Luisa Gigli was born in Italy in 1920. She'd gotten married by the time she was eighteen to an American soldier and moved to America never to see her family again. Then, after her husband got shipped off to the Pacific, she raised three children by herself all the while holding down two jobs as a waitress and assembling bombs in a munitions factory. Then her husband came back and she had four more kids. She had instilled in each of her children a Catholic fear of god that was only rivalled by their fear of her. Needless to say, Nonna was one tough cookie. She expected Maria and all twenty-nine of her cousins to get jobs, be successful, get married, and make her a great-grandmother before she dies. Fifteen of the cousins had fulfilled this duty and Maria was next on the chopping block.
Which was why, when Maria sat wedged between her cousin Donna's son Antony and her oldest sister Luisa, Nonna asked the dreaded Question.
'Maria, when are you going to bring a boy to dinner?' Nonna had been asking the Question every Sunday dinner since she was fourteen. Maria had tried bringing home a boy just to shut Nonna up (Really, he was a lovely boy named Felix who was quite sympathetic and quite gay. His husband is a lovely man and Maria was a groomsmaid at their wedding.), but instead was asked about him every dinner after for two years. In the Hill family, you didn't even think about taking someone to meet Nonna unless there was a diamond ring on your finger. Maria did not have a ring on her finger, and, being almost thirty, had almost been given up as a lost cause.
Normally, Maria brushes off the question by talking about how busy, yet for some inexplicable reason she finds herself opening her mouth and words that have nothing to do with annual quota and rushed deadlines coming out.
'Well, there's someone, but we'll have to wait and see if what happens.' This immediately coaxes her siblings and their children into a round of catcalling that's almost immediately silenced by a stare from her grandmother.
'Maria will bring this boy around when she is ready.' Maria smiles, thankful that her grandmother is on her side just this once–
'But for heaven's sake girl, I'm not getting any younger and I want to beat Marjorie Phillips, she already has twenty-five great-grandchildren and I only have seventeen.' Well, that was nice while it lasted.