There is a specific sound a kitchen makes when five people are arguing about nothing. Forks against ceramic. A chair pushed back. My father correcting my uncle’s pronunciation of something that does not matter. My mother laughing from behind the stove, stirring something she refuses to let anyone else touch. The windows are fogged. The whole apartment smells like garlic and butter and the particular sweetness of onions that have been cooking low for an hour.
I sit at the corner of the table, the spot I’ve had since I was small enough to need a cushion on the chair. The camera is on my lap. I don’t lift it. Some meals you photograph. Some meals you just eat. Tonight the pasta is cacio e pepe, my mother’s version, which my father insists is wrong because she adds a little cream and he will never forgive her for it. They have had this argument for thirty years. It is, I think, a form of love.
Milan at night through the kitchen window is just a row of lit apartments across the courtyard. Other families, other tables. Someone on the third floor has their television on, the blue flicker visible through thin curtains. I wonder if they can hear us. We are not a quiet family. We never have been. My cousin pours more wine without asking. My aunt tells a story I have heard four times. I laugh anyway, because her timing is still perfect.
This is the strange thing about not having a fixed address. You start to notice home more carefully when you’re inside it. The crack in the ceiling above the stove that has been there my entire life. The way my father’s hands look older now when he breaks bread. The weight of a full plate passed to you by someone who will not sit down until everyone else has been served. I leave again in three days. Porto, maybe. Maybe not. Tonight it doesn’t matter. Tonight I am here, in the noise, exactly where the noise wants me.
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