“Nonsense!” She waves away the thought. She moves in closer and grabs the side of my face. Her hands are soft and smell like marinara, onions, and garlic. “Remember what I told you when your father died? Sometimes the plans we thought we had forourselves don’t always work out. They change. Life changes. I mean, look at me. I never thought I’d be living with my mother at this age. I wanted to see the world, do something important, you know? Now I’m forty-four, and what do I have to show for it? Besides you, I haven’t done much with my life. And you’re not a kid anymore.” She plants a wet kiss on my cheek and sings, “But you’ll always be my baby. I want better for you, thanthis.” She gestures around Nonna’s small house, the one she could never make it out of due to her and Dad’s money struggles, then Dad’s cancer diagnosis and eventual death. Ma wants more for us. For me.
Iwant more forher. “Ma, you’re super young. Youcansee the world. Do whatever you want. You act like you’re in the final stages of life.”
She shrugs. “I’m stuck with Nonna.”
If there’s one thing I want you to know about Italian women, it’s this: They’re soldiers. They take care of everyone at their own expense—feed the family at dinner, loading everyone’s plates twice over before even taking a slice of bread, break their backs until they bleed and never so much as complain. And don’t you dare feel sorry for them. Just do better.
“Zia Gab and Zia Rosa can help with Nonna.”
The door swings open and slams into the Formica counter, chipping the corner. Ma curses.
“What can I do? I heard my name. You shit-talking, nephew?” Zia Rosa sets down a platter of pignoli and rainbow cookies, and stomps her boots on the welcome mat before beckoning me for a hug.
On her tail, Zia Gabriella peeks her head inside, a bouquet offlowers with one of those miniature helium balloons-on-a-stick that says, “Best Sister Ever,” and a stuffed bear with a silk heart in its hand clutched to her chest.
“Why do you keep getting me that shit?” Ma asks her sister.
“Shut up, it’s a present,” Zia Gabriella exclaims.
“Youshut up! It’smybirthday, and you don’t have to live with all these tchotchkes!” Ma says. “I told youse guys, no presents for my birthday.”
As I look around, she’s not wrong. Nonna’s house is severely outdated, not having had a facelift since the 1990s when apparently pastel pinks and soft grays, off-white cabinets, and cheap countertops were all the rage in home décor. It makes it worse that Nonna likes to buy a lot of garbage from Walmart and Five Below that she’ll never use, and Ma has to work smart to collect these “treasures” and donate them without Nonna knowing. Zia Gabriella’s penchant for giving everyone useless trinkets doesn’t exactly help.
“Come on, Gab,” Rosa says. “I’d kill you if you brought this trash to my house.”
“Well, luckily for you all, this isMa’shouse,” Zia Gabriella snips.
“Why you gotta come here and be a bitch, Gab?” Ma quips back.
“It’s Queen G’s birthday,” I say. “Can we all relax?”
“Yeah, Zia G.” I hadn’t noticed my cousin Matty standing in the doorway. “Take it down a couple thousand notches.” He kisses Zia Gabriella hello, slips past his mom, Zia Rosa, to kiss my ma. “Happy birthday, Zia Guisy!”
“Thank you, handsome nephew!” Ma says, squeezing him. “You don’t come visit your aging zia anymore.”
Matty’s eyes widen in shock. “I was here last weekend!”
“Can you believe our kids are all graduated now, Rosa?” Ma says, ignoring him.
Zia Rosa holds up her hands. “No, don’t get me started.”
As if summoned by some unknown force, the Coven as they’re known—Ma, Zia Rosa, and Zia Gab—huddle together in prayer for their collective sons’ loss of innocence, do the sign of the cross, look to the heavens, and mutter a Hail Mary.
Rosa Lemon is the baby of the three sisters. A bit flighty, yet shrewdly perceptive, Rosa is the fun, carefree, perpetually unboth-ered sister. She lives for designer brands, and somehow always convinces the men she’s dating to buy her the finest jewelry and tags. Everything about her is vibrant and sassy with hips for days and an hourglass body that the Kardashians wish they had (naturally). She’s always singing and dancing to the latest Top 40 hits, much to Matty’s chagrin. I think it’s hilarious. Quintessential “cool mom” vibes. Rosa is definitely my favorite—just don’t mention that to Gabriella; she’ll rip my head right off.
