One

“Be back in an hour,” Aunt Minnie said, handing me a shopping list longer than my arm. “I don’t want to be late for my appointment at the chiropodist.”

I didn’t know what a chiropodist was any more than I could read Aunt Minnie’s warbling scribble. The intensity of her penmanship—the shape and form of each carefully constructed letter, both upper and lower case—could be felt like Braille bleeding through the post-marked and addressed business-sized envelope. She’d cut it open length-wise in order to accommodate her long list of instructions. Frugality, even when it came to recycling uses for paper, was Minnie’s middle name.

“I can’t read this. What does this say?” I asked, pointing to one of the many stops listed on the itinerary.

“Let me see.” Aunt Minnie slipped on the pair of bifocal glasses hanging from a chain around her neck. She peered down at the list and spouted, “Okay, we’ve got the turkey, gizzards and hot and sweet saus-seige from Arturo the Butcher; potatoes and parsley, pinnolis and lemons from Dutchy at the veg-a-table stand; cannolis and strufuli from Palermo’s… With the cod, you tell Giacomo that I want four fill-its, as big as my hand, half-inch thick.” She gestured at the length of her palm then held up her thumb and forefinger to demonstrate what she meant.

“Fill-its? Do you mean fillets, as in fish fillets?”

“Yes, fill-its…fillets.” She waved her hands in the air as if to brush off what she considered to be my ridiculous pronunciation. “No worries… Just tell Giacomo I sent you. He’ll know what to do. Now, you go. Andiamo.”

She pressed her rusty, folded up rolling shopping cart against my hip and practically pushed me down the concrete front stoop of her brownstone.

Oh, what have I gotten myself into!

A canopy of withering leaves clung to branches above me as that rusted shopping cart jiggled and shuddered. The wheels bumped loudly down each concrete step that led to the sidewalk.

“Okay, smile!” she hollered.

When I turned, there was my silver-haired aunt standing in the doorway. The mid-day November gloom was brightened by the faded yellow and blue flowers dotting her housedress. With her arms outstretched, her cane draped over her elbow, she snapped a picture of me with her Smartphone.

Enthusiasm oozed through her tone as she said, “I’m documenting our whole weekend together for my blog.”

“Since when do you have a blog?”

“Since I took a class at the Senior Center. You’re not the only creative one in this family, you know.”

“Well, let me teach you how to use my camera?”

“No. I don’t want to use that big complicated thing. Besides, no cameras for you this weekend—you promised.” She wagged a finger at me to reinforce her point. “You need a couple days of vacation from all that. And you need to live your life like a normal person for once.”

“Normal?” I let out a big, walloping guffaw. “And would you call a computer and Smartphone-savvy 96-year-old normal?”

She smirked.

Beneath a low mid-morning sky, cluttered with stubborn gray clouds, golden orange and red leaves from the tree-lined street sputtered down. They sent up a swooshing sound as a fierce gust of chilly fall wind scattered them across the pavement. I looked over my shoulder at Aunt Minnie who stood framed in the doorway, leaning on her cane.

“Burrrrrr! It’s cold out here,” she said. “Feels like snow.”

She bundled her ratty old cardigan sweater over her housecoat while I gathered my Polar fleece jacket around my neck to buffet against the chill. I blew warm air into my cupped hands.

“What exactly is a chiropodist anyway?” I asked.

My aunt raised one leg, pointing the tip of one of her orthopedic shoes my way, trying to do what looked like an elderly-looking version of a Rockette kick. “Foot doctor. I think you young people call it a podiatrist nowadays,” she said. “Need to have my tootsies tended to.”

Great-Aunt Minnie was the last of a dying breed—literally. She had never married and had long outlived every member of her immediate family. I was an only child and, with both of my parents now gone, Aunt Minnie, who was actually my father’s aunt, was a last vestige of an immediate blood-line family for me, and vice-versa. I found myself clinging to her more and more tightly as the years went on. She was like a rare and treasured antique, one that required continued care and maintenance, and I was eager to help preserve her longevity—even if it meant I’d have to muster more patience than readily available to my good nature.

