The Forever Year

by Lou Aronica

  As I began to consider the timing of the meal in my mind, she put down the Arts and Leisure section of the Times, kissed me on the forehead and said, “I’ve gotta go back to the house. There are some things I need to do before I meet with Jerry.” She then walked over to my father and kissed him on the forehead and grabbed her car keys. I’m not sure I said anything more than “bye.” If my father had noticed any tension between us, he wasn’t mentioning it. Probably because he was too focused on her kissing him.

  I wasn’t sure how I was going to respond to Denise’s visit. In some twisted way, I resented her because of the difficult patch I’d encountered with Marina. After all, if she hadn’t invited herself over for dinner, I wouldn’t have failed to invite Marina to join us. On top of everything else, I wasn’t sure what things were going to be like with Brad. He’d accepted the news about Mark Grey gracefully and even congratulated me when I told him about the feature piece that Mark wanted me to do, but I wasn’t sure how much of his immediate reaction was simply Wharton-schooled polish. Now that he’d had time to think about it, would he see me as a failure, or even as someone who had sold him out?

  If there was going to be any animosity between anyone on this day, though, my father defused it. As soon as Denise, Brad, and Marcus arrived, he brought them out back to the garden. He spoke excitedly about how we had dug and planted it, and then even got down on his knees to explain to Marcus the various growing patterns to the seeds we’d sown.

  “He’s not really bending over regularly to take care of this stuff, is he?” Denise said to me in a stage whisper.

  “Sometimes he does, yeah.”

  “With joints like his?” She lowered her voice. “Do you have to come out here and carry him back into the house?”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  For dinner, I made a lasagna using my mother’s exact recipe. On top of all the other swirling emotions befuddling me at this point was an aching nostalgia for the late Dorothy Sienna. There had been a certain predictability to this since my father started telling me stories about Gina. There would be the hours (sometimes as much as a day) when I was simply caught up in the romance of those episodes. I had developed a very real image of Gina in my mind and an equally real image of my younger father. This couple would dance in my head, replaying certain scenes from their drama. At some point, though, my mother’s face would peer out from one of the many photographs I kept of her and I would feel a little like I had betrayed her, and a lot like I would love to have her back. Since the last story, I found that I missed my mother even more. I wanted her to be as corporeal as Gina and Young Mickey had become to me. Making the lasagna was a way to conjure her.

  “Delicious, Jess,” Denise said when she had her first bite. “This tastes a lot like Mom’s.”

  “It should. I did everything the way she used to do it.”

  “You mean there are no pumpkin seeds or wild rice or ground buffalo in here?” This was a reference to meals past when, if I chose to make a traditional dish, I would insist on adding a personal tweak.

  “No, really. Just the way Mom used to do it.”

  “Well, you didn’t make the pasta from scratch, did you?”

  “Of course I made the pasta from scratch. How else would you make it?”

  “How would I make it? I’d make it by sticking the leftovers in the oven the day after I had it at Carmela’s.”

  “That’s why we never come to your house for dinner,” my father said with a smile. I think everyone at the table knew that the reason we never went to Denise’s for dinner was because she never invited us, but that wasn’t the point. “Who would eat second-rate take-out when you could eat like this?”

  “And in a garden setting,” I added, pointing to the spottily verdant plot of dirt. Denise chuckled, but she offered a confused expression to my father and I wanted to change the subject as quickly as possible. I couldn’t remember the last time I had done something like that to spare her feelings.

  Toward the end of the evening, Brad pulled me aside. “How’s the piece for 24-Hour City going?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I did my first interview with the teacher a couple of days ago. I’m going back to see her next week. Hopefully, she’ll let me get a little closer this time, because she definitely didn’t want to open up in our first conversation.”

  Brad nodded. I probably gave him much more information than he was really asking for.

  “I got Ed Crimmins.”

  “You did?” I was genuinely surprised. Ed had been in the business for more than twenty years, the last half dozen or so as the Editor of Contemporary Man, a major monthly.

  “It turns out that all of the prep work you made us do on Mark Grey came in handy. Ed was impressed with our plans for the magazine. I also think he was pretty impressed with our proposed compensation package. He’s resigning tomorrow morning and he’ll be on board at the end of the month.”

  “That’s great news. Quite an accomplishment.”

  Brad grinned. For a moment, he seemed practically giddy. “Thanks. With a name like Ed Crimmins on the management team, the rest of the financing will fall into place easily. We’re going to shoot to have a premiere issue out in October, then do six issues next year, and a full twelve the year after that.”

  I found that I was genuinely happy for him. This wasn’t just about being let off the hook with regard to Mark Grey, but also about seeing Brad in a new way. I had begun to change my impressions of him after the dinner with his backers, and I found now that I was actively rooting for his success.

  “Anyway, Ed and I would like to get together with you sometime in the near future to talk about some things.”

  Ed Crimmins had been one of dozens of editors in New York whom I hadn’t been able to impress with my feature pitches.

