Eddie has much more composure than I do. He extends his hand to the guy. I pull myself together and lean down to hug Trina loosely. “So good to see you,” I say and hope my face isn’t giving away my horror that she’s so young and so pregnant and that everybody seemed to know this but me. I feel a twinge of jealousy.
Trina smiles at the guy beside her. “Lemon, this is my boyfriend, Chuck.”
“Nice to meet you, Chuck,” I say.
He nods but doesn’t crack a smile or extend his hand to me. I let it pass.
“So, now we can eat.” My grandmother pulls two large frit-tatas out of the oven.
“You didn’t have to wait on us,” I say.
“Oh, you know what?” Trina pushes herself up to stand in that awkward swayback, bent-kneed pregnant woman way. She looks a good six, six-and-a-half months along. “Chuck and I can’t stay.”
“Trina,” Aunt Adele says in a tight voice, “this brunch is for you.”
“And it’s so totally awesome and everything,” says Trina. “But Chuck got tickets to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert out at Jones Beach. Sort of a belated birthday present for me.” She pats his arm. He doesn’t flinch. “We told some friends we’d meet them out there early for a tailgating party.”
Adele’s face clouds over. She stares straight ahead. Everyone else busies themselves with nonsense tasks, straightening napkins, stirring potato salad, brushing lint away from clean clothes.
I grimace at Eddie. This is our fault. “I’m sorry,” I say to my aunt. “I overslept. We didn’t mean to be so late.” Eddie puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes gently.
Trina waves my apologies aside. “It isn’t your fault, Lemon,” she says. “Mom didn’t tell me that this was a whole-day commitment.” Then she holds her hand up beside her mouth and does an exaggerated whisper. “She still thinks I’m some little teenager.”
My jaw drops. If anyone else in our family spoke so disrespectfully, they’d have my grandmother and a lineup of my aunts to contend with. But with Trina, everyone lets it pass.
“Is the party a pitch-in?” my grandmother asks. She jabs a big spoon into a bowl of fruit salad. “You could take some food with you.”
Trina shakes her head no. “There’ll be plenty of food out there. And Chuck’s in charge of the barbecue. He’s fierce on the grill.”
Adele stares straight ahead, her face rigid with anger.
“Well, come by later if you want leftovers,” my grandmother offers.
Trina and Chuck mumble their good-byes and slink away hand in hand. I stand by the window with Aunt Adele and watch them walk down the sidewalk toward a motorcycle. Trina lights a cigarette before slinging her leg over the bike. Adele’s mouth is a straight, tight line. “They met in rehab,” she says to me. It comes out a little sharp, high-pitched, pointed. “He’s thirty-seven.”
“Holy smokes,” says my cousin Sophie. “Trina just turned twenty-one!”
“She says she’s cleaned up her act,” Adele tells us. We both watch the motorcycle speed off down the quiet tree-lined street. “Swears that she wants this baby.”
I glance at Eddie. He’s wedged himself in a corner by the door and watches everyone quietly.
Adele turns toward her sisters and holds out her hands. “How can I say anything? I was pregnant with Anthony when I was eighteen.”
“You got married,” Gladys says.
“They are getting married,” says Adele. “At least, that’s what she tells me.”
This time Eddie shoots me a look that seems to say, See? I roll my eyes at him. As if I’m going to use Trina as my example of good choices in life.
“What’s her rush?” Grandma asks.
“I thought marriage was a sacred institution to Catholics,” I say.
“You Catholic all of the sudden?” she says pointedly. I drop it.
“And even if they don’t get married,” Adele goes on, “she’s got us. We can help her.”
Everyone is silent. What the hell is there to say? This is what women in my family do. They meet men, get pregnant, have babies, and make lives as mothers. Trina’s not that different than the rest of them. And now, neither am I, apparently.
After a few seconds, Adele turns back toward the window and says dreamily, “You know, when I got pregnant with her, I thought I was going through menopause early. Which was fine with me. I figured, forty years old, I had my four kids. I’d get through my hot flashes before everyone else, then sit pretty with my estrogen pills for the rest of my life.” She closes her eyes and thinks back. I watch my other aunts inch closer to her, nodding their heads, reaching out to comfort her.
