What Happens in Suburbia… (Red Dress Ink Novels)

by Wendy Markham

  “It’s been so nice having Stefania around,” my sister-in-law Katie comments to me as we work our way into the living room. “Too bad her visa is expiring. She has to go back to Poland in two weeks.”

  Well, hallelujah.

  “Really?” I say aloud. “That’s a shame.”

  “It is, because she’s been a big help with Ma. With all the rest of us having to work during the day, there’s no one to be here with her if anything else should happen, God forbid,” Katie goes on, and I feel guiltier by the second.

  I mean, I’m no longer working during the day. If I lived here in Brookside, I could be the one spending time with my mother.

  But you don’t live here in Brookside…remember?

  Yeah, but what if—God forbid—something happens to my mother? Will I look back with regret? Will I wish that I had never moved to the opposite end of the state?

  Part of me thinks that’s ridiculous; after all, kids are supposed to grow up, cut the apron strings, move on, right?

  It’s just in my family, no one else has really done that. My grown siblings all depend on each other and my parents, their daily lives so interwoven that sometimes I marvel that they don’t all just live under the same roof.

  And whenever I visit, I get sucked right back into the Spadolini mind-set, complete with longing and guilt.

  I turn my attention back to my mother who, aside from being a little pale, looks pretty much the same as always.

  I hugged her harder than ever and had to fight back the tears when I first saw her come out onto the front steps in her sauce-stained apron.

  Now, watching her chat with Wilma, I tell myself there’s nothing wrong with her.

  I believe that wholeheartedly…

  Until Mary Beth drags me into the empty kitchen, where pots are bubbling on the stove and casserole pans are heating in the oven.

  “Listen, Tracey…we found out there’s something wrong with Ma.”

  My blood runs cold. “What is it? Cancer?”

  “No…”

  “Her heart?”

  “No. She got the test results back…”

  Oh, no. Oh, God. Please don’t let anything happen to my mother.

  I brace myself.

  “It looks like she has type two diabetes,” Mary Beth says gravely.

  I’m not sure whether to be relieved or concerned. I mean, diabetes doesn’t sound like an instant death sentence. But I’m sure it’s not good. “What does that mean?”

  Mary Beth fills me in: it basically means my mother’s body isn’t producing enough insulin, which causes a glucose buildup in the blood. In the long run it can have serious complications. For now, the doctor wants my mother to lose weight, change her diet, get more rest and start exercising.

  “What did she say about that?” I ask my sister.

  “She called the doctor a mamaluke.”

  Oy.

  But that’s my mother. She hates doctors. She and my father both think they’re all a bunch of quacks. In their world, you can heal just about anything with a novena, chicken soup or a little whiskey. “Ma said she’s not going to change a thing.” Mary Beth sighs. “She spent yesterday weeding her garden and she made pizza-frite last night.”

  That’s fried bread dough, which my mother slathers in butter, then tops with sugar and cinnamon and canned fruit-pie filling.

  “I’ll talk to her,” I say, eyeing the heaping platters of homemade food waiting on the countertops. No way is my mother going to be able to lose weight until she stops acting like a one-woman Food Network.

  And rest? I have never seen the woman sit in a chair unless it’s to eat or knit or have her hair done.

  “Good luck.” Mary Beth shakes her head. “She only hears what she wants to hear.”

  We continue to discuss my mother’s health until she bustles into the kitchen a few minutes later.

  Seeing her, I want to grab her and hug her hard again, or beg her to come back to Westchester with me so that I can take care of her, or scold her for calling the doctor a mamaluke.

  But before I can do any of those things, she commands, “Let’s start taking things out of the oven. Everyone’s hungry.”

  “Where’s my mother-in-law?” I ask her.

  “In the dining room talking to Grandma.”

  Uh-oh.

  I grab the nearest platter, which is piled high with homemade zau-zage calzones. “I’ll bring this in.”

  Hustling it into the dining room, I find Grandma lifting her turquoise satin blouse and exposing her left breast to Wilma.

