Page 29 of Boyfriend of the Hour

This time, he didn’t follow me as I took off down the street, though I felt those dark eyes watching me the entire time. Not once did I turn around. I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction.

Before I reached the end of the block, however, my phone buzzedagain. This time a text from Kate, outside our chat group.

Kate: Are you on your way? If you don’t make it today, I don’t know if they will forgive you.

FIVE

WHY NONNA SHOULD STAY

#14 Becuz I need to eat!

In the end, guilt and duty got me good.

Two hours later, I stood outside the security lines at LaGuardia International Airport along with four of my five siblings, each of us taking turns kissing our grandmother on both cheeks. I’d met my family outside of the ticketing area after taking two trains and a bus all the way to the airport, still wearing the same wrinkled red shirt and black jeans. Nonna had just checked the threecoffin-sized suitcases she was taking to Italy, and everyone was getting ready to say our final goodbyes. I got exactly four pairs of stink eyes that translated to, “where the hell have you been, Joni?” as I ran up, out of breath and knee throbbing.

Honestly, would JFK have killed her? At least I only had to take the E train from midtown.

“You take care of your family,” Nonna told Matthew before muttering some things in Italian that the rest of us couldn’t really decipher.

As the oldest, my brother had grown up hearing the dialects our grandparents spoke to each other, and after doing a tour in Sicily while he was in the Marines, he’d gotten nearly fluent. The rest of us, however, knew just Nonna’s endearments and exclamations when we screwed up; I was pretty much only good for the swear words.

“Nina’s sorry she couldn’t be here,” Matthew told her as he pressed a kiss to each of Nonna’s lined cheeks. “She’s not supposed to travel. Or get out of bed until the baby’s born.”

“Dai, of course,” Nonna said. “She needs her rest before you don’t get any more sleep, my beautiful boy.” Then she turned to Lea. “And you, take care of our Michael and the babies, yeah? Like always, my good girl.”

I rolled my eyes. I never understood why Lea was the favorite, Nonna’s “good girl” when she had the sharpest tongue out of all of us.

Lea’s eyes closed, almost as if in pain, while she squeezed Nonna tightly. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do without you. But I hope you have the most amazing time. We’ll visit soon.”

Even I wasn’t immune to the pain in Lea’s voice. We all knew the likelihood of her and Mike schlepping four kids across the ocean for an Italian vacation was about as likely as the Central Park Fountain erupting with rainbow sprinkles. They’d only just barely made it work for Matthew’s wedding last fall, and that was only because he and Nina had paid everyone’s way.

For the first time, I really felt bad for my oldest sister. She was probably the smartest of all of us and was stuck in that crappy little house in Belmont with her mechanic husband and four kids. She swore up and down that she chose that life and loved it. Loved doing the books at Nonno’s old auto shop while Mike fixed the cars. Loved chasing her kids around the park and carting them back and forth to school with her one-year-old onher hip. Loved cooking and cleaning and nagging and pinching pennies.

In some ways, it was true. I saw the way she looked at Mike when she thought no one was watching, and I saw the way he followed her around every room she was in, even after being together for close to twenty years. I knew she would never admit to wanting more for her life than what Mike was able to give her.

But she could have gotten it. It was hard not to imagine it for her sometimes too.

Well, when she wasn’t pissing me off.

Nonna told Frankie to be careful in London and to see her after the baby was born, then hugged Kate and made her promise to visit her in Rome.

“You can count on it,” Kate told her. “Hopefully in the spring. I want to hit up some sample sales and see what I can thrift for the shop, Italian style.”

Nonna finally turned to me and reached out for my hands. She didn’t say anything for a long while as her thumbs stroked my wrists, looking me over like she was searching for something to say. Something good. And finding nothing.

She tugged me close, and I had to lean down to hear her speak. Whatever she had to say, it wasn’t for anyone else’s ears.

“My baby Joni,” she whispered fiercely. “Youfindyourself, okay? You find yourself, and you don’t let go.”

“Nonna,” I started, but she cut me off with a fierce shake of her head that made her thick gold hoops sway from side to side.

“I know it’s hard,civetta,” she said. “But you have so much more than you think. Iknow, Joni. You just have to know it too. If you’re willing to try.”

My instinct was to avoid her stern gaze, those dark eyes that had always seemed to see everything I did, even if she didn’t always say it.

She’d just always been there, from the time I was a baby when my actual mother went away and my father, her son, died.

Nonna was more my mother than a grandmother. And now she was leaving me too.