The Temptations of St. Frank (8 page)

Frank surveyed the spread on the kitchen table. It was enough for an army—a tuna noodle casserole with a whole big bag of potato chips jutting out of the browned surface, cold cuts and cheeses arranged in a pinwheel on a large platter, a basket of bread, plastic tubs of cole slaw and potato salad, two bottles of ginger ale, a jug of iced tea, and right in front of his father, a Pyrex baking dish of manicotti and a bowl of stuffed vinegar peppers. Frank's grandmother—his father's mother, who lived downstairs with Frank's grandfather in their two family house—always sent “a little something” upstairs every night. But not because she was being nice. It was more like a Care Package because she thought Frank's mother was a god-awful cook, and Grandma didn't want her son to have to eat “A-merry-gan” crap. Frank's mother wasn't Italian. Her parents were French-Canadians, and she'd been brought up in New Hampshire, which was like being from Mars as far as Grandma was concerned.

The truth was, Frank's mother really was a terrible cook, and Frank's grandmother was an amazing cook. Frank's mother, who had worked full-time as a registered nurse until his sister was born, cooked everything to death to kill the germs. So when she fried an egg, for instance, she cooked it so long you could pick it up like a cookie. Forget about sopping up the yolk with toast. Not in her kitchen.

His grandmother, on the other hand, made everything from scratch, even the macaroni. Her manicotti were homemade crepes filled with ricotta cheese mixed with raw eggs and parsley, then smothered in her tomato “gravy” and baked until the cheese was firm and the edges of the crepes were just slightly crispy.

“You don't like this stuff, do you?” Frank's father said to him, finishing off his first manicotti and cutting into his second.

Frank did like his Grandma's manicotti. He liked it a lot. But he wasn't hungry, and he wasn't thinking about food. He was thinking about Yolanda, how he'd blown it with her. Besides, even if he did want some manicotti, they wouldn't last long the way his father was going. And anyway he didn't want his father to think he wanted any. Showing a desire for anything, whether it was a piece of manicotti or a college education, was always an invitation for his father's ridicule and ass-backward logic.

“Frank! Can't you wait?” Frank's mother came into the kitchen. She was talking to Frank's father whose name was also Frank. Frank Senior. Frank was Frank Junior. Except at home, his father was Frank and he was Frankie or worse, Frankie-boy. All Italian-American males who were juniors automatically got the
–boy
suffix on their names, except for the ones who just became “Junior.” Frank had stopped answering whenever anyone called him “Frankie-boy.” Except for his Grandma whenever she called him down to her kitchen to have something to eat.

Frank's mother, Martha, was a big woman, a bit taller than his father and more than a bit heavier. His father had a gut, too, and a workingman's muscular chest and arms. He frequently told Frank he'd sacrificed his height for Frank. Frank used to think it was a lame joke, but his father said it so often, Frank wondered if he really believed it. In the universe of Frank Grimaldi, Sr., crazy bullshit like that would be repeated over and over again until it eventually became a hard fact.

Frank' mother whisked around the kitchen, getting serving spoons, mustard and mayo for the cold cuts, and paper napkins, wedging them onto the already crowded table wherever there was a sliver of open space.

“Frank!” she said, plopping down into her chair, her baby-blue floral housedress parachuting around her. “Why can't you wait for the rest of us?”

“Hey, I work hard,” he yelled, gravy dotting the corners of his mouth like vampire blood. “I'm hungry!”

She shrugged and waved him off as if his sudden flash of anger meant nothing. And she was right. I didn't mean a thing because his father had the unique ability to blow up and tell you to go to hell because you were a worthless, no-good good-for-nothing and then in the next breath ask you what the hell your problem was and why were you pouting. His temper came fast and left fast. He never let anything bother him for more than a second. Frank, on the other hand, was a brooder. When Frank felt he'd been wronged, he held grudges, plotted elaborate vendettas, held it in and let it simmer.

“Carol!” his mother yelled, calling to Frank's little sister. “Carol! Come eat!”

The sound of a flushing toilet answered her.

“Come on,” his father said, lowering his voice. “Let the poor kid go in peace.”

