When she opened the door and looked at him she'd said only, “Dio mio, Luigi! Che cosa ti è successo?” While she bathed his wounds and fed him sips of too-sweet, too-milky coffee, Luigi told the whole story, keeping nothing back. He could tell la nonna was furious, but not with him. She muttered to herself in dialect, and then took his hand and said, fiercely, in strongly accented English. “You stay 'ere, Lu, with me. And I talk to the fool your father.”
She stomped off to the telephone. Through his misery, Luigi wondered that such a short woman could have so much presence, so much menace, just in the way she walked. There ensued a short, poisonous conversation with his father. He could hear only her side, but it was obvious that she was skelling his father out. She slammed down the phone and stared in silence at it for what seemed an eternity. Then she said, “Bene.” No more than that, but the tone was killing. Then she shook her head and pressed her lips tightly together.
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