They Spoke Sicilian Over My Head, So I Called My Don Grandfather novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: Every Word

Thirty-one people sat down to the first Ruggieri dinner in Port Alder.

I took the chair at the head of the table, with my grandfather on my left and Massimo on my right.

The housekeeper brought out veal, risotto, and a tray of grilled octopus I did not touch.

For the first course nobody looked at me directly.

Then the man from the Naples side, the stooped one who had judged Carmine, leaned toward the cousin beside him and spoke in dialect, low, behind his hand.

"Pretty enough," he said. "Too pretty. A girl from a billing office. Give her a year at that chair and she'll run home."

The cousin laughed into his glass.

At the far end, a woman in pearls added, "She has her mother's forehead but not her spine. Aurelio is sentimental."

A young man across from her said, "I'll give her until Christmas."

Another lifted his eyebrows. "Look at her. She isn't even listening."

They glanced at me, every one of them, and checked my face.

It was a habit older than I was.

I let them look.

I cut a piece of veal and ate it, and I waited until the table had gone quiet enough to hear a fork.

Then I laid my knife down.

"Pretty enough," I said in Sicilian.

My voice carried.

I looked at the stooped old man and said it in his own dialect, with his own vowels, flat and exact.

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