Heard It Through The Grapevine. Pamela Browning
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Josh gestured toward the crowd. “She’s wandered off, I guess,” he said.
“You did okay for your first time,” Nick said. “Here are a couple of T-shirts. See that Gina gets hers, will you?”
As a new group of contestants climbed into the barrels, Josh looked down at his feet. They were purple. So were all the other previous contestants’, but they didn’t seem to care, so why should he? He scrambled down from the platform and took off in pursuit of Gina, whose ash-blond hair was highly visible near the food-laden tables. He caught up with her as she was piling barbecued ribs onto a plate.
“Here,” she said, unceremoniously shoving the plate in his direction.
“Nick said to give you this,” he said, handing her the T-shirt.
She afforded him a grudging smile as she tossed it over her arm. “Thanks, Josh. Second place isn’t bad, you know, for your first grape-stomping experience.” Her gesture encompassed the abundance of dishes on the tabletop. “Please help yourself to the food. There’s Aunt Dede’s special penne-and-artichoke salad. She’s a caterer here in the valley and my mother works for her. Also, Claire—she’s Uncle Fredo’s daughter—made her prize carrot cake, and you might want to try that.”
Josh set the plate of ribs aside momentarily so that he could roll his pantlegs down. Gina caught sight of the purple stains on the fabric.
“Uh-oh,” she said with a grimace. “I’m sorry about your pants.”
“Don’t be. It’s nothing a good dry cleaner can’t fix.” He picked up the plate and helped himself to Aunt Dede’s salad.
“Try the bruschetta,” Gina said as they moved past the layered salad, the marinated mushrooms, the artichoke pie.
“Hey, Gina, did you make your special mussels-and-tomato fettucine?” Rocco called from a table at the outskirts of the group.
“Not this time. Too busy,” she called back.
“Aw, that’s too bad. I’ll let you sit with us, but only if you promise to invite me over for it soon.”
Gina glanced up at Josh. “Do you mind hanging out with Rocco? Or have you had enough?”
Which was how Josh found himself part of another amiable family group. He met Gina’s vivacious cousin Bobbi, who said she’d served in the Peace Corps, and her husband, Stan, who owned a chain of fresh markets. He met Albert Aurelio, a salt-of-the-earth type who had married into the Angelini family and was now chief financial officer at Vineyard Oaks. When Josh’s plate was empty, he returned to the buffet table for more food and found Maren putting out bread and rolls that she’d baked herself, and later he listened with rapt attention as Gina’s cousin Carla, who was unmarried, talked animatedly about her career in public relations with the local winegrowers’ association.
“Are you the one who made the carrot cake?” he asked her. “It’s the best I’ve ever tasted.”
“No, that was Claire. She’s over there—the tall one with the long earrings. Don’t worry,” Carla said with a laugh. “No one could get all the Angelinis straight right away. A lot of people have the same name—for instance, Big Tony and Little Tony.”
“I met them playing bocce,” Josh said, digging into the artichoke pie.
“They’re not to be confused with Anthony Ceravolo, Rocco’s dad, who married Aunt Gianna and is sometimes called Tony. And of course Aunt Gianna is not to be confused with my cousin Gina, who brought you here, and neither of them should be mistaken for Jennifer Saltieri Thompson, who for some unimaginable reason is sometimes referred to as Jeni, with a long e. Oh, and Marcy, who is Little Tony’s wife, is expecting a baby girl in a few months, and she and Little Tony say that they intend to name their new daughter, guess what? Toni.
“Of course,” she went on, “we have a Timmy and a Jimmy who are brothers. And Jaimie, naturally, doesn’t like to be mixed up with Jimmy. There’s Sophia, the grandmother of Sophie, and a Ronnie and a Donny, and Victorine, Vicki and Victor.”
“Don’t forget Fredo and Fred, Emma and Emily, Suzanne and Susan, and Mia, whose middle name is Suzanne,” chimed in an older woman, who introduced herself as Audra.
“Maren and Maureen,” contributed Carla. “Margo, Marco and Mark.”
“Thank goodness for Teresa and Angelo Bono. They named their kids Zizi and Dodie. They’ll never get mixed up with anyone else.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that,” said Gina. “Zizi and Dodie are only nicknames.”
Audra frowned. “What are their real names?”
“No one remembers, thank goodness,” Carla said with a laugh.
Josh grinned, and all in all, by the time dinner was over, he thought he had never met more interesting people gathered in one place in his entire life.
Night fell, and the party, with a final tired wheeze of accordions, was declared to be over by Fredo. Barbara, Nick’s wife and Gina’s sister, came over to their table and presented Josh with a Super Stomper Certificate in honor of his stomping grapes and attending his first crush. People lingered, gathering up their children, their strollers, diaper bags and wraps as they bade one another fond goodbyes. And before her parents came to carry her home to bed, Mia curled up on Josh’s lap and almost fell asleep.
“I have to leave,” Gina said to Rocco after the Sorises had departed. “I’ll need to be up early to work in the herb garden in the morning.” Others were wending their way through the big oaks to their cars, and the cleanup detail was stashing containers of food in a van marked Dede’s Catering Service.
“I should help fold the chairs,” Josh said, but when he offered, Rocco told him that it wasn’t necessary.
“We’ve got things under control, don’t we, Frankie?”
“Sure, Pop,” Frankie said with a jaunty grin. “Hey, Josh, how did you like crush?”
Amazingly, he didn’t even have to think twice; Josh immediately gave it two thumbs-up, much to Frankie’s delight.
“Now, Josh,” Rocco said in parting. “You get any extra time, drop by the house. I’ve got a bocce court in my backyard, and I’ll give you some pointers.”
As painful as the bocce experience had been, Josh thought he never wanted to see another bocce ball or court as long as he lived. But he did want to see Rocco again, so he managed a halfhearted grin. “Will do,” he said before hurrying after Gina, who was halfway to the parking lot by this time.
ONCE THEY WERE AWAY FROM everyone else, Gina was self-conscious around Josh, though she certainly felt more favorably disposed toward him since he’d made such an effort to fit in. She hadn’t expected Rocco to take to him so well, nor had she counted on her mother’s trying to make him feel welcome.
Josh didn’t say much as they put up the Galaxie’s convertible top and got in the car. He tossed his shoes in the back seat; the night had never grown as cool as expected and he was still in his bare feet. As they headed down the long Vineyard Oaks driveway toward the road, moonlight dappled the car’s long hood with shadows and cast a silvery glow ahead. Gina sneaked a glance at his aristocratic profile and suppressed a grin when she saw that he was smiling. She wasn’t quite sure why she was glad that he’d enjoyed himself tonight; whatever vengeful feelings she’d nurtured since the Mr. Moneybags show seemed to have been crushed out of her as completely as the juice from the grapes.
“Your niece is a charmer,” Josh said, apropos of nothing.
“Which one? Stacey or Mia?”
“Mia. I didn’t get too well acquainted with Stacey.”
Gina smiled. “They’re both my sister Barbara’s kids. Stacey recently became a teenager, and she likes to congregate with her cousins at family events. Mia is my godchild as well