Anyway, there was Michael leaning over the banister of the veranda, surveying the crowd, and I caught his eye. He was wearing a cream-colored linen jacket over a navy T-shirt with navy lightweight gabardine trousers. By coincidence, so was I. But my navy T-shirt was actually a camisole and my jacket hung from the crook of my finger over my shoulder. I gave him a small smile and a slight nod.
Just to clarify the varying degrees of “small smile and slight nod” and what they meant, this one meant The drawbridge is lowered. You may approach. At the far end of the spectrum, there was the jaw-dropper, in which your face was agog and you looked like a total ass with zero odds to recoup your cool. And at the opposite end there’s the vacant stare as your eyes slide elsewhere that says Don’t even think about it. Well seasoned in reading social signals, the smiling and self-assured Michael came down from the porch and made his way to my side.
“Don’t I know you from someplace?” he said.
“Good grief. Is that the best you can do?” I said. And I fell like a fool into the endless blue of his eyes.
“Do you want to live together? My apartment is over-air-conditioned,” he said with a grin and dimples that were beyond adorable and irresistible. He reached in his pocket and pulled out his keys. “It’s freezing there.”
“So is my place, and you’re pretty optimistic,” I said. “Shouldn’t we start with something like, I don’t know, dinner?”
“I don’t know. Sure. Hey, do you like baseball?”
“What red-blooded American doesn’t?”
“Well, want to come see me play?”
“What’s up with you and baseball? You play for the Yankees?”
“No, no. I play for the MUSC team to benefit the terminal patients in the children’s wing. My friend Larry works there with critical-care kids. Got me involved.”
Well, that stopped me in my lustful tracks. I mean, any man eager to play ball for a good cause in that heat had to be a great guy. I looked at him and said, “Sure. I’d love to.”
What ensued over the next few weeks were many baseball games, too many romantic fattening dinners, lots of sweaty hooking-up and me holding out on the deed. Rule one: If you want a man to take you seriously, keep your britches on. Besides, there were so many things about him I didn’t know. Like, was he a pathological liar? A philanderer? In huge debt? Did he have a drinking problem? An ex-wife with anger issues? Twenty children? A drug problem?
Did any of these things matter? Not really. No, they didn’t really matter at all because for the first time in my life I was dumbstruck, absolutely flattened by the stupefying, powerful all-consuming feelings I had for a member of the opposite sex.
Eventually our bloomers hit the floor and I gave him keys. He put his stuff in storage and moved in. I had never been as happy as I was then, and in my head I was doing the hippie dance of stoned-out love every waking minute. Ah, yes, life was pretty darn near perfection in the domestic arena. Until I talked to my mother or my father or any member of the clan. Little by little my parents wheedled the facts about Michael from me. They were aghast that he was Irish, but the fact that he was doing stem-cell research in a project to repair heart-wall muscle sent them over the moon. He became the Irish Baby Butcher.
What happened over the next ten months was this widening of the distance between us and them. They didn’t even know him. They had never even met him. Worse, they were always putting me in these awkward positions to choose them over Michael. I was left to manipulate the situation with Michael so that he wouldn’t notice that I always capitulated to my parents. But that didn’t mean I didn’t try to resist or that I didn’t resent my folks. And I’d tell you this, my parents were wearing me out.
For example, I’d had no intention of driving to Hilton Head for this holiday until Mom called.
“Big Al is digging up the front walkway again,” she whispered. “Did I ask for a new walkway with a nonskid surface of some revolutionary composite material?”
“Probably not, but I’m just guessing. Why are you whispering?”
“Because I don’t want Nonna to hear me! Did I ask for a team of Mexican gentlemen to show up at six this morning and start jackhammering to wake up the entire world? Because if I did ask, I have no recollection…”
“What do you want me to do, Mom?”
“Talk to him, Grace. He doesn’t listen to me! I have my ladies’ club coming here next Thursday and…”
The front walkway was once again experiencing some unsolicited renovation that I was sure basically left the front yard a mud hole. For the sixth time in three years. I had to agree with my mother; it was a little much.
