Engaging Men (14 page)

But there was no time to consider these matters, not with Vanessa and Sonny at center stage,Vanessa aglow while Sonny went on and on and on about how he felt the baby kicking up a storm the night before.“He’s gonna be a fighter, this little guy.” I watched sullenly while Joey, Miranda,Tracy, Timmy and even Kirk took turns touching Vanessa’s rounded abdomen. I felt a frisson that felt decidedly like fear when I saw Kirk slide his own wide palm over that smooth expanse, a smile turning his handsome features boyish, as the baby, apparently, responded with a firm kick.

Eesh. I didn’t even want to touch it. All I could think about was the suffering that would have to be endured to bring that baby into the world.The blood…

“Where’s Nonnie?” Joey asked now.

“God only knows,”Ma began.“She left the house hours ago with that Artie Matarrazzo to do a little shopping, and I haven’t heard a word! She was supposed to pick me up some garlic for the stuffed mushrooms. How are we gonna eat stuffed mushrooms with no garlic?”

“Oh, Mrs. DiFranco, stuffed mushrooms? You shouldn’t have,” Kirk said, acknowledging, as he usually did, his lust for my mother’s cuisine.

“Well, I might not be,” she replied, sparing him a glance that said (to me, anyway) that garlic had nothing to do with why she might withhold her famous stuffed mushrooms.

Fortunately, Kirk didn’t notice, because just then the door opened and a flushed Nonnie stepped into the room, trailed by an even redder-faced Artie Matarrazzo, who was carrying more shopping bags than an eighty-six-year-old man technically should.

“Well, everyone’s here!” Nonnie said breathlessly. “Hello, hello!“Then she hurried about the room dispensing kisses and hugs and, in the case of Joey, Sonny and even Kirk, swats on the rear end. Apparently Nonnie wasn’t bearing a grudge the way my mother was.

“Did you bring the garlic?” Ma asked, grabbing the two Waldbaum’s bags Artie held.

“Of course,” Nonnie said, turning as she pulled from her head the scarf she had worn to protect her hair. Hair, it should be noted, that looked even fuller and more lush than usual. Apparently Artie was a man of many talents.

“Artie, honey, the garlic?” Nonnie said, holding out one well-manicured hand while Artie fished around in his trouser pocket.

“Ma, you better have paid for that garlic,” my mother warned when Artie finally retrieved a cluster of cloves from his right-hand pocket.

“Who pays for garlic?” Nonnie said, taking the cloves and giving Artie a pat on the cheek. He didn’t even blush this time. Only smiled like a man who had found his partner in crime. Obviously Artie shared not only a mutual affection with Nonnie, but also her staunch belief that garlic was the food of the people and should be given—or taken, as the case might be— freely.

“Impossible!”Ma said, snatching the garlic from Nonnie and heading into the kitchen in a huff.

“What’s eating her?” Nonnie inquired. Then she shrugged, as if my mother’s ire was not her concern. And it wasn’t, I supposed. It was mine. Or more specifically, Kirk’s, I discovered once we were seated around the dinner table.

“So, Kirk,” Ma began, when everyone else was immersed in eating. “Angela tells me you went home recently, to see your family?”

Uh-oh. I knew exactly where this conversation was going.

“Yeah. Had to make the rounds, especially now that I’m an uncle,” Kirk said proudly.

“Is that right?” Ma said, looking at me as if I had withheld some crucial information. “Girl? Boy?”

“Oh, a girl. Kimberly. And she’s a cutie.”

“How old?” Vanessa asked.

“Ten months.” Kirk replied.

“Well, that must be hard,” Ma chimed in. “What with your family living so far away and all.You probably hardly get to see her.”

“Yeah. But I’ll be seeing her soon. In fact her christening is Labor Day weekend—and that’s only a month and a half away. My sister Kate just called and asked me to be the godfather,” he said, beaming at us all.

I tried to smile back. I really did. But suddenly one of those stuffed mushrooms had lodged in my throat, right there beside the realization that Kirk was going home without me again. And how come he hadn’t mentioned to me before that he’d been invited to be a godfather?

But if my mother picked up on this, she didn’t show it. “Ten months and they’re just having the christening now?” she exclaimed, not even trying to disguise her horror at the idea of letting a baby go unblessed for so long.

“Well, that was my mother’s idea actually.” Kirk chuckled ruefully. “She seems to have it in her head that the act of baptism might be a bit traumatic for an infant.”

“Traumatic?” Ma replied, her eyes wide. “I should think it would be more traumatic if-—God forbid—something should happen to the baby before the baby was recognized by God!”

