Slightly Engaged (27 page)

In our house, it’s fine to give orders if they’re preceded by an endearment.

“It’s coming, it’s coming, hold your horses. Here you go, honey, now you eat all of that and I mean it.” My mother plunks down a plate that holds enough food to choke one of those horses my father is supposed to be holding.

I watch her obediently return to the stove, retrieve the saltshaker and hand it over to him. He grunts his thanks.

I look back at my plate and say, “I’m, uh, not hungry, Ma.”

No, I’m starved.

But not because I haven’t eaten. Quite the contrary, in fact. While Jack was feasting on
cucidati
and milk before bed last night, I was downing a large wedge of leftover lasagna. But it’s almost as if the more I eat, the more I require.

Mary Beth looks up from her own heap of eggs. “You’re on a diet again, Tracey, aren’t you?”

“No way!” I say, hoping to head off a lecture on such foolishness.

I pick up my fork.

“Good. You’re finally getting some meat on your bones,” my mother says approvingly.

I put down my fork.

Meat on my bones? How depressing is that? What am I, a suckling pig?

I proceed to poke at my food while the three of them chow down. In the next room, the Ray Conniff Singers hit a sudden vinyl snag and get stuck singing,
“Oh come let us adore hi—oh come let us adore hi—”

“
Bella,
the record,” my father says, because, you know, she’s deaf and he’s helpless. “It’s skipping.”

She sighs and starts to push back her chair.

“Sit and eat, Ma, I’ll get it,” I say, eager for the opportunity to flee the table.

“You eat,” she says, motioning at my plate. “I’ll get it.”

As she goes into the other room, my father looks at me. “Not salty enough? Is that why you’re not eating?”

“No, it’s fine.”

“Needs more salt.” He shoves the shaker across the table in my direction. “Your mother still hasn’t learned in forty years that eggs need salt.”

“I think they’re salty enough,” Mary Beth says as the Ray Conniff singers skid all the way to
“Sing, choirs of angels…”

“You, you’re just like your mother, all health conscious,” my father accuses my sister.

I hide a snort behind my cup of coffee. My mother and Mary Beth—both of whom swear by good old-fashioned recipes that call for lard—
health conscious?

Mary Beth decides to change the subject. “So what did you get for Jack for Christmas, Tracey?”

This conversation just gets better and better.

“I got him a, um, gift certificate,” I say as my mother returns to the table and resumes eating.

“You got who a gift certificate?” she asks.

“Jack.”

“For what? Borders?” asks my father, who received just that from me for Father’s Day last year. Not that he ever sets foot in a bookstore. But I had long since run out of gift ideas for him, and I thought he could buy himself some CDs or DVDs if he didn’t want books.

I guess he didn’t want any of the above, because I spotted the gift card collecting dust on his dresser when I went in to borrow my mother’s flannel nightgown after I got the lasagna on my pajamas last night.

“No, it isn’t for Borders,” I say. “It’s for…something else.”

“Oh! I get it,” Mary Beth says slyly.

“You do?” I ask, betting she doesn’t. There’s a gleam in her eye, and it’s not a Caribbean-vacation gleam. It’s an X-rated gleam.

“What?” my mother asks, all swivel headed. “What do you get?”

“Never mind, Ma,” Mary Beth says with a lascivious grin.

Needing to set her straight, I begin, “Mary Beth—”

My father cuts me off with an exasperated “What is everybody talking about? Why doesn’t anybody ever tell me anything?”

My mother shushes him with a terse “This is girl talk! That’s why!”

Then she turns back to me and asks, again, “What’s the gift certificate for?”

“Well, it’s not for what
she
thinks it’s for,” I say, bobbing my head at my dirty-minded sister.

“Oh, okay.” Mary Beth winks at me.

Naturally, both my parents pick up on that.

My father throws up his hands in confusion, and my mother finishes gulping some orange juice before she does the same—then suddenly clutches her head.

“Oh!”

“What’s the matter, Ma? Head freeze?” I ask hopefully.

“Is that gift certificate for something…romantic?” she asks ominously.

“Romantic? I guess so.”

“Tracey!” She smacks me in the arm. “I never thought a daughter of mine would go around giving out sex coupons.”

“Sex coupons?” my father echoes in disbelief.
“What?”

