Full of Grace

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  “Hey, Gracie!” Nicky said.

  “Hey, yourself!” I said, and gave my brother a hug and a noisy rhubarb kiss on his cheek. “Hi, Marianne! How are you?”

  “Gooood. Gooood. Nicky, dahlin’, let me wipe your sister’s sa-lievah from your preciousth face…” Marianne said, using the napkin around her plastic cup on my brother’s cheek.

  “So things are good?” I said to my brother, not really having anything to say to him then or ever except Your girlfriend is a freaking jerk, you egomaniac lunatic, which I didn’t say in the interest of a pleasant evening.

  Nicky nodded and kissed Marianne on the forehead. “Never better.”

  “Well, fine. Good. Better go kiss Big Al and Connie, right?”

  “Duh,” Nicky said.

  “You are one articulate so-and-so, little brother,” I said with a giggle, hoping he would take my assessment of his command of the language as a joke, which of course he did. Who would insult the prince?

  I wandered over to the pool, kissed my mother, waved at my nephew Paulie in the pool, blew a kiss to my niece, ignored my nephew behind the grill and joined Big Al, Regina and Frank.

  “Here’s my little girl!” Big Al bellowed, and placed his can of beer on the table, throwing his arms open to hug me and give me the standard family chiropractic adjustment.

  “Daddy!” I said, and despite the heat and his sweaty shirt, I hugged him mightily. “How are you?”

  “Are you kidding? I’m the richest son of a bitch in the world! Look around you! The only thing I could ask for is—”

  “I know, I know,” I said. “More grandchildren, right?”

  “You got it! Hey! Speaking of which…I met a nice guy I’d like to introduce to you. He’s from Pennsylvania and is a helluva golfer. He’s a little bit older, mind you, but good people, if you know what I’m saying to you…”

  “Italian, right?”

  “You know it, baby, and—”

  “Over fifty? Widowed? Grown children?”

  “You’re a mind reader! Hey, Frank! Didn’t I just finish saying that our Grace was the smartest one? Didn’t I?”

  “You did, Dad, you sure did,” Frank said, and gave me a normal hug.

  Then, in the pause of the moment, Big Al searched my face for an answer to the proposed widower. He scowled and said, “No way, am I right?”

  “They gotta have hair and teeth, Dad. And besides, you know I’m involved with—”

  “That Irish baby butcher?”

  “He’s not—”

  “You’re blind, princess. Love is blind. Go get your old man a cold beer, okay?”

  “Sure.” I turned to Frank and Regina. “He does a little stem-cell research, just so you know.”

  Frank and Regina were shaking their heads as if to say, There’s just no end to the goading and the guilt, is there?

  I pulled a freezing can of beer from the bar area’s refrigerator, put it in a foam rubber coozie—which I figured was a variation on cozy, as in the cozies that covered teapots to keep tea warm—a coozie kept a canned beverage cold. Looking at the cook area, I decided my father might have been a narrow-minded bigot from time to time, but he sure did know how to design and construct an outdoor barbecue. It had every new gadget available. Naturally, its most important feature was the decking.

  It appeared to be ancient stone from maybe Greece or Corsica, but of course it was a cool-touch product. It was pitted here and there to give it character and the color varied throughout to give it dimension. The decking began at the doors of the kitchen and, like a lava flow, moved out past the barbecue area and the dining area and ended surrounding the pool in a wide band, allowing ample space for twelve lounge chairs.

  When my parents bought this place a few years ago the backyard had been a wasteland. But Big Al had a vision of seeing his family all around him in a double kidney-shaped pool on a hot day like the very one we were enduring. He brought in earthmovers and backhoes. Dump trucks of sand and depleted dirt were hauled away; yards of topsoil and sod were brought in. As if it all happened in the blink of an eye, Al created a verdant paradise, complete with cement statues of half-dressed women of Roman antiquity pouring recycled water from great vessels balanced on their slim shoulders.

  I think an argument could have been made that Big Al loved cement as much as he loved women and that cement women were the epitome of it all. If you had taken these voluptuous creatures away, your eyes would have been drawn to the lush landscaping, the rare specimen trees and shrubs from Hawaii and Costa Rica. The border plants that were handpicked from nurseries all around Miami and the Florida Keys. But given the crowd of Pompeians, the extraordinary shrubs went almost unnoticed.

