He Spoke Her Language, So I Said Goodbye novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Say It in Italian

Willa plays the garage recording with English subtitles in front of 140 guests; Dante calls it a joke, Gianna's mother walks out, and Luca leads her out through the kitchen and texts her to check where her sixty thousand went.

The man in the hotel vest looked at the phone in my hand, then at my hoodie.

"Ma'am, the bride isn't supposed to be in here yet."

"I'm the bride," I said. "And I need the screen that shows the slideshow."

He hesitated.

Behind him a hundred and forty guests were drifting in through the side doors, kissing cheeks and finding their seats.

The ballroom had a wall-sized screen above the altar that said Willa & Dante in gold script.

"It's my wedding," I said. "I'm asking you for one cable."

He found one in a black case.

I plugged in the phone and pulled up the recording.

My sister Bridget came through the doors at that moment in her green bridesmaid dress and her work clogs.

She took one look at me and stopped dead in the aisle.

"Willa. Why aren't you dressed?"

"Sit down, Bridge," I said. "Please. Sit in the front."

She sat.

She didn't ask anything else, which is why she's my sister.

I took the microphone off its stand and held it.

The room was almost full, and the quartet in the corner had gone quiet when they saw me.

Dante's mother sat in the front row in navy silk with a rosary in her lap.

Dante's older brother stood at the back by the doors with his arms folded.

The side door beside the altar opened, and Dante walked in with a pocket square on and Gianna a step behind him carrying my bouquet.

He saw me holding the microphone, and the smile dropped off his face.

"Willa. Amore. What are you doing?"

"Good morning, everybody," I said into the microphone. "Thank you for coming. I need three minutes before we start."

I pressed play.

The speakers filled with Italian, quick and warm and low, a man's voice and a woman's.

On the screen above the altar, the English came up line by line over the photo of us at the Cape.

Two more hours, it said. Then I can stop pretending to be nervous.

Somebody in the third row laughed, thinking it was a game.

Then the words kept coming.

Poor Willa. She picked out the napkins herself.

She still thinks the restaurant was my idea.

Gianna set the bouquet down on the altar step, very carefully.

"It's her mother's money, and Willa gave it to me with a bow on it."

A woman near the aisle put her hand over her mouth.

Gianna's mother sat three rows back in a lavender suit, and she was the only person in that room who didn't need the subtitles.

I watched her listen to her daughter laugh in a car.

She stood up before the recording finished.

She picked her purse off the chair and walked out the side door without looking at anyone.

Rosa, in the front row, had stopped moving.

Her rosary was a straight line in her fist.

"Turn it off," Dante said, and his voice cracked in the middle. "Turn it off. This is a private conversation."

"It's very public now," Bridget said from her chair.

I let it run to the end.

The screen read: Go on, then. Say your vows for me.

Then, in English, in a flat little voice from every speaker in that ballroom: "I do."

Gianna's laugh came out of the speakers a moment later.

Nobody in the ballroom made a sound.

I put the microphone back on its stand.

"Dante," I said. "I'm told it's a joke in Italian."

"It is." He stepped toward me with both hands out. "Willa, listen to me. It's a joke. It's an inside thing, we've done it for years. In Italian it's nothing, it doesn't mean what it says."

"Then it'll be funny in English too," I said. "The screen says exactly what you said. Which part isn't what you meant?"

He opened his mouth.

Gianna looked at the floor.

"Willa," she said. "Please. Let me explain."

"In which language?"

Somebody in the back laughed once and stopped.

The brother at the doors had come halfway down the aisle without my noticing.

He bent and said something to his mother in Italian, short and quiet.

I couldn't follow a word, and for the first time that day I didn't care.

Rosa nodded without looking up from her rosary.

Then he was beside me.

"Not that way," he said, in English, nodding at the guests. "Come through the kitchen. Bridget, with her."

Bridget was already on her feet.

The three of us went out through the swinging door behind the altar, past the cake and two caterers who pretended to be reading the menu.

In the service corridor I opened my fist and set the ring on a rolling cart.

I stood there shaking, in jeans, in a hotel hallway, on the day I was supposed to get married.

"I'm Luca," the brother said. "We've met nine times, and you've never gotten much out of me."

That was true, and I laughed, and it came out wrong.

My phone buzzed against my palm.

The text was from Luca, who stood six feet away with his back to me, typing.

The sixty thousand your mother left you. Check where it went.

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