“Poor babies,” she mutters. “Poor, poor babies.”
I stand up quickly before she has a chance to become lucid. “We have to get going, Livvie,” I say. “You want to come upstairs and say hello to everyone?”
She shakes her head.
“All rightie, then.” I grab Eddie’s hand and pull him toward the stairs.
“Nice to see you, ma’am,” he says as we hightail it out of her morbid living room.
She raises her crochet hook at us, then goes back to her doilies as if we were never there.
Chapter
Eight
B y the time we get back up to my grandmother’s, most of my aunts and cousins have left. The lingerers are camped out in the living room, snacking on leftovers and watching the Mets lose again. Eddie joins them, but I venture into the kitchen, where my grandmother is rolling out dough.
“What’s that for?” I ask.
“Noodles for the church bazaar,” she says and cuts a thin rectangle of dough into long thin ribbons.
I dip an empty mixing bowl into the sink full of sudsy water and wash silently as I look out the window onto the backyard. My mother’s pear tree is in full bloom. Little yellow and green pears hang heavy from the branches. “Did my mother want to get married?” I ask.
“Sure,” says Grandma. “Why wouldn’t she?”
“I don’t know,” I say without looking at her. “She seemed so different than every one else in the family. More of a free spirit.”
“Yeah, well, people in her situation got married in those days.” Grandma picks up the noodles, shakes the excess flour off, and lays them out to dry.
“It was the seventies,” I point out.
“Not in this neighborhood.”
“But do you think she wanted to get married or felt she had to get married?” I rinse the bowl under warm water and set it in the drying rack.
“What’s the difference?”
“There’s a huge difference.”
Grandma eyes me suspiciously. “Why the sudden interest?” She starts on another piece of dough.
I shrug nonchalantly, or so I think. Anytime I’ve thought I was pulling something over on my grandmother, I’ve been wrong. She has an uncanny ability to ascertain the situation. Maybe she uses body language or telepathy. When I got back from Europe, she knew something had happened between Franny and me, but I wouldn’t tell her what.
“She wasn’t like Joy, Adele, Gladys, or Mary, was she?” I ask, hoping to sidetrack Grandma from watching me too closely.
“She was always different. Even as a kid. The other girls never wanted to be apart, but Norma would go off and climb the pear tree just to be alone. Or she’d play the piano for hours and hours, all by herself, getting lost in the music. She never had close friends or even boyfriends. I think plenty of neighborhood boys thought she was cute, but she intimidated them. She was aloof, strong, independent. Like you. Most girls weren’t like that then. I always figured she’d be the one to break out and do something different. Move to Manhattan and never come back to see us.” She looks at me but I don’t take the bait. “But then she met Giovanni, and…” She trails off.
They met at a pool hall. Or that’s the way my father liked to tell it. As if my mother were some hussy hanging around the pool sharks, looking for a good time. I never got tired of hearing my father tell the story.
He claimed he noticed her just as he was lining up a perfect cross-table eight-ball bounce off the sidewall into the corner pocket. He claimed there was a lot of money riding on that shot. That a couple of Irish guys from Bay Ridge had come to Carroll Gardens looking for trouble. Giovanni was ready to show them to the door, twenty dollars lighter. He always told it like it was a scene from West Side Story, as if everyone really did walk around with duck-butt haircuts and cigarette packets rolled up in their sleeves, snapping and singing menacing songs.
Then there was my mother. Standing in the doorway. Giving him her big brown-eyed Claudia Cardinale stare. Arms crossed, hip stuck out, watching him. He claimed that his heart skipped a beat when he saw her, causing his hands to shake, the cue to misfire, the eight ball to fly wildly across the table, bank hard to the right, actually bounce over the two remaining stripes, then off the table and under the jukebox as the cue ball rolled right up to the corner pocket, paused for just a moment, shuddered as if for dramatic effect, and then tipped past the edge, scratching, losing it all for the neighborhood boys, who never forgave him. But, my father always said it was worth it. Just to meet Norma Calabria in a pool hall.
My mother forever rolled her eyes and corrected him. “My sister Gladys introduced us in Fat Sal’s pizzeria, attached to the pool hall. I might’ve stuck my head in once to get a look at him, but I never set foot in that lousy place.”
My father would shrug and tilt his head as if to suggest that she had conveniently forgotten her sordid past.
“I was seeing this guy at the time,” my mom would point out.
“A hood,” my father would clarify. “A real tough guy who walked around in a leather jacket when it was eighty-five degrees outside and always had a toothpick between his lips.”
For me, every man I ever saw in a leather jacket or with a toothpick in his mouth became my mother’s past. No matter what he looked like or how old he was, he could have been my father. I shivered at the thought of someone other than Giovanni tucking me in at night, singing me songs about the moon.
“A nice neighborhood kid. Mikey Tronoloni,” my mother would interrupt. “Knew him since I was a baby. He wanted to get married, but I wasn’t interested.”
“Where would you be now?” my father would ask her. “In the Bronx. I tell you. You’d be living in the Bronx.”
I would imagine myself living in the Bronx with my mother and Mikey Tronoloni in his leather jacket for a father.
