Slightly Single (17 page)

I look at my sister, standing there in her sweatpants and sweatshirt that do little to conceal her belly and hips and thighs, and I feel sorry for her.

“Trust me, I’m not overdoing it,” I assure Mary Beth. “I have at least twenty more pounds to lose.”

“Twenty! You do not!”

“Mary Beth—”

“Five more pounds, maybe,” she says. “You want something to drink? I’ve got pop.”

Pop. I’m definitely not in New York anymore.

“Do you have any diet stuff?” I ask her.

“Sure. You want anything to eat?”

“No, thanks.”

“Did you eat on the bus?”

“Yep,” I lie, because I don’t feel like having her force-feed me. She and my mother freak out if they think somebody’s missed a meal.

I watch her leave the room, and I feel guilty for wondering if my butt has ever been as big as hers is. I love my sister. She’s my favorite person in the world.

But we’re so different.

At least, that’s what I’ve always told myself.

I look around the living room, with its Fisher Price meets Sears decor. I smile when I see the boys’ latest school pictures framed on a shelf in the entertainment center. I stop smiling when I notice that my sister and
Vinnie’s wedding portrait is exactly where it’s always been.

“Why haven’t you taken that down, Mary Beth?” I ask, pointing at it when she reappears with two Diet Cokes and a bowl of potato chips.

“What? The wedding picture? What would the boys think if I took it down? That’s me and their dad.”

“The boys already know you’re getting divorced.” This is a given. I was with her last fall when she told them. Vince Junior seemed to get it, but he wasn’t fazed. Nino was oblivious to the news.

“They know we’re getting divorced, but I don’t want them to think I hate their dad,” Mary Beth says, sitting on the couch and crunching a chip.

“That’s crazy. For one thing, you do hate him…don’t you?” I demand when I catch the fleeting expression on her face.

“He cheated on me when I was pregnant. I found out he was with another woman while I was in labor, Tracey. How do you think I feel about him?” she replies.

“Well, then, get rid of this picture,” I insist, crossing the room and taking it off the shelf.

“Now?”

“Here.” I hand her the frame. “Throw it away.”

“But you gave us the frame for a wedding present.”

She’s right. It’s sterling silver, and it’s engraved with their wedding date. I bought it at Things Remembered, and it seemed extravagant back then. When my
mother saw it, she said I should have gotten the brass because silver would tarnish.

I realize it hasn’t.

And I realize Mary Beth must polish it regularly.

This makes me ill.

“Throw it away,” I say again.

“That seems so—”

“I’ll do it for you.” I march into her kitchen and stomp on the pedal of the plastic garbage can. As the lid swings open, I drop in the frame. It lands with a splat on top of somebody’s leftover Spaghetti-Os mixed with coffee grounds.

“There. Don’t you feel better?” I ask my sister as I return to the living room.

“I guess.”

But she doesn’t. I can tell it’s killing her.

She wants the picture back where it belongs.

She wants Vinnie back where he belongs.

“Are these
Wow
chips?” I ask, grabbing one and biting into it.

“Nope. Full fat.”

“Oh.” I eat just that one chip, and then I sit on the chair opposite the couch, taking a sip of my Diet Coke. “So how are the boys?”

“Oh, you’ll see them first thing in the morning. And I mean first thing.” She smiles. “They’re so excited you’re going to be staying here, Trace. They wanted to know if you can spend the whole weekend with us, but I told them you’ll probably sleep at Nana and Poppi’s tomorrow night.”

“Yeah, I probably should,” I say. My parents would be hurt if I didn’t.

But I know my mother’s going to be driving me crazy within twenty-four hours. She’ll keep trying to make me feel guilty for moving away. She’ll act like it’s only a temporary thing, the way she always does.

“I heard Mom and Dad are getting a new couch,” I tell Mary Beth.

“Yeah. It’s god-awful.”

“I know. I remember barfing all over it, and I’m not the only one who did over the years.”

“No, I mean the new one. It’s this brown and beige pattern with nubby fabric and stiff cushions. I went with Mom to pick it out.”

