Slightly Settled (22 page)

It turns out everything he gave me—with the exception of the Sephora Gift Certificate, which he bought at Dianne’s suggestion—was regifted. Even the tickets to Radio City were comps from one of the TV networks.

“I’m sorry, Chief,” Mike said about a thousand times. “I was trying to do something nice for you. I didn’t realize you were upset by it.”

“It’s okay, Mike,” I said every time he told me he was sorry.

But the whole thing has left me with a bad taste in my mouth, and it isn’t from synthetic muffin.

Just when I was getting over the whole tighty-whitie/naked fall, this put a whole fresh strain on my relationship with Mike.

I don’t blame him if he thinks I’m an ungrateful wench.

Who in her right mind would be offended by a pile of expensive presents?

Never mind that Mike didn’t pay for most of them…and that he only gave them to me because he and Dianne decided I was pathetic.

I should have accepted graciously and kept my mouth shut.

Well, I should do a lot of things.

Except the thing I
shouldn’t
do.

Which I have an uncanny knack for doing.

Like inviting Buckley to see the Rockettes with me tomorrow night after I had already invited Jack.

I’m starting to suspect that I need to uninvite him ASAP.

Which
him,
you wonder?

I wonder the same thing.

I have Jack’s travel itinerary, and I can call him at the hotel tonight if I want.

Or I can call Buckley at home.

But which guy should I uninvite?

I think I know.

But I need to run it by somebody first. Namely, my shrink.

Unfortunately, on Thursday afternoon, Dr. Trixie Schwartzenbaum’s office calls to cancel my appointment. It seems she’s taken a spill on an icy sidewalk and fractured her wrist.

Okay, there goes my plan to run the potential blow-off by Dr. Trixie Schwartzenbaum.

Since I don’t trust my own judgment, and since I’m avoiding all of my work friends today due to the stripper
disaster, and since I already know that Kate will automatically say I should choose Buckley over Jack, I’m left with only one person to turn to for advice.

God help me.

My laundry’s already in the spin cycle and One-Sock Sally’s taken up three dryers by the time Raphael breezes into the Laundromat with a sack full of laundry over his shoulder and a wicker basket in his hand.

Inside the basket, on a nest of white linen napkins, are a silver cocktail shaker and two glasses.

“No martinis for me,” I tell him, holding up my Rolling Rock. “I can’t afford to get trashed tonight. I’ve got a major decision to make.”

I wait for him to ask what the decision involves, but he’s too busy folding the linen cocktail napkins, setting up the glasses and saying, “These aren’t martinis, Tracey. They’re Brandy Alexanders, in honor of the boy I met last night at Oh, Boy. Guess what his name was?”

“Um, Joe?”

“No! Tracey, it was Alexander,” he says, oblivious to my sarcasm.

“What happened to Carl?”

“He has a boyfriend,” he says with an easy-come, easy-go wave. “Alexander is beautiful. Blond, like Carl. Tall, too. But not as meaty.”

Eeew.

Speaking of meaty…

“If that’s how it works, I should be drinking Sexual Steve Slammers today,” I tell Raphael.

“Ooh, sounds yummy. What’s in them?”

I smack him in the arm and snap, “They’re not a real drink, Raphael, and it’s a miracle I’m not a Juicebox convert after what I witnessed last night.”

I fill him in on the whole sordid Sexual Steve tale.

Unlike Jack, he’s sympathetic and horrified. No self-respecting gay male would be the least bit amused by the thought of a less-than-perfect physique being flaunted in a public forum.

Raphael shudders profusely, then apologies profusely. He also offers to make it up to me—by sending the newly sprung Bodacious B over to my place for a private lap dance.

“No, thank you,” I say politely, because God only knows where Bodacious B’s “lap” has been.

“Anyway, listen, Raphael, I have a huge problem and it’s really been bothering me. I need you to tell me what I should do.”

“Electrolysis,” he says promptly, rattling the silver cocktail shaker above his head with both hands. “I’ve been hoping you’d ask.”

“What?”

“Aren’t we talking about your upper lip, Tracey?”

“No, we’re not talking about my upper lip!”

My hand goes right to my recently—but apparently not recently enough—waxed mustache, courtesy of my Mediterranean heritage.

“Oh.” Visibly troubled, Raphael pours himself a drink. “Are you sure you don’t want one, Tracey?”

“I’m positive.” I snatch the shaker from him and try to glimpse my reflection in its silvery surface.

