by Rita Ciresi
“Is it a support group?” I asked.
“It’s a self—pity club. Where you can whine about your diarrhea and take great pleasure in the fact that you have more immune cells than the next person.”
“Do you have the runs again?”
“No, but you’re gonna, baby, after eating a too big hunk of your mother’s lasagne.”
“Once she left off the cheese.”
Dodie hesitated. “Wasn’t that the Good Friday my dad called me a fairy?” Then he laughed. “Happy holidays, Lise. Eat a smelt or two for me.”
• • •
Before dinner, Auntie Beppina came over. Uncle Gianni stopped visiting us when my father died. I guess he figured he didn’t owe anything to my mother and that it fell to the women to keep up the lines of communication between our two families.
Al watched the game, Al Junior slept, and Carol and my mother fought about whether or not the Church of the Holy Family really needed an interior paint job (Carol was pro—Sherwin—Williams, and my mother thought Father ought to put his pennies away for the day that rains, because the parish was dwindling, and if it weren’t for those Vietnamese boat people who were starting to come in with all their children, he wouldn’t have half so many lining up at mass to receive Communion). Auntie Beppina cornered me in the dining room. I was sitting at the table, folding the lace napkins for dinner. She gripped my arm—after all, she was my comare, so she felt she had the right—and demanded, “Well? You talk to him lately?”
“Mm—hmm.”
“You seen him?”
“Mm—hmm,” I repeated.
“Still good—looking?”
“Better than ever,” I said. “And making money on a roll.”
Auntie Beppina shook her head. Then she smiled, but sadly. This, at least, she could claim: one son who was handsome, who was well—off, who had never been suspended from school or done time in J.D. But she couldn’t claim him to the rest of the world; because this son, unlike the others, had never knocked up a girl from East Haven, or West Haven, or North Haven, or New Haven. He’d never have children. He’d never wear a wedding ring.
“He called me this morning,” Auntie Beppina said, sitting down at the table beside me. “He sounded kind of funny on the phone.”
“Maybe he wanted to come home for Christmas.”
“I asked him. I ask him every year. He says no.”
Auntie Beppina took one of the napkins that I’d folded and refolded it. Then she refolded another. They looked a lot better done her way, and that irked me. I narrowed my eyes at her. She narrowed hers back.
“You don’t look good,” Auntie Beppina said.
“I had the flu,” I said. “I lost weight.”
“He’s been sick lately too. He got the flu last month same as you. You two always seemed to get sick at the same time—”
My hands blanched. I was sure all the blood had drained from my face, because Auntie Beppina asked, “What is it? What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me.”
“Your face is white.”
“I have anemia, thanks for reminding me, I’ve got to go take my iron pill—”
When I got up, she put her hand on my forearm. “Ah, Elisabetta, you tell me what you know. You know something, don’t you—”
“I don’t know nothing,” I said, “except that you’re practically breaking my arm. Let go of it.”
“Ay,” Auntie Beppina said, and let me go. I listened to my own breathing and from the china cabinet behind me, the ticking of my mother’s porcelain clock. I examined the Santa Claus tablecloth my mother had laid beneath the yellowed vinyl cover. A hole in Santa’s forehead made it look as if a bullet had gone right through his brain.
“I worry about him,” Auntie Beppina said.
I shrugged, as if I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“I read the papers, you know,” Auntie Beppina said. “It’s supposed to be bad in New York.”
I shrugged again.
“I worry about him,” she repeated.
I got up and began to place the napkins around the table.
When I got to the head of the table—where Al was slated to sit—Auntie Beppina said, “I saw on TV the other day you can get over it by hypnosis.”
“AIDS?”
“The other thing,” Auntie Beppina said.
“Oh,” I said. “Yeah. The other thing.” I opened the silverware chest and took out the forks. “What does the hypnotist do, wave a pocket watch in front of your face and say, ‘You are feeling very heterosexual’—”
From the parlor I heard Al laughing, and I suddenly realized that he and my mother and my sister had been listening to every word that Auntie Beppina and I exchanged. But that didn’t stop me. In a fake Viennese accent, I said, “Watch this watch. Now, repeat after me: You vant to make love to a woman—”
Auntie Beppina gasped, as if this was the dirtiest thing she’d ever heard in her life. So I kept on going. “You are dreaming of a couple of big fat juicy tits—”
“Watch it!” my mother called out from the kitchen. “Watch your mouth, talking to your comare like that—”
Auntie Beppina called back, “This daughter of yours, she’s got a problem with herself—”
“Tell me something new,” Mama said, which made me drop the forks back into the silverware chest with a clatter.
“You’ve got the problem,” I said. “You all do! Treating me and Dodie like we’re a couple of major fuckups—”
“Lisa,” Carol said. “For Christ’s sake, it’s Christmas. Calm down.”
“Or go back to New York,” Al said, pissed because the Jets were on a losing streak again.
I lowered the lid of the silverware chest with a bang. “Fine. I’m going, right now.”
