Julie and Romeo Page 10

  I hung up the phone and looked at my watch. “She said a half an hour. We’re going to have to really move it to be there on time.”

  “You have to stop being so afraid of her,” Gloria said.

  “Why?” I said. “She’s scary.”

  Gloria drove me back to the flower shop so I could pick up my car. “You’re going to have a wonderful time tomorrow,” she said. “We’ll look back on all of this someday and have one hell of a laugh. It will be years from now, but it will happen.”

  I put my arms around her neck. “I’m going to have to take your word on it.”

  She tapped the horn twice and waved as she drove away. I wished that she could have come home with me, but she didn’t offer because she knew it wasn’t right and I knew it wasn’t right and neither one of us had to say it.

  Dreaded Lexus. Enough of that. Sandy and Nora were sitting in the kitchen. They had plugged the kids into reruns of Gilligan’s Island, which I felt sure was doing them absolutely no good and very possibly some harm, but we needed the privacy.

  “So,” Nora said. She was dressed casually, which meant slim black pants and a fitted black sweater, with her hair pulled back in a gold barrette. Sandy was dressed casually, too, which meant the Celtics T-shirt had just come out of the dryer.

  “So here’s the thing.” I sat down across from them in the Meet the Press configuration these family meetings usually took on. “A priest came to see me at the shop today, a Father Al, and he brought me a letter from Romeo.”

  “After I left?” Sandy asked.

  “Actually, yes. You had just gone.”

  “You’re getting letters from Catholic priests now?” Nora said incredulously.

  “He didn’t write the letter, he only delivered it, and you might want to pace yourself because there’s more to come.” I couldn’t help but think about the night I had called both of the girls home to tell them Mort had left with Lila. Sandy was married to Sandy Anderson then and both girls brought their husbands. It was so humiliating to have to announce my private life like that, to tell them all that my marriage had failed and that their father preferred a much younger, much more attractive woman to me. Both girls cried. They had counted on us always being together. I thought that night was the hardest thing I was ever going to have to do. It turns out I was mistaken.

  “He wants to see you,” Sandy said.

  Bless her for that. “Tomorrow morning.”

  Nora looked at her watch. “Well, seeing as how it’s seven o’clock now, I don’t think you’re calling us over so we can discuss this. I think you’ve said yes and you’re just filling us in on the details.”

  “I wasn’t planning on asking permission, if that’s what you mean.”

  “The answer is no,” Nora said, standing up. “We’ve been threatened and harassed, property has been damaged.” Nora took anything concerning property very seriously. “These aren’t just people we don’t like anymore. These are dangerous people. Dangerous to you and me and Sandy, not to mention the children. You just can’t keep thinking that you’re the only person in this world whose needs matter. You have to think about your family.”

  I was trying to remember how Nora had taken the news of her father’s departure. I wondered if she’d ever called him and roughed him up, tried to make things turn out the way she wanted. I had no idea.

  “I’ll admit things have gotten out of hand, but I want to see Romeo again, I need to. I just don’t want to lie to you. You asked me to tell you the truth, this is the truth.”

  Sandy was thinking about it. She was holding the past in one hand and the present in the other and making her silent assessments. I asked her where she stood on all of this.

  “I think these are really, really crazy people,” she said quietly. “And I think you’re making a mistake.”

  I could live with that.

  “Don’t call me,” Nora said. “I have to detach myself from this.” She picked up her purse and said good night to her sister, her niece, and her nephew.

  “Does that mean ‘Don’t call me and let me know how it goes’ or does that mean ‘Don’t ever call me again’?”

  “I’ll let you know,” Nora said, and then she was gone.

  I had a real lump in my throat. It wasn’t that I needed her approval. It wasn’t that I was worried she’d never come back. But we had been having the same old fight for so many years that it just made me sad beyond measure. She was my daughter, she had been my baby. We had shared a body for a while. It seemed like ever since then I’d been missing her.

  “So you aren’t going to walk?” I said, turning around to Sandy.

  “I’m not moving out, if that’s what you mean, but I want you to listen to me, Mom. I think this is a serious mistake you’re making. That’s what you told me, and maybe for my age, for that time in my life, you were right.”

  I was fairly stunned by her admission. I reached out and petted her hair. “I’m just so much older.” I felt so much older.

  “I know,” she said without any unkindness. “That’s why you should know better.”

  Tony came into the kitchen with a flashlight. “Come outside, Grandma. I made you a surprise.”

  “He’s been working on this all afternoon,” Sandy said.

  I followed my grandson out into the yard. He was holding a piece of paper in one hand and shining his flashlight with the other. He took me over to the roses, which looked perfectly healthy in their new bed of black soil.

  “I know that woman wasn’t coming to borrow the roses. I know she wanted to steal them,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said. “You’re right.”

  “So I did this thing. We learned this in Cub Scouts. See, I broke some sticks and set them in the ground, see?” He shined his light down, and sure enough, there were about a half a dozen small sticks set casually among the rosebushes. “Then I made a map that shows where all the sticks are now. Then every morning I bring out the map and I check to see if the sticks are in the same place. Mr. Hollins says you have to remember that the wind can blow them around some, so not to get upset if they aren’t in exactly the same place, but you’ll know if someone was there.”

