Adriana Trigiani: Brava, Valentine

“If I were single, I’d be all over Gianluca. He is one hot Italian,” Tess continues.

“I’m all the hot Italian you can handle.” My brother-in-law Charlie stands in the doorway.

“You see? I could never cheat. I even get caught talking about it.” Tess sighs.

Thankfully, Charlie is dressed. The sight of another pair of boxers on yet another male relative might put me over the edge. Furthermore, Charlie’s legs are so hairy that in shorts, he looks like he’s wearing felt pants.

“How do I look?” Charlie opens the front panels of his jacket to reveal a lavender silk vest under the jacket of his morning coat.

The minute Gram announced her nuptials three months ago, Tess put Charlie on a diet. She also sent him to the gym. It doesn’t appear that he’s lost a pound, but he’s gained a few inches in his neck from lifting weights. Now his head cradles directly into his shoulders, giving him the look of a Sicilian Humpty Dumpty.

“You look buff,” Tess purrs.

“You gonna wear clothes to this thing?” Charlie asks her.

“No, I thought I’d wear tap pants.”

“I never know with you,” he says.

“Help!” Mom calls from down the hall. “Call 911!”

“They don’t have 911 here,” my brother-in-law Tom shouts back.

I follow Charlie and Tess down the hallway. Their daughters Charisma and Chiara, dressed in pale blue organza gowns, stand in Aunt Feen’s doorway with Mom. We blow past them and into the room.

My great-aunt Feen, who declined her sister’s invitation to be in the wedding party and had to be dragged overseas like my mother’s XL shoe duffel/body bag, sits on the edge of the bed with a blood pressure cuff hanging off her arm. She is dressed in a black wool suit that I’ve seen at every wedding and funeral since I can remember. Her Papagallo flats lie next to her stocking feet, which sport double toe corn pads and elastic bunion slings. I kneel down next to her.

“What happened, Aunt Feen?”

“I got dizzy. The room was spinning.”

“Were you trying to take your own blood pressure?” Charlie asks.

“Who is he?” Aunt Feen looks up at Charlie, whom she has known for twenty years, as though he’s a stranger.

“It’s me. Charlie.”

“I know who you are, but you’re an in-law. Get out.”

Charlie leaves the room.

“That wasn’t very nice,” Tess says diplomatically.

“I don’t need a crowd in here.” Aunt Feen lets the blood pressure cuff fall to the floor. “I thought I was having a stroke.”

“Then we have to take you to the doctor.”

“In Italy? Are you crazy? They’d kill me over here.”

“It’s a modern country with modern medicine,” I say.

“Really? It takes an hour to get hot water in the tub. How modern can it be?”

“If you’re faint, you need to see a doctor,” my mother insists.

“I’m seventy-eight, I’m faint most of the time. I wish God would take me.”

“Did you eat breakfast?”

“Two rolls with butter, two poached eggs, a little gabagool, and a Snickers bar I had in my purse.”

“Could be sugar and fat shock,” I reason.

“It’s not lack of nourishment!” Aunt Feen bellows. “I’m an eater!”

“Then what is it, Aunt Feen?” I rub her bony shoulder.

“This wedding. I have a bad feeling.”

“See? I’m not the only one.” My mother squeezes onto the bed between Tess and Aunt Feen.

“I just think it’s crazy.” Aunt Feen shakes her head. “What for?”

“What do you mean, what for? They love each other,” Tess says defensively, still chapped that Aunt Feen banished her Charlie.

“Love. Love? What good is love?”

Mom and I look at one another. We look at Tess, who rolls her eyes.

“Well…,” I begin, “love is…a start.”

“Oh, big deal. There is no happiness in this world, in this life. It’s a vale of tears that leaves you lonely and bereft. I know it firsthand-the cheat of this world. The big cheat of this life. I loved Norman Mawby, and he was sent over to France in World War II, none of youse would remember that, but he was a bright, shiny boy from Grand Street, very neat and clean, and I loved him bad. And we wanted to get married, but he died on the fields of France, a country I will always hate. He died, and I was robbed.”

“But you married Uncle Tony-”

“I never loved that hack.”

“Aunt Feen!” Mom cries.

“I didn’t. He was sloppy seconds. When I cried at his funeral, I was crying for all the years I wasted with the bum.”

We are stunned into silence. I look at the clock. “Well, Aunt Feen, the good news: I don’t think you’ve suffered a stroke. You appear to be completely normal. We need to get to the church.”

“All right, all right,” she says. “Let’s get this nonsense over with already.”

“Girls, I’ll get Aunt Feen down the stairs. You need to get dressed.” Dad comes in, filling the room with the layered scents of Aramis cologne, Brylcreem, and Bengay. With his thick hair brushed back without a part, he is a dead ringer for Frankie Valli on the reunion tour, except for two squares of red under his eyes where the Frownies were ripped from his skin. They resemble odd patches of sunburn, but will hopefully fade as the day goes on.

Tess and I go out into the hallway. Jaclyn, looking like a sprig of mint in a strapless pale green cocktail dress with a hem of tulle, comes out of her room. Her black hair is piled high on her head, as if she’s a duchess from the court of Louis XIV. “What is going on?” she asks.

“Old issues,” I tell her.

Jaclyn pulls us into her room.

“Where’s the baby?”

“Tom took her for a walk.”

“In the snow?” Tess looks at me. My sister and I are very critical of our brother-in-law, who takes the baby everywhere, including places like Giants Stadium for a football game. We should not be surprised that he’s rolling around the streets of Arezzo with her. This is nothing.

“He put the plastic hood on the stroller,” she says defensively before she leans in. “Pamela and Alfred had a helluva fight. I heard it through the wall.”

“What about?” Tess asks.

“Money.”

Our brother, Alfred, is one of the few bankers in the New York/New Jersey area that haven’t lost their jobs in the worst economic collapse of our lifetimes. That’s how good Alfred is at whatever it is that he does. I can’t imagine that they have money problems. My brother pastes his paycheck stubs in a scrapbook.

“She’s a spender,” Tess whispers, as though it’s a disease.

“Yeah, but he’s a saver,” I remind them.

I leave my sisters to their gossip and go to my room. Closing the door behind me, I throw off my robe, relieved to be alone. My dress is hanging in its linen bag on the back of the door. I slip it off its hanger and step into it.

The silver lamé sheath glides over me. I slide on a pair of matching metallic pumps. I open my jewelry case and pull ropes of faux pearls out of its pockets, layering the strands until Coco Chanel might stick her head out of her grave in approval and say, “Très élégante!”

I grab my purse and meet my sisters in the hallway.

Tess wears a forest green velvet gown with a matching bolero. Her thick black hair falls in loose curls. She whistles when she sees me.

“Thanks,” I say.

“You’re going to knock Gianluca out with that number.”

I blush.

“I knew it,” Tess says smugly. “A sister always knows.”

The idea of a horse-drawn carriage is a lovely one, unless you’re cramming nearly every member of my immediate family and their children into one vehicle. Which is what we did. The wet streets made the wheels slide to and fro like a rusty Tilt-A-Whirl carnival ride, and even Aunt Feen, who hasn’t broken a smile since 1989, had to laugh when it skidded around a sharp corner and we all wound up on top of her.