Chapter 12
“Come, it’s time for a merenda,” Nonna announces as we follow her through the door from the courtyard and into the kitchen.
Alex gives me a quick, uncertain glance. “What’s that?”
“She’s giving us a snack,” I explain in a half whisper. My favorite room of the house, the kitchen is large and spacious with a low ceiling, white plaster walls, heavy wood beams, and a chipped tile floor. Everything looks exactly the same as it has for as long as I can remember.
At one end sits a huge open hearth, the inside blackened from decades of fires.
In the middle of the room stands a heavy scarred table made from olive wood.
My grandfather Carlo crafted it for Nonna as an engagement present and she uses it as her prep table for cooking.
There is a smaller round table nestled at the back of the kitchen where the family gathers to eat.
No one uses the formal dining room or parlor, which lie down a hallway toward the front of the house.
All of life happens here in this kitchen.
Nonna directs us to be seated at the round table and sets tall, sweating glasses in front of us.
I take a sip, instantly transported back to childhood.
It is Nonna’s lemonade, a delicious concoction of soda water, fresh-squeezed lemons, and honey.
I happily drink the refreshingly cold beverage, watching Nonna bustle around the kitchen, soaking in the serene normalcy of the moment.
I can’t quite believe I’m really here again.
I focus on Nonna, watching her closely. How has she changed in the years since I’ve seen her in person?
Nonna claims she’s five feet tall, but I don’t think she’s ever actually reached five feet.
She turned eighty-two in February, and she wears the years well.
Small and stocky, with thick dark hair she dyes religiously every two weeks and sharp black eyes that miss nothing, she is still vigorous.
She is all movement in the kitchen, her strong hands chopping and arranging as she stomps around in her sensible black pumps.
She has aged in the fifteen years since I last saw her, though.
I can see it now. Her shoulders are a little more stooped, and she moves more slowly.
But she is still vibrant and proud, with her strong Roman nose and thin mouth that belies the tender expansiveness of her heart.
She is firm and unyielding, warm and nurturing, all at the same time.
She will badger you with love and stuff you with good things to eat.
Like every Italian nonna, food is love to her.
“Mangiate, mangiate.” She slides two small plates in front of us, urging us to eat, eat.
On each plate sits a thick slice of crusty bread drizzled with olive oil, a wide smear of creamy goat cheese, and two quartered figs.
I devour the bread first, the unctuous olive oil coating my tongue, cut with a sharp sprinkle of sea salt.
I utter an involuntary groan of appreciation, and Nonna’s mouth curves up in a satisfied smile.
Alex holds up her bread and sniffs it suspiciously.
“Try it,” I urge her. “The olive oil is from our farm.” Nonna doesn’t use anything else in her cooking.
Alex takes a tentative bite and sets it back down quickly, making a face.
She sips her lemonade and looks down at her plate with a frown.
I can see Nonna Bruna watching us both from the corner of her eye as she arranges a plate for Lorenzo at the prep table.
When Alex hesitantly asks to use the bathroom and disappears up the stairs to the only bathroom in the house, Nonna marches over to the table and interrogates me, hands on her hips.
“What? She don’t like the food?” Her lips are pursed in dismay.
“I don’t know what she likes,” I admit honestly. “She’s practically a stranger.”
“But she’s your sister.” Nonna looks shocked.
“Half sister,” I correct. “And I barely know her.”
Nonna frowns. “There is no half family,” she tells me firmly.
Lorenzo comes in from outside, carrying our suitcases, and hauls them up the stairs to our rooms. There are a total of five bedrooms upstairs, along with the sole bathroom.
Nonna’s room is at the far end of the house.
On either side of her are two generously sized bedrooms that have only ever been used as storage rooms and are full of old furniture and boxes of yellowing books and odds and ends.
They were a treasure trove to explore when we were kids.
Aurora and I always shared the biggest, brightest room at the top of the stairs.
It faces the courtyard and has a lovely lake view.
Dad’s room was directly across the hall from ours, looking up the hill and over the olive groves behind the house.
Alex has not reappeared yet. Nonna is bustling around, and I take the opportunity to glance around the kitchen, looking for the cookbook.
If I remember right, Nonna always kept it in a nook built into the wall, along with a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and an extra pair of reading glasses because she was forever misplacing hers.
The nook still contains the Blessed Virgin presiding over not one but two pairs of reading glasses, but there is no cookbook in sight.
“Nonna, where’s your cookbook, the one we cooked from all the time when I was younger?” I crane my neck, searching for it. “I’d love to see it again.”
Nonna pauses, and a strange expression flits across her face for a brief second.
She looks almost…furtive. She slices into a fig firmly.
“That old thing? I don’t know. It’s probably around here somewhere.
” She brushes away the question. “If you want good recipes, Maria Azzano from Garda just published a recipe book last year, all local recipes they use in their family restaurant. Good food and not hard to make.”
