Why, oh why, did I let them ruin our beautiful couch?
Because they couldn’t get it through the door, remember?
Yes, but what goes in must come out. Right?
I should have stopped to think things through.
Not just the couch.
“I’m so sorry,” I tell Jack around a gi-normous lump in my throat.
“For what?”
“For making us move.”
That isn’t what I meant to say. I meant to apologize for the couch leg, but—
“Tracey—”
“I ruined our lives!”
“Shh! No, you didn’t.” He gives me a there-there pat.
“Yes, I did.”
“How?”
“I feel like if we hadn’t moved, we’d still have friends, and money, and time together, and jobs—”
“I have a job—a better job—and you didn’t lose yours because we moved.”
“I know, but our little apartment was so cozy, Jack. It was comfortable. We had a bed.”
“We still have—”
“We’re on the floor.” The ache that’s been in my throat for a week now suddenly gives way to a sob. Sobs. Huge, heaving sobs, and I’m blubbering all over Jack.
“It’ll be okay. It just takes a while to get settled.”
“When we moved into our apartment, we were settled right away, remember?” I cry. “Remember all the time we had together? And we didn’t have the stupid budget, or the car—I hate driving, Jack! I hate it! And we didn’t have room for all these freaking houseguests…and we could order takeout for delivery whenever we wanted it? Remember how happy we were back then? Remember how easy it was?”
“That’s because we didn’t move to a new town, and we were younger, and we were just renting, so if it didn’t work out…”
“What if this doesn’t work out?”
“It will. It’s where we wanted to be, remember?”
“I don’t have any friends here. No one likes me.”
“Now you’re being ridiculous.”
I wipe my nose on a blanket. “I can’t help it. I just feel like it’s all so depressing, and the next thing you know, I’m going to be a sick, middle-aged woman in the emergency room calling the doctor a mamaluke.”
Jack laughs.
I cry harder.
“Oh, come on, Trace. Things will look better in the morning. They always do.”
“In the morning I have to lead a group tour in Manhattan. And that’s not even in the budget!” I wail.
“It’s all right. Do what you have to do and we’ll figure something out later. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Good.”
I sniffle. “Thank you.”
Jack pretty much falls asleep right away.
I don’t think I ever will, but eventually, I can feel myself growing drowsy.
My last conscious thought is that Kate once mentioned the Screaming Jesus wakes up pretty early.
As in predawn early.
CHAPTER 15
The Screaming Jesus wakes the entire household at 5:00 a.m.
By seven, Jack has left for the train and I’m left to hold down the fort with Grandma, who has now monopolized the upstairs bathroom for two hours “getting ready.” Stefania actually does seem to think she’s an au pair because she’s done nothing but tend to Kate’s daughter, maybe because Kate is sick and hungover in addition to being generally devastated.
“I think I’m going to fly home to Mobile for a few weeks,” she tells me, gingerly sipping a cup of black coffee. Did I mention we finally bought new filters? “It’s not that I don’t appreciate your offer to let me and Katie stay here. But there are reminders of Billy everywhere I look.”
“It’s a new place. Billy’s never even been here,” I point out.
“No, not like that. I mean you and Jack. I can’t stand seeing the two of you so happy together. It’s awful.”
Here’s the thing about Kate and me: we’ve been friends long enough that I can understand just what she means by that comment and not be insulted or take it personally.
“It’s not like Jack and I don’t have our problems,” I tell her. “Everyone does.”
“Jack would never leave you, Tracey.”
No. She’s right. He wouldn’t.
Thank God I married Jack and not Billy. Thank God I have my life and not Kate’s.
After I hug her and Katie goodbye, I call Jack.
He picks up his cell phone for a change. “Hi…how’s it going at the Candell B and B?”
“Two of the guests have checked out.”
“Which two?”
“Does it matter?”
He considers that, then chuckles. “No,” he says. “I guess it doesn’t. Either way we don’t get our bed back till the weekend, right?”
“Right. Kate’s going down to stay with her parents for a while in Mobile.”
“That’s probably a good idea. She seems to need someone to take care of her and Katie. She did bring Katie with her, didn’t she?”
“No,” I say, “she brought Stefania. Katie and Grandma are staying on with us.”
At his horrified silence, I burst out laughing.
“Please tell me you were just kidding,” he says.
“I was just kidding.”
“You are one funny, funny gal. Listen, I talked to my mother a little while ago and she said she had a wonderful time with you and your family.”
“She did?”
Then again, of course she did. What else is she going to say? Wilma is a true lady.
“Yes. She also said to remind you that the girls have some kind of talent show on Saturday afternoon and we’re supposed to go.”
“Saturday afternoon?” I echo. “Oh, no.”
“Oh, no, what? Don’t tell me you made other plans?”
“Yes,” I say quickly, seizing the out. “I told Raphael I’d meet him for lunch in Manhattan. Bummer.”
You might think I’m lying to my husband.
I guess I am…but it’s for his own good, because there’s no telling what I might do—and in public—if I have to sit through the devilmint twins in a talent show on my first free afternoon after Grandma and Stefania fly away.
“You can’t reschedule?”