“Are you serious?” I have to laugh. “What’s with the earth-tone color scheme?”

She laughs, too. We proceed to make fun of our parents’ furniture. Then we make fun of our parents in general. It sounds mean, I know, but we do it in a loving way. And I realize how much I miss my sister.

When Mary Beth tells me I can sleep in her queen-size bed with her instead of out here on the couch, I take her up on it. It’s peaceful, snuggled beside her, listening to her even breathing, knowing that she loves and accepts me unconditionally.

S
o do my parents.

Love me unconditionally, that is.

But when I see them at their party the next day, the first thing my mother says to me—after she’s screamed and hugged me and cried, and then gotten over the initial shock of seeing me there—is, “Where did you get that dress? You should wear things like that more often. You look beautiful!”

The dress is from the back of Mary Beth’s closet—at least a decade old and four sizes smaller than her current wardrobe. I wouldn’t be caught dead in this thing east of the Hudson River. It’s a totally outdated style. Plus, it’s pink. And sleeveless. But look at my mother, in an ill-fitting turquoise number with a gold
chain belt. She’s not exactly the fashionista of Brookside.

My father tells me, repeatedly, that it’s about time I came home for a visit. He says it on the buffet line, he says it during his toast to my mother and he says it as we’re dancing to an old Frank Sinatra tune.

He says it so often, and to so many relatives, friends and neighbors, that I’m sure everybody assumes I haven’t been back since I moved to New York over a year ago. I’m already the talk of the town because I left. Now I can be the talk of the town because I’ve not only left, but I’ve turned my back on my loving parents.

The party is held in the Most Precious Mother church hall—the same place where I went to CCD (i.e., Catechism) classes while I was growing up, where as teens we had our CYO dances and where Mary Beth and Vinnie had their wedding reception. It’s funny—I’ve been here hundreds, maybe thousands, of times in my life, but the place suddenly seems completely unfamiliar.

I can’t believe I never noticed that the place reeks of smoke from Saturday-night bingo, or that the linoleum floors are so scratched or that the folding gray metal chairs and the long tables covered with paper tablecloths printed in wedding bells are so…well, tacky.

So is the buffet table, with its tinfoil trays of baked ziti and sausage with peppers and salad made with
whitish-green iceberg lettuce, orangey-yellow tomatoes and Seven Seas Italian dressing.

And the decorations: crepe paper draped from the rafters and folding honeycomb wedding bells dangling from the basketball hoops—I never noticed that there were basketball hoops in here. On the tables are little white crinkle cups filled with those vile-tasting candy-coated almonds.

But the pièce de résistance has to be the DJ: Father Stefan’s younger brother, Chaz, who’s wearing a tan polyester leisure suit, and not in a cool retro way, but in an oblivious, geeky way. He’s played “Celebration” at least three times, and every time it comes on, a big cheer goes up and the dance floor is promptly jammed.

I compare this scene to the events Milos puts on in New York, and I find myself feeling sorry for my parents and my siblings. None of them has any idea that this is woefully inadequate. They’re having a blast, dancing and eating and mingling.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m having fun, too.

But I can’t help feeling like I don’t belong here.

No…

Like I don’t
want
to belong here.

I try to imagine what will happen when Will and I get engaged and my family tries to plan our wedding. They would be crushed if I told them that we wanted to get married in New York City. They would point out that the wedding is always in the bride’s home
town, and that if they’re going to pay for a wedding, it better take place right here in Brookside.

All the more reason for me to keep socking away money in that Prego jar, which I have to take to the bank now that I’ve got a respectable amount—almost five hundred dollars—from working for Milos these past few weeks.

Will and I will have to save money and pay for our own wedding if we want to have it in the city.

Otherwise, we’ll find ourselves here, in Most Precious Mother hall, boogeying to Kool and the Gang and doing the chicken dance, which Chaz has now forced on everyone not once, but twice.

