“Rosa,” Elise says around a mouthful of food. “Are you exaggerating? How does someone gain forty pounds and not eat any sugar?”
I sigh. “Homemade bread, homemade pasta, buttered popcorn. It was a lot easier than you’d think.”
“Oh,” Elise says with a grimace. “I believe it. Yet somehow Angelina defied all the odds and managed to stay fit as a fiddle. How’d you do that, girl?”
Angelina grabs a plate of nachos from the buffet table and sits cross-legged on the floor. She digs in with gusto.
“Stress,” she says. “Anxiety. I don’t recommend it.”
Elise grimaces. “Oh, right.”
Angelina was incarcerated right here in our family home during the beginning of her pregnancy, because she and Elise had concocted a plan to fool my brothers. They’d switched places and fooled all of them into thinking Angelina was Elise. When the real Elise turned herself in, Angelina was forced to watch her be punished for the same crimes.
My brothers can be seriously ruthless. Maybe, if I’m honest, they’re not the only ones.
“Those boys are incorrigible,” Marialena says, but in a low enough voice that if any of “those boys” were in the hall outside her room, she wouldn’t be overheard. Romeo once threatened to send her to Tuscany for openly defying him, and she hasn’t forgotten it.
Vittoria smiles from where she sits, sipping a cup of tea. “I don’t disagree,” she says, shaking her head. “Now, Marialena, I’m dying to hear what my cards say.”
Marialena reaches for Vittoria’s cup instead. “I think I’d like to start by reading your tea leaves, Vittoria. May I?”
Vittoria nods, her mass of wild amber hair swirling around her face. She’s got pretty, vivid eyes and lips that are almost always tipped up in a smile. I like her. “Ah, a smorgasbord tonight.”
Marialena swirls the remaining tea, then pours the tea leaves onto a paper napkin. She frowns at the little design they make. She turns the napkin around, as if trying to see a way into the knowledge they hold, then her eyes light up.
“Oh, wow, Vittoria. I’m seeing nothing but good fortune.”
I tune it out as Marialena goes on and on. I have no use for things like this.
Finally, she pulls out the cards again. “And here we go,” she says happily. “I am so glad I finally got all of you together to work on this. I’ve been dying to, you know.”
I laugh. “It only takes someone’s birthday for us all to finally find the time to do it, huh?”
“Well, yes, if the birthday girl wants to corral us all into her mystical woo-woo ways,” Elise says with a wink at me. She and I share similar views on all mystical, spiritual things, and love to pull Marialena’s leg.
“Watch it, girls,” she says. “I do have voodoo dolls in my chest.”
Vittoria pokes a pinky finger at Marialena’s free-swinging breasts. “Oh, do you? All I see is a pair of free birds.”
Angelina snorts with laughter. We all know Marialena’s talking about the chest that sits at the foot of her bed, where she carefully packs away her Tarot cards and crystals and books, and I suspect a good supply of candy, as well, which she knows would be gobbled up in seconds by our gluttonous brothers.
“Oooh, Voodoo,” Elise says, waving her hands over her belly. “Don’t curse the baby, Lena!” She gasps, her eyes go wide, and she sits with her legs spread wide apart. “Oh my God, did you see that?”
We all crowd around her huge belly and croon our little praises to the tiny baby, whose feet are kicking up a storm like they’re doing a little jig in there. Elise and Tavi haven’t found out the sex of their baby yet. I’m kinda hoping for a niece so my Natalia isn’t the only girl, but I’ll love any little baby that comes our way.
I stare out Marialena’s window at the garden below and stroke my hand absentmindedly over my own flat abdomen.
I don’t want a baby. Not now. God, it would complicate things so much, the very thought pains me. But that doesn’t mean I don’t allow myself a little space to dream of a baby with light brown hair and pale blue eyes, as soft and pretty as a rain cloud…
“Now, listen,” Marialena says, turning to face the girls. “Tarot can’t predict the future. It doesn’t work like that, okay? But it can help you, like, make decisions and know what the right thing to do is.”
“So can logic and reason,” I say under my breath. Elise snickers, but Marialena is unperturbed. It’s Marialena’s birthday. I can give my little sister a little grace for today.
“It’s a good way to stay grounded,” she says, gesturing without a trace of humor on her face. Always one to crack a joke, she takes this very seriously. “When things are overwhelming or I’m struck with indecision.”