Slightly Single Read online

  “No, I mean the new one. It’s this brown and beige pattern with nubby fabric and stiff cushions. I went with Mom to pick it out.”

  “Are you serious?” I have to laugh. “What’s with the earth-tone color scheme?”

  She laughs, too. We proceed to make fun of our parents’ furniture. Then we make fun of our parents in general. It sounds mean, I know, but we do it in a loving way. And I realize how much I miss my sister.

  When Mary Beth tells me I can sleep in her queen-size bed with her instead of out here on the couch, I take her up on it. It’s peaceful, snuggled beside her, listening to her even breathing, knowing that she loves and accepts me unconditionally.

  Thirteen

  So do my parents.

  Love me unconditionally, that is.

  But when I see them at their party the next day, the first thing my mother says to me—after she’s screamed and hugged me and cried, and then gotten over the initial shock of seeing me there—is, “Where did you get that dress? You should wear things like that more often. You look beautiful!”

  The dress is from the back of Mary Beth’s closet—at least a decade old and four sizes smaller than her current wardrobe. I wouldn’t be caught dead in this thing east of the Hudson River. It’s a totally outdated style. Plus, it’s pink. And sleeveless. But look at my mother, in an ill-fitting turquoise number with a gold chain belt. She’s not exactly the fashionista of Brookside.

  My father tells me, repeatedly, that it’s about time I came home for a visit. He says it on the buffet line, he says it during his toast to my mother and he says it as we’re dancing to an old Frank Sinatra tune.

  He says it so often, and to so many relatives, friends and neighbors, that I’m sure everybody assumes I haven’t been back since I moved to New York over a year ago. I’m already the talk of the town because I left. Now I can be the talk of the town because I’ve not only left, but I’ve turned my back on my loving parents.

  The party is held in the Most Precious Mother church hall—the same place where I went to CCD (i.e., Catechism) classes while I was growing up, where as teens we had our CYO dances and where Mary Beth and Vinnie had their wedding reception. It’s funny—I’ve been here hundreds, maybe thousands, of times in my life, but the place suddenly seems completely unfamiliar.

  I can’t believe I never noticed that the place reeks of smoke from Saturday-night bingo, or that the linoleum floors are so scratched or that the folding gray metal chairs and the long tables covered with paper tablecloths printed in wedding bells are so…well, tacky.

  So is the buffet table, with its tinfoil trays of baked ziti and sausage with peppers and salad made with whitish-green iceberg lettuce, orangey-yellow tomatoes and Seven Seas Italian dressing.

  And the decorations: crepe paper draped from the rafters and folding honeycomb wedding bells dangling from the basketball hoops—I never noticed that there were basketball hoops in here. On the tables are little white crinkle cups filled with those vile-tasting candy-coated almonds.

  But the pièce de résistance has to be the DJ: Father Stefan’s younger brother, Chaz, who’s wearing a tan polyester leisure suit, and not in a cool retro way, but in an oblivious, geeky way. He’s played “Celebration” at least three times, and every time it comes on, a big cheer goes up and the dance floor is promptly jammed.

  I compare this scene to the events Milos puts on in New York, and I find myself feeling sorry for my parents and my siblings. None of them has any idea that this is woefully inadequate. They’re having a blast, dancing and eating and mingling.

  Don’t get me wrong—I’m having fun, too.

  But I can’t help feeling like I don’t belong here.

  No…

  Like I don’t want to belong here.

  I try to imagine what will happen when Will and I get engaged and my family tries to plan our wedding. They would be crushed if I told them that we wanted to get married in New York City. They would point out that the wedding is always in the bride’s hometown, and that if they’re going to pay for a wedding, it better take place right here in Brookside.

  All the more reason for me to keep socking away money in that Prego jar, which I have to take to the bank now that I’ve got a respectable amount—almost five hundred dollars—from working for Milos these past few weeks.

  Will and I will have to save money and pay for our own wedding if we want to have it in the city.

  Otherwise, we’ll find ourselves here, in Most Precious Mother hall, boogeying to Kool and the Gang and doing the chicken dance, which Chaz has now forced on everyone not once, but twice.