I can only imagine what’s going through their heads. If I weren’t so aggravated, I would probably laugh at the vision of me holed up with a bootleg printing press running off certificates for illicit bedroom services.

As it is, I can only bury my face in my hands and wish that I were somewhere, anywhere, else. New York, Aspen, even the reflexology room at Deux Coeurs Sur La Plage. Anything would be better than this. Why is it that every conversation I have with my parents tends to become an interrogation?

“Tracey, what got into you?” my mother wants to know. “I raised you to be a lady. I raised you to—”

“Ma, I’m not giving Jack a gift certificate for sex, okay?” I glare at Mary Beth, who doesn’t even have the decency to look apologetic.

“You’re not?”

“No, Ma.”
Jack gets sex for free.

But I refrain from saying that, and she looks mollified until I feel compelled for some reason to add, “It’s a gift certificate for a Caribbean vacation.”

Pause.

“You’re taking Jack to the Caribbean on vacation?”

I nod.

To say that she isn’t pleased would be the same thing as saying that it’s a little nippy outside this morning.

Clearly, to my mother, my Christmas gift to Jack is a mere step down from doling out sex coupons.

“I really don’t think you should be going around doing that,” she informs me. Surprise, surprise.

I picture myself “going around” with my Caribbean-vacation coupons. As in door to door. As in,
Hi, my name is Tracey Spadolini, and I’d like to whisk you away with me on a sexy island romp.

“You’re not even married, Tracey,” my mother informs me, because clearly I must have forgotten.

“Ma, come on. They
live
together,” Mary Beth speaks up at last.

“Don’t remind me.” That came from my father, who has resumed shoveling eggs and potatoes into his mouth after dumping salt all over everything.

“If you were married, Tracey, everything would be different.”

Yeah, no kidding, Ma. Thanks for enlightening me.

“Married people travel together all the time,” she goes on, “and nobody thinks anything of it.”

“Jack and I traveled here together,” I point out.

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“This isn’t a foreign land.”

What the…?

Ah, the old Connie Spadolini logic. It’s been a while.

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Ma.”

“It’s one thing to fly to Buffalo,” she says with a shrug. “It’s another thing altogether to go away on a vacation together.”

You know, there was a time when I actually valued my mother’s infinite wisdom. Either I’ve changed, or her infinite wisdom has been replaced by meaningless bullshit.

“But we live together,” I remind her helplessly. “What’s the difference where we go?”

“She wants you to get married,” my father interrupts his chewing to say. “Okay?”

I look at my mother, who shrugs.

“I guess I don’t get what any of this has to do with my Christmas gift to him,” I tell her.

Or what business it is of yours.

“I think Jack is great, Tracey,” she says simply. “I just wish you two were at least engaged.”

Okay, so we’re all on the same page here.

Even Mary Beth is nodding. “I know you probably think living together is the same thing, Trace…”

Who—me?

“…but believe me, it isn’t.”

“Trust me, I believe you, Mary Beth.”

What I can’t believe is that they’re all sitting here acting as though my marital destiny is in
my
hands.

Tell it to Jack,
I want to scream at them.

But before I can, guess who appears in the doorway?

Okay, in this house, you never know. It could be any number of assorted relatives, friends and church ladies.

So I won’t make you guess who.

I’ll tell you: it’s our little adamant-bachelor sleepyhead himself.

Instant smiles all around. Well, I’m not smiling. I’m pissed at him for putting me through this with my family. Why can’t he just give me the damn ring and make us all happy?

“Sit down, Jack. I’ll get you your eggs.” My mother bustles over to the stove. “Tracey, pour him his coffee.”

I dig into my fried potatoes, because God knows I can use a little comfort food right about now. “Jack can get his own coffee, Ma.”

“Tracey! He’s a guest,” she chides, but what she really means is
he’s a man.

And I can tell by the way she’s looking at me that she now understands why Jack hasn’t proposed. It’s because I’m not waiting on him hand and foot.

“It’s okay, Connie,” Jack says easily, going over to the Mr. Coffee on the counter and opening the cupboard for a mug. “I’ve got it.”

Not only does he have it, but he also goes around the table, pouring refills for everyone else, including my mother.

“Oh, Jack, you shouldn’t have,” she says as though he’s just presented her with an extravagant gift.

