How to Love an American Man (17 page)

I can't force out more than a whisper. “No.”

She dabs at her mouth and places her napkin next to the plate, already throwing in the towel on dinner. Then she links her pinky through mine on my lap and whispers, “I know how you feel, dear.” I know she does. “But eventually, you'll forgive him. Forgiveness is peace, when it comes.” A tear crashes down my face and seeps through my silk blouse.

Around us my aunt's second floor whirs with activity. Grandma and I are the only still figures among the sounds of ice in cocktail glasses, the crackling fire, and the hum of couples deciding which is the least crowded table at which to sit. This is the price I pay for wanting someone like my grandfather—look: tonight, they're both absent. The crowd laughs and silverware clinks, and through the fog that's clouding my ears I hear my aunt suggest I should be drinking champagne. With her eyes, Grandma shields me from the scrutiny and “shoulds,” panning around the table to make firm eye contact with the family members who are eagerly filling the seats around us.
Don't question how a woman deals with defeat
, her glower says; and with their incessant chatter and nosh, they honor her.

Grandma and I continue to carry on this way, unable to control the actions of some significant other person. We're like the centerpiece candle in front of us, flickering feebly without control of the activity around us; simply wanting to be tucked away, invisible.

Indeed this year's holidays won't be easy, for at the season's kickoff tonight I feel as though we two Gasbarre women have been widowed by hope. I lift a private prayer that, unlike Chris and his dear patient who must be spending Thanksgiving alone, at least Grandma and I both have someone to share the loneliness with.

Chapter 8
You Are the Prize

Grandma's birthday falls on December 11, exactly ten days before my birthday, which marks the first day of winter. My mom once told me that when I was born Grandma gently recommended that my parents always separate my birthday celebration from Christmas, as a girl deserves her very own day every year.

There are similarities between Grandma and me that continue to surface as we both wrestle with confusion over our unwanted single status and our respective futures. Until now I've never given much thought to the notion that my birthday falls on the very last day of Grandma's Zodiac, but perhaps now's a good time to pay attention to the sign that binds us. Side by side we're two fiery, independent women . . . who, at the moment, happen to be starving for male companionship. By Sagittarian definition, however, we're often too stubborn to voice what we need, and too impatient to find out what will happen next.

Since I was a kid, our family has celebrated Grandma's birthday by reserving the back room at the little wood-paneled tavern on the edge of town known as the Pine Inn, where Grandpa always held office meetings and company holiday parties. Our whole family has known the owners of the restaurant for decades, so on Grandma's big day we've sat down to a family-style feast surrounded by twinkling white lights and silk poinsettia centerpieces on the tables. It's not an extravagant locale by any means, but it's private, and it's tradition. This year, Grandma informs us, she doesn't want any of it; but after Thanksgiving Uncle Phil insists to her that we should celebrate her eightieth year on the planet with the biggest bash yet.

Two weeks before her birthday the family murmurs collective frustration over whether we're supposed to proceed with the planning. Grandma continues to resist deciding whether she wants a party, and when my dad and uncles nudge her for progress, she grows increasingly obstinate. I call her one afternoon when one of my old college roommates is pressing me to make weekend plans. “Grandma, is this because of Grandpa?” There's silence on the line. I cautiously proceed to tell her that sitting around because Grandpa's not here would be the absolute worst thing for her spirits—she gives off this air that she's blaming him for her predetermination that her birthday's going to be miserable. “God forbid, Grandma, if things were reversed and you weren't here, we know that Grandpa wouldn't pass up a celebration just because
you
weren't around,” I tell her. “He loved parties, and he loved when we were all together.” I tell her that we want to have this party for her simply because she deserves to be celebrated, but if
she
doesn't want to have this party, then that's a decision she'll have to live with. “But I think you're cutting off your nose to spite your face, Grandma. Grandpa will be there in spirit.” I pause. “And if he's not, it's his loss!” Her laugh erupts in my ear.

Two days later Uncle Phil sends out a family e-mail informing everyone that Grandma has agreed to the party and he's booked a block of hotel rooms for us in Pittsburgh that weekend. We travel the two hours in a caravan, and when we arrive I watch all the family's happy couples taper off to their rooms to slide into their dresses and suits. “Let's go, roomie,” I tell Grandma, slipping her overnight bag over my wrist and linking my arm through hers. Aunt Marie has already arrived from St. Louis, and Grandma squeals to see her eldest child and only daughter.

