by Dina Di Maio

Rose cuts the peaches into halves, scooping out the hard pits and throwing them away. Taking down the glass jars from the cabinet, she pushes the sliced peaches inside. From the cellar, she brings up a bottle of wine and pours some into the glass jars of peaches. Screwing on each lid, she puts the jars into the refrigerator. She has one jar left over from the last time she made the peaches, so it is time to make more. In a few days, she will have a cold snack.

Rose’s father used to make his own wine. Every year, when she started school, he’d receive a big order of grapes from California. She remembers her younger brothers and her uncles pressing grapes with her father. Sometimes, Rose would play hooky, going down the dark steps to the wine cellar. She would climb onto a high barrel near one of the windows and sit there until she thought it was time for her mother to expect her back from school. At Christmas, when the wine was ready, her father would bring some to all of his friends and family. It was his Christmas present. Everyone talked about Nico’s wine, how good it was. They expected it, and every year, Nico delivered it, with Rose’s younger brothers, a few days before Christmas, knocking on all his neighbors’ doors. Rose wonders about this generous side of her father.

He took such care in making his wine. He wanted it to be perfect, and it was. Sometimes, he would bury kegs in the ground to keep cool. Rose remembers, years after his death, finding bottles of her father’s wine buried in the backyard.

Joe tries to make his own wine now too, but Rose hates it; it tastes like vinegar. Even so, it’s the only wine she has so she makes due.

*

At seven o’clock, Joe comes through the kitchen doorway. Rose is cooking spaghetti with broccoli sauce.

"Mmm, smells good in here."

"Yeah," Rose says.

Joe slaps a paper down on the table.

Rose watches him. "What are you doing? I’m getting ready to set the table for dinner."

Joe opens the paper.

"Well, read it in the living room," Rose says.

Her six-year-old son, Joey, comes into the kitchen, holding up a torn piece of paper.

"Mommy, Petey ripped my Cs," Joey says.

Rose takes the paper. "What, is this your homework? Petey." She calls her three-year-old. "Where’s your brother?" The pot on the stove is boiling. She is ready to put in the macaroni.

Rose looks at her husband, sitting at the table, reading the newspaper. She rolls her eyes and leads Joey into the living room.

Petey is sitting on the floor in front of the TV. He is watching a cartoon while holding and rubbing the shiny edge of his blanket.

Rose says, "Petey, did you tear your brother’s homework?"

Petey looks up at her and shakes his head.

"No, then how did it get ripped?"

She sits down next to him and holds up the paper. "Petey, your brother will get in trouble at school if he doesn’t have his homework. Do you want the teacher to yell at him?"

Petey looks up at her, then back at the TV. He smiles and shakes his head yes.

"You want your brother to get yelled at?"

Petey shakes his head yes.

"Yeah, OK," Rose sighs and turns to Joey. "Joey, you’re going to have to do it over."

"I don’t want to. He ripped it," Joey says.                                                  

"Well, from now on do your homework in the kitchen with me. Your brother just wants attention, that’s all."

She walks back to the kitchen and starts to set the table. Joey sits across from his father and starts to write his homework over. Rose takes the silverware out of the drawer by the sink and sets the table around her husband and son.

"Your brother called, " she says, putting a glass down in front of Joe.

"Oh, yeah," Joe says, turning the page.

"Yeah, he’s staying at Sugar’s sister’s," Rose says, putting the macaroni into the pot.

"Did you get a present?" Joe asks.

"Mommy, is this how you do a D?" Joey asks, holding up his homework.

Rose looks at the paper. "Yeah, that’s right. Just make a loop at the top." She looks at Joe.

"Yeah, I got her something."

Rose takes our a few bowls and plates. She puts them on the counter next to the stove. "Are you gonna ask him, Joe?"

Joe folds the paper. "Why you want me to ask him?"

"Because he hasn’t paid us in a year. We’re not the Rockefellers, ask us every time you can’t pay your bills," Rose says, taking a strainer from the cabinet.

"All right, Rose, I’ll ask him. I told you I’d ask him," Joe says, getting up and going into the living room.

"Oh, go ahead, leave the room, but you better ask him or we’ll be in the poorhouse," Rose calls after her husband.

Joe says, "How we gonna be in the poorhouse? We got plenty of money. What are you worrying about anyway? You have to work?"

"No, I don’t work. My father was a doctor and I left for a butcher."

"I really don’t want to hear this." Joe stands in the doorway.

"I know you don’t. How many times do we have to be the bank for your family? I just want you to ask him for the money back. That’s all. Is that so hard to do? You lend somebody money, they should pay it back." Rose pours the broccoli sauce over a bowl of spaghetti.

"Yeah, I’ll ask him," Joe says, sitting down at the table.

*

Joe worked in his uncle’s butcher shop. It was the same butcher shop that Rose’s family bought their pork from. One day, Rose’s father sent her to the store to buy capozel, the lamb’s head. He was the only person in her family who liked to eat it.

Rose walked into the familiar store with its red, white, and green awning and sausage hanging in the window.

A short guy with thinning, dark hair was working behind the counter. He looked up at Rose. He had a round face, dark eyebrows, and small eyes. He smiled.

"You’re Dr. Fiero’s daughter, aren’t you?" he asked.

Rose blinked. She was shocked that he knew her.