“How are the members of my bridge club supposed to navigate the planks of wood, wobbling on sinking bricks? Should I bring them in through the garage like cases of paper towels from Sam’s Club?”
“You want me to come for the Fourth?”
A deep sigh from the Grand Canyon of my mother’s despair followed and I could imagine her curtains billowing and then settling from the g-force of her breath.
“You’re always welcome, Grace. And your brother is coming with his family. It would be so nice to have my family all together one more time before I…you know…die.”
You’re always welcome, Grace. That was Connie-speak for You’re welcome, not your boyfriend; it’s a family weekend; he’s not family.
“You’re not even sixty, Ma. Bad news, you’re not going anywhere for, um, I don’t know, thirty or forty years?”
“You never know, Grace!” Another huge sigh. “It’s in God’s good hands.”
So that’s a snapshot of my mother and what she’s like. Helpless. All my life it irritated me that my mother could never stand up to her mother or to my father. Good grief! Old Connie had been a loyal and dutiful wife for a million years and had produced three reasonably successful children who were educated and self-supporting with the tiny exception of my mortgage and my stupid brother Nicky. But even Nicky was actually doing okay—at least he had never been in rehab or arrested for anything. Sometimes, and especially with family, it was just best to just, ah well, lower your standards of judgment.
My parents were some duo. Connie and Big Al. Big Al was my dad’s well-deserved nickname. A booming voice, emphatic opinions on everything from the cost of gasoline to the amount of garlic in the shrimp scampi, Big Al gave highly quotable commentary that usually came across as, well, slightly naive and, let’s spell it out, a little bit gauche. Big Al bellowed the final word, Nonna agreed with every syllable he spoke, and my poor mother cowered, sneaking to her bedroom to call me, looking for an ally or just a few moments to vent to a sympathetic ear.
I reminded myself all the time that Big Al meant well. His brand of politics and his crazy work ethic had kept us way beyond solvent, but he was never going to be the American ambassador to France, if you get my drift. Never mind that the BMW I drove, the house I lived in and the diamond studs in my ears were all spontaneous gifts from Big Al’s generous heart. Okay, he still paid the mortgage and held the title, but that was how he held on to me.
On the other hand, that generosity produced another kind of emotional sand trap. You see, he bought Mom one-carat diamond studs for her birthday. That would be one-half carat for each ear—I mean, Al’s successful, but he’s not Donald Trump, okay? At the same time he bought me diamond studs of the same quality that were one-third of a carat each, because I have an extra hole in my right ear. Mom’s face fell when Dad slid the little velvet box toward me at Mom’s birthday dinner, and it was obvious that the thrill of the moment had been diluted for her. Same thing happened when Dad bought my convertible. He bought Mom a BMW sedan. She wanted to know if he thought she was too old to drive a convertible. Big Al couldn’t understand Mom’s edgy resentment, but I am sure some shrink would have had a ball with it. I didn’t really blame her for her ambivalence about these double-edged swords of gratuitous gifting. Anyway, there’s probably a pill that could help her, but that would be the last thing
I would suggest to anybody.
“I’ll see you for the Fourth,” I said.
You know how you always wish that you came from the perfect family? That they were wealthy, classy and smart, but never pretentious? That they were all good-looking, stylish, funny and never cruel? Well, keep wishing, right? There was no Ralph Lauren ad layout waiting for me to step in on Hilton Head.
It was about six in the evening when I arrived at my parents’ home and steam was still rising from the grass. We’re talking ridiculous steaming Tennessee Williams–Somerset Maugham kind of heat. I pulled my duffel bag from the trunk and looked at the house. Mom was right. Dad’s little construction project looked terrible.
