What it does to my ass is another story entirely.
My mother has miraculously kept the figure she’d been gifted with when she sailed through her teen years, even after birthing six kids. Breasts like a screen siren’s, a tiny waist, and hips built for pregnancy, my mother’s silhouette is a classic hourglass and she still dresses in ways that accentuate her assets. The movie star bombshells of Hollywood’s heyday have nothing on my mama for natural sexiness.
As a teen, being her daughter hadn’t been easy. My brother’s friends all fell in pubescent lust with mama. Standing next to her I paled in the female comparison department and looked more like another of her sons than her darling daughter.
But she had a heart of gold and when she loved you it was for life. That military expression I’ve got your six could have been devised for mama because no matter what stupid things my brothers had done, any trouble they’d gotten into, and even through my turbulent and emotional teen years, she’d always had our backs.
“Louie. Louie,” she shouted as she blew like a sirocco into the room. “I just heard from Frankie about a dead guy at the store. Mi amore! Your heart. Are you okay? You ain’t hurt are ya?”
She flung her fur coat off and it landed on the floor in a heap behind her. Wrapping her arms around my father, who’d stood the moment her worried voice boomed through the back door, she cried, “Are you okay?” She ran her hands over his head, down his shoulders, to his chest, her gaze raking along with her movements, making sure all his parts were intact and he wasn’t spouting arterial blood.
My father, ever calm and controlled, took her hands with his and brought them both to his lips. After he kissed each one he continued to hold them as he told her, “I’m fine, Gracie. I’m okay. It was Donna who found Chico, not me. And he was already dead.”
My mother whipped her head in my direction. With her forehead a mass of furrows and her eyes pinched at the corners, she pulled a hand from my father’s grip and grabbed my arm. “You okay, bambina?”
I squeezed her hand and nodded. Then, without any warning, an unusual need to fall into her arms and cry overcame me. When a sob escaped me full-force, she pulled out of my father’s hold, clicking her tongue on the roof of her mouth, grabbed me, and hauled me against her chest, my nose crushing into her well-supported cleavage.
Her arms were like steel traps and she kept me glued to her body while she rubbed my back and cooed in Italian. A quick whiff of her knock-off L’air du temps combined with a hint of garlic and I closed my eyes as the tears fell.
I’m not gonna lie: as a thirty-four year old, grown-ass woman, nothing made me feel better when I was off-kilter than when my mama held me in her arms. I’m not one iota ashamed or embarrassed to admit it.
As I cleaved to her she asked my father, “You’re sure you’re okay?” He told her he was, then, “Why don’t you take Donna into the kitchen, mi amore? Get her something hot to drink. It’s been a long morning for her.”
My mother nodded then slipped an arm up and around my shoulders. “Come on, bambina. Let the boys talk.”
I allowed her to propel me into the kitchen she’d had remodeled the year before.
“Sit.” She pointed to one of the breakfast bar chairs.
I grabbed a paper napkin from the holder on the marble topped counter, did as she commanded and sat, then swiped at my wet eyes.
This is mama’s domain. Daddy may run a successful deli and is an amazing cook in his own right, but Mama rules the kitchen in our house. When nonna was alive she could be very stingy with any kind of praise, but she always complimented my mother on her cooking skills, honed—of course—at nonna’s knee.
Moving with the finesse of one who knows where every single item is to be found in her world, Mama filled the teakettle then put it on the ceramic-topped stove to boil. She didn’t even look when she reached into one of the cupboards and pulled down two porcelain cups with one hand, the other disappearing into one of the pottery containers on the counter that held the teabags.
I sat, silent, watching her move with efficiency from one task to the other, and marveled as I’d done my entire life at what a dichotomy she was. While she had the body of a pampered goddess and could cook like one of the world’s finest Italian chefs, she wasn’t – what my Uncle Sonny often remarked – the sharpest knife in the drawer. I’d always thought this was mean, but in reality, it was God’s truth. My mother wasn’t a member of Mensa – not even close—and on any given day she was known to pop out with things that made most of us cringe or she’d ask a question a bit too intrusive for the person being asked. She had a habit of saying exactly what came to the front of her mind at any given moment with no regard to filtering it. This was one of the reasons my father never let her work in the deli. She couldn’t be trusted around the customers to self-censor. But, despite this one flaw, he adored her, as did I.
She reached into the cabinet under the sink and grabbed the bottle of brandy she kept there for emergencies. When my nonna had been alive, the bottle had gotten a great deal of use, especially after one of her visits. Mama poured way more than a shot-glass full into my teacup after adding the boiling water. She let it steep for less than a minute then handed it to me.
“Drink this. And then tell me everything ‘cause I know your daddy won’t. He’ll gloss over details thinking he’s protecting me.” She waved a hand in the air with a dismissive flick.
I sipped the liquor-laced liquid, knowing she was right.
“Antonio Roma is the person in charge?” she asked when I finished giving her chapter, book, and verse about what had gone down in the deli.
I nodded. And yes, I’d disobeyed the request for silence, just as my father had.
Mama crossed her arms over her ample chest and pursed her full lips together. “He still as drop-dead gorgeous like he was as a kid?”
“Unfortunately, he’s even better. Like one of Uncle Sonny’s Barolos, he’s aged well.”
“Why does that only happen to men?” She shook her head. “Men get old and they get, come si dice? More refined. We just get old and wrinkly. It ain’t fair, you know?”
I couldn’t agree more.
With a very knowing squint she continued to stare at me. It took everything in me not to squirm under her perusal.
“You had a little thing for him when you was younger, bambina. Don’t deny it,” she pointed a finger at me.
I slammed my mouth shut.
“I gave birth to you, little girl. You got no secrets from me.”
I choked on the potent tea.
Santa Maria. I hoped I had at least one secret from her, one that involved what I’d done at seventeen with Tony.
Mama continued to stare at me.
“That boy was a heartbreaker,” she said when I stopped coughing. Her cap of champagne colored curls bounced when she shook her head. “Left a line of girls mooning over him with tears in their eyes when he enlisted.”
I knew that, since I’d been one of those girls.
“I wonder if he moved back home. Alfonse Roma had a heart attack last year, a big one. Almost took him out. Since Tony’s the oldest, it makes sense he might’a gone back home to help out.”
She peered at me as if I knew the answer. All I could do was shrug. The amount of knowledge I had about Tony began and ended in the back seat of a car almost two decades ago.