dressings for… (Noted.)
galantine of (What?)
hash, 263 (I don’t think…)
loaf, cooked (Oh Christ!)
roast (Bingo!)
It’s all pretty straightforward, although some of it is a little bit mysterious. I’m going to need to do some Googling—truss?—but that’s okay. Everything I might need is spelled out for me: rack, pan, everything. So off I go toward the turkeys.
But as I’m barreling past the peanut butter endcap, something else catches my eye. Another Costco subliminal message. There is a jewelry case full of sparkling diamonds, and in the center, rows of engagement rings.
At first, I can’t believe the thought even crosses my mind. Me. Jimmy Falconi, thinking of that?
But then it all gets really fucking simple. When you know, you know. And when you know, you can’t just stand around saying you know all the time. You’ve got to do something about that shit to make it real.
Valdez shoulders up beside me with a sample chocolate truffle in each hand. He puts one in his mouth and hands the other one to me.
But it’s not a truffle.
It’s a chocolate-covered macaroon. Of course it is.
“So?” Valdez says as a little bit of melted chocolate seeps into the corners of his mouth. “What do you think?”
I stare at him and chew my macaroon, which tastes so much like her it kind of makes me crazy inside.
“Are you going to ask her?”
I look down at the rings lined up neatly on a gray velvet display rack. “How do you know when you should do it?” I swallow hard and wipe my mouth with my thumb and forefinger.
Valdez chews and stares at me. “How do you know you’re thirsty? How do you know you’re hungry? How do you know you’re alive? You just know, man.” He pokes me in the chest. “You just know.”
A ring on a spinning display platform glistens underneath the glass. It’s a beautiful ring. It really is. But…
“I can’t ask her with a Costco diamond,” I tell him.
“Fuck no, you can’t.”
47
Mary
As I begin measuring out a cup of Karo syrup for my pecan pie, Bridget says, “You do know he’s going to ask you to marry him, don’t you?”
It startles me so much that I look up at her, and I just stand there, stunned, with the Karo spilling out of the half-cup onto the pecans in the mixing bowl.
Marry me?
What?
“Oh, come on,” I say, trying to fix the excess Karo situation that has now gotten seriously out of hand. “No way. No way!” I set the sticky bottle on the countertop. I try to estimate just how badly I just over-poured. Badly. I sure hope Jimmy likes his pie sweet and syrupy.
“Are you kidding me? Watching this happen to you, it’s like being in a soap opera. If you’re this head over heels, I can’t even imagine what he is. So of course he is,” she says, and steals a pecan from the bowl, putting it in her mouth and chewing slowly as she nods knowingly. “Mark my words.” She wags a finger in the air. “Mama Bridget always knows.”
It’s ridiculous. It’s impulsive and fast and kind of overwhelming. Do I even want to get married? I stir in some melted butter and brown sugar, folding the pecans together.
“It’s so fast,” I tell her.
“I know,” Bridget says, sliding down off the counter and filling a glass of water from the tap. “But I can feel it in the air. Like Phil Collins.”
At my feet, Frankie Knuckles sits patiently. I rest the spoon on the edge of the bowl and get him a chicken jerky treat from the bag by the fridge.
Frankie shuffles his paws and looks up at me hopefully, as if it’s entirely possible that I’m going to drop everything from the counter down onto the floor at any second.
“Sit,” I tell him.
He lifts his paw for a high five.
Every damned time. But for today, it’s good enough. Better than nothing. And I cannot resist that face. Ever.
“So?” Bridget asks. “What’s the plan, lady? If he sticks a ring in your stuffing, what are you going to do?”
I rinse off my drool-covered fingers in the sink, and think it over. I won’t lie. My hands are clammy. I have been hoping, hoping like a little schoolgirl with a crush on her first boyfriend, that he would. That he might. One day.
“He doesn’t even know my ring size, Bridge.” I measure out two cups of flour for the crust.
But wait.
When we were in bed and he flipped my ring over, he put it on his finger, on his pinkie. “Oh my God, yes he does…” I bite down on a syrupy pecan.
