“…his…most developed…skill is coaxing.”
“Malcolm coaxed me, too, sweetheart.”
“I’ll pay…you back.”
“It’s not yours to pay back.”
“Open your mouth, Mama.”
“Nothing wrong…with…my mouth.”
“Your mouth is just fine, Aunt Floria.” Anthony
who cooks but is not a cook. Who is a chef. That’s what Leonora reminds everyone to say. Chef. Though he learned his recipes from Floria and Victor, who learned them from Riptide: layers of eggplant with sauce and cheese, manicotti or ravioli or lasagna so hot you can’t touch them for minutes, just watch the cheese dribble down the sides. It’s food Floria loves. Not like Julian’s anniversary food, when he takes her to gourmet restaurants—brandy sauces and whole fish with eyes—where you always pay extra for the salad
“Chefs are…smarter than cooks….”
“Thank you, Aunt Floria.”
“…especially if they…are chefs…in a bookstore.”
“Ida and Joey send their love.”
Half that bookstore Anthony’s now that he’s married to Ida
“Old…to be a…father. All…that waiting.”
“Floria doesn’t mean it.” Leonora’s voice.
“…waiting makes…you…cautious.”
“True enough. Ida says I’m the kind of father who buys safety gear before choosing athletic gear for Joey.”
“Sad…you sound sad…always sad when Ida moves out….”
Some people have several marriages. Some have one marriage. But Anthony and Ida have one separation that’s disrupted by intervals of marriage
Floria has two marriages. And two wedding dresses. The first one she sewed. The second one was store-bought and too expensive
“You’re always sewing for others, sweetheart.”
But the saleswomen don’t understand, even though Floria clearly says “a wedding dress,” and then “a dress to wear to my wedding.” A bride her age is beyond their imagination.
“Are you the mother of the bride?”
“Are you a guest?”
“I’m it…the bride….”
“Mama?”
“She said something about being a bride.”
“Laughing…gas…”
“Everyone is here, Mama.”
“Oh,” the saleswomen say. Congratulate her. Lead her to mother of the bride outfits. Outfits to be buried in.
“Beige is not a good color for me.”
“If you just put on some lipstick. Some eyeshadow.”
“I’d feel funny with all that smeared on my face.”
They suggest different shoes, a higher heel, straps though she’s already wearing the shoes she plans to wear for her wedding. New dress. But time-proven shoes.
“Here is your way out,” she tells Julian that night.
“Saleswomen have trouble seeing me as a bride.”
“I’ve always seen you as a bride. For over thirty years I’ve thought of you as a bride.”
When the photos of their wedding are developed, Floria gets out the album of her first wedding, looks with her new husband at pictures of herself as a much younger bride. “I was there,” Julian says, “see, I was there, the best man,” as if he’d been with her from that day forward; as if Malcolm had been no more than a switch in her life, an idea, an inconvenience; as if she could rewind her memories and relive them with Julian. But those years of being with Malcolm are part of her life, too, and brought her two daughters
“Good. She’s swallowing.”
“Hot…”
“I’ll blow on it for you, Mama.” Bianca’s voice.
Hot, Floria’s face is hot
from playing in the schoolyard, rescuing ants she hides in the pocket of her blouse till she sneaks them into the castle she made for them from clay. She hides the castle beneath her bed so her mother won’t find the ants and kill them. “What do you think you are doing, Floria, bringing vermin into the house?” To her mother, any animal you don’t buy in the pet shop is vermin
“Vermin…”
“We don’t have a problem with that, sweetheart.”
“I can give you the name of a reasonable exterminator, Julian.”
“Here is another spoonful, Mama.”
“The…castle has…”
two turrets and tunnels that Floria pokes through the clay with her pencil. When the lead breaks, she fixes it with her brother’s pencil sharpener. But Victor gets huffy because his sharpener is gummed up with clay. Victor can get so huffy. Gets huffy and wants to divorce Leonora, but then stays, while Floria divorces Malcolm
“Because of the…sweaty sleep…”
“Sshhh—Aunt Floria is saying something.”
“Mama?”
“Because of what?”
“Sweaty…sleep…”
and Julian loving her while silk-sweat blossoms on her neck, spreads into her hair, slicks her breasts, her thighs, while her body is cooling itself, making her grateful for its wisdom
“She says she’s hot.”
“Malcolm…won’t touch…”
“What about Papa?”
“I want to…pay Julian…back.”
“For what?”
“What…he borrowed.”
“But we’re married.” Julian. Old man…so old. A glimpse into the future Floria doesn’t want. “Besides, whatever you paid me would still belong to both of us.”
Tears in her eyes at the relief of money not being such a problem anymore—
“Don’t cry, Mama.”
the relief of Malcolm no longer wasting money with his schemes; relief of not just owning her sewing machine and dummy, but every piece of her furniture, most of it new—store-bought or made by Julian—except for inheriting her father’s Victrola. Things she wants. No more furnished apartments. No more slipcovers. No more landlords who keep her deposit. Still, first time she and Julian move, she feels she’s stealing the landlord’s furniture, that she should move during the night. So accustomed to furniture staying behind, to starting out with different old furniture like that brown couch on Ryer Avenue with the musty-sweet smell
Fanning that smell away with her hands. “…awful…smell—”
“Mama—you’ll tear off the tubes.”