“Ma!” Sonny interjected now, clearly sensing my mother was on the verge of offending my future husband.

“Things are different today,” Vanessa said, adding an extra syllable to the word “different,” which somehow undercut her claim, in my mind anyway.

“I suppose you’re right,” Ma said, then she looked me right in the eye, taking in the way I struggled to get down that mushroom. “Things are different today. Having children. Getting married. I mean, in my day, we married once and we made it work,” she said, shooting a glance in Miranda’s direction, which (thank God) Miranda missed. “Even dating has changed,” she said, her eyes roaming back to Kirk before focusing on me. “Do you know that your father introduced me to his mother on our second date? Our second date.”

There was no way anyone at the table could have missed my mother’s intentions that time. Least of all, Kirk, who suddenly had a hard time swallowing the mouthful of linguine he had just heaped into his mouth. As I watched him slowly chew, eyes averted, I felt a wave of protectiveness for him. And a mixture of sadness and anger I was powerless to articulate.

Fortunately, Nonnie piped up, “As I recall, his mother showed up at the party he took you to that night. Something about wanting to make sure that the kids weren’t drinking beer, but we all knew what she was up to, nosy body that she was.”

“She was wrong to care what her son was up to?” my mother protested.

But her point was lost as Nonnie went on to regale us all with tales of how Grandma Anna notoriously used to butt into her son’s life. “Do you know she tried to go with them on the honeymoon? The honeymoon! You’re lucky your mother chose to live in my house, or you kids might never have been born!” Then she chuckled and winked at Artie,

I, however, could not forget my mother’s point. Instead, I carried the weight of it with me on the Avenue U bus, which we boarded a few hours later on the way home. And I discovered, in the silence that thickened between us as we sat side by side, that Kirk was carrying it, too. At first, I wondered at his sullen silence, until he gripped my hand almost painfully and pulled it into his lap.

Gazing at me steadily, he said, “Look, I want…that is, I think…do you want to come with me to the christening,Angie?”

Joy shot through me. Followed by dismay. “Look, just because my mother—”

“No, no, it’s not that. I should have brought you home sooner. I know that. It’s just that my family…” He paused, scrambling for words. “Well, let’s just say that they aren’t at all like your family.”

“Thank God for that” I replied with a nervous chuckle.

“Are you kidding me?” he said, turning in his seat to look at me. “Your family is great. I mean, Nonnie is so warm and sweet. And funny! Sonny and Joe are like the brothers I never had. And your mother!” He chuckled.“Look, the worst that woman could do to me is overfeed me.”

He didn’t know the half of it.

“On the other hand, my family…” He seemed to struggle for words. “Well, they’re lovable once you get to know them, but they’re a bit…odd.”

“Isn’t that adorable?” I said to Grace that night on the phone. “All this time I’m worried he’s afraid his parents won’t like me. And now I find out he’s worried /won’t like them.”

“Adorable.”

“Grace, what is wrong with you? I thought you’d be happy for me.”

“I am happy for you. If this is what you want.”

“Of course it’s what I want. Isn’t it what we all want?”

Silence reigned for a few minutes. A very pregnant silence.

“Grace, is everything okay?” I asked.

“Oh, everything’s fine,” she said eventually.“I’m just distracted. Drew has this work-dinner thing he wants me to come to this weekend and I…1 don’t know what the hell I’m going to wear.” I heard the rustle of hangers in the background and knew she was standing in front of her enormous closet faced with a range of fashion possibilities that most women would kill for.

I felt the chasm between us open wider. It was so easy to be Grace, I thought, when the biggest thing you had to worry about was whether the Calvin Klein or the Donna Karan was more appropriate for a “work-dinner thing.” What could my minuscule gains matter to her when she had not only met Drew’s parents but had gone on vacation with them?

“I’ll let you go,” I said.

“Hmm?Yeah, okay. I’ll call you tomorrow…”

But I knew I wouldn’t hear from her tomorrow. Tomorrow night she’d probably be with Drew. The day after that, she’d probably be wining and dining with some of her colleagues, who could better afford to eat at the five-star restaurants Grace frequented than I could. I guess that’s just what happened when you grew up and got a life. With a sigh, I hung up the phone, taking comfort in the fact that I would at least see Grace at the wedding. Either hers or mine, I thought with a shimmer of something that felt like…fear.

