Adriana Trigiani - Brava, Valentine

“Adhesive . It’s a natural glue of some sort. I’ll get the rosewater spray to dissolve them. Dutch, I mean it. Don’t pull at them. You’ll make scabs.”

“Get the spray,” Dad says clapping his hands together in a tick-tock beat. “Get the spray. We got a schedule to keep here. You don’t want to be late for a wedding that features two eighty-year-olds. Anything could happen.”

Mom rushes out.

“What is wrong with her?” my father asks. He looks out the window, his eyes bulging out of his head like a pug’s. “Snow. I thought it was balmy in Italy. What the hell is going on?”

“It’s good luck.”

“Is it?”

“I don’t know. I’m just saying.” I shrug.

“Have you ever noticed that whatever clime blows through on a wedding day, somehow it’s interpolated as good luck?”

“Interpreted.”

“A mushroom cloud of poison gas could linger over Tuscany and by God, that would be a good sign.” My father shakes his head.

“The triumph of love over nuclear annihilation.”

“As if that could be true. It rained when your mother and I got married. But we were twenty-one and twenty-two, and what the hell did we know? Rain, shine, we just wanted to get to the Inn at Oldwick.”

“Thanks, Dad. I like to imagine you and Mom on your honeymoon. Especially right after breakfast.”

“When you’re young, it’s all in front of you, when you’re old, well, you got your memories and the occasional stirring of your adrenals to remind you of what you once were. Between you and me, your grandmother and Dom are a ticking time bomb. If they get a year out of this deal, they’ll be lucky.”

“Don’t say that, Dad. Don’t even think it.”

“Excuse me for being a naturalist.”

“Realist,” I correct him.

My father places his index fingers on the Frownies and holds them down to blink. “Whatever. I’m happy for Teodora, I think it’s all great and well and good. But lest we forget, they are a coupla old people. I mean old . They’re merging when most people are done. So I guess, good for them. Right? What the hell.” Dad sits down in the rocking chair by the window. “Big changes.”

“Yep.” I sigh.

“For you the most.”

“For me the most.” If only my father knew how much I dreaded this day for selfish reasons. I am losing the most important person in my life. Gram is my master craftsman, my confidante, and my friend. I don’t even want to think about going home without her, much less back to work.

“Has it sunk in yet?”

“Not really, Dad. But it’s happening. It’s done, so I have to do what I have to do.”

“That’s all you can do.”

Mom comes in with the rosewater spray. “Dutch, lean back. Close your eyes.” Mom hovers over Dad as he tilts his head back.

“I feel my carotid artery pulsing.” He places his hand on his neck. “Is it normal to hear your heart beat in your ear?”

“This will only take a second.” Mom spritzes the wrinkle patches.

“In my eye! In my eye!” Dad covers his eyes with his hand. “I’m burning! I’m burning!”

“Get a towel!” Mom barks at me. “Soak it!”

I bolt into the bathroom, turn on the water, saturate the towel (or try to-it’s one of those thin Italian towels that are more moppeen than bath towel), and run back to my father. I place it on his face.

“Cold! Cold!” he screams.

“Flush. Flush them, Dutch!” my mother tells him.

Tess rushes in wearing black tap pants and a hoodie that says JUICY FOREVER across the chest. “We are not the only patrons in this hotel!” Then she sees our father swabbing his eyes like he’s been evacuated after a gas explosion on his favorite TV drama, 24 . “What’s wrong, Dad?”

Dad hangs his head and dabs his eyes with the towel until the Frownies are damp enough to peel off. He holds up the half-moons and hands them to Mom. “Don’t ever make me glue this crap on again. I like my wrinkles. I’m going to be seventy-everything on me is shriveled. Especially after the cancer. My balls are like prunes-”

“Dad!” Tess and I stop him before he describes them in further detail.

“Dutch, I’ve seen them before and I’ve seen them after, and there’s not that much difference in the general circumference,” Mom reasons.

“Mom!” Tess and I are disgusted.

“It doesn’t matter. My point is: I look old in pictures because I am, in actuality, old. It is what it is, and what it is, is not going to get better.”

“All right, all right,” Mom says impatiently. “As if self-improvement is a crime.”

“That’s it!” I wave them out. “Everybody out. I have to get ready. The carriage awaits.”

“Is it here?” Mom asks.

“Come and see.” I pull back the curtain. My mother, father, and sister stand in the window with me. We look out over the village and take in the enchanted scene. The horse pulling our carriage shakes his head, making the bells he wears jingle sweetly. The sheer beauty of the moment soothes us as we look on in awe and silence.

“Okay. Enough with the view,” Dad barks. “We gotta get a move on. That old nag is gonna be looking for a bucket of oats. And frankly, so will I.”

“What about my hair?” Mom looks in the mirror.

“Pull it off your face and use some Bed Head gel. Tess packed, like, three kinds. Right?” I look at my sister.

“In my room. In the red duffel. There’s a pack of bobby pins too. And a HairDini if you want some extra volume.”

“An upsweep. Good idea.” Mom goes, followed by Dad, who fluffs the ample seat of his boxer shorts like a skirt.

“Mom is losing it,” Tess says as she sorts through my makeup kit. “It’s an emotional time.”

“Why? Why can’t it just be fun? Do you ever notice our family can’t be happy for anybody that’s happy?” Tess takes a tube of mascara out of my case, unscrews it, and pumps the brush. She leans into the mirror and tries my long-lasting dark brown Rimmel. “We have to inflict negativity on every event.”

“That’s a little harsh.”

“Really? Don’t you notice? We appear completely nuts to outsiders. How about last night at the rehearsal dinner? Mom got up to give a toast and started sobbing and made it all about her childhood. 1-800-therapy, anybody?” Tess throws the mascara back into the makeup case. “Thank God most of the people who attended didn’t speak English.”

“It was pretty uncomfortable,” I admit.

“Thank God Gianluca saved the night with his funny story about never having a sister and now he has one with Mom. You know Mom loved that because she’s old enough to be his aunt. But now she can shave off a dozen years because Gianluca’s, like, what…fifty?”

“Fifty-three,” I correct her.

“No way. He looks good. You know, for a guy his age.” Tess snaps open a compact of concealer and dabs it under her eyes. “He was really chatting you up.”

“I’m not interested,” I lie. I don’t have to tell my sister that when I saw Gianluca for the first time again last night, my heart pounded like a blowout on a flat tire hitting the rim at eighty miles an hour. Whomp. Whomp. Whomp. I’m surprised the guests couldn’t hear it. I won’t tell her that Gianluca’s grasp of my hand as I turned away to talk to someone sent an electric shock through my entire body. I wasn’t expecting that either. Tess doesn’t need to know that I came back to this room and dreamed of Gianluca all night, woke up at 3:00 A.M., and had to open the windows for air because the mental pictures were so steamy, they drove the temperature in the room up to boil.

I take the concealer from Tess and dab it under my eyes. The dark circles we inherited are a nice complement to the dark secrets we carry. Gram’s love affair with Dominic was the last big reveal. She had been seeing him for ten years, since my grandfather died, and nobody knew it. Only after I saw them together at the tannery last summer did I realize that Gram had a lover. And even when I found out, I kept the secret, as only a good Angelini/Roncalli girl can. I lean into the mirror. Eight layers of this yellow putty will cover generations of intrigue.