What Happens in Suburbia… (Red Dress Ink Novels)

by Wendy Markham

  “Pop told me you wouldn’t call,” my mother is telling me somewhat smugly. “He was just saying that people in New York City don’t even celebrate Saint Joseph’s Day.”

  Well, I can’t speak for the other eight million New Yorkers, but I, for one, forgot all about the most gala Spadolini holiday next to Christmas.

  “I’m sure they do celebrate it, Ma. We have Italians here, remember? We even have Little Italy.”

  “That’s not real,” she all but snaps.

  I bite my tongue, telling myself she’s just cranky because I live almost five hundred miles away. She still hasn’t gotten over my cross-state flight from the nest. The rest of the family dutifully lives within shouting distance.

  I think my mother’s secretly harboring the hope that I’ll get over this nonsense and come home, Jack in tow. Nothing would make her happier than to have us set up house in Brookside.

  Which makes me wonder why I thought it was a good idea to call and share our happy house news.

  I wouldn’t have if I’d remembered what day it is, because Connie Spadolini is undoubtedly teetering on the verge of exhaustion and in no mood to hear that my downstate sojourn is about to become more permanent than ever before.

  Before I get into all that, though…

  “Ma, who’s Stefania?” I ask, wondering if she’s not just exhausted, but also delirious, because I can’t think of a single Stefania who would call my parents’ house and greet my mother, Hi, it’s me.

  Come to think of it, I can’t think of a single Stefania, period.

  Unless she meant Father Stefan, the priest at our church. But his voice sounds nothing like mine, and anyway, she calls him Father Stefan—Father, for short. No nicknames.

  “Stefania,” my mother tells me, “is Josie Lupinelli’s cousin—she’s visiting from Krakow.”

  Krakow—that’s not even in Italy.

  Wait—is it?

  Geography isn’t my forte, but I’m sure it’s not.

  “Josie Lupinelli has a cousin in Poland?” I ask. I manage not to add, One who’s cozy enough to call you and say, Hi, it’s me without a trace of an accent, because if she had an accent, you wouldn’t be mistaking her for me, your own daughter, would you, now?

  “Of course she does, Tracey. Josie’s Polish.”

  “Josephine Lupinelli is Polish,” I repeat, just to be sure, considering that Josie has a distinctly Mediterranean look. In other words, she’s about four-eight, has an olive complexion, dark, soulful eyes and a mustache darker than my aunt Aggie’s. (I’m allowed to say that because I’d have one, too, if it weren’t for wax.)

  Mental Note: check mirror to see if it’s time for waxing appointment.

  Now that I’m married, I don’t spend nearly as much time analyzing my appearance as I once did. A quick glance, and I’m usually good to go.

  Sometimes, the old facial hair creeps up on me and I don’t even notice it until I catch a glimpse of Keith Hernandez on the street and realize it’s not Keith, it’s me, reflected in a store window.

  “Josie Lupinelli is half-Polish,” my mother concedes. “She’s Tatarkiewicz from home.”

  It takes me a second to translate that phrase into good old American English.

  In Spadolinish, it means Josie’s maiden name was Tatarkiewicz.

  Which doesn’t sound Italian to me, so…okay.

  Still…

  “How come Josie’s cousin from Poland is calling you on the phone?” I ask my mother.

  “I don’t know—to see what she can bring, maybe? She has very good manners. Very old-fashioned, very polite. And she’s only nineteen.”

  “Good for her,” I say somewhat curtly. “What she can bring where?”

  “Over here. Where else? For the Saint Joseph’s Table.”

  “She’s invited? We don’t even know her!”

  “We know her.”

  Is it just my imagination, or does my mother put slight emphasis on the we? If she did, then she’s trying to tell me that I am no longer considered a part of the family back in Brookside.

  Okay, maybe that’s a little extreme on my part. Maybe I’m just feeling understandably jealous of this old-fashioned, polite Polish interloper. I can’t help it.

  My mother goes on to tell me briefly about Stefania’s background, but I don’t listen.

  An e-mail from Kate just clicked in on my desktop computer, and the subject line reads:

  HELP!