I sit on a folding chair sipping warm white zinfandel from a foam cup. I watch Vince Junior and Nino out on the dance floor, waggling their elbows like poultry before they collapse on the floor in hopeless giggles. And I find myself thinking that maybe the chicken dance isn’t so bad.

But then I try to picture Will doing it, and I can’t.

He just wouldn’t fit here.

And that isn’t a bad thing.

I would kill for a cigarette. Lord knows I could bum one from somebody, since there are smokers galore, but I never light up in front of my parents. Somehow, I know that if I’m still smoking when I’m in my fifties and they’re in their eighties, I will continue to sneak cigs behind their backs.

The chicken dance gives way to the Tarantella, which is a big hit with this crowd. It’s a traditional
Italian folk dance that involves much clapping and bouncing and linking of arms.

Someone sits down beside me. “Hi, Tracey.”

I look up to see Bruce Cardolino. His parents and my parents have been friends for years. In fact, Bruce’s father was friends with my dad, and his mother was friends with my mom, and they set my parents up on a blind date. That’s how they met.

Bruce is wearing gray slacks—not pants, but
slacks
—and a black silky-looking shirt with an open collar that reveals chest hair and a gold cross. In other words, he’d be right at home on the set of
The Sopranos.

“Hey, Bruce, how’s it going?” I’ve always liked him. In fact, I brought him to a couple of CYO dances when we were teenagers and I couldn’t get a real date. We never kissed, or anything—we were strictly friends. But I always thought he was cute, and if he hadn’t always had a girlfriend—or if he had ever been willing—I would have been totally into him.

He’s still good-looking, in a strictly Guido sense. Black hair combed straight back, tall, nice build. I haven’t seen him in a few years—he went away to St. John Fisher college up in Rochester, but I heard that now he’s back in town working for his dad’s business.

Mr. Cardolino is a plumbing and heating contractor. My father’s always talking about how he makes a fortune, and I guess he does, by Brookside standards. He’s always driven a new Buick, and Mrs. Cardolino has a fur coat and the whole family is always decked
out in gold jewelry, right down to Bruce’s sister Tanya’s one year-old daughter, who has pierced ears and who is currently chicken-dancing with my nephews.

“You still living in New York?” Bruce asks. When I nod, he says, “Yeah? What’s that like?”

“It’s great,” I say, not wanting to elaborate. Anything I say is going to get back to my parents, so I have to tread carefully here.

“Ever see Donald Trump around?”

“No, I’ve never seen him.”

“How about those people on the
Today Show.
You ever seen them?”

“No, I never have.”

“So you never went over there when they’re taping the show and waved a sign at the camera?”

“No.”

“Huh. My girlfriend keeps saying she wants to do that. She says that if we ever get married, she wants me to take her to New York on our honeymoon so she can hold up a sign that says we just got married.” He snorts in a
go figure
kind of way.

“Who’s your girlfriend, Bruce? Anyone I know?”

“Angie Nardone. You know her?”

“Angie Nardone! Yeah, she’s a few years younger than I am, but we were in Key Club together.”

“Yeah, she’s only nineteen,” Bruce confides. “I figure she’s too young to be talking about getting married.”

“Yeah, nineteen is young.”

“I keep telling her that if we’re still going out next year, when she’s older, then we’ll see.”

“Yeah,” I say, deadpan. “Then she’ll be twenty.”

“Yeah. That’s better than nineteen. My parents got married when they were nineteen, but things were different back then.”

“Exactly. But then, Tanya got married right out of high school, and she and Joey seem really happy,” I point out. Obviously, she’s not married to my brother, Joey—there are countless Joeys in Brookside. In fact, most of them are right here at my parents’ anniversary party.

Bruce’s sister Tanya and her Joey have at least five kids and she’s pregnant again, but the two of them have danced every slow dance Chaz has played.

“Yeah, but that’s different, too,” Bruce says, leaning closer to me. “They
had
to get married, remember?”

“Oh, yeah.” I had completely forgotten about that.

