“Oh, but here’s a little advice for you,” I said, and turned before I crossed the threshold. “Make sure you keep your fat clothes.”
It was a cute 1920s red-brick bungalow with a fireplace in the living room and a swinging door in the kitchen. And it was for rent.
I had already peeked through the windows the night before after reading the ad for it in the newspaper. The rent was three hundred dollars, it had two bedrooms, and was perfect for my boyfriend and me.
I was twenty, and had moved out a couple months before to live with said boyfriend and seven of his friends, most of whom were in punk bands, one of whom would boil a massive cast-iron pot full of beans, stick it in the refrigerator that had no shelves, and eat from it for a week. When it was time for a new batch of beans, he’d pull the pot from the fridge and take it directly back to the stovetop, not bothering to make a pit stop in the sink for a meeting with soap before boiling up another week’s worth.
I didn’t mind living with eight boys and the collective six dogs, two pythons, a monitor lizard, and a collection of other pets we probably never realized we had. One by one, however, the boys moved out until it was just my boyfriend and me, although it took me until this moment to realize I was most likely the reason they all split. Boys don’t want to share bathrooms with girls.
It was time for us to move into something for just the two of us, six of us if you counted the dogs, python, and lizard that were left when everyone else moved out. And the two-bedroom brick bungalow was it. I knew it the moment I drove up to look at it.
I made an appointment to see the house with the property manager that day after lunch with my mother. I was so excited that I could talk about nothing else during lunch: my very first house…with my own furniture, my own backyard, my own kitchen. I already had paint colors picked out and ideas about decorating.
“Why don’t I go with you?” my mother suggested. “I don’t have anything planned for the afternoon.”
We headed over to the house, and in the bright light of day, I thought it was even more adorable. The wooden sash windows sparkled, the lawn gleamed emerald, and I could easily see past-due notices from credit card companies being mailed to me there. It was perfect.
The property manager was waiting for us outside with what appeared to be a friend, and I introduced my mom and myself. Together, we walked into the house and it was confirmed: The inside was exactly as I thought it would be. Wood floors, a little scuffed but who cares, and a brick fireplace with two bookcases flanking it. It was marvelous. I was ready to sign on the spot.
I turned around to whisper, “Isn’t this fantastic?” to my mother, but she was gone. Not behind me, not in front of me, she had vanished.
“Mom?” I said as I walked into the kitchen, which was original by the way, complete with a huge farmhouse sink and a refrigerator I was sure had at least a couple of shelves in it.
There she was, in the corner of the kitchen, her face flushed red.
“Did I raise you to be an animal?” she said, staring at me. “That’s the way you want to live? Like an animal?”
“What?” I replied. “What happened?”
She pursed her lips tightly in anger, then pointed in a direction a little bit past me.
I turned around and darted my eyes everywhere, until my gaze hit the floor.
“That,” my mother added in a hiss, “is a roach.”
And, sure enough, behind the door, was an oblong dark corpse. But it wasn’t just a roach. It was plus-sized. Like a Florida roach, the kind that fly and lift unattended puppies into the sky. It was so big I couldn’t figure out how it got into the house without the aid of a dog door.
The roach was on its back in a death pose, its legs rising up into the air like twigs, casting a long, terrifying shadow from the light above.
“You can’t live here,” my mother insisted. “This is a hovel. It’s disgusting!”
“This is a totally cute house!” I replied. “They probably just sprayed, that’s why it’s dead right out in the open.”
“Where there is one roach, there are a thousand. They’re all looking at us right now, do you know that?” my mother said, her face deepening into crimson. “This kitchen is like the Coliseum of roaches. They are behind every single wall in here! And they will shit in every speck of food you buy!”
“Mom,” I insisted, “this is a perfect house for us. I want this house. One dead roach doesn’t mean the house is infested.”
“Yes it does,” she volleyed.
“Mom—”
“Yes it does,” she shot.
“Mom—”
“Yes it does,” she concluded. “If you rent this house, I will have a heart attack worrying about roaches crawling in everything you eat…crawling over you as you sleep, hiding in your shoes, laying eggs in your ears.”
“I’ll wear earplugs,” I offered.
“Roaches carry cancer,” she said simply. “And if you live in this house, you’re going to get it.”
I was about to say, “They do not! They carry cholera,” but at that moment, the kitchen door swung open, and the property manager and her friend walked into the kitchen.
“Excuse us,” she said as she took some papers out of a folder and put them on the counter.
“So just sign here,” the manager said as she pointed to someplace on the paper. “And you can move in as soon as I get your deposit.”
“Thank you!” the friend, who was not a friend at all but a rental competitor, said. “My boyfriend is going to love it!”
I saw my mother’s face return to a pinkish hue, now that the danger had passed. I had lost the house, just like that. The fireplace, bookcases, wood floor, and farmhouse sink would not ever be mine. I felt my face turning red.
My mother more tightly clutched her purse to her body as she passed the woman who would allow herself to live like an animal, and walked out of the kitchen.
“Look at that, Mom,” I heard myself say out loud. “There’s a huge dead roach behind the kitchen door. The kind that carries cancer.”
