“Oh, please, Teddi, your mum would have your uncle Lou here in ten minutes flat to check on us if we didn’t go. It’s simpler to go along.”
“I don’t know how you can be so blasé about it. Uncle Lou’s like an oversize baby-sitter.”
“Because they’re not
my
family, Teddi. It’s easier to find them slightly dotty and laugh about it.”
“Well, I’m glad my world exists to amuse you.”
“Don’t be cross, Teddi. They really are sweet in their own way.”
“Sure.
You
didn’t have to hide the Career Day notices from elementary school. Every kid had his or her parent in to talk to the class for five minutes about their job. There were three cops and a bunch of firemen, a stockbroker, a lawyer or two, a doctor, a teacher…one kid’s father owned a dry-cleaning business. Joey Antonelli, the plumber. There was even an out-of-work actor. Everybody had someone there but me. I mean, what was I supposed to do? We had twenty-two phone lines in the basement for my father’s bookie business. I couldn’t drag him in for Career Day. And then there’s the fact that…well, I’m still not one hundred percent sure what it is he does. Bookie? Loan shark? Well, anyway, not Career Day material.”
“I would have thought it would be very interesting.”
I threw a pillow at her.
“I’m serious,” she protested. “Think of all the little minds who could have been turned on to a life of crime. It’s perfectly charming!”
“All I’m saying, Diana, is it’s charming as long as it’s not happening to you. But these Sunday dinners not only blow my diet, they’re exhausting. I love my family members—each and every one. It’s the constant harping on my lack-of-a-boyfriend status. If I have to hear one more time that we’re both destined for old maid-hood…”
“Ignore them. Ignore them, Teddi. It isn’t worth it. You need to become more like the British. Smile and nod. Smile and nod.” With that, she sat upright, glazed over her eyes and began waving at me like a very stiff Queen Elizabeth, turning her hand just so, smiling and nodding as if greeting me from her gilded coronation carriage.
“Your father at least had a real job.”
“Oh, please. His job is to sit around with a stick up his ass.”
I laughed. “Smile and nod, Lady Di. Smile and nod.”
“Don’t make me laugh, Teddi. I’ll vomit, I swear. How is it you don’t weigh four hundred pounds growing up in a family like that?”
“You learn to pick at your food and make it
look
as if you ate. I don’t know…it’s like the restaurant, I just taste everything and don’t ever finish any one thing. Plus my family serves things like sheep’s head. Did you try some of that?”
“No. And the sight of your gorgeous cousin Tony gnawing on a sheep’s jaw bone—it still had teeth on it for God’s sake—may have cured me of my infatuation.”
“My father used to stack the heads one on top of the other in the extra freezer we had out in the garage. They’re quite a delicacy, you know.”
Lady Di shuddered. “They make me squeamish. Really horrid things. And that squid stuff…”
“It’s an acquired taste.”
“Still, all that delicious pasta… Even picking and choosing, I would weigh four hundred pounds. As it is I
starve
myself every Saturday so I can eat at your mum’s on Sunday.”
“Yeah…well, I carried a few extra pounds in high school. I’ve learned to keep it all in balance now.”
I stood up and stretched. “I am so full I’m falling asleep in the chair. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Right, love. Listen, I’m too full to move. Can you put on channel two on the tellie?”
I switched the television to her favorite Sunday night cop show and went to bed. I had heartburn—a deadly combination of my mother plus Sunday dinner. I popped a few Tums and changed into my pajamas. Staring at my reflection in the mirror in the bathroom, I practiced Di’s smile-and-nod pose and mildly amused myself, despite all the aggravation I’d suffered. Then I climbed into bed and was soon fast asleep, dreaming of disembodied sheep’s heads dancing a conga line around the dinner table.
“I
s this Pussy Galore enough?”
On Thursday night, with exactly one hour to go before I had to meet Robert for dinner, I stared at Lady Di. She was dressed in a black cat suit and a pair of black stiletto boots.
“You look like a dominatrix.”
“I was worried about that.” She rummaged in her closet and emerged with a hot pink scarf, which she expertly tied around her neck.
