Page 106

“It’s cold outside.”

“I don’t care. I’m sweating like a beast of burden in here.” She lowers her voice to a threatening register. “I’m gonna get that Giuliani smudge-pot look if you don’t cool this house off. I couldn’t get to the beauty parlor. I had to use the root spray. It runs when I sweat. It’s gonna be a meltdown worse thanHouse of Waxif you don’t cool this barn down.”

“Ma, go freshen your lipstick and nobody will notice your roots.”

“Do I need it?” Mom purses her lips.

“Your lip liner looks like the coral ring around Saturn. You need a fill-in.”

“Do I? No one else in this family pays a bit of attention to me.” She glares at my father and turns her attention back to me. “Honestly, they wouldn’t notice if I had my bra on backward. I’m a nothing. It took you flying in from Italy to be seen. I don’t know how I got along without you, Giuseppina.”

“You do just fine.” I take the tray from her.

“I try. You know I was with Lil when she died. Right before she went to sleep, the last thing she said to me was ‘Pass the Gold Bond.’ ”

“Let’s not put that on the tombstone.”

“It’s already engraved. You know my brother, nothing on layaway. He paid in full in advance. Poor Lil. No kids. Died alone with no kids of her own.”

I haven’t had a chance to tell my mother about her nephew Mauro LaFortezza. Maybe when everyone leaves and there’s nothing left but stale sfogliatelle and a fresh pot of coffee, I’ll break it to her. “Having children is not the only path to happiness.”

“But still. It would have been nice. I still mourn that loss for my brother. He loved children. Ah. What are you going to do? That’s life. Lou got the money and success, and I got the house full of children. Who won? Who lost? Who knows?”

Connie offers us crabbies on a tray from the count of five hundred Carmel made for the reception and dropped off in two wax-paper-lined shirt boxes from Saks Fifth Avenue. “I’m pushing these crabbies as though my life depends on it,” Connie says. “Not a lot of takers.”

“Push harder,” Mom tells her. “Fish spoils.”

“You can’t make people eat.”

“Yes, you can. You cajole. You push. You force. Stand there and glare at them until they take one. They’ll eat.” Mom moves off to talk with a cluster of non-Italians from Aunt Lil’s Avon days.

Connie and I laugh. “Mom is so intense.”

“Our mother who art on North Boulevard, Brutal is her middle name.”

Aunt Lil’s doctors stand by the buffet. When we die in this family, we include every human being who ever encountered the deceased over the course of her natural life. We even invite the medical team, EMS, doctors, nurses, and caregivers to the funeral and reception. It’s an international coalition of the healing arts, a rainbow of humanity from every corner of the globe. And even they know not to touch the crabbies.

I follow my sister into the kitchen to reload the tea sandwiches. “Con, what’s the matter with Lisa?”

“She seems fine,” Connie says.

“She’s acting weird. Like she’s on medication.”

“Maybe she is. Everybody is on something these days.” Connie bites her lip nervously.

The kitchen door swings open behind me. “Jess.” Bobby Bilancia kisses me on the cheek. “How are you?”

Weird. I didn’t smell Bobby coming. I sniff the air like a bloodhound for the scent of peppermint.

“I’m doing well. How are you?” Bobby no longer combs his hair back off his face; he has a side part. The cut is spiky too, very Ryan Gosling by way of Newark.

“I’m okay.”

“Good. Good,” Bobby says.

What is wrong with him? He never says a doublegood. Something is off. I thought we were fine at the Milan airport in January. We haven’t communicated much since then, except for a couple memes about Jersey we sent back and forth. I thought we were good/good. Something has changed.

“I’d like to stick around later to talk to you,” Bobby says. Connie skitters out of the kitchen.