We'll Be a Dream

Nonna's Pizzeria was the best kept secret in New York. It's about the size of a four bedroom apartment and tucked around a corner, almost hidden from view in an alley. This family run business only has four booths, five tables and three stools for customers to sit inside and eat. In a place like New York, not many people stay to eat, especially not in this neighbourhood. Nonna's never used to have an influx of random customers passing by on their journey to some other destination. No, this was their destination. It was the kind of place that people returned to, where they were greeted by name, where every time they walked in it was like coming home from a long trip. Nona's used to have regulars and then they'd have new customers who become regulars in the span of a month.

But as of two weeks ago that Nonna's is gone. It's now a hotspot for teenage girls, just discovering their independence, to linger for hours. It's a trending topic on Twitter. A new picture of Nona's specialty pizza is uploaded on Instagram every hour. The pizzeria is never empty. Mama Franceschi is looking for two new waitresses to help with all the foot traffic. Nonna has made more pepperoni pizzas in the last two weeks than she has since Nonna's Pizzeria first opened.

Sometimes I worry that all the hard work will send Nonna Giovanni to an early grave, and that would be my fault. Ever since he came into our lives, things have been different at Nonna's Pizzeria--no one smiles anymore, everyone is tense and we never get to talk to each other.

Nonna's belongs to my best friend Giovanna Franceschi's family. When I first met Giovanna in elementary school I thought it was the coolest thing ever that her family owned their own pizza place and that every Sunday she got to have pizza for dinner. It blew my mind that her family also lived above the restaurant. I spent months trying to get her to invite me over, but Giovanna was always reluctant to bring me around. At the time, I thought it was because she was embarrassed by her full-blooded Italian family and the fact that her grandparents, her parents and her four older siblings all lived in the same four bedroom apartment, but Giovanna was just worried about Nonna G.

Nonna Giovanni, like her Nonna, decides if she likes a person based on their pizza preferences. It is the only question that matters when the Franceschi's interview someone for a job at Nonna's Pizzeria. One time an ex-boyfriend of Giovanna's ordered a cheese pizza, light sauce on hand-tossed dough. Nonna G chased him out of the pizzeria brandishing a ladle and swearing at him in Italian. Anybody who orders cheese, pepperoni or Hawaiian pizza gets the stink eye from Nonna Giovanni. She takes it as a personal insult to her cooking, and you do not want to insult an Italian woman's cooking.

The first time Giovanna brought me to Nonna's Pizzeria was when we were ten and I had only been living in New York for a year. Mama Franceschi was working at the register and I remember thinking that she was the kind of beautiful that I wanted to grow up to be. She had womanly curves that made people look twice at her, skin the colour of caramel and her hair was dark and hung down her back in a long braid. She smiled widely at me, her full lips parting to show slightly crooked teeth, and asked me what I wanted.

"Oh, I don't have any money," I tried to bashfully dodge her kind offer. Things around my house were tense and I knew my mom would blow up if I ruined my dinner with pizza. I didn't want to spend another night listening to her slamming all the doors in our apartment and crying.

"Don't be silly, cara, it's on the house!" Mama Franceschi is the kind of woman that always gets what she wants. Even at my young age I knew that her insistence went beyond being polite. This was more than just ordering a pizza, so I took my time to really go through the menu and the chalkboard that was mounted on the wall behind the cash register. After about twenty minutes I ordered one of Nonna Giovanni's new pizza experiments.

Three cheese lasagna pizza. I must have chosen the right kind of pizza that day, because Nonna Giovanni came out of the kitchen and kissed my cheeks multiple times while muttering in Italian. Now, three cheese lasagna pizza could have gone very, very wrong, but Nonna makes the best pizza in the city. No, the best pizza in the state. Possibly even the best in the country, because I have had more than my share of Chicago pizza and compared to Nonna G's, Chicago pizza fails to live up to its hype.

One day I hope to make a pizza that is half as good as Nonna's. The day I ordered the three cheese lasagna pizza is the day that I became part of the Franceschi/Giovanni family. I was invited to Sunday dinners, where there was always a pizza on the table. On Sundays Nona Giovanni and Mama Franceschi gave the girls cooking lessons. Soon I was invited to learn how to make genuine Italian food. I began unofficially working with Giovanna and her family at Nona's Pizzeria when I was ten. I started as a busgirl, then as a dishwasher and then a server who occasionally made deliveries on her bike. Now, though, it seems like I spend most of my time pedalling pizzas than inside waiting tables with my best friend. And I really need my best friend right now.

Every night I fall into my bed, exhausted from biking around the city, and wrap my arms tightly around my middle in an attempt to hold myself together for another day. I wake up with my temple pressed deep into the mattress, my arms crossed over my middle and my fingers curled into a dirty t-shirt, more tired than when I went to sleep.

But before my mind is fully awake it confuses my arms for his and I am tricked into thinking he's here. It lasts as long as five beats of my heart before my body acknowledges an absence--my heart stutters over its next palpitation, I take a deep breath, roll off of my stomach onto my back and tighten my fingers on the fabric of a white t-shirt that probably isn't mine. I give myself five minutes to lose myself in something that I can't name before I get up and start my day. Shower, dress in my uniform, eat my oatmeal, check the air on my bike tires, bank and then work.

The best love story I've ever heard is about Nonna's Pizzeria. So it makes sense that my own love story is about Nonna's, too. I haven't figured out yet if mine has a happy ending.