ERICA ORLOFF

is the author of Spanish Disco, Diary of a Blues Goddess and Divas Don’t Fake It (and Nine Other Things I Learned Before I Turned Thirty), all published by Red Dress Ink. She is also the author of the gangland novel The Roofer, published by MIRA Books, and the vampire novel Urban Legend (Silhouette Bombshell). Like the character of Teddi, Erica knows how to score boxing on the ten-point must system, and she is an avid card player. She lives in Florida in a completely chaotic household of family and unruly pets, and she can be reached at www.ericaorloff.com.

Mafia Chic
Erica Orloff

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Dedicated to my own special kind of family.

And to Pamela Morrell, honorary family member.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As always, a huge thank-you to my agent, Jay Poynor. He has always been my biggest supporter.

Thanks also to Margaret Marbury, for her absolutely brilliant eye, and to Jessica Regante at Red Dress Ink. A note of thanks to Laura Morris, marketing genius at Red Dress Ink, who appreciated the heroine of this tale. Thanks to Dianne Moggy (we still have to go out for spaghetti and meatballs), part of the great network of support I have for my books, as well as publisher Donna Hayes, for her vision. I also have to say this cover is my favorite of all my books so far—so a special thank-you to the terrific designers at Harlequin in Toronto.

You can’t write a novel about a special kind of family without having a tight-knit one of your own. Thank you to my parents, Maryanne and Walter Orloff, Stacey, Jessica, extended family members, Gloria and Joey, and the memories of my grandparents, Robert and Irene Cunningham. Wherever my grandmother is, along with my grandfather, they’re likely playing pinochle. Love to all my nieces and nephews: Tyler, Zachary, Pannos, Cassidy, Tori.

To the members of Writer’s Cramp, Pam Morrell, Gina De Luca, Jon Van Zile, thank you for faithfully meeting every two weeks. I know the food and wine are enticements, but it’s also the hard work we do. Your comments are always dead-on.

My friends, Cleo, Nancy, Mark DiBona (my resident bookie and gambling expert), Kathy Levinson, Kathy Johnson and Chris Richardson, for being rock-solid supports.

And last but not least, Alexa, Nicholas and Isabella, for being truly happy and extraordinary little people. And to J.D. For it all.

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Preface

Every other Friday from the time I was born until I was sixteen and allowed to start dating, I slept over at my grandma and Poppy Marcello’s house. My brother slept over, too, and my parents used the free night to go out for dinner and have some time alone.

My brother and Poppy used to go down to my grandfather’s wood shop and make birdhouses. Then they’d watch the fights on cable or would play checkers. My grandmother and I cooked in anticipation for Sunday’s big family meal, hand rolling meatballs with chopped veal and beef and bread crumbs. She taught me all the secret family recipes, passed down from her mother and her mother before that.

After cooking, Grandma and I would go sit in the den and have sweetened iced tea in summer or hot tea with lots of milk in winter. One Friday night, when I was about eleven, I remember dragging out the heavy family photo albums lining the bookshelves. I brought one over to her on the couch and plopped next to her and opened it.

“What’s this a picture of?” I asked on the first page.

“Oh…” Her eyes misted over, and her smile was bittersweet. “My goodness, but the time flies, Teddi. That was your mother’s fifth birthday party. Your grandfather… Every birthday had to be better than the last one. That was the year we had pony rides.”

“Wow.” I wanted a pony. I turned the pages, and each photo brought on a story. I knew most of the tales already, but I never got tired of curling up next to my grandmother and hearing them again. Then I found a page that had somehow gotten stuck to the page before it. Gingerly, I pried the pages apart. There, in black-and-white photos, was a man I had never seen before. “Who’s that?” I asked.

Grandma’s eyes welled up, and she heaved an uncharacteristic sigh. “That, my darling, is my youngest brother. He’s your great-uncle Mario.”

“And who’s that lady next to him? She’s beautiful.”

“Yes, she is. Was. That woman is Mariella.”

“How come I don’t know them? How come I’ve never met your brother, Grandma?”

“He was struck by the thunderbolt.”

I looked up at my grandmother’s face, still relatively unlined, rosy-cheeked, her dark hair, graying at the temples, pulled up in a topknot and secured with bobby pins. I furrowed my brow. “A thunderbolt? He was hit by lightning?”

She laughed, even as she dabbed her eyes with a little handkerchief she kept in her apron pocket. “No…it’s an expression we Italians have. When you’re older, you’ll fall in love and get married. Maybe it will be someone you’ve known a long time…a friend you suddenly see in a different light. Or maybe you’ll go off to college and meet a boy you could imagine yourself spending the rest of your life with. Someone with good values. But maybe…just maybe…you will be struck by the thunderbolt. That means you’ll look across a crowded room, or you’ll bump into someone on the street…and from the very second you look into his eyes and he looks into yours, that’s it. You know. He is the one. It won’t make any sense. People will tell you that you’re crazy, but you will know. There’ll be this voice, this feeling deep inside…you will just know, and your life will never be the same, because none of it will matter until you finally get to be with him. Your love.”

I looked down at the picture of my long-lost uncle Mario. “So what happened to him?”

“He’s in prison, dear.”

“Prison? For what?”

She hesitated, and then said, “He killed a man.” She said it as if she’d said, “He ran a red light.”

I shivered slightly and snuggled closer to her. “Why? How?”

“Oh…it’s a long story.” She looked at me, and I clearly wasn’t going to let the matter drop. “All right, then. Your uncle Mario saw Mariella at a dance. And that was it. They were both struck by the thunderbolt. You’ve never seen two people more in love than your uncle Mario and Mariella. It was like electricity ran between them. When people were around them, it was intoxicating. You could just feel the way they were meant to be together.”

I hung on her every word. “And?”

“Mariella’s father was not a reasonable man. A very over-protective Sicilian. But a little crazy, too. He decided Uncle Mario was not the man he wanted Mariella to marry. He had already decided she should marry Joey Antonelli.”

“The plumber?” Everyone in our neighborhood knew Antonelli and Sons plumbing. Their vans—all a bright yellow—were always on the streets of Brooklyn.

“Yes. The plumber. Anyway, Mariella’s father sent her two older brothers to scare Uncle Mario. They went to beat him up.”

“Oh, no!”

“Yes.” She nodded. “Only they didn’t count on Uncle Mario being so strong and so in love. It was like he was superhuman. He turned around and beat one of her brothers so hard he killed him right there on the street.”

I shuddered. “But…but couldn’t he tell the police it was only because they were going to beat him up?”

“Yes. He did say it was self-defense. But…the beating was so brutal. And Uncle Mario didn’t have a mark on him. And it was around the time that…well…the judge wanted to teach a lesson to our kind.”

“Our kind?”

“The family. It’s too much for you to understand. But it didn’t go well, the trial. They added some other charges—racketeering. Anyway, he got a prison sentence.”

“And he’s still in jail?”

“Yes. He’s eligible for parole next year.”

“And what about Mariella? Did she marry Joey Antonelli like her father wanted?”

Grandma shook her head.

“Well, what happened to her?”

“She stood by Uncle Mario. She had no choice. She’d been struck by the thunderbolt. She was very sad about her brother, but she still loved Uncle Mario. Her family disowned her. She ended up moving away. She visits Uncle Mario every weekend. She dresses all in black. People say she’s crazy. She dresses like a widow. She missed any opportunity to marry like her friends, to have babies. Waiting…waiting…all this time. Like a penance or something.”

