14. The Meatball meets la Famiglia #2
“Oh, I… don’t usually drink much,” Japheth started to tip his glass away.
“Tonight, you do,” Leo said firmly. “You are with family tonight. Family drinks.”
“How else will we get the truth out of you?” Eva smirked. She propped her chin on her hand, turning her full attention on Japheth as Alma and Leo took their seats. “I like you very much already. So, any frontrunners on the baby name leaderboard?”
Japheth nearly choked on his first sip of wine, “Baby… names?”
Rino groaned, “Eva!”
“What?” she asked innocently. “If I’m going to be an auntie, I should be the first to know!”
Alma leaned in, eyes bright, “I like Matteo. Or Luca. But if you have a girl, maybe Giovanna. Or Alma, of course. A classic. It means soul.”
“Mamma,” Rino cut in. “First date, remember. Please, please don’t scare him away. We’ve known each other for a fistful of weeks.”
“That is plenty of time,” Alma said serenely. “Your cousin Gilles married that girl from Kingston after three dates. They have a baby now. Or maybe two. I lose track.”
“I’m not totally sure we know what Rino’s long-term goals are yet, in terms of kids?
” Japheth ventured, voice climbing a register.
“Or mine. I don’t know if I’m… or if he’s…
able to like… how exactly we would if we wanted to, you know, how we might…
” he flailed, groping for a phrase that did not include the word inseminate.
“We just had our first kiss about ten minutes ago, and it was excellent, outstanding even, but we’re still very much getting comfortable around each other? So, we don’t even know if we’re…”
“Compatible?” Eva supplied, eyes twinkling with glee as Japheth squirmed.
“Oh, Carissimo. If you’re not compatible with my brother, he’s going to be absolutely shattered.
And when he gets angry, he’s just unbearable!
Remember when his GI Joes wouldn’t fit in the Lego Landrover he built them?
Next thing you know, he throws them all off the Napanee bridge.
Poof! Disappeared. No more problem! If you’re not compatible, we’re in for so much trouble.
The only solution I can suggest is he’ll have to date a mirror. ”
“That is a real possibility,” Leo said, breaking off a piece of bread with surprising delicacy. “He loves a reflection. But come on, he’s got his father’s features! Can’t blame him!”
“I love these gnocchi,” Rino said, clearing his throat loudly, “Mamma, it’s perfect.”
“Do not change the subject,” Alma scolded, but her face lit up at the compliment. “Eat, eat!”
Bowls and platters began moving in choreographed chaos.
Everyone talked at once. Japheth found food landing and overfilling his plate–caponata on crostini accompanying caprese salad; capicola and pecorino fighting for real estate; and a generous heap of gnocchi with a light snowfall of parmigiano.
His wine glass was being refilled though he’d only managed a single gulp, albeit a big one, for bravery.
“So, Polpetto,” Leonardo said, turning his attention back to Japheth once everyone had a full plate. It was strange to hear the nickname fall gingerly from the hard mouth of Rino’s father. “You and my son. How serious is this?”
“We’re… on a… first date?” Japheth explained, again, gripping his fork like a lifeline and hoping he wouldn’t need to use it for anything but its intended invention.
He tried to read the room as best he could, having absolutely no prior experience in Italian family dinners or dating heirs to auto dealerships.
He chose his words with deliberate care, “It feels… serious in terms of emotional investment and general physical fascination? But not so far along that we’ve discussed retirement plans. ”
“Good,” Leo nodded, as if this were a reasonable answer. “Have you… how do you say, Alma? Have you seen if the machinery is all in working order?”
“Papà!” Rino protested. “Please. No.”
Alma set down her napkin and leaned in seriously, “In a relationship, someone needs to drive the caboose. Which one of you will do that?”
“Mamma!” Rino looked assaulted. “No one is driving the caboose. A train has an engine, or sometimes it has two engines and usually, but not always, there’s a caboose. Or two.”
Eva took a deep drink of her wine and settled back into her seat with a delighted look on her face, “I’ve seen trains with three engines.”
“Three engines? Why?” Mamma stabbed at runaway gnocchi and successfully wrangled them into her mouth.
Leo lined up broken pieces of a baguette in front of his plate for demonstration purposes as he tried to work out the problem as someone fiercely fascinated in physics would do. “Just a guess but maybe for power, or efficiency? Multiple engines could be placed at the front of the train like this…”
“Double, or triple heading?” Eva offered with a smile cleverly hidden behind her wine glass.