“
Now
do I look like Pussy Galore?”
“No. You look like a dominatrix with a pink scarf.”
“Hmm.” She turned to her closet again. “That’s not what I’m going for here.”
She pulled out blouses and tops and threw them on her bed. I try not to look in Di’s closet, or in her room for that matter. She lives knee-deep in laundry, and her dresser is just a jumble of cosmetics, most of them half-used and drying out with the tops off.
She pulled out a long black blazer and put it on. “What does this say to you?”
“I don’t know that it says anything.”
“No, it must. It must say I am ready for
Mission Impossible. Charlie’s Angels.
Scotland Yard. All that.”
“Okay. It says that.”
“But you don’t
really
think so.”
“Di.” I sighed. “Can we concentrate here? Every time we pull this stunt, it’s a fashion crisis.”
“It helps me get into character, darling.”
“Fine…let’s run through the plan.”
“Check. I call you on my cell phone…earpiece, little thingy here attached to my lapel.”
“Check.”
“At 0800 hours, I take these little pastries down to your cousin Tony—”
“What? Di…no military time. And that would be 2000 hours, anyway. You always screw it up.”
“All right then…at eight o’clock.”
“Right.”
“When you hear on your cell phone that he is sufficiently distracted, you slip out and head ’round the block to catch a cab.”
“Perfect.”
“Then you go off on your date with Mr. Tall, Blond and Handsome, fall madly in lust, make passionate love and live happily ever after.”
“I’ll settle for a second date. Without a contingent of Italians following me.”
We went to the living room where a large white box of fresh cannoli perched on the coffee table, tied up with twine from the bakery.
“I don’t understand—” Lady Di eyed the box “—why these little pastries are such an obsession with your family. It’s a little perverse, if you ask me.”
“They’re an obsession because finding them fresh and really well made with ricotta cheese and chocolate chips isn’t easy. Make them wrong, and they’re soggy. You can’t just get these anywhere. That box there is a thirty-five minute cab ride
each way.
Even the pastry chef at Teddi’s doesn’t do them this good. Now, Byron, he’s a good pastry chef—”
“I live for his tiramisu.”
“Yes. But he’s not really Italian. His family is from San Francisco…and he says they adopted him from an unwed mother who listed Hungarian as her background. And as good as he is at tiramisu, somehow, some way, his cannoli end up…well, not up to the Marcello-Gallo family standards.”
“But it seems to me that pastry and ricotta cheese shouldn’t have anything to do with each other. It’s downright unnatural, Teddi. Pastry and custard, maybe…pastry and chocolate, pastry and a nice caramel or perhaps some ice cream, but these I do not understand. Ricotta is slimy.”
“It’s as Italian as sheep’s head. Trust me. You don’t have to understand. All that’s important is that, with the exception of a woman in a micromini with very big hair, my cousin Tony loves cannoli more than anything in the world.”
“Should I change into a micromini?”
“No. The cat suit is sexy, but trust me, he sees you with a box of pastry from my third cousin Tessa’s bakery in Brooklyn and he’ll be in love.”
Lady Di adjusted her cell phone earpiece.
“All this because you’re the only granddaughter of Angelo Marcello.”
“’Fraid so.” My Poppy Marcello had five daughters and one son. One of his daughters, my aunt Connie, wasn’t able to have children. She and my uncle Carmine owned a pizza place and treated me like a daughter. My aunt Gina had five sons, always figuring this “one last time” she would have the little girl she dreamed of. After the last son, my cousin Frankie, she packed the crib up to the attic for good and decided to hold out hope for a granddaughter one day. My aunt Marie had four sons. Though Uncle Vito held out hope for an even five—for a basketball team—she’d had enough. My uncle Lou and his wife had three sons—including the hunky Tony, though their oldest son, Sal, died. My grandfather watched pregnancy after pregnancy result in male heirs—and what he wanted was a little girl, he told my mother when she married, to spoil rotten, and to buy fancy dresses and Madame Alexander dolls for. He wanted to build a dollhouse. First my mother had my brother. No pink dresses there. Then she had three miscarriages before I came along. My baptism was celebrated with a party—including an eight-piece band—for three hundred. Three hundred people!
