Advice for Italian Boys by Anne Giardini

which was printed with deep purple poppies on olive-coloured sway-backed stems on a black and yellow background, tied around his wide, red neck, and his head was tipped forward so that his chin was cushioned by a folded band of rosy flesh at the top of his wide chest. He spoke carefully from one side of his mouth, avoiding any unnecessary movement. Massimo was standing behind him in the small space between the table and the refrigerator, scraping errant hairs from Joe’s neckline with an ancient and freshly honed straight razor. Nonna had prepared espresso in a battered wasp-waisted pot, and from time to time one or the other of the two fathers sighed, contemplating his scapegrace son or daughter, and thenbrought his cup close to his lips, blew short cooling breaths across the dark surface rimmed with minute white bubbles, and took a small sip. Nonna set the blue-flowered sugar bowl on the table and then turned to slice one of the heavy, crusty loaves of bread that she had made the day before. She placed two of the slices carefully into the toaster, which she did not trust. It had once given her a shock that coursed like a serpente up her arm from her fingertips to her shoulder when she used a fork to try to free a piece of bread that had been cut too thin and had curled in the heat and got caught in the wires. Nicolo reached over and pressed the lever down for her, while she rummaged inside the refrigerator for a jar of the blackberry jam she made every August, each jar kept this side of too sweet with a fat paring of lemon peel.
    “Kids these days. They got too much time on their hands. They flock around each other like flies and honey. And the way they dress. Boys and girls both. Tattoos. Earrings everywhere, even in their noses and stomachs. Tight jeans. Those little shirts. Legs and arms and boobs and belly all out for everyone to eyeball like the vegetables outside of a grocery store. Nothing left for the imagination. No wonder they get themselves into trouble—who wouldn’t? But, then I think to myself, after all, I mean, we got to remember that they would be married by now already if we were still living back in the old country.” Joe reached out to take a noisy slurp from his cup. “And anyways, you can’t lock them up any more or we’d be up on charges for child abuse.”
    “Aspirin,” said Massimo, snipping his scissors for emphasis in the empty air above Joe’s ear. “We should of gotten them to take aspirin. That’s my advice.”
    “Aspirin? I don’t get you.” Joe twisted his head around to look at Massimo. “Aspirin’s for headaches, not for getting knocked up.”
    “It works.”
    “I never heard of that. How many they got to take?”
    “They don’t take them. They just hold them.” Massimo finished his coffee in one swallow and held his empty cup out toward Nonna, who hurried over with the espresso pot in her hand. “Between their knees.”
    The two men laughed while Joe repeated the punchline, savouring it, wondering how he could work it into the speech he was going to give at the wedding reception. “Between their knees. Yes. That’s good. Between the knees. Couldn’t hurt, eh?”
    Nicolo carried his toast, and his coffee which Nonna had diluted for him with milk heated in a small pan at the back of the stove, into the living room. He fell onto the sofa and switched on the TV with the remote. A wedge-shaped formation of women—three with blonde hair and three with dark—were demonstrating aerobic exercises to the rhythm of a thumping, repetitive soundtrack. The women kept broad lipsticked smiles fixed on their faces, and their six sets of eyes gazed into the camera, but none of them seemed to be getting any enjoyment from the workout. The manner in which they bounced and stretched and reached made exercise appear like a necessary evil, something to be concluded in as short a time as possible, perhaps so they could go and relax on the beach, of which a simulacrum could be seen in