Aunt Minnie was a woman of great contradiction. One part of her—the part that was never without her Smartphone and had a propensity for blogging—was updated for the 21st century. While the other part was steeped in the tenets of The Old World. It would’ve been nice, and it certainly would’ve made my life a lot easier, if the two worlds could’ve overlapped someplace in between evoking Aunt Minnie’s belief in contemporary American supermarkets.

“Too many germs,” she’d told me. “And the way the world is today, I can’t afford to take any chances. And I want to know who I’m buying from, so if they foul things up, I can go back and hit the stu-nod over the head with my cane.”

I might have only been 32 years-old, but I had lived long enough to realize that Aunt Minnie must’ve been doing something right to have lived, relatively healthy, on the planet for nine and a half decades, long before the advent of hand sanitizer, maybe even antibiotics. But her resistance to the concept of one-stop shopping would have me traipsing all over Federal Hill, a tiny enclave nestled in downtown Providence, Rhode Island where Aunt Minnie had lived—in the same house—her whole life. I’d have to hurry, as her list would have me stopping at little old-fashioned grocers and specialty stores tucked on side-streets in order to gather what she needed to assemble her Thanksgiving Day feast…and all in an hour.

Not an easy task.

I had been on a photo assignment in Iraq, so I hadn’t been back to see Aunt Minnie for almost a three month stretch. It was a longer absence than usual. As I dragged her grudging shopping cart behind me along Atwells Avenue, brittle fall leaves scuffling under my feet, I took note of how much the neighborhood had changed throughout the years. When I was a kid, Federal Hill was a small, repressed community, home to poor, immigrant Italians proudly sporting red, white and green flags everywhere. But in the years that I had studied photography at R.I.S.D, aka the Rhode Island School of Design—and stopped over to have dinner with Aunt Minnie once a week and do a couple of loads of laundry—it had slowly started to experience a resurgence. In the years since I had graduated, it had morphed into an upscale, quarter-mile square neighborhood still deemed as Little Italy—but of late, the world of the past and that of the present had started to collide. Upscale international eateries, high-end trattorias, pasticcerias, gelaterias, as well as exclusive fashion boutiques and art galleries, had been popping up everywhere.

Places such as these were not on my radar that morning, as Aunt Minnie had sent me on a mission to find the old world in the new. I followed her shopping list, which she’d organized so that I could make all the stops in the most efficient use of time.

The meat market was packed. But when Arturo, the butcher, heard the front door bell chime and saw me enter, he spouted my full name, “Anna Maria,” and with open arms he hurried around the high counter showcasing bright-red marbled cuts of ripe red beef, pork and veal. His blood-stained, long white lab-like coat didn’t deter him from winding his way through the bustling crowd and greeting me with a kiss and a bear hug. I towered over him.

“If it isn’t the prettiest world traveler.” He rose on tiptoes to plant a wet one on my check. “I bet you’ve got a guy in every port?”

“Yup. And you’re my number one fella whenever I’m back in Federal Hill.”

“Stop. You’re making me blush,” Arturo winked, his face bright beneath the shock of his white hair.

We soon settled down to business. After he handed me a heavy shopping bag filled with the turkey, giblet and sausage, and I stuffed it inside Aunt Minnie’s shopping cart, I went on my way.

I received a similar greeting from Dutchie, a paunchy little man with thinning hair and a dazzling smile who tended a tiny little vegetable store tucked off DePasquale Plaza.

“Where’s Minnie?” Dutchie asked at the first sight of me. The rustic-looking, wooden cart parked outside his store was stacked to overflowing with fresh fruit and produce more colorful than a rainbow.

“She’s already cooking up a storm for Thanksgiving. I’m her personalized shopper for today,” I told him, while he gave me a European-style kiss on each cheek. Traces of garlic filled my nostrils.

“Well, God bless her. She’s a little workhorse. She’s gonna outlive us all—at least until she can dance the Tarantella at your wedding.”

“Wedding?” I laughed, feeling my eyebrows crinkle and a wave of nervousness and dread rise up inside of me. “Do you know something I don’t know?”