  I sit on a folding chair sipping warm white zinfandel from a foam cup. I watch Vince Junior and Nino out on the dance floor, waggling their elbows like poultry before they collapse on the floor in hopeless giggles. And I find myself thinking that maybe the chicken dance isn’t so bad.

  But then I try to picture Will doing it, and I can’t.

  He just wouldn’t fit here.

  And that isn’t a bad thing.

  I would kill for a cigarette. Lord knows I could bum one from somebody, since there are smokers galore, but I never light up in front of my parents. Somehow, I know that if I’m still smoking when I’m in my fifties and they’re in their eighties, I will continue to sneak cigs behind their backs.

  The chicken dance gives way to the Tarantella, which is a big hit with this crowd. It’s a traditional Italian folk dance that involves much clapping and bouncing and linking of arms.

  Someone sits down beside me. “Hi, Tracey.”

  I look up to see Bruce Cardolino. His parents and my parents have been friends for years. In fact, Bruce’s father was friends with my dad, and his mother was friends with my mom, and they set my parents up on a blind date. That’s how they met.

  Bruce is wearing gray slacks—not pants, but slacks—and a black silky-looking shirt with an open collar that reveals chest hair and a gold cross. In other words, he’d be right at home on the set of The Sopranos.

  “Hey, Bruce, how’s it going?” I’ve always liked him. In fact, I brought him to a couple of CYO dances when we were teenagers and I couldn’t get a real date. We never kissed, or anything—we were strictly friends. But I always thought he was cute, and if he hadn’t always had a girlfriend—or if he had ever been willing—I would have been totally into him.

  He’s still good-looking, in a strictly Guido sense. Black hair combed straight back, tall, nice build. I haven’t seen him in a few years—he went away to St. John Fisher college up in Rochester, but I heard that now he’s back in town working for his dad’s business.

  Mr. Cardolino is a plumbing and heating contractor. My father’s always talking about how he makes a fortune, and I guess he does, by Brookside standards. He’s always driven a new Buick, and Mrs. Cardolino has a fur coat and the whole family is always decked out in gold jewelry, right down to Bruce’s sister Tanya’s one year-old daughter, who has pierced ears and who is currently chicken-dancing with my nephews.

  “You still living in New York?” Bruce asks. When I nod, he says, “Yeah? What’s that like?”

  “It’s great,” I say, not wanting to elaborate. Anything I say is going to get back to my parents, so I have to tread carefully here.

  “Ever see Donald Trump around?”

  “No, I’ve never seen him.”

  “How about those people on the Today Show. You ever seen them?”

  “No, I never have.”

  “So you never went over there when they’re taping the show and waved a sign at the camera?”

  “No.”

  “Huh. My girlfriend keeps saying she wants to do that. She says that if we ever get married, she wants me to take her to New York on our honeymoon so she can hold up a sign that says we just got married.” He snorts in a go figure kind of way.

  “Who’s your girlfriend, Bruce? Anyone I know?”

  “Angie Nardone. You know her?”

  “Angie Nardone! Yeah, she’s a few years younge
r than I am, but we were in Key Club together.”

  “Yeah, she’s only nineteen,” Bruce confides. “I figure she’s too young to be talking about getting married.”

  “Yeah, nineteen is young.”

  “I keep telling her that if we’re still going out next year, when she’s older, then we’ll see.”

  “Yeah,” I say, deadpan. “Then she’ll be twenty.”

  “Yeah. That’s better than nineteen. My parents got married when they were nineteen, but things were different back then.”

  “Exactly. But then, Tanya got married right out of high school, and she and Joey seem really happy,” I point out. Obviously, she’s not married to my brother, Joey—there are countless Joeys in Brookside. In fact, most of them are right here at my parents’ anniversary party.

  Bruce’s sister Tanya and her Joey have at least five kids and she’s pregnant again, but the two of them have danced every slow dance Chaz has played.

  “Yeah, but that’s different, too,” Bruce says, leaning closer to me. “They had to get married, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah.” I had completely forgotten about that.