  “Sure, anytime you want.”

  ~~~~~~~~

  Of course Denise had herself and her men packed up and out the door by six. So much to conquer, so little time. I walked the three of them out to the car and waited to kiss my sister goodbye while she instructed Marcus on the proper positioning of his shoulder belt. This to a kid who’d probably done a paper on restraint systems for fun during summer vacation. She turned around and I kissed her on the cheek.

  “So when are we going to meet the mysterious Marina?”

  “You know, she keeps running out every time she hears you’re coming around. I don’t know what it is. I say only the nicest things about you.”

  “Yeah, I believe that one. If she can handle Dad, she can handle anybody.”

  “Dad? He’s like putty in her hands. Make that Silly Putty.”

  She smirked. “I’m serious. I’m starting to believe that you and Dad are making her up.” She got into the car.

  “Maybe I’m just waiting for an invitation to your fabulous apartment so I can show her the lofty circles my family travels in.”

  Denise lifted her chin slightly. “Yeah, we’ll have to set that up.”

  Deflecting everything should be that easy.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Mickey kissed the picture and rose slowly from the bed to put it back in its box. His knees were very tight this morning. That either meant there was rain coming or he really was an old man. Kneeling felt like hellfire, and on top of it all, there was that lightheadedness again when he bent over. He was going to have to get to the doctor soon, even if the man was useless.

  As he opened the box and placed the picture on the top of the pile, Mickey thought about Jesse. It was certainly the first time that had ever happened. He hadn’t intended to draw the story out as long as he had. He wondered what Jesse thought of it all and he wondered why he didn’t simply discuss it with him directly. But something overcame him when he began to talk to his son about Gina. Things that made sense before just didn’t seem to make the same sense after. It didn’t really matter. He’d be getting to the point soon enough. Maybe even today if he could hold up.

  Looking back at the picture, he
realized that he still hadn’t shown Gina’s photograph to Jesse. He called out to him, but got no response, which meant that Jesse must have already gone into his office.

  Mickey raised his voice. “Jesse, can you come in here a second?” He heard the office door open.

  “Where are you?” Jesse called out.

  “I’m in the bedroom. Come in here a second.”

  Still kneeling in the closet, Mickey turned his head when he heard Jesse coming into the room. Just in time to see the startled expression on his son’s face.

  “Dad, are you all right?” Jesse said, rushing over to the closet and putting his hands under Mickey’s shoulders as though to lift him up.

  “I’m fine. Why are you picking me up?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I said I was fine. I want to show you something.”

  Mickey struggled to get to his feet. Jesse reached down again to help him, and Mickey glared him back. He sat on the bed, gestured for Jesse to sit next to him, and held up the picture.

  “This is her,” he said.

  Jesse reached for the picture, but Mickey held on to it. Jesse moved his face a little closer.

  “Wow, she really is beautiful. She looks a lot like I imagined her. You described her well.”

  “Yeah, maybe I should be a writer in my next career.”

  Jesse made brief eye contact with his father and then looked back down at the photograph. “Was this taken professionally?”

  “By the Mayor’s office. Right after he appointed her to Young Women for a Better New York.”

  “I never even heard of that organization.”

  “That’s a story in and of itself.”

  Jesse reached for the photograph again and Mickey reluctantly let it go. “So you’ve had this picture in that box?”

  “In and out of it. Often. I thought you might be interested in seeing her.”

  “Yeah, of course, though like I said, she’s not all that different from what I was imagining already.”

  Mickey took the picture out of Jesse’s hands and got up to put it back into the box. Again, he felt lightheaded and needed to sit back down on the bed.

  Jesse put a hand on his shoulder. “Knees really hurting?”

  “Yeah. I think I might spend some time in bed reading today.” Mickey put Gina’s picture on the occasional table that had served as his nightstand since moving to Jesse’s house. “We picked that out together, you know.”

  “Picked what out?”

  “The table.”

  “That table? The one that was in the living room for my entire life? Did Mom know?”

  “She knew it came from my apartment and that it meant enough to me to keep even after we got new furniture.”

  ~~~~~~~~

  The doorbell barely awakened Mickey. When it rang a second time, he rolled over to look at his alarm clock. 8:18. Doorbells didn’t ring at 8:18 on Saturday mornings. One of the privileges afforded those who worked very hard and got up very early during the week was that they didn’t have to do either on Saturdays. When the bell rang a third time, Mickey realized that ignoring it was not going to make it go away. He pulled on a robe and walked to the front door. Gina was standing there smiling at him.

  “Time to get going,” she said, as she walked into the apartment.

  “Get going where?” Mickey wondered if he had forgotten about something they’d planned. He couldn’t imagine having done so. He certainly would have remembered something that required his getting up early on a Saturday morning.

  “Furniture shopping. It takes at least three months to get furniture delivered, and we’re getting married in three months and a week.”

  “We need furniture?”

  Gina gestured around the apartment. “You think we don’t need furniture? First of all, you don’t have very much, and second of all, what you do have…” She rolled her eyes and then handed him a bag. “Here, I brought you coffee and donuts.”