She’d roll her eyes again. “But Gladys said she knew this guy, Giovanni. I said I’d meet him, maybe fix him up with my friend Sue.”
“Sue, she says. Sue had a walleye. Never knew who Sue was talking to.”
“Stop. You’re awful. Sue was a very attractive girl. Real pretty. You’d hardly notice that eye. She ended up okay, Sue. Married an ophthalmologist. They live in Connecticut, you know.”
“Connecticut, sheesh!” was always the response from my dad, which cracked me up. I grew up thinking Connecticut was where all the walleyed women lived, since I’d never met a walleyed woman in Brooklyn.
“So I met Giovanni. In the pizzeria.” My mother would emphasize the word. “Thought he was cute enough. Nice guy. Good manners.”
“You were smitten. Admit it. Scooted over just enough so that when I slid in the booth, our legs touched.”
“It was crowded. What’d you want me to do?”
“Ho-ho. You know what I wanted you to do.”
“Giovanni, stop! You make it sound like I was some kind of loosey-goosey girl on the make.”
The shrug. Again the tilt of the head. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I thought it was hilarious to see my father send my mother up.
“I found out he played the bass. Sometimes he’d come over, and we’d play music together.”
“I knew the minute I heard her play the first three bars of ‘Take the A Train’ on her mother’s old squeaky upright piano that this was the girl I would marry.”
“So we dated for a while.”
“Not that long,” my father would say, with a wiggle of his bushy black eyebrows.
My mother would slap his arm. “And we decided to get married.”
“Mikey Tronoloni threatened to cut my fingers off and feed them to me like cannoli.”
“You exaggerate.”
“I thought your mother was going to take him up on the offer.”
“My mother always liked you. Likes you better than she likes me,” my mother would say, and I’d laugh because sometimes it seemed true. My grandmother adored my father more than any of her other sons-in-law. I suspect she was thrilled when my moth
er announced that she would marry Giovanni.
It took me until I was nearly sixteen to figure out the math. I knew my parents were married in 1974. Same year that I was born. And I knew their wedding anniversary was January 10. My birthday is July 12. One day, looking at the Holy Name calendar on my grandmother’s refrigerator I realized that those two dates were only six months apart.
My grandmother has finished two more batches of noodles while I’ve been lost in my memories, drying the same bowl over and over again.
“Do you think she wanted to have a baby?” I ask my grandmother. “I mean, me?”
Grandma lays down her last ball of dough. “You were the best thing that ever happened to your mother. I’d never seen her so happy. She hadn’t even told me yet. I found her one day with her head over the toilet. ‘You been drinking?’ I asked. When she came up smiling, I knew. ‘How far along are you?’ I asked her. She just looked at me and kept on grinning. ‘Does he know yet?’ I asked. ‘He wants to get married,’ she told me.”
I’m struck by how similarly my father and Eddie handled the same situation. I pick up the ball of dough from the counter and start to knead it. “What’d you say?” I try to picture my mother at twenty-three. I see her smirking on the courthouse steps, with my father laughing by her side.
“What could I say? They were in love,” says my grandmother. “All the time playing their music together. Jazz wasn’t even popular anymore. Everyone wanted disco and rock-n-roll. But those two didn’t care. They loved the jazz. Talked about how they would play in clubs. How they’d travel across the country playing music. So what else could I say? I said I’d call the priest and see if there were any free days at the church, but of course they didn’t want a church wedding. Just a quick ceremony at the courthouse.”
Sometimes I suspect my grandmother revises history when it comes to my mother. I didn’t know Norma that well, but looking back on what I did know about her, my grandmother’s rosy picture of my mother’s marriage hardly seems to fit.
Grandma wipes her hands on her apron and turns to me. “Why you asking me all of this now?”
“I don’t know. Seeing Trina pregnant so young, I guess. Just made me curious about my mom.”
She squints at me. Takes me in slowly. Am I giving it all away? Do I want to? Maybe I do. She’s seen this same look on each of her daughters’ faces when they came to her with the news that they were unexpectedly pregnant. The look of excitement and terror. The look that says, Now everything is different.
“You thinking about marrying Eddie?” Grandma asks.
“No,” I say honestly. “Why? Do you think I should?”
“What’s it matter what I think?”
This is her game. The what’s-it-matter-what-I-think strategy, when she knows perfectly well how badly it matters to me.
“You know, Lemon,” Grandma says to me, “if you want to get married, that’s okay.”
“Who said anything about—” I start to say, but my grandmother is onto me. She puts her hands on her hips and simply waits.
“I’m not getting married,” I say adamantly.
She stares at me with both eyebrows raised. Part of me wants to tell her. Wants to share it with her. Wants to see her reaction. I’m also scared. Scared of her expectations. Will my family think I’m awful when they find out I’m not planning to marry Eddie? That I intend to keep my restaurant, keep working crazy hours, keep pursuing what I want in life instead of completely devoting myself to this kid? Will they think I’m making the same mistakes as my mother? Or is that my fear for myself? My grandmother continues to wait. I’ll have to tell her sooner or later. Maybe sooner is better. Give her more time to get used to the idea.
