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Sal brought the wooden spoon to his lips, letting the tip of his tongue flick out to taste the marinara sauce. His tongue recoiled at the heat, but he smiled nonetheless; that last dash of basil had done the trick.
"Perfecto." Sal turned off the burner and lifted the pot to pour the sauce over the bowl of flaccid linguine. "Mamma!" he called as he balanced the bowl between two mittened hands and carried it into his mother's dining room. Mrs. Romano looked up from arranging her place setting and smiled as her son placed the bowl upon the table.
Sal gestured at the bowl, encouraging his mother to eat. "Mangia," he said, with a smile.
Mrs. Romano spoke English, but with difficulty, and never with the passion and nuance with which she wielded the Italian language. Sal understood the value of the polished presentation of ideas, and he'd never pressured his immigrant mother to conform to the all-American world into which he himself had assimilated with such determination. It wasn't so much trouble for him to use his mother's language, in the privacy of her Baltimore home.
Mrs. Romano sat down, pulling her napkin into her lap and spooning linguine onto her plate. "That's my good boy," she said, in Italian. "Always taking care of your mother." She picked up her fork and dug into the pasta, twirling it around the tines before taking a bite. Her face turned quizzical. "Mmm… next time, more basil."
Sal's smile froze. "Yes, Mamma," he said, through slightly gritted teeth. "Of course."
They ate in silence for a few minutes, mouths full of the apparently imperfect food, but silence had never lasted long in their family. Sal broke it first, talking idly about his latest campaign, about the color samples he'd been studying and comparing to capture just the right shade of lipstick for each new Belle Jolie ad.
"You work too hard, Salva," Mrs. Romano chided. "Too much time at your drawing desk, too little time out in the world."
"Oh, come now, Mamma. I was celebrating with the boys from the office just last week."
"And what of the girls?"
Sal laughed. "Those silly secretaries? They may be nice to look at, but they aren't the kind of girls I'd take home to meet you."
His mother shook her head. "Amore mio. Every weekend you take that train down here all alone. It's not healthy. You'd do your mother's heart good to bring home any girl, even a silly one."
"And let someone else take my attention away from you?" Sal stood, partly to stop the tell-tale shaking in his legs that happened any time the conversation came around to this. He stepped around the table on the pretense of refilling his mother's wine glass and leaned in to kiss her cheek. "Never in a million years."
That was usually enough, for his mother. They'd been having this conversation for so long that part of Sal was convinced that she had to know why he kept avoiding it. She had to see through his proclamations of lust with no evidence behind them. She had to know why he hadn't brought a girl into their house since Suzy Miller in the fourth grade. And she must have noticed the way he used to look at Tommy DeCaro across this very kitchen table, when he'd dined with the Romano family two days a week through most of high school. (His parents had always liked Tommy, with his impeccable manners and boundless confidence, though they might not have liked him as much if they'd known what he'd gotten up to with their son the night they'd found the key to Mr. Romano's liquor cabinet.)
But tonight, his mother grabbed his hand. She was getting on in years, but you couldn't tell from her grip. "Kitty Carter has been asking about you, you know."
"Little Kitty?" Sal laughed, conjuring an image of a child in pigtails and bashful grins. "They should have named her Puppy, for all she used to follow me around."
"She's grown into a fine young woman," his mother said.
So it hadn't been as much a non sequitur as Sal had hoped.
"Mamma…" he protested.
"Don't you take that tone with me." His mother's eyes flashed as her voice rose. "She'd be a perfectly good match for you. Pretty and Catholic, with a strong frame -- good for bearing children. She's a terrible cook, of course, but that can be fixed."
"I have a job several states away, Mamma. I don't have time to be courting some neighborhood girl when there's so much work to be done." Sal could tell the excuse was weak in the face of his mother's sudden intensity.
Mrs. Romano still hadn't let go of her son's hand, and she spoke in a whisper that was deadlier than her shout. "I won't see your late father's name die with you, Salva." When Sal met her eyes, he could see all the knowledge that had remained unspoken between them for so many years.
So this was it, then.
Sal swallowed the bitter pill of defeat, washing it down with rationalization. He'd spent so much time lying to so many people, what difference would one more girl make? Perhaps it was all for the best, anyway. Presentation mattered, after all. "Ok, Mamma. I'll visit her."
His mother nodded, satisfied. "Good boy. Now serve me some more linguine, won't you?"