But it wasn't Carol who came to the doorway. It was Frank's grandfather, Antonio. His sparse unruly white hair stood out from his head as if he'd recently had an electric shock, and as usual he had a few days of gray stubble on his cheeks. He was stocky with a round belly covered by a baggy wool plaid shirt. His hands were hard and calloused from a lifetime of manual labor—he held a heavy pipe wrench in one, a plunger in the other.

“It's all fix,” he said. He had a thick Italian accent, and a hoarse voice that was no more than a loud whisper, the result of a bout with throat cancer long before Frank was born.

“Thanks, Pop,” Frank's mother said.

“You want something to eat, Pop?” Frank's father said.

Antonio waved his thanks but no thanks. “Go ‘head, eat,” he said, slipping back into the hallway. They all listened to his slow steps as he descended the squeaky stairs. When it was clear that he was downstairs, Frank's father shot out an annoyed hand gesture at his mother.

“What'd ja make him fix the toilet for? I told you I'd do it.”

His mother threw her own annoyed gesture. “When? I kept asking you, but you didn't do it. It was running for three days. The water bill's gonna be huge.”

“Next time don't bother my father. I'll do it.”

She sniffed defiantly. “Next time I'll call a plumber,” she said just as he was shoveling another slab of manicotti into his mouth.

He glared at her as he chewed. Those were fighting words. The Grimaldis never ever hired outsiders to fix anything. Frank's father and grandfather fixed everything themselves—even when they didn't know the first thing about it.

“We got any bread?” his father said, still glaring at his mother.

“What do you think that is?” His mother pointed to a basket overflowing with slices of rye and pumpernickel and a couple of Kaiser rolls.

Frank's father made a sour face, and Frank knew why. He wanted a long loaf of crusty Italian bread from the Italian bakery around the corner. You couldn't sop up Grandma's gravy with a Kaiser roll or anything else that came from Foodtown. You had to have Italian bread for it to taste right. Frank had to admit his father was right about that.

“Carol!” his mother yelled again. “Come
eeeeat!”
At Frank's house everybody yelled. Except for Frank and his sister. He stewed; she prayed.

Frank's father started to make himself a ham sandwich. “Where's your sister?” he said, reaching for the jar of spicy brown mustard.

“I dunno. Probably saying a rosary.”

Frank's father didn't react. He reached across the table with a fork to spear a couple of slices of provolone for his sandwich.

“Don't make fun of your sister,” his mother said in a loud whisper. “She might have the calling.”

“She's ten years old, ma. The only calling she has is you calling her to come eat.”

“I think you might have the calling, too,” his mother said. “More than her. You just don't want to listen to it.”

Frank rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “We've been through this before, ma. I do not have the calling. I'm never gonna be a priest.”

She sighed. “I guess not.” She sighed again. Loudly.

Kids who went to Catholic school got indoctrinated early. In first grade Frank was taught that there were two paths in life: taking your vows and everything else. Bank presidents, bank robbers, lay schoolteachers, prostitutes, and the President of the United States were all on one side; priests, brothers, monks, and nuns were on the other. Frank could remember coming home from school one day when he was six and his mother quizzing him about having the calling, asking him if he felt it moving inside of him the same way she would always ask if he felt like throwing up when he was sick. The answer was no then, it was still no, and it was gonna stay no. But she kept hoping. What Frank couldn't figure out was why the possibility of having her daughter become a nun wasn't as satisfying as having her son become a priest. Maybe she figured she'd get more points for getting into heaven if she produced a priest. After all, priests could say Mass and nuns couldn't.

Carol walked into the kitchen and took her usual seat in the narrow space where the table met the wall. She was holding her Barbie doll, the long blonde hair not as lustrous as it had been on Christmas morning. Frank noticed that Carol had wrapped her rhinestone rosary beads—a different garish color for each set of Hail Marys—around Barbie's sexy bod, making a glittery risqué cocktail dress out of them. Frank was relieved to see this. Maybe someday she'd snap out of it. She had severe straight bangs that covered her eyebrows, and her expression was always serious, which made her look like a nun in training, but her attachment to Barbie and girly things convinced him that she didn't really have the calling. For a while she had him worried, but deep down she was normal.