  Well, it could have been worse, I thought. Al could’ve chosen little boys pee-peeing or giant frogs. Or a great row of cement dolphins, leaping in unison, spewing water from their jaws, underlit by a color wheel. The possibilities for worse taste were infinite. But for the statuary and the turbo-Catholic grotto dedicated to the Virgin Mary that lurked around the corner of the house by my grandmother’s patio, this was a beautiful place. Really beautiful. Oh, the front-yard walkway situation was a mess, but that would be remedied immediately after the holiday. Over dinner my father promised my mother he would take care of it.

  We gathered at the dining table, all eyes focused on the platters loaded with cold antipasto and clams oreganata, and the fresh tomatoes and basil from Nonna’s garden. The breadbasket was being passed from plate to plate with small bowls of olive oil for dipping. Dad poured a wonderful Gavi di Gavi in small measures for the adults.

  “I’ve been saving this one for a special occasion,” he said, and everyone accepted that pronouncement had a probability that was perhaps partial truth. Maybe he had only been saving it since yesterday when someone from the Piggly Wiggly recommended it to him, but that would have been good enough to save Al from the venial sin of a lie. Spared a decade in the flames of purgatory on a technicality.

  Connie poured Orangina soda for the children and everyone couldn’t wait to eat. Al blessed the food while Frank’s offspring squirmed and snickered at his long-winded thanks for the presence of each person, their health, their long life and their worldly possessions. Nonna shot the kids the evil eye to behave themselves, to which Regina responded with a backup evil eye.

  “Buon appetito!” Al said, raising his glass.

  The first official meal of the holiday weekend was under way.

  “We’re eating light tonight,” Connie said, “because the barbecue tomorrow is pretty…well, it’s a lot of food.”

  Light? The table struggled to remain upright.

  After the antipasto was gobbled up and the platters cleared, Nonna and Mom served steaming bowls of pasta with shrimp in Nonna’s gravy and another baguette was sliced and passed around. The adults were now on their third bottle of Gavi di Gavi, and between the sun exposure and the alcohol, our tongues loosened.

  “So where is what’s his name this weekend?” Dad asked me.

  “He’s visiting his mother,” I said.

  “Yeah, she’s in a nursing home,” Nicky said.

  The table fell silent at the mention of a nursing home.

  Nonna, who could barely contain or swallow the food in her mouth, threw her arms in the air and cried out, “Madre Dio!”

  “Thanks a lot, asshole,” I whispered to Nicky.

  “I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for her being in a home,” Regina said.

  “She’s has very advanced Alzheimer’s,” I said. “It’s so sad and very difficult for Michael to see his mother that way.”

  “Is that all?” Nonna said. “A little Alzheimer’s? Next thing I’ll forget where my purse is put and everybody’s gonna say that I’ve got this Alzheimer’s! Spend the rest of my life in a nursing home? Is that what you want?”

  “And she’s a severe diabetic, completely blind, and don’t ever say I said this, but she’s incontinent. Very incontinent,” I said. “I mean, Michae
l can’t take care of her, right?”

  I looked around the table for a little support. Nicky was staring at Al, who was staring at Connie, who was staring at Frank and Regina.

  Marianne, in her continuing campaign for brownie points, spoke up. “I could never put my mother in a nursing home, no matter what.”

  I considered slapping Marianne’s teeth out and just getting it over with. No, something stronger, like a tragic farm accident—Marianne needed a tragic farm accident…a swan dive into a threshing machine or something like that.

  “That’s very easy for you to say, Marianne,” Regina said, putting her hand on my arm to hold me in my chair and giving me a supportive squeeze. “I work in a hospital. You wouldn’t believe some of the things I see.”

  I took a deep breath and looked from my mother to my grandmother.

  “Like what?” Nonna said. “How bad could it be that your own children turn their backs on you and dump you in some filthy place?”

  “Uh, could we table this discussion for another time?” I said. “Because, Nonna, you are as healthy as a horse and you’re gonna live to be a thousand years old.”