Bridget clicks her tongue against her teeth, winks, and then pinches me on the side. “How will it feel to be Mrs. James Falconi?”
48
Jimmy
Thanksgiving morning. I pull the bird out of the fridge. The thing is rock solid, like marble, and I think, Uh-oh.
I look at the clock. It’s 10 a.m. She’s going to be here at 4. Fuck.
There is nowhere on the bird that is even the slightest bit thawed. Somehow I just figured it would have to have thawed by today. I’ve had it for two days. What, do people all over America start thawing their turkeys a week ahead?
I knock on the breast. Apparently they do.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I say at the bird in the sink. I turn on the hot water and a frosty haze rises from the plastic.
Goddamn it.
The Joy of Cooking has let me right the fuck down on this one.
But there, on the tag, is the only thing standing between me and having to resort to baking chicken breasts and making profuse apologies for my total inability to pull this shit off. On the tag it says: NEED HELP? CALL 1-800-BUTTERBALL.
So I do. Amazingly, magically, there is an automated menu that seems ready-made for people exactly like me.
“Press or say ‘1’ for a burning bird. Press or say ‘2’ for an undercooked bird. Press or say ‘3’ for a frozen bird.”
“Holy fuck! Three!” I holler into my phone. And it transfers me, playing the Charlie Brown Christmas theme as I wait.
And wait.
While I wait, I set the table. I fold up the napkins nice and neat and put down all the silverware in what I’m pretty sure is the right order. I’m not totally sure what to do with the spoon, so I put it horizontally above the plate. I feel like I’ve seen that at restaurants. Maybe. Whatever. I like the symmetry and I’m going to roll with it. I study the instructions on the tube of rolls and try to figure out how in God’s name I’m going to cook those at 375, while I’ve got to cook the bird at 450, and apparently warm the potatoes at 250.
What.
The.
Hell.
That takes like…three ovens. Or one oven with three heat zones. How is this even possible?
That’s when the dismal Charlie Brown theme goes silent in my ear and the line clicks over. At first, I think the call has been dropped.
“Hello?” I say, a little louder than I’m sure is at all necessary. “Hello? Butterball, hello?”
“Well, hello. I’m Edith. Happy Thanksgiving from Butterball.”
“Edith.” I pick up the bird by the mesh handle. “I’m fucked.”
On her end, a dog barks. “Frozen bird?”
“Like cryogenically frozen. We’re talking fro-zen, Edith. I’m not sure if this is normal. Maybe I grabbed the display bird.”
She laughs. “There’s no such thing, honey, and you’ve come to the right place.” I hear the clatter of dishes and kids giggling in the background. Whoa. I think she might be in her own kitchen, on call for poor bastards just like me. “When do you have guests arriving?”
“At four,” I tell her. “And it’s really, really important.” I pop open the ring box and set it down in the banana bowl. The thing is perfect for her. Just fucking perfect. Two carats set in rose gold. The best Lord’s Jewelers had. “This has to be perfect. I mean, down to the last detail. I’m asking a girl to marry me, Edith. I cannot have a frozen turkey on the ta
ble. Are we on the same page here?”
“Congratulations!” I hear ice cubes tinkling in the background on her end.
“Yeah, thanks! But we have to figure this out. I can’t make chicken for Thanksgiving. I think that’s un-American or something.”
Edith, though, she’s a bad ass, and with a confidence that would make Joe Freaking Montana himself jealous, she clears her throat and says, “Honey, there’s a lot of reasons to panic in this life, but a frozen turkey? It ain’t one of them.”
At 2:30 p.m., the intercom buzzes. I freeze with a dishtowel in my hands. It can’t be her. She’s punctual, but an hour and a half early? The bird isn’t even in the oven. And I don’t know how I’m going to tell her that we won’t be eating until nine.
And that’s Jimmy Falconi with the Thanksgiving Day fumble.
I just hope she’ll still have me.