  I crouched down and studied his work. Tony was a seriously meticulous kid. “It’s a good plan,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “At least it keeps us safe,” he said.

  Let me extend the fairy tale, if I may. It was more complicated than it had originally appeared. It wasn’t just the five frightening fire-breathing sons I would have to contend with. There was also a desert to cross and then a jungle of thorns. There were seven years of drought and then seven years of flood, followed by famine and pestilence and war. In addition there was a burden of doubt that had to be dragged behind me in a burlap sack at all times. It was absolutely written in the decree of my fate that Doubt had to come along. It had a whining, high-pitched voice that rang in my ears for every step I took.

  “Are you sure?” Doubt would say. “Do you know him? Could he be worth all of this suffering you’ve brought on the world?”

  “Shut up,” I say to the sack.

  “Have you thought of the people you love?” Doubt says. “The people you’re hurting?”

  “Shut up,” I say.

  “He may not even be there—did you think of that? After all this time, it could all turn out to be nothing more than an elaborate hoax and you will be forced to live with the shame and embarrassment for the rest of your days.”

  “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.”

  chapter eleven

  I WAS UP AT SIX, UP MEANING OUT OF BED. I HAD been awake since three. I conditioned my hair and blew it dry. I used some of Sandy’s face scrub, just in case he decided to look too closely at my pores. I cut all the tags off my champagne underwear and put it on. It was pretty. It would have been much prettier on the girl who sold it to me, but it would have been too big for her, and anyway, she wasn’t here. I changed clothes three times and then drew a line with myself. The next thing I
put on was what I was wearing, otherwise everything in my closet was going to wind up on the floor and I was going to fall into the morass. I didn’t know that this part of human nature survived. I thought that it had slipped away at some undefined age, like baby teeth and menstruation. I thought that I had outgrown the ability to look into a full closet and think that there was nothing there. Now here I was, living proof that it is possible to become a teenaged girl again. Finally I chose a pair of heavy linen pants and a dark blue boat-neck sweater, an outfit that I thought made me look smart but unconcerned. I was growing less concerned by the minute. All of the things I should have been worried about were falling away: There went Nora’s wrath. There went all the Cacciamani boys’ threats. There went the old matriarch, who may or may not have died on my lawn yesterday. The hardest thing to put aside was Sandy, but I’ll tell you, I did that, too. I was happy. I was a woman getting dressed for a date with a man I didn’t really know but who I knew I was crazy about. I put on the little amber drop earrings that I always got the most compliments on. I put on lipstick, wiped it off on a Kleenex, put on lip gloss. I slipped on my most sensible walking shoes.

  Sandy was in the kitchen with a cup of coffee reading the front page of the paper. “You look so nice,” she said. She looked mostly tired herself, like she might have been sitting there all night.

  “I really appreciate that.”

  “Don’t,” she said. “Frankly, I’d rather you didn’t look nice. You know, I thought about nailing your bedroom door shut, but then I figured the hammer might wake you up.”

  “I always was a light sleeper.” I poured myself a cup of coffee.

  “I just decided there comes a point in every woman’s life when she has to accept the fact that her mother is all grown up and she should be allowed to make her own mistakes.”

  “Are we there already?” I sat down beside her. “It seems like only yesterday I was holding your head back and trying to pour liquid penicillin down your throat because you were half dying of something but you didn’t like the taste of the medicine.”

  She smiled a little. “I don’t remember that. I mean, I remember the scene, but in my version I’m pouring it down little Tony. It’s a sort of bubble-gum pink, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Maybe that’s why this whole thing is harder for Nora. She hasn’t had kids of her own yet. She hasn’t been thrown up on so many times that there’s no point in trying to look good anymore. She isn’t used to being bent to somebody else’s will. When you have kids you bend, you just have to. Kids make you good at not getting your own way anymore. I don’t like what you’re doing, but at least I understand that there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “Thanks, honey.”

  “Do you want me to drive you over there?”

  I shook my head. “It’s not far. I’m going to walk. It’s nice outside.”

  “You and your walking. Mother, you are a constant surprise to me.”

  I shifted in my chair and stared at the clock. “It isn’t time to go yet.”

  “Here,” Sandy said, shoving half the Sunday paper toward me. It was as thick as a brick. “I’m going to make waffles for the kids. Do you want waffles?”

  “No waffles,” I said, picturing myself becoming sticky and having to change again. I spread open the paper. I went through all of it while the kids watched cartoons and jumped around with the energy that comes from Sunday morning syrup. I read Sarah the funny papers and Tony sat and listened to save himself the trouble of having to read them himself. I put on an apron and washed the dishes. Then I went into the pantry and alphabetized all the spices in the spice rack. That’s what I had come to.

  I looked at the clock again. “I could go now.”

  “If you want to be absurdly early.”

  “Where you going?” Sarah said. She tried to put her sticky fingers in my hair but I was too fast for her.

  “Grandma’s got a play date,” Sandy said. She looked at me with some fondness. “Get out of here.”

