“This is my sister Tess.”
“You have two daughters, right?” Roman asks as Tess extends her hand and he shakes it.
“Yes, I do.” Tess is impressed that the stranger has retained any biographical information about her whatsoever.
“And this is my baby sister, Jaclyn.”
“The newlywed?”
“Yes.” Jaclyn shakes his hand and squints at him like she’s surveying stew meat in the butcher department at D’Agostino’s.
“Well, Roman, what did you make for us?” Mom bats her eyelashes at him.
“It’s a cobbler of blackberry and fig,” he says, just as I hear my niece pipe up from the stairs.
“Who’s that guy?” Charisma points at Roman.
“Charisma. Come over here and say hello.” Tess looks at Roman. “I’m sorry. She’s seven. She hates all boys. This is Aunt Valentine’s friend.”
Charisma squints at him. “Aunt Valentine doesn’t have friends.”
“Well, not in a long time, but now she does and we’re all happy for her,” my mother explains as I contemplate jumping headfirst out of the kitchen window.
“We’re just about to sit down to dinner.” Mom makes a sweeping gesture with her arm toward the table. My mother’s body language shifts from slight wariness to full receptivity of Roman Falconi. “You must meet my husband and the boys.”
“Our brother, Alfred, his sons, and our husbands,” Tess explains as she puts her arm around Jaclyn in a united, don’t-mess-with-us fashion.
“You’re forgetting Pamela,” I remind them.
“And Pamela. My only daughter-in-law. She’s so tiny you almost miss her.” My mother waves her hand in the air and laughs.
My father and the boys come downstairs and Mom, now in full command of Roman Falconi, introduces the remaining family members. Alfred’s sons extend their hands in greeting, like gentlemen in the drawing rooms of old. Chiara, with all the charm of her older sister, makes a face at Roman, and runs to join her sister at the table.
Gram motions to us to help her in the kitchen. Pamela stands up to come with us, but Tess says, “Don’t worry, Pam. We’ve got it.” Pamela shrugs and goes to the table.
“You complain that Pamela doesn’t help and then you don’t let her,” Gram whispers.
“If we gave her a platter to carry, she’d collapse under the weight and her stilettos would sink into the floorboards like penny nails.” Tess puts a pepper grinder under one arm and picks up the water pitcher with the other. Gram, Jaclyn, and I grab the last of the platters and join the family at the table.
My father takes his place at the head of the table. He folds his hands in prayer. He makes the sign of the cross, and we follow him. “Well, God, it’s been a helluva year.”
“Dad…,” Tess says softly, looking at the children, who find the mention of hell hilarious in a prayer.
“You know what I mean, dear Lord. We’ve had trials and tribulations and now we meet a new friend on the journey…” Dad pauses and looks at Roman.
“Roman,” Mom pipes up.
“Roman. We give thanks for our good health, my relative good health, Ma’s eightieth birthday, and all the rest in between.” Dad goes to make the sign of the cross.
“Dad?”
He looks up at Jaclyn.
“Dad…one more thing.” Jaclyn takes Tom’s hand. “Tom and I would like you all to know that we’re having a baby.”
The table erupts with joy, the children jump up and down, Gram wipes away a tear, Mom reaches across the table to kiss Jaclyn and then Tom. Dad holds up his hands.
Roman takes my hand and puts his arm around me. I look up at him; he is beaming, which means the world to me.
“My baby is having a baby. Well, this is proof positive that God isn’t sinkin’ our ship just yet.” Dad puts his hand to his forehead, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit-”
“Amen!” we shout, the least religious of my mother’s children the loudest. I’m thrilled about Jaclyn and Tom’s news, and I’m also happy that my first Christmas with Roman is off to a great start.
We crowd onto the roof in our coats, hats, and mittens for the Annual Christmas Marshmallow Roast. Mom follows with a bottle of Poetry wine and a stack of plastic glasses embossed with sexy girls dressed as elves. (Where does she find this stuff?)