But if I was having doubts, they were dissipated by the time I walked into Lee and Laurie the next afternoon. On the Rise and Shine set that morning, Colin had been ecstatic when I’d told him the news, even joking that he wanted to be my maid of honor. And I expected no less enthusiasm from Michelle.

“Well, I’m going to Newton,” I said, dropping my bag on my desk along with the stack of magazines I planned on grazing through to pass the hours.

“Kirk’s parents?” Michelle said, glancing up from the copy of In Style she was perusing.

When I nodded, she pounded her fist into the air. “Yessss!” she hissed. “Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I?”

“Tell her what?” Doreen said, swinging around in her chair with her usual wiry violence.

Knowing better than to let the Conspiracy Theory Queen in on my own personal little plot, I quickly answered,“Oh, I’m going home with Kirk for a christening.”

“A christening?” Roberta chimed in as she came off a call. “Oh, Angie, who had a baby?”

“Kirk’s sister, Kate.”

“Girl or boy?” she asked, eyes gleaming with excitement.

“Uh, a girl. Kimberly,” I said, wondering what relevance this had to anything.Then I remembered whom I was dealing with. Roberta Simmons, Mother of all Mothers.

“So you’re going to meet the parents,” Doreen said.

“Uh-huh,” I replied, sitting down and pulling my headset out of the drawer.

Doreen barked out an abrupt chuckle. “Well, I’ll tell ya.You never really know a man until you meet his parents. Did I ever tell you my ex’s father was a prison guard at Riker’s Island? Whoo-hoo. That explained a lot. Up until then, I thought the handcuffs were just a harmless sexual perversion.”

“You’re a fucking weirdo, Sikorsky,” Michelle said with disgust.

Doreen simply smiled, then smoothly moved into a call.

“I remember when I met Lawrence’s parents,” Roberta said dreamily. “Do you know, I think I had a little crush on my father-in-law when I first met him?”

“Me, too!” Michelle exclaimed.

I stared at her. “A crush on Mr. Delgrosso?” I said, remembering the somewhat stocky man who used to stare a little too long at us whenever we walked past his dealership, which happened to be on the way home from our junior high.

“What? He’s a good-looking guy.”

“Who’s the weirdo now, Delgrosso?” Doreen said, eyes narrowing gleefully.

“Thank you for calling Lee and Laurie Catalog…” Michelle chirped into her headset as she flipped Doreen the bird.

These were the people I was turning to in my time of need? I suddenly, painfully, missed Grace. Maybe we could meet up for a drink. “Thank you for calling Lee and Laurie Catalog. I said, relieved to be taken away from these mad ramblings, if only for a moment. I even managed to sympathize with the 38C-sized woman who was desperate to find out if the dress on page 35 of our summer catalog could accommodate her. And believe me, ordinarily I had a hard time sympathizing with anyone who had ”more than a handful,“ as Nonnie always described the ample-breasted women of the world.

When I finally convinced the woman that $6.95 in shipping was a small price to pay to discover whether this dress would get her through her brother’s bar mitzvah, I turned back to the Committee, only to find Michelle and Roberta still engaged in phone calls.

“You realize that once you go to Newton, there’s no turning back,” Doreen said. “You show up for one family function and you’re expected to be at all of them. Suddenly it’s this one’s seventieth birthday, or that one’s anniversary and it’s ‘Where’s Angela, Kirk? Is everything all right with you two?’ Soon you can’t even go on one little march on Washington without the family getting in an uproar…”

Oh, brother. Suddenly the disaster of Doreen’s marriage unfolded before me.

Fortunately, Michelle clicked off just in time. “Look, Doreen, it’s not your ex-husband’s fault he married a lesbo!”

“Doreen, is it true?” Roberta asked, getting off her call. “I mean, that’s okay with us, if you are…”

“I’m a feminist.That doesn’t mean I’m a lesbian.”

“I’m a feminist, too,” Michelle said,“but we got bigger things to worry about right now.” Then, turning to me, she asked, “Now, what are you gonna wear?”

Though I might be guilty of leaving my love life in Michelle’s hands, when it came to fashion, Grace was the girl to call. Thank God, I finally reached her on the way home from work that night. “Come shopping with me?” I pleaded.

As it turned out, I was in luck. Grace was going to Bloom-ingdale’s the very next day during lunch, which really wasn’t all that unusual, since she spent so much time there they practically had a fitting room with her name on it. She still hadn’t managed to come up with something to wear for her work-dinner thing with Drew and had decided a new purchase was in order. Though I had a whole month and a half to make my own purchase, I saw no reason not to rush to Bloomingdale’s as soon as possible—now that I had a reason to shop.