Loose Screws (16 page)

“And Shelby called, wanting to know why she couldn't get through on your cell.”

“You told her, I suppose?”

“It's not exactly a secret.”

I roll partway over, clutching the sheet like a baby its security blanket. “Which means she probably called Terrie, right?”

“Honey, if I know Shelby, she's probably taken an ad out in the
Post.
Jesus, Ginger, your breath stinks. Now get up and function, for God's sake. I'm going into school for a meeting, I'll be back at lunchtime. The cleaner's said your clothes would be ready by this afternoon.”

I stare down at the pajamas I was wearing the night of the fire, which have probably fused to my skin by now.
“And what, pray tell, am I supposed to wear in the meantime?”

“Check the drawers and the back of the closet. There's stuff there from when you still lived here.”

My eyes widen. “You saved my old clothes?”

“Not exactly. I just never got around to throwing them out.”

Yeah, that sounds like Nedra, who would save newspapers until they decomposed if it weren't for Nonna's pitching them on the sly.

I struggle to sit up, hugging my knees. “I hate to tell you this, but I have exactly two hundred sixty-four dollars in my checking account. Until something comes in, I can't get those clothes out of hock.”

“Don't worry about it—”

I jump up when my mother goes pale, sinks into the chair in front of the desk in my room.

“Nedra! Are you okay?”

She plants an unsteady hand on her chest. “Nothing that digesting your grandmother's stuffed peppers won't cure.”

“Look,” I say, finally untangling myself from the sheets and getting out of the bed. “This is nothing to joke around about. It could be serious. Nausea and dizziness is often the first sign of a heart attack in a woman, you know.”

Nedra rolls her eyes at me, then gets to her feet, tugging down her blouse over her skirt. “I'm not having a heart attack, Ginger. I'm having agita. A couple of Tums, I'll be fine. Now, go clean yourself up, for God's sake. I'll be back soon.”

Actually, now that I'm vertical, it's not so bad. If a little weird, since for some reason, I expected my room to look exactly the same as it had when I left some twelve years ago. Instead, a good half of it's crammed with file cabinets and bookcases, my bed, dresser and old desk huddled against the wall like bullied children. All my posters, my dolls, the books I deemed too juvenile to cart off with me when I moved out, are gone. Or at least, out of sight. Like my clothes, I'm sure they're lurking in a drawer or closet, banished but not annihilated.

I paw through the dresser for undies, shorts, a T-shirt.
Did I really used to wear shorts that short? Jeez. What a hussy. Twenty minutes later, bathed and dressed, I plod out to the kitchen to find Nonna, as ever, surrounded by bowls and rolling pins and other cooking paraphernalia, humming to herself as she goes about fulfilling her mission to feed people. Dressed in one of those murky-colored sacks they must sell by the boatload in some dumpy little store on Delaney Street, she beams when she sees me, her arms flying open. I step into her embrace, having to bend over to give her a hug. She is short, but solid, like a tree stump, and she always smells faintly of onions and garlic and talcum powder.

“Sit, sit. I fix you breakfast. You feel better today?”

“Marginally. What are you making?”

“I think maybe stuffed ziti. How does that sound?”

“Like heaven.” She gives me another broad smile, and
marginally
cranks up another notch. To
passable,
maybe.

I let her feed me—pancakes, sausage, scrambled eggs, coffee—after which I feel reasonably ready to face the world. Or what's left of mine, in any case. I turn on my cell phone, call everyone I can think of who might need to know where I am, including the store to tell them I still need a few days off. Elise Suderman, the head of the design studio, isn't happy but there's not a whole lot she can say. I mean, please. What's the worst they can do? Fire me? Oooooh, I'm shaking in my boots.

Then I call the caterer, still on the cell's speed dial. I have no idea what I'm going to say, or how I plan on paying the still overdue bill, but I figure the least I can do is keep the lines of communication open.

“But we got a check for that on Monday, hon,” the gravel-voiced bookkeeper says, clearly a little surprised.

My hand grips the phone. “Mr. Munson paid the bill?”