“We’re always hoping, Anna Maria.” Dutchie held up his short, stubby hands, fingers crossed, then he pressed his palms together tall as if to steeple them in prayer. “You can’t let one bum ruin you for the rest of mankind.”

“He wasn’t a bum. But, I know. I hear you.” I swept my gaze off his, not really wanting to discuss my love life, or lack thereof, with the produce man and especially not over a bunch of green beans, Brussels sprouts and shiny red and green apples. But from Dutchie’s comment, I got the sense that the whole neighborhood probably knew about my romantic tales of woe, namely my broken engagement.

I quickly bid Dutchie goodbye. With a brown paper bag bursting with potatoes and veggies set atop the bundles from the butcher shop, I hurried off to Palermo’s Pastry Shop.

The pasticceria was mobbed and infused with the scent of espresso and warm, fresh-baked bread and cookies. I weaved my way through the crowd and ripped a ticket from a dispenser on top of the counter. It was set alongside a tray filled with samples of cookie and cake crumbles. I helped myself and while my palate detected the crunchy sweetness of a chocolate dipped, almond biscotti, I looked at my ticket. Number 776. The electronic tote-board climbed to 770.

I checked my watch. I’d already used up thirty-eight minutes on my first two errands. With six more people in front of me on the line, I hoped I could finish up here, get those fill-its at the fish store and be back to Aunt Minnie’s place in the twenty-two minutes that were remaining. My aunt’s idea of being on time was actually arriving places ten or fifteen minutes early. Aware of that, I tried to mentally slow down the clock by studying the sparkling glass cases bursting with an array of artful-looking cakes, tortes, pastries and cookies. I was starving by now and, with the sample cookie having whet my appetite, I was tempted to order one of everything. But when the owner, Carmela Palermo finally called my number, I stuck to Aunt Minnie’s script and ordered exactly what she had written down—four cannolis, two rum baba and two lobster claw pastries, and a dozen pignoli nut cookies.

As Carmela assembled and boxed up the order, she asked, “Is that all Minnie wants?”

“That’s everything.”

“Everything?” Surprise seeped from Carmela’s voice. Her bleached, strawberry blonde hair, swept up in a tidy bun, glimmered like a caramel cloud beneath the fluorescent lights. “Is Minnie all right?”

“Yes, she’s fine. It’s just gonna be the two of us sharing a quiet Thanksgiving dinner this year. She’s going to tackle the pumpkin pie herself.”

Carmela nodded in understanding, passing a white cardboard box, tied with white and red cotton string, over the counter to me.

“Sometimes quiet is better. You’re a good niece… Here,” she said, reaching across the counter to hand me a cup cake paper filled with a sfogliatelle—a flaky, multi-layered, clam-shaped pastry, sprinkled with powdered sugar and filled with sweet ricotta cheese and diced citron fruit. She knew they were my favorite and had been handing me a comp pastry every time I visited her store since I was kid.

Inhaling sugary bites of what would become my lunch, I traipsed out of the bakery and hurried down the block through Garibaldi Square, past a monumental bronze statue of the Italian general and patriot, and onto a nearby side street. It was comforting, after all the years, to be back amid the local flavor and folks of Federal Hill. It was my version of reuniting with family. Each warm greeting, comments and asides included, made me feel as though I were surrounded by the comforts of home, even though my actual “home” was a rent-controlled studio apartment in New York City. When I wasn’t on a photojournalism assignment, which wasn’t very often, I clocked in at the Associated Press Offices in Midtown.

With only minutes to spare before I was due back to collect Aunt Minnie for her doctor’s appointment, I dashed, navigating the shopping cart toward Giacomo’s fish place. The wheels shimmied along the cold, windy street. But when I spied the hand-crafted sign that read Fresh Catch, I stopped in my tracks. The hallmark of Giacomo’s store had always been a simple weathered sign that read Pesce/Fish. I looked up and down the street to see if I’d maybe passed Giacomo’s shop, but there were no other fish stores in the square. Figuring this must be the same place, I stepped inside. The bell on the front door jangled against the plate glass, echoing into the eerily empty shop. The soles of my sneakers squeaked upon the freshly painted concrete floor. I looked up at the fluorescent lights lining the ceiling. Was it me or did the place look brighter? The freezer doors…they had never sported Windex shines. There was an uncharacteristic void of customers and not even the sight of a clerk behind the counter. But after all, who, but my Aunt Minnie, buys fish on Thanksgiving weekend!

