Don't Sing at the Table Read online

  My Italian grandparents aspired to the British style, from the chintz teacups to the chocolate brown crossbeams set in beige stucco on the facade of the Tudor. For them, all things British meant aristocratic. Whenever Viola admired a well-turned-out gentleman, she said, “He was like a duke.” And when a woman did the same, “She was a queen.” The royal touch went one step further. Underneath the floor, at the foot of the dining room table (Viola’s seat), was a servant bell that, when pressed, dinged in the kitchen to summon the help. Usually, “the help” was a blood relative of the hostess.

  From this small kitchen, Viola produced gorgeous dinner parties. She served canapés and cocktails in the living room (aqua and gray decor) first. Viola made a mean Manhattan, and as kids, we’d fish out the maraschino cherries after the grown-ups went into the dining room to eat. The canapés were pure charcuterie, slender slices of Italian salami, juicy olives, fresh local scamorza (a locally made version of mozzarella, braided by hand) dusted with black pepper, served with small biscuits and fresh bread.

  The first course was always one of her hearty soups (Italian wedding soup with greens) followed by a salad, made with fresh greens tossed with a simple oil and vinegar dressing I cannot duplicate (I only know she never used black pepper, only salt, to season a salad). She went through phases where she’d come upon a new recipe and perfect the dish by repeating it over the course of a year’s worth of dinner parties. She went on a jag in the 1970s where she made oysters Rockefeller in actual seashells. This was a perfect dish to serve with a Fuzzy Navel, a fresh aperitif made with peach schnapps.

  The main course usually harkened back to meals prepared during her youth on the farm: creamy polenta with a robust tomato sauce tinged with cinnamon, savory meatballs and sausage with her handmade manicotti (filling and crêpes), or a Venetian fish brodetto in a marinara sauce that I crave to this day.

  For dessert, she made fruit pies from scratch, simple pound cakes and cookies from her sister-in-law Gus’s oeuvre (Italian sesame cookies, small chocolate cups, and ginger cookies we called “dunkers”). There was no fancy frosting or rosettes of whipped cream—she was as direct in her baking techniques as she was on the factory floor. She used the freshest and best ingredients, never a box mix or prefab dough. Her devotion to eating fresh was a lifelong commitment; we used to drive to a nearby farm early in the morning so she might have the freshest eggs for baking. The Miller Egg Ranch operated on the honor system; you took what you needed and left the exact change in a cup.

  Viola was a regular at Calandra’s in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, where they made fresh ricotta, mozzarella, and grated Romano cheese. When my dad decided to move his young family from Pennsylvania to Big Stone Gap, Virginia, she said, “I could never live in a place where they don’t make cheese.”

  After dessert, she served digestifs (bitters, Fernet Branca, Amaretto, or Fra Angelico) from a standard 1950s rolling liquor cart with two shelves. There was always a large carved wooden bowl filled with nuts and studded with silver nutcrackers and matching picks to remove the meat from the nuts, placed on the table after dessert. Viola even had a fancy table-size silver-handled whisk broom and dustpan to sweep up the shells.

  After dinner and dishes, there was usually a card game, and sometimes there was just conversation, but I remember feeling content after one of her dinner parties, hoping the night would never end. We laughed a lot. Viola played records on the hi-fi before and after dinner, stacking the LPs of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, One Thousand and One Strings, and other instrumentals. The hi-fi still works because none of her sixteen grandchildren was ever allowed to play it.

  I once asked her how she knew how to throw dinner parties. After all, her own mother had died so young, and all Viola knew was life on the farm. She did not have exposure to fancy restaurants or grand parties, yet she knew how to prepare elegant dishes and entertain with style. Viola admitted she studied how people entertained in the movies (“the show”) and learned how to create a dinner party from a small series of books she received when she married.

  The Woman’s Library was created by Social Culture Publications in New York City in the 1920s as a series of advice books for young ladies who aspired to be proper hostesses, entertain like the upper classes, and present themselves with good manners. With or without these books, I doubt the queen of England herself entertained her guests better than my grandmother. And I’ll bet the cooks at Buckingham Palace couldn’t top her polenta.

