Adriana Trigiani - Very Valentine

The interior design of my parents’ home is an homage to the glory of the British Empire and a direct poaching of every room ever depicted in the Tudor style in Architectural Digest since 1968. Anything English is coveted by Italian Americans, because we respect whoever got there first. As a result, my mother adores cheery chintz, braided rugs, ceramic lamps, and oil paintings of the British countryside, which she has yet to visit.

Gram and I follow Mom to the kitchen, with its mod white appliances and white marble counters trimmed in black. Mom calls the color scheme “licorice and marshmallow,” as nothing in Mom’s life could ever be referred to as black and white.

Jaclyn has spread the photos from her wedding on the kitchen table. Alfred sits at the head of the table, but it’s Tess, who sits on his right, who captures my attention. Her nose is red; she’s been crying.

“Come on, you can’t look that bad in the photos,” I tease Tess, but she looks away.

Amid the commotion of double cheek kisses and hellos, I motion to Tess to meet me in the bathroom. We stuff ourselves into the half bath, off the kitchen, that used to be a pantry. The floor-to-ceiling wallpaper in pink, green, and yellow polka dots in this tiny space makes me feel as though I’ve landed in a bottle of pills. “What’s the matter?”

Tess shakes her head, unable to get the words out.

“Come on. What is it?”

“Dad has cancer!” Tess begins to wail. My mother opens the door to the powder room, revealing Dad, Mom, Gram, Alfred, and Jaclyn crammed in the doorway as though we are in a moving train and they’re on the platform saying good-bye.

One look at Dad’s face tells me it’s true.

“Air, I need air!” I shout. They disperse as we fan out into the kitchen. Dad grabs me and hugs me hard. Soon, Tess and Jaclyn are embracing him, too. Alfred stands back and away from it all with a grim expression on his already pinched face. Mom has her arm around Gram, big tears rolling down her face, yet miraculously, her mascara doesn’t run.

“Dad, what happened?”

“I don’t want you to worry. It’s not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal? It’s cancer!” Tess fights to regain her composure, but she can’t. The tears continue to flow.

“What kind?” I manage to call out over the weeping.

“Prostate,” Mom answers.

“I’m so sorry, Dutch.” Gram takes my father’s arm. “What does the doctor say?”

“They caught it early. So, I’m weighing my options. I think I’m going to go with the seeds implanted in the nuts scenario.”

“Dad, do you have to call them…nuts?” Big tears roll down Jaclyn’s face.

“I didn’t want to say scrotum in front of your grandmother.”

“It’s better than nuts,” Mom says.

“Anyway, evidently about seventy-five percent of men who reach my age have prostrate issues.”

“ Prostate, honey.” From the tone of my mother’s voice, I can tell she’s been correcting Dad’s phonics since the diagnosis.

“Prostate, prostrate, what’s the damn difference? I’m sixty-eight years old and something’s gonna get me. If it isn’t a shit ticker,” Dad says, thumping his chest, “it’s gonna be cancer. That’s the truth. I wanted you, my progeny, to know what I’m up against. And I wanted to tell you all in person, without spouses or the kids, so you could ingest the information firsthand. Naturally, I was also worried I’d scare the kids talking about my private areas. How the hell could I tell them that Grandpop has a problem in his pee-pee? It didn’t seem right.”

“No, it wouldn’t be right,” I whisper. I look at my father, who is the funniest person I know but doesn’t have any idea he’s funny. He’s worked all his life as head of the parks department here in Forest Hills, until he retired three years ago and went to work for my mother as the family gardener/dustman. He scrimped and saved and put us all through college. He’s been a willing costar to my mother, the lead, in the movie of their marriage. I never imagined anything bad happening to him because he was so stable. He wasn’t a saint, but he was solid.

My mother puts her hands in the First Communion position. “Look. We are facing this as a family, and we will beat it as a family.” The expression on her face is pure Joanna Kerns in the climax of My Husband, My Life, a TV weeper running in the repeat cycle on Lifetime. Mom takes a breath, hands still in the prayer position. She continues, “The doctor tells us it’s stage two…”

“…on a sliding scale of four,” Dad adds.

Mom continues, “…which is very good news. It means at his age, your father could easily outlive the cancer.”

I have no idea what my mother’s explanation means, and neither does anyone else, but she forges on.

“I am galvanized. He is equally galvanized. And thank God for Alfred, who is on top of getting Daddy the top medical care in the country. Alfred is going to call his friend at Sloan-Kettering to get your father the A team.”

Alfred nods that he will make the call.

“We have magnificent children…grandchildren”-Mom waves her arms around-“a lovely state-of-the-art home, and a beautiful life.” She breaks down and weeps. “We’re young and we’re gonna beat this thing. And that’s that.”

“Good deal, Mike.” Dad claps his hands together. “Who wants French toast?”

I drank way too much of the autumn-blend hazelnut coffee Mom served in the ornate sterling-silver urn with the spigot shaped like a bird’s head. (Heirloom, anyone?) There’s something about Mom’s delicate Spode teacups and the bottomless urn that tricks you into believing you’re consuming less caffeine than you really are. Or maybe I drank so much coffee because I was looking for an excuse to get up from the table from time to time, so I wouldn’t cry in front of my father.

We managed to keep the patter light through breakfast, but occasional silences descended on us as our thoughts wandered back to Dad’s terrible news. Conversation did not flow, it ricocheted around the room, exhausting us. Attempting to be chipper in the face of my father’s illness, a man who has never been sick a day in his life, is a tall order even for Funnyone.

The girls have cleared the brunch dishes from the table and are now sorting through the wedding pictures. Dad and Alfred are watching a football game in the den. The male bonding is evidently necessary after viewing wedding photos.

I’ve escaped to the backyard for air, but it’s actually claustrophobic because the only open space is on the stone footpath that leads to an outdoor living suite of English cottage furniture. And that’s not all. Artfully placed amid the dense landscaping is a clutter of traditional lawn ornaments including a sundial, a birdbath, and statuary of three Renaissance angels playing flutes. The reflection of my face in the blue medicine ball on a pedestal looks like a Modigliani, long and horsey and sad.

“Hey, kid,” Dad says from behind me.

“Why does Mom overdecorate everything ?” I ask. “Does she think if she keeps landscaping in the English style, Colin Firth is going to come over that wall and take a dip in the birdbath?”

I sit down on the love seat. Dad squeezes in next to me. We are sharing rear-end space the size of a single subway seat. “This is the original Agony in the Garden.”

Dad laughs and puts his arm around me. “I don’t want you to worry about me.”

“I’m sorry, Dad, but I do.”

“I’ve been very blessed, Valentine. Besides, the big C ain’t what it used to be. People walk around with cancer like good bridgework. It becomes a part of you, the doctors tell me. Remission can last until you’re dead, for God’s sake.”