Slightly Married (23 page)

I tip the dispatcher and thank the businessman profusely before settling into the seat with Grandma, Mary Beth and Mary Beth’s choo-choo duffel, which didn’t fit into the trunk.

As we careen toward the Belt Parkway, reggae music blasting from the radio in the front seat, my grandmother holds on to me for dear life and insists that we all say a rousing rosary.

“She did this on the plane, too,” my sister hisses into my ear.

She does it on the Metro-North train, too, six hours later. Well, she starts, anyway—the moment the lights and ventilation system turn off in the tunnel as the train picks up speed.

“It’s okay, Grandma,” I cut in. “This happens all the time.”

And then there was light.

And ventilation.

And a clear view of my nephew standing on his seat in madras shorts and a preppy Baby Gap polo, staring down a pair of rough-looking tweens in the seat behind him.

“Sit down, little Joey,” I coo, reaching across the aisle and past my sister-in-law to touch his shoulder.

“No!” he shouts, bouncing wildly on the seat.

“I don’t want him to get hurt,” I tell Sara.

“Hmm? Oh, he’s okay. He’s holding on to the seat.”

Yes
, I think, turning away from potential bloodshed,
but the tweens might be armed.

And it’s a good thing I don’t carry a firearm around in my purse because by late afternoon, after showing my family around Manhattan, I’d have been tempted to turn it on myself.

It was hard enough to keep from diving off the observation deck of the Empire State Building when my father asked where the twin towers used to stand, then loudly announced that it was too bad our country hadn’t learned its lesson yet, and kicked out all the “foreigners.”

Keep in mind that his own parents were Italian immigrants, that he spouted this gem within earshot of a virtual melting pot of tourists, and that he had complained just five minutes earlier that we wouldn’t have time to see the Statue of Liberty until tomorrow.

Why is he so anxious to see it? Does he have a can of spray paint and a diabolical plan to change the inscription to “
Keep
your tired, your poor, your huddled masses…”?

Then again, at least he didn’t request a stop for coffee and danish every five minutes despite a hearty lunch at the hotel restaurant. No, that was my mother, the bottomless pit.

My father was the one who complained nonstop about the cost of coffee and Danish and everything else in Manhattan.

For her part, my sister spent most of the afternoon on her cell phone, fielding frequent calls from Nino and Vince Junior, who have been bickering and needier in her absence than they are when she’s around, which I didn’t think was possible. Keep in mind that she dropped them off at their father’s apartment just
this morning
and she’ll be picking them up again tomorrow afternoon.

Her end of the conversation always tends to go something like this: “Hi, sweetheart…I know, I miss you so much too…He did what?…Did you tell him to stop?…Put him on…Hi, sweetheart, what did you do to your brother?…You didn’t?…He did what?…Where’s Daddy?…Well, go wake him up…(
or knock on the bathroom door
, or
tell him to get off the phone with his girlfriend
…”

You get the picture. Poor Mary Beth, who has never spent a night away from her children, gets a little weepy whenever she hangs up after talking to them. But her phone invariably rings again five minutes later and she’s right back in it.

And then—once again—there’s Grandma.

Wouldn’t you know, her steamer trunk contains twenty pairs of shoes—all of them skinny high heels? She was limping five minutes into our sightseeing jaunt, and by the time I dropped everyone back at the hotel to get ready for the party, her feet were bloody stumps.

But she turned down my offer to pick up a pair of sneakers for her—she’s got a pair of “gorgeous gams,” as Grandpa used to call them, and dammit, she’s going to show them off. So now she’s wearing tall, strappy hot-pink sandals that perfectly match her hot-pink well, hot pants is the best way to describe what she’s wearing, though she prefers to call it a “skort.”

Mary Beth, who is sharing a room with Grandma and a train seat with me, assures me in a whisper that this outfit is preferable to the “Batgirl getup” Grandma was planning to wear.

Um, Batgirl getup? Dare I ask?

“It was shiny, and long, and…skintight,” my sister informs me with a shudder. “She made it herself out of some bargain fabric she got at Joanne’s.”

“She still sews her own clothes?”

“Yup.”

I should probably be thinking, “God bless her.”

Instead, looking at her sitting there across the aisle in those hot pants, I’m thinking, “Holy varicose vein, Grandma. You’re an octogenarian!”