“No problem.” He takes a seat and looks at the heap of food on his plate. “If I keep eating like this, I’m going to have to buy two seats for the return flight.”

Everyone laughs.

Everyone except me, that is. I’m too busy trying not to eat everything my mother put on my plate, and then go back for seconds.

But of course, I do.

Stress makes me eat, and being with my family—especially at Christmas—is as stressful as it gets.

After breakfast, Mary Beth goes to The Wal-Mart to finish up some shopping. Jack heads out into the blustery weather to shovel the walk and driveway, which of course thrills my father to no end.

I am roped into kitchen duty, cleaning five pounds of shrimp for tonight’s traditional seven-course seafood dinner. As I scrape the gloppy black threads from each shrimp’s curved spine, I curse whoever started this tradition back in Italy.

“Why does it have to be seven courses, Ma?” I grumble.

She looks up from the scrod she’s dipping in eggs and coating with flour for frying. “For the seven sacraments. Baptism, communion, reconciliation—”

“I know the seven sacraments, Ma,” I cut in.

I also know that marriage is one of them.

She insists on naming them all, of course. To prove she’s good at religion.

In lieu of applause, I say, deadpan, “Well, I wouldn’t want to come up short on my sacraments. I guess if this marriage thing doesn’t pan out with Jack, I’ll have to go for the Holy Orders one.”

“Tracey! Don’t joke around about the sacraments.”

“I wasn’t joking, Ma. Who’s to say I might not get the calling someday? We haven’t had a
nun
in the family since Sister Mary Ann.”

She was my grandmother’s first cousin, and not exactly a fun-loving gal, from what I hear. According to family legend, even the laughing gas she was once given for a root canal failed to make her crack a smile.

Speaking of not cracking a smile, my mother is sternly shaking her head at me and saying, “You don’t want to be a nun, Tracey.”

“I don’t?”

“No. You want to get married and have babies.”

She’s right, but I can’t help saying, “Actually, Ma, anyone can get married and have babies. I want to become a copywriter and win Addy awards.”

Which isn’t a lie, because I really do want to do that. I just want to get married and have babies—someday—too.

Who should walk in on my poster-child-for-women’s-lib moment but Jack?

He grins broadly, and I can’t tell whether it’s because he assumes he’s off the hook with the whole marriage thing, or because he’s no longer toiling away with a shovel in sub-zero temperatures.

In any case, he accepts my mother’s offer of hot chocolate, and she bustles down to her basement pantry cupboard for some bittersweet cocoa squares to melt.

What, you thought she makes instant?

“So how’s it going?” Jack asks, kissing me on the cheek.

I rip the intestines from another shrimp with my bare hands. “Terrific,” I say through clenched teeth.

“Is your mother getting on your nerves?”

“How’d you guess?”

He shakes his head. “Holidays are stressful. Try to just take it in stride. And you shouldn’t talk about business with her.”

“Business?”

“You were saying you wanted to win an Addy. She probably doesn’t even know what that is.”

“I’m sure she can figure it out. And anyway…that’s not what we were talking about.”

“It’s not?”

I shrug. “Not really.”

My mother is back with the cocoa squares, so I don’t have a chance to tell him that we were discussing my future with Jack.

Not that it matters now. He’s either going to give me a ring in the next twenty-four hours, or he’s not. It’s beyond my control.

Jack sits at the table sipping hot chocolate and chatting with my mom as she fries the fish, and I can’t help but lighten up a little. He’s such a good sport. Especially when he offers to hand deliver several tins of cookies to the neighbors, wearing a Santa hat, no less, so that my mother won’t have to do it herself in the snow.

“He’s crazy about you,” she comments, watching him trudge down the driveway, tins in hand, Santa hat on head.

“I don’t know…I was just thinking he’s crazy about
you,
” I tell her, and I can’t help but smile.

Must be the Christmas spirit, because the rest of the day passes in a merry blur of cooking, baking, wrapping and cleaning.

The next thing I know, I’m sipping a well-deserved cup of rum-spiked eggnog—homemade, of course, and served in my mother’s cut-glass punch bowl—and the relatives are starting to arrive. Not just my brothers and sister and their families, but dozens of aunts, uncles and cousins.