“Then, with the morning sickness, I thought, God forbid, I had the stomach cancer.” She opens her eyes and looks at each of her sisters. “Remember Uncle Elio with the stomach cancer?”
“Poor man couldn’t keep anything down and wasted away to ninety-seven pounds,” Mary tells us all.
“I kept telling myself to go to the doctor,” says Adele. “But I couldn’t face the possibility of cancer. Finally, I thought, wait a minute, I’m getting fat, not skinny, so it can’t be stomach cancer.”
“Thank God,” says Joy.
“Knock wood.” Gladys raps on the table.
“And then, I remember it so clearly. I was at the butcher’s, buying veal. I was going to make piccata. And I’m standing there in front of the counter, looking at all the meat. I felt nauseous, dizzy, completely off-kilter and far away. All that pink naked meat. So exposed and defenseless. I almost wanted to cry for the meat. For the stupid meat.”
My aunts laugh together, but my stomach tightens. I think about the pheasants. My first clue. I’m so much like all of them.
“That’s when it hit me, like a ton of bricks. Just flattened me. I thought, I know this feeling. I’ve had this exact same feeling four times before. But with my other kids, I knew the minute I was pregnant.”
“You just know,” says Gladys. “Even with Sophie, here.” She reaches out and runs her fingers through Sophie’s soft black hair. “My first. I just knew.”
“Me, too,” says Joy. “I was puking ten seconds after I got pregnant with Teddy.”
“But with Trina, it took me nearly two months to figure it out,” says Adele with a laugh. “I walked out of the butcher’s in a daze and called Dr. Pucci. Next day, he’s like, Yeah, honey, you’re going to be a mommy—again.”
Everyone smiles fondly. I realize that my hand is resting on my belly. Slowly I move it before anyone notices.
“I don’t know.” Adele slumps back against the windowsill. “Maybe that was the problem. Maybe it’s because I walked around for so long without knowing. Maybe I never bonded with her right.”
Oh, great, I think, I’ve doomed myself to have a kid like Trina.
“No, no, no,” says Joy.
“You can’t blame yourself,” Gladys tells Adele.
“You were just as good a mother to her as to your other four,” says Mary.
I go stand with Eddie. He wraps his arms around my shoulders and holds me against his body. I need his reassurance now more than ever. If my aunts have come undone at the thought of Trina having a baby, what will they do when they find out I’m going to be a mother? Me, the least maternal of the entire brood?
“Listen to you all!” Grandma says. She opens the oven door and pulls out a rosy ham. “Blubbering about a baby.” She sets the ham on the table. “I put up with every single one of you telling me you were pregnant when you were about her age, and none of you were exactly model citizens. Trina’s a fighter. Like everyone in this family.” She picks up a carving knife and brandishes it over the meat. “She’ll be okay because she has us.”
Chapter
Seven
A fter an hour of table conversation dissecting every detail of Trina’s life, I’ve had enough. Trina and her baby, Trina and Chuck, Trina’s wedding, Trina’s hair. I’m more than sick of stupid pregnant Trina.
“I think I’ll go down to see Aunt Liv
inia,” I stand up from the kitchen table and announce.
The conversation lulls, and everyone looks at me like I’ve spoken Flemish.
Eddie stands up, too. “I’ll go with you,” he says. The man’s a saint.
“Good,” says my grandma without missing a beat. She grabs a plate and dollops a little bit of each brunch dish onto it. “Take her some food, will you?”
“How’s she doing?” I ask.
“Oh, she’s great,” Grandma says. “Up dancing the Watusi till two, three o’clock in the morning. Throwing tea parties for all her friends.” She stares at me. I stare back. “That woman has been sitting in the same chair for the past forty years, and you ask me how she’s doing.”
“I take it there’s no change, then?” I say dryly.
“Eh,” Grandma says with a shrug. “She’s constipated, she tells me.”
I take the plate from her and shake my head as my aunts giggle. Eddie and I head downstairs.
“Hi, Aunt Livvie,” I call as we enter her dark musty apartment.
“In here, Poppy,” she croaks. In the past few years, Livinia’s mind has stayed firmly rooted in the past, when she lived on Staten Island with her sister Poppy.
