To Lucinda’s paternal grandmother, Mary, there was only one way to cook meatballs: drop them, uncooked, into a bubbling pot of tomato sauce, until the sauce and all its contents could marry the meat, making it one. Lucinda’s grandmother’s sister-in-law, Aunt Josephine, saw it differently. The real way to cook meatballs was to brown them first, then pour the sauce on top. Any other way was absurd.