  Dear God, it’s worse than I imagined in my wildest dreams.

  “See? It’s right there, by the nipple,” Grandma is saying loudly—I’ve noticed that her voice seems to rise a decibel with every birthday she celebrates.

  “Grandma! What are you doing?” I shove the platter onto the table and rush over, thankful that at least no one else is in the room, and wishing Wilma weren’t here, either. I don’t dare look at her.

  “I was just telling your mother-in-law that I’ve got a rash from my new brassiere.”

  But why, Grandma? Why were you telling her that?

  “What brassiere?” I ask weakly instead, and remind her, “You aren’t actually wearing a brassiere.”

  I wonder if she’s finally gone senile. Let me tell you, it’s been a long time coming. She’s in her mid-eighties now, and she’s had a good ride, but—

  “I know I’m not wearing a brassiere. Because the fancy push-up one I ordered from Sears catalog gave me this itchy red rash, see?” She thrusts her boob—which I’m sure was once pert, but now sags like a tennis ball in a gym sock—in my direction. I can’t help but notice that she really could use a push-up bra.

  Still…

  Seeing Wilma, poor thing, looking slightly faint, I say brightly, “Sears! That reminds me—you have to hear about our house, Grandma. It’s from Sears catalog, too. Why don’t you put your boob away and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “Tracey! Boob is not ladylike,” she scolds.

  Neither is exposing yours to visiting houseguests, I want to remind her.

  But at least she’s lowered her top and is tucking it back into the waistband of her jeans, which rides right in the vicinity of her rib cage. Yes, she’s wearing jeans. High-waisted, dark, soft, shiny denim pleated jeans. With hooker high heels. Her hair, these days tinted a brassy shade of blond, is piled high on her head and she’s wearing makeup, including blue eye shadow.

  For a moment, I wish she were a regular grandma: a sweet, gray-haired lady in a housedress and scuffies with a pocketful of Root Beer Barrels.

  Don’t get me wrong. I love my grandmother. She’s just…a character on a good day, a total fruitcake on a bad one. It’s like her appropriateness filter has disintegrated. Maybe that’s a sign of age.

  Suddenly, I feel more bittersweet sorrow than embarrassment.

  Grandma’s not going to be here forever.

  My mother isn’t, either.

  Even this familiar house will one day be sold to someone new, the way Hank and Marge’s house was sold to me and Jack.

  That’s my home now, my own home, almost five hundred miles away. That’s my life now. Someday, I’m going to be the matriarch bustling around in an apron or—God forbid—showing my boob to my granddaughter’s mother-in-law.

  “What kind of brassiere do you wear, Wilhelmina?” Grandma asks.

  Oh, for the love of God.

  “You know what, Wilma,” I say quickly, “you must be exhausted after that road trip. Do you want me to bring you upstairs so you can freshen up before we eat?”

  “That would be nice,” she says gratefully.

  “I’m sorry about my grandmother,” I whisper to her as we leave the room.

  She dismisses that with a flutter of her manicured hand. “Oh, we’ve all had eccentric grandmothers.”

  Somehow, I doubt that, but it’s kind of her to say.

  We pass Stefania on our way to the stairs. “
Hi! Hi, Tracey! Hi, Wilma!” Waving, she gives us a big, America-is-good kind of smile, and for about two seconds I feel bad for resenting her.

  Then I remember that she’s sleeping in my room, and I’m bunking with Wilma down the hall.

  “How’s it going, Stefania?” I say, and add evilly, “Why don’t you go keep my grandmother company. She’s in the dining room.”

  “Okay! Okay, Tracey!” Off she goes.

  “She’s a nice girl,” Wilma comments as we ascend the stairs.

  “She is.”

  “I just love your family. They’re all so warm and welcoming. And I love watching your parents together,” she adds somewhat wistfully. “It reminds me of you and Jack.”

  And of all that she missed, having been married to—and divorced from—my late father-in-law.

  Poor Wilma. I feel really bad about wanting to drive her off a cliff.