Eddie and I make our way to the living room, where she’s perched in her chair, crocheting. Doilies escape her fingers. Potholders. Tiny sweaters for nonexistent babies. That I thought this would be a better option than the kitchen table conversation upstairs certainly says a lot for my state of mind.
“It’s Lemon,” I say. “And Eddie. Grandma asked us to bring you down some food.”
“Oh,” says Livinia weakly. “I thought you were Poppy.”
“Poppy’s dead, honey,” I remind her as I kiss her papery cheek. Eddie stands in the back of the room, rocking on his heels, trying not to touch anything in the crowded, dusty space. I set the covered dish on the end table next to a collection of her favorite photos. She seems not to notice.
Then she looks up from her crochet. “Oh, now,” she says, as if she’s just become aware of us. “Who’s this nice young man here?”
“That’s Eddie. Remember him? He’s my boyfriend. You’ve met before.”
“Are you two married?” she asks.
“No,” I say. Jesus, my family is relentless. Even the senile have an agenda.
“Don’t you want to marry our Lemon?” she asks Eddie.
“Sure,” he says.
“Then what’s the hold-up?” she demands.
Eddie laughs uncomfortably. “You’d have to ask her that.”
“Oh,” says Livinia. She picks at the plastic wrap over the plate of food. Her dry brittle fingers can’t get a hold of it. “I’ve seen that on the Montel Williams Show. Everyone thinks it’s the man, but sometimes it’s the woman.”
“Here,” I say and lift the cover from her food. For an old bat, she sure is sharp. “Let me get you a fork.”
“Nah,” she says and turns away. “Not hungry.”
I squint at a large photo on the end table. A baby girl with dark ringlets perched in a wooden high chair stares icily forward. The picture makes me queasy. I instinctively put my hand over my belly as if to protect my unborn child from the jinx of Livinia’s dead-baby pictures.
Ever since I can remember, hanging all around Livinia’s living room, propped up on every shelf, displayed over the mantel and on the end tables, have been dozens of grainy black-and-white photos of these blank-faced infants, dressed in fine lace christening gowns, posed on chairs, in carriages, sleeping in cribs. When I was a kid, I didn’t believe my cousin Teddy that the babies in Livinia’s pictures were really dead. Then I asked Aunt Gladys, and she said, “God rest their souls,” and crossed herself.
“You sick?” Livinia motions at me with her crochet hook. “You’re clutching your stomach like you don’t feel well.” I move my hand away. Aunt Livinia stares at me. She always was an odd bird. A little grin lurks on her lips. “Do you know what today is?”
“Wednesday,” I say, thinking that she’s merely confused.
“Today is the day that Tony left.”
I’m startled by the clarity of her statement, although I have no idea if it’s true. “Today?” I ask. “You sure?”
“July twenty-fifth,” she says.
She’s right about the date at least. It could be true. Perhaps it’s the one piece of reality that she hangs on to. That and the Montel Williams Show.
“Ran off with the boss’s wife,” she says.
I’ve never heard this before. The family version is clean and tidy. One day Tony put his clothes in a paper sack, took the ferry to work, and never came back. Nobody knew why. Aunt Livinia was never right after that, so Little Great-Aunt Poppy, my grandmother’s youngest sister, who had polio as a child and was my same height when I was ten, moved into the Staten Island house to take care of Livinia. After Poppy died, Livinia moved into the basement apartment at my grandmother’s house with all her creepy baby pictures.
“Do you know why he left?” she asks, as if she is searching for the answer. As if after all these years, someone could finally explain to her.
“Well, Aunt Livvie,” I say, trying my best to find some generic explanation, “some men just aren’t cut out for marriage.”
“He left me because of the babies.”
“Did you offer to take down the pictures?” I ask. “They are a little—you know.”
“She was pregnant,” Aunt Livinia says.
I exchange glances with Eddie. He shrugs. “Who was pregnant?” I ask.
“You know who,” she says and waits for me to get it.
“His boss’s wife?”
“The mother-whore,” she says with relish.
Eddie leans against the mantel and knocks over one of the pictures.
She looks up at it and gasps, “Poor babies.”