“But they’ll get to be together when he comes out of prison. They’ll finally be together.”

“Yes. But…well, they’ll never be those two young people so in love.” Suddenly, Grandma seemed to think better of telling me the story of Uncle Mario and Mariella. “Oh…what am I telling you this sad story for?” She patted my knee. “It’s in your blood, you know. The passion. Maybe you’ll be struck by the thunderbolt yourself. Maybe you will have that kind of love.”

I looked down at the picture of my uncle Mario and the beautiful, tragic Mariella. And I knew one thing. I never, ever wanted to be struck by the thunderbolt.

Chapter 1

“Jackson is going to take a dive in round three,” I said, glancing at the television as I passed through the living room, where my roommate sat with her boyfriend of the moment, a boxing buff.

Dave eyed me the way men do when they assume a woman doesn’t know the first thing about sports or the difference between a Phillips head and flat-head screwdriver (for the record, the Phillips head is shaped like a cross on the end). “Jackson? A lot you know about boxing. He’ll go all twelve and take the decision.”

I stopped in my tracks and whirled around. “Wanna bet?”

“I hate to rob you of your hard-earned money, Teddi, but you’re on. Five bucks says he’ll go the distance.”

“Then let’s make it interesting. Hundred bucks…and the loser cleans the kitchen.” I stood in the doorway of the living room and cast a backward glance to the kitchen, where a porcelain tower of dishes was precariously leaning in the sink.

“A hundred bucks?” He was handsome, I’d give Diana that. Nice biceps. But then Diana always had handsome men following her around. I called her Lady Di, and her British accent, Paris fashions and catlike eyes made her stand out, even among New York City’s trendsetters. However, something about this guy annoyed me. He was too cocky, a trait I was certain Lady Di would discover very quickly. She tolerates fools and assholes less than I do.

“Yes. A hundred bucks and the dishes. Unless you’re afraid a woman will beat you,” I said, emphasizing “woman” as if I had said “herpes” or “vomit.”

“You’re on.”

I strode across the living room and stuck out my hand. “Then shake on it.”

Dave shook, firmly I might add, and I sat down on the love seat to watch the boxing match. “What round is it?” I asked.

“Second.” Lady Di spoke up, her smirk barely contained. She knew that, other faults aside, I never took a sucker bet.

The bell signaled the end of round two. Jackson looked to be in terrific shape. His muscular back and coffee-colored skin glistened with sweat, but he wasn’t even breathing heavy. His opponent, “Rocky” Garcia, was nine years older—a lifetime in boxing years, sort of like dog years—and he already looked tired. The guy was known as a “bleeder,” sustaining cuts above the eye that would pour down his face, blocking his vision. If you’ve never actually watched a boxing match, then you might not know cuts like that entail sticking a Q-tip directly into the gash. Boxing is not for the squeamish. And though Garcia was the champ, no one expected him to win against Jackson.

Dave leaned back on the couch and stretched. “I’m going to take Diana out to Whiskey Blue with our hundred bucks—which we’ll blow on a bottle of champagne. And we’ll tell you all about it in the morning.”

I rolled my eyes, then focused on the television set. When the bell rang, Garcia came out with a flurry. Left, right, left jab. Uppercut. The announcers were getting excited, shouting into their microphones. The crowd in the MGM Grand in Vegas rose to their collective feet. Jackson shook his head from side to side, as if to clear it from the small pounding he took. Garcia came at him again with a series of body blows and then—wham!—Jackson hit the canvas like a man who’d just had a safe fall on him in a cartoon. He was caught square on the jaw.

Dave leaned forward on the couch, in shock, screaming at the television set. He stood up and leaned still closer to the TV, not believing his eyes. “Get up, you loser! Get up!” Dave was willing the fighter to climb the ropes and stand again, in the way men have of believing the athletes on television can actually hear them through some miracle of technology. But Jackson just lay there, as I knew he would. The fight was called, the champ held up the belt he retained with the victory, and I stuck out my palm.

“A cool one hundred, please.”

Stunned, Dave pulled his eel-skin wallet out of the back pocket of his beautifully cut pants (Italian, no doubt). Lady Di tried to look appropriately sad that he lost, but she couldn’t look at me for fear we would both dissolve into gales of laughter.

“Here,” Dave said through his teeth, seething. He handed me five twenties.

“Fastest hundred I ever earned. Thanks…and Dave?”

“What,” he said evenly.

“Don’t forget the kitchen,” I replied in a singsong voice. “You’ll find everything you need under the sink…sponges, dish towels and detergent.” I twirled around and veritably pranced into my bedroom and shut the door. I looked at my clock radio—10:37 p.m. I gave Dave ten minutes before he left and slammed the door.

He only took five.

Lady Di knocked on my bedroom door a moment later and poked her head in. “What an insufferable ass,” she said, then squealed with laughter and flopped down on my bed.

“He deserved it.”

She squeezed my hand. “You are something else, Teddi ol’ girl. This calls for champagne cocktails.”

She climbed off my bed, went into the still-dirty kitchen and returned with two champagne flutes with sugar cubes nestled in the bottom, a splash of bitters on each and a bottle of Moët. She popped the cork and poured us each a glass right to the rim.

“To Teddi, for knowing much more about boxing than Dave will ever know—and to her hundred dollars.”

“And to my grandfather Marcello, for owning Tony ‘the Dancer’ Jackson—and to Garcia.”

We clinked glasses and sipped the bubbly champagne. Lady Di sat down on the antique rocking chair in the corner of my room, next to a small pie table I inherited from my great-grandmother and covered in pictures of family and friends encased in silver frames.

“You’re always complaining about your family, Teddi, but it seems to me they come in terribly handy at times. My parents are pathetically boring—so utterly devoid of any life. Their faces are so stiff, they look like Botox patients whose treatment went horribly awry. I’d much rather be in your family. The food on Sundays is better, too.”

“Well…you’re an honorary member, anyway. They adore you. But trust me, you really wouldn’t want to be in my family if you had a choice. My childhood wasn’t about snooty British boarding schools, Miss Fancy Pants. I didn’t learn to ride English on Thoroughbred horses, and I didn’t ski in St. Moritz on vacation.”

In fact, Di knew very well that I learned three-card monte before I started kindergarten. I learned how to score a boxing match on the ten-point must system before I learned my ABCs—and it wasn’t too long after that when I found out most of the matches were fixed. I know about the over-under in football, and I can shoot pool better than Minnesota Fats—well, maybe not him, but I can outshoot almost anyone. This does not make for a) an idyllic childhood orb) the kind of skills you like to show off to men. I mean, on what date do you tell the man you potentially want to sleep with that before you discuss birth control it might be a good idea to see how he feels about the Witness Protection Program?

“Hmm.” Lady Di frowned, squinting her blue, almost-violet eyes. “I’d hate to give up my ski vacations. Nonetheless, your family is much more fun than my own pathetic ’rents.”

“Maybe, but then there’s the little problem of surveillance. Go to the window.”

“Oh, not again.” She shook her head. “Don’t tell me…”

“Go on. Peek out the blinds.”

She did as I asked.

“Let me guess, Di. A long, black Lincoln Town Car? A guy leaning on the hood? He’s sort of just hanging around—maybe even reading a newspaper?”

“You know very well that, yes, he’s there. Appears to be your cousin Anthony—who I will reiterate for the thousandth time is very hunky, by the way—and your uncle Lou again.”

“Of course, because we two nice single girls shouldn’t be living alone in the big city.”

“Puts a crimp in things, doesn’t it?”

