Very Valentine

“Your mother’s been landscaping again,” Gram says as we stand at the foot of the front walk of 162 Austin Street. “It looks like Babylon came to Queens.”

The Roncalli Tudor is freshly painted and shellacked with chocolate brown and off-white trim over the entry porch. There are three brand-new, glossy holly bushes on either side of the entrance. There are two small English-style flower beds where plain grass would ordinarily grow. The plots are crammed with decorative pumpkins, squat autumn cabbages, and the last of the purple impatiens, hemmed in by a slanting brick border on either side of the walk. Three hanging baskets spilling with shiny green leaves are suspended from the portico like the chickens in Chinatown. Over the front windows there’s a United States flag unfurled next to the flag of Italy. The window boxes beneath them are stuffed with red, white, and green foil pinwheels that spin in the breeze. Cars are to Queens Boulevard what flora, fauna, and foil are to my mother’s front yard. Everywhere you look, something is growing or spi

“She doesn’t know when to stop.” Gram takes a step onto the walkway. “I wonder what she spends a year on Miracle-Gro.”

“A lot. The Burpee seed catalog is my mother’s porn.”

“Hi, kids!” Mom pushes the front door open and runs down the sidewalk to greet us. “Ma, you look like a jillion.”

“Thanks, Mike.” Gram gives Mom a kiss on the cheek. “Your garden looks-”

“You know I hate grass. It’s too country.”

Mom wears a long, white, raw-silk tunic with matching white slacks. The deep V neckline of the tunic is studded with flat turquoise beads. Her brown hair is blown straight to her shoulders, revealing extra large, silver hoop earrings. Her shoes, winter white suede mules with four-inch chunky heels, show off her slim ankles. Her left arm, from wrist to elbow, is covered in silver bangle bracelets. She jingles them. “Very Je

“Very,” I tell her.

“I’m making custom omelets. Daddy is doing the French toast thing,” Mom tells us as we climb the stairs. “Everybody is here.”

The interior design of my parents’ home is an homage to the glory of the British Empire and a direct poaching of every room ever depicted in the Tudor style in Architectural Digest since 1968. Anything English is coveted by Italian Americans, because we respect whoever got there first. As a result, my mother adores cheery chintz, braided rugs, ceramic lamps, and oil paintings of the British countryside, which she has yet to visit.

Gram and I follow Mom to the kitchen, with its mod white appliances and white marble counters trimmed in black. Mom calls the color scheme “licorice and marshmallow,” as nothing in Mom’s life could ever be referred to as black and white.

Jaclyn has spread the photos from her wedding on the kitchen table. Alfred sits at the head of the table, but it’s Tess, who sits on his right, who captures my attention. Her nose is red; she’s been crying.

“Come on, you can’t look that bad in the photos,” I tease Tess, but she looks away.

Amid the commotion of double cheek kisses and hellos, I motion to Tess to meet me in the bathroom. We stuff ourselves into the half bath, off the kitchen, that used to be a pantry. The floor-to-ceiling wallpaper in pink, green, and yellow polka dots in this tiny space makes me feel as though I’ve landed in a bottle of pills. “What’s the matter?”

Tess shakes her head, unable to get the words out.

“Come on. What is it?”

“Dad has cancer!” Tess begins to wail. My mother opens the door to the powder room, revealing Dad, Mom, Gram, Alfred, and Jaclyn crammed in the doorway as though we are in a moving train and they’re on the platform saying good-bye.

One look at Dad’s face tells me it’s true.

“Air, I need air!” I shout. They disperse as we fan out into the kitchen. Dad grabs me and hugs me hard. Soon, Tess and Jaclyn are embracing him, too. Alfred stands back and away from it all with a grim expression on his already pinched face. Mom has her arm around Gram, big tears rolling down her face, yet miraculously, her mascara doesn’t run.

“Dad, what happened?”

“I don’t want you to worry. It’s not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal? It’s cancer!” Tess fights to regain her composure, but she can’t. The tears continue to flow.

“What kind?” I manage to call out over the weeping.

“Prostate,” Mom answers.

“I’m so sorry, Dutch.” Gram takes my father’s arm. “What does the doctor say?”

“They caught it early. So, I’m weighing my options. I think I’m going to go with the seeds implanted in the nuts scenario.”

“Dad, do you have to call them…nuts?” Big tears roll down Jaclyn’s face.

“I didn’t want to say scrotum in front of your grandmother.”

“It’s better than nuts,” Mom says.

“Anyway, evidently about seventy-five percent of men who reach my age have prostrate issues.”

“Prostate, honey.” From the tone of my mother’s voice, I can tell she’s been correcting Dad’s phonics since the diagnosis.

“Prostate, prostrate, what’s the damn difference? I’m sixty-eight years old and something’s go

“No, it wouldn’t be right,” I whisper. I look at my father, who is the fu

My mother puts her hands in the First Communion position. “Look. We are facing this as a family, and we will beat it as a family.” The expression on her face is pure Joa

“…on a sliding scale of four,” Dad adds.

Mom continues, “…which is very good news. It means at his age, your father could easily outlive the cancer.”

I have no idea what my mother’s explanation means, and neither does anyone else, but she forges on.

“I am galvanized. He is equally galvanized. And thank God for Alfred, who is on top of getting Daddy the top medical care in the country. Alfred is going to call his friend at Sloan-Kettering to get your father the A team.”

Alfred nods that he will make the call.

“We have magnificent children…grandchildren”-Mom waves her arms around-“a lovely state-of-the-art home, and a beautiful life.” She breaks down and weeps. “We’re young and we’re go

“Good deal, Mike.” Dad claps his hands together. “Who wants French toast?”

I drank way too much of the autumn-blend hazelnut coffee Mom served in the ornate sterling-silver urn with the spigot shaped like a bird’s head. (Heirloom, anyone?) There’s something about Mom’s delicate Spode teacups and the bottomless urn that tricks you into believing you’re consuming less caffeine than you really are. Or maybe I drank so much coffee because I was looking for an excuse to get up from the table from time to time, so I wouldn’t cry in front of my father.