Here’s a little more on him: Big Al was supposed to be retired and he relocated the family to Hilton Head for the multitude of golf courses. He loved golf so much you would’ve thought his father had run the PGA and that he had caddied for Arnold Palmer or somebody. For years he talked nonstop about Hilton Head, the weather, the blue skies and the various challenges of each course, one more fantastic than the next. But to be perfectly honest, in a little over a year he got sick of golf and then there was the problem of Nicky. My little brother, Nicky, is a handsome devil, but he’s not exactly Albert Einstein. It took him eight years to graduate from Caldwell College in New Jersey with an associate’s degree in communication. Most people would be a doctor after eight years in college. Not my brother. He has a degree in skirt.
Anyway, true to his amazing nature, Big Al opened his second business so that Nicky could have a career and something to inherit someday. In New Jersey, Dad was in the paving business, mostly parking lots. In Hilton Head, he called himself a hard-scaper, which still entailed the pouring of asphalt from time to time. It was actually more gentrified, as they did work with all sorts of new materials that resembled that which they weren’t. Cement that looked like bluestone, cement that looked like sandstone, et cetera.
You had to love my father. Everyone did. And I had always been his favorite. Until the advent of Michael. Maybe he couldn’t stand the thought of his little girl having a man and a sex life. Maybe he was jealous. Or maybe he was just old-fashioned and didn’t approve of his daughter sharing a home with a man without the benefit of marriage. I knew the fact that Michael was Irish didn’t help. Anyway, life delivered Big Al and me to a Mexican standoff. It was stupid because everyone was entitled to live their lives the way they wanted to, weren’t they? No. The truth is that you could, but there were consequences and the Big Chill from Al’s corner was mine. I thought I had compromised by agreeing to live nearby in Charleston. We could see each other often enough and I could still live my life. But the fact of the matter was that I could have been living in Patagonia and if Connie yelped I would’ve jumped on a plane. The familial choke chain had no respect for distance.
In this case, Mom was right. The front yard was an archaeological dig. If that wasn’t bad enough, red, white and blue bunting was draped across the garage doors and a municipal-building-size American flag hung from a flagpole in the front yard. Over the flag of Italy, of course. It was just too much for anyone’s definition of normalcy.
The New Jersey plates on my sister-in-law’s minivan announced Frank and Regina’s arrival with their trio of thugs-in-training. Nicky would be there with his insipid girlfriend, Marianne, the pre-K substitute teacher who never got called in for work and who spoke to my brother in her five-year-old’s voice all the time. I braced myself and chose the garage entrance over the muddy bricks and planks. This was going to be some weekend.
I opened the door to the mudroom and entered the kitchen. Fresh pasta hung from the handles of every mop and broom in the house and every ladder-back chair. Nonna’s marinara sauce (which she called gravy) simmered in a large cast-iron kettle, and truly the room did smell like a warm and heavenly afternoon on Mulberry Street. I don’t know why it irked me that we couldn’t serve just hamburgers on the Fourth of July like everyone else. Tomorrow my family would have spaghetti with meatballs and braciole, antipasto, sopressata, mozzarella and tomatoes with basil oil, a half-dozen baguettes dipped in this and that, and then we would have hamburgers, hot dogs, corn on the cob and more pasta, macaroni salad. With pickles. Don’t forget the pickles. After every last person would moan from the excess of it all, the men would fall asleep on the sofas, the children would make themselves scarce, and the women would clean up so we could do it all over again in a few hours.
The television was blaring, and sure enough, Nonna was positioned in Big Al’s La-Z-Boy recliner crocheting at fifty miles an hour. I called out to her, knowing she was fully absorbed in her soap operas and had not heard me come in. She is as deaf as a doornail, but don’t say I said so.
“Nonna! It’s me! Grace!”
“What? Oh! Maria Graziana! Thank God you’re home safe! Vieni qua! Help me up!” I gave her a kiss on her cheek and helped her to her feet. “Oh, Madonna! My knees are killing me. Avecchiaia, old age—that’s just how it is. Now let me look at you!” Her milky eyes that streamed water traveled from my head to my toes and she said, “Humph! Too skinny!”
“Oh, Nonna!” I gave her a big hug and I could feel her smiling. “What are you making?”