I did get the fanciest party dresses and doll strollers that were more expensive than actual baby strollers. Poppy built me a three-story dollhouse—a turn-of-the-century town house he even rigged with electrical wiring to light up the miniature chandeliers. I had expensive dolls with wardrobes that rivaled the
real
Princess Di’s. But eventually, when I outgrew dollhouses and dolls and crinoline dresses, I was left with one
very
protective grandfather who was determined to see me married off in the grand style that befitted the last virgin in Manhattan—which, of course, he
believed I was. And my cousin Tony was, in turn, my keeper. This was because he did not have a real job, and in the words of the family, he was a little lost. I knew it was because, though he could hustle a pool table with the best of them, and liked to go to the track with all my cousins and uncles, he wavered on whether he wanted “the life”—the “family,” and all that went with it…including, possibly, ending up in prison like John Gotti’s son. So rather than give him a job with too much responsibility, he was assigned to watching me, and in general acting as a driver for his father, whose glaucoma made driving impossible. The old guys of the family…well, they were getting old.
“Okay,” Lady Di said, “I’m ready as I’ll ever be.” Lady Di lifted the box of pastries. “Off I go.” She dialed my cell phone as she stepped out the door of our apartment. I had a walking commentary as she went downstairs.
“Entering the elevator…won’t be able to chat until the lobby.”
As I listened to dead air, I threw on my black velvet swing coat and grabbed my evening bag.
“Teddi?”
“Yeah?”
“Entering lobby. The cute doorman is on duty tonight. Winking at him—”
“Stay focused on the mission at hand!”
“Sorry. Oh, this is so Cold War, so
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
Staying focused. Mr. 12B just gave me a very sexy look. I’m walking. Can you hear my heels clicking? God, I love these boots. Walking…walking. Mrs. Melman from the third floor just gave me the evil eye. Like I’d want to hit on that flabby, balding husband of hers.”
“Focus, Di!”
“Okay then…at the revolving doors. Time for you to come down to the lobby.”
I dashed out the door, locked it, then made my way down to the lobby. I listened to my phone.
“Walking across the street. See your cousin Tony. Waving and smiling to him.”
Now I could hear traffic sounds, cabbies beeping their horns, then muffled conversation and her replies to Tony.
“You must be simply starving out here.”
Mumble, mumble from my cousin.
“Well…I
know
how you find these positively delicious. Just wanted to say hello and bring you a dozen…
No,
it was nothing. Nothing at all for one of my favorite, most favorite chaps.”
Mumble, mumble.
“Oh…you like this outfit? Just threw it on…. You know, Tony, one of these days we have to go out for dinner and get to know each other better.”
Mumble.
“Smashing, then. You know, you’re looking terrific. You working out?”
Mumble.
“Tony…I’m a little cold just standing still here. Positively shivering. What do you say we take a walk around the block? Get the blood pumping.”
Mumble.
“Grand!”
And that was my cue. I dashed out the door, much to the bemusement of the doorman, who, I think, was on to our
charade—this wasn’t the first time we’d gone to such ridiculous lengths. I made a sharp left and raced around the corner for a cab.
Flawlessly executed. Or so we thought.
But it turned out that Di’s pastry hand-off was to have devastating consequences.
I plead an overflow of sake. The piping-hot liquid must have, like some alcoholic Drano, busted through my brain’s tiny capillaries and rendered me stupefied. So stupefied that I revealed more than I usually do on a first date.
Robert Wharton was dressed like a power player. Maybe that was it. I was overwhelmed by his expensive suit and silk tie, and his dimpled smile and flawless TV-teeth. His manners, as he pulled out my chair for me.
Or maybe it
was
just the sake.
“So do you have any brothers or sisters?” he asked, leaning in to better hear me, his face illuminated by a single candle in a Japanese-inspired lantern on our table.
I had been mid-lift of a delicious piece of eel on the ends of my chopsticks. Oh, God, here comes the obligatory family discussion, I thought. I dropped the eel in the little dish containing my soy sauce.