“Oh.” I settle back in the chair, disappointed and a little worried.
I need that cookbook. How am I going to gather all the recipes I need if I don’t have it?
I was counting on it for those fifty recipes in one convenient, easy-to-access place.
“I was just hoping to look through that specific cookbook again. I have such fond memories of it.”
Nonna hurries over with a plate for Lorenzo as he comes back down the stairs and settles himself with a loud sigh in a chair opposite me.
“I don’t know where it is,” she says dismissively, “but we can cook together while you’re here.
We’ll make those almond biscotti you always loved. They were your favorite as a child.”
“Sure, that sounds great.” I nibble a quarter of a fig, mind racing with worry. This is an unexpected problem. I need to locate the cookbook as soon as possible. I’m going to have to poke around and see if I can find it. My entire plan hinges on it.
Alex still has not reappeared.
“You think your sister is okay?” Nonna asks, brow furrowed with concern.
“She wanted to know where her room was,” Lorenzo says. “So I showed her and put the suitcase in there. You too.” He nods to me. “I put your suitcase in your room.”
I thank him. My room. All these years later, and it is still my room.
“Do you think she wants something more to eat?” Nonna asks, brow furrowed in concern. “She looks as skinny as a chicken bone.” She snaps her fingers. “Maybe some pork sausage?”
“Um.” Gently, I break the news of Alex’s vegetarianism.
Nonna looks shocked. “But what’s wrong with the meats, the goat cheese?” she asks in horror. “What about the pasta? The pasta is made with eggs!”
I shrug. “I think it’s a personal conviction. Eggs should be okay. I think most vegetarians eat eggs. And I think the goat cheese is fine. You’ll have to ask her.”
Nonna frowns and I can see her struggling to translate the words in her head and wrap her mind around the concept of vegetarianism. Then her face clears and she makes a dismissive gesture. “It’s okay,” she announces. “Tonight I make fish. And pasta.”
I glance at Lorenzo, who shrugs and pops a whole fig into his mouth. “I don’t argue anymore,” he tells me in Italian, throwing a knowing grin toward my grandmother’s small but mighty figure. “I learned many years ago. There is no point in arguing with Bruna.”
“That’s right,” Nonna says firmly in English, pouring herself a glass of lemonade and sitting down heavily across from me. “You’re a smart man despite having such a thick skull, Lorenzo.”
It’s been this way with them for as long as I can remember, this good-natured bickering and ribbing.
I think they do it for entertainment. Lorenzo has never married and Nonna never remarried after my grandfather Carlo died.
They run the farm together, just the two of them, squabbling and managing everything themselves, getting older and grayer every year.
“You should be on Pasta Grannies,” I tell Nonna spontaneously. “They’d love you. You can show the world your special pasta recipes.”
“What is this Pasta Grannies?” She looks mystified and a little suspicious.
I smile. “It’s nonnas like you from all over Italy showing people how to make pasta through videos on the Internet.” I whip out my phone and show her. She watches for a moment, then quirks a brow at me, bemused.
“And these women make money from putting these videos on the Internet?”
“Yes. People love them.”
She waves a hand dismissively. “She’s making the tagliatelle wrong. I know a better way.”
“Of course you do.” I exchange an amused glance with Lorenzo, who shrugs dismissively.
“See, I don’t argue,” he mutters.
I slip my phone back in my pocket and concentrate on my snack. Nonna takes a sip of lemonade, then sighs and fixes me with a searching gaze.
“We missed you, bambina mia,” she says softly. She reaches out and takes my hand in hers—big-knuckled and a little cold. Her fingers are twisted from arthritis but her grip is still surprisingly strong. “It is good to have you home.”
I feel a lump rise in my throat and look down at my plate.
“I missed you too, so much,” I whisper, feeling ashamed that it has been so many years.
Aurora is right: I let fear keep me from a good thing.
I see that now. I could have come back, should have come back.
I let my conflicted emotions keep me away for so long.
“Juliana, look at me.” Nonna interrupts my thoughts.
I do. She gives me a searching look as though she can see all those thoughts going through my head, then nods once, firmly. “You are here now,” she pronounces, squeezing my fingers with her own. “You are home. And that is all that matters.”
At her words, Lorenzo clears his throat and she glances at him, a brief flash of warning in her eyes.
“Not now, Lorenzo,” she mutters in Italian, so low I almost can’t catch the words.
Lorenzo holds up his hands, a gesture of surrender.
I take note, thinking of what Aurora said.
I feel like there is something I’m missing, something they are not saying.
I wonder what it is. The not knowing makes me uneasy.
I hope it’s not bad news. I squeeze Nonna’s hand, vowing to somehow make up for lost time.
I’m here now, and I’ll do whatever I can to atone for all the years I’ve stayed away.
At the same time, I have to find that cookbook pronto.
All my hopes are pinned on it. I have a lot of work to do.