“Or you could put two at the rear to push a train up a steep incline. To really push it over the edge when needed,” Leo continued, moving around the broken baguette and setting a salad spoon up against its bowl, pushing the bread bits up the hill from the rear.
“Or, or! Even distribute a few engines throughout the train. You’d get better overall performance that way. If one peters out…”
“Or gets performance anxiety,” Eva offered, chewing thoughtfully on a salami stick.
“Then another engine just takes over to finish the job,” Leo smiled and clapped his hands, having solved the three-engine problem masterfully.
“I rode my bike tonight, I think environmentally sustainable transportation is important to consider whenever we can,” Japheth chimed in.
He realized, a little too late, that his comment might land a little flatly with a family that sold petroleum guzzling asphalt eaters.
“But if I had to choose between riding the engine or the caboose…”
“You don’t have to choose,” Rino flew his hands up protectively in front of Japheth, as if warding off his own family. “Not right here, not right now.”
“What?” Leo shrugged. “It is important. If you have two cabooses, how will the train move? Or two engines? Maybe they pull in different directions. You must know these things before you buy the tickets to the ride.”
Alma clapped her hands, delighted, “Yes! This! I have been saying this for years. People jump into relationships and then suddenly say, ‘Oh, you’re a caboose, too? That’s a surprise.’ Why make it a surprise, why not know?”
Japheth’s face suddenly felt very hot and he wasn’t sure if it was the wine or the realization that all the transportation talk had a lot more to do with him and Rino than he’d originally surmised. “Engines… and… cabooses.” He felt faint.
Alma nodded sagely, “In every relationship there must be the push and the pull. Sometimes you take turns. But you must discuss these things. You cannot both be very surprised on your wedding night. You may wish to take a test drive. Or a few.”
“We aren’t getting married, Mamma,” Rino said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “We are eating gnocchi.”
“I agree, not tonight,” Alma conceded. “I’m just saying, you can’t both wake up one day and say to the other, ‘Oh, I thought you were driving this train.”
“Are test drives… allowed?” Japheth asked, and decided to heck with it, in for a penny, in for a pound, taking another delicious sip of his wine.
“Some people buy without trying,” Leo nodded, running through a few mental spreadsheets, “but not many.”
“What does the Pope have to say about that?” Japheth asked.
Leo looked at him curiously, unsure what His Holiness would have to say about his dealership.
Alma leaned across the table, plucked one of the baguette train cars from in front of her husband and then picked up her butter knife.
She went to work, slathering it with butter before leaning in toward Japheth conspiratorially, “What they say and do in Rome is very different from what’s always right or wrong for us in Greater Napanee.
I think about it like this, should a bunch of men in nice dresses half-way around the world tell me which side of my bread should be buttered? ”
“Mamma!” Rino whispered in desperation now, having long given up the fight.
“What? I said they had nice dresses,” his mother shrugged.
“Sometimes the trains connect in the middle,” Eva said thoughtfully, picking up a spare fork, “like this.” She clacked the fork tines together, “very modern.”
“That’s a tale as old as time,” Alma gestured indelicately. “Scissoring, we used to call it.”
“Please stop speaking,” Rino said to no one in particular but hoping everyone would take notice.
Japheth, half hysterical, and more than a little tipsy now, found himself saying, “We… haven’t really… discussed… locomotive roles yet. But I’m okay to hop on and hop off whenever convenient. If there’s a commuter rail, I could take that? Just thinking about the environmental impact again.”
“I like this boy. He’s got a good head on his shoulders,” Leo considered him seriously.
“Me, too,” Alma agreed. “We are simply saying, if you want to test drive before you buy, you have our blessing.”
Rino dropped his head briefly into his hands and Japheth squeezed his knee in solidarity. “Can we talk about anything else, please?”
“How is the new show going?” Leonardo asked, smoothly redirecting the conversation; he was clearly accustomed to his son’s passionate outbursts. “Business is good? Are you happy working at the station?”
Japheth stiffened. He hadn’t told them. Of course, he hadn’t told them yet. To the Ferraris, WWJD was likely just one more investment, or might it be something more?
“About that,” Rino said slowly. He glanced at Japheth as if asking for permission to share. “There has been… a development.”
Alma’s hand went to her necklace, “What development? Is everything okay?”
Eva, who had been busy swiping bread through her marinara sauce, paused, eyebrows lifting quizzically, “Oh no. Is this about the fire?”
Japheth’s fork clinked against his plate, “You… heard about it already?”