  Until—over the homemade tiramisu my mother made for dessert—she transforms my immediate future into a living hell.

  She doesn’t do it single-handedly, by any means, and it all begins innocently enough, right after I finish describing the new house to everyone in as much detail as I can without boring them to tears.

  That’s the great thing about family—mine, anyway. You can share stuff with them—like long stories and vacation photos—and they don’t glaze over and tune you out the way your friends or coworkers might.

  “How many bedrooms did you say it has, Tracey?” asks my brother Joey.

  “Four.”

  “Tracey asked me to drive back down there with her on Sunday,” my mother announces. “But of course, I can’t.”

  Naturally, they all concur; of course she can’t.

  However…

  “I’ll come,” my grandmother says, and I nearly choke on my Diet Pepsi.

  My mother rolls her eyes. “Ma, you can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “How would you get home, Ma?” my father wants to know.

  “I could fly.”

  “Alone?” Mary Beth shakes her head. She would never in a million years get on a plane alone.

  Grandma shrugs. “Why not?”

  “It’s dangerous, Ma.” That’s my mother.

  Ordinarily, I’d correct her. But if she wants to let my grandmother think she’d be taking her life in her hands visiting me, who am I to stop her?

  “If I croak in a plane crash, I croak in a plane crash, Connie,” Grandma responds with a what-are-you-going-to-do shrug. “I’d love to go back to New York City again.”

  “Oh, New York City,” Stefania speaks up. “I love to see New York City. Statue of Liberty is there, yes?”

  “Yes,” I admit, but clarify—for everyone’s benefit—“I don’t actually live in New York City anymore. I live far away from New York City now.”

  “Not that far away,” Wilma says with a laugh. “It’s just a short train ride to Grand Central.”

  “Grand Central Station? We were there!” Grandma says. “When we came down for the engagement party. Woo-hoo! You should see it, Stefania. The ceiling is painted in constellations. It’s just gorgeous.”

  “I love to see ceiling,” Stefania says agreeably. “Woo-hoo!”

  “Remember when we went to the top of the Empire State Building, Joey?” Sara asks my brother. “What a neat place. It’s too bad little Joey was too young to remember. We’ll have to come down and visit you guys someday, Tracey, if you really do have room.”

  “Oh, they do,” Wilma assures her.

  “I love to see Empire State Building!” That’s Stefania again, of course.

  “You should come, too, then,” Wilma tells her. “That way, you two can fly back together and no one has to worry about Grandma on a plane alone.”

  Shut up, Wilma! Who was worried? Was anyone worried? I wasn’t worried. Even Grandma wasn’t worried. If she croaks, she croaks.

  “But, Ma, don’t you need Stefania here to help you since you’ve been sick?” I ask in desperation—and that, of course, is the final nail in the coffin.

  Connie Spadolini is not sick and she does not need help.

  “Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous, Tracey.” My mother turns to Stefania. “You have to see New York City before you go back to Krakow.”

  “She doesn’t have to…I mean, it’s not like a law or something.” I laugh nervously. No one else does. I try another tactic. “Maybe she doesn’t want to do all that traveling. With an overseas trip coming up, she’d be exhausted.”

  “I love to traveling!” Stefania says energetically.

  “Tracey and Jack will show you all around the city,” Wilma tells her. “There’s so much to see. You’ll have a terrific time.”

  Wait, what? I don’t want to play tour guide to Stefania and Grandma. And I seriously doubt that Jack will want to play tour guide to Stefania and Grandma.

  But it’s too late.

  Everything’s settled.

  They’re coming, and from where I sit, there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

  From where Jack sits—probably on a cardboard box at the moment—there is.

  “Just tell them it’s not a good time for us to have company,” he advises into the phone when I call him that night from my parents’ basement. No, not a finished basement, but the kind with clammy stone walls and cobwebs and spiders.

  It’s pretty much the only place in this house where no one can possibly overhear a conversation. Everyone is upstairs, asleep.

  Oh, and guess what? My mother-in-law snores like a trucker. Go figure.