Here in Brookside, if you’re single and Roman Catholic and you get pregnant, you
have
to get married. There’s simply no alternative.

“So what do you do?” Bruce asks me. “In New York?”

“I work for an advertising agency.”

“What do you do there?”

No way am I going to use the “S” word. Not when Bruce is sitting here looking all impressed with the mere fact that I live in Manhattan.

I say vaguely, “I do a lot of different things. Like,
right now, I’m trying to come up with the name for a new product.”

“You’re kidding! What kind of new product?”

“A new deodorant. It’s formulated to last a week at a time.”

“Cool. What names have you come up with?”

“
Persist
is my favorite,” I tell him. “But I don’t know if they’re going to go with that, so I’m still working on it.”

“Hey, I’ll give it some thought and write down a few names for you, okay? I’d love to help out with something like that.”

“Thanks, Bruce…” I want to tell him not to bother, but I don’t know how to do that politely, so I just say, “That would be great.”

He asks for my address, writes it on the paper tablecloth and tears it off and puts it into his shirt pocket. We chat awhile longer, mostly about the plumbing and heating contracting business and about people we used to know.

Then “Celebration” comes on again and Bruce leaps to his feet and shouts,
“Whoo-hoo!
Want to dance, Tracey?”

To this not-so-golden oldie? Not if my life depended on it. But I politely say, “No, thanks. But you go ahead.”

“Come on! Angie wouldn’t mind. She had to work today—did I tell you she’s a phlebotomist over at Brookside General?”

“No, I don’t think you mentioned it.”

“Come on, let’s dance.”

“No, that’s okay. I’m going to go see if my nephews got a piece of cake yet,” I tell him, and I go off in search of Vince Junior and Nino while Bruce joins the bopping crowd on the dance floor.

I find the boys sprawled under a table dumping candied nuts out of the little paper cups and making a big pile of them.

“What are you guys doing?” I ask, peering at them.

“This is the rock quarry,” Vince Junior says solemnly.

Nino nods and produces a miniature yellow metal bulldozer from the pocket of his tiny Baby Gap khakis. “We-o pwayin’ wock quawwy,” he informs me.

“Cool. Can I play?”

Naturally, they’re thrilled.

We all pway wock quawwy for a while, and then I get them each a big piece of cake, which they promptly strip of the sugary bakery frosting before telling me they’re full.

I’m tempted to eat the remaining cake, but it’s looking a little slimed, so I dump their plates.

I’m cleaning the icing off their faces with purple napkins that are printed in silver with my parents’ names and their wedding date when Nino shouts, “Hey, wook! They-o’s my Daddy!”

I follow his gaze.

Sure enough, there’s Vinnie, out on the dance floor, dancing with Mary Beth to “Always and Forever.”

“What’s Daddy doin’ here?” Vince Junior asks.

“I was just wondering that myself,” I mutter.

As the boys rush over to greet their dad, I march over to the table where my brother Joey and Sara are sitting.

“Did you guys see who’s here?” I ask.

“Trust me, he wasn’t invited,” Sara says. “He said he was just here to drop off Mary Beth’s car and pick up his Explorer from the parking lot.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what he’s doing,” I say, glaring at Vinnie, who is now balancing a giggling Nino on his shoulders, pretending he’s going to drop him on Vince Junior, while Mary Beth looks on, beaming.

“I guess he came in to say hi to Ma and Pop, and somebody asked him to stay and have cake,” Joey says.

I’d be willing to bet that that somebody was Mary Beth.

It hurts to see my sister so unwilling to shove him out of her life for good.

Yes, he’s the father of her children.

But can’t she see how he’s using her?

“The thing I don’t get,” Sara says, “is why he even does this. He supposedly has a new girlfriend—at least one—and he’s told Mary Beth he doesn’t love her anymore. So why does he keep her on a string?”

“Because his ego needs to be fed by her blatant adoration. He gets off on seeing her so into him, and knowing that no matter what he does, she’ll be there.” I shudder. “If he so much as looks my way, I’m going to drag him outside and tell him off.”