Mental Note: Price electrolysis while home for Christmas; will be cheaper in Brookside than Manhattan.

“So if we’re not talking about your upper lip, Tracey, what are we talking about?”

I plunk the cocktail shaker down on the table next to the laundry he’s beginning to sort. “I need to run something by you, Raphael. It’s about Jack. And Buckley.”

“Delicious,” Raphael pronounces, sipping his foamy white drink and closing his eyes in ecstasy. “Not as delicious as Alexander himself, but—”

“Raphael, please!”

“Sorry. I’m listening,” he says in his best, soothing Frasier Crane voice.

So I tell him. About Jack, and about Buckley, and about the kisses and the dates and the tickets.

And as I talk, it becomes clear to me which guy I have to uninvite.

Good thing, because Raphael the lush is no more help than Dr. Trixie Schwartzenbaum.

By the time I’m done sorting things out aloud, he’s done sorting his laundry, and half in the bag.

Raphael. Not the laundry.

“How much booze is in those Brandy Alexanders, Raphael?” I ask, plucking a wayward pair of red velour socks out of his pile of whites.

“I don’t know. Do you think too much? I couldn’t remember which was the jigger and which was the shot. Want to try some?”

“No, thanks.”

I need to be clearheaded for the grim task ahead.

He answers on the third ring.

“Tracey!” he says. “I was just thinking about you.”

“What are you doing?” I ask.

He sounds breathless. “Crunches,” he tells me, and my lusty brain instantly downloads an image of his washboard abs.

Then I quickly shove it out of my head. I don’t dare think of how attracted I am to him when I’m about to tell him I can’t see him again.

Nor do I dare ask him why he thought of me while he was doing crunches, since he has to have noticed that my abs are not the least bit washboardy.

“Listen, I have to talk to you,” I say, determined to stay on task, here.

“Uh-oh. Sounds serious.”

“It is. I feel really bad, but…” I take a deep breath.

“You’re going to tell me we can’t go out tomorrow night, aren’t you?”

Caught off guard, I sputter, “Why…who…what makes you think that?”

“I’ve been blown off enough times to recognize the tone.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, and to my horror, I start to cry.

“It’s okay,” he says. “I understand.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. I don’t think either of us is in the right place for this right now.”

“You’re a great guy,” I tell him, meaning it with all my heart.

“I know I am. But not for you,” he says.

“Right.” I sniffle.

“Have fun with State Capital guy,” Buckley says.

And, shoving aside a wistful little pang for what might have been, I promise him that I will.

T
he Saturday-morning flight from LaGuardia to Buffalo is oversold, and I have to admit, there’s a moment when I actually consider giving up my seat.

Visions of Christmas in Manhattan with Jack dance through my head….

But only momentarily.

Because Jack won’t be here for Christmas, remember? He’ll be in Aspen, where his family has rented the same house every Christmas since he was ten.

So if I don’t get home to Brookside, I’ll be stuck here in New York for a solitary Christmas, and who, besides Will McCraw, who is his own favorite companion, wants that?

Certainly not me.

I slink down in my seat and I don’t volunteer to get bumped.

Apparently, nobody else on the plane is interested in a
solitary Will McCraw Christmas because they don’t volunteer to get bumped, either.

Which leads to involuntary bumping.

Which can get ugly, especially at Christmastime, and quickly does. It’s like a
Survivor
tribal council featuring, in the Jeff Probst role, a fake-smiling, fake-blond flight attendant with fake boobs, pretty much manhandling those who have been voted off.

Finally, those of us who make the cut find ourselves in the air for the “short ride over to Buffalo,” as the pilot puts it when he comes on the intercom. Pilots always make it sound so easy, like they’re driving the carpool around the corner to school.

Meanwhile, there’s snow. Snow and turbulence.

Such bad turbulence that I have my first full-blown panic attack in ages.

My chest is constricting, I can’t breathe and I’m certain death is imminent.

The man on my right is calmly reading his
New York Times,
with its headlines about holiday travelers as terrorist targets.

The old lady on my left is clutching her rosary beads and muttering about Jesus, no doubt convinced she’s about to meet Him in person.

I try to distract myself, first by reading the Caleb Carr novel Buckley lent me last summer and I never had a chance to read, then, when I can’t get into nineteenth-century forensics, by replaying last night.

It helps a little.

Okay, it helps a lot.

Especially when I relive the part where I saw Jack strid
ing toward me along Sixth Avenue as I stood in front of Radio City waiting for him, and he saw me, and his face lit up and his pace quickened.