  E-mails from Kate frequently bear that subject line, so no need for premature concern. Usually, she just wants to know if you remember the name of the lipstick shade that looked so fabulous on her at Saks on Saturday, or where she can buy Veuve Clicquot at 8:00 a.m. because she has a fierce Bellini craving.

  Hmm. This one says:

  Meet me for drinks after work. What time are you free?

  Uh-oh.

  Sounds kind of terse. Something may be amiss in Kateland.

  Though just how seriously amiss can’t be discerned electronically. The last time I was summoned via e-mail for emergency cocktails, it was because Lancôme had discontinued her favorite Le Rouge Absolu Satin Romance lipstick.

  “So anyway, Ma,” I say, realizing she’s concluded her bio of Stefania of Krakow, “Happy Saint Joseph’s Day. You, too, Dad,” I call a little louder. As if he can hear me. As if he can hear anything.

  I type out a quick reply to Kate’s e-mail as my mother shouts, “Frank, Tracey says Happy Saint Joseph’s Day. Frank! Frank!”

  Back on the line, she informs me with a sigh, “He’s deaf lately.”

  Yeah, well, forty years working in a steel plant will do that to a person.

  Poor Pop.

  Poor Ma.

  I guarantee she’s been working herself ragged for at least a week now, preparing the traditional meatless feast for, oh, seven or eight dozen hungry people. Not that she’ll have that many at her annual Saint Joseph’s Table, but she always makes enough food to feed an army of famished soldiers—preferably the Good Christian kind.

  Traditionally, you were supposed to invite people less fortunate to your Table, such as widows, orphans and paupers.

  Those are in short supply, even in my hometown, so who knows, maybe Josie Lupinelli’s cousin from Krakow is an impoverished widow. Or orphan. Whatever.

  Too bad Jack and I can’t attend this year, because we are certainly impoverished, according to the budget he set up on an Excel spreadsheet last night.

  Until now, we’ve pretty much just spent what we needed to on whatever we needed.

  Now we have a monthly allotment for everything from postage stamps to gasoline for the car we’re going to have to buy. When Jack suggested that our monthly dining-out/take-out/entertainment budget be set at a hundred dollars, I pointed out that this only allowed twenty-five bucks a week, and that the two of us can’t even see a movie with popcorn and Sno caps for that price.

  “We’re going to have to sacrifice some things to make room for others,” he said.

  He wound up raising the dining-out/take-out/entertainment budget to a hundred and fifty, taking the extra money out of the monthly clothing budget—three hundred dollars for both of us. Jack insisted that was plenty, and I was too mentally and emotionally exhausted to point out that a decent suit for him would leave me wearing last season’s jeans well into the next three months.

  Anyway, an impromptu flight to Brookside for Saint Joseph’s Day certainly isn’t in the budget, so that’s not going to happen this year.

  My mother always invites my brothers, their wives and kids; my sister (divorced—shh!) and her two kids; assorted friends, relatives, parishioners and random locals of Sicilian descent; and of course my grandmother, the token widow, who is still going strong in her eighties, looking fabulous for her age—and knows it—and loves it when you know it, too.

  The Table is adorned with flowers, candles and religious statuary including a toddler-size plastic Saint Joseph whose bare feet are usually positioned in the vicinity of my plate. Fat
her Stefan says a long blessing and then there’s a toast, followed by hearty cheers of “Viva San Giuseppe,” which means Long Live Saint Joseph.

  As the meal goes on Viva San Giuseppe is shouted out whenever anyone is moved to say it, and everyone has to put down their fork, lift a glass and chime in.

  The more wine everyone consumes, the more prone they are to shouting, “Viva San Giuseppe!”

  It’s kind of like a college drinking game, only with church ladies and better food.

  “What is that tapping?” my mother—who is not deaf by any means—wants to know.

  “Oh—sorry. It’s just my keyboard. I’m at work.” I pause to quickly scan the e-mail I just typed, then hit Send.

  I probably can’t get out of here until after 8. Tomorrow is better, my boss is out of town.

  “You’re at work on Saint Joseph’s Day,” my mother acknowledges sadly.

  Imagine her profound sorrow if she knew I had to go in on Easter Sunday last year, to get ready for a Monday-morning Client presentation.

  My father and brothers—who have all at some point stoically worked through the flu, various injuries and the early stages of their wives’ labor—all take off on Saint Joseph’s Day. They go to early mass, of course, then spend most of the day setting up tables, carrying heavy platters and getting their hands slapped by my mother for stealing samples.

  “So what are you making for the Table this year, Ma?”

  “The usual—fried sardines, lentils with linguini, pasta fagiole, stuffed artichokes, fried cardone, stuffed calamari, fava,” she rattles off, stops for a breath and resumes, “spaghetti with garlic and oil, zucchini frittata, fried mushrooms and cauliflower, asparagus frittata…”

  Yeah, there’s a lot of fried and/or stuffed stuff on Saint Joseph’s Day. But back in Brookside, people aren’t opposed to that. In fact, they embrace it.

  Which would be a healthy attitude if they weren’t all so…unhealthy. Overweight, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart conditions—it seems like every time I call home, I hear about someone else who’s been added to the endless intercessions list at Sunday mass.

  “What about the breads, Ma?”

  “The breads? I’ve been doing breads all week. The breads are done.”

  The breads are individual, egg-glazed, anise-flavored loaves of slightly sweetened dough shaped like a cross or Saint Joseph’s staff or beard. It’s great sliced thinly and toasted the next day, with butter.

  “What’d you make for dessert?”

  “Pignlate, sfinge and cannoli,” my mother reports in a What else? tone.

  You know, when I was a kid, I longed for the kind of house where the cupboards are stocked with Oreos. But my mother made our cookies and pastries from scratch. Nary a chocolate chip or snickerdoodle emerged from her oven in all those years, and God forbid a Dunkin’ Donut should ever cross her threshold. She made old-fashioned Italian cookies and pastries that use ingredients like almond paste or figs; her one chocolate-cookie recipe calls for raisins and cloves.

  Don’t get me wrong; they’re delicious. I have the Italian chocolate-cookie recipe on an index card from the kitchen of Connie Spadolini and have shared it at the request of countless enamored friends.

  But when you’re trying to survive middle school, hanging out with latchkey kids who eat Oreos and Lay’s Barbecue Potato Chips after school, you just want to fit in. You don’t appreciate unique cookies or—in lieu of chips and French onion dip—hard cheese, salami and those garlicky green olives that smell to high heaven.

  No, you don’t want to expose your Working Mother Oreo Household friends to your house where your mom is always, always at home (aside from church or her standing weekly appointment to have her hair “done” at Shear Magique), cooking and cleaning and praying for people’s souls.

  Flash forward a good decade and a half: what I wouldn’t give to be in that cluttered kitchen back in Brookside, biting into a hot, crisp, powdered-sugar-encrusted sfinge—which is pretty much cream-puff dough fried in a vat of hot oil, an age-old Saint Joseph’s Day tradition.

  For a moment, I’m so entrenched in homesick nostalgia that I forget why I really called my mother.

  Then—oh, yeah.

  “Hey, Ma, guess what?” I ask before remembering that I vowed never to say that to her again.

  For this reason:

  “You’re pregnant!”

  I sigh inwardly. “Why does everyone—” especially Connie Spadolini “—think I’m having a baby whenever I say I have news?”

  “Because that’s the best news there is,” comes the simple reply amid running water and clattering pans.

  “That depends on how you look at it, Ma.” I can’t resist saying, “If I were thirteen and unwed, would it be the best news?”

  “That’s different. And you don’t kid around about stuff like that, Tracey,” she says, undoubtedly saying a quick little prayer for my perennially touch-and-go soul.

  “Sorry, Ma. So do you want to know the news even though it’s not about another grandchild?”

  It isn’t as if she doesn’t already have eight grandchildren and another on the way (my sister-in-law Katie is pregnant again).

  “Of course I want to hear your news—wait a second.” Sounding frustrated, she calls to my father, “No, Frank, I said get the big platter. The one we got from Fat Naso and Marie for our wedding…. No, the other one. Yes. That’s it. Tracey? Are you there? What’s your news?”

  Talk about anticlimactic.

  Still, I manage to summon a “Jack and I bought a house!”

  Either I’ve stunned her into silence, or she’s got a mouthful of something.

  The latter, I realize, when I hear her chew and swallow before saying, “Oh, good! Where is it?”

  I know that somewhere deep down inside, Connie honestly believes I might actually be moving back to Brookside. Surprise, Ma!

  See, the thing is, no good news I ever give her is going to be the good news she wants to hear, which tends to diminish the pleasure in delivering the good news every time.

  “It’s in the suburbs,” I tell her.

  Pause. “Closer to home or farther away from home?”

  By home, of course, she means Brookside.

  I know better than to point out that A) Brookside is no longer my home and hasn’t been in years, and B) Brookside is still a good four hundred-some miles away from Glenhaven Park.

  “Um…closer, Ma. Definitely closer.” By about thirty miles. “And it’s a great house, old, with four bedrooms, so we’ll have plenty of room for company. You guys will all have to come and visit us.”

  “That is neat,” my mother says. “Frank, the kids bought a house!…Frank! Frank! I said the kids bought a house!”

  An e-mail pops up in my in-box, from Kate again.

  Tonight, please, whatever time. Really need to see you. Just call me when you’re leaving and I’ll meet you at the Campbell Apartment.

  Uh-oh. It sounds kind of desperate.

  Of course, even in her time of need, Kate thrives on fabulousness.

  The Campbell Apartment is an amazingly atmospheric bar tucked away above the Vanderbilt Avenue entrance to Grand Central Station. Back in the Roaring Twenties, it was the private digs of a New York tycoon who was presumably named Campbell. It was uncovered about a decade ago, like some long-forgotten mausoleum.

  Now it’s been restored to its former Jazz Age glory with an ornately painted twenty-five-foot ceiling, a massive fireplace and lots of vintage furniture. The place is steeped in elegance with dim lighting and cocktails that easily cost twice as much per drink as a dinner entrée at Brookside’s nicest restaurant. There’s a strict dress code and someone suitably stern and dazzlingly intimidating stationed at the door to make sure potential patrons are properly swanky.

  Luckily, I’m wearing a decent dark suit that can be swanked up if I remove the white blouse, change from low pumps to heels and add the decent silver necklace and earrings I keep hidden under the pa
per clip tray in my desk drawer for fashion emergencies.

  I check my wallet and see that I’ve got enough cash for one glass of wine or a fancy cocktail, and the Budget Master will be none the wiser.

  “Tracey, Pop says congratulations,” my mother tells me.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, and he said make sure you don’t buy the first house you look at.”

  I sigh inwardly.

  I do a lot of that when talking long-distance to my mother. And even more when we talk in person.

  “Ma, we already bought it, and anyway, this isn’t the first house we looked at.”

  “Frank, this isn’t the first house the kids looked at. Frank! I said, she says this isn’t the first house they looked at!”

  You know, after this conversation, I’m going to need a drink later.

  Okay, see you then, I type back to Kate. Then, P.S., WE GOT THE HOUSE!!!!!!

  “Pop wants to know how many houses you looked at,” Connie Spadolini informs me.

  “At least half a dozen,” I say, which is almost the truth.

  “Frank! They saw half a dozen houses. At least.”

  I hear the rumble of my father’s voice, and then my mother tells me, “He says that’s the same thing as the first house.”

  “No, it isn’t. What does that even mean?”

  “Do you want to talk to Pop? You know how cautious he is. He just wants you to be careful with your money.”

  “No, I’m at work right now,” I remind her quickly as another e-mail clicks in from Kate.

  All it says is: Great.

  Does she mean great about my meeting her tonight, or great about us getting the house? “I really have to go,” I tell my mother, noting the time on the e-mail.

  “Are you cooking sfinge at home tonight?” she asks hopefully.

  No, but I’ll be drinking wine at the Campbell Apartment. Maybe so much wine I’ll be moved to shout out Viva San Giuseppe a few times.

  CHAPTER 8

  One look at Kate’s face when she comes striding into the Campbell Apartment—cell phone in hand as though she’s just hung up from a disturbing call—and it’s clear there will be no revelry tonight, wine-fueled, or otherwise.