by Ariella Papa
“He’s cute,” Jackie said. “I love those shoulders.”
I tried to place the guy’s face as he limped off the field and closer to where we were sitting. He was wearing those baggy Umbro shorts and a faded red T-shirt. He stood in front of us and contorted his leg, pulling the shorts up to expose the muscle that he rubbed. He seemed oblivious to us and in a lot of pain.
“Wow!” Jackie said, still enjoying the view. Then she yelled to the guy. “Are you all right? I’m a nurse.”
I thought Jamie had said she was engaged. I couldn’t believe she was trying to pick up a guy with her fiancé so close by. I looked at Jamie, but she nodded and smiled, so I knew that Jackie actually was a nurse.
“I’m fine,” the guy said, looking up. “Just an old injury.”
“Well, let us know if we can help,” Jackie said. Nurse or no nurse, she was definitely flirting.
“I will. Thanks, ladies,” he flirted back. He smiled at us, and when he met my eye he said, “Hey.”
“Hello,” I said, still confused, because he recognized me, too.
“How’s it going?”
I could feel Jamie and Jackie staring at me.
“Fine.” I think my voice betrayed my confusion.
He smiled and winked a light brown eye at me. “335 West 32nd Street.”
It was my address! Next to me, Jamie gasped. I squinted, trying to figure it out.
“I think I put out a fire at your house.”
“Oh,” I said, finally remembering.
Next to me, Jackie mumbled, “I’ll say.”
I felt myself blushing and wished I had put my sunglasses back on. “I remember you, too. You’re—”
“Paul Torrisi.”
I had had elaborate fantasies about this fireman, but I would never have recognized him without his gear on and his face covered in soot.
“Right,” I said. “Thank you, again. You saved us.”
“Hardly,” he said.
He was still rubbing his thigh, and now I was compelled to look at it.
“You were already out of it. Is your place okay, now? What was that, a couple of months ago?” he asked.
“Yeah, about three. It took a while for the smell to go away.”
“Have you cooked anything yet?” he asked.
It stumped me. I’m sure a lot of people had the same fears I did, but I hadn’t told anyone about it and it was weird to have a stranger know something so personal.
“Not really,” I said.
“Well, you will,” he said.
I remembered how he had squeezed my shoulder the night of the fire and how it had felt so calming.
He took a sharp breath in and squeezed his thigh.
“Um, we’re going to order some pizza, actually,” Jamie said. “Why don’t you sit on the blanket and have some with us.”
“You should definitely take some weight off that leg,” Jackie, the expert, said.
It was like they were working in tandem to help me keep talking to him. I would have hemmed and hawed and tried to think of a way to keep him there, but for them it was easy to talk to men.
Paul looked at me and smiled. “Seems like a good idea. I rarely get such enticing invitations.”
The other women slid over on the blanket and Jamie grabbed my shoulders and positioned my stunned body to give Paul room on the blanket, but not too much.
“Thanks,” he said, sitting down.
The hurt thigh was pressed right up against my leg, and unfortunately he had the perfect vantage point of my reddened eye area. He smiled at me. Jamie immediately called for pizza and gave them directions to get to us in the park.
“I have to return a call,” Jackie said, getting up off the blanket (to make an imaginary call?).
With Jamie occupied and Jackie gone, Paul could only talk to me. He kept rubbing his leg, and I wanted to ask him if he needed help. Instead I just asked if he was okay.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m just being a baby. By the way, what’s your name?”
“Oh, right,” I said, laughing. “Voula.”
“Voula. That’s beautiful.” He squinted, trying to read me. “Italian?”
“No,” I said, reaching up to scratch (cover) my yucky eye. “I’m Greek.”
“Ah, Greece,” he said. “That’s somewhere I’d like to go. The closest I’ve been is Cyprus.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling silly for not just coming clean. “That’s actually where my family is from. Why were you there?”
“I have cousins who live in Italy. They vacation there. One time I went with them. You ever been?”
“Yeah, almost every other year when I was growing up. My father lives there now.”
“Let me guess—you grew up in Astoria?”
“You’re right.”
“An Astoria girl,” he said, smiling.
Are there rumors about us? Because I’m sure I didn’t live up to any of them.
He looked at me again. “Hey, what happened to your eye?”
“I told you not to use that eye shadow,” Jamie said, popping back into the conversation. She winked at me and handed me my sunglasses, which had been on the blanket. “You know how allergic you can be— Pizza is on the way.”
“Just in time,” Paul said. “It looks like they’re done.”
The boys came barreling off the field. Paul stood up, putting his hand gently on my shoulder for balance. I wanted to reach up and hold on to it. With all the guys off the field, I doubted I would be able to talk to him much.
“Hey, man, sorry about that. You okay?” Raj asked.
“No problem,” Paul said, shaking his hand in one of those silly macho ways. “I made a stupid move, you made a great play.”
All of the guys, including Paul, started talking about the game, and as I suspected, Paul got lost in the crowd. When the pizza delivery guy biked by us, Jamie and I ran and flagged him down. As we walked back with the boxes, she smiled at me.
“You are devilish,” I said.
