Novel - The Ozone Café - The 3 Sisters

The Three Sisters

Lucy squeezes in beside Vincenzo and Rennie while Riesca and Natasha are in the back seat of the car. Vincenzo watches and listens as the two women open and close their mouths like pecking ravens. Watching them together, his three sisters and brother makes Vincenzo think about Sundays back in Paola. All the women talking, while the men played bocci.

Rennie swings the car around in the railway station's carpark, hearing the luggage on the roofrack bouncing. He nudges Vincenzo's shoulder. 'I love us all being together, Vinny old boy,' he says, 'but I'm afraid brother Maria is missing out.'

Vincenzo nods in agreement and Riesca goes quiet. Natasha who has been a veritable verbal outpour, slaps her knees, raising her hands in the air. 'We tried very, very hard Vin, but she insisted all of the time, blah, blah, blah, too much work at home, what about the girls, what about her paintings.'

'She wants you to come home,' adds Lucy, nudging his side. 'She thinks Australia has swallowed you up like one of these sharks. I tell you she has changed Vincenzo, not so friendly to us when we talked about coming to Sydney.'

'Cranky, cranky, all of the time,' says Natasha.

'Oh well, I make the best of it. We have a good time, hey?' Vincenzo stares out of the window. He had threatened her this time, if she didn't come he would get a divorce. 'I say, I divorce you, I divorce you three times and it is over,' he blurted down the phone. 'I find myself a nice Australian woman. There's plenty here in Satara Bay.' But seated in his arm chair after the call, he had sulked for the rest of the night. Of course, he would never leave her.

The car pulls into the drive. Rennie has taken two days off work to get his three sisters settled into his holiday house. Since the completion of the Ozone Café he has renovated, adding a sleepout to the back with louvres and a large patio that stretches across the width of the building. With his new girlfriend they have planted ferns and palms, making the area very cool and tropical.

Susan greets them at the front door, and after several toasts of red wine and helpings of pizza, they lounge on cane chairs in the backyard.
Everyone is drinking making an effort to keep talking about old times except for Vincenzo. He wasn't expecting so much Calabrian dialect to fly out of his sisters' mouths, all speaking over one another. He found that his constant switching from thinking in English to speaking in Italian very tiresome.

He opens one eye, then both. 'It's been a long day, and now I have to get back to the café. We see you tomorrow and I make a good Australian steak for you.'

'Ha, watch that banana lounge doesn't snap you up like a shark,' laughs Rennie. 'Remember, like last time.'

'I lost weight since then,' says Vincenzo, whistling for Pomadina to join him on his walk home. At the front gate, he can still hear the women's voices raised above the loudest octave, rabbiting on and on about their husbands, kids, jobs and the mafia. He wasn't at all concerned. Any doubts that he had about them not liking Satara Bay had been squashed in the afternoon with the women admiring the bay, the boats and distant foothills. 'It's heaven,' suggested Lucy. 'Paola with Australian trees,' said Riesca. Although there had been plenty of laughter, he felt a little sad that Maria hadn't made any effort to come. Her last letter had left him feeling puzzled about her strong criticisms of him living in Australia, and he didn't like her swearing down the phone at him. She was never like that before.

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