“You need gas in that Jeep!” Al called out—for he had taken my latest purchase for a test—drive that morning.
“I’m leaving,” I said, “if I have to run on empty! I don’t belong here.”
“You belong,” my mother called out. “You belong to this family whether you like it or not—”
“Not!” I said, and made for the stairs to get my duffel bag. But Al—who was probably excited by the tied score in the fourth quarter—jumped up from the recliner and tackled me from behind, laughing as he got a good grip around my waist. I stared into the kitchen at my mother and sister, who sat at the table over the open lid of the Whitman’s Sampler.
“Look out,” I told Al, “or I’ll give it to you right where it hurts—”
Carol shrieked—after all, she wanted more kids—and my mother said, “Look at her, she’s so skinny! How’d she get to be so skinny?”
“She said she had the flu,” Auntie Beppina said, coming to the door.
“Bullshit,” Carol said, plucking a milk chocolate from the plastic tray. “She’s in love with her boss. At work.”
“Carol!” I said, still struggling to get free of Al. “You bitch. You said you wouldn’t tell!”
“Mannaggia!” my mother said. “A married man?”
“He’s not married!”
“What is he then?” my mother demanded.
“A Jew from Brooklyn!” I shouted.
My mother put her hand over her heart. “Santa Maria,” she murmured. “What next?” Then she asked, “How much money does he make?”
Al clearly enjoyed this question to the hilt, for he laughed wildly and held me even closer against his showered, after—shaved body.
I knew I was over the deep end when I deliberately pressed my rump back against his pelvis and felt a strange stirring inside of me.
After all, it had been months since any man touched me.
Al must have been pretty hard up too. In any case, he couldn’t have been getting much off the tranquilized version of Carol, because before I broke free and headed for the stairs, I earned the dubious satisfaction of giving my own brother—in—law an erection.
Chapter Eighteen
; My Father’s House Has Mansions
Although the rest of Editorial was thrilled to come out from under the yoke of Eben Strauss—and probably even celebrated his departure with a round of jelly doughnuts ordered behind my back—I grew incensed at Peggy for sending him off on a three—month junket to the Orient while subjecting me to the supervision of Hook. The carpet practically caught fire from static whenever Hook and I were in the same room together. Hook’s smarmy face was in my face all day long, suggesting futile, busywork projects that technically were the responsibility of the advertising staff I didn’t dare complain to anyone. I was afraid Hook would accuse me of harassing him. Eager to vindicate Strauss, Peggy would step forward and say, “Hmm, Ms. Diodetto does seem to have a bad pattern of becoming involved with her superiors.” I pictured myself stripped of my computer and private printer, demoted to a cubicle with only a box of blue pencils, the latest edition of the PDR, and The Chicago Manual of Style to keep me company.
By Valentine’s Day—a miserable holiday that I celebrated only by keeping my daily date with the Pacer—my résumé was flying fast and furious through the mail, but apparently no one wanted the exmis—tress of Boorman’s exiled VP, even if she knew where to place her semicolons. Two months in Taipei stretched into three, and there was talk of another shakedown up top. Rumors. I heard them in the cafeteria. Hook started to back off and even dropped a few hints that he was on to bigger and better things. Good. The guy couldn’t get out of my face fast enough. But right behind him loomed the unreadable Dr. Peggy Schoenbarger—cool but courteous—who decided she, not Hook, would be the one who executed my next employee evaluation.
Although I had coated my armpits with three layers of an extra—strength antiperspirant touted as so effective you can even skip a day! my blouse already felt damp by the time I got to Peggy’s office for our meeting. I took it as a bad sign when she stayed behind her massive desk rather than joining me, as she usually did, at her conference table. “Greetings, Ms. Diodetto,” she said, looking up from the pile of papers on her desk. “Sit down.”
I perched on the penitent’s chair opposite her.
“You don’t look well,” she said.
“I ate lunch in the cafeteria.”
She frowned. “I’m not sure the strictest food sanitation is practiced there.” She leaned across her desk and handed me the evaluation. “Look it over first and then we’ll talk.”
I tried not to let my hands shake as I turned the pages, and I tried not to let her see how quickly I scanned the right side of the page to catch the numbers before I read the comments. I had no cause for worry on the first page—she’d given me eights and nines in every category, and under attention to detail she’d even given me something that Strauss had never dreamed of doling out: a perfect ten. I had become a minor heroine with Peggy after I scanned a blue line and honed in on an error that four other pairs of eyes had not caught, the lack of a necessary zero in a formula: .025 when it should have read .0025. Although she was hardly effusive in her praise—rewarding me with a cool I see that’s why we pay you to be at Boorman, Ms. Diodetto—that little compliment had kept me going through weeks of tedium. It bored me to tears sometimes, but at that moment my job seemed to have some meaning. I had saved somebody from getting hurt, and it felt good to remind myself I wasn’t just a loose cannon at Boorman, threatening to explode in every hallway I passed through.