The kitchen is a fucking disaster, and I still haven’t decided how I’m going to ask her, so the ring is in its box right there in the banana bowl. I snatch it up and stick it in the napkin drawer. As I walk to the door, I smooth my shirt and wipe off some flour from my stomach. I hit the intercom button and say, “Happy Thanksgiving, beautiful,” and hit DOOR.
I look at myself in the mirror by the closet. I look…nervous. Fine. I am nervous. I make sure my sleeves are rolled up to the same height on both sides. I straighten my apron. And then I try to calm the hell down.
My heart is pounding in my ears. Everything changes today. Everything starts right here.
The elevator clatters up, up, up, whirring and rumbling and finally dinging when it gets to my floor. I hear the door clatter open.
I straighten my shoulders and wait. To see her. At the end of the hallway. At the beginning of our life together. Maybe I’ll do it as we sit down to eat. Or maybe over cheese and crackers. Jesus, maybe I should just run and get the ring right now and get down on my knee in the doorway.
But before I can have another thought, I see it isn’t Mary. Or Frankie. Or even Michael.
It’s Annie, all by herself, shuffling down the hallway in her pink boots, holding her purple giraffe. Her mittens dangle out of her coat on a string, one much lower than the other, almost dragging on the floor.
It’s not that strange for them to show up unannounced. “Hi, Jellybean,” I say and get down on her level, reaching out for her. I wait for Michael to darken the end of the hallway, but instead of the noise of his footsteps, I hear the elevator door rumble shut.
“Annie? What’s going on?”
She doesn’t run to me. She doesn’t even smile. She slogs down the hallway leaving a trail of dirty snow behind her from her boots. It’s not until she’s almost toe-to-toe with me that she looks up into my eyes.
“What happened?” I take her in my arms.
She wipes her nose with her sleeve. Her lips pucker and then start to tremble. And tears start spilling down her cheeks.
I get her snuggled up tight on the couch in a quilt my mom made by hand before she passed away. I turn on the How It’s Made Thanksgiving Day marathon. She finally smiles when thousands of fresh blueberries roll along a conveyor belt.
The story has been hard to get out of her. At first, she cried so hard that she couldn’t talk at all. But then she started telling me bits and pieces. “Fight” and “money” were clear through the sobs. I thought maybe something had happened to Michael, that his life had caught up with him, and somehow she’d found her way here. Like maybe he’d ended up in jail on a DUI, and whatever woman he’s hanging around with these days had the sense to bring Annie to my building. But even as I was thinking it, I knew that it was nonsense. And then finally, she said, “Daddy left.”
That motherfucking deadbeat.
Pushing my anger down into my chest, I stand up and get her a tangerine from the fruit bowl. She’s a big fan, which is why I keep them around. Angrily, I drive my finger into the bottom of it, into the soft, loose peel. I focus everything on that goddamned peel and rip it off, trying to give my fury a place to go. Then I steady myself again and hand a slice to her. I crouch down in front of the sofa and make sure the blanket is doubled up over her feet. “Did he say he was coming back?”
She looks at me sadly.
And shakes her head.
“He just left you? On the street?”
She blinks slowly. “He pushed the button.”
The rage is so intense that I actually crush the tangerine so it drips juice from my fist. When I get my hands on that motherfucking piece of a sorry excuse for a shitbag…
That’s when I catch Annie staring. I know she’s trying to take her cues from me. If I get mad, she’ll melt down. She’s like a tiny emotional barometer. So, as calmly as I can, I wipe the tangerine juice off on my pants, take my phone from the coffee table, and shoot Michael a text.
Where the fuck are you?
No answer. Nothing. Zip.
She’s safe, for your fucking information
You shithead
Still nothing at all. Annie smiles a little bit more, her tear-stained cheeks brightening as How It’s Made moves on to tennis ball felt. Just looking at her makes my heart swell, filling me with so much love I feel dizzy. She deserves so much better than she’s gotten. So much better than she has. So much better than Michael for a dad. The thing is, I don’t give a shit about my brother. I’d prefer that he not be, say, dead in Lake Michigan. That would be awful for Annie. But right now, I honestly don’t give a shit where he is or if he’s okay. I just want to know what the fuck the deal is with Annie and what I do from here.