  I kissed them each good-bye and made my break for the door. It was too early, but I couldn’t control myself. I stopped off at the rosebushes and, to the best of my memory, Tony’s sticks were all in proper alignment. The plants themselves seemed to have survived their trauma unscathed. If anything, with all that new dirt and fertilizer they would probably have a record-breaking summer. Then I started walking. I was only thinking about Romeo now, how much I used to hate him and how much I didn’t hate him anymore. I was thinking about his hair, which was rough as a brush, half black and half gray. By the time I got to the end of Cedar and turned on to Elm, I was repeating his letter again and again in my mind. Love, Romeo. I was walking faster. When I got to the parking lot of the CVS, I was trying hard not to run. It was eight-thirty when I got there and I had a light sweat on my forehead. I went in the store (thankfully open twenty-four hours) and went straight to the condom section, where lo and behold, a full half hour early, Romeo was waiting.

  We stood there for a minute, grinning stupidly at our own good fortune.

  “You met Al,” he said.

  “A great guy.”

  “He really liked you. He said you thought he was going to shoot you.”

  “I’d had a bad couple of days.”

  “You are so beautiful.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing about you.”

  He reached out his hand and took my hand. I stepped toward him and then he kissed me. Very few people were in CVS at eight-thirty on a Sunday morning. There in the condom aisle I wrapped my arms around his neck and he crossed his fine hands behind my back. That kiss was worth everything. Even if every rose had died, that kiss would have made it right. It was tender and passionate. I tapped my teeth against his teeth. We bit each other’s lips kindly. I used the muscle of my tongue for something better than conversation. We must have made a sight, two sixty-year-old people looking like they might just drop down on the flat-pile orange carpet and do it there in the birth-control aisle.

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay.” He kissed my chin. “We’ve got a big day ahead of us.” He took my hand and we started to walk out of the store. “Wait a minute.” He stopped. “I want to buy you something.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know, a present. Something from CVS. I mean, I think we should support the place. It’s been so good to us.”

  I thought about it for a minute. “Licorice. Black licorice.”

  He nodded solemnly. “For you, two packages.”

  We went back to the candy aisle, dazed by the bright assortment, the shiny possibilities of sweetness. I decided on a package of Switzer and one of Nibs. Then we went outside and got into his car. He held the door open for me. You would have thought we were in the South.

  “So, where are we going?”

  “Surprise,” he said. “Are you hungry?”

  The thought of food was impossible at the moment. I shook my head.

  “Me neither.” Romeo was a good driver. “So, you met my mother, too. You know everybody.”

  I looked out the window and watched Somerville shooting past me. All of the McDonald’s and Pay-Less Shoes, the endless stream of Dunkin’ Donuts, they looked brighter to me now. Forgive me my sentimentality. It was suddenly a better-looking town. “I didn’t kill her, did I?”

  “She’s fine. Just a little scratched.”

  “She poked me once. Then the second time I dodged it. I swear to God, I never touched her.”

  “She poked you?”

  “She did, see?” I pulled down the neck of my sweater to show him the round purple bruise up high on the left side of my chest, showing also the strap of the champagne bra for good measure.

  He looked while driving. “The Cacciamani stigmata!” he said. “You’ve been initiated. I’ve had that exact same bruise for probably fifty percent of my life. She has it perfected. She doesn’t even have to look anymore and she hits right in the soft spot between the bones. It hurts like hell. None of us are
ever smart enough to duck. We just stand there and take it. Boy, she must have been really surprised.”

  “It was hard to tell,” I said. “She was going down. You’ve got a tough mother, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  “I have a tough mother,” he said with gravity. “She was a good mother in a lot of ways. She worked so hard for the business, she took good care of me and my dad. I think about what it must have been like for her, a pretty girl coming over from Italy all by herself, not speaking a word of English, but she just took it on. I don’t think anything ever stopped her. But I’ll tell you, she rules. I think she wanted to have a ton of kids and it was too bad she wound up with just me.”

  “That’s not so bad, just you.”

  “She really was too much mother for one person,” he said cryptically. “So, then when I married Camille and we had so many kids, she was in heaven. We bought the duplex underneath my parents’ place—how’s that for genius? I don’t know how Camille even stood it. My mother just took over everything she touched. It was like my kids had two mothers, one who was really sweet to them and one who kicked their butts into line.”

  “She poked your kids?”

  “She poked the kids. She poked my father. She poked the dogs. She even poked the mailman once for being late. He tried to sue her.” He laughed a little. “I always thought it would stop someday. She’s pretty old, you know, I thought she was going to be winding down. Now she’s poking you.” He shook his head. “I really am sorry about that.”

  “I’m sure if my daughter Nora had seen you, she would have done more than poke. How much trouble are your kids giving you?”

  “I have to tell you, it’s been a real surprise to me. There was a time the whole Cacciamani-Roseman thing was of great interest to me, but I dropped it so many years ago. I never would have imagined they’d keep the torches burning.”

  “So it’s bad?”

  “I’d say very bad. Except for Plummy. She absolutely doesn’t get it, and she’s not particularly interested, either. She just shrugs the whole thing off and goes to school.”