“What’s the name of that lipstick?”
Mary smiled broadly. “Big Apple Red.”
“Nice.”
They shook hands and Mary turned to go, feeling like she really wanted to make Maria Garcia proud.
After subletting her apartment to some tech bro, Mary’s biggest test was still to come. Her family’s Sunday supper was going to be brutal. No one in her family could understand why she was going on this wild adventure with her college girlfriends instead of staying home and working on getting married and starting a family. She’d been bracing herself for days in the lead-up to the feast.
She got to Staten Island at three in the afternoon before the rest of the family arrived. Her Nonna had already been cooking up a storm.
“Hi, Nonna,” she said, wrapping her grandmother in a hug from behind while she continued to make meatballs. “That smells so good.”
“Special gravy for you tonight, my girl.”
“I’m so lucky.” She looked around the kitchen. “Who else is coming—the entire island? There’s enough food here for everyone.”
“I made extra. Going to send you home with it for your freezer.”
“But I’m leaving on a plane tomorrow, Nonna.”
“I know. That’s why I got you an extra suitcase when I was at TJ Maxx.”
“You’ve thought of everything.” Mary relented. There was no way she was hauling all this food to Wisconsin. She hoped her subletter liked Bolognese.
Her parents walked into the kitchen with open arms.
“Hi, Pop,” she said, folding herself into his embrace.
“Hi, baby girl.” He kissed her head.
“I can’t believe you’re leaving me,” Mary’s mom, Christine, said.
“I’m not leaving you. I’m going on a short-term adventure. I’ll be back before you know it.”
Mary kept a positive attitude the entire night as it went on like that.
“Welcome to the Last Supper,” her brother Frankie said as he passed the bruschetta.
“I’m not dying,” she said.
“Why do you assume you’re Jesus in this scenario? You might be one of the other guys.”
“Yeah, like a tax collector. The old-fashioned lawyers,” Joey, her closest brother in age, said.
“Could you weigh in here?” she implored Gabe, the priest, to back her up.
“I’m the peacemaker, Mary.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Do you think you’ll meet any lumberjacks out there?” her sister-in-law Donna asked, biting into a roasted pepper.
“I can hope,” she said, imagining bringing a burly man back to Sunday supper and showing him off to her family.
After dessert, her dad raised his glass of Sambuca.
“To Mary,” he said. “You’re our best girl.” Emotional, he wiped away a tear.