“Get a hold of her arms.”
musty-sweet smell of the brown couch, too big for her slipcovers, brown and too soft, with divided pillows that swallow spoons and babies and coins
“Hold still, Floria.”
“Coins. I…want—”
“She’s getting even more upset.”
“Yes, Mama? What do you want?”
“…pay Julian…back.”
“Just tell her she can pay you back, Julian.”
“You can pay me back, sweetheart.”
Her father tucks money into her palm the way he does with the twins. Forgetting bills and coins in his pockets just so he can enjoy finding them
“Now she’s crying.”
and giving them to her. Bills and coins to pay Julian back
“Floria—”
“She’s in pain.”
“Quiet.”
Quiet, first she must be quiet, because her father is wiping dust from a record with a folded undershirt. When the voice starts, he becomes flat as he leans into the breath of the voice, voice high and thin like a wail
“Can’t we give her something for the pain?”
“When’s that doctor supposed to be here?”
Floria closes her hand
hides the money from them all
“Mine—”
“Of course it’s yours, Aunt Floria.”
“Mine—”
and it’s the pebble in her palm. Days and months and years thinking of her pebble in Slattery Park, there if she needs it to remind her she wants to stay alive. Or make it possible for the not wanting to live. She knows the shape of the pebble, touches it every day with her thoughts, pictures Malcolm taking her to t
he park, digging his fingers into a crevice between two large stones, shaking his head, trying another gap, and pulling out her pebble. But one Sunday when she’s no longer afraid and asks Malcolm to take her there—he leads her to a pebble larger than hers, brighter.
“What did you do with it, Malcolm?”
“You’re holding it.”
“No.”
“It is just a stone.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I tossed it. All right? Into some bushes.”
“But where were you those hours?”
“What does it matter?”
“Because I felt safe thinking of you finding a place for the stone. And now
“—it’s all…false.”
Malcolm comes running toward her, and her mother is clicking photos, and it’s no longer Slattery Park but Central Park, where her mother is making her and Malcolm run toward each other on the snow-covered lawn, click-clicking at the bride and groom running toward each other, one standing still while the other runs, arms extended. “More exuberance,” her mother demands. “Motion.” They have to repeat their run, click-click, repeat their embrace till Floria is stiff. Frozen. Her brother’s new girlfriend offers her red cardigan. Leonora, half her size. Tries to button that tight cardigan over Floria’s satin breasts. Good luck. The camera click-clicking. Warming herself inside Leonora’s tight red cardigan till her mother makes her take it off before she runs toward Malcolm again. Running toward Malcolm, again and once again, till it’s only the running
“Julian? Let me help you change her sheets.”
“Thank you.”
and the running is toward Julian, such a long time to get there, to him, but still early enough in her life to test him—sudden heat and silk-sweat blossoms—and Malcolm is fading…one of his pranks. He can be so childish, Malcolm. Childish and spoiled. Aunt Camilla says he promises clouds and gives you dirt. One trip abroad every year for Aunt Camilla, always farther away than Italy
“Italy…is not far…enough for…”
“I’ll take you to Italy, Mama, once you get better. We’ll visit that island where they make lace.”
Lace and weddings.
“Are you the mother of the bride?”
“Are you a guest?”
“Guest…”
“Yes?”
“At…my own…wedding.”
“You were the bride, Floria.” Leonora’s voice. “A stunning bride.”
“And you’ve already had many anniversaries with Mr. Thompson.” That’s Bianca.
“Do you thinks she understands what you’re saying, Belinda?”
“Frogs…”
“What about frogs, sweetheart?”
“Julian likes…frogs…my secret.”
The day before their first anniversary, and she’s putting the frog tattoo on her butt while he’s working at his furniture shop. But it won’t stick, the tattoo, because she’s forgotten to remove the plastic on the decal. The second frog she does just right: places it on her butt, wets it down, waits thirty seconds before pulling the backing off. And there it is—she can see it in the mirror, smack on her left buttock. To keep it from rubbing off against her underpants, she walks around bare-assed, cooks bare-assed linguine. Then pulls on a skirt just before Julian comes home.
“I know that smile. You’re up to something.”
She shakes her head. Grins. “My secret.”
Five in the morning she’s awake, rolls on her right side, fits her back against his belly, burrows herself into the warmth of his half-sleep spooning, sweet spooning, till they begin to make love, and he’s waking fully, and she positions herself so he has to see the tattoo.
“My God.” He touches it. “Does it hurt? Why would you do that?” Then the relief in his voice:
“It’s on top of your skin.” And they’re both laughing. “You’re my wild woman,” he says
“Wild…woman.” Floria feels wilder now than when she was a girl.
“Now I remember, sweetheart. That tattoo, right?”
“Cats…the wilder…cat…”
“What cats, Aunt Floria?”
“Did your mother have a cat, Belinda?”