  Everything I Ever Wanted

  Long summer days were workdays for Viola, as they were loaded with light, perfect for hanging laundry on the clothesline, baking, and cleaning. Viola rose early, and often started her day berry picking.

  One summer morning, before daybreak, Viola drove her station wagon, the back loaded with empty baskets, on a winding road through Flicksville with walls of green corn on either side. She was on her way to a commercial farm loaded with strawberry fields, where you could pick your own and pay for them. Her baby sister, Lavinia, had the same idea. She too rose early, drove to the farm, grabbed a stack of empty baskets from her car trunk, and waited for the flatbed truck to take her up the hill to the fields filled with the ripest berries.

  As the sun came up over the mountain, Lavinia saw the truck coming down the dirt road toward her. As it appeared in the distance, she saw a lone rider with her legs dangling over the side of the flatbed, surrounded by baskets filled with fresh picked strawberries. It was my grandmother, well into her seventies, wearing cutoff jean shorts, a vibrant polyester blouse, and a sun hat. When she saw her baby sister, she said, “You’re late.”

  Viola’s routine was to return to her kitchen with the fresh-picked berries and commence making pies, crust first. Viola’s fruit pies were works of art, sweet fruit in a delicate, lacy crust. I never remember a slice left over, they were eaten the day they were baked. She loathed sleeping late, didn’t understand it, never did it, and thought it a terrible waste of time. “I don’t understand why anybody would waste the morning,” she’d say. To this day, as a result of her example (and insistence), I can’t sleep late. I still get a vision of my grandmother’s face, much like Saint Thomas Aquinas had when he saw the face of God promising eternal life in exchange for a purposeful life. Once I’ve seen The Face, I have to get up. And, like Viola, I need eight to ten hours of sleep, so early to bed is a house rule. “It’s time for the Lily White party,” Viola used to say around eight in the evening. Some party. Sleep was part of her master plan to get more work out of you the following day. This good habit sustains me, and now I’ve passed the habit along to my daughter.

  A particular summer day at Viola’s house stands out in my memory. I am one of seven children, Viola is one of six herself, so we shared the big-family dynamic. Therefore it was rare that we were alone, just the two of us. But on this particular day, we were. I was in college and was spending the summer with her, and had a job as a fry cook in a local restaurant. I had one day off a week, and Viola looked at my day of rest as an opportunity to get things done around the house.

  Viola: the hostess with the mostest.

  So I washed her car.

  Cars in particular, their care and maintenance, were important to Viola; they were an outward sign of opulence and another gleaming ray of the sun called the American dream. She told me about my grandfather’s car on their first date, and how much she admired it (running boards, rumble seat). Various photographs of her from the age of sixteen feature her in the foreground, and a car gleaming in the background, the ultimate sign of working class success.

  Throughout her life, she took care of her cars like jewels. Cars were markers of particular eras in Viola’s life, and memories were built around them. In the late 1920s, Viola drove a Nash Roadster. My grandparents owned a Packard in the 1940s, the “it” car of the moment, and then moved on to Cadillacs, the ultimate stature vehicle, American designed and built, like the blouses in the factory. When I was little, their 1962 Cadillac Sedan de Ville was charcoal gray with fins, with a pale silver leather interior. Her 1960s work car, a Ford station wagon painted dull gold, was often filled with bundles of blouses that needed sleeves turned, or tickets affixed. When her grandsons bought her a car later in life, it was returned to them in pristine condition upon her death, plastic seat covers intact. When my father graduated from college, the first in his family to do so, they gave him a mint-green 1954 Pontiac convertible. A car was the highest reward you could get in the Trigiani family.

  But that summer I was washing Viola’s 1970s car, a Mercury Grand Marquis four-door sedan, paying special attention to the hubcaps with a scrub brush. You would think that washing a car is not something you have to learn how to do, but Viola had taught me her technique years earlier and her expectation was that I would follow orders. She didn’t leave my efforts to chance. She oversaw my progress through the kitchen window. Once a forelady, forever a forelady. She did not restrain herself when it came to pointing out any missed spots.