In that moment, I knew I’d made the right choice, choosing him over Buckley.

No matter what anybody says. I really like Jack, and Jack really likes me, and I’m sick of overanalyzing our relationship.

Last night was wonderful.

So wonderful that if this plane freaking crashes, I’m going to be pissed as hell—if one can be pissed as hell in the Great Hereafter.

But the plane doesn’t crash and my panic attack subsides and the next thing I know, I’m walking through the gate and into my sister Mary Beth’s arms.

“Thanks for driving in and picking me up,” I tell her when we’re done hugging.

“Are you kidding? No problem. I stopped at Toys “R” Us on the way here, and I got all my Santa shopping done in an hour. The place was a zoo, but I was so happy to be out on my own that I didn’t care.”

“Where are the boys?”

“Home with Vinnie.”

I guess she can tell by my expression what I think of him, because her round face becomes earnest and she says, “Things are going great with him, Tracey. Really. He’s changed.”

“I hope so, Mary Beth. For your sake. And for the boys’, too.”

“He has. Really!”

I wonder who she’s trying to convince.

As we walk downstairs to the baggage claim, she fills me in on marriage counselling and tells me how happy my nephews are to have their dad living under their roof again.

I try to act enthused, but it isn’t easy.

“All I’m doing is talking about myself,” Mary Beth says as we stand by the idle luggage carousel. “What about you?”

I open my mouth to tell her about Jack, but before I can, she frowns and says, “You look skinny.”

“Thanks.”

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

I shrug off the classic Spadolini bluntness. “It was a compliment to me.”

Mary Beth shakes her head, looking me up and down.

I’m carrying my down parka and wearing a black turtleneck, black jeans and black boots.

“Don’t you eat anything anymore?” she asks.

“Of course I eat. Jut not as much as I used to.” And not as much as she does, by the look of it.

I immediately feel guilty for noticing that she seems to have gained weight since I last saw her, at Thanksgiving.

But I can’t help it. I know I’m being catty, but she’s being judgmental, too.

And anyway, how can I miss the fact that the buttons on her red cardigan sweater are gaping at the boobs? The sweater is a hand-me-down from me, and it fit perfectly when I gave it to her last month.

It’s pretty clear that my sister is rapidly becoming a clone of our mother, who is a clone of
her
mother.

Nor can I help thinking that there, but for the grace of God—and a huge spaghetti dinner every single Sunday for the rest of my life—go I.

“You know, men don’t like scrawny women,” my sister informs me.

I wonder where she heard that? Probably from my mother. Certainly not from Vinnie, who nags Mary Beth about her weight every time she puts something into her mouth.

“I’m not scrawny,” I tell her.

“Yes, you are. You just can’t see it. I’ve read about that happening. Your body image is distorted when you look in the mirror.”

“That’s what happens to anorexics, Mary Beth. I’m not anorexic.”

She shrugs.

Luckily the baggage carousel beeps twice and lurches into motion, curtailing the conversation.

I step closer, keeping an eye on the heap of dark-colored bags rumbling our way. I tied a bright red ribbon to the handle of mine so that it would stand out.

So, it appears, did everybody else on my flight.

Finally I’ve got the right bag in hand, and Mary Beth and I are stepping outside.

The cold air hits me with a swirl of snowflakes. I shiver violently and zip my coat.

Mary Beth doesn’t even flinch, and she left her coat in the car.

“It’s Lake Effect,” she says, trudging through the blizzard, jangling her keys. “We’re getting a foot today and two feet tomorrow.”

Snow.

Aspen.

Jack.

Funny how everything segues back to him in my newly obsessed brain.

I open my mouth to tell my sister that I met somebody, but she’s talking again, telling me about the tool set she ordered for Vinnie for Christmas from the
Craftsman Tool Hour
on QVC.

Oh, well, it can wait.

Two days later, I still haven’t told anybody about Jack.

At this point, I figure I might as well keep the news to myself.

My sister is wrapped up in Vinnie and the kids; my brothers won’t give a shit; my parents won’t be happy to hear that I’ve met a great guy unless he’s from Brookside, is still living in Brookside, and has pledged never to leave Brookside.

The only person in whom I’d be tempted to confide is my sister-in-law Sara, but she’s got a horrible case of the flu and has been home in bed ever since my plane landed.

This afternoon, as yet another—or perhaps one long, continuous—Lake Effect snowstorm rages outside, my mother, Mary Beth and I are in the kitchen working on the
cucidati
.