Dad and Alfred load the sticks with marshmallows and hand them to the kids, who gather around the grill like little match children, holding the white puffs into the flames. Roman puts his arm around me.
“Time to light the torches!” Mom calls out. “Ambience inside and out, I say.”
“She’s exactly as you described her,” Roman whispers in my ear, then joins Charlie and Tom as they fan out and light the torches on the corners of the roof.
Dad helps Alfred Junior and Rocco hold their marshallows on sticks to the flames. Charisma, a little pyro, lets her marshmallow burst into flames, open like a bomb, and ooze onto the hot coals. Chiara waits patiently, toasting each side of her marshmallow uniformly. My sisters stand behind the girls, guiding them as another holiday tradition is handed down from my generation to the next one.
“Great-gram?” Charisma asks. “Tell the story of the velvet tomatoes.”
“Great-gram has had too much great wine.” Gram sits down on the chaise and puts her feet up. “And I’m having some more. Have Auntie Valentine tell the story.”
“Tell the story!” Charisma, Rocco, Alfred Junior, and Chiara jump up and down.
“Okay, okay. When I was six years old, my mother brought me over to stay with Gram and Grandpop when she went to see Phantom of the Opera for the eighth time.”
“I love an Andrew Lloyd Webber show,” Mom says unapologetically to Roman, who shrugs.
“Alfred and Tess were at summer camp…”
“Camp Don Bosco,” Tess clarifies.
“…and baby Jaclyn was in Queens with Dad. I had Gram and Grandpop all to myself. And I came up here to play on the roof. First I had a little tea party, using garden tools for utensils and mud for scones. Then I decided to be like Gram, and I went over to the tomato plants and started to dig around in the dirt. But when I looked up through the vines, there were no tomatoes. So I ran downstairs, right into the shoe shop, and I said, ‘Somebody stole the tomatoes.’ And I started to cry.”
“She almost had a nervous breakdown,” Gram says wryly.
“She was worried! No tomatoes,” Chiara says in my defense.
“Right. So Grandpop explained that sometimes the plants don’t bear fruit, that sometimes, no matter how well you take care of them, it’s just too rainy for the plants to make tomatoes. The plants are so smart, they know not to bloom, because the tomatoes would come in all mealy and tasteless, and what good would they be?”
“And then I said we might have to wait until next summer for the tomatoes to grow. But Valentine was heartbroken.” Gram lifts her glass of wine.
I pick up the story again, looking at Roman, who is as engrossed as the kids in the fate of the tomatoes, or maybe he’s just being polite. “The next Sunday, everyone came over for dinner, and Gram said, ‘Go up to the roof, Valentine. You won’t believe your eyes.’”
“And everybody raced up the stairs!” Chiara says.
“That’s right.” I put my hands on Rocco’s and Alfred Junior’s shoulders. “We all came up to the roof to see what had happened. And when we got here, there was a miracle. There were tomatoes everywhere. But they weren’t tomatoes to make sauce, they were velvet tomatoes, made with red and green fabric, and they dangled from the barren plants, like ornaments. Even the tomato pincushion from the shop was there, hanging from the vine. We jumped up and down like it was Christmas morning even though it was the hottest day of summer. I asked my grandfather how it happened. And he said, ‘Magic!’ And then we all celebrated the harvest of the velvet tomatoes.”
My mom gives me a thumbs-up as the kids eat their marshmallows and we drink our wine. I look around at my family, feeling blessed and full. Pamela remains glued to my brother’s hip, like a gun holster, while Gram lies with her feet up on the chaise. Tess and Jaclyn pull Mom away to watch a Norwegian cruise ship make a lazy entrance into New York Harbor. I look at Roman, who seems to fit into this crazy family without too much fuss. The moon peeks out between the skyscrapers looming behind us, looking an awful lot like a lucky penny.