And then I followed her out of the house.
For the first time in our lives, Christmas Eve was not going to be at my mother’s house.
“I’ve done it for forty years,” my mom had announced suddenly. “Figure it out on your own.”
It came as a significant shock to most of my family; how would our holiday stay intact if we changed venues? What about tradition? No one’s ever decided to light a Christmas tree in front of the Empire State Building; it would be heresy! We had never had Christmas Eve anywhere else, and her announcement was very much akin to my mother canceling the holiday altogether.
What were we supposed to do now, gather at the buffet at Outback, my parents’ favorite restaurant (but only before 5:00 P.M.), or, even worse, meet up in the parking lot of the casino where she’d suggested we have Thanksgiving? If we started having milestone events at the casino, I had no idea what the future held for my family, but if this was the direction we were heading, it wasn’t good and could only involve myriad single-wides on a dirt lot somewhere in West Phoenix with a cardboard sign that said “Notaro Village” in Sharpie, nailed to the mailbox. And possibly a communal outhouse.
But my baby sister, Lisa, took it in stride. She simply shrugged and said, “So? Let’s just have Christmas at my house.”
“Do you—do you think we’re…allowed?” I stammered.
“Why not?” Lisa said. “She was the one who said she was sick of being everyone’s Christmas servant. In my book, that leaves it wide open.”
I thought about it for a minute and it seemed plausible. Why couldn’t we have it at Lisa’s house? Our traditional Christmas Eve antipasto was easy enough to re-create. I knew where all of the good Italian delis in town were. I knew how to make roasted peppers and garlic in olive oil; I could roll up prosciutto and soppressata. It could actually be like Christmas!
Until my sister said, “And I’m thinking about making this thing I h
ad at a restaurant that was so good. It was Brie baked in blueberries!”
Brie and blueberries, the hair standing up on my neck screamed. Not only are we changing locales but we’re also introducing unknown variables? I began to panic. Didn’t she know how this might tip the balance of the holiday dynamic? Everything had been the same, exactly the same, on Christmas Eve for as long as I knew it. We used the same plates. We sat in the same seats. We had the same arguments, although the subject of Jill Biden’s promiscuity was a new topic introduced in 2012, a product of residual anger left over from the election, and we had to clear the room of everyone under eighteen.
And now, Brie and blueberries? That might knock us out of orbit, only to end up at the casino next year! It wasn’t Italian, I knew that, but what nationality are blueberries?
I looked at my sister, and she was so excited. She had just taken on a lot, I knew, and if need be, I thought, I could do damage control once my mother saw the new dish on the antipasto spread. I would take the blame. She hates me the most, anyway, and I could just say that I borrowed the recipe from my husband’s kin, who have been in the United States for so long that they are an eighth of everything, including Pilgrims, Holler Folk, Slave Owners, Abolitionists, Sharecroppers, and People Who Eat Cornbread. It was the cornbread faction that made my mother cry when I got engaged.
As my sister and I set everything up for dinner that Christmas Eve, she pulled the Brie and blueberries out of the oven. It looked delicious. She placed it in the very center of the table, within eyeshot of everyone. I knew this had the potential of a Jill Biden–type evacuation of the young, and I just crossed my fingers that we could get past this potential disaster without wills being redrawn and paternity tests challenged (which is always Plan A with the cornbread side of the family).
I waited nervously as the rest of our family arrived and assembled around the table, ready to dig into the antipasto. It was then that I watched my mother do a double take when she saw something that wasn’t a cured meat in front of her. She leaned forward, raised a brow, and sniffed.
“Get the kids,” I whispered to my sister, whose eyes suddenly went wide. “This thing is gonna blow.”
But my mother, instead of furrowing her brow and looking for a dishtowel to use as a whip, picked up a cracker and dipped it in the blueberries.
I held my breath as she chewed, trying to figure out if people wearing natural fibers could even pass the dress code of the casino. I was going to have to get some gold bracelets and ask relatives still in New Jersey for makeup tips, and I might have to procure a clothing item in a leopard-skin pattern.
My mother glanced up, and looked me in the eye for a moment.
Oh god, I thought, feeling chilled. Am I going to have to start smoking again? And saving my quarters?
And then she picked up a second cracker, scooped up some Brie and blueberries, and went in for another bite.
“You know what would be better?” my mother said, and I instantly drew in a breath.
I hesitated, prepared to run, then asked, “What?”
She chewed a moment as she thought. “More blueberries,” she finally said.
I placed the bowl of spaghetti on the table directly in front of my husband. Then I stood there for a moment and gave him a dirty look, just like I do every time I make spaghetti.
“So,” I said in a completely serious tone, “is this magic bowl of spaghetti sending you a message? Because if the pasta is trying to tell you something, I think we need to clear it up right now before I bring the meatballs out.”
And then I waited.
“I’d rather not talk about it,” he usually says, which is the right answer.