“Tell me about it.”

“You’d think they would have grown tired of this by now.”

“Please…my uncle Tony once waited fifteen years to extract revenge from a guy who screwed him in a casino deal in Atlantic City. My family is nothing if not patient.”

Lady Di and I had moved in together two years ago when my father “persuaded” someone to rent us this place for a song. I realize how extremely hypocritical it is to complain about my family at the same time that I enjoy a two-bed-room apartment with a view of the East River in a doorman building. Of course, the spacious apartment and the view came with the vigilant watchdog eyes of various members of my family. My cousin Tony—whom Di has a crush on, and vice versa—seemed to have drawn the short straw or something as he is the one who watches over us the most.

Lady Di came over to the bed and sat down. “So we ignore them. There’s nothing exciting going on here, anyway. Eventually, they’ll go home. What do you say we hit some clubs tomorrow, Teddi? It’s your night off.”

“I don’t know.”

“Please,” she pleaded, “I have a smashing new outfit that I’m dying to wear. And now that Dave appears to be out of the picture, you can’t expect me to spend the brisk and bitter days of autumn in New York alone, can you? It’ll be winter before you know it.”

“No, I suppose I can’t. Though Lord knows I’ll be by my lonesome.”

“Don’t say that, Teddi.” She smiled and refilled my glass. Standing up, she kissed me on the top of my head. “I have a feeling you’ll meet the right one before long. See you in the morning, love.”

“Good night, Lady Di.”

She shut my bedroom door. I turned on my stereo and listened to a vintage Bruce Springsteen CD. I stripped and pulled on a sleep shirt, then I padded over to the window. Tony was pacing the sidewalk. I knew he and my uncle would stay another hour, then head over to Mario’s for some pizza and a card game.

I went into my bathroom—my bathroom…in New York City where most people live in apartments the size of bathrooms. Our apartment has floor-to-ceiling windows, crown molding, Ralph Lauren paint and hardwood floors glossed to a sheen. I washed up and brushed my teeth.

Back in my room, I sat on my bed and pulled out a photo album I kept on the shelf near my bed. In my life, I hit the crime-family genetic lottery. My mother’s family, the Marcellos, own one of the largest pizza chains in New York. They also are bookies and gamblers, loan sharks and pool hustlers. Suspected of money laundering, they are what New York newspapers call “an alleged crime family.”

Flipping through the album, I thought back on the birthday parties in the pictures I had slid into plastic photo sheets. Other little girls had parties with ponies and pizza, clowns and confetti. I had parties that lasted until the morning of the day after. I had ponies, too, and cake with real whipped cream frosting, and spumoni. But there was always a craps game going on in the basement, or even the occasional fistfight between the Marcellos and the Gallos.

Turning another page in the album, I landed on photos of my cousin Marie Gallo’s wedding. The Gallo clan was Sicilian—which some might think is the same as Italian, but it’s not—at least not in Brooklyn. Where the Marcellos were prone to angry outbursts, the Gallos were always picking on one another and pulling elaborate practical jokes, all in good fun—until the fistfights started, usually for reasons no one could remember the morning after. Two of my father’s six brothers were on the fringes of the five families. My uncle Jackie and uncle Tommy are both serving hard time in prison for murder. My father managed to squeak through life with a rap sheet a mile long but no major convictions. I can’t say what he actually does for a living. Not because I won’t say, but rather I can’t say, as in I’m not quite sure. However, because of the family, I grew up hearing clicks on the telephone because we were bugged, and catching sight of unmarked federal cars in my rearview mirror as I learned to drive.

I sipped my champagne and crinkled up my face. Champagne and Crest toothpaste don’t mix. I swallowed another swig anyway and sighed. In between these two crazy families was me, a mix of both. I had inherited dark masses of curly Italian hair from the Marcellos and the olive skin of the Gallos. Green-eyed (a Sicilian trait), I have a very ethnic look—whatever that means. I’ve been told, by less-than-gracious dates—and haven’t I had enough of those?—that I look like I “just got off the boat.” And when I get fed up with said lousy dates, when I want to see whether or not a man is really interested in me, I say that on my mother’s side, I am one of the Marcellos. That usually makes most men turn pale.

Because while all this may sound delightfully colorful, it ceased to be even remotely amusing when I became an adolescent. Suddenly, I had to explain my “family,” in more ways than one. And bringing a date home to meet the Gallos or the Marcellos was like subjecting the poor, hapless guy to an FBI interrogation. My male relatives would corner my date to find out his intentions. My solution? Stop dating. (Not really.) I just became as devious as my family—only far less criminal. I hid my dating from everyone. Lady Di became my conspirator from the moment we met when we were freshmen in college. Once we moved to this apartment, I also relied on my doorman, Michel, to frequently slip me out the back of my apartment building, enticing him with fresh cannolis from his favorite bakery.

I shut the photo album. Walking over to the window, I saw that my cousin Tony and uncle Lou had left for the night. They had my best interests at heart. They all did. But both sides of the family were pressuring me to marry and have babies. And while I did feel a baby urge when I saw mothers and their rosy-cheeked little cherubs in Central Park, the likelihood of ever meeting anyone who would find my extraordinary three-card monte skills endearing—let alone maternal—was not likely. And what man in his right mind is going to sleep with a woman whose father says, “You hurt her, we’ll break your legs”—and means it? The truth is that despite America’s obsession with all things Mafia, from the Godfather to the Sopranos, being a Mafia princess is most decidedly not what it is cracked up to be.

Chapter 2

“So I hear a man was over at your apartment last night.”

It was my mother, of course, calling me at work to remind me that my biological clock was tick, tick-tocking away.

“Gee, wonder where you’d hear that from?”

“A little bird told me.”

“Little? Uncle Lou weighs a good 250 pounds, Ma.”

“Does it matter where I heard it from? Just tell me who he was.”

“Mother, how many times must I tell you I’m a lesbian?”

She audibly sighed at my feeble attempt to throw her off my trail. My mother feels the need to call me once a day, whether we have anything to say to each other or not—and we usually don’t.

“Don’t give me that crap, young lady.”

“Ma…I have a million things to do.” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the morning vegetables being delivered. My cousin Quinn and I own “Teddi’s,” a little Italian bistro just barely in the black. We’re struggling to survive in a city with restaurants on every corner and sky-high rents. The fact we rent from family does help things a bit. I cook. Quinn runs the front of the house and tries to bang all the waitresses. He’s good at both.

“‘A million things to do…a million things to do.’ But apparently one of them is not to tell her mother about the man in her apartment last night.”

“He was Lady Di’s date, Ma.”

“Oh.” Her voice was flat, emotionless—and spoke volumes. My older brother Michael moved out to Hollywood to become an actor. He lucked into a couple of minor roles and has a recurring bit as the boyfriend of a character on a WB television show. He never visits home, and we spot him in cheesy tabloid magazines squiring beautiful but vapid actresses around town. His idea of commitment is staying for breakfast, and, assuming he knows what a condom is, there’s not a chance that he’s going to settle down and make my parents happy by marrying and having a baby. Which leaves, reluctantly, me.

“You don’t have to sound like that, Ma. The guy was a jerk, anyway.”

“Jerk, schmerk,” she said. “You can reform a jerk. Look what I did with your father. You need to stop being so picky, Theresa Marie.”

Ah, the dreaded official first name and—worse—the use of my middle name. This was serious—at least where my mother was concerned.

“Ma…I will find someone eventually, but I’m not in any hurry.” Sure, let me get struck by the thunderbolt and end up visiting prison in widow’s garb. Not a chance. “Besides, Ma, running this place takes up so much of my time. I barely have enough time to sleep. I eat standing up…. I’m not looking for a relationship.”

“Theresa…darling—” My mother continued nagging. “You’re not getting any younger—and neither am I! I want grandbabies. I want to see my daughter walk down the aisle. Is this so wrong, Theresa? Isn’t this what every mother dreams of? I just want you to be as happy as your father and I are. I want you to have someone to grow old with.”

I tried to avoid howling into the phone with laughter. My mother and father can’t be in the same room without arguing. She henpecks at him constantly, and he hollers that he can’t enjoy any peace in his own home. He hates the plastic slipcovers on our furniture, and she hates the fact that he’ll drop a thousand on the ponies. They sleep in twin beds. Have for as long as I can remember. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for the institution of marriage. I am convinced Michael and I are, for the record, immaculate conceptions. Something in the water in Brooklyn.

“I’ll get a cat.”

“Not funny, Theresa Marie. Not funny at all. Do you like to torture your own mother like this? To break my heart in every phone call?”

When my mother talks, I envision the old Peanuts specials whenever the teacher spoke. “Mwah, mwah-mwah, mwah-mwah.” I tuned her out.

“No, Ma, I don’t. Listen, it’s getting busy here. Let me go.”

“I wish you never got into the restaurant business. It’s not right for a woman.”

“Please, Ma…I was born with it in my blood.”

“You coming Sunday?”

“If I didn’t, there’d be a hit ordered. Of course I’m coming.” Sunday was an eating extravaganza that most Americans reserve for an occasion like Thanksgiving. The piles of food are downright nauseating. Attendance was pretty close to mandatory.

“And how many places should I set?” she asked hopefully.

“Two. One for me…and one for Lady Di.”

“Even if it’s short notice, if you meet someone, there’s always room for another plate at the table.”

“I know, Ma. Thanks. Gotta run.”

I replaced the receiver on the hook. She never gave up. She married at eighteen, right after high school. I don’t know if she was struck by the thunderbolt. Hard to picture someone feeling that way for my father with his ugly bowling shirts and beer belly. Still, to my mother, her husband and family are everything to her. When Michael and I were little, we were her universe. But if she only saw what I saw. The health spa where I take the occasional yoga class in an attempt to convince myself I’m not getting out of shape is a perfect example. A microcosm of pickup lines and outright seduction. A revolving door of hookups. Everyone has baggage. Failed marriages and relationships, messed-up childhoods, resentments and unhappiness. But I lug around a steamer trunk of baggage. I’m from a family of “made” men and wise guys, with a true nut job or two thrown in for good measure. Do you bring this up with a date over dinner? Dessert? When it starts to get serious? And even if a man thinks he can handle my background, he’s just kidding himself. Spending time with my father makes all those movie mobsters look like pussycats. He frightens people.

The phone rang again. It was Lady Di.

“Hello Teddi, ol’ girl,” she said, as if we were going to meet for a fox hunt.

“Hey…what’s going on?”

“I am bored out of my mind.” Lady Di works as a PR agent, which means she has invitations to all of New York’s hot spots. But as much as she likes the night life, she loathes being in the office. I accuse her of being part vampire. She abhors daylight.

“Sorry. I just got off the phone with my mother, who reminded me yet again that I am depriving her of the chance to see me in virginal white gracefully gliding down the aisle and into a happy life like her and my father. I could hear my ovaries shriveling as we talked.”

“She never gives up, does she? My parents are too afraid to say anything like that to me. It’s decidedly un-British. Sticking their noses in like that. Besides, if they make me angry, I’ll never visit them again. As it is I hate that damn drafty house and the sons of their equally stiff friends. Besides, the thought of marriage and babies gives me hives.”

“Well, my parents have never kept their opinions to themselves.”

“All right, ol’ girl. I’ve got just the ticket for your ennui. We’re going to Shangri-la tonight.”

“What?” Shangri-la was the hottest bar of the moment, in a city where “the moment” changes faster than the revolving door at Macy’s.

“Yes, my little Mafia darling! Lady Di has done it again. So what will you wear?”

I sighed. Lady Di tried to dress me in fuck-me pumps, a micromini and a halter top with a “jaunty” scarf tied around my neck…some sort of Euro-look, with bright red lipstick and sultry, smoky eyes to boot. However, she just could not transform me into a mystery woman. She could carry off a look like she was born on Page Six of the Post, where she actually appears from time to time. Me? Between my unruly hair and my slightly lopsided smile, my dimples (which admittedly are cute—but cute isn’t what we’re aiming for) and full cheeks, I always look like I’m playing dress-up.

“I don’t know, Di. I’ll figure it out when I get home.”

“Think about it, darling. Because I have a feeling tonight will be lucky. My Chinese horoscope says so.”

Leave it to Lady Di. The regular zodiac doesn’t do. She consults the Chinese version. She’s a dragon. I’m a mouse or a rodent of some sort. Need I say more?

“Well, let me go, Di. I need to start today’s soup.”

“Kisses, love!”

“Back at you.”

Much as I adored her—with all my heart—she just didn’t understand. She only heard from her parents once a month, if that. They saw one another every other year. Remembering my conversation with my mother, I rolled my eyes. Lady Di had no idea just how lucky she was.

Shangri-la was packed with the black-clad denizens of Manhattan. The women all seemed to be tall (I’m only five foot four) and anorexic, and the men looked like refugees from the fashion spreads in GQ. But Lady Di, of course, had access to the VIP room, where we promptly headed. She spotted one of the owners, a restaurant impresario who always filled his restaurants and clubs with supermodels, hip-hop stars and A-list Hollywood. He immediately gave us a table and sent over a bottle of champagne. Lady Di’s PR skills were unparalleled. She knew all the right people, and she charmed the ones she didn’t know until they couldn’t resist her. And unlike a few other “über-bitches” who worked PR in New York City, she somehow managed to do it by being tough yet never alienating anyone. It also didn’t hurt that her father was wealthy beyond imagination—even if, as she put it—he was as “stiff as a piece of plywood.”

We sat down, and our champagne was uncorked and placed in an ice bucket. Lady Di was dressed in a simple black minidress with a Hermès scarf wrapped around her thick blond hair. Her makeup wasn’t even a brand you could buy in the States. Her father flew to Japan on business regularly; she gave him a list and he bought it there, then shipped it to her. She wasn’t someone who dressed outlandishly in the hopes of being the center of attention, yet she had her own distinct style—not to mention perfect porcelain skin. If we weren’t best friends, I could hate her.

I had decided, with Lady Di’s prodding, to wear a black miniskirt and a silk kimono-style jacket her father brought me back from Japan on Lady Di’s orders. It was a brilliant blue, and though I felt out of place in New York with its sea of black clothes, it did feel beautiful on, and I caught admiring glances. I envisioned myself, for a change, as glamorous, rather than like the Italian girl from Brooklyn with the mass of unruly hair. I had even blown dry my hair nice and straight, and it had cooperated for once.

We sipped champagne, and Di leaned in close to me and gave a running commentary on every person who walked past.

“A-list actor… Cocaine fiend.”

“That one’s wife left him for another woman.”

As for the women: “Fake tits…real…real…oh, my God, fake. They’re like boulders perched there.”

She went on: “Does she not own a mirror? She’ll be in the next edition of Us Weekly under the ‘what was she thinking?’ category.”

“Her hairdresser should be shot.”

All right, taken out of context, she sounded catty, but she just likes to “dish.” I bet she could make even the guards at Buckingham Palace laugh, if given the chance.

Suddenly a WASPish blonde approached our table. “Robert Wharton.” He smiled. “And you two appear to be the only interesting women in this place. Can I join you?” We were seated on a bloodred velvet couch, and Di immediately scrunched closer to me.

“Okay…we’ve moved on over. But you can only join us if you are terribly amusing and promise to make us laugh,” Di said, and smiled.

“Promise.”

Turned out Robert Wharton, who looked vaguely familiar, was an on-air reporter for a major cable news network. He had the bland yet handsome looks of a news anchor, a side part in his perfect hair, and an angular build encased in an expensive suit jacket. His chin was dimpled, and his nose was straight without a trace of ethnicity. Everyone in my family looked like they had been on the wrong end of a strong right hook. His hazel eyes peered out from behind wire-rimmed glasses.

“I scored the first post-trial interview with Connie Benson,” he said when Di pressed him to tell us just where we’d seen him before.

“Oh, my God! The Hamptons Harlot!”

Connie Benson was a 40DD porno actress who married the king of Long Island real estate, who promptly died under questionable circumstances. And despite a murder trial that lasted for six months and riveted the media, she’d been acquitted, though the prosecutors had thought it was a no-brainer.

“So dish. Do you think she did it?” Di asked.

He nodded.

“Well…” I chimed in, “she’s laughing all the way to the bank. He froze out his kids in the will.”

Robert nodded. “And she has the spending habits of a Rockefeller. She went through a cool half million just adding mirrored ceilings in all the bedrooms, and her own state-of-the-art screening room. She likes to watch her old porn movies with popcorn and her new lover. The old man was forty years older than she. This new guy is only nineteen.”

“Truth is always stranger than fiction,” I said.

“I’m so glad you sat down,” Di added. “I was hooked on that case. Watched the recaps every night on Court TV. Cheers!” She lifted her glass and elbowed me to lift mine, and the three of us toasted.

“You look familiar, too.” Robert studied me.

I wriggled uncomfortably in my seat. Of course, he could have eaten in my restaurant and have recognized me out of context. But A&E also profiled my family a year ago, complete with family trees and fuzzy photos. Because I was the only granddaughter of Angelo Marcello in a sea of seventeen male cousins, I had been filmed from a distance crossing the street and labeled “The Mafia Princess.”

“Do you work out at Parallel Spa?”

He shook his head. We were all growing hoarse talking over the music.

“Ever eat at a tiny little place called Teddi’s?”

“No. Where is it?”

“East Side. Mid-Sixties.”

He shook his head. “You work there?”

Lady Di wrapped an arm around me. “She owns it. And it has absolutely the most delicious food in New York City. I would starve without Teddi. Would curl up on the floor and die. Her spaghetti carbonara is rapturous.”

I rolled my eyes. “Spoken like a true PR agent.”

Robert laughed. “Well, sounds like I should visit Teddi’s, but…I still feel like I know you from somewhere.”

“No, I don’t think we’ve met before,” I said firmly.

“But now we have. Can I invite you to dinner? I promise I’m not a serial killer. Just an honest boy from Philadelphia.”

Di dug her heel into my instep, urging me to say yes. I glared at her, then nodded at Robert.

We spent the rest of the night making small talk. Turned out the “honest boy” from Philadelphia was from Main Line Philly and old money. I cringed. Talk about worlds colliding. We ordered more champagne and discovered that Robert liked horses, specifically polo, and had attended the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School. And yes, there was some relation to the original Wharton way back in his lineage.

“Is Teddi your real name?” he shouted over the music.

I shook my head. “Theresa. But my grandfather called me Teddi Bear, ridiculous as that sounds, and it stuck.” Of course, I didn’t point out that Angelo Marcello, one of the most celebrated of the old-time mobsters, was my Poppy. I was his teddy bear, his angel, and if anyone thought about touching a hair on my head, there wouldn’t be a federal safe house safe enough for the man, whoever he was.

“That’s really cute.”

I shrugged. “I like it better than Theresa, that’s for sure.”

Lady Di stood and waved to a client. “Back in a jiff, Teddi.”

Robert focused on me again. “I wish I could place you. I just have this feeling we’ve met before.”

“I promise you, we haven’t.”

“I know this is the oldest line in the book, Teddi, but if we haven’t met before, then I have a serious case of déjà vu. I must have known you in another life.”

He was near enough to me that when he bent his head to better hear me, I could smell his cologne. Maybe it was the loud music, but he leaned in so close to me that he gave the impression that he wanted to hear every word I said.

“Maybe…” Anxious to change the subject, to steer him away from the Marcello and Gallo family names, I asked him how he got into journalism.

“Please. Every kid who ever saw All the President’s Men wanted to be the next Woodward or Bernstein and packed off to college…and I was no exception. I changed my major from business. I found I had the stomach for journalism. I wasn’t squeamish at crime scenes. I didn’t mind working my way up from the bottom. I was always comfortable at public speaking, so speaking in front of a camera wasn’t a big deal.”

“I’d rather do just about anything than speak in front of a group of people.”

“Number-one fear for most people.”

Should I tell him that in my neighborhood, the number-one fear is having my uncle Lou show up to collect a bad debt? I opted to shut up.

Around two o’clock in the morning, I realized my alarm was going to ring mighty early for opening the restaurant. By this time, Di had rejoined us, and we’d ordered another bottle of champagne. As we poured the last of it into our glasses, I nudged Di and said we had better go.

“What time is it?” Robert pushed up the cuff of his shirt and read his Rolex. “Jesus! The night flew by.”

We all stood. Robert kissed my cheek, took a card from the restaurant and promised to call to arrange dinner. (If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that line, I could have bailed out my uncle Jackie the last time he was arraigned.)

Lady Di and I said goodbye and made our way through the packed main club, its dance floor so crowded you couldn’t fit a slip of paper between the dancers, and went outside. The doorman hailed us a cab. Nestled into the back, Di was both drunk and ecstatic for me.

“Robert Wharton…old money, handsome and a high-profile job on top of it. I think this is your lucky night, Teddi, you Chinese mouse, you! Or is it a rat?”

“Lady Di,” I slurred, the champagne long since gone to my head. I could only imagine the hell of standing over a hot stove the next day. “Given the unfortunate incarceration of half my family, and the fact that there are one hundred hijacked Betsey Johnson dresses in the basement of my parents’ house, do you really think a high-profile relationship is such a good idea?”

“Fuck it all,” she said. “Then a toss in the hay and you’re done with him. But really, Teddi, do they expect you to marry a mobster?”

I frowned. “No…I guess not.”

“Trust me, darling. He seemed positively mad about you. If this works out, your parents will be delighted.”

“I doubt it. But let’s take it one step at a time.”

As the cabbie raced through the streets of Manhattan, I tried to quell the feelings of nausea in my stomach. But whether it was from the champagne or the prospect of telling “old money” Robert Wharton about my family tree, I wasn’t exactly sure.

The next day I walked the twenty blocks to work. I’m one of the few New Yorkers blessed with an easy commute—a brisk walk instead of clinging to a subway strap for dear life, or exhaust fumes filling my nostrils as I ride the bus. The only tough thing is three days a week I work early. As in really early.

At six-thirty, on three hours’ sleep, and my head pounding as if some heavy-metal drummer had taken up residence in my left temple, I was already starting a pot of gravy—what we Italians call spaghetti sauce—which would be used for the manicotti, as well as several pasta dishes. I took out fresh parsley and began chopping, finding a rhythm as the sharp knife hit the cutting board—chop, chop, chop—my fingers curled to control the blade. My cousin Quinn only worked nights, and the sous chef, Leon, wasn’t due in until nine-thirty, so I had the place to myself. Leon favored a serious hip-hop station on the radio. Chopping to DMX and Eminem can be kind of therapeutic. It can also get on your nerves. So I spent my mornings alone in silence, humming to myself, thinking of nothing in particular. This morning, however, I was thinking that Lady Di and her wild nightlife were going to be the death of me very soon. And I was thinking that Robert Wharton was very cute in a nonethnic kind of way. I couldn’t imagine someone with the last name of Wharton being struck by the thunderbolt. Somehow, I found that comforting—if he even called, which I doubted. So I put him from my mind and concentrated on the simmering pot after popping two aspirin.

Next, I busied myself making the soup of the day—a pasta fajioli—then went to the front of the house—restaurant talk for the dining room—and fetched a cold club soda from the bar. I looked around the restaurant—my place. Or at least half mine and half Quinn’s. Though to be technical about it, the bank owned a big chunk, too.

I had wanted my own restaurant since I could remember. My grandfather owned a restaurant in Brooklyn, and though he owned it for business reasons—Mafia business reasons—I had spent much of my childhood sitting at its checkered-tablecloth tables, eating authentic food prepared by men who spoke only Italian.

When Quinn and I found our place, it was suffering from neglect. The floors were filthy, the lighting dim and roaches roamed freely across the stainless counters in the kitchen. But Quinn and I saw past all that. Now, with room for twenty-two tables, Teddi’s sparkled. We had the walls painted with a faux finish that resembled stone walls, vaguely reminiscent of Florence, sort of ancient-looking. The ivory tablecloths were crisp, and the plates on each table bore handpainted flowers on the rim. When nighttime came and the small votives on each table were lit, with fresh flowers in each bud vase and a crowd at the bar waiting for a table, it was magical. At the end of every shift, Quinn and I would each have a sambuca with three coffee beans floating for good luck and go over the night and unwind. I had never, not even for a moment, wanted to do anything else, despite the long hours. Despite the fact that it was back-breaking sometimes. Despite the fact that I had a hangover and was staring at a double shift.

I went back into the kitchen—my domain—and continued prepping for lunch. Around ten o’clock the back office phone rang. “Teddi’s,” I answered on line two.

“Is Teddi there? The owner Teddi?”

“Who’s calling?” I was used to food and beverage sales guys calling, trying to get our account. Linen companies. Wine sales reps.

“It’s Robert Wharton.”

“Robert? It’s Teddi.”

“Thought that was your voice.”

I managed to sputter out a hello. A man in Manhattan who actually called when he said he would?

“You gave me your card,” he offered, as if the reason I sounded a little stunned was I didn’t remember him. As if I could forget his anchorman smile.

“Of course.” I finally regained my composure. “It’s nice to hear from you, Robert.”

“Listen…I would love to take you to dinner.”

“Um…great.” Nit-twit, as Di would call me. So much for witty repartee.

“What’s your schedule like?”

“Thursdays are good. I usually work Friday night. My sous chef does Thursday night. I do lunch Thursday instead.”

“What about Sunday? I’m off on Sundays.”

I crinkled up my face in a wince he couldn’t see. Sunday was sacrosanct—family dinner in Brooklyn. “Sundays are no good.”

“Thursday then. Next Thursday okay?”

“Sure.”

“I’m a little nervous taking a chef out for dinner. You probably have high standards.”

“No. I was born in a family of professional eaters. But honestly, I’m not that fussy. I like to enjoy someone else’s cooking for a change.”

“How about if we meet at a little Japanese place called Yama’s at Fifty-fifth and Seventh?

“I’ve heard of it.” Heard of it? I’d heard it was one of the priciest new restaurants in the city—and the sushi chef was a temperamental master. I knew I’d love to scope out their menu. Japanese was a style of cooking I’d longed to experiment with. My mother mocked my Manhattan eating adventures. “Raw fish,” she’d once said. “What’s next? Cold monkey meat?”

“I’ll make reservations for eight-thirty. Okay? Does that sound all right?”

“Okay. See you then.”

“I’m really looking forward to it.”

“Me, too.”

I hung up the phone by pressing down on the reset button. Then I immediately speed-dialed Lady Di on her cell, which she wore attached to her hip at all times, with a tiny little earpiece set in her ear. Di also carried a Palm Pilot and had her laptop at home perpetually plugged in. Besides dressing to the nines, she was wired to the nines.

“Diana Kent here,” she answered.

“It’s Teddi.”

“Hello there, flatmate,” she said, never getting used to calling me her roommate or roomie.

“He called.”

“Who?”

“Who…him!”

“That Robert fellow?”

“Yes, that Robert fellow.”

“How fantastic, Teddi! Are you going to see him?”

“Next Thursday.”

“Smashing.”

“I need your help, though.”

“What?” she asked. “Want to borrow my little black dress? Oh…what about the Roberto Cavalli one?”

“Too wild.”

“My Donna Karan. The black wraparound one?”

“No. That’s not why I called. Well…now that you mention it, that dress might be good. But no…I need you to distract my ‘bodyguards.’”

“Right-o. No problem.”

“Don’t you think it’s a little ridiculous that I’m a woman in my mid-twenties and I’m still being baby-sat?”

“Yes. But one of your baby-sitters is your cousin Tony. And I find him positively delicious. So, for purely selfish reasons, I rather find it amusing.”

“You’re impossible.”

“But that’s what makes me so irresistible.”

“Look, just help me duck out unnoticed.”

“You can count on me. I always feel all James Bond when we do this, you know.”

“I feel a little Godfatherish when we do it. But either way, next Thursday keep them busy. I’d like to get in a first date without them looking over my shoulder. And the black dress would be nice, too.”

“It’s yours.”

“We have six days to plan.”

“And plan we shall. Must run now.”

“Ciao.” I put the phone down. I had stopped going to church years ago, but if I was still a church-goer, I would have said four novenas and five Hail Marys that my date with Robert Wharton went off without a hitch.

Chapter 3

Calling what my family does on Sundays “dinner” is like saying the pope is just another priest with a fancier hat.

Lady Di and I arrived at Sunday dinner to the usual chaos of the Marcello clan with a couple of Gallos thrown in for good measure. In the kitchen my mother was making an immense pot of gravy. Not only was the pot big enough for one of my little cousins to use as a fort when not filled with gravy, but Ma couldn’t even move it from one burner to the next without the help of my cousin Tony.

My aunt Marie, aunt Gina, aunt Connie and assorted other aunts, and wives and fiancées of my male cousins were all crowded into the kitchen as well, supervising my mother. This routine goes on until my mother has had it with the lot of them and chases them all out with a wooden spoon. For every infraction I committed as a child, the wooden spoon was threatened. Not that she ever actually spanked me with it. She just chased my brother and me throughout the house, screaming in Italian.

The women all clustered around the stove. “Add more oregano, Rose.”

“It needs a pinch of…something. Hold on…maybe some more garlic.”

“Can’t have too much garlic.”

For my mother, the red stuff she slaves over is a religion. She has been known to actually break out in a cold sweat at the sight of a jar of Ragú. That’s sacrilege of the highest order.

Lady Di and I always gather in the kitchen because it’s what we do, feminism aside. The men watch football during the season, and with most of them heavy gamblers and bookies, it’s either a joyous occasion or the cause of a lot of screaming. Either way, the language flying through the room would make Sister Mary Catherine of my old grammar school roll over in her grave.

Lady Di is considered an oddity, being as she comes from way across the Atlantic, and she had never even eaten true gravy before meeting my family, nor had she ever teased her hair, or even discovered the wonders of Aqua Net hairspray—the aerosol-can variety. I’m not even sure if the Aqua Net company still makes it, thanks to the ozone layer’s problems. However, my mother and her sisters have enough stockpiled to take them into the next decade.

“Diana, honey, can you stand a little advice?” My aunt Gina cornered us in the kitchen. Diana had no time to answer before Gina, cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, was pinching her. I don’t mean like a little pinch on the cheek, either. I mean she was pinching her upper arm for all it was worth—Lady Di showed me a bruise later. “You could stand a little meat on these bones.”

“Well…I—”

“Honey…men don’t like bags of bones. You wonder why you’re not married? This is why.” She stated this with such certainty, oblivious to Di’s beauty.

“Actually, Aunt Gina—” I felt the need to defend my pinched roomie “—Diana has a lot of boyfriends, and she’s been proposed to three different times. She’s not married because she doesn’t want to be married.”

“Bullshit.” Aunt Gina pinched her again. “Look at this. You see this, Andrea?” She motioned to one of my other aunts. “You see this? Both of them. Really, Theresa Marie, you, too. You think you’re all fancy living off in that city, but when your uncle Rocky proposed to me, I was the babe of Brooklyn.”

I stared at Aunt Gina and glimpsed, beneath the pile of big hair, the perfumed face powder and the sixteen gold-and-diamond necklaces she wore stacked around her neck like a snake’s coils, the beautiful neighborhood girl she once was. I still love looking at old pictures of them, just as I loved looking at them as a little girl. I laugh when I see pictures of them all from back then, the girls in eyeliner and Pucci dresses—the first time Pucci was in—the boys in zoot suits too big for them. They all have highball glasses in one hand, cigarettes in the other. You can see the smoke swirled around their faces and can almost smell it, as well as hear the giggles and tough talk, mixing together as they lived “the life” then.

“I’m sure you were, Aunt Gina.”

“I was. Ask your mother, Theresa. Ask her.”

Lady Di humored her. “So come on, Mrs. Gallo, were you girls ‘it’ back then? The bomb?”

My mother usually waves off such talk with a flick of her spoon and a roll of her eyes. But her sisters wouldn’t let it rest. “Come on…” Aunt Marie snuck up behind my mother and pinched her on the arm. “Tell the girls about when we used to go out in the city.”

“Honey…” Aunt Gina gestured with her thumb toward the living room where we could hear screams and cheers erupting after various plays in the game. “They may not look like much now, those balding bastards, but way back when they were all catches, every last one of them.”

My mother twirled around. “Theresa…every girl was in love with your father. But his family was considered trouble. He was a bad boy, you know. But underneath it, I could tell he was a real softie. Now, all of you—” she glared at the room full of us, packed tight around the table “—get outta my kitchen!”

We scattered—not before Aunt Connie reiterated for the twentieth time that the gravy needed both garlic and oregano. In the living room, my male cousins, three of whom are named Tony, clustered around Lady Di. She chose to sit next to the “hunky” Tony, who had staked out our apartment not three days before. His massive biceps belied the fact that I knew he liked nothing better than to cook pastry. He sometimes came up to our apartment and I taught him recipes. He was a fast learner. I know he liked being up there with Diana and me. Whenever he was around her, he stood a little taller, and he never cursed. He was an amateur chef in the making, but he’d never let the family know that. Pizza was one thing—maybe—pastry was another.

A half hour, and one Giants touchdown and an interception later, it was halftime and that meant we would shovel food in as fast as possible before the game resumed.

The first course was eggplant parmigiana, as well as a heaping bowl of homemade ravioli stuffed with ricotta that Ma got special from the Italian deli. Then she brought out huge bowls of gravy, teeming with large sausages, meatballs and whole lamb chops on the bone. This was served on pasta, also homemade. Garlic bread, a large salad, bowls of olives and plates of sliced pepperoni and fresh mozzarella, which, if you’ve never had it, has the consistency of congealed I-don’t-know-what. It’s beyond gross, wet and rather tasteless, but the Italian deli carries that, too.

And we were just warming up.

Later, a huge ham came out. Followed by a seafood course, including an Italian version of octopus, legs flopping over the side of the bowl, looking like they were trying to make a run for it. Through it all, as bowl and pan, and plate and platter made their way from the kitchen to the table and everyone started fanning himself or herself as the temperature in the house rose from the oven opening so often and boiling pots on the stove, my mother never sat down. She moved from kitchen to the dining room, back and forth, back and forth. She sat down occasionally, but watched over the table like General Patton, waiting for a movement of the troops that might signal we needed something, then she’d leap up and fetch it. Bottle after bottle of good red wine was opened. Forget letting it breathe. Around our house, a bottle of wine never sits still long enough to breathe.

I loved watching the insanity of it all. Sundays were sacred when I was growing up. I think that’s why I ended up being a chef. I didn’t go to culinary school. I was raised in culinary school, standing on a stool with a makeshift apron on—a towel tied in the back. I learned, as a little girl, that the way to my father’s heart was through his stomach, and by the time the whole stereotype of the “little woman in the kitchen” was something to resent, I was hooked. The kitchen was where I felt content and happy; cooking was a way to relax, a way to create.

The men ate huge mouthfuls of food, occasionally grunting their approval. Poppy Marcello was especially happy with the sausage. Lady Di consumed five glasses of red wine and got giddy enough to ask Uncle Rocky to sing a Louis Prima song, then some Frank Sinatra. Call it the Marcello version of karaoke. We laughed and ate, but I noticed my mother wore a pair of house slippers and, not for the first time, I could see how Sundays wore her out, even when she wasn’t hosting. But if I offered to help her she would turn me down flat. This was her show, just like, I guess, at my restaurant, the kitchen was my show. I hated when Quinn came back, lifting lids to pots and looking over my shoulder. “Go back to chasing the waitresses,” I’d yell at him.

The women all rose and began clearing as soon as the game came back on. The men would take plates in front of the television for further eating while my mother readied dessert. At one point, Ma and I were alone in the kitchen.

“I wish one of these Sundays you’d bring home a man, Theresa Marie. None of us are gettin’ any younger.”

“I know, Ma.” I rolled my eyes and tried to find room in the overstuffed fridge to put leftover eggplant. It didn’t look like I’d fit a single black olive in there.

“I don’t understand what’s so hard. There are what, forty million men in Manhattan? At this point, I give up on you even finding someone from Brooklyn. Manhattan would be fine. Non-Italian would be fine. You can marry an Irishman. Hell, a nice Jewish boy. Just someone. A warm body, for God’s sake. Though Catholic would be good. Your father would like that.”

“First of all, Ma, there aren’t forty million men in Manhattan. Second, however many there are…forty percent of them are gay.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m not kidding.”

She slammed down a pan. “You should move back home.”

“I’d rather eat fifty pounds of scungilli and explode.”

“Outta my kitchen!” She slapped my arm.

Moving back into the living room, I saw five of my cousins and my father on their cell phones. Placing bets, checking on the book they’d taken. The women were martyrs. The men were criminals. Me? I was just certain that I’d never find someone who would understand the dance of it all.

