Free Lambrusco by Ellen Cooney

said Marcellina. “He’s ours, but not Lucia’s! She insists on going to another one, across two villages, just because he’s Sicilian!”
    â€œThey tell me you play golf,” said Ugo.
    â€œGolf!” said Marcellina. “Everyone’s talking in riddles! Signorina
Americana,
or Sister, how should I know what to call you? You have a nun’s hair! I am Marcellina Galeffi, which no one has mentioned! No one makes introductions of a housekeeper! Let’s go to the car, not that I look forward to being stuck in a cave!”
    Marcellina stamped her foot like an impatient nanny. “Lucia, you’re not saying anything!”
    â€œMy throat feels a little dry. A little scratchy.”
    â€œYou’re ill on top of everything else! You sound hoarse! Ugo, do something!”
    â€œWe have some wine in the car,” said Ugo.
    His same old calm manner. His same old echoes of Aldo: a resemblance in the narrow lines of his nose, the curve of his quick, soft smile, the slight hollows under the cheekbones, which had stayed with Aldo even after he’d got so overweight.
    His same old bushy eyebrows, so at odds with the rest of his face, not having grayed at the tempo of his hair: two tweedy, black-and-silver, woolly-looking caterpillars. “Ugo’s awful caterpillars,” Beppi used to call them, running to a mirror, licking his fingers, reaching up to smooth down his own.
    His same old way of not looking at me directly. His same old stoop. He was almost as tall as Annmarie, but they had opposite methods of coping with their height. Where Annmarie was straight-backed and full of ease, poor Ugo acted as if he hated it. He always seemed to be ducking down low, as if worried about hitting his head on a doorframe.
    His same old imperfections. The eyebrows, the stains on his teeth from smoking, the wrinkles; the hollows, the narrow chin with its tiny scar, just off-center, about the size and shape of a thorn, where a patient had once attacked him, with his own scalpel.
    A voice inside me rose up, like a warning. Always it was this way. Don’t do it. Don’t go near him.
    To go near him would be breaking a rule. Where had I heard the rules about being a widow? What song was it?
    It was an old one, a folk song, about someone giving a new widow advice. An old woman talking to a younger one. A litany of proper etiquette. Hymn-like, but it wasn’t a hymn.
    I remembered. The proper title was “The Apparition To Mary Of Jesus’ Grandmother, Following Joseph’s Death.” But everyone called it “Mary, Mary, Don’t Do It.”
    Mary, a new widow, is walking away from her husband’s grave, bent low in mourning. Her mother, dead for many years, steps down from a cloud to have a talk with her.
    It was no surprise to me that I was thinking of it now, in a village of carpenters, all of whom were likely to have Joseph as their personal occupational saint.

    Follow my simple widow’s rules.
    Soon, you may want to look at men,
    You’re human.
    You may want to look at men a certain way.
    You’re not a saint yet.
    It’s well before the Assumption.
    You may want to look at men,
    But they’re married, all of them.
    If a certain someone flutters your heart,
    Keep your distance!
    Mary, Mary, don’t do it!
    Don’t go near him!

S PRING , 1924. Almost twenty years ago. That was when I knew about Ugo.
    It was a Saturday evening at the
trattoria.
This was the second one, the bigger one. There were six long tables seating eight apiece, or even a dozen if people were willing to be squashed together, which they usually were. The smaller tables—prime seating—were by the windows.
    Mariano Minzoni, stolen by Aldo from the Grand Hotel in Rimini, was already head of the kitchen, and even then, still youthful, he was cocky and arrogant, terrorizing everyone. Poor Gigi Solferino, having hoped for the position, was overwhelmed with depression,