The lovely Uncle Phil has seen to it that the setup of our room will suit us three girls just fine: Aunt Marie and Grandma both have their own bedrooms and bathrooms, and I'll take the couch in the suite's living room and share the powder room with Grandma. I have to stay mindful to keep all my toiletries organized and out of her way—her sink at home is always in mini-malistic, perfect order.

I slip into a new black dress with white silk ruffles on the bodice, and Grandma puts on the silver dress she wore to my cousin's debutante in St. Louis. When the family arrives for drinks in the suite that we three are sharing, my dad pins a white rose corsage on Grandma's lapel. “See that?” I whisper to her. “You're beautiful.”

As we all board the shuttle up to Mount Washington, I count a solid seventeen of us. The maitre d' takes our coats and escorts us to our table overlooking Pittsburgh's nighttime skyscape and Point State Park, where the Ohio, Allegheny, and Monongahela rivers famously meet to create a curving Y-shaped waterway that resembles the midsection of an inviting female. The back of the menu states that
USA Weekend
has voted this the second best view in America. As we crane our necks to point out the glimmering landmarks we recognize below, it's no wonder why.

The dominating pattern around the long dinner table is boy-girl, boy-girl . . . until you reach Grandma, who's seated next to me. Our tuxedoed waiters fuss over her with innocent flirtation, kissing her hand and pouring her champagne with theatrical delight. When I lean in to ask her what she's eyeing for her appetizer, I find that she's immersed in a comical story with my uncle seated on her opposite side. My mom kicks me under the table to point out that Grandma is actually having an awesome time, and my dad snaps a photo of her giving the A-OK sign to the camera.
You all win,
her expression says. She, like every member of our family, is convinced she deserves to be adored tonight by us, if not by Grandpa. A woman is too precious to compromise her good time or her happiness because things haven't gone her way with a man.

When we return to the hotel after midnight, everyone reconvenes in our suite for cake and presents. We sing over the birthday cake and I brace myself to see tears, but Grandma smiles massively before releasing a successful exhale across the sea of candles. I'm betting that right now Grandpa's
really
grateful we did this. When the gang finally gives Grandma loud champagne kisses good-night, she goes into the bathroom. When she exits, she finds me in her bedroom.

I pop her pillow to fluff it up. “Climb in, toots.”

“You don't think this is too big for one person?” she says.

“It's a queen,” I say. “It's all you.”

Early the next morning when I return to the room from the gym, she meets me in the doorway with alarm. “I couldn't find you,” she says.

“I was just at the gym.”

“The gym? Heavens, what for,” she says, pouring me coffee from the minibrewer. “You're gorgeous the way you are.”

G
RANDMA'S EIG HTIETH BIRTHDAY
is a night I want to remember—my twenty-ninth birthday, on the other hand, is not. First of all, who wants a Sunday birthday with the Monday dooms hanging over your head? Dad's not in the mood for Luigi's, and when we go there anyway, my brother points out the way I hold my knife. “No, I disagree,” he says. “That's not how the Europeans cut their food.”

“Yes it is. I lived there for a year; you studied there for a summer and met like
one
Italian person. And he wanted to be an American rapper. So he doesn't even—”

“You two, enough.” Mom breaks up our argument as though we're still in junior high while Dad glares down to our end of the table. Grandma sits at the far end straining to participate in our conversations, and the whole family is so visibly agitated with the unpleasant rhythm of the evening that when the cake arrives, the expressions around the table as people sing “Happy Birthday” look more like mug shots than party faces.
And many moooore!

T
HREE DAYS LATER
Christmas Eve comes and goes for me with the same apathy, and again Grandma blends quietly into the scene around our living room. When each of us grandkids opens our annual savings bonds, the note inside looks lightweight and lonely:

Her signature looks so lopsided without Grandpa's name next to it. I glance at her, sitting alone at the bar. Then I look up at the ceiling:
This would all be a lot better if you'd stuck around, you know that, George?

I'm jealous when my cousin's fiancée selects the confetti-cut paper shredder that I've donated to the annual blind gift exchange: what, she gets a hot-rod PowerShredder
and
an engagement ring? I should have gifted booze. I lazily look up from my mulled wine (of which, for yet another year, I am the sole maker and drinker, big fat hooray) to inform her, “You can shred credit cards with that thing, you know.” The princess-cut diamond on her left hand sparkles in the light as she crinkles the wrapping paper into a carefree ball and beams ear-to-ear. Someone is having the Best Christmas Ever, and it's definitely not me.