I stared into the glass cases sporting wide-eyed aquatic creatures with fins and gills and glistening scales set alongside trays of mollusks and shrimp laid out on ice with as much care as fine diamond necklaces sitting on velvet at a jewelry store. I glanced at my watch. Time was quickly ticking away so I said, “Hello. Hello…Giacomo? Anybody home?”

Out stepped a man much younger and taller than the Giacomo I’d remembered. I couldn’t get a good, clear look at him, as he was standing behind the uncovered tanks housing foraging lobsters. Wearing jeans, a faded R.I.S.D. t-shirt and old sneakers, he looked to me, wiping his hands on a towel as he asked, “Yes, how can I help you?” A New England accent tinged his voice.

When the man’s gaze met mine, time seemed to stop. I was stunned. Breathless.

“A.M.?” he asked.

My belly thrilled at the sound of hearing myself referred to by the initials of my first name. It didn’t take long to recognize traces of a man I used to know—his well-defined biceps filling out the arms of his worn t-shirt; his trimmed goatee; his receding hairline cropped ultra-short, no doubt, to conceal its diminishment. His face was no longer thin, but the familiar impish glow glimmering behind his warm, chestnut-colored eyes was unforgettable.

“Jack?”

“Ohmygoodness. A.M., it is you… Your hair—it’s so much shorter. And it’s lighter…”

I ran my fingers through the layered, shoulder-length, dyed strands remembering how in college my long, thick mane used to hang down my back at one point almost to my derriere.

“…It looks good. Becoming on you,” he said, scrambling. “So tell me. How are you?”

“I’m good. Good.” My heart was pounding so fast, I suddenly felt woozy and unwell. I ran a hand over my mouth, praying that I didn’t have traces of powdered sugar from the sfogliatelle pastry still dotting my lips.

In truth, this chance meeting had thrown me totally off kilter. The spontaneous part of me, the part dictated by my heart, was truly glad to see Jack. But my mind overruled my heart and unearthed a whole hodgepodge of feelings for Jack from a very long time ago.

Jack was a guy—really, the guy—who broke my heart in college. Although I don’t think he knew how deep and profound a wound he’d left in me. At the time, the slow dissolution of our relationship was all-consuming. Thankfully, the years had dulled the sting. He, and the thought of him, had ultimately been reduced to an every-now-and-then passing flash—the what-could-have-been-but-wasn’t-meant-to-be—that burned brightly in my mind only to dim just as quickly.

“It’s been a long time,” he said, studying me as if checking to see whether I had retained my youth any better than he’d retained his.

“Yes, it has been a while,” I agreed. “Hard to believe we graduated college what…is it eleven years ago?”

Jack nodded. “I was really hoping to see you at the reunion last year.”

“Oh, I couldn’t make it,” I told him. “I was on assignment.”

“On assignment? Sounds important… What do you do?”

“I travel a lot. Work as a photojournalist for the Associated Press.”

“Wow! You’re still there… That’s great.”

“And what about you?” I asked.

“Me? I work here.” He gestured with his hands, motioning around the fish store.

“Really?” I narrowed my sights on him. “Since when?”

“Since…” he hesitated. “Since I couldn’t feed my family on what I was earning as a starving artist.”

I quickly read between the lines of what he’d told me, but was unsure how to respond.

Okay, sounds like he couldn’t make a go of an art career… He’s married…has a family—outside of me, who doesn’t?

“So, I guess that means, you’re not in graphic arts anymore?”

He shook his head. “Unless you count my artwork for the Fresh Catch of the Day.” He pointed to a chalkboard mounted on the wall over the bubbles that ascended inside the lobster tanks. There were colorful sketch images of lovable looking squid and octopi with a price per pound printed beneath the gangly legs of the doodles.