“A brother. Actor. He lives in Hollywood.”
“And your parents?” His eyes were a cross between brown and yellow, and he looked genuinely interested.
“Not much to say. Have one of each. So what other kinds of food do you like to eat besides sushi?”
“I’m adventurous. Like all kinds of food. Italian’s my favorite, though. Which makes us rather well matched, don’t you think? I did an Internet search on your restaurant. You’ve gotten some really good reviews.”
“Thanks. We’ve been lucky…no…that’s not all true. It’s more than that. We work really hard at it. You shouldn’t have a restaurant if you’re not prepared to put in the hours. Anyway, I do love to cook Italian food, but to be honest, I love Asian cuisine. I like adventurous foods, too. I’ve even tried the legendary, sometimes-deadly blowfish.”
“No way.”
I nodded. “Di, whom you met, had her father here on a visit and got us all invited to some investment banker’s dinner party at the Trump Tower. The man had a private chef…and they served blowfish.”
“You
are
brave.”
“I was kind of terrified. But at least now I can say I did it.”
“Well…no blowfish for me. I’m not that adventurous. But if you ever want a guinea pig for some of your Italian cooking, I’m your man…. So is your mother a good cook?”
I struggled to think of questions to get him off the family track. Until the family thing came up, we had not run out of things to discuss. We were both huge football fans. He liked the Philadelphia Eagles, and I liked the New York Giants. We both loved bad kung fu movies—for reasons neither of us could explain—and those old dubbed Godzilla movies. We both adored dogs and considered our childhood mutts our best pals; we’d both even had a dog named Pepper, though, technically, my dog’s name was short for Pepperoni. We liked eating out, the crisp days of fall and Bruce Springsteen.
“Oh, you know…typical Italian mother. Good cook, yes. Like I said, when it comes to parents, I had one of each. A matched set.”
“You know, ‘one of each’ isn’t much of an answer, Teddi. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were dodging my ques
tions. I’m a reporter, you know. I’m trained to grill unwilling subjects.” He winked at me. Then he poured me some more sake.
“Well…what about your family?” I asked.
“If I tell you about mine, will you tell me about yours?” He said it slyly, sexily. He had taken off his jacket, revealing a dress shirt crisply starched but very well filled out by what looked to be a taut body. Di would have declared him “smashing.”
“Sure,” I replied. Of course, I had no intention of doing any such thing.
“My family is old Philadelphia. Main Line. Stiff, upper-crust and boring with a capital
B.
Do you know, my mother actually uses words like
droll?
And she talks through her teeth, like this.” He affected a dead-on Main Line accent. I wasn’t unfamiliar with this type; sometimes the odd trust-fund Upper East Sider or Central Park Wester would come into Teddi’s. Quinn would suck up to their table perfectly, then mock them in the kitchen with his gift of mimicry. I hated this kind of person and couldn’t imagine Robert coming from such stuffed shirts. I guess I prefer my father, with his shirts always smelling of cigarettes and Aqua Velva, and his basement craps games when he let me blow on the dice.
Robert continued. “I was off at prep school by the time I was fourteen. Parenting always seemed like an inconvenience to my mother—whom, I might add, I always called Mother and not Mom. I knew better than to
ever
interrupt her four o’clock martini.”
“Doesn’t sound very happy.” I thought of my boisterous clan. I don’t think anyone in our family had
ever
drank a martini. Or said “droll.” “Fuck” was my father’s favorite
word. And when the men were alone, that was followed by “asshole” and “bastard.” What does
droll
mean, anyway? And prep school? I was lucky they let me move out when I was twenty-four. And then only with my own Italian security detail.
“No…not terribly happy. Though, I suppose, it was all I knew. It was all my friends knew. Disinterested parents who took us on fabulous vacations—along with our nannies so they didn’t have to bother with us too much.”
“Was there anything you liked, I mean
really liked
about your family?”
“Well, it’s taken me a while to see some of the good stuff. They encouraged me in school, and I really have my father’s connections to thank for getting me in the door at Global News.”