I’m sure not everyone eats spaghetti like this, but it’s become something of a custom in our house. The gravy is homemade; the meatballs are the result of generations of meat and cheese mashing until they are perfect. I’m a pro at making gravy now, but when I was in my twenties it wasn’t such an easy task. Although I’d been watching my Nana make gravy since I was old enough to know that hot oil will pop into your eye if you stand too close to frying spheres of meat, it took a certain amount of chutzpah to take on the duty myself. One afternoon, I decided to give it a shot and followed my Nana’s directions for Sunday gravy, mapped out in her formal script on a stained recipe card (see this page).
I rolled the meatballs out perfectly, a precise combination of beef, pork, breadcrumbs, garlic, and Parmesan. My Nana’s recipe. Fried to a crispy, deep brown, I plopped them into the gravy, which had been waiting patiently in a pot next to the frying pan.
From the aroma steaming up from the popping bubbles in the simmering sauce, I could tell it was going to be awesome. This was my family’s age-old mainstay tomato sauce for all things Italian: lasagna, eggplant parm, and, most important, macaroni. My Nana’s gravy acumen left a lot to live up to. It takes hours to make, and the longer it simmers, the better it is. I left my gravy on all morning, and thought that as long as I was going through the trouble for my own dinner, I might as well spread the glory of gravy around and put together a nice lunch for a guy I had just started dating. Instead of eating off the roach coach, he would have an awesome dish of spaghetti and meatballs.
When the gravy was finished, I assembled the spaghetti and meatballs together in a Tupperware bowl and brought it to his place of employment, eager to deliver such a delicious lunch. He smiled when he took it, and said he would call me later that night. I waited in wild anticipation of what he would say. Italian girls have a lot to make up for; if you’re not willing to have hot wax poured over ninety percent of your body, you’d better be exceptional in other areas. I was hoping gravy would be mine.
And he did call when he said he would, then invited me over. He made no mention of the spaghetti, but as soon as I got to his house, his reaction couldn’t have been more spectacular.
He broke up with me. I tried to take it on the chin, but I sobbed to Stevie Nicks songs the whole way home, wailing like a cat. He said he wasn’t ready for something so serious, not even when I insisted that macaroni was just macaroni and not an offering of a dowry. It was not a cow or a herd of goats. It was just lunch.
I’m sorry, he said. I’m not ready for the spaghetti level of relationship, he explained. Spaghetti added a lot of pressure. It was too soon; spaghetti was…more than he could do at the moment. Spaghetti was heavy.
I was stunned for days. Would it have been different with macaroni and cheese? Should I have delivered a burrito? After overthinking my misstep too much, I started to resent the spaghetti. I was never going to make it again.
I told my Nana what had happened, and she just laughed. “What a gavone,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Spaghetti is just spaghetti! Now, if you made gnocchi or braciole, that’s asking for a commitment.”
I ran into him at my favorite bar that weekend and instead of snubbing him, I addressed the issue head-on.
“Hey, you,” I said, wagging a drunk finger in his face. “That gravy wasn’t just for you, you know. I was trying to be nice. Try to find another girl who makes it like I do. Never. Gonna. Happen. That’s my Nana’s gravy, buster. And you’ve had it for the last time.”
“It was delicious,” he admitted.
Twenty years later, I still think of that guy when I make gravy. I’ve gotten better at it, and now, after two decades of practice, I have it nearly down to perfection. I feel almost sorry for him, but then I remember the snot bubble I blew near the freeway exit to my house twenty years ago and I just have to laugh at his foolishness. Jerk.
And when I ask my husband if he sees anything in the magic spaghetti, he never has an answer. But he eats every last bite.
September 30, Eugene, Oregon
Saw the first leaf fall today. It was followed by a second, then a third. By end of day, thirty to forty little veiny leaf corpses scattered all over my lawn like the bones of summer. It has begun.
I can do nothing but look away, knowing what is to come.
&nb
sp; October 4
The lawn guys arrived, complete with leaf blowers. It is clear by their precise movements and determination to get every single leaf in a pile that they are excited to use their lawn toys for the first time this season. They spend an inordinate amount of time next to my office window, so much that I can smell the exhaust. Reminds me of the story about my dad’s lawn guys, who had an eighty-year-old man operating the leaf blower, and he stepped into the pool by accident. Immediately sinking to the bottom because of the engine strapped to his back, he never made a sound, never made a splash, and resembled an old-timey diver at the bottom of a fish tank. The other leaf-blower guys just kept blowing until my dad ran out of the house and dove into the pool to rescue him. It took four men to pull him out.
That story makes me laugh until I cry.
Lawn guys make a tiny, neat pile of leaves and place it in the street in front of my house.
It is cute. I cannot help but smile.
It is The Pile.
October 5
Every leaf blown away yesterday by lawn guys has reappeared; the nice little pile is gone. Fall is back. I feel the joyful urge to place a pumpkin on my porch and a woven cornucopia with an autumnal-plaid ribbon springing from it. Make note to get a forty-percent-off coupon from Michaels and try to secure some decorative festivities, then come to the conclusion, in five seconds, that hunting through the Sunday paper, finding the coupons, then driving to Michaels, purchasing the pumpkin, and then going to the car to put on my disguise to go back in and buy the cornucopia with my second coupon would eat my autumnal seasonal spirit. The daffