The Supreme Macaroni Company Read Online Free PDF Page A

Gianluca close. “God bless you! Welcome to the . . .” Mom didn’t want to use the word family in the current environment, so she said, “It’s wonderful. What a perfect romantic note to end the year 2010! Now, when do you want to get married? What will I wear? Do you have a date?”
    “However long it takes me to build a pair of shoes, Ma,” I told her.
    Gianluca looked at me and smiled. My future husband had just gotten the first bit of living proof that I never lie.
    “We need a photograph. An official engagement picture!” My mother looked at my father, who hadn’t leaped up to capture the moment on film. My mother would tell you that in all of our family history, my father is never ready with the camera unless she insists. “Damn it, Dutch. Get out your phone!”
    “I’ll take the picture!” Gabriel said, pushing through the crowd. He’s been around my family for so long that he knows about my mother’s photo obsession. My mother handed him my dad’s phone. Soon my sisters, Gram, and Pamela handed their phones to Gabriel as we assumed our positions. The adults formed a long standing row in front of the tree, and then a kneeling row in front of the standing row. The children sat in front of the kneelers. We looked like the Latin Club in the yearbook from Holy Agony. I watched as Gabriel backed down the hallway, trying to get everyone into the shot. “Squeeze, people! I need to see a squeeze.”
    “Wait! The baby!” Jaclyn got up from her kneeling spot and sprinted up the stairs for the baby. We remained crammed. The scent of Aqua Velva, Jean Naté, Coco cologne, and Ben-Gay wafted up from my family like sauce on the stove. I turned around to get a good look at them.
    My sister Tess, the second eldest in the family after our brother Alfred, looked pretty, her jet-black hair in a bun on top of her head. She did the full Cleopatra with black eyeliner to bring out her green eyes, which were bloodshot from the crying jag she went on in defense of her husband. From the neck up, she was a movie star. From the neck down, she was dressed for kitchen duty, including a white apron splotched with red gravy. She looked like a dancer in the musical version of All Quiet on the Western Front . Charlie, her burly bear of a husband, had unbuttoned his shirt down to the pocket, exposing more fur on his chest than went into making my mother’s mink jacket.
    Jaclyn returned with the baby.
    Jaclyn, the youngest of our family, mother of one, apparently still had time to go for a blow-out at Fresh Cuts. Her chestnut brown hair had not a crimp, and she still could fit in her pre-baby sweater dress. Her husband Tom still had the Irish good looks of an innocent Kennedy. He’s all freckles, thick light brown hair, and white teeth.
    Aunt Feen stood next to him in a Christmas sweater embroidered with two cats playing with two blue satin Christmas balls. Her pink lipstick had worn off except for the ring around her lips, which matched the kittens’ pink tongues perfectly. My sisters and I call her lipstick look “the plunger.”
    My gram, Teodora Angelini Vechiarelli, wore a white winter suit. Dominic looked very dapper in a white shirt, red tie, and forest green Tyrolean vest. Gram had her hair cut short in feathered white layers, while Dominic’s silver hair was combed back neatly. It occurred to me that my grandmother and Dominic actually looked younger since they’d married. Maybe the slow pace of life in Tuscany kept them young. Whatever they were doing, I wanted some of that.
    My sister-in-law Pamela’s long blond hair looked white-hot against the simple turquoise wool sweater she wore with a black leather pencil skirt. She makes forty look like thirty-two. Her stilettos were laced with turquoise ribbons—I had to find out where she got them. My brother Alfred knelt dead center in the middle row, looking exactly like the photo from his basketball team at Holy Agony, aging aside. He’d been the captain then, and he