Frank's father stopped chewing and smiled at Carol. “You want some of Grandma's manicott'?” He already had one balanced on his fork for her.

She didn't answer, just smiled, and he put it on her plate. She was Daddy's girl.

“Any of your friends hear from any colleges?” Frank's mother asked him.

He tensed. The mere mention of college at the dinner table was a time bomb. There was no question that it would go off. It was just a matter of when.

“Yeah, a few guys heard this week,” Frank said, braced for the blast but deliberately provoking it, too. “Danny Pensa got into Georgetown. He got into a few other places, but that's probably where he's gonna go.” Danny Pensa was one of the smarter guys in 4H. He was class president, and he ran track, so he was a desirable candidate. What Frank decided not to reveal was that Georgetown had offered him a scholarship. Money was another time-bomb topic in his house. An
atomic
time bomb.

“You should have applied to Georgetown,” his mother said with a wistful note in her voice. He'd been in Catholic school since kindergarten—he didn't want any more Catholic school.

“Big waste of time,” his father said. “Big waste of money, too.” He chewed hard as if he wanted to hurt the food.

Frank felt like his mother's pressure cooker, his anger and resentment building up inside of him while he showed nothing on the outside. Yet.

“Don't be ridiculous, Frank,” his mother said to his father. “Frankie
has
to go to college. You need it these days.”

“For what?” his father shouted. He turned to Frank. “What's it gonna do for you? Huh? What? You gonna make more money with a college degree?”

Here we go.

“If you wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer, then I could see it. But you don't want that, so what the hell's the point?”

“To learn stuff,” Frank said. He kept his answer short so that his real feelings wouldn't spill out.

“Learn what? History? Novels? You can read that stuff on your own. You wanna speak French? Why? Whatta ya gonna do with that? Nothing. Nobody's ever gonna pay you to speak French.”

“It's not all about money, Dad.”

“Oh, no? You don't think so? Let me tell you something—it's ALL about money. How do you put food on the table?” He was putting food on the table as he spoke, bits of ham sandwich sputtering out of his mouth. “I think you should forget about college. It's all bullshit. Get a job. Get a
union
job. Good pay
and
benefits. Or a government job. Like working for the Post Office. Or you could work with me. I'll put your name on the truck and everything.”

Frank was grinding his molars. The sound of a million fingernails on a gigantic blackboard would have sounded sweeter than this. A few years ago, his father had hired a sign painter to put the particulars of his business on the doors of his truck and told the guy to leave a space for “& Son” after his name. Frank cringed whenever he saw that space.

His father bunched his fingers and shook his hand at Frank. “Frankie, don't be a
stunade!
Forget about college!”

“You studied music,” Frank said.

“That's got nothing to do with nothing. Learn from my mistakes. Don't waste your time!”

Frank looked at his mother who looked away as soon as they made eye contact. He knew she wanted him to go to college, but so far she'd avoided a pitched battle with her husband over it.

Just get in someplace good, she kept telling him in private. We'll figure out the rest later. Your father will come around.

This wasn't exactly reassuring for Frank, but he had no choice but to trust her.

He watched his sister eating her manicotti. He hoped to God she didn't have to go through this crap when it came time for her to apply to colleges.

“So you thinking about the prom?” his mother asked, changing the subject and looking pathetically hopeful.

Frank cringed. This was another topic he hated. He shrugged, determined to be noncommittal. If he was lucky, she wouldn't give him the third degree again.

“You thinking about asking somebody?” she said. “Anybody in particular?”

Frank's relationships with girls—or lack of relationships—was something he did not want to discuss with his parents. Ever. But what really galled him was his mother's contradictory attitude about him and girls. On the one hand she wanted him to be a priest, which meant taking a vow of celibacy. But on the other hand, she wanted him to take a girl to the prom, probably because she was afraid he was queer. Of course, his father came right out and asked him during the Superbowl last winter, asked him if he liked girls or if he “went the other way.”