Page 62 of Que Será, Syrah

It told me that they weren’t just friends.

“Oh, I know, I know,” Nonna was saying—when I recovered from my shock. And I think I may have missed part of their conversation while I was grappling with my surprise. “I’m probably being silly. But I know my son. Geno does not handle change well. He never has. He closes in on himself. He focuses all his attention on what’s immediately in front of him and lets everything else go. And it’s my fault—I know that, too. Well, mine and Leo’s. Actually, mostly Leo’s, I think—not that I mean to speak ill of the dead. But we had our own pain, he and I; our own grief to deal with. The loss of our child, our firstborn—neither of us handled that well, I’m afraid.”

“I don’t know how you would,” Jimmy replied. “Or how anyone would. You can’t blame yourself for that.”

“Oh, I know,” Nonna agreed. “But we had other children—and they suffered, too. I think we lost sight of that for a while. Geno was saddled with too much responsibility, at too young an age. And then criticized for not being able to deal with everything as well as his brother had. I should have seen what was happening and put my foot down. But…”

Nonna’s voice trails off and Jimmy says something else I can’t hear. Then Nonna again, “But no! Don’t you see? That’s precisely the problem. I won’t be there to advise him. And I doubt there’s anyone else he’ll listen to. So, I have to do what I can—to protect my girls, mie tre sorelle. I have to make sure that they are not the ‘pieces’ that get lost when the bowl shatters.”

So, I guess, after all, she was talking about the will…

* * *

By the time we reach the point in the movie where Max is forging letters to ensure that his mysterious cousin (coincidentally, a girl from Napa) can inherit the winery, instead of him, I’m remembering why I’d found it so confusing.

There’s the inheritance angle. The love story sub-plot between Max and his childhood friend. The illegal vine sub-plot—because if you think Napa wine laws are convoluted and pointless, France is here to say, “hold my INAO glass!”

There’s a strangely contentious winemaker who clearly knows more about everything than he’s saying. A passive-aggressive dog— “See, Moose?” I whisper to the little dog whose head is resting on my leg. “That’s bad. Don’t be like that.” And, at the end of the day, Max has to give up the winery (and the life he built in London) in order to get the girl. Which, then and now, has always struck me as being massively unfair.

I mean, he’s the one with the memories of growing up there, isn’t he? He’s the person his uncle wanted the winery to go to. But that’s not how the movie ends, and that’s not how life works out either, most of the time.

As the end credits roll, we fall into a discussion about when we should do this again, and what movie we should watch next time. Since November is right around the corner, Gianni suggests that we aim for a Friendsgiving dinner. Which has an unfortunately quelling effect on all of us, driving home the point that, with Nonna gone, we probably won’t be celebrating Thanksgiving together as a family anymore.

It takes me a moment to rally from that, but my sisters bounce back quickly. “Yeah, for sure. The Sunday after should be good for us,” Rosa says. And “You’ll be back by then too, won’t you?” Bee asks Jansen.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Jansen says, nodding gamely. Which makes him a keeper in my book.

In a desperate attempt to move the conversation along, I start tossing out suggestions for next month’s movie. I lean hard into the old musicals that I remember Nonna having loved, prompting Leo to marvel at my memory. “How do you remember so much?” he says. “You had to have slept through half those movies.”

“Sleep learning!” Gianni suggests. “She remembers more than the rest of us do because all those songs went straight into her subconscious mind.”

“Grullo,” Vitto murmurs dismissively—basically calling his brother gullible. “That doesn’t work.”

“How would you know?” Gianni replies, playfully shoving his brother. At least I think it’s supposed to be playful. “Show me your research, carciofo.” And I can’t tell if they’re about to start fighting or if calling your brother an artichoke is just something brothers do.

Either way, I switch instantly to deflection mode. “That’s not why,” I tell them. “It’s because I had mono in high school and was sick for weeks.” It was early in my junior year—while both my sisters were away at college. I was out for so long and fell so far behind that my school enrolled me in their independent study program, and I was basically homeschooled for the remainder of the year.

“Nonna and I spent a lot of that time watching movies together.” And re-writing song lyrics. And making grand plans for the future—this future. Now. A future that, by design, did not include her. Funny how I hadn’t really recognized that, at the time.

And now I’m blinking back tears and spiraling into depression again, largely unaware of the worried looks the others are casting at one another.

“Hey, you know what?” Rosa says. “We have weeks to decide, we don’t have to make up our minds tonight.”

“That’s true,” Leo agrees. “And we need to get going now, anyway. We can talk about that later.”

“Or we don’t even have to,” Vitto suggests. “Why don’t you three decide? You have good ideas. And, you know us, we’re easy to please.”

“Oh, sure,” Gianni says with a laugh—that’s cut short when Leo smacks him in the back of the head. “I mean, yes. We are. Total pushovers. Love those chick-flicks.”

* * *

After my cousins leave, I make an excuse and slip away to quickly text Clay?—

“Can I come over?”

He texts back after less than a minute?—

“Now? It’s kinda late,”

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