My father stood up to stretch. Sometimes he liked to go outside on the front steps of our house and smoke a cigarette. I saw him go out the front door, and I followed him.

“Hey Dad.”

“Teddi Bear, come ’ere.” He stretched out an arm and wrapped it around me and kissed the top of my head. “I come out here for a little quiet. Those women are like a gaggle of friggin’ geese.”

“I know…. Ma’s giving me the ‘hurry up and get married’ speech again.” I looked up at my father. He slicked back his hair in a pompadour and favored polyester shirts in ugly colors like lime green. He wasn’t Manhattan stylish, but he was still handsome, his jaw square with a dimple in the middle, and his eyes nearly black and penetrating.

“She’s kind of a broken record with that one.”

“What about you, Dad?”

“What about me?”

“Am I this big disappointment because I haven’t found Mr. Right? Should I marry some Brooklyn boy and live around the corner from you and Ma?”

My father smiled a half-sad, sort of mysterious smile. Then he took my chin in his fingers and tilted my head up so I was looking right into his eyes. “Teddi…when I first set eyes on your mother, believe it or not, I knew she was the one.”

“Struck by the thunderbolt?”

“Not quite. The thunderbolt is like crazy love. We were just high school kids, you know. I was a player. She was the prom queen. But I knew what I wanted. I wanted a nice girl I could have babies with. A good cook. Pretty.”

“And?”

“And don’t tell your mother I said this or nothin’, but that was then. This is now. I don’t want to see you like my brother’s kid—Angela. Divorced with four fuckin’ kids to feed. You take your time. And who knows? You just might get struck by the thunderbolt.”

“I hope not.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Aunt Mariella and Uncle Mario.”

He nodded. After my uncle Mario had been paroled, he married Mariella in Las Vegas two weekends later, and they never left Sin City. They never came to Brooklyn to visit. Too many painful memories, they said. But once, my grandmother and Poppy had gone to see them in Las Vegas, before my grandmother died a few years back. When they returned, my grandmother wouldn’t speak about what they’d seen for the longest time. I found out what happened from my mother, whispering—which in my mother’s case is more like what other people call a normal speaking voice—to my father one night, when they thought I couldn’t hear.

Mariella, crushed by waiting for her true love all those years, had long since gone mad. She was no longer the beautiful woman from the picture in the photo album. Her beauty was still there, but her eyes, so fiery in the photos, were flat. She was extremely childlike—she wouldn’t go to the grocery store by herself, or even cross the street. But my uncle Mario remained true to her, doing all the shopping, even cutting her meat for her and helping her do her hair. I suppose some people might think that’s romantic in a tragic way. I just thought it was tragic. Period.

“You know, Teddi…it doesn’t matter who you marry. I just want you to be happy.”

“I’m happy in my restaurant, Dad.”

“Yeah…but when you’re old and gray, it’s not like you can curl up next to a plate of spaghetti and meatballs, Teddi.”

I didn’t see the point in telling my father that was the stupidest thing I ever heard. I just nodded as if he’d told me the sagest wisdom a father can impart to a daughter.

He lit his cigarette, and I kept him company while he smoked it. Then we both turned to go back inside.

“You know, Teddi,” Dad said as he pulled open the door. “I do just want you to be happy. An’ no pressure or anything, but the reason your mother acts this way is that you’re your mother’s only hope. That brother of yours…he’s dating a girl he met at the Playboy mansion this week.”

“I know,” I said, and rolled my eyes. Where my brother Michael was concerned, forget being struck by the thunderbolt. He was blinded by brainless blondes with boobs.

“I’m so full I could positively vomit.” Lady Di clutched her stomach as she rocked slightly on the couch back in our apartment later that night.

“It’s truly torture. It’s a week’s worth of calories. Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn’t skip it once in a while.” I was ensconced in our overstuffed living room chair—a descriptor that matched my own swollen belly.

“Oh, please, Teddi, your mum would have your uncle Lou here in ten minutes flat to check on us if we didn’t go. It’s simpler to go along.”

“I don’t know how you can be so blasé about it. Uncle Lou’s like an oversize baby-sitter.”

“Because they’re not my family, Teddi. It’s easier to find them slightly dotty and laugh about it.”

“Well, I’m glad my world exists to amuse you.”

“Don’t be cross, Teddi. They really are sweet in their own way.”

“Sure. You didn’t have to hide the Career Day notices from elementary school. Every kid had his or her parent in to talk to the class for five minutes about their job. There were three cops and a bunch of firemen, a stockbroker, a lawyer or two, a doctor, a teacher…one kid’s father owned a dry-cleaning business. Joey Antonelli, the plumber. There was even an out-of-work actor. Everybody had someone there but me. I mean, what was I supposed to do? We had twenty-two phone lines in the basement for my father’s bookie business. I couldn’t drag him in for Career Day. And then there’s the fact that…well, I’m still not one hundred percent sure what it is he does. Bookie? Loan shark? Well, anyway, not Career Day material.”

“I would have thought it would be very interesting.”

I threw a pillow at her.

“I’m serious,” she protested. “Think of all the little minds who could have been turned on to a life of crime. It’s perfectly charming!”

“All I’m saying, Diana, is it’s charming as long as it’s not happening to you. But these Sunday dinners not only blow my diet, they’re exhausting. I love my family members—each and every one. It’s the constant harping on my lack-of-a-boyfriend status. If I have to hear one more time that we’re both destined for old maid-hood…”

“Ignore them. Ignore them, Teddi. It isn’t worth it. You need to become more like the British. Smile and nod. Smile and nod.” With that, she sat upright, glazed over her eyes and began waving at me like a very stiff Queen Elizabeth, turning her hand just so, smiling and nodding as if greeting me from her gilded coronation carriage.

“Your father at least had a real job.”

“Oh, please. His job is to sit around with a stick up his ass.”

I laughed. “Smile and nod, Lady Di. Smile and nod.”

“Don’t make me laugh, Teddi. I’ll vomit, I swear. How is it you don’t weigh four hundred pounds growing up in a family like that?”

“You learn to pick at your food and make it look as if you ate. I don’t know…it’s like the restaurant, I just taste everything and don’t ever finish any one thing. Plus my family serves things like sheep’s head. Did you try some of that?”

“No. And the sight of your gorgeous cousin Tony gnawing on a sheep’s jaw bone—it still had teeth on it for God’s sake—may have cured me of my infatuation.”

“My father used to stack the heads one on top of the other in the extra freezer we had out in the garage. They’re quite a delicacy, you know.”

Lady Di shuddered. “They make me squeamish. Really horrid things. And that squid stuff…”

“It’s an acquired taste.”

“Still, all that delicious pasta… Even picking and choosing, I would weigh four hundred pounds. As it is I starve myself every Saturday so I can eat at your mum’s on Sunday.”

“Yeah…well, I carried a few extra pounds in high school. I’ve learned to keep it all in balance now.”

I stood up and stretched. “I am so full I’m falling asleep in the chair. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Right, love. Listen, I’m too full to move. Can you put on channel two on the tellie?”

I switched the television to her favorite Sunday night cop show and went to bed. I had heartburn—a deadly combination of my mother plus Sunday dinner. I popped a few Tums and changed into my pajamas. Staring at my reflection in the mirror in the bathroom, I practiced Di’s smile-and-nod pose and mildly amused myself, despite all the aggravation I’d suffered. Then I climbed into bed and was soon fast asleep, dreaming of disembodied sheep’s heads dancing a conga line around the dinner table.

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