  “Humph,” she said, obviously unsatisfied with my answer. “I’m not the one who has to worry here! I have a daughter to take care of me…”

  “And I would never put you in a nursing home!” Connie said.

  “But her daughter has a boyfriend who thinks he knows more than the pope himself, and he thinks it’s fine to put his mother in a nursing home and she agrees with him!”

  “Please, Ma,” Mom said to Nonna. “I worked so hard on this dinner…”

  “What did you do?” Nonna said. “It’s my gravy, my clams, my tomatoes that I grew myself, my basil…”

  “Ma…”

  Big Al wiped his mouth with the dish towel he used instead of a napkin, got up and went to Nonna’s side, leaned over and kissed her on the top of her head. “Nobody’s going nowhere, okay?” he said. “We’re a family! Now how about some fish? Huh? I’m starving here! Give Connie a hand, Marianne. That’s a good girl.”

  I felt my temperature rise. Al had chosen Marianne over me to help my mother with dinner all because of Michael and his mother living in a nursing home. It seemed that he used every opportunity, no matter how small, to show his displeasure with me. Sure, I got a nice hello, but after that he went for my throat.

  Regina couldn’t help serve dinner; she had to watch her kids, especially Tony, who might drink all the wine left in the glasses, because, well, that’s just how it was. I put my platform-sandaled foot on top of Nicky’s and pressed down hard, wishing I were wearing cleats instead.

  “Ow!” Nicky hollered.

  “Oh! Excuse me! I’m so sorry,” I said, and turned to Frank, knowing I was being sarcastic but thinking what the hell? “So Frank? Welcome home. Didn’t you miss all this?”

  Later that night, after the last glass was dried and put away, after the kitchen floor was swept, after Nonna and Connie had gone to take their showers, and after Big Al had smoked Robustos with Nicky and Frank in the backyard and finally turned in for the night, Nicky took Marianne home.

  When I felt the heavy silence of the house and was reasonably certain everyone was finished with the day, I crept from my room and bumped into Frank in the kitchen. He was watching CNN on mute and dipping a piece of biscotti in a glass of anisette.

  “Oh!” I said. “I didn’t know you were in here.”

  “Yeah, I just finished pumping up the air mattresses and thought I’d check on the outside world…you know, make sure it’s still there.”

  “Yeah,” I said, inspecting the contents of the refrigerator. “Make sure there’s no nuclear war dropping bombs on I-95 and that we’re not stuck here for all of eternity, right?” I poured myself a glass of skim milk. “Where’s the biscotti?”

  “In the cookie jar over there.” Frank turned to me, smiled and said, “Sit down, Grace, talk to me for a minute. Then I gotta crash. I’m exhausted.”

  I reached in the jar and pulled out two pieces of biscotti—one that was dipped in chocolate and one that was dipped in chocolate and then coconut.

  “Well, it’s a long drive, especially with three kids. I only had to drive from Charleston. Know what? If I had a cookie jar in my kitchen, it would be crawling with bugs.”

  “You wouldn’t have a cookie jar with actual cookies in it.”

  His words were beyond the obvious, but the remark stung a little. Did my brother think that I was obsessed with my weight, or that I wasn’t interested in baking, or that I was gone so much cookies would be wasted? Even though all three possibilities were fact, I pouted. But Frank was always the one in the family to call a thing what it was and he was right. I looked at my brother, and in the blue light of the kitchen cabinet’s underlighting, I saw how strongly he resembled our father, and had the thought that he was a kinder, more educated and definitely more genteel version of Al.

  “You’re right. You look like the old man, you know.”

  “There are worse things, I think,” he said. “So what’s the deal with this guy Michael?”

  “We’re living together in mortal sin,” I said with a little laugh, and dipped my cookie in the milk.

  “In the house Al bought? Is he Italian?”

  “No, he’s Irish. I’m going to hell for all of eternity.”

  “Okay, you’re a fornicating sinner and your eternal soul is smeared with mortal sin like cream cheese on a bagel. Well, at least he’s Catholic.”

  “Not really. He sort of believes in science more than the Church.”

