The Olive Garden

I had dinner with the whole family last night at The Olive Garden. We always have such a great time. They’re having a special this month on some kind of double-stuffed raviolis – Tuscano Poppers I think they’re called, or something like that. It’s a wonderful place for family and friends to gather. It’s like eating at home almost, but surrounded by strangers in an extra large dining room.

Everyone was there. Aunt Sylvia and the twins were even visiting from Italy. Aunt Sylvia said the décor was just like the décor in the neighborhood restaurants that she and the twins often went to back in the old country. This was good, she said, because the twins, like most autistics, responded well to consistency.

I was hoping the twins could tell me how the pastas stacked up against the pastas of Italy, whether The Olive Garden had authentic ristorante-style pastas or not, but they ended up ordering hot dogs off the kids’ menu. When I asked the twins how they were liking their hot dogs, Aunt Sylvia reminded me that they were non-verbal. I asked Aunt Sylvia if that meant they couldn’t taste hot dogs, and she said, “Sshhh. Maybe…I don’t know…they don’t taste nothin’.”

Aunt Sylvia was going to order the lasagna, but at the last minute she changed her mind and went with the poppers. “What can I say?” she said, shrugging with conceit. “The lasagna’s probably good, but I just don’t think anyone can make a lasagna better than I do.” Aunt Sylvia does make a great lasagna, it’s true.

Pops had the all-you-can-eat salad and breadsticks. Every ten minutes he’d ask the waiter for more salad and more breadsticks (Pops is obese), and whenever the waiter would bring more breadsticks Pops would ask, “Hey, is the wine here bottomless, too?” The waiter would laugh nervously and say that it wasn’t, and then Pops’d order another wine anyway. He kept pinching the waiter on the ass and calling him “Bambino, my handsome Bambino.”

Mama glared at Pops as she does. Mama wanted a cocktail, but The Olive Garden doesn’t serve cocktails and so she went out to the car to get her bourbon. Before she left she told Pops to order her a coke but Pops forgot, and when Mama came back she was really pissed. “It’s a coke, Rico! What? You can’t manage to order a coke, you fucking buffoon?”

Grandma was in fine form – at least, at first. She told this whole story about red sauce and white sauce and how when she was a little girl a Gypsy had once told her that every mortal had a preference for either an Alfredo sauce or a marinara. “If the man he likes the red sauce then he burns with a passion,” she said, quoting the Gypsy, “but if the man he likes the white sauce then he be a wise man, like, say, a scholar or a diplomat.” We all laughed and laughed.

“What sauce are you, Grandma?” someone asked, but Grandma’s Alzheimer’s had suddenly kicked in and she just stared blankly ahead as she picked aimlessly and floppily at the cold cuts and cheeses in her antipasto. After a while, Mama pulled the antipasto platter away and out of Grandma’s reach.

“Alfredo is to marinara as New England is to Manhattan as chowder is to sauce,” said Cissy. (Cissy’s studying for her SATs.) Then she started banging on her knuckles really hard with her soupspoon and muttering, “No, that’s not right; no, that’s not right” over and over again.

Annie had brought along her boyfriend, Brando. His real name is Brandon and so his nickname makes sense to me, but the weird part is that he doesn’t know whom Marlon Brando was. He (Brandon) had never even heard of the real Brando (Marlon) until I brought him (Marlon Brando) up when he (Brandon) and Annie first started dating.

Annie and Brando are vegans. Annie said there wasn’t anything on the menu that they could eat (“I don’t know why we have to come here,” she said), and so Annie just ordered beers. She’s been 21 for several months now, but Brando's still a few weeks shy of drinking age and so he didn’t order anything. He’d occasionally sip from Annie’s beers, and between sips they’d make out until Mama told them to stop.

“Annie Marie, goddammit!” Mama would snap. “Brando, get your filthy hands above the table.”

The lovers would grudgingly (and temporarily) desist. “Geez, Ma…it ain’t church. Why’d you even make us come?” Annie’d grumble, and Brando would chuckle whenever he heard the word “come” being used in a context in which it might be a remotely viable double entendre.

I noticed that one of the twins, Stefano (or was it Giancarlo?), would stop eating and would rest his hands in his lap every time that Brando and Annie started kissing. Every few seconds he’d glance furtively at the couple, and he’d rock back and forth in his chair ever so slightly. I think he was trying to bang one out underneath the table all subtle like.

I had the chicken cacciatore. It’s my favorite; I always get the chicken cacciatore. I can’t go to The Olive Garden and not get the chicken cacciatore. It’s the best. Everybody wanted a bite.

When the waiter asked us if we’d like to see the dessert menu, Pops said that there was a Krispy Kreme right across the parking lot and that we should all just go get Krispy Kremes. But Aunt Sylvia said that she wanted to try the tiramisu and that, besides, if the twins were to set foot in a doughnut shop then there’d be pretty much no way to safely get them out. So we all had tiramisu, all of us except Annie and Brando. But then, on the way home, Pops made us go through the drive-through at Krispy Kreme anyway.