Wilder. Wilder than she feels at twenty-two and walks tilted back to carry her huge belly. Crocheting silky white thread into her baby’s christening gown. White on white. Half transparent. One gown because she doesn’t know she’s carrying two. That’s why one twin has to wear that store-bought christening gown. Bianca. Who doesn’t last. Is that why?
“Remember…the gown?”
“We are all praying for you.” Irish Spring and fried food. So it’s the priest standing above her
and she’s fretting with Julian about their letter to the Irish-Spring-Priest after their friend Maxine’s funeral mass, where the Irish-Spring-Priest only talked about man’s relationship with God, man-this and man-that. Is it too rude to tell him so? Julian says their letter is necessary. “How else will he know to do it right at another woman’s funeral?”
At my funeral. We just didn’t know it would be this soon
“We…didn’t know…it’ll…be this soon.”
Maxine. Radical and conservative, outspoken on both, sending donations to Planned Parenthood and the Vatican. Whenever Maxine gets too militant, Floria stays away from her for a while. Like when their super is gossiping in the lobby about his niece. “Got herself pregnant.”
Maxine fixes her hot gray stare on him. “You mean she held up a sperm bank with a gun?”
He laughs, uneasily.
“The only fair way is to have every boy, by the time he’s fourteen, freeze his sperm at a sperm bank and get snipped.”
The super gasps. “Snipped?”
“Snipped.” Maxine nods. “Once he marries, he can withdraw from his sperm account if his wife agrees. The sperm will be released to them if they both sign an agreement that they’ll take care of the child resulting from his sperm. Long term it keeps your taxes down.”
The super is shaking his head. “And how is that?” “Because part of that agreement is that he pays child support if there’s a divorce.”
Floria and Julian like Maxine’s feistiness, and that’s why they have to write that letter to the Irish-Spring-Priest, who’s washing Floria’s legs with a sponge that’s almost dry. Priests and doctors. Spoiled men, all of them, expecting your instant respect and obedience while, already, they’re rushing away from you. Floria’s doctor calls her “Kiddo” though she’s old enough to be his grandmother. It amuses and annoys her. When she has her eye infection, he tells her to soak her eye in front of the television, as if that’s all women do. When her fingernails keep breaking, Dr. Kiddo prescribes prenatal vitamins. She’s not about to take them, and when the pharmacist agrees and suggests gelatin capsules instead, Floria starts to ignore much of Doctor Kiddo’s advice, even makes fun of him when she comes home to Julian. But Doctor Kiddo gets even. Finds her cancer
Against her thighs, the sponge makes harsh whispers.
She doesn’t want the hands of the Irish-Spring-Priest there
“Don’t.” She tries to raise herself on her elbows.
But it’s the girl from Hospice, dipping the sponge into a basin of tepid water, wringing it out more than Floria likes.
Whispers…people knock at her door. Smother their steps on the rug. Neighbors murmur their I’m-so-sorries
“What can we do to help?”
“She’s much too thin.”
Neighbors…each with one nose and one mouth and two eyes and two ears, but the arrangement so different
nose mouth eyes ears watching faces in stores and subways, in crowds, always amazed how unique each of them looks, given how many people there are in the world and that each has the same four ingredients. Nose mouth eyes ears…
“How is she doing, Julian?”
“My father-in-law’s aunt had the same thing.”
“Sleet. That’s what they’re forecasting.”
“Chocolate, a two-fo
r-one special, but only till Friday.”
Floria likes Barricini’s better than Loft’s. “Not…Loft’s…”
“We don’t think of Al Gore as being handsome, but he is not a bad looking fellow.”
“Too well-behaved. He should have fought for the votes that belonged to him.”
A thief will steal more if he isn’t stopped. If the law didn’t stop Malcolm, he’d move her into The White House. Instead he tried to move her to Co-op City, built on swampland, on failed Freedomland. Half of the Concourse moved to Co-op City, changing the neighborhood. Mustache Sheila liked it at first, then kvetched about structural problems
“Not for…me.”
Floria knows what it’s like to be the wife of a thief. Making nice though you’re ashamed of his bragging and grabbing and coaxing. But Malcolm likes newness, likes moving on. “It’s in the country beyond Pelham Bay Park,” he said. “And it’s affordable. At least take a look.” But looking confirmed what Floria knew—that Co-op City was ugly, and that she didn’t want to live in tall skinny boxes so near the clouds, that you couldn’t see your children playing in the grass. In Mustache Sheila’s apartment, a gap opened as the building spread while settling, and it got filled in with concrete
Franklin…praying over her. Franklin who is Belinda’s priest and became a history teacher when Malcolm died and his roofing business caved into itself, only held up by Malcolm’s schemes. Franklin prays two hours every night, and Belinda is jealous. Jealous of her husband’s God. Jealous of Bianca.
Floria closes her eyes so she can hear their voices more clearly and tune out the breath of snow that presses against the windowpanes, snow
on the day she meets Julian but marries Malcolm. White on white
“You’re so brave, Julian.”
“Problem with my daughter is that she’s set on having this one be a girl.”
Floria likes Franklin better than the Irish-Spring-Priest. Better than the television bishop
“Believe the incredible, and you can do the impossible.” But two men carry the television from her apartment. Repossessed