“Be a sport, Voul, and play this right. I can tell you like him. And I didn’t see a wedding ring.” She looked back at the guys and Jackie and shouted, “Pizza’s on.”
After the group had finished stuffing our faces, people started meandering off. It was a perfect summer night and it made me realize how I had been too busy running around and being annoyed by the heat to enjoy it. A few times Paul caught my eye and winked. I smiled back without opening my mouth, because it was usually full of sauce and cheese. He was hanging out, but not eating. Maybe he had someone at home cooking for him.
Eventually, I saw him pick up what looked like a giant gym bag. It was time for him to leave. He came over to say goodbye.
“Well, I’m glad you’re doing so well, except for the eye thing,” he said, gesturing to my sunglasses.
“Yeah, well thanks, you know, for everything you all did.” I actually did go to college and have been known to complete sentences without saying “you all.”
“I bet you’ll be cooking in no time.”
“Oh, she’s a great cook,” Jamie blurted.
She seemed to cherish these moments of ambush. I can boil water, but it isn’t like I’m a secret chef or anything.
“You should eat some of her food sometime,” she said.
“Maybe she’ll invite me over sometime,” Paul said, smiling.
“Well, you know where I live.” I managed to follow this with what I felt was a coy smile. “Take care.”
“You too,” he said.
I watched him walk away until Jackie and Troy said goodbye. Jackie wished me luck with Paul, like there was even a chance we would meet again. I smiled in attempt to be the good sport Jamie asked me to be.
When the group had thinned, Jamie and Raj came up to me and asked if I was ready to go home.
“Maybe we should walk,” Jamie said.
“Yeah, that would be nice,” I agreed.
Raj didn’t want to. “Do you really think it’s a good idea?” he a
sked Jamie.
“Why not,” I said. “It’s such a good night.”
“Raj is being a baby because his feet hurt,” Jamie said quickly, kissing him. “We’ll get the subway.”
On the way to the subway, Jamie congratulated Raj on bumping into Paul and called him my new boyfriend.
“As usual, your wife is getting way ahead of herself.”
“You should have seen her, babe. Not since Trigonometry have I seen Voula so flustered.”
“It does happen,” I said, shaking my head. “Though it might have been the heat.”
“He seems like a nice guy,” Raj said when we were on the C. “I think he’s a firefighter.”
“Der, Raj. He put out her fire.”
Both Jamie and I giggled, but I continued to shake my head at her.
“Speaking of fires, did you tell her what we’ve got cooking?” Raj said. He looked at Jamie. She smiled and put her arm through his.
Then I got it: she was going to ambush me again.
“You tell her, babe, I think I might cry.”
“Well,” Raj started as both he and Jamie beamed at me. “We’re pregnant.”
The Family Way
10
I had an idea that being in her apartment might add to the tension between my mother and me, so I invited her to dinner in a restaurant.
I should back up, because I make it seem as though I casually chose a restaurant and called her up and that was that, but relations with my mother, like the politics of the country we came from, were never as simple as they could have been.
I knew that the idea of us going to a restaurant would be met with immediate suspicion. My mother had a strange paranoia about paying for things. She was always convinced that people were trying to take advantage of her. I chalk this up to her being an immigrant and for a long time not being sure what people were saying, although Georgia’s parents were nothing like this.
I couldn’t choose any food too exotic, because my mother wouldn’t have liked it and probably would have made some racist comment about the country where it originated. I definitely couldn’t have picked a Greek place, because my mother would have taken offense at this and accused me of not liking her cooking. Also, the place had to be convenient, close enough not to put her out, but not so close that she could suggest we go upstairs to her apartment instead. It was just dinner, but I put more thought into it than into most of my pitch letters to magazine editors.
I picked an Italian place in Astoria. I asked my mother to meet me there, because it was right near the train station and close enough to her job for me not to have to escort her from home.
I got there first and stood in the entrance waiting for her to come in. The place was empty when I arrived, but as I stood there, more and more couples started coming in. I began to fear it was a date place. But it was too late to change location. My mother approached the door, walking in her defiant way, as if she had something important to tell anyone who would listen.
“Hey, Mom,” I said when she got in. I kissed her on the cheek and watched her eyes dart around the dimly lit dining room.
She spoke to me in Greek. “How are we going to be able to see what they’re feeding us?”
“It’s very highly recommended, Mom,” I answered. “Zagat gave it a good score.”
She sneered at me. I knew that she had no idea what Zagat was. The red guide made no difference in her world. I ignored her and told the maître d’ that my party was ready. He glanced over his shoulder, squinted and then looked back down at his book. My heart began to beat faster. I hoped there wouldn’t be a problem. When I’d called I was told they didn’t take reservations. If we had to wait for long, my mother would get cranky. It was such a small, stupid thing, but if we had to leave I would feel like a failure.
“Just a few minutes,” he said.
I stood at the desk, not wanting to turn and see my mother’s expression. The man said something in Italian and I wished that somehow Armando would emerge from the kitchen and get us seated. (But then, of course, I would have to explain how I knew him and that would cause all kinds of other grief.)
“Right this way, miss,” the man said.