I don’t dare say it, though. She prides herself on looking great for her age—and great for anyone a few decades younger, too. I just wish she wouldn’t flaunt so much skin in front of my future in-laws. Or people in general.

Grandma is lugging along a mysteriously bulging Hens and Kelly shopping bag, filled with God knows what. She won’t tell me, just keeps insisting it’s “for the party.”

I’m sure it’s safe to assume she didn’t buy whatever it is at Hens and Kelly, a blue-collar Buffalo department-store chain that vanished before my allowance days. Then again, you never know, because when I ask her if she made her hot pants, she says, “No, I bought them down at the Montgomery Ward.”

Which pulled out of Brookside at least a decade before I was born.

My mother, who goes nowhere empty-handed, actually asked if we could stop at a supermarket this afternoon; turned out she wanted to throw together a “dish to pass.” She was thinking a nice salad. She even had the foresight to pack a paring knife, a Tupperware container and “good” olive oil because we must not have “good” olive oil here in the most vast and diverse metropolitan area in the country.

“Station stop…One Hundred and Twenty-fifty Street, Harlem,” intones the mechanical voice.

“Did they say Harlem?” Grandma asks loudly. “Is it safe here?”

Dear God.

I pointedly ignore her. So does my sister, whose cell phone is ringing again.

“Off!” Little Joey bolts from the seat and makes a mad dash for the doors as they open.

My brother the superhero leaps forward in a single bound and snatches his son just inches from the platform.

“Off!” protests little Joey in a piercing voice.

What a far cry from “On!”, which is what he was screaming back in Grand Central when we were waiting for the doors to open. “On!” It echoed through the cavernous tunnel and everyone else on the platform gave us a wide berth.

“Joey, you love trains,” my sister-in-law claims as my brother marches little Joey back to their seat. “Choo choo! Remember?”

“No! I hate choo choos! I want my bike!”

Terrific. I had to force them to leave it back in the hotel room. Yes, they were planning on bringing it to the party. They thought it would keep him entertained, and who doesn’t know that a toddler zipping around on a shiny red trike would be a welcome addition to any engagement party?

Honestly, it’s scary the way parenthood has challenged Joey and Sara’s common sense. Between that and Kate’s miserable pregnancy, I’m seriously thinking Jack and I need to wait a good two or three years before we even consider having children.

“Biiii-iiike!” Joey howls.

Maybe four or five years.

“Here, have a treat, honey.” That’s my mother saving the day as only an Italian grandmother can: by shoving something sweet—this time, a chocolate doughnut—into Joey’s mouth. It immediately shuts him up, of course.

No, Ma doesn’t carry doughnuts in her purse in case of emergencies.

I assured her earlier that the party food was taken care of, but she showed up in the hotel lobby toting two boxes of Krispy Kremes she had sent my father out to pick up for the party.

When I protested, “Ma, you don’t have to do that,” she shrugged and said, “Oh, I wanted to.”

I mean…what do you say to that?

I’ll tell you.

You say: “Really, Ma, it’s not necessary. Go put them back in your room and eat them later.”

But then she looks wounded and asks, “Why? You don’t think Jack’s family likes Krispy Kremes? Are they some kind of health nuts?”

Some kind of health nuts
. In my family, that is the ultimate insult, right up there with
some kind of liberal
.

“Everyone likes Krispy Kremes, Connie,” is my father’s response. “And they were selling them four for a buck.”

Ah, his first New York bargain: day-old doughnuts.

Luckily, I’d had the foresight to visit the Grand Central ticket kiosk earlier this week and pick up a bunch of off-peak round-trip tickets to Bedford. I can just imagine what my father would say to spending almost twenty bucks a head just to get to the party. Needless to say, he’s still freaked out about the forty-five-dollar cab ride—not including tip and toll—from the airport this morning.

So here we have it: Mom and her twenty-three remaining donuts; Dad and his perpetual sticker shock; Grandma and her inscrutable shopping bag; Mary Beth and her long-distance bickering boys; indulgent Joey and Sara and their unruly toddler, whose face is now smeared with chocolate icing….

A far cry from the Candells and people of that ilk.

Still, regardless of everything…

They’re my family and I love them. I’m glad they’re here to celebrate my engagement. All of them.