“But,” I say, and then I stop. The words get caught, and I’m uncertain. How should I say it? There are no words big enough. You just have to blurt it out. Blah blah blah blah pregnant blah blah baby blah. There should be more to it than that. There should be dancing girls and juggling bears and horns and drums and majorettes. There should be a better way. A ritual. A dance. A special feast that says it all.
“I…” I start again and she waits. “We’re…” That’s not it either. I put the dough down. “I’m expecting,” I say vaguely and quietly, my eyes averted.
“Expecting what?” she says, but I see the little laugh coming up on her face.
I look at her and roll my eyes. “I’m, you know…”
She doesn’t budge.
I take a breath. “I’m pregnant, and Eddie wants to get married, but I’m freaking out because everything is changing so fast and the restaurant is barely making it and I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle it all when I have this kid so I just don’t know what to do!”
Grandma claps her floured hands together and laughs through the white cloud. She laughs so hard, tears fill her eyes and her belly shakes.
“This is not the reaction I was hoping for,” I say.
She doubles over and rests her hands on the counter while she catches her breath. I just stand there, waiting for her to finish.
“You done yet?” I ask.
She wipes the tears away, leaving streaks of flour on her face. “Finally caught up with you, didn’t it?”
“What?”
“The ol’ Calabria curse. The one you’ve been trying to outrun all your whole life.”
“God!” I yell and nearly knock the dough off the counter. “This is why I don’t tell this family anything. I was hoping for some support because I’m terrified! But I come here today, and Trina is as big as a house. Everybody’s talking about Trina this and Trina that. But did anyone tell me? No! Nobody tells me anything.”
“You never tell us anything, Lemon. You sat here all day with everyone and didn’t say a word about being pregnant.”
“Because I was afraid!” I blurt out. Then I realize that it feels good to admit it.
My grandmother scoffs. “Afraid of what?”
“Of what you’d all think. What you’d say.”
“Since when has anything any of us thinks or says made a difference to you?”
“It does!” I insist. “It always has.”
“Even if it does, you’ve always gone right ahead and done exactly what you’ve wanted.”
“Just like my mother,” I say.
“Yes,” my grandmother answers. “You’re a lot like her.”
“I’m not giving up my restaurant,” I tell her defiantly.
“Who says you should?”
“I know it’s going to be really hard,” I say. “With a kid and a business and the hours.”
My grandmother rolls her eyes at me. “You think you’re the only one who does anything hard in this family?”
This is how every argument with her goes. She has a way of turning everything big and important into something small and insignificant. “It’s just that…I’m just so…” I fumble and mumble, then once again, like the pregnancy boob that I am, I’m bawling.
My grandmother opens her arms to me and pats me gently on the back. I calm down a little. Dab at my eyes with the corner of a dishtowel.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I mutter into her shoulder.
“You’re pregnant,” my grandmother says simply. “That’s all. Just pregnant.”
“Hey,” says Eddie from the doorway. He stands like a little boy with his hands shoved deep into his pockets. “I thought we weren’t telling anybody yet.”
“Oh, well, the cat’s out of the bag now,” I tell him through a sniffle.
“Does this mean I can tell my parents?” he asks.
“Sure,” I say and throw my hands up in exasperation. “What the hell! Tell everyone. Yell it from the rooftops. Take out an ad out in the Times. Lemon’s pregnant! Ha. Ha. Ha.”
My grandmother shakes her head at me. “Everything will be fine, Lemon,” she says. “You have your whole family to help you.”
I pull myself together and laugh a little. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
&n
bsp; Eight Weeks
You are now an inch. Your mother’s thumb tip. You are perfectly formed, with a head and dark spots for eyes, even the beginnings of soft eyelids. You have elbows and wrists that waggle your tiny webbed hands. Your feet paddle, froglike below. Inside, your organs are sketched to be filled in over the next week—heart, lungs, spleen, kidney; love, breath, anger, absolution.
You swim and somersault inside your mother, but still she cannot feel you. No matter how hard she concentrates. You are a matter of faith. She thinks of you as a girl. She doesn’t know why. She considers it a gut instinct. She has a fifty-fifty chance of being right. And even though she will be perfectly happy if you are a son, she likes the idea of daughter. Someone to replace the missing link in her life of long-ago abandonment. But what she does not yet understand is, although you are inside her, although she is giving you life, although without her you are literally nothing, already you are your own person, and her life will be endless variations of letting you go.
Chapter
Nine
E llie Manelli,” I say to the receptionist. “I’m a new patient, here to see Dr. Shin.”
Once I started looking, I realized there are ob-gyn offices everywhere in my neighborhood. As well as armies of women with babies and strollers. I’d never noticed, but now it seems like everywhere I look, someone is either hugely pregnant or toting around an infant, like another accessory. I asked some friendly-looking new moms for recommendations and stuck my head in a few doctors’ offices, then chose the East Village Women’s Clinic, a few blocks away from Lemon. The waiting room is nice and simple. No annoying Anne Geddes baby-in-a-bee-costume photos or precious posters of fuzzy kittens. Just comfy chairs, good magazines, decent artwork on the walls, and two recommendations from happy mothers.
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