  Viola maintained her car’s interior no differently from her own living room. We dusted, swept, vaccumed, and buffed. The carpet mats were shampooed. Then, once the interior passed her inspection, and before you scrubbed the outside of the car, Viola would take a squeezed lemon from the kitchen and set it on the dashboard, close the doors, and let the summer sun fill the car with a fresh lemon scent. (Throw the lemon out when it turns black. On a hot summer day, that takes about fifteen minutes.)

  To wash the exterior of a car, begin with two buckets of water, one spritzed with dish detergent (not too much, just a quick blast of soap), the other bucket with clean water. Have a garden hose close by. You also need a scrub brush for the hub caps, a bottle of bleach to whiten the rims, a cup of white vinegar to add to the clean, cold bucket of water for polis
hing the bumpers (later), and a pile of moppeens (old dish towels).

  Begin by swabbing the roof (without missing any spots!), then the hood, then the sides, and finally the windows. Soak the moppeens in the soapy bucket, with big circular motions cover an area, and then in straight rows, with rags dipped in the rinse bucket, cover the same areas. Hose off the car, making sure you leave no soapy residue behind. Commence the detail work: bleach the rims (scrub brush and Clorox) and polish the chrome (vinegar, cold water, and more fresh moppeens).

  By the time I was finished, Viola’s lime green land yacht glistened like a pale emerald.

  I was beat. But she wasn’t. Even at the end of a long day, I never saw her energy flag. She baked pies while I polished the bumpers, and with the hot sun over the hill, she jumped on the riding lawn mower and mowed the trim of her property. I can see her, weaving in and out of the property line like a whipstitch, the soft whirl of the motor in the distance. She was meticulous about her yard, and you’d often seeing her striding across the acreage collecting sticks. (If I was ever bored as a kid, she’d say, “Go pick up sticks.” Evidently, you don’t want sticks getting in the mower blades.) Viola took such pride in her green rolling hills; her lawn was treated more delicately than an antique Aubusson. She had a war going with the indigenous groundhogs, and took it personally when they’d bore holes in her yard or eat from her garden.

  Viola was a good shot, and owned several rifles, which she did not hesitate to use when a groundhog had the temerity to lumber into the open. I can see her, rifle cocked into the crook of her shoulder, her steely eyes squinting behind her eyeglasses, pale blue octagon frames so large they resembled windshield wipers (Dame Edna owns the other pair) as she tracked the vermin through the viewfinder on the gun. She was convinced that the groundhog came above ground to taunt her, so retaliation was necessary. When she’d pull the trigger, she’d hold the flank of the gun steady, so there was no recoil as there can be in police dramas on television. She was in total control, of the gun and the groundhog. The guns always made me nervous, and I declined to learn how to use one, even though she offered to teach me. Washing cars seemed safer.

  By late afternoon the laundry, hung on the line in the morning, was ready to come down. Folding her bleached sheets was like folding cardboard. She never used fabric softener (“It gums up the machine,” she’d say). She was an early environmentalist. Viola was green before anyone thought about being green. Every day was Earth Day for Viola. She loved a low electricity bill and a wee water bill. It was a badge of honor for her to employ Mother Nature instead of Mother Maytag.

  “Don’t you feel good?” she said to me on that summer day, inhaling the fresh Pennsylvania air. I didn’t want to admit I was exhausted, because she didn’t believe in it, so I lied and said, “Like a million bucks.”

  “Come on,” she said.

  I followed her into the kitchen. She took two crystal tumblers out of the cupboard and went for the liquor cart. She took the gold shaker and commenced making a killer batch of her Manhattans. Like a scientist making a brew to save mankind, she’d measure (by eye) sweet vermouth, whiskey, and a few tablespoons of cherry juice into the shaker. Then she’d gently shake the concoction like she was rattling maracas in a Carmen Miranda kick line.