“What? Oh! Oh, I’m just put the finishing touches on the cover for the extra roll of toilet paper for the powder room. See? It’s the Capitol building!”
“Wow! It’s great! Someday you’re gonna have to teach me how to do this, you know.”
“Well, you’d better hurry up. Madonna!” she said again, and blessed herself. “I could go any minute.” We exchanged looks and then smiled at each other, the knowing smile with which we acknowledged each other’s white lies.
“Nonna, you’ve been threatening to die since I can remember. You and Mom.”
“Humph,” she said, handing me her masterpiece. “Go put this where she belongs. I have to check my gravy. Everyone’s out by the pool, running around in this heat!”
“Okay.”
With her hand in the small of her back, Nonna toddled off in the direction of the kitchen, waddling her generous proportions from side to side as she walked, which I thought was probably brought on by some arthritis. I examined her work. Indeed, it was the Capitol building. No doubt the toilet seat had Paul Revere or something like him crocheted in three-dimensional relief. Mom never complained about the Santa tissue-box covers Nonna made for every Christmas or the lilies she crocheted for Easter. She never complimented her either. But she did have an issue with the toilet-lid covers.
If you put them on the back of the lid, the lid flopped forward. If you put them on the front of the lid, the lid flopped forward. When my mother voiced a squeak of concern over the possibility of one of her grandsons losing his manhood in a slamming accident, Big Al read her the riot act. “Connie! ’Ey! Come on! This is art!”
It wasn’t art and we all knew it, but just like parents who enthusiastically hang their children’s artwork all over the refrigerator, my mother, with some reluctance, displayed the entirety of Nonna’s yarn creations with pride, albeit a worrisome pride.
I put the Capitol building cover over Mom’s extra roll, inspected the American flag on the lid and the fireworks on the tissue box, and had a flash that the fireworks would actually have been pretty cool if she had used a yarn with a little shine. Then I asked myself if I was losing my mind and went to my room to change clothes.
Like the rest of the house, my room was moved in its entirety to Hilton Head with a few choice additions from the Vatican gift shop—a holy-water font over the light switch by the door, a large white glow-in-the-dark crucifix over the bed, a small statue of the Holy Family on the bedside table and a statue of my patron saint, Maria Goretti, on the chest of drawers. No doubt there was a scapular pinned to the mattress to thwart dreams of anything not approved by the Church.
I realized that until I got married, and perhaps until I produced a pack of children, Mom was determined that my bedroom would remain exactly as it was because, who
knew? I might come home again. Simply put, my life in Charleston wasn’t real to them. And frankly Mom’s life in Hilton Head wasn’t real to her because she desperately missed her friends and her sister in New Jersey.
I ran my hand over the fading flowers of my upholstered headboard and all of a sudden I felt sorry for my mother. In my life I went a million miles an hour trying to get what I wanted and to enjoy every minute of it. Had my mother ever had that chance? Did she have what she wanted?
I threw on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and went outside to say hello.
“Turn the gravy!” Nonna called out as I passed through the living room.
“Sure thing!” I called back as I sailed into the kitchen.
As I stirred I stared through the sliding-glass doors. There on the terrace was my brother Nicky with his hand cupping Marianne’s southern cheek. My mother, Connie, was taking pictures of Frank and Regina’s baby, Paulie, belly flopping into the pool. Big Al, arms waving, was talking to Frank and Regina. And although the shank of the day’s tanning rays had disappeared, their Lisa, who couldn’t be a day over twelve, was lounging like a movie star in her bikini reading Teen People. Tony, their oldest at fourteen, was sneaking a cigarette behind the grill.
I slid the heavy door to the left and called out, “Hello, fam! I’m home!”
CHAPTER TWO
GRATING PARMESAN
With the metallic thwack of the sliding door slamming back against its frame, Nicky and Marianne glanced in my direction. Nicky’s face lit up and Marianne assumed a wide smile, one almost as disingenuous as that of the first runner-up in a Miss America pageant. Petulant Marianne would have to share Nicky’s attention for maybe, I don’t know, twenty-two seconds?