On Christmas morning Mom and Dad are hunting for a gift receipt in Dad's den when my phone echoes through the first floor. “Kris?” Mom hollers, her voice bouncing off the hard-wood. “I think your phone is ringing!”

She doesn't know that I'm standing a room away from her in the foyer staring at the incoming call. It's Chris, whom I hadn't heard from since the Thanksgiving flop. “I got it,” I say as I hit the Ignore button and disappear upstairs.

Half an hour later when I return, my parents are still in the den, now listening to the Kings of Leon disc I gave Dad in his stocking. Mom wants to know, “Who called?”
Oh, here we go.

“It was . . . Chris.”

“Oh! You see? He's thinking of you, how nice! What'd he have to say?”

“I actually missed the call.”

“Well, did he leave a message?”

Ufff.
“He did.”

“Well?” I don't need them shoving the importance of forgiveness down my throat, but with them both staring up at me over Dad's desk, there's no way around the truth. I give them the seven-second summary of Chris's two-minute message. He told me he's hanging out with his brother in Chicago, that for some cosmic reason I'm in his thoughts right now so he said a prayer for me and he has a lot of confidence that God has great things in store for me. He said he's reading a novel that's changing his life.

In the last month I've begun to see his attributing every mortal event to God and the universe as his way of wiggling out of any active decisions or commitments. He wants no responsibility, no one depending on him for anything, not even to show up on Thanksgiving. If he's not paying me, then he doesn't want to hang out with me. I feel like I've been prostituting my companionship for the last four months.

“Are you calling him back?” Mom asked. “Probably not.”

My dad pipes up. “It's not fair for you to make judgments about him.”

“Pardon me?”

“You don't have all the answers.”

I can't wait to move out of this place
I think, as I stomp upstairs. When I slam the door that closes off the second floor from the first, I wait for my dad to spring upstairs and yell at me like he did during my junior high moody phase: “Just because you're mad at the world, there's no excuse for eye-rolling, stomping, or slamming doors!” In fact I am in my mad-at-the-world mode, but as an adult I've realized that this misery simply translates into feeling frustrated with my own existence. This self-loathing only ever occurs as the result of an unhappy transaction with a boss or a romantic interest, and as I remain unemployed at the moment, it's the not getting my way with Chris that has my emotions more tangled than an old string of Christmas lights. I just can't figure out how to unwind myself and brighten up again.

But I won't call him back. Dad's criticism—“You don't have all the answers”—shamed me, but after the pang of disappointment I experienced at Thanksgiving, there's almost nothing that could persuade me to make myself vulnerable to him again. Even if we were to run into each other at the grocery store next week, I'd stop my cart, stare at him calmly, and then continue on my way. (I would, however, be sporting lipstick and high boots in case of the good fortune of a run-in.) At this point I'd feel gratified if he wanted me, but me not showing desire for him would be empowering.

M
Y FRIEND
K
ENNETH
from high school and his boyfriend throw a New Year's party at their house in Pittsburgh, and on Facebook three of my old classmates and I make arrangements to go. On the ride down my friend Margie reveals to me that the guy she'd been dating since high school has turned out to be a criminal and a polygamist, that she accidentally met three of his other fiancées when she went to visit him in jail in October. Margie is one of the happy-go-luckiest, least controversial people I have ever known (plus she drives a stick shift with better skill than any dude I've ever met—impressive). I can't believe that any man would put someone like her through such hell. “Margie, please tell me you've cut off all contact with him,” I say.

“Oh, believe me, I have, are you kidding?”

“Good. And don't go getting frustrated about men—there's going to be a
good
guy who comes to you and tells you that you're the most beautiful woman he's ever met and that he can't live without you.”

“Yeah.” Her voice quiets. “You really think?”

I look at Margie in the glow of her dashboard. “Absolutely.” When we arrive at Kenneth's house, he takes our coats with grandiose presentation. Except for the fact that I don't recognize most of the faces milling around his marble kitchen, I feel like we're back in high school when he was famous for organizing extravagant dinner parties. In junior high his parents had gone through a brutal divorce and left him to be raised by his grandfather, a local coal mogul. Kenneth always amazed and entertained me as he passed around expensive hors d'oeuvres, finding such wild exuberance in astonishing his guests. “Caviar, for
me
?” I asked him at the first of his high school dinner fetes that I attended.