In case you were wondering—and I can’t imagine that you weren’t—
cucidati
are Italian fig cookies, kind of like trapezoid-shaped homemade Fig Newtons. They’re a family tradition, as much a part of Christmas as the bright-colored strings of big oval bulbs my father staple-guns to the porch roof every December.

By the time I hit junior high, I wished we could have tiny
white lights like the Gilberts down the street, just as I wished we could get regular cutout Christmas sugar cookies from the bakery at Tops Market like the Gilberts down the street.

Of course, my mother turns up her nose at store-bought cookies and says they taste like sawdust. Personally, I think
cucidati
taste like poop wrapped in pastry, but I wouldn’t tell her that.

The Gilberts never heard of
cucidati
until they moved to Brookside from the Midwest and met us. I know this because one December, when I was around eight, my mother sent me over there with a plateful to welcome them to the neighborhood.

Yes, this was back in the days when you sent a little girl to the new neighbors’ house without worrying that they might be serial-killer pedophiles.

So there I was, all buck teeth and pigtails, offering the plate to WASPy Mrs. Gilbert, who peered under the foil and said politely, “They’re…very nice. What are they?”

And even after I told her, she still didn’t know.

Since moving away from Brookside, I’ve met plenty of people who’ve never heard of
cucidati.
In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody who
has.

Certainly none of my new friends would agree to spend two whole days in a steaming kitchen making twenty dozen of them, which is a three-man job. Rather, three women—because in the Spadolini family, the men don’t cross the kitchen threshold unless it’s time to eat.

Not that I mind making the
cucidati
this time. It’s kind of cozy, and I’m feeling nostalgic, rolling out the dough as my nephews drive their Matchbox cars around the linoleum under the table the way my brothers used to do, and the Ray
Conniff singers croon “Silver Bells” from the stereo in the next room.

My life in Manhattan seems a world away, almost as though it belongs to somebody else.

“You’re rolling too thick,” my mother says, peering over my shoulder. She takes the rolling pin from me and expertly rolls out a patch. “See? Thin. Like this.”

I try it. The dough crumbles.

“Here, let me try.” My mother does it again.

Perfect.

I try again.

“Well, that’s the way the
cucidato
crumbles,” I say, when it falls apart.

My mother, who takes her Christmas baking very seriously, doesn’t even crack a smile.

Switching to a flattery tactic, I tell her, “Maybe when I’m your age, Ma, I’ll be able to do it as well as you can.”

Yeah, like I have any intention of killing myself every Christmas to make a truckload of cookies nobody likes.

“When I was your age, I was doing it as well as I do now,” she tells me. Then she shrugs. “Of course, I was married already and I had Mary Beth.”

“I was married when I was Tracey’s age, too,” my sister observes from her sentry point by the huge tub of figs.

“That’s right, you were,” my mother agrees. “Speaking of getting married, Bruce Cardolini just got engaged to Angie Nardone. They’re getting married on Valentine’s Day.”

“Angie Nardone? She’s only nineteen,” I say in disbelief.

“She’ll be twenty next month,” my mother tells me.

“Oh, well, then, that changes everything,” I say sarcastically.

I keep forgetting we’re in Brookside, land of child brides and twenty-five-year-old spinsters.

“We’ll all be invited to the wedding,” my mother says. “Bruce asked for your address after mass last week, Tracey.”

“That’s nice, but…I don’t know if I can make it.”

“Maybe you’ll get to bring a date,” Mary Beth says, as though that’s the only reason I’d consider not flying home to Buffalo again in two months.

I realize that both my mother and my sister are looking at me as though they feel sorry for me.

I want to tell them that I’m leading a very fulfilling single life in the city.

So why do I blurt, “I met someone” instead?

They look blank.

Vinnie Jr. drives a miniature Harley over my sock-clad foot as I clarify, “I met a guy. A really nice guy.”

“Are you getting married?” my mother asks, crossing herself.

“Is he weird like that Will was?” my sister asks.

Why did I have to go and say anything?

Too late to take it back, so I muster all my patience to say, “No, he’s not weird, and I’ve only known him a few weeks so we’re not getting married, but I really, really like him.”

“Where’s he from?”

“Westchester.”

My sister, the home-shopping-channel addict, lights up with recognition. “That’s QVC headquarters. In Pennsylvania, right?”

“No, not West Chester, Pennsylvania. Westchester County, New York. Right near the city.”

“He’s from the city?” My mother looks disappointed.