My lowest number, predictably, was under the category of collegiality. Peggy had jacked it up only one point to a seven, and as I stared at it, she dryly remarked that although I had shown “some improvement in that area,” from all reports I still seemed to be clashing with my immediate supervisor.
“If you remember, this was the weakest point on your last evaluation. On your last evaluation, you scored six.”
“Mr. Strauss scored me,” I said. “I mean, he filled it out.”
There was a long silence. “You signed off on it,” Peggy reminded me.
“But—as I told you before—I didn’t want to argue with him. I didn’t like arguing with him.”
“But you like to argue with Mr. Roberts?”
“I can win against him.”
“But you didn’t think you could win against Mr. Strauss?”
“I’m not sure what you’re saying. Asking for. With that question.”
“Just an honest answer will do.”
From outside her window the spray of the fountain thudded down on the stone base. “No,” I finally said. “I didn’t think I could win with Mr. Strauss.”
“Just as I thought.” She shuffled papers on her desk. “Do you enjoy working for Mr. Roberts?”
“He has a dart board in his office.”
“Do you object to his playing on company time?”
“No—I mean, I don’t think he should do that—I certainly don’t join in—”
“Does he ask you to join him?”
“No, Mr. Roberts already knows he’d better duck when I get a sharp object in my hand—but—what I meant to say is that this dart board represents something about his personality that doesn’t quite mesh with mine.”
“Do you prefer to work for Mr. Strauss?”
“I do like that Thomas Eakins print on his wall.”
“I had no idea you were so interested in interior decorating.” She leaned back in her chair. “You understand Mr. Strauss is coming back soon.”
I nodded, not daring to open my mouth.
“I need to ask you something, Ms. Diodetto.”
Shoot, I silently begged her.
“I need to know if you can work under him and maintain a professional relationship.”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “I can. I will. But I always have—”
“That’s not his side of the story.”
I looked down at my hands. “Could I ask—what his story—was?”
“Are you interested in telling me your side?”
“No—not at all—but I’m sure he said things about me that—that weren’t true—”
“Whatever Eben is, he isn’t a liar.”
“I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that when you tell a story, you tell it from your own perspective, and sometimes the facts get mixed up with fiction.”
She frowned. “Facts are facts, Ms. Diodetto. I had the plain truth. He said he lost his judgment—took advantage of his position—coerced you—”
“Bullshit!” I said.
A lock of her silvery hair—loose in front—froze in midair. I rushed in to set things right. “What I mean to say is, that’s the way it happened in his imagination—”
“Why would he imagine such a thing?”
“Because he’s on a guilt trip,” I said. “And he likes to act as if he’s in charge of everything. The guy has a control problem.”
“It’s true, Eben can be a poor sport on the golf course—but—” She squinted at me. “Did he or didn’t he make the first advance?”
But what was the first advance? The moment we stopped in the hall and I admired his shirt and he frowned at my knees? The All—in—1 messages about our names? The way I denied eating lunch so I could corner an invitation to dinner? His May I? before he first kissed me? But he was the one who had to lean down for that kiss, because I had kicked off the heels that usually brought our heads even.…
Peggy was staring at me the way a judge peered down at the defendant from the bench.
“He did!” I said. “But maybe I shouldn’t say anything more, without a lawyer present—”
“I’ll thank you to keep lawyers out of my office.”
“You don’t like them either?”
“My father was an attorney.”
“Ha,” I said, genuinely amused.
Peggy adjusted her glasses—like my mother, she wore bifocals—to cop a really good look at me. “You are an intensely nervy young woman, Ms. Diodetto.”
What could I say but thank you?
“Next thing you’ll be asking me for a raise.”
&nb
sp; I folded my hands in my lap. “I think it might be a smarter move on my part to ask for a letter of recommendation.”
“And after I praised your work, how would I describe your behavior and your attitude?”
“I could help you find the wording.”
“I’m sure you could. In the meantime, here you sit at Boorman. You’re a hard worker, and I’d just as soon not lose you. But I can’t abide this kind of thing going on in the workplace. It shows a complete lack of respect for yourself, your coworkers, and the entire corporation—”
“I couldn’t agree with you more—”
“—never mind me.”
I hung my head. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled.
The hmmphf she emitted hardly inspired me to feel forgiven. “Is this relationship with Mr. Strauss over and done with, as he reports?”
“Yes. I swear it. It has been for months.”
“And have you had your fill of Mr. Roberts and his dart board?”
“More than enough.”
“Then get ready to work again for Eben.” She looked outside at the squalid March weather and sighed. “A good golf game—just the three of us—might help restore some harmony.”
“Who gets to drive the cart?” I asked.
“I usually take the wheel. Eben is a careless driver.” She handed me a pen and motioned for me to sign off on the evaluation. I bore down so hard with the ballpoint, I practically ripped through the paper.
“I’ve been admiring your Jeep, Ms. Diodetto. How many miles do you get to the gallon?”
“I have no idea,” I said.
She looked gravely disappointed in me as I handed her back the pen.