Eggplant Alley (9781593731410) (15 page)

Dad said, “What the? Jee-sus. Get those out of here!”

“Why?” Roy shrugged. “You don't have to eat them.”

“What, are you trying to kill yourself?”

“You're nuts. You should try one yourself. They're quite tasty.”

“Tasty?” Dad said, bewildered, staggered by one thing after another. No one in the family ever uttered the word
tasty
.

“Three guesses where he got that,” Mom noted with a smirk.

Roy tossed a hunk of Blue Castle burger to Checkers. Dad exclaimed, “Now he's trying to kill the dog!”

It was clear Margalo was not going to fade away like Roy's other fleeting passions (roller skates, the harmonica, painting-by-numbers). So Mom needed a closer look at her, and she demanded one. For months, Mom pestered Roy to bring the girl home.

She nagged Roy.

She badgered Roy.

Roy cracked. Out of total exhaustion, he threw up his hands and waved the white flag. He surrendered, and the deal was struck. Margalo would meet the family at Easter dinner.

All that week, Roy had a severe case of the jitters. He jumped at the sound of loud noises. He talked in his sleep—fearful mumbling. He complained of a nervous stomach and unleashed unusually long, anguished farts from his bed at night. On the morning of the big day, he grimly left the apartment to fetch Margalo and he looked like a boy on his way to the gas chamber.

The apartment was spruced, primped, and buffed for the special occasion. The rugs were crisscrossed with fresh vacuum tracks. The tables smelled of oil. The plastic slipcover was off the couch.

Dad set up the “dining table” in the living room. The dining table consisted of a sheet of plywood placed across Roy's old Junior Play-Town Ping-Pong table. The contraption was then covered by a tablecloth. Dad was the mastermind behind this arrangement. Each time he put it together, he set his hands on his hips and marveled, “Now, that's using your noggin.”

Dad was transferring wine from a screwtop jug to a glass decanter and Mom was arranging pink mints in a serving dish.
Mom instructed Nicky to get the fancy napkins she had picked up at Walgreens. “They're in the kitchen,” she said. Nicky went to the kitchen and rummaged in a paper bag on the floor and found a box of Kotex brand sanitary napkins. He opened the box and was impressed. He figured it didn't get any fancier than individually wrapped napkins. He was placing them near each plate on the table when keys jangled in the lock.

The door opened and an unfamiliar female voice sounded softly from the hallway. Roy and Margalo walked into the living room.

“Hey-lo, everyone,” Margalo said with a small wave.

Margalo had blue eyes and chestnut hair, straight and parted in the middle. Her hair ended in a pert flip at the shoulders. She was slightly shorter than Mom. The top of her head only reached to Roy's chin. She wore an orange-and-lime-green blouse of a swirly design, and a teensy, pure white mini skirt.

Roy mumbled introductions. Margalo smiled brightly, and the corners of her mouth slipped under her hair.

Dad gazed at Margalo and kept pouring until wine glubbed up the neck of the glass decanter and overflowed onto the coffee table and cascaded onto the rug.

Mom squawked. Dad said, “Sonavabitch!”

“I'll show you the rest of the apartment,” Roy said, heavy with despair. “It won't take long.”

Mom worked a rag into the wine stain and hissed, “Did you see that skirt?”

“What skirt?” Dad said.

“She doesn't look so evil to me,” Nicky said vacantly.

Mom said, “Looks can be deceiving.”

Mom and Margalo were unlikely to get chummy, but a stroke of fate made the idea out of the question. It was just bad luck that Mom was banging pots and pans in the kitchen while she inquired about Margalo's family.

Margalo said, “It's just me, my father, my brother Eugene …”

And Mom clanged a skillet onto the stovetop as Margalo continued, “plus my setter, Martha. She's three.”

Later events suggested Mom mistakenly heard, “plus my sister, Martha. She's three.”

“And what is your family doing for Easter?” Mom said, stirring gravy.

“Father and Eugene are going to the movies,” Margalo said.

“Uh-huh,” Mom said. “What about Martha?”

“She's home.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“You could have brought her,” Mom said, wrinkling her forehead. “We have plenty of food.”

“Oh, no,” Margalo said. She chuckled daintily. “My goodness, she'd be a total nuisance. Running around, knocking things over. Drooling, scratching, begging for food.”

Margalo shook her head at the thought. “Martha can be a total pest,” she said, and she giggled. Mom stared, bewildered, not at all pleased with this coldhearted girl, standing in her kitchen, giggling, wearing a mini skirt.

Nicky, who was planted near the kitchen table, stared at Margalo,
his lower lip hanging open, and he didn't hear a word said by anyone.

The other dinner guests, Aunt Serafina and Uncle Dominic, arrived and kissed and hugged everyone including Margalo. Within minutes they all sat around the makeshift dining table.

“What are these?” Aunt Serafina said, letting an unwrapped sanitary napkin dangle from her thumb and index finger.

“Nicky, Jesus Christ, are you brain-damaged?” Mom said. “Give me those.”

“Very nice touch,” said Uncle Dominic.

“I'm sorry,” Roy said to Margalo, and Mom gave him a hard look.

They all got started on the food. They dug in and steadily ate, course after course. They ate through the cold cuts and cheeses and roasted peppers and black olives and marinated artichokes and fresh bread from Orzo. They ate through the ravioli. They ate through the lasagna. Mom was the only one who moved from the table, relaying dishes and platters back and forth to the kitchen. By the time the ham hit the table, all eyes were glassy and every forehead was sweaty.

The meal slowed down. The jug wine quickened. Actual conversations began to form. Uncle Dominic used his fingers to pick pineapple from the ham and said, “So, Roy. One more year of high school, right? What's the plan?”