Even Grandma.

11

Y
es, I’m thrilled Grandma came all this way to celebrate my engagement…until the moment she pulls me aside to ask me in a loud whisper why Jack’s family is protesting the wedding.

Which occurs pretty much the moment we walk through the door into the private party room at Toute l’Année.

Protesting? What can she possibly be talking about? I look around, half expecting to see Jack’s siblings sporting Down With Tracey sandwich boards.

Nope.

In fact, no one has even glanced in our direction yet, including Jack, who is helping himself to a tasty morsel from a passing tray, and Wilma, whom I spot conferring with a tuxedoed waiter.

The party is under way and the guests are elegantly mingling, munching and sipping Candelltinis, the signature drink Wilma and the bartender created just for tonight. A pianist is playing a jaunty version of “Just The Way You Are” on a baby grand in the far corner beside a tall window. Beyond that is a view—yes, sweeping—of the blooming garden against a backdrop of stone walls, rolling hills and a tangerine sunset.

I turn back to my grandmother, flummoxed. “What makes you think anyone is protesting the wedding, Grandma?”

“Look at them! They’re all in black from head to toe! They look like they should be at a wake!”

Yes, and you’re in hot-pink hot pants and spike heels. You look like you should be hooking by the Lincoln Tunnel.

Aloud, I say only, “Grandma, this is New York. Everyone wears black. It doesn’t mean they’re protesting anything. I promise you.”

“It’s just so…somber,” my mother comments in a stage whisper. Balancing her Krispy Kreme boxes in one hand, she reaches up to nervously pat her hair, and I glimpse an unfamiliar vulnerability in her black-lined eyes.

“Ma—” I put an arm around her “—come on. Let’s go meet Jack’s mother.”

“Which one is she?”

I point out Wilma and feel my mother stiffen beneath my grasp.

“Do I look all right?” she asks anxiously, and I see her seeing Wilma’s flattering black sleeveless dress, her youthful haircut, her real jewelry.

I look at my mother. She’s a head shorter than me, her roly-poly figure draped in a silky red dress with a cowl neck. She’s wearing a new cubic zirconia pendant and matching earrings she ordered from QVC especially to wear to the party.

My heart overflows and I hug her. “You look beautiful, Mom. Come on, let’s go get Jack so you can meet everyone.”

“We look like we just got into town with the circus,” Sara mutters as we head over.

“What do you mean?”

She gestures at the other guests. “They’re all in black.”

Et tu, Sara? Et tu?

“It’s a New York thing,” I tell her soothingly. “And you look great.”

“I look gaudy.” She gestures at her lemon-yellow sundress. “And so does poor Joe. I made him wear that. I got one for him and one for your dad for Father’s Day last week.”

It’s a Hawaiian shirt covered in turquoise hibiscus blossoms. My father’s is similar but his blossoms are orange.

They are a pretty colorful crew, especially with little Joey’s loud shorts, Grandma in hot pink and Mary Beth in a pale lavender pantsuit.

Being the bride, I’m all dressed in white—corny, I know. But I went shopping with Rachel a few weeks ago and found this crisp Ralph Lauren skirt and top that set off my new fake tan, which was Raphael’s engagement gift to me.

“You’re giving me a
tan?
” I asked when he told me about it awhile back.

He nodded vigorously. “You want that Palm Beach glow, Tracey.”

He’s right. I do. Now that I have it, anyway.

At first, though, I wasn’t crazy about the idea of stripping down to my underwear under bright lights in a little booth and being sprayed head to toe by a stranger with some kind of bronzing mist. But then Tiffany—she, of course, is the tanning technician—started explaining how she was contouring my thighs and stomach with strategic spraying, to make me look more toned—and you know what? She was right. It really does. I even got a touch-up last night after work.

Now Jack’s eyes widen appreciatively when he sees me, and he greets me with a kiss and a fervent, “You look gorgeous.”

“Thanks. So do you.” He’s in a dark suit and tie with a white dress shirt and polished wingtips. I love it when he’s all dressed up like this. It makes up for all the stinky socks and holey sweatpants.

He warmly hugs all of my family and takes the doughnuts from my mom, saying, “Krispy Kremes! That’s the best thing anybody could bring to a party. I’m having one now.”