“Sorry, sorry.” Eddie fumbles to pick it up and replace it.
“See how much they were loved?” she asks him.
I roll my eyes. Here we go again with the stories about the babies that no one loves. She’s been saying these same things since I was a kid. When I was about eight, I asked my grandmother what happened to the babies.
“What babies?” she asked as she tucked me into bed.
“Livinia’s babies,” I said.
“She doesn’t have any babies,” she told me.
“Did she ever?”
“You ever meet her children?” She pulled the covers up tight against my body.
“I don’t know.” I kicked my feet and bent my knees up high to loosen the cover coffin my grandmother had constructed for me.
“Well, you haven’t, because she doesn’t have any.”
“But why does she have those pictures?”
My grandmother held up her hand and looked away. “Filling your head,” she muttered. “Never mind what Livinia has.” She bent down and kissed me on the forehead.
“Did they die?”
“Who?”
“Like my mom and dad?”
“Hush.”
“Did the babies get killed in a train wreck, too?” Those eerie ghostly children were the ones that invaded my dreams. Pressed their oddly peaceful little faces against the windows of my parents’ plummeting train.
“Listen,” Grandma said as she stroked my hair away from my face. “Your aunt Livinia is a very sad person.”
“Sad like me?”
“You’re not a sad person,” Grandma informed me.
“I’m sad that my mom and dad died.”
“That’s different. You can be sad that your mom and dad are gone but still be a happy person. Aunt Livinia is sad about everything.”
“I feel sad for her then.”
Grandma patted my hand. “That’s because you’re a nice little girl.” She stood slowly. Her knees creaked like old doors. “Nightie-night,” she said as she turned off the light.
“Grandma,” I whispered into the dark.
Grandma paused by the door with her hand on the kno
b.
“Did anyone take a picture of my mom and dad while they were dead?” I asked, but I knew the answer. Both their coffins were closed. My mother’s empty. There was nothing to take a picture of.
“Heavens, no,” said Grandma. She pulled the door closed behind her. “Now go to sleep.”
I think that Livinia has lost the thread of the conversation. She seems engrossed in her handiwork again, endlessly drawing acrylic yarn from her wicker basket, looping it over and over her crochet hook in a pattern of flowers or stars. But I’m wrong.
She lifts her hook and points at the pictures on the mantel beside Eddie. “People used to love them,” she says. “Nowadays they just have abortions.”
“Did you see that on the Montel show, too?” I ask, then feel badly for being so mean to her.
She looks up suddenly. “Where’s Poppy?” she asks.
Sometimes I wonder if her befuddlement is an act. The conversation gets tough, and she checks out. But her eyes have gone dull, and she seems genuinely confused. I squeeze her old soft hand. “She died, remember?”
“Oh,” she says, small and sad. Tears fill up her eyes. “I forgot.”
“I know,” I say and lean down to hug her. She is tiny. Slight beneath her bulky cardigan sweater.
She reaches out unexpectedly and lays her frail hand against my belly, then looks up at me with that same sly smile on her face. “How far?” she asks.
I pull away. “What’re you talking about, Livinia?” I try to sound stern to shut her up, but inside I’m panicked. I look at Eddie. His eyes are wide. How could she know? She couldn’t possibly know. She’s just weird. Old and weird. What if she does know? If she’s figured it out? Dread overtakes me. Not here, not now. Not with every single member of my extended family upstairs within earshot.
It’s been this way my entire life. Anything that I didn’t want my aunts to know, they’d find out. I’d get diarrhea, and they’d start a phone chain. For the next three weeks, every time I’d see one of them, no matter where I was (church, the grocery store, in the middle of the sidewalk) or who I was with (friends, Grandma, a boy I liked) they’d ask me how my diarrhea was. I can’t take that prospect with this baby. Not yet anyway. If Livinia has figured it out, then it’s all over. From this moment on this child will cease to belong to Eddie and me. For now and evermore this baby will be the property of the extended Calabria clan. Every decision I make, from what color socks to put on her feet to where to send her to school, will be scrutinized and endlessly discussed by my forty-seven closest relatives, and I will hear every last opinion on the subject. I look back at Livinia, ready to deny everything, but her eyes are gone again.
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