Badfellas by Tonino Benacquista Emily Read Page B

destructive rather than constructive purposes. He returned to the kitchen, where Maggie was back at work, spoke the words he had dreaded having to say (“Have we got a number for a plumber?”), and then helped himself to a plate of peppers, which he took away with him to eat on his veranda.
    As soon as the children got back from school, Maggie gave them jobs to do: the younger one chopped vegetables, and the older one took charge of the garden, the table setting and general decoration. She was expecting more than thirty people, which was about a third of the number of regular guests at the barbecues in the old days in Newark – one a month, from April to September, and nobody would dream of missing them. On the contrary, there, new faces kept turning up – people who saw an opportunity of getting their foot in the door.
    “What do Normans put on their barbecues?” Warren asked.
    “I’d say lamb chops,” his mother replied. “With potato, radish and fromage blanc salad on the side.”
    “My favourite!” Belle said, as she passed through the kitchen.
    “If you tried giving them that, it would be a disaster,” said Warren. “We have to give them the sort of American barbecue they expect.”
    “What’s that?”
    “American swill. Big fat American swill. We mustn’t disappoint them.”
    “That sounds delicious, my son. Makes me really want to try it.”
    “What they want is pornographic food.”
    Maggie stopped dead with her cheese grating and, unable to think of a comeback, forbade him to use that word.
    “Mom,” Belle said, “your son isn’t using the word pornographic in the sense that you think.”
    “The French are fed up with refinement and healthy eating,” Warren continued, “that’s all they ever hear about. Steaming, boiled vegetables, grilled fish, fizzy water. We’re going to free them from guilt, Mom, we’re going to give them fat and sugar – that’s what they expect from us. They’re going to come and eat here as if they were going to a brothel.”
    “Watch your language, boy! You wouldn’t dare talk like that in front of your father.”
    “Dad agrees with me. I caught him playing the stupid American in Cagnes, and people were begging for more, he made them feel so clever.”
    Maggie listened to her son holding forth as she continued to put the final touches to her Tex-Mex potato salad, toss the Caesar salad and drain the ziti before dropping them into the tomato sauce. Warren fished one out and tasted it, still boiling hot, from the giant transparent plastic salad bowl.
    “The pasta is perfect, Mom, but it’s going to betray us.”
    “?…”
    “They’ll realize that we were Italians before we became American.”
    Fred rolled into the kitchen with an air of abstraction. Warren and Maggie stopped talking. With the same gesture as his son, he picked at the pasta, chewed it carefully, nodded at his wife and asked her where the meat was that he was supposed to be cooking later. Not having chosen it himself, he half-heartedly inspected the merchandise, weighed up a few steaks and examined the mince. The fact was, he had left his study in order to give himself a little time to reflect on a passage he was finding particularly difficult.
    The word I hate most in the world is “sorry”. Anyone thinks I’m sorry, I shoot them on sight. The day I took the oath and shopped everyone, all those lawyers and judges would like to have seen me bow my head and beg for forgiveness. They’re worse than priests, those little judges. Me, regret anything about my life? If it was all to do again, I’d do everything – EVERYTHING – the same, just avoiding a couple of traps at the end. Apparently, for the French, regretting is when the painter repaints his canvas. Well, let’s say that’s what I’ve done, I’ve covered a masterpiece with a new layer and that’s all the regretting I’m going to do. A guy who regrets his life – he’s worse than an immigrant who doesn’t feel any more