  “I can’t tell them it’s not a good time for us to have company,” I inform Jack, “because I already told my mother it was a perfect time for us to have company.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I wanted her to come. Just her.” Remembering that he doesn’t know about Ma’s diagnosis, I fill him in quickly.

  “That’s not good, Trace. She really has to start taking care of herself.”

  “I know…but you know her. She says she won’t change her diet, and she won’t exercise.”

  “That’s not good,” he says again.

  “I know it isn’t good. Nothing about it is good.” I wish he were here or I were there, because I really could use a hug.

  “Doesn’t she realize how serious this is?”

  “She’s stubborn,” I remind him. “They all are, here. It’s like they’re living in their own little world, on their own terms. I have about forty-eight hours to make her see that she’s got to change and get on a good diet and exercise program.”

  “It’s not up to you, Tracey.”

  “No one else is taking control.”

  “Because she’s a grown woman. And so are you. She has her life, and you have yours. You can’t—”

  “She’s my mother, and she’s sick!”

  “I know, but what are you going to do? Kidnap her and send her to a health spa for a year?”

  Jack is right. I know he is.

  And I know I’m a control freak. I can’t help it.

  “You have to let go, Trace,” he tells me gently.

  “Why does it seem like that’s all I’ve been doing lately? Letting go?”

  “Because it is. And, yeah, it’s been a rough stretch,” he tells me. “You’ll get through it. We both will. Everything will turn out to be fine.”

  Sometimes I really wonder.

  “I love you, Jack,” I tell him with a lump in my throat.

  “I love you, too,” he says.

  And that, I think, feeling infinitely better, is all I really need to get through anything.

  CHAPTER 14

  Well…almost anything.

  If you thought the ride to Brookside was bad, imagine the return trip.

  Actually, you don’t have to imagine it.

  Let me tell you all about it.

  Grandma sits in front, because she gets carsick—or so she claims.

  Turns out, Stefania gets carsick, too.
/>   All over poor chic Wilma and the beige upholstered backseat of my Hyundai.

  It happens only twenty minutes into the trip, which has me seriously considering a U-turn.

  “No, no, I am fine,” Stefania says wanly, mopping her face with a tissue Wilma handed her. “I love to see New York City!”

  “It’s a long trip, though, Stefania…”

  “No, I am great!” she insists, then gags and gulps.

  “Maybe you should let Stefania sit up front,” Wilma, looking green herself, suggests to my grandmother, who is eyeing the mess in the backseat.

  Grandma glances down at her brand-new white Dress Barn pantsuit, purchased just for today’s trip. “I’m sure she’ll be fine back there,” she decides. “Won’t you, Stefania?”

  “I am great. Let’s go! Woo-hoo!”

  What is there to do but drive on, breathing fresh vomit fumes?

  “I know! Let’s sing show tunes,” Wilma suggests. “That always helps.”

  Huh? That never helps.

  But she and Grandma are off on a Rodgers and Hammerstein medley before you can say Oklahoma.

  The singing subsides only when I stop at the next rest area so that Stefania can go into the bathroom and clean herself up.

  While she’s in there, I swab out the backseat the best I can with a couple of fast-food napkins that were in the glove compartment, but it’s still disgusting.

  Owning a car is definitely overrated. What I wouldn’t give to be back on the good old subway, where there may be plenty of other people spewing bodily fluids, but at least it’s not my job to clean it up.

  Back on the road, Wilma and Grandma launch into all the songs from South Pacific, which naturally reminds me of my Tahitian honeymoon.

  Why, oh why, didn’t Jack and I stay there while we had the chance? Now that we have a mortgage and I’m unemployed, we’ll be lucky if we manage to get back there before our fiftieth anniversary. Or ever.

  I mean, think about it: how many seniors do you see jetting off to Tahiti for a second honeymoon? And how much fun can they possibly have? Even if Jack and I do manage a return visit before we croak—as Grandma so eloquently puts it—who’s to say I won’t be going around exposing my right boob to strangers, talking about my brassiere rash?