“Sure did. Even included ten percent extra to cover the inconvenience, he said.”

My head buzzing, I call the florist, get the same story.

The hotel? Yep. All paid up.

Whoa. I mean…

Okay, this is good news, right? One less thing to worry about, one problem solved. Yet…I don't know. Some
thing's…bugging me about this, but I'm too stunned to figure out what it is.

Over Nonna's vociferous protests, I wash up my breakfast dishes. And it's when I'm wiping my hands on the country kitsch terry cloth dish towel that the significance of Greg's paying off the bills hits me.

Now
it's over.

All three places said the checks were dated well before the fire, which means he could've gotten in touch with me, if he'd wanted to. That he hadn't could only mean one thing, which was that he wasn't going to change his mind. Or even give me the courtesy of a face-to-face explanation.

The past month, I realize, I've been like a person sitting by a deathbed, praying for a miracle, unwilling to let go as long as there was even a shred of hope. Well, honey, the body done been carted off and buried now, and there ain't nuthin' left to hang on
to.

My grandmother looks up from her work, frowns. “Are you all right?”

I shake off those last shreds of false hope and smile for her. In a way, I feel relieved. Free, even. Depressed as hell, but free.

“Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine,” I say, then head back to my room, for the first time since my return taking the time to reabsorb the place I'd had no choice but to call “home” for the first two-thirds of my life to date.

The apartment is one of those grand old dames common to so many prewar buildings north of 96th Street, the rooms spacious and high-ceilinged, the wood floors wood slightly slanted, the hundred-times-painted over walls and ceilings trimmed with cornices and molding. The windows were replaced seven or eight years ago, but as a child, I remember my father joking that you could practically gauge the wind velocity by how far the curtains would blow out from the sills.

I don't suppose I should be surprised that being here makes me think of my father. But now, as I regard a collection of photos hanging crookedly on the wall outside the kitchen, my eyes burn at a picture of the three of us
on what I think is my fifth birthday, right after we moved here from the tiny three-room apartment on 114th Street.

Next to my father, Nedra looks almost petite. Leo—short for Basilio—Petrocelli was six-three or four, with thick, curly black hair and a full beard and moustache. Gee, if he'd lived long enough for his hair to turn white, he would have made the perfect Santa Claus, complete with the booming laugh. Dressed in almost identical fisherman's sweaters and jeans, we're all smiling like goons in the picture, my father possessively hugging my mother to his side, his cheek nestled in her hair. I'm standing between them, one of their hands in each of mine.

I certainly look happy enough in the photo, don't I?

I turn away, shaking my head at the living room, which is one of two rooms Nonna gave up on trying to bully into order years ago. “Less is more” is not a concept with which my mother is familiar. Piles of books and papers and magazines, like a drunken city skyline, take up most of whatever space isn't occupied by furniture that was comfortably worn when I was little, but is now simply pathetic and threadbare. Because she's still giving her salary away, I wonder? Or because she simply can't be bothered calling her daughter to help her go look for something less disreputable?

Nedra's bedroom, the old dining room, is right next to the living room. Through the slightly open French doors I catch glimpses of discarded clothes and more piles of books, competing with the magazines and papers scattered across her unmade bed.

I have to smile. Yep, that's my mother, a woman too busy
being
to be bothered with cleaning up after herself.

And then there's my grandmother, I think as I stop in front of a room that would put a Marine recruit to shame. Or a nun. Underneath a crucifix (a large, gaudy, gruesome thing I found totally fascinating as a kid) stands a single twin bed, tightly made, keeping company with an armless upholstered rocking chair she brought with her from Italy more than fifty years ago. The dark wood dresser is bare except for a statue of the Madonna centered on a tatted lace doily; there is not a speck of dust on the damn thing.

How on earth have these two women managed to live together this long without driving each other nuts?

And how odd that I am like neither of them.

Once back in “my” room, I turn on the fan on the dresser, then crawl back onto the bed—which I haven't yet made—and sit cross-legged, elbows on knees, chin in hands, and take stock of how I feel. I decide not bad, but not good, either. This is when, logically and true to my nature, I should be recouping, planning, figuring out where I go from here. For some reason, it's not happening. Although whether it's because I'm feeling rebellious or because I'm simply worn out, I can't quite tell.