I couldn’t believe our luck. I turned to my mother, beaming. She looked as if something had just dripped on her head.
“Right this way, Mom,” I said.
“So I heard,” she said.
It wasn’t a mood. If someone was constantly in the same awful state, it was a personality disorder. But I was going to persevere.
We sat down and I took both the menus while my mother pulled off her jacket. The maître d’asked her if she would like to check it and she looked at me for translation. Though she spoke and understood English almost as well as Greek, she was rarely in a situation to have her coat checked. Like Zagat, it was foreign to her. The idea of losing sight of one of her belongings would have distressed her.
“We’re fine, thank you,” I said.
“Ti eipe?” she asked me.
“He just wanted to know what we wanted to drink,” I said. I could have used a nice stiff drink, but it was out of the question. “How about some wine?”
“The wine is too expensive here.”
She hadn’t opened the menu, and I was certain that she had never been here. I swallowed.
“Well, I’m going to get a glass.” I held my menu up in front of me so as not to see her expression.
I ordered for both of us. I got orecchiette con rapini, homemade pasta with sausage and broccoli rabe. She chose a chicken breast with lemon and capers. She pushed most of the capers off when it arrived. I decided not to ask her how it was. I tasted mine and told her it was delicious, and decided to order a second glass of wine.
I was worried about telling my mother that I was thinking of buying a place. For almost three months I had been searching for apartments, and though I stayed up nights fretting about her reaction, I thought no matter how scary it was, I should bite the bullet. My mother was going to have to learn about it sooner or later. I would need to get access to my bonds. Ever since Jamie had told me she (or excuse me, she and Raj, who seemed to suddenly share a uterus) was pregnant, I had felt as though I needed to make a real change, not just speculate or research an article. It didn’t hurt that the editor of Financial Woman gave me a six-month stint, which meant a little secure money coming in.
As we ate, I told my mother about some of the places I had seen, specifically the ones that had doormen. I figured I would appeal to her sense of security. I didn’t tell her my price range.
“Apartments in the city are too expensive,” she said matter of factly, between chews of her chicken, “but real estate is a good investment.”
I looked at my mother. Was it possible she was going to approve of something I was doing? I had planned out many arguments to show that I was making the right decision, but I’d never figured on her going for it. I didn’t know how not to defend myself.
The waiter cleared our plates and listed the desserts. I ordered a cappuccino, and when he brought it I thanked him.
“You really like this stuff, don’t you. You like having people serve you.”
I didn’t understand how two sentences about an insipid transaction with a waiter could make me feel like shit. How did my mother have such power over my feelings? Just as I readied for a particular battle with her, she abandoned that road and went for the jugular about something I hadn’t prepared for. She was the queen of taking me by surprise.
“Jamie’s pregnant,” I said, to distract myself from wanting to cry.
“Na zisoun,” my mother said, pleased for Jamie and wishing her and the baby long life.
I nodded. I had prepared for that, and for my mother to say something about my single, barren status. This time she didn’t disappoint.
“It must be nice for her mother to be a grandmother. That we all could be so lucky.”
“But you already are that lucky mom,” I said before I could stop myself.
; She looked up at me, and for a minute I think she thought I might be knocked up—she had put Helen so far out of her mind. Then she realized. She looked down at her napkin and folded it into a perfect square. My mother touched fabric in a way that made me envious. She put so much care into the designs she stitched, but her children…we never received such attention.
My cappuccino was too hot; I wished I could drink it quickly to get us the hell out of there, but no matter how hard I blew it didn’t cool. I sipped about half and signaled for the check.
My mother didn’t say a word as I paid. Of course I had to walk her home. We were one whole subway stop away from where she lived, but I had to walk her. Even if she wasn’t going to talk to me, even if every step was misery, I couldn’t let her go alone. She didn’t even turn to let me kiss her at the door. She just walked up the stairs and away.
On the subway platform I checked my messages. There was one from Maureen. A place I had liked with a doorman and a decorative fireplace had had a bid put on it. It was a studio, but it had a decent-size kitchen and bathroom and the ceilings were high enough that I wouldn’t feel like I was living in a closed box.
Maureen had walked me through this scenario before. If you put a bid on a place, the sellers—the anonymous entities that they were—would have forty-eight hours to accept your bid or make a counter offer. If they accepted your bid, the rest of the agents could offer it up to clients and then they could try to outbid without knowing how much you bid, or maybe you couldn’t know how much they bid and then either you had another chance or you didn’t. I wasn’t exactly sure. Now there was an accepted bid. I had a day to move if I wanted to try to outbid the nameless bidder.
My next message was from Jamie. She sounded down. She had taken the day off work, and asked me to call her whenever I got a chance. I knew production on Raj’s show was really picking up and he was probably working late. Since it was only nine, I decided to call her back.
As soon as they told me “they” were pregnant, I went out and bought a pregnancy book. I wanted to read about what Jamie was going through. I wanted to be there to support her. I quizzed her about whether or not she was dizzy (nope), her breasts were sore (only getting bigger), or if she was sensitive to odors (big time!), because my book said these were all the things that happened right away.