Adriana Trigiani - Very Valentine

“Well, whoever. My point is, it seems to me we keep going through it.”

“You do, Mom.”

“Your father wasn’t a saint. But I’m not the Blessed Mother either, am I?”

“I think you have more jewelry.”

“True.” She laughs. “But I know he never wanted to hurt me, or you children. He just lost his mind for a while. Men go through their own version of the change in their forties, and your father was no exception.”

“Roman is forty-one.”

“Maybe he went through it last year, before you met him,” Mom says brightly.

“We can hope.”

Mom goes into her purse; when she snaps it open, a clean whoosh of peppermint and sweet jasmine fill the air. Sticking out of the pocket where the cell phone goes is a clump of perfume testers from the Estée Lauder counter. That’s another of Mom’s elegant-living tricks, she tucks paper bookmark perfume samplers in lingerie drawers, evening bags, purses, and car vents, wherever ambience is needed, and evidently, in my mother’s view, you need ambience everywhere.

She finds the tinfoil sleeve of gum among the cancer pamphlets, punches a red square, hands it to me, then pops one in her own mouth. We sit and chew.

“Mom, how did you know you could get Dad back after the…incident?”

“I didn’t do a thing.”

“Sure you did.”

“No, really, I just left him alone. The worst punishment you can give a man is to isolate him. I’ve never seen one who can handle it. Look at what being alone did to our priests. Of course, that’s another subject entirely.”

“I remember when you and Dad fell in love again.”

“We were lucky, we got it back. Most people don’t.”

“How did you do it?”

“I had to do what a single girl in your position has to do when she likes a guy. Never mind that I had four children and a college degree collecting dust. I had to make myself desirable again. That meant I had to show my best self to him at all times. I had to figure him out all over again. I had to redo the world we lived in, including the house and my wardrobe. But mostly, I had to be sincere. I couldn’t stay with him for you, or for my mother, or for my religion, I had to stay with him because I wanted to.”

“So how did you know when you had succeeded?”

“One day, your father came home with a bag of groceries from D’Agostino’s. You kids were at school. It was a few weeks after we got back together. Big week. First week of school…”

“September 1986. I was in the sixth grade.”

“Right. Anyway, he comes into the kitchen. And I was sitting there, filling out some form for one of you kids for school and he opens the fridge and unloads food into it. And then he lights up the burner on the stove and puts a big pot of water on the flame. Then he gets out a saucepan and starts cooking. He’s chopping onions, peeling garlic, browning meat, and adding tomatoes and spices and all. After a while, I said, ‘Dutch, what are you doing?’ He said, ‘I’m making dinner. I thought lasagna would be good.’ And I said, ‘Great.’”

“That’s how you knew he loved you?”

“In eighteen years, he had never made a meal. I mean, he’d help if I asked. He’d cut up melon for a fruit salad for a buffet or he’d pack the Igloo with ice for a picnic or he’d set up the bar for the holidays. But he had never gone to the store and bought the ingredients without asking and then come home and cooked them. That was left to me. And that’s when I knew I had him back. He had changed. You see, that’s when you know for sure somebody loves you. They figure out what you need and they give it to you-without you asking.”

“The without asking is the hard part.”

“It has to come from the heart.”

“Right,” I say and nod.

Mom and I watch the people move through the lobby, patients on their way to appointments, staff returning from break, and visitors jostling in and out of the elevators. The sun bounces off the windows in the pavilion that faces the lobby, and drenches the tile floor with a gleam so bright, I close my eyes.

“Have I upset you?” Mom asks me.

I open my eyes. “No. You’re a font of wisdom, Mom.”

“I can talk to you, Valentine.” She fiddles with the gold post in the back of her hoop earring. “I just-” And then, to my complete surprise, she breaks into quiet sobs. “Why the hell am I crying?” She throws her hands up.

“You’re scared?” I say softly.

“No, that’s not it.” Mom fishes through her purse until she finds the small cellophane pad of tissues. She yanks one out. “These”-she holds up the tiny square-“are worthless.” She dabs under her eyes with the small tissue. “I just don’t want it all to have been a waste. We’ve come so far and I was hoping we’d grow old together. Now, time is running out. After all that, we don’t get the time? That would kill me. It’s like the soldier who goes off to war, dodges gunfire and bombs and grenades, makes it out of the war zone, only to return home and slip on a banana peel, fall into a coma, and die.”

“Have a little faith.”

“That’s coming from the least religious of my children.” Mom sits up straight. “I don’t mean that as a judgment.”

“I mean faith in him.”

“In God?” “No. Dad. He’s not going to let us down.”

Our family, like all the Italian-American families I know, is big on Excuse parties: birthdays and anniversaries that end in a zero or a five. We even have special titles for them, a twenty-fifth anniversary is A Silver Jubilee, a thirtieth birthday is La Festa, a fiftieth anniversary is called A Golden Jubilee, and a seventy-fifth anything is a miracle. So, imagine how thrilled we are to toast Gram, in good health, still with excellent vitality, in fine physical shape save for those knees, and having “all her marbles,” as she calls them, on this, her eightieth birthday.

I also thought, knowing my immediate family would be in full attendance, that this would be the perfect opportunity to introduce them to Roman. I know I’m taking a chance here, but I have learned, when it comes to my family, it is best to introduce a new boyfriend in a crowded public venue where there’s less possibility of a gaffe, slip, or chance that someone will reach for the photo albums and show pictures of me buck naked, wearing only angel wings, on my fourth birthday.

We offered Gram the standard big bash at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Forest Hills, with a DJ; a ceiling of silver balloons; the stations of the cross on the walls, covered with streamers of crepe paper; and a custom sheet cake with Gram’s age embossed on it. But she opted for this party instead, a chic night out, dinner and a show at the Café Carlyle. She’d seen enough and plenty of the extended family at Jaclyn’s wedding, plus, Gram’s favorite singer of all time, Keely Smith, the great song stylist and comedienne, is the headliner at the Carlyle. When Gabriel, my friend the maître d’, told us that she was appearing, we reserved a table.

Keely Smith and her music have a special place in Gram’s life. When my grandparents were young, they used to travel around to catch Keely singing with her then husband Louis Prima, backed by Sam Butera and The Witnesses. The act was a swinging cabaret alternative to the orchestras of the big band era. Gram will tell you that they personified hip.

Italian Americans revere Louis Prima, as we are married and buried to his music. Jaclyn, Tess, and Alfred danced to Louis’s chart of “Oh, Marie” at their weddings, and my grandfather was buried to Keely’s version of “I Wish You Love.” Prima is primo with the Roncallis and the Angelinis.

I check my lipstick in the cab on the way to the Café Carlyle, the Krup diamond of cabaret rooms. When a Village girl crosses Fourteenth Street and heads north, she had better be Upper East Side chic. Also, I want to look good for Roman, who hasn’t seen me gussied up since our first date. How can I look glamorous when I run over to the restaurant kitchen to help him make pasta by hand or shuck clams for chowder? Tonight, he’s getting the best version of his girlfriend.