I should call a Bitchfest.

Then again, maybe not. The way I feel right now, Terrie's cynicism would push me over the edge.

Not to mention Shelby's serene little smile.

On a sigh, I haul my butt off the bed, decide—because it's not as if I have a pressing schedule or anything—to see just how much of my past my mother has managed to hang on to. The cedar-lined closet is a fairly big one, with lots of shelves and crevices. When I was little, I used to torment my mother by hiding inside, refusing to answer when she called me…until the tone of her voice warned me she was no longer amused. But it was nice, even if just for a few minutes, pretending that no one could find me, or bother me, or disturb my thoughts. By ten or eleven, though, I'd outgrown the practice, which was sad because then I really had no place to be by myself.

I pull the cord to turn on the overhead light. Criminy. Here are my teenage years, tucked away for all eternity—the clothes, those posters, all rolled up inside each other in a corner, boxes of books.

And on the top shelf, a splotched, banged-up wooden case that still smells of linseed oil and turpentine.

Something stirs in my blood, something I'd thought long since dead and forgotten. I yank down the box, nearly beaning myself in the process, then carry it to my bare desktop to open it. My heart rate speeds up, my fingers tingle, like a lover disrobing her beloved after too many years apart.

The bent, squashed tubes huddle together, deformed and smeared. I pick one up, gently squeeze it to find it still pliant. Most of the other kids in my art classes preferred acrylics, with their brighter colors and faster drying time. Not me. I loved the way oils smelled, the subtle depth of the colors, their patience with a neophyte's experimentation with blending and shading, even the different textures and feels of the different pigments. A pathetic romantic then, I even loved the sense of connection with artists from centuries before.

I'd turned to painting about the time I'd outgrown the closet.

I'd let myself wander around for hours in the world I'd create with my brushes, oblivious to the comings and goings in the apartment. My parents encouraged my explorations, never hesitating to buy me whatever supplies I needed, no matter how expensive a tube of Alizaron Crimson or a pure sable Number 10 round brush happened to be.

Even during those weeks when all we ate was macaroni and cheese.

Gee. That wouldn't be guilt pricking my conscience, would it?

Further rooting around in the back of the closet turns up a stack of canvases, some half finished, some only primed. And my old easel, too…

I find myself wandering into the third, now-empty bedroom, the one Nedra had said I could use as an office. Or something.

It's the one room that faces north, due to a funny jog in the building. A battered chest of drawers, a couple of chairs are all that break the monotony of bare floor, unadorned walls. The old roller shade snaps up when I pull it; clear, bright light floods the room.

“Found your paints, huh?”

Despite its softness, my mother's voice makes me jump, crashing out of my dream. God—what was I thinking? That I'd start painting again? As if the reason I'd given it up to begin with has changed?

“You should have ditched all that crap years ago,” I say, my voice shrill, hollow, in the empty room.

“Wasn't my crap to ditch.” A floorboard creaks as she comes into the room, her arms crossed. She crosses to the window, struggles with it for a minute before coercing it open. A hot, airless breeze drifts into the room, spiked with sounds of traffic, voices, a child crying somewhere in the building. “This would make a great studio, wouldn't it?”

I glance around, shrug. “I suppose.”

Nedra drops into one of the chairs, an old Mission-style thing I'd always hated. “You were good, Ginger. I never did understand why you gave it up.”

Her words provoke simultaneous pride and annoyance. Nedra's not one for empty praise. Neither is she much for seeing something from someone else's vantage point.

“You know damn well why I quit.”

“Because you'd rather take the easy way out.”

“Because I'm not the starving artist type. Which you know.”

“Not all artists are starving.”

“No, only most of them. Come on—how many of those friends of yours ever made it even past the bottom rung of the ladder, let alone to the top? You know damn well what the odds are against becoming a success. Or even simply making enough to live on. I'd've had to have a screw loose to even think about pursuing a career as a painter.”