“Some things never change. You always were gifted and talented.”

He laughed. “And I could always count on you for compliments.”

“How’s business?” I asked, swiveling my sights around the shop.

“I’m afraid if I say, good, the echo in here is bound to make you think I’m a liar. Come back on Christmas Eve and ask me the same question.”

The bell on the front door of the store jangled, and it served to dispel the beat of awkwardness that lingered between us.

“So, tell me,” he asked. “What are you doing on Federal Hill, anyway? Do you have a photo assignment in this neck of the woods?”

“No. Have the weekend off. I’m here to visit my aunt…Minnie LaRusa.”

“She’s your aunt?”

“Yes, my great-aunt. You know her?”

“Of course, I do. I’ve known her for years. She’s a great lady, a good customer.”

At his comment, my Smartphone chimed to alert me that a new text message had just been delivered. I rummaged through my purse and by the time I pulled out the phone, my pulse rose when I read the characters: Where R U? Getting late...

“Bad news?” Jack asked.

“No, I’m just kicking myself for teaching Aunt Minnie how to text.” When I looked up, I spied the wall clock hanging above the fish counter. It was official. I was now three minutes late in getting back to fetch Aunt Minnie. “She’s probably the only 96-year-old in the whole world who has an interest, and aptitude, for all this new-fangled technology. I’m taking her to a routine doctor’s appointment. And she’s not happy that it’s getting late.”

“Well, tell me what she needs, and I’ll get you out of here asap.” He clapped his hands together then rubbed his palms as if trying to warm them.

“She wants four cod fillets—or fill-its, as she calls them—as long as her palm and about a half-inch thick. She said Giacomo will know exactly what she needs. Is he here?”

He blushed. “Giacomo’s me.”

“You?”

“Yeah, I was my uncle’s namesake. When he passed away and left me the shop, I sort of reinvented myself from plain old Jack to the ethnic Giacomo. It sounds more authentic when I attend the meetings for the Federal Hill Little Italy Rotary Club. You know what they say… When in Rome…”

I burst out laughing. I had forgotten how much I’d missed Jack’s dry, deadpan sense of humor.

He reached a hand inside the case and pulled out a whole cod fish—head, tail, the works.

“You said four fill-its?”

“Right. Four.”

On the counter behind the refrigerated case, Jack settled down to work. With the precision of a surgeon, the long blade of a knife cut the fillets fresh off the fish, completely skirting the bones. Then he slapped the four of them atop the scale and said, “That oughta do it. Are these for dinner tonight?”

“No, they’re actually for tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? Thanksgiving?”

“Yeah, Minnie thinks it’s not Thanksgiving without every course imaginable—soup, salad, pasta, fish… Seven courses in all. It’ll probably be midnight by the time we actually dig in to the turkey and fixings!”

He grinned as he wrapped up the cod fillets. “Maybe she thinks the Pilgrims were Italian?”

“You might be on to something,” I told him, realizing how much I missed the easygoing, playful banter we’d had in college.

“Well, tell Minnie these are on the house,” he said. “Happy Thanksgiving to you both.”

As I thanked Jack, the one other customer in the store—a woman carrying a bag of Panko breadcrumbs and a jar of shrimp cocktail sauce—approached the cash register and interrupted our final goodbyes.

When Jack finally passed the bundle of fish over the counter to me, I looked and was surprised to notice he wasn’t wearing a wedding band.

“Well, you take care… And a Happy Thanksgiving to you, too.” I slipped the fish atop all the other bundles packed inside the overflowing shopping cart.

“By the way, you have a little smudge on the corner of your lip there,” he said, pointing to his own face in order to show where on my own.

Mortified, the small shop suddenly seemed hot and closed in. I followed his lead and wiped away what I figured were lingering traces of powdered sugar from the pastry and started pushing the cart toward the door.

I hurried out of the store, grateful to be met by a cool gust of fresh air.

My phone chimed again.

It was another text from Aunt Minnie: U R 10 mins late. Now I’m getting worried.