The Way Life Should Be (27 page)

“No.”

He looks to see if I’m kidding. I refuse him the satisfaction of a response.

“I think I’m an ass.”

Nonna, sitting at the table, purses her lips in a smile.

“Good,” I say. “We agree.”

“I guess we do,” he says.

“All right,” I relent. “What do you mean?”

He twirls the wine in his glass, tilts it up and swallows. “You and I are very different people. And sometimes—okay, most of the time—I just want you to be…normal, like me. Like everyone else. I don’t know why I do, because frankly, half the time…Look, I don’t wake up in the morning questioning my life. But if I did…” His voice trails off.

“If you did—?”

“Let me finish,” he snaps. Even when contrite, Paul needs to be in control. “But it does seem to me that if I hadn’t made the choices I’ve made, if I didn’t live the life I live, I’d probably be—lost. But you’re not, are you?”

I think about this for a moment. “No. I don’t think I am.”

“Ange,” he says, swaying toward me, “I may not ever say this again, so listen closely.”

Against my will, I lean in.

“I actually think you’re pretty cool,” he whispers.

“Are you drunk?”

“What if I am?”

I look at the empty bottle, his near empty glass, and shrug. “I’ll take it anyway.”

Just then our father comes in, and Paul holds up the bottle. “We need more wine, Dad. We’re celebrating!”

Dad retrieves a bottle of merlot from the pantry. “So what are we celebrating?” He looks dizzy with joy, and I can guess the reasons—his children home, his mother alive, his favorite dish,
fave e cicoria
, simmering on the stove.

“Angela and I have forged a truce,” Paul says.

Dad finds the wine opener in the dish drainer. “Oh?”

“Actually, we’re just celebrating being here with you, Dad,” I say.

He pops the cork. Reaching up in the cabinet, he finds wineglasses and pours for the three of us. Then he remembers Nonna, still sitting at the table, now cutting escarole, and gets another glass.

She shakes her head. “Not for me. My medication.”

“Oh, that’s right,” he says. He fills the wineglass with seltzer and hands it to her. “You need to be part of this toast anyway,
Madre,
” he says. “
La famiglia
.” We clink our glasses all around.

“Far-flung as it may be,” Paul says.

CHAPTER 26

Sitting at the Christmas table, we clasp hands as Ryan and Brianna
sing at the top of their lungs:

For health and strength and daily food

we give thee thanks, Oh Lord.

For health and strength and daily food

we give thee thanks, Oh Lord.

For health and strength,

For health and strength…

Turns out it’s a round, and we’re expected to participate. Coming in at different times, starting and stopping as the whim strikes, we sound like a chorus of the mentally challenged.

“Give thee thanks, Oh Lord,”
Mr. Hot intones in a nasal tenor, hurrying the tune along as he realizes he’s the only one still singing.

“That’s not Catholic,” my father mutters when it’s over.

“Sounds Quaker,” Lindsay remarks.

“We’re raising the children multidenominational,” Kim explains. “We don’t want them to feel oppressed by religious dogma.”

“Dogma?” My father grunts. “Oppressed?”

“La famiglia!”
Paul says, unsteadily raising his glass. Sitting
beside him, I notice that he has kicked off his fancy shoes. A stain like a gunshot wound blots his chest, probably the marinara I caught him slurping out of the pot a few minutes ago. We all clink glasses. “Bring us some figgy pudding,” he adds. “Or at least baked ziti. God bless us, everyone!”

Somewhere in the background, I hear a high-pitched trill. Back in Maine, in honor of Thanksgiving, Flynn had changed my cell phone ring, and now I see people around the table straining to identify the jaunty melody. “Turkey in the Straw.” I dash off to find the phone, tracing it to my cavernous handbag on a hook in the back hall. Frantically I paw past wallet, camera, keys, and mini-umbrella, and find it buried at the bottom, coated in crumbs.

Clutching the phone in both hands, I squint at the little window.

Unavailable.

“Hello?”

“Angela? It’s Tom. I didn’t think you were going to pick up.”

Tom, from that faraway, possibly imagined place, calling me here? It takes a moment to process. “Hi. I—we were just sitting down to dinner.”

“I’m sorry. I can call back.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” I say. “Things were getting a little out of hand in there anyway.”

He laughs. “Well, I won’t keep you. I just wanted to say Merry Christmas. I’ve missed you. I mean, everyone’s missed you. I mean—well, I’ve missed you, actually. To hell with the rest of them.”

“Oh.” We both laugh.

“Anyway,” he says. “How’s your grandmother? I should’ve asked right away. I’m not very good at this.”

“At what?”

“I don’t know. Talking.”

We laugh again.

“Well, thanks for asking. Nonna had a stroke—a small stroke—but she’s doing better. She’s home with us now, running the whole show, of course.” I tell him about my vain attempts to keep her in bed and her insistence on managing every detail of Christmas dinner, and he tells me about the vegan buffet featuring the “mock ham” the Zen master is preparing for him and the other acolytes. (He doesn’t say “acolytes.”)

“What’s mock ham?” I ask.

“I’m not exactly sure. Something to do with tofu skins, from what I understand.”

“Oh. Yummy.”

He laughs. “Let’s just say I wish I were eating with you instead. An Italian feast. Splendid. And I’d like to meet Nonna.”

“So how’s Katrin?” I ask pointedly.

“Oh, she’s fine,” he says. “Busy. You know.” He clears his throat. “Honestly, I’m not sure. We’re not seeing each other anymore.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. It was just sort of—time for it to end.”

“Oh.” I don’t know what to say.

“It’s all right. It actually is. Things haven’t been right between us for a long time. I wanted to say something earlier, but I just—I couldn’t. I needed to see it through in a way that wasn’t—hurtful or disrespectful. Does that make sense?”

“No. Yes,” I say.

He laughs.

I smile.

“Hey,” he says, “stuff has happened since you left. Did you know that Flynn and Lance are back together?”

“No!”

“Oh yeah. The Christmas spirit, I guess. You gotta get back here to see it. And anyway, we have so much to do.”

“So much to do? What do you mean?”

“Look, I don’t want to get ahead of myself,” he says. “But this restaurant idea—I want to help. I might as well do something productive with those dot-com spoils, right? And I can’t think of anything more worthwhile at the moment than getting this idea off the ground.”

“Are you serious?”

“I think it will be fun.”

“Are you…Santa?” I ask.

He laughs again. “If Christ was Jewish, I guess Santa can be, too.”

“I’m—speechless,” I tell him. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You should know that I have an ulterior motive. I’m hoping it’ll give me a chance to spend more time with you,” he says. “So don’t say anything. Just hurry back.”

I hang up the phone and stand still for a moment, thinking it through. What I feel is unfamiliar; I don’t know how to interpret it. I do know I’ve never felt this way before. Hearing Tom’s voice on the phone was like hearing a forgotten song from childhood, the melody, long thought lost, suddenly flooding back.

At the table, Lindsay says, “Finally. Who was that?” Everyone looks at me, forks poised in midair.

“Oh—somebody from Maine,” I say, sitting down.

Lindsay furrows her brow, trying to decode what this means, then raises her palms in a shrug. She taps her glass with her spoon and stands up. “Peter and I have news,” she says, clearing her throat and looking over at Mr. Hot. Every visible inch of his skin reddens. “Last night we stayed at my parents’ house—in separate bedrooms, of course, Mr. Russo—and this morning
when I woke up there was a knock on my door. It was Peter, with a beautiful little Tiffany box.”

In real time, Mr. Hot pulls an aqua box out of his pocket.

“Oh my God!” Kim says.

“And he asked me to marry him!”

Squeals and murmurs all around.

“The ring is too big; we need to have it sized,” Mr. Hot says. “That’s why Lindsay isn’t wearing it yet.”

“Let’s see it,” Sharon demands.

Mr. Hot opens the box, revealing a bona fide diamond engagement ring, neither too big nor too small. Having never turned my attention to this particular custom, I know little about what I’m gazing at, except that it sparkles brilliantly in the candlelight.

“The stone is a princess-cut, 1.03-carat, grade H, VVS2-quality in an 18-carat white gold band,” Peter explains, taking the ring out of the box. Lindsay extends her hand as if commanding him to dance. He slips the ring on her finger, and we all cheer.

“I now pronounce you man and rhymes-with-the-rest-of-your-LIFE,” Paul says.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Kim says, moving the wine bottle down the table. “I’m cutting you off.”

“Be sure, buddy,” Paul says, wagging his finger at Mr. Hot. “Be very sure.”

I hug Lindsay, who is now crying. “See? Soul mates do exist,” she whispers in my ear. “It will work out for you—I know it will. Don’t give up hope.”

I sit back down and look around. My father and Sharon are negotiating whether he should have a second helping of ziti; my brother and Kim are debating how many broccoli spears their kids have to eat before they can leave the table; my best friend and her fiancé are gazing, punch-drunk, at the ring wobbling
on her finger. Carefully, Nonna rises from her place at the table to scrape one mostly empty serving dish into another, making room for more.

She catches my eye and smiles. “Well, you did it,
la mia cara.
You pulled it off.”

“We did it, Nonna, didn’t we?” I say.

Two days later,
after my father and Sharon leave for work, I go down to the kitchen to make coffee and find Nonna chopping onions.

“Early for onions, isn’t it?” I ask, scooping coffee into the paper filter.

“Veal meatballs for your father,” she announces. “A special request.”

I fill the carafe with water and pour it into the coffeemaker. “He should know better than to make special requests,” I grumble. “You need to take it easy.”

“What else am I going to do? Lie in bed?
Grazie non.
”

I watch her mix ground veal and pork and beef in a bowl, adding bread crumbs, parsley, rosemary, chopped onions from the cutting board. “So how are you feeling?” I ask.

Nonna seems a little low now that the whirlwind of Christmas has passed. Before we left the hospital, the doctor took my father and me aside and explained that it’s common for people who’ve had strokes to be depressed, and that we should be attentive to this possibility.

Nonna whisks two eggs together in a bowl and stirs them into the meat. “
Tutto bene,
” she says.

“Really all right?”

“All right.” She shrugs.

Not wanting to push, I hesitate. “You know, they say it’s not unusual to feel a bit down after you’ve had a stroke.”

“I don’t feel ‘down,’ exactly.” She plucks a gob of the meat mixture from a shallow metal mixing bowl, rolls it between her palms, and drops it on wax paper on a baking sheet. Her hands, I notice, are quavering. “I’m just…thinking.”

I move the dishes to the sink, turn on the water, and squirt in some soap.

“I tell you, Angela,” she says. “The older I get, the more I think about home.”

“Home?”

“When I was young, my village was the whole world. I knew nothing else,” she says. “Now that I’m old, I am drawn back to that place. But there is no way to get there.” She pauses. “I miss my cousins. The white caves. I remember it all like I was just there.”

Nonna has never been back to the land of her birth. When she left, a twenty-year-old newlywed, she said good-bye to her mother and father, cousins and nieces and nephews, her closest friends, a language and culture and history that were in her blood.

“Do you want to go home for a visit, like we talked about a few days ago?” I ask. “I would go with you, Nonna.”

“Eh. It’s too late.”

I turn off the water. “When you get better and stronger—”

“I can never go back,” she says.

Her vehemence takes me aback. “Why?”

“Ah, Angela, there are…” Her voice trails off. “For me it wasn’t always easy to be good. I was…Things happened.”

I try to contain my surprise. At the sink, I wash the cutting board and set it in the drying rack. I pour a cup of coffee, add milk from the fridge. Then I watch for a few minutes as she plucks and rolls and drops. “What kinds of things, Nonna?” I ask finally.

She shakes her head no, but I can tell that she wants to talk. “Things I never told a soul,” she says.

The hairs on my arms rise a little.

She scrapes the meat mixture out of the bowl, enough for one final meatball, forms and drops it on the wax paper. “You will tell nobody.
Nessuno.
”

I dry my hands on a dish towel and sit at the table. “Of course.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”