  “Furniture stores are open at 8:18 in the morning?”

  “No, but they will be open by the time you eat your breakfast, take your shower, shave, and do whatever else you do that takes you so long to get out of the house in the morning.” She drew up next to him and kissed him on the neck. “You forget that this is one of the secrets about you I already know from our illicit trip to Italy.”

  Mickey grinned and wrapped his arms around Gina for a longer kiss. They had been together in this apartment less than eight hours earlier and he longed for the days – not far off now – when they wouldn’t need to be separated at night.

  “I’ll be ready to go in a half hour or you can have final say on all of the furniture.”

  Gina smiled. “I’ll have final say anyway, but if you’re ready in a half hour, I’ll let you pick out a lamp or two.”

  Mickey wasn’t ready for more than forty-five minutes. He’d never noticed that it took him a long time to get out of the house in the morning. Maybe he was normal and Gina was just especially efficient. That probably wasn’t the case. Gina would know about these things, and if she thought he was slow, he probably was. He promised himself to add it to the list of ways to improve himself for his future wife.

  “Not that I really care,” Gina said, throwing Mickey a grin to let him know that she was kidding, “but do you have any preferences?” They had just entered Bloomingdale’s and were walking through the crowded aisles toward the furniture department.

  “I like dark brown.”

  She laughed. “Dark brown? I was wondering if there was a style you preferred.”

  “I’m sure there are styles I prefer, but I couldn’t tell you the names of any of them. I do know, though, that I like dark brown furniture.”

  Gina seemed to find all of this amusing. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Over the next hour and a half, Mickey realized there were places in his relationship with Gina where they were not on equal footing. While she pelted the salesman with questions about manufacturing methods, types of wood, types of finishing, patterns, and fabrics, Mickey stood mute. For a few minutes, this disturbed him, but then he realized that Gina’s superior knowledge in this area was a tremendous added benefit to their household. Because he was marrying a woman with discerning taste and a discriminating eye, he would have a nice-looking home. The fact that he made virtually no contribution to the purchases involved was purely secondary.

  They had already settled on a bedroom and a dining room and were reviewing living room sets. Gina stood in front of a sofa and love seat with a mahogany coffee table and end tables.

  “Do you like this?” she said. “It’s dark brown.”

  Mickey nodded. Of course it was beautiful and of course he could imagine it in his living room. He sat down on the love seat and asked Gina to sit next to him, putting his arm around her and reclining her back.

  “Yes, it’s absolutely perfect,” Mickey said, squeezing Gina’s shoulder.

  “Mickey,” Gina said, pulling herself back up but tossing him an affectionate grin. “I’m sure Mr. O’Donnell here doesn’t want to see us cavorting.” She put special emphasis on the last word to indicate to Mickey that she was looking forward to doing exactly that with him on their love seat in the near future.

  Mickey looked up at the salesman. “I apologize, Mr. O’Donnell.” When he glanced out, his eye settled on a small table with carved wood and brass appointments. He stood up and walked over to it. “I really like this.”

  Gina came over to him. “It’s lovely, but what would we do with it?”

  “We’d put knick-knacks on it. Things like that sculpture we got in Tuscany and other things that we buy on future vacations.”

  “It isn’t part of the set, though.”

  Mickey bent down to examine the table at eye level.

  “See the way the wood is carved here in intertwining lines? That’s you and me.”

  He looked up at Gina and saw her kneeling next to him, her eyes softening. He glanced over at the salesman.

/>   “It’s an occasional table,” O’Donnell said, “which means that it’s an additional piece. And it is mahogany, so it would certainly blend in with the rest of the set.”

  Gina looked up at the salesman, ran her fingers over the carving, and then looked over at Mickey. “We’ll take it.”

  After they’d filled out the paperwork and paid the deposit, Mickey and Gina went to the store’s restaurant for lunch.

  “I can’t believe we just bought an entire apartment’s worth of furniture in a couple of hours,” Mickey said while they waited for their food.

  “It’s all beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “Not nearly as beautiful as the other addition to the apartment that will be arriving in three months and a week.”

  Gina smiled shyly. Mickey loved the fact that he could still get a response like that from her after nearly nine months together. They had scheduled the wedding for the one year anniversary of their first date. The day couldn’t arrive soon enough for him.

  “We didn’t spend too much, did we?” Gina said.

  “That deposit was the single biggest check I’ve ever written, but we didn’t break the bank.”

  “It’s all excellent quality. Mr. O’Donnell said the furniture could last a hundred years if we take care of it properly.”

  Mickey took a sip of water and allowed himself to imagine the new pieces filling their home for decades to come.

  “Well, I guess we know what the great-grandchildren can get us for our hundredth anniversary present, then.”

  Gina beamed and reached out for his hand.

  They were going to be separated that afternoon by a meeting that Gina was attending. Gina wasn’t entirely sure what it was all about, but it involved some senior staff members in the mayor’s office regarding some kind of committee the mayor wanted to put together. Mickey hated losing a Saturday afternoon with Gina, but if it was going to happen, this was a good reason for it.