Queen Guisippina Lemon (also known as G, Guisy, or just Ma) is the middle sister. I have stories for years and still wouldn’t crack the surface. She wears long, flowy shirts, mostly muted colors because she’s insecure about her body, which is something I inherited, and she’d rather hide her curves than show them off. She likes a good sparkle or sequin. Despite being the middle sister, she actually gives major eldest sister energy, always the one to steer the ship and offer the sagest advice. The realist of the Coven,Queen G will tell you exactly what you don’t want to hear, but make you believe it’s what you needed. Respect.
Gabriella Lemon is the oldest, but gives middle sister vibes, constantly wanting to be the center of attention. She insists on letting the natural gray in her jet-black hair grow out like Michelle Visage. Except she doesn’t keep it up, so it’s slightly unsettling. Everything she wears is vintage but has just aged out of trendy and into “Should Be Donated but Won’t.” Everything is slightly too big for her thin frame, and she has a Third-Grade Art Teacher but Make It Italian aesthetic. Her son Topher is the oldest cousin by a good six years. Topher Lemon is a tech whiz kid who dropped out of Cornell before the end of his freshman year and now, at twenty-five, is already a multimillionaire because he invented and sold software that can crack “uncrackable” social media algorithms, including the Clock App’s. Having grown up impoverished, living in a paycheck-to-paycheck household like every Lemon, he now has houses in Malibu and the Hamptons, and a ski chalet in Colorado. We’re like brothers—growing up in a small suburban town in Westchester, New York, in an Italian family means we’re all suffocatingly close to one another—but I don’t see much of him these days. He’s too busy chartering private jets to the Maldives and meeting investors in Dubai.
Matty, Topher, and I call our moms the Coven because they look like a trio of witches. The Sanderson Sisters, but make it Italian. All of them have long, curly black hair, olive skin (though Ma is the fairest by far), and aside from some extra wrinkles on Zia Gabriella, and Zia Rosa’s breast implants, they all have similar facial features and body types. Outsiders have trouble telling them apart, which they all hate with a venomous passion becauseall three of them think they’re nothing alike. Each member of the Coven is unmarried, and thus all retained the Lemon family name and passed it down to their three respective sons, and the six of us plus Nonna have been one medium-sized dysfunctional family unit for as long as I can remember. I’m the only one who knew my dad. Topher’s dad is rumored to be some famous rock star from the 2000s, and Ma’s dropped hints that Matty’s dad has been on a reality TV show, but won’t say which one, and after some serious reconnaissance, I narrowed it down to one appearance on a game show and gave up because it became far less interesting. In short, the dads don’t matter. Slap that on a T-shirt, huh?
A lot of people have asked how we have such an unusual name, and, as the story goes, my great-great-nonno, who immigrated here from Fascist Italy through Ellis Island, didn’t want to give his real last name. He didn’t know a lick of English, except one word: Lemon. It’s become a sense of pride for our family. Lemons and lemonade and all that. Maybe more like limoncello in this family.
Matty shakes his head at the Coven’s usual chaos, the familiar cackling of their voices filling every nook and cranny in the house, before pulling me into a bro hug. “What up, brother?”
“Long time no see.” I choke beneath his grip. I may be built like a linebacker thanks to Dad’s Swedish genes, but Matty is a short king brick house. In a lot of ways, we’re very similar. Two gay himbo cousins trying to make it in the world.
“We got bagels this morning,” he says. He’s not too quick with the wit, despite how hard I try. Matty and I are the same age, but we’ve grown so much closer this last year after he came out to meand asked me to help him come out to the rest of the family since I’d done it at such a young age (I was ten—when you know, you know, you know?). Ever since, we’ve been inseparable, sort of a gay Jedi master and Padawan type thing, hanging out most weekends, talking about guys and life. He’s my best friend.
