Soft music floated faintly through the night air, along with the smells of roasted garlic, tomato sauce with notes of oregano and basil, and freshly baked bread.
From somewhere in the large house a small dog barked twice in welcome.
“Welcome to Casa Ferrari,” Rino grinned, and his nerves poked out as he gave Japheth one final peck. “Try not to let them adopt you, immediately. They have been wanting another son since my older brother moved out.”
“I can’t make any promises,” Japheth shrugged. “I’m very adoptable.”
Rino came around to the passenger side before Japheth could reach for the door handle, opening it for him like they were in some old-fashioned movie where men still remembered chivalry and to shave. As they climbed the steps, the front door flew open.
“Rino!” cried a woman’s voice, rich and musical like her son’s. “Why are you late, Mostriciattolo? The gnocchi are going to start sticking and will be looking sad if I don’t get it sauced.”
She was small and round and formidable, with a cloud of dark hair pulled into a perfectly poised bun that would never surrender to the day, and an apron printed with fluffy white Volpino puppies tied over a simple but elegant black dress.
Gold hoops swung from her ears, a small cross glinted against the soft fold of her neck.
Her eyes, dark as over-steeped espresso, went instantly from her late Mostriciattolo to Japheth.
“Mmm… Mmmhmmm. Both of you are red in the face. Both of you with constellations in the eyes. That’s what I thought. That is why you’re late.”
“Mamma!” Rino complained.
“This must be Polpetto!” she declared. “I’m happy to see he wasn’t so delicious that you devoured him yourself, Rino.”
“Mamma!” Rino complained, a little louder this time.
Japheth froze halfway up the steps, “You… You know about the… meatball thing?”
“Of course I know!” she said, as if this were obvious. “My son calls me every night. He tells me everything. I’ve been hearing about you for weeks. Come here, let me see you.”
“I thought you said you just talked to your family about cars and money and the Pope?” Japheth said in an aside to Rino as they mounted the steps.
Rino just shrugged, “She has a way of working things out of you.”
Before Japheth could decide whether to bow or shake hands, she enfolded him in a hug that smelled like basil, laundry detergent and unconditional love. She kissed both his cheeks, leaving a small imprint of coral lipstick.
“You are even more adorable than he said,” she announced, holding him at arm’s length, hands firmly on his shoulders. “Look at this face. Dio mio. Those eyes! This curly hair! Rino, why have you been hiding him from us?”
“Mamma,” Rino protested, but there was a shy pride in his voice. “We have known each other for five minutes. This is our first real date. I knew better than to take him for pizza at the bowling alley.”
“Five minutes, five years, when you know, you know,” she said with the zealous certainty of someone who’d married at nineteen.
“I am Alma. You call me Ma for short. And when you’re ready, you call me Mamma Ferrari.
Come, everyone is waiting. They are very excited.
Rino never brings anyone. Never! We thought he was…
how do you say… ragazzo di legno, like a wooden boy? A robot! But a handsome robot.”
“Mamma,” Rino said again, his ears tinged with pink.
Before he could rescue Japheth, a whirlwind in heels descended the stairs from inside–a tall woman in her late twenties in a fitted jade dress, brown curls exploding gloriously around her shoulders, eyeliner sharp enough to count as a concealed weapon.
“Oh my God, this is him?” she squealed. “This is Polpetto? You’re right Ma, he is cute. And such a sharp dresser! Look at this jacket.” She flicked the lapel of Japheth’s blazer with appreciation, “I’m Evangelista, the good child. But you can call me Eva, the favourite.”
“I thought Marco was the good child and the favourite,” Rino said, stepping aside so they could sweep Japheth into the house.
“Marco moved to Ottawa and became an accountant,” Eva sniffed. “He’s dead to us. I’m kidding! We don’t kill family members. Every year at tax time, we resurrect him and pretend we love him again. Japheth, I’m sure you’ll meet him one day and he’ll bore you to death. You picked the right brother.”