“Are you kidding? After the way Raphael has carried on about my abandoning him?”
“I guess you can’t,” he says. “It’s okay. I’ll go to the show with my mother. So what’s on the tour schedule for today?”
“They want to see the Statue of Liberty.”
“Take the Staten Island ferry. It’s free and you get a great view from there.”
“Good idea.” Free is definitely in the budget.
After we hang up, I quickly call Raphael.
It goes into voice mail after several rings. I happen to know that Raphael always checks caller ID, no matter where he is—in a meeting, at a photo shoot, on the toilet—so I’m well aware he’s screening my call.
“I’m taking you to lunch on Saturday in Manhattan, you choose the restaurant, no excuses.” No, it’s not on the budget. But sometimes, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. I hesitate, about to hang up, then add, “You know I love you. Still. Always. No matter what. Or where. Okay? See you Saturday.”
Grandma—who wore a homemade gown fashioned out of a shower curtain to my wedding—dresses for the day in a romper that appears to be made from a bath towel.
“Is that terry cloth?” I ask her when she first appears in it.
“Yes. You said to wear something comfortable.”
“I was thinking sneakers.”
She, of course, has on strappy high heels, the better to show off her “gorgeous gams” (the quote is from her). Referring, of course, to her own gams. Which I’ll admit are still decent, especially for a woman in her eighties, but shouldn’t a woman in her eighties keep them—and other body parts—under wraps?
A few people on the train to the city give Grandma a wary
once-over, and I find myself wishing we’d gone at rush hour so there wouldn’t be an available triple seat and we could have all sat separately. I make sure Stefania sits in the middle and I pretend to be engrossed in my gardening magazine so that no one will think we’re together.
Especially when Grandma announces, loudly and within earshot of everyone including the short, friendly and pockmarked conductor: “The conductor has a terrible skin problem, poor little fellow.”
“What are you reading, Tracey?” Grandma wants to know, leaning across Stefania’s lap, and I show her the cover.
“You’re going to plant a garden?”
“Yes, just as soon as I get a chance.”
“What kind of garden?”
“You know…like my mother has. And you, too. Herbs, flowers, vegetables…”
Grandma looks pleased. “That’s so nice!”
Stefania is also pleased. “How nice!”
“Yeah. I already bought all the seeds.”
“Seeds? It’s already June. Too late to start a vegetable garden from seed!”
I frown. “Too late? Really?”
“Oh, yeah.” She gives a dismissive wave of her hand, shaking her head. “You need to start seeds indoors in the winter, in little pots.”
“My mother never did that!”
“That’s because she gets her plants at the nursery. Most people do.”
“They do? My mother does?”
“Yes,” Grandma confirms.
“Yes,” Stefania also confirms cluelessly.
Really. Who knew? I guess I never paid much attention to how—or when—the plants got there. All I ever noticed was the end result. The August tomatoes, warm from the sun.
“Oh, sure,” Grandma says. “You have to get the plants in right at the start of the growing season. Go to a nursery. It might not be too late.”
“I want to grow them from seed,” I say stubbornly.
“You can’t,” she replies just as stubbornly.
“No.” That’s Stefania, also stubborn. She’s getting on my nerves again. I should have put her on the aisle.
“What would happen if I planted the seeds now? They wouldn’t grow?”
“No, they would,” Grandma tells me, “and then next fall, the killing frost will come along before your tomatoes have a chance to ripen or your flowers have a chance to bloom.”
Jesus, that’s depressing.
“If you want to plant seeds, wait until next year,” Grandma says with a firm nod.
“Next year,” Stefania agrees with a firm nod.
Next year? I wanted to do it this year. I wanted to plant seeds and watch them sprout and pluck ripe tomatoes and peppers from their vines by my back door in August, the way my mother and grandmother have always done.
Why didn’t anyone ever tell me they were getting their plants from the nursery?
Why is it that nothing ever works out the way I have planned?
And why is this damn garden so important to me?
I have no idea. It just is.
You mean was.
Whatever. It’s over.
“I guess I’ll save the seeds for next year,” I tell Grandma with a sigh.
“Oh, you can’t save seeds. You have to buy fresh ones.”
I’m annoyed all over again. What a waste! I can’t squander the seed budget like that.
Not that there was a seed budget in the first place.
Who knew there were so many rules in gardening?
Who knew I’d fail so miserably before I even started?
I put the magazine aside and spend the rest of the trip staring glumly out the window.
At last we arrive at Grand Central Terminal. I herd Grandma and Stefania up into the main concourse to ooh and aah over the lustrous sky-blue ceiling with its constellations, then hustle them back downstairs and onto the subway.
It’s slightly strange being back in Manhattan after almost a week away. The territory is familiar, and my every move is second nature, yet I’m no longer a part of the city. Maybe that’s why its hassles seem to have miraculously diminished. The crowds, the cost, the homeless, the noise…none of it’s getting to me today. I feel emotionally insulated. Or maybe just emotionally isolated.
When the express train runs local all the way downtown, I shrug it off. Same thing when I emerge on Canal Street to a passing cab splashing me with a warm, stagnant puddle from last night’s rain.