“I dunno,” Roy shrugged. “College, I guess.”

“Unless Uncle Sam got other ideas for you, right?”

“Oh, I hope not,” Mom said.

“Hey, if you gotta go, you gotta go.”

Dad said, “Unless you're one of those peace creeps. Then you burn your draft card and let somebody else go in your place.”

“Disgusting,” Aunt Serafina said.

“Bunch of chickens,” Uncle Dominic said. “Nobody wants to go to war. But we went. We couldn't wait to go. Right, Sal? We couldn't wait. The war. That was our college.”

Uncle Dominic speared a slice of ham.

“I'll just pick,” he said. “Yuh, the army made men out of us. It was good for us. Going to war never killed anybody.”

Dad poured more wine for Dominic. Nobody said anything until Dominic belched and muttered, “Bunch of chickens.”

And Margalo joined the discussion.

“I suppose it does take a measure of physical courage to fight in a war,” she said. She spoke politely and calmly. “But I have to say, it also takes a great deal of courage to stand up and say no. I will not go. I refuse to take part in your war.”

Margalo flickered her eyes around the table and grimaced shyly. She said, “I don't mean to make anyone uncomfortable.”

“Oh, we're not uncomfortable,” Uncle Dominic said. “But lemme ask you something. All right? Let's say Roy here gets drafted. And he don't go, God forbid. Let's say he runs off to Canada. You think that will make them call the war off?”

Roy said, “Let's talk about something else.”

Margalo looped her hair behind her ears and said, “Well, yes, I do think that one person can make a difference. Look at Gandhi.”

“Yeah. I guess one person can make a difference,” Uncle Dominic snorted. “Lookit Hitler.”

Mom removed the ham from the table and said, “Sal, put out the figs.”

“Oh, yeah,” Dad said, brightening.

Dad glowed when he placed the gigantic holiday box of Sun-Spot California Candied Figs in the center of the table. The figs had arrived on Thursday. The parcel post had left them on the Martini doorstep by mistake. Dad hated figs, but he was overjoyed by these figs because they had been dropped into his lap by lucky accident. In his whole life, not much had been dropped into Dad's lap by lucky accident.

“Feast your eyes at those beauties,” Dad said.

“They are nice, Mr. Martini,” Margalo said pleasantly.

Dad said slyly, “A little gift.”

Nicky said, “Uncle Dommie, how was your Easter display this year?”

Uncle Dominic's home in Brooklyn was well known for its elaborate holiday displays. He put out strings of lights and plastic figurines for every occasion. He marked every single holiday, large or small, even Washington's Birthday. He placed a plastic cherry tree, illuminated by a ten-watt bulb, on his tiny lawn for that.

“Ahhhh, I didn't put 'em up,” Uncle Dominic said.

“You didn't put them up?” Mom said.

“Nah, we didn't do nothing. Not after what happened on St. Patrick's.”

Mom said, “Nobody told me. What happened?”

“Nothing. Just some animals busted a bunch of my green lights and walked off with my Lucky the Leprechaun.”

“Animals?” Margalo said. “You think raccoons? Squirrels?”

“No,” Uncle Dominic said. He snorted. “Not them kind of animals. The other kind. The coloreds.”

“Dominic,” Aunt Serafina said.

“Oh, I'm sorry—the Negroes. Whatever you call them now. All I know is, they're ruining my neighborhood. From what I hear, they're doing a nice job on this neighborhood, too.”

“We're trying to get out,” Mom said.

“It's a damn shame,” said Aunt Serafina.

Margalo touched her mouth with a napkin and said, “I'm sorry, but I can't allow myself to sit here and not say anything. I don't mean to make anyone uncomfortable. But I think you are forgetting that anger and despair, and hunger drive people to steal.”

“We were poor, but we never took anything that didn't belong to us,” Dad said, biting a fig.

“Let's talk about something else,” Roy said.

“It's a free country. Let her talk,” Dominic said, rubbing his round belly. “I think you're right, missy. I think they stole my Lucky the Leprechaun so's they could eat him.”

Mom stood and said, “Who wants pie?”

Roy touched Margalo on the arm. Roy looked into her eyes. Margalo nodded. Nicky thought they were exchanging a secret signal.

“We gotta go,” Roy said, getting up.

Mom said, “Whaaaaat? With no dessert?”

Margalo said, “Thank you for a tasty meal. But I really have to get back home. I have homework. I have to let Martha out. It really was a wonderful meal.”

Mom gave it one more try. “Well, how about I wrap up a nice piece of apple pie for Martha?”

“No, thank you, Mrs. Martini,” Margalo said sweetly. “I never give her that kind of food. It would make her sick.”

Mom dropped into her chair. She gulped wine from Aunt Serafina's glass. “I give up. Good-bye.”

Roy slammed the apartment door on the way out.

“Nice girl,” Uncle Dominic said. He belched. “A little mixed up, but a nice girl.”

Roy came into the bedroom after midnight. Nicky was awakened by the creak of floorboards. Roy smelled of cigarette smoke. Coins hit the dresser top, bedsprings cheeped. There was a big sigh. Roy's breathing became slow and regular. He could always fall asleep in an instant.

Nicky was wide awake. His big brother was just a few feet away in the next bed, but Nicky felt Roy was a million miles away. Farther away than ever. His brother was becoming someone else, and Nicky knew why.

“Margalo, oh, Margalo,” Roy murmured in his sleep.

“Margalo,” Nicky said, retrieving the
TV Guide
from the magazine rack, looking at Ann-Margret, whom he decided definitely had green eyes, and remembering the fourth thing that ruined his childhood, stomach cramping at the memory.