Answer me or I’m filing a missing persons report.
Waiting 24 hours? That’s bullshit.
They’ll be on your ass like stink on shit.
That’s when all my previous messages suddenly show as READ and I see he’s typing. The rage inside me is so thunderous, so fucking profound, I cannot see or hear or think. He is alive. He is able to type on his fucking phone. And that means he abandoned Annie on purpose.
Take her.
I can’t do it.
You fucking win.
You can’t do this, Michael.
It’ll crush her.
It’s already fucking done.
Peace out, you motherfucker.
Take good care of her.
I know you will.
I stare at the words. I don’t know how he got to be so hard, so awful, so mean. But he’s always been that way. Born bad. The kid that our minister in Odessa would pray over a little harder than all the rest. No fucking wonder at all.
With a flip of my finger, I move to the phone icon and call him.
“The pay-as-you-go Verizon customer you have called cannot…”
Which is when I just know, I can feel, that he’s gone. Forever. Phone disconnected, Annie offloaded. He’s got nothing to stay here for. And I know I’ll never have to see his face again. Which is good news for him, the piece of shit.
I hit END and turn my phone over in my fingers. On the screen, huge bolts of bright green felt spin and spin.
The logical half of me is fucking elated. I tried to fight for her in a failed battle in family court. I have tried to tell him I’d take her so he can spend his life getting rip-roaring drunk and losing his shirt on dog fights or whatever-the-fuck.
But the other half of me, the half that is like Michael and my father and my uncles and my grandpa, he is so fucking angry, so fucking furious, so fucking enraged…
49
Mary
I press on the intercom button once, and then a second time. Instead of him buzzing me in, my phone vibrates in my purse. I place my pie on the top of the intercom box and pull it out of the side pocket.
Code is 7441. Come on in.
My heart flutters in my chest as I punch in the numbers. I wonder what in the world he could have planned for me. What if Bridget is right? What will I say?
I look at my bare ring finger on my left hand. Yes. The only thing to say is yes. Because I adore him. I do. I
love every moment we spend together. And I want to know more and more, unraveling out through time. For today. For tomorrow. For everything that comes next.
Up the elevator I go, and then down the hallway. From about ten feet away, I can see it’s ajar, but no Post-it. No message. Nothing naughty.
Inside, I hear a television. I don’t smell anything particularly like Thanksgiving. The apartment is mostly dark and very still. The first thing I see is a raw turkey on the island, and next to it, six very, very over-risen crescent rolls. The oven light is on, but not the oven itself.
My heart sinks. What is going on here? What happened? I place the pie on the counter and turn the corner into the living room. There I see Jimmy on the couch with Annie in his arms.
“Sleeping,” he mouths to me.
His brother isn’t here, I can feel that in the air. It’s just the two of them. His eyes hold mine in the flickering light of the television, and I see his face is stern, tired, serious.
“What happened?” I mouth back.
Looking down at Annie, he untangles her hair a little and she sticks her thumb in her mouth, curling up into a little ball. He stands up with her in his arms and then sets her back down again, making sure she’s covered up tightly, taking special care to make sure her head is on the pillow. He signals toward the bathroom, and I follow him. He’s already got the doorknob in his hand as I walk through, and he latches it shut behind us.
“What happened? Is she sick?”
Pinching the bridge of his nose, he grinds his teeth from side to side. “The motherfucker left her.”
“Oh, Annie.” The poor little thing. The poor sweet little girl.
“She’s fine, or she will be,” Jimmy says. What he doesn’t say, and doesn’t have to, is that he isn’t fine. Now he’s like a caged animal, pacing around. “She fucking showed up on her own, and her jacket wasn’t even zipped. Can you fucking believe that asshole? It’s fifteen degrees out there and she’s walking around with her mittens dangling and her jacket undone. The bastard.”
Hail Mary Page 26