  “Okay, let’s sum this up. You’re living with an agnostic Irish guy in a house Big Al paid for and you’ve got no intention of marrying him either, right? And he does embryonic stem-cell research for a living, which is solidly condemned by the pope? And his mother is in a nursing home! And you want to know why he’s not the favorite son?” Frank started to laugh and then added, “You’re crazy!”

  I laughed with him, got up to bring the cookie jar back to the kitchen table, and when I sat down again I said, “So he does stem-cell research. Big deal. He’s a Rhodes scholar, for God’s sake.”

  “The only Rhodes Big Al cares about are the ones he paved himself, lemme assure you.”

  “Yeah, well, Michael says that if we can manage to stay alive until 2050, we can live to be five thousand years old and in perfect health.”

  “Five thousand years? Who wants to live for five thousand years? Would you?”

  “I don’t know. To tell you the truth, I’m not so sure it will work on people anyway, except that they have some pretty amazing evidence on age reversal with rats.”

  “It always starts with the poor lab rats, right?”

  “Well, Professor, they share like ninety-nine percent of our genetic code or something…or maybe it’s mice?”

  “Immaterial. No, I know that. I mean, think about it. It does proffer some extremely interesting ethical questions, like how would you end life—when you hit your five thousandth birthday?”

  “Seriously. Can you imagine what you’d look like in a bathing suit at five thousand?”

  “Let’s not go there. It’s bad enough now,” Frank said. He got up and poured himself a glass of water. “So how’d you like old Nonna ripping Connie a new one at dinner? She’s getting meaner than hell.”

  “She’s always been mean to Mom, but now she’s mean in front of anyone. I think it’s a little weird that Dad doesn’t ever come to Mom’s defense, but I guess he figures Nonna is old and all.”

  “Who knows? Anyway, I wouldn’t get too shook up over their opinions of Michael. Remember Sophocles said, ‘The good befriend themselves.’ As long as you are happy and satisfied with your relationship, that’s all that matters.”

  “You guys still up?” Regina came around the corner in an oversize Rutgers jersey and flip-flops. “I’m so tired I could die.” Frank got up and pulled out a chair for his wife. She sank into it and put her head on her crossed arms on
the table.

  “I’m an old woman tonight,” she said. “All I see when I close my eyes is interstate.”

  I smiled and tried to remember if Michael had ever pulled out chairs for me. I wasn’t sure, and I decided if I wasn’t sure, then it probably wasn’t something that really mattered. Still, it was a nice gesture and Regina kissed her husband in thanks. They had an easy tenderness between them that was enviable.

  “Want booze or milk?” I said, pushing the biscotti in her direction.

  “Do I have to pick? Can’t I have both?” Regina said.

  “How about Kahlúa and cream?” Frank said.

  “There’s some that Dad made in the bar,” I said. “It’s in the Colavita bottle.”

  “Perfect,” Regina said. “With ice please, sweetheart?”

  “It’s about two hundred proof,” I said, “so go easy. You don’t want Regina to get brain damage.”

  “I’m already brain-damaged,” she said. “I’ve got kids.”

  “You’ve got great kids,” I said. “They’re growing like weeds!”

  “Growing. Lemme tell you something,” Regina said, winding up for the pitch. “I gotta watch Tony like a hawk—if he’s not smoking something, he’s snitching a drink of something…”

  “I saw him smoking today behind the grill,” I said.

  “I’ll smack him in the head first thing in the morning,” Regina said. “And my Lisa? The good Lord gave her all my estrogen. I’m a thousand degrees and all of a sudden she’s got these breasts. And the boys are calling! Mother Mary, pray for us. No, just pray for me!” She blessed herself and looked up to heaven for emphasis. “She’s not even thirteen and shaving her legs already.”

  “Well, Paulie is a sweetheart,” I said. “Lisa’s normal. Everyone says girls are tough.”

  “They are. And Paulie’s an eating machine! Did you see the fat on his belly?”

  “Make him play football,” I said.

  Regina nodded and said, “If sports were the answer to everything, life would be very simple.”

  “Life’s not so easy, is it? This whole family drives me crazy,” I said.