Page 31 of It's Always Sonny

PARKER: Trying to get me to run the Luciano family reunion for the press!

JANE: That’s exactly what we were trying to do.

LOU: I don’t buy it, PJ, and neither should you. They’re definitely trying to set y’all back up.

PARKER: See? Thank you, Lou. The rest of you are on blast.

ASH: What did I do?

PARKER: You didn’t tell me.

ASH: Save the drama for Millie’s llama.

LOU: GROOOOOAN.

PARKER: *gif of Mercutio* A plague on both your houses.

ASH: She’s resorted to quoting Shakespeare, gang. Jane, Millie, apologize.

MILLIE: Sorry, PJ.

JANE: Sorry I didn’t tell you.

PARKER: I reject your fake apology. I expect TWO pairs of Jimmy Choos.

By dinnertime, I lead the Luciano clan to the covered pavilion near the industrial kitchen. The weather up until this week has been in the low sixties, but now it’s maybe fifty degrees, and it’s only supposed to get colder. Anita warned everyone about the cold front, but it’s clear that half of the great grandkids didn’t take the warning seriously.

What is it with teens and jackets? Are they embarrassed to be warm? Is Watch Me Get Frostbite and Lose Some Digits a new TikTok challenge?

Thankfully, commercial patio heaters dot the pavilion, making dinnertime more comfortable for those poor teens thirsty to prove to everyone that they’re too cool for comfort.

The family was very specific about the menu. I watch them carefully during dinner to make sure that it’s all to their liking. When I find out that Nonna spent the afternoon with the chef, I make a mental note to apologize to him. I never met Nonna while Sonny and I dated, but I saw pictures and heard enough stories about her to know that she’s a pistol.

And now, I’m seeing that firsthand.

She holds court during dinner without saying more than a few words. She doesn’t preside in a showy way, but it seems to spring up naturally. The family is seated among several long communal tables, with Nonna and Great Aunt Mary and Nonna’s daughter-in-law at the center table, surrounded by space heaters. Nonna is tiny. She’s shorter than I am, even without my heels. Yet her presence is larger than life, almost mythical.

“Tell us the one about the dog poop!” a teen calls out. He’s sitting with Sonny’s cousin, Emma, so I assume he’s her kid.

Nonna waves her hand. “You don’t want to hear those old stories,” Nonna says.

“Yes we do!” another great grandkid says. And then the great grandkids and even some of the grandkids start to pound on their tables. After five or ten seconds, Sonny’s uncle, Bruno, hushes them.

“Okay, okay, here’s how it went,” he starts. “When I was young, we lived in a small neighborhood in Virginia. One of the neighbors had this show poodle he was so proud of, and he would let the poodle poop in everyone’s yard in the neighborhood and never cleaned it up. It was a mean, miserable beast. The owner thought he was better than the rest of our working class neighborhood. One day, Mom asked the man to stop letting the dog poop on her lawn, and he swore up and down that he would.”

“Spoiler alert,” Sonny’s dad says. “He didn’t.”

Everyone laughs.

“Mom crossed the street, knocked on his door, and told him to pick up the poop, or else. Instead of apologizing or making empty promises, he said that our house was an embarrassment since Dad died and that she should feel honored to have a prize poodle’s poop in it. He said it would increase the value of her POS property.”

People gasp, including me. I look at Nonna, and she’s touching her bare ring finger, not looking at the rest of the family.

“Mom turned and walked back across the street with the man laughing at her the entire time. For the next week, Mom went to every neighbor on the street to pick up the dog’s feces.” Bruno eyes Nonna, who’s shaking her head. “She kept it in a baggy outside, adding to it until the collection was complete. Then, when the man went out of town for a dog show, she shoved every last piece of poop through the letterbox of the man’s front door with a note. What did it say, Mom?”

Nonna smirks. “‘Hadn’t realized this was so valuable. Thought you might want it back.’”

The whole pavilion roars with laughter, and I can’t help chuckling with them.

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