It’s a muggy gray day, and the old-world air down here is thick with the smell of exotic cuisine and the East River and foreign strangers who stand too close.
For Stefania’s benefit, we lunch on kielbasa and pierogi at a Polish diner on the Lower East Side. For Grandma’s benefit, we have dessert and espresso at an Italian Pastry Shop a few blocks away on Mulberry Street.
Then it’s on to Battery Park and the ferry, from which we can glimpse the Statue of Liberty.
It’s funny. In all those years of living in Manhattan, I’ve only seen it a couple of times. I mean, it’s not as though I cruise the New York harbor on a daily basis.
“I cannot believe I am here!”
I turn to see Stefania standing beside me, her hair streaming back in the wind, with tears running down her cheeks.
Grandma looks at her, then at me. I’m shocked to see that there are tears in her eyes, too. “This is what my mother saw when she came over from Italy,” she says, wiping at them and shaking her head. “She was just a kid.”
“How old, Grandma?” I ask as Stefania moves on down the railing with her camera, snapping picture after picture from different angles.
“Fifteen, and a newlywed. My father was already here—he came for a year, then sent for her. And it was an arranged marriage back in the Old Country, so they barely knew each other as it was. How about that?”
“I never knew any of that,” I tell my grandmother in awe.
“Well, you should. It’s your history.”
I nod solemnly, gazing at the Statue and at Ellis Island in the distance.
“She never saw her parents or her sisters and brothers again, you know,” Grandma tells me. “Once in a while she used to cry for them when I was a little girl. And they wrote back and forth for years, until they all died back in Italy one by one and she was the only one left.”
All I remember of my great-grandmother is a wizened old lady in a housedress and cardigan, baggy stockings and thick-soled shoes. She spoke no English, and pinched our cheeks, and gave us Root Beer Barrels. She died when I was little. I confess I never gave her much thought, before or after that.
Now I try to imagine her standing on the deck of a ship in this very harbor, embarking on a new life in a strange land, far from a homeland and family she would never see again.
“What was her name?” I ask Grandma. “Your mother.”
“It was Carlotta. That means ‘strong one’ in Italian. And she was.” My grandmother shrugs. “We all are. Especially you.”
Surprised, I ask, “Me? Why?”
She laughs. “You’re the only one who left home, followed a dream, the way she did. The rest of us…we all stick around. Stick together. It’s easier that way. More comfortable. We play it safe.”
I never thought of it that way. I never thought the rest of them admired me. I thought they just resented me. I’ve always felt like the outcast. Maybe I’m not.
As the boat glides past the Statue of Liberty, Grandma puts her arm around me and holds me close, stroking my hair the way grandmothers do.
I think about my old life, and my new life.
I think about Carlotta, building a new life alone in a new country, and how if she hadn’t done what she did, I wouldn’t be here.
Not here, as in Glenhaven Park. I mean here, in the world, at all.
She was strong.
Yeah, I’ve got quite a few years and a whole lot more life experience on Carlotta when she married and came to America, and my husband isn’t a stranger. Still…
Maybe I’m strong, too. Stro
nger than I thought.
That night, before I go to bed, I open a drawer looking for my dental floss, and stumble across all those packets of seeds I stashed there last week.
Useless, according to Grandma.
I carry them over to the garbage can, step on the pedal and hold them poised to dump in.
It seems like such a waste.
What would happen if I planted them now anyway?
What if this were the one year without a killing frost?
It’s a long shot, I know…but anything’s possible, right? Global warming, and all.
I slip outside in my pajamas and sneakers, carrying a trowel and the packets of seeds.
It’s a warm night. Crickets, and in the distance, the sound of a late train rumbling toward the city.
In the moonlight, I dig into the moist, crumbly ground beside the back door, creating a garden patch.
As I dig, a rich, earthy scent fills the air. It makes me think of spring nights when I was a kid, just before school got out, when my brother Joey and I would hunt for night crawlers for my father to take fishing. My mother would have to call us in repeatedly. I remember her voice, frustrated, then worried, echoing through the dark neighborhood. She’d make us take a bath before bed, and the water would be dingy, leaving a ring around the tub that she’d sigh about and scrub after we went to bed. And when my father came home the next day with freshly caught fish from the waters of Lake Erie, she’d fry it all up for dinner.
Lake Erie. For all I know, the fish was glowing green, but we never worried about stuff like that back then.
I sigh, remembering home.
Then I carefully tear open each seed packet and dump them all into the soil. After covering the whole thing with another layer of dirt, I stomp it down, and step back to look at it.
I have no idea what I just did, or why I did it.
All I know is that somehow, it makes me feel good.
CHAPTER 16
“I don’t know…I just feel like it’s all over, Tracey,” Raphael says mournfully across the table on Saturday afternoon.
We’re having lunch in the Flatiron district at Raphael’s favorite tapas restaurant. He’s wearing a black bolero and a white blouse with a jabot in honor of the cuisine. On anyone other than a toreador or Raphael, the outfit would look ridiculous.
What Happens in Suburbia… (Red Dress Ink Novels) Page 21