  Here in Brookside, if you’re single and Roman Catholic and you get pregnant, you have to get married. There’s simply no alternative.

  “So what do you do?” Bruce asks me. “In New York?”

  “I work for an advertising agency.”

  “What do you do there?”

  No way am I going to use the “S” word. Not when Bruce is sitting here looking all impressed with the mere fact that I live in Manhattan.

  I say vaguely, “I do a lot of different things. Like, right now, I’m trying to come up with the name for a new product.”

  “You’re kidding! What kind of new product?”

  “A new deodorant. It’s formulated to last a week at a time.”

  “Cool. What names have you come up with?”

  “Persist is my favorite,” I tell him. “But I don’t know if they’re going to go with that, so I’m still working on it.”

  “Hey, I’ll give it some thought and write down a few names for you, okay? I’d love to help out with something like that.”

  “Thanks, Bruce…” I want to tell him not to bother, but I don’t know how to do that politely, so I just say, “That would be great.”

  He asks for my address, writes it on the paper tablecloth and tears it off and puts it into his shirt pocket. We chat awhile longer, mostly about the plumbing and heating contracting business and about people we used to know.

  Then “Celebration” comes on again and Bruce leaps to his feet and shouts, “Whoo-hoo! Want to dance, Tracey?”

  To this not-so-golden oldie? Not if my life depended on it. But I politely say, “No, thanks. But you go ahead.”

  “Come on! Angie wouldn’t mind. She had to work today—did I tell you she’s a phlebotomist over at Brookside General?”

  “No, I don’t think you mentioned it.”

  “Come on, let’s dance.”

  “No, that’s okay. I’m going to go see if my nephews got a piece of cake yet,” I tell him, and I go off in search of Vince Junior and Nino while Bruce joins the bopping crowd on the dance floor.

  I find the boys sprawled under a table dumping candied nuts out of the little paper cups and making a big pile of them.

  “What are you guys doing?” I ask, peering at them.

  “This is the rock quarry,” Vince Junior says solemnly.

  Nino nods and produces a miniature yellow metal bulldozer from the pocket of his tiny Baby Gap khakis. “We-o pwayin’ wock quawwy,” he informs me.

  “Cool. Can I play?”

  Naturally, they’re thrilled.

  We all pway wock quawwy for a while, and then I get them each a big piece of cake, which they promptly strip of the sugary bakery frosting before telling me they’re full.

  I’m tempted to eat the remaining cake, but it’s looking a little slimed, so I dump their plates.

  I’m cleaning the icing off their faces with purple napkins that are printed in silver with my parents’ names and their wedding date when Nino shouts, “Hey, wook! They-o’s my Daddy!”

  I follow his gaze.

  Sure enough, there’s Vinnie, out on the dance floor, dancing with Mary Beth to “Always and Forever.”

  “What’s Daddy doin’ here?” Vince Junior asks.

  “I was just wondering that myself,” I mutter.

  As the boys rush over to greet their dad, I march over to the table where my brother Joey and Sara are sitting.

  “Did you guys see who’s here?” I ask.

  “Trust me, he wasn’t invited,” Sara says. “He said he was just here to drop off Mary Beth’s car and pick up his Explorer from the parking lot.”

  “Yeah, that’s exactly what he’s doing,” I say, glaring at Vinnie, who is now balancing a giggling Nino on his shoulders, pretending he’s going to drop him on Vince Junior, while Mary Beth looks on, beaming.

  “I guess he came in to say hi to Ma and Pop, and somebody asked him to stay and have cake,” Joey says.

  I’d be willing to bet that that somebody was Mary Beth.

  It hurts to see my sister so unwilling to shove him out of her life for good.

  Yes, he’s the father of her children.

  But can’t she see how he’s using her?

  “The thing I don’t get,” Sara says, “is why he even does this. He supposedly has a new girlfriend—at least one—and he’s told Mary Beth he doesn’t love her anymore. So why does he keep her on a string?”