"I saw you at church. Your father comes in here all the time," he said. "What’s your name?"

"Rose," she said.

He walked around the counter, wiped his hand on his apron, and held his hand out to her. She shook it.

"I’m Joe," he said. "Joe Avaria. This is my uncle’s store."

Rose nodded. Joe nodded. "So what can I get ya?" he asked.

"Well, I’d like a capozel," she said, softly. She was embarrassed, asking for capozel. She hated it. Why did her father have to send her in for that?

"Capozel?" Joe asked, raising his eyebrows. "You don’t strike me as the capozel type."

Rose smiled. "I’m not. It’s for my father. He’s the only one in our family who eats it."

"Really? My dad hates it, but my grandmother eats it," Joe said.

Joe opened the case to take out a capozel. He said, "So what are you doing tonight? You going home?"

Rose nodded. The butcher boy.

*

Joe unbuttoned her blouse. He was moving fast. His head came up to her breasts. She sat, with her legs wrapped around him, on top of one of her father’s wine barrels in the cellar. She was wearing a skirt. Joe rubbed her leg, feeling her underwear. He pulled at it. She touched his hand, at first to stop him, but then to help him pull it off. Because of Joe’s height, she had to maneuver herself to the edge of the barrel. It didn’t work. Joe grabbed her around the middle, pulling her upward.

They lay on the floor, warm because it was summer.

Joe was on top of her. He took off his shirt. Rose touched his small, almost-bare chest, rubbing the little patch of hair. She reached down, undid the zipper of his pants and felt his hardness. It felt big for such a small guy. Rose laughed.

"What’s so funny?" Joe gasped.

"Nothing," Rose said, getting up and pushing him down. She pulled the band of his underwear down and kissed it.

Joe moaned until she stopped. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"Wait," she said. She got up and left.

"Rose, come back here," he called.

Rose reappeared with an open bottle of wine. She sipped some from the bottle, licking the rim. Then she doused his penis with wine, sucking it off.

*

Joe’s brother Pauly owned a bar. Joe took her there when it was closed. It was a dive, a man’s hangout, with brown, scraped wooden stools and chairs and booths along the wall.

Rose looked at herself in the mirror behind the bar. The lighting was dim, and the shadows played along her profile, making her look older. She wondered what her father would think if he knew she was in a bar like this one. He would come and get her, drag her out, lock her in her room, and forbid her to see Joe anymore.

Joe slipped some coins into the jukebox. He pushed a button for a song. It was an Italian song. Rose recognized it. Jimmy Roselli. Anema e core.

Joe put his arm around her waist and pulled her close to him. This made her think of another song: Cheek to Cheek, one her father used to sing while he held her mother from behind as she washed dishes in the sink.

They danced slowly, closely, and Rose felt warm. She felt safe. Joe moved his other arm so that he held her with both arms around her waist. She held his little shoulders. They were small but buff. She lightly kissed the rim of his ear. He responded by pulling her closer to him. She moved helplessly as if a light wave had pushed her.

I have but one desire and that’s to love you. With all my heart and all my soul, my whole life through.

With his hands, Joe moved her face to his. They kissed, and it was not like the kisses she had before—the awkward movement of lips and wet tongue. It felt like soft leather.

Joe took a ring from his pocket and asked her to be his girlfriend. It was not like the ring her father had gotten her mother.

She said yes.

Outside, Joe locked the door of the bar as she waited. An old man sat propped up against the adjoining building. His head was balding, what hair left was wild and gray. He smiled with many teeth missing.

"Do you have any change, sir?" He held a brownish, cracked hand up to Joe.

Joe looked at her then fished in his pocket for a dollar.

"Thank you, sir."

Catching up with her, Joe took her hand. Before they turned to walk away, the old man yelled to her, "Marry that guy."

*

"The butcher boy! Is this how you pay me back for all those years of private school? All those years I worked for you to have something good. This is what you bring home? This cafone from the butcher shop? I sent you to that school so you meet a nice doctor or lawyer, somebody with ambition, with a future. And you bring home . . . this. I could have saved all that money if I knew you were going to go around the corner. You’re not marrying him. If you marry him, I will have no daughter!"

Her father did go to the wedding. Before they walked down the aisle together, he said, "Don’t do this. You’re confused. You don’t have to do this. You think what you’re feeling is love, but that’s only because you’re young. You don’t have to do this. We can call it off now. I’ll tell everybody to go home, OK?"

*

OK, Rose thinks. She’s reading recipes on quick family suppers in Family Circle after she put the kids to bed.

Joe sits in the living room watching TV, some cop drama. He has his feet up on the ottoman. He is sitting on the corner of the couch next to the end table. He has a drink; he is drinking beer. Rose watches him; he yawns and stretches his arms.

Rose gets up, headed for the kitchen. She thinks of the beer. Opening the refrigerator door, she grabs the old glass jar of peaches in wine. She pulls out a kitchen chair to sit down. Unscrewing the lid, she reaches her fingers inside and picks out a piece of peach. Lifting it to her lips, she bites it. The coldness feels good in her mouth. She thinks the sweetness of the peach almost cancels out the bitterness of Joe’s wine.

This story is from a novel-in-progress.  Dina Di Maio is the editor of this site.  Currently in law school, she holds a master's from NYU and has written for Glamour, Time Out New York, Family Circle, Vault and more.