The foyer was a study in excess: massive marble tiles that clicked underfoot, a chandelier dripping with crystals, a larger-than-life painting of the Last Supper over a sideboard absolutely drowning in framed family photos.
The smell of simmering tomatoes, oregano and garlic hit Japheth like a benediction.
From around the corner where Japheth presumed the kitchen was, a man in a crisp white shirt and dark slacks stepped forward–Rino’s father, clearly.
He was broader but just as tall as his son, hair mostly silver now but still thick, a trimmed salt-and-pepper beard giving him the air of a retired pirate who’d gone into real estate–and done well. His handshake swallowed Japheth’s.
“So,” he said in a rumbling baritone. “You are the boy from the radio. The one who sings about God being a woman. Very interesting.” His face was serious; his eyes were amused. “I am Leonardo. You can call me Leo. When you’re ready, you call me Papà Ferrari.”
“Hi,” Japheth said weakly. “I’m Japheth. You can call me… Japheth.”
“We’ll try,” Alma cooed. “So polite. Come, come, sit. Eat! You are too thin. I can see your ribs right through that mesh shirt. And your nipples. Your fashion reminds me of the Pope’s designer Raniero Mancinelli, but he’s always trying to make the Vatican a little more fashionable, isn’t he?
Always with the shiny fabrics, the gold filigree embroidery everywhere and the little nipple-tipped hats.
His Holiness approves and so do I. But you know, Rino likes a man with some…
substance.” She mimed rounding out her own hips, then smacked Rino lightly on the stomach.
“You should eat more too. Both of you. You will waste away.”
“There’s plenty of me, Mamma,” Rino muttered, but he let himself be herded along, drawn toward the dinner table by the incredible smells.
They were ushered through an archway into a dining room that looked like a set piece for an Italian wedding.
A long table, dark wood, covered in a white embroidered cloth, sagged slightly under an impressive spread: platters of antipasti, bowls of salads, a mountain of gnocchi in red sauce, a braided loaf of bread that glistened with its lacquer of brush stroked butter, something bubbling and cheesy and undoubtedly delicious at the far end.
Candles flickered in silver holders and a statue of Saint Francis watched over everything from one corner of the room, birds and all.
Japheth’s stomach, which had been too nervous to speak before, let out a small, hopeful growl in anticipation.
“Sit, sit,” Alma urged, shooing Japheth toward a chair beside Rino near the centre of the table.
Evangelista slid into the other side, already reaching for the breadbasket.
She stage-whispered to Japheth, “Rino forgets to eat. Always on the go. When we were growing up our parents made us sit to have dinner, like normal people, right? Rino would be racing home from drama rehearsal, on his way to hockey practice. He’d put one foot on the chair, like that could count as sitting, to wolf down a plate of pasta in five minutes then run out the door.
He hasn’t changed, always working, always running.
Protein shakes, espressos. Lattes made with protein powder.
It’s like he thinks food needs to be able to pass through a straw and two minutes for a meal is two minutes too much. ”
“I heard that,” Rino said mildly. “All of that.”
“Good,” his sister replied with a wink. “Tonight, you keep that tush in your seat.”
“You were in the drama club?” Japheth asked.
“He was an excellent Iago in Othello! Very convincing,” his father offered.
Japheth tried to recall the character and the play with little success. He tilted his head to appraise Rino anew, “I didn’t take you for a drama guy. So many secrets.”
“Just like Iago,” Leo beamed at his son.
“Admittedly, sports were more in my arena of interest,” Rino grinned.
“Though I do occasionally sing out loud as I skate around the ice chasing the puck so maybe the theatre bug did bite me hard after all. I still play pick-up hockey with a group of guys on Thursday nights, but we don’t get the ice until 11 p.m. It’s cheaper then, for cheap skates like me. ”
“So don’t expect him home before 1 a.m. on Thursdays, Japheth!
” Alma instructed, as she bustled around, pouring wine into glasses from a bottle with a label Japheth couldn’t read but assumed cost more than his entire wardrobe.
Well, maybe not the ensemble Carrington had him dazzled up in tonight – but it was certainly worth more than all his vests combined.