  “Because his ego needs to be fed by her blatant adoration. He gets off on seeing her so into him, and knowing that no matter what he does, she’ll be there.” I shudder. “If he so much as looks my way, I’m going to drag him outside and tell him off.”

  But Vinnie doesn’t look my way. He leaves.

  And after he’s gone, Mary Beth deflates.

  I want more than anything to talk some sense into her, but there’s just not an opportunity. We have to pose for enough family pictures to fill a dozen albums and package the leftover cake into individual boxes that are printed with my parents’ names and wedding date, and we have to hand one box to each guest on his way out the door.

  By the time it’s just our family left, Nino is having a post-bakery-frosting meltdown, screaming and kicking on the floor, and my brother Frankie is helping Mary Beth wrestle him and Vince Junior into her car.

  Then I’m back home with my parents, who are in a panic because nobody told them I was coming and my bed isn’t made up.

  “Ma, it’s no big deal,” I say as she bustles around, pulling down blinds and shoving things into the closet. Apparently, they now use my room as a dumping ground for stuff that doesn’t fit anyplace else—bulky sweaters and magazine clippings and junk mail and toys the grandkids play with when they’re here.

  I tell myself it shouldn’t bother me—after all, it’s their house, and I don’t even live here anymore—but I can’t help feeling resentful.

  Was I expecting them to keep my room an untouched shrine in my absence?

  Yes, apparently I was.

  “How long are you staying?” my mother asks as she retrieves a set of worn, faded flowered sheets from the top drawer of my dresser, where I used to keep my white cotton panties and my industrial-strength bras and my baby-sitting cash and, way in the back, my cigarettes and a dog-eared copy of The Sensuous Woman.

  “I’m staying until Monday,” I tell my mother.

  “Monday!” She pauses in the process of stretching the ancient, shrunken fitted sheet over the sagging, stained twin mattress. “But that’s the day after tomorrow.”

  “I know. I have to work on Tuesday.”

  “Can’t you take a few days off?”

  I shake my head and help her stretch the sheet. “I haven’t earned any vacation yet.”

  She looks horrified. “What do you have to do to earn vacation?”

  “Nothing, Ma, just work there for six mon
ths. Which I haven’t done yet.” I tug an elasticized corner of sheet beneath the mattress, and the opposite corner pops off.

  “Well, do they know your family lives five hundred miles away?” She puts the opposite corner back on.

  My corner pops off again. “Ma, it’s company policy.”

  “What kind of company is this?”

  “I told you, it’s an advertising—”

  “No, I mean what kind of company holds a young girl hostage from her family?”

  Okay. I’ve had it.

  With her, and with the damned sheet.

  But before I can say a word, she goes on to say, “And what kind of man turns his back on a woman for months at a time so that he can go be on the stage, singing and dancing?”

  Here we go.

  She’s never liked Will.

  Nobody in my family has ever liked Will.

  He has so many strikes against him:

  He’s not from Brookside.

  He didn’t stay in Brookside after he got here.

  He looks, acts, and sounds different from anyone in Brookside.

  And he took me away from Brookside…

  Or so they assume. They can’t fathom that I’d ever have left on my own.

  “Ma, Will’s an actor. Actors do summer stock. The fact that he’s gone for the summer has nothing to do with me or our relationship.”

  She’s silent. She gives up on the fitted sheet and leaves one top corner untucked, turning her attention to the flat sheet. Her chin is set stubbornly. Not a good sign.

  I watch her. I notice that everything about her is round. Her pouf of dark, sprayed hair. Her big dark eyes outlined in too much liner and mascara for the special occasion. Her face with its circular application of rouge. Her arms, her body, her butt—everything about her is elliptical. I’ve seen pictures of her in her youth, and she was always pleasantly plump, but pretty. I wonder if I’ll look like her one day.

  I try to imagine myself middle-aged. I try to imagine myself middle-aged, looking like my mother and married to Will.

  I can’t.

  Will, at middle age, will undoubtedly be a cross between Harrison Ford and Michael Douglas. And a man who looks like that won’t have a wife who looks like this.