Read Online The Supreme Macaroni Company by Adriana Trigiani - Free Book Online Page B

don’t you? Or do they even have that in Italy? You know, you ought to check. For down the line. What kind of coverage does he have? Your father’s meds practically put us in hock every month.”
    “I give up. Book it.”
    “Fabulous! I already put a deposit down.”
    “Of course you did.” I almost threw the phone across the room.
    My mother was elated. “It’s a little breezy in February, but so what? You’d never go strapless, and I’d never go sleeveless, so February is perfect. Silk shantung for you, and a bouclé bolero for me.”
    “As long as you’re covered, Ma.”
    “As long as my arms are covered. I’ve still got the cleavage. Gonna show it with the big jewels.”
    I threw down the phone and sipped the bitter cup of Super Dieter’s Tea slowly, like I was Juliet and it was poison.
    “What was that all about?” Gabriel asked.
    “Mom booked Leonard’s.”
    Gabriel made a face. “How retro. That’s like going to the Poconos for your honeymoon.”
    “Don’t say that. Carol Kall will have me booked at Mount Airy Lodge in the bridal suite with the bathtub shaped like a champagne glass. I’ll get my leg stuck in the stem like my cousin Violet Ruggiero did on her wedding night, and my first night of married life will end up with a stay in the emergency room.”
    “You know, instead of getting upset, why don’t you just go with whatever your mother wants?”
    “Why would I do that?”
    “You’re busy. You have a business to run. Plus there’s something very seventies kitsch about all this. Leonard’s. The Poconos. Your sisters can wear palazzo pants—hides a multitude of sins, and believe me, Tess won’t be able to drop ten pounds in six weeks. I say, hand your mother your wedding on a silver platter.”
    I texted Gianluca. “Do you want to get married on February 14, 2011? Valentine’s Day.”
    Gianluca texted me back. “Yes.”
    “How do you feel about a big wedding?” I texted.
    “As long as you’re the prize at the end of the carnival, I don’t care.”
    I read Gianluca’s text aloud to Gabriel.
    Gabriel’s eyes welled with tears. “I don’t know if I’m emotionally moved or if the tea has formed a firewall in my colon around the cannolis I ate at your sister’s, but what a wonderful man you’re marrying. God bless us everyone.”
    I texted Gianluca, “I love you.”
    “I love you,” he texted me back.
    “You realize you could have an entire marriage on your phones,” Gabriel said. “That’s my dream, a mutually satisfying committed relationship that takes place over iPhone. Just odd symbols and snippets of thoughts and feelings punched into the phone with my thumbs and no one in my face bugging me for actual conversation. That, I could sustain. I could do that. A text-y marriage.”
    “I need air.” I grabbed the tin of biscotti. “Come on. Let’s go up to the roof.”
    “No, thanks. It’s cold up there.”
    “I need to show you something.”
    We grabbed our coats, and Gabriel followed me up the steps to the roof. I pushed the door open and inhaled the cold air deep into my lungs.
    “Okay, what do you want to show me?”
    “Something bad happened tonight.”
    “I know. Aunt Feen put Charlie’s manhood in a Tupperware container and burped it.”
    “No, not that. It happened here. On this roof. Tonight. Before we came out to Jersey.”
    “Oh boy. Did it have something to do with Bret? He sort of blew past me before he left tonight.” Gabriel dragged two chaise longues to the center of the roof. He placed my cup of hot tea in the holding cup, and his in the other. He plopped down in his coat and folded his arms.
    I stretched out on the chaise next to Gabriel. “He was upset about Mackenzie. She wants a divorce.”
    “She thinks she can do better than him?”
    “She already has. Met another guy at church.”
    “Oh the piety!”
    “And the pity. Look, Bret signed on for that life. That fancy life. And she wants out. So he came over here.”
    “You’re