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“How sad is that?” my mother barks. “Instead of the f-word, honor Uncle Mike by taking apart an engine and putting it back together.”

“Do as Connie asks, Lou,” Lil says. “They’reherchildren.”

The kids gather around Uncle Louie, who has pushed his chair away from the table. He sits.

“Who wants a quarter?” Uncle Louie asks the kids. They squeal as Uncle Louie pulls a shiny new quarter out of Alexa’s ear and hands it to her.

“Me too, Uncle Louie!” Rafferty jumps up and down.

One by one, Uncle Louie tickles their ears and produces a quarter like magic. I’ve turned to take the coffeepot into the kitchen to refill it when Mackenzie says, “What’s wrong with Uncle Louie?”

I turn back around. Uncle Louie has slumped forward in the chair. The quarters fall out of his hand and scatter across the floor.

My dad gets up and shoves his chair out of the way.

“Louie, what’s the matter?” Aunt Lil shrieks. “Louie!”

“Ma, take Aunt Lil to the living room,” Joe says calmly. “Everybody out. To the living room. Now.” Diego takes Connie and Katie and the kids to the living room. For the first time since they arrived, the kids are quiet. Aunt Lil, however, is crying out in desperation. She calls her husband’s name while Mom ushers her out to the living room.

“I’m calling 911.” Joe taps his phone.

“Lou, you all right?” My dad tries to lift Uncle Louie upright on the chair.

Uncle Louie doesn’t answer; his eyes are glassy and unfocused.

Soon enough, two medics burst through the front door. Connie shows them into the dining room. They’re young, in their early twenties. They kneel and take Uncle Louie’s vitals. There’s equipment and a stretcher, two more medics lift him off the dining room floor, and within seconds, my uncle is loaded onto the gurney. One of the medics speaks to him in a low voice, explaining exactly what they’re doing, but I doubt Uncle Louie hears him. He is the sameshade as the ash-speckled terrazzo floor he installed in our dining room in 1992.

As they carry Uncle Louie out on the stretcher, my mother, in a panic, pushes me toward the door.

“Go with him in the ambulance,” she says. “I’ll follow with Lil. She’s hysterical.”

5

Louie, Louie

Uncle Louie sleepssupine in his hospital bed underneath a thin blanket the color of lime sherbet. I welcome the snorts between his breaths; they are as rhythmic as the faint dings from the screen on the monitor over his bed. The doctor assured me they would have the results from his tests in the morning. The sun can’t rise fast enough.

I don’t know what my mother was thinking when she dropped off food for us. Her brother had a major cardiac event. Meatballs, sausage, pork, and gravy are not ideal food choices for a man with clogged arteries. I rearrange the square plastic containers filled with the leftovers from Sunday dinner perched on the windowsill as though I’m ten years old and they’re Legos. I remember the hoists and the crane on the pier the last time the marble arrived from Italy. I can’t sleep, so I open the notes app and write. I feel an urgency not to forget a single detail about my life with Louie Cap.

Perth Amboy isa small city situated on a wide inlet off the Atlantic Ocean, the host of the busiest industrial pier on the New Jersey coastline. Twice a year, a cargo ship arrived from Italy and delivered a load of Carrara marble and Tuscan granite. The Perth Amboy drop is a Capodimonte family tradition that began with my great-grandfather. Uncle Louie figured that as of the spring of 2024, this was his ninety-sixth drop.

Uncle Louie stood back as a slab of Carrara Borghini, secured with ropes and hooks, was hoisted off the deck of the freighter and up into the sky. The marble slowly sailed through the air on a pulley operated by the men on the dock. The expanse of glistening white stone, veined in streaks of pale blue and gold, twenty feet high and almost as wide, blocked the sun as it was lowered onto the dock.

The gloved workmen rushed to surround the slab. They unhooked the ropes and glided it upright into a storage sleeve, where it would stand until the marble was transported by truck to destinations all over the state of New Jersey. One by one, the slabs flew through the air, and soon the wooden slats of the pier groaned beneath our feet from the weight of the stone. The process was like watching the skyscraper construction scene inThe Fountainhead, Grandma Cap’s favorite old movie to watch on TCM. Perth Amboy had everything but Gary Cooper and his drill.

Uncle Louie was a bag of nerves during the transport. Marble is delicate, even though it’s a workhorse. Hit the stonein a vulnerable spot, it shatters, and you end up with slag. In this way, marble is a lot like a human being.

A black Cadillac SUV pulled up at the end of the pier, gliding into a spot next to Uncle Louie’s Impala.

“Hey, Googs.” I waved to him as he got out of the truck. “Over here.”

Uncle Louie’s occasional business partner walked toward us. He wore a navy pinstripe suit with a white shirt and a hot-pink tie. His white hair was brushed back neatly with gel. His jowly face gave him the look of an Italian bulldog.

“How we doin’?” Googs squinted at the final slab of marble as it floated through the air on its way to the dock.

“Looks good,” I told him. “No problems.”

Googs grunted. “Not yet.”