  She put the shaker aside (“Let it rest,” she said), and made our hors d’oeuvres: thin slices of fresh mozzarella, the ends of some crusty Italian bread drizzled with a bit of olive oil. Then she took out a canister and put a couple of oil pretzels she had made on the tray. (These resemble popovers with a hard-shell crust. When you bite into them, they are spongy and not too sweet—perfect with a cocktail.)

  She poured the Manhattans into the ice-filled tumblers, added two cherries to each glass, and said, “Let’s go.” She carried the drinks outside, and I followed with the snacks.

  She usually took cocktail hour on her folding chair under the shade tree by the kitchen window. But on this day, I felt compelled to break her routine.

  “Let’s go sit in the field,” I said, grabbing a garden chair with my free hand, and we walked toward the top of the hill overlooking Viola’s lawn. The fringe of towering pine trees around the property seemed as tall as a city skyline. The low wall of fieldstone in the distance looked lavender as the late afternoon summer sky turned the color of a ripe peach. I lay down on the grass while Viola sat in the lawn chair.

  Viola had lived alone since my grandfather died. If she was ever lonesome, she never let on. Somehow, caring for the home she’d lived in with her husband and continuing his efforts to keep the land in perfect shape gave her a deep sense of fulfillment. Her home meant everything to her. She prayed to never have to leave it. Viola never got over the fact that she lived in this majestic Tudor, that she owned it outright, so she took care of it like a castle, a steward of the house and the land, knowing her time in it was precious and now fleeting.

  We sipped our cocktails and talked. Our relationship had changed over the years. At first I was in awe of her, then scared of her, but eventually she became my friend. These were the years I would love the best, when I was young and she still seemed to be. She had short, wavy, silver hair now, and her knees were bowed from arthritis, but in every other respect, it appeared she had not changed in the twenty years since I was born. She was still gutsy, and in fact she got more so as time went on. It was as if she wasn’t going to let anything get her, not old age nor sickness nor death. For a long time, I imagined that she’d never die. If anyone could skirt death, it would be Viola, by sheer determination.

  When she saw an elderly lady (around her age) crossing the street slowly, she turned to me and said, “She’s not slow because of her age. That one moved like a turtle when she was young.” Viola would not accept old age as an excuse for giving up or giving in. She had her armor on.

  The sun began to slip over the Blue Mountains. Hot summer days in northeastern Pennsylvania cool off quickly at twilight, and the temperature was near perfect. The sky colors were like an Impressionist masterpiece, saturated blues with streaks of lilac, soft corals hemmed in milky beige. I could see the first flickers of fireflies in the trees. Even the cocktail turned more beautiful in this light. The cherries glowed at the bottom of the amber mixture.

  Viola, far right, wears an ostrich plume hat, at her sister Helen’s wedding. They flank their father, Davide.

  This was bliss.

  I’m not much of a drinker, but Viola’s cocktails were delicious; they had a woodsy taste that burned my lips (the whiskey, evidently), but then went down sweet (the vermouth) and cold, as a lovely and immediate buzz ensued. After the chores that culminated in washing the car, I came to appreciate that lovely buzz. It meant we were finally off the clock; miracle of miracles, there was nothing left to do around the house.

  “Every once in a while, have a drink,” she said. “When you’ve earned it.”

  This advice comes from the same grandmother who sent me a tin of her cookies when I was in college. The note said, “Eat one cookie at a time.” I’m still not quite sure how to eat them otherwise. (Viola’s letter provided great entertainment to my roommate Cynthia, for whom I gave readings of the letters in our dorm room at Saint Mary’s. Cynthia, raised by steel magnolias from Alabama, said, “Dang. Your grandmothuh has mine beat. Mah grandmothuh sends me a tin of cheese straws, but she nevuh tells me how to eat ’em.”)

  There is nothing like the quiet in the country; you can think, and you can breathe. The scent of sweet grass hangs in the air and every once in a while the night-blooming jasmine plays through like delicate perfume on a sophisticated woman. I didn’t crave nature or peace and quiet in my youth, but now I understand my grandmother’s need for it. It gets harder and harder to think amid the noise of the world, and lately it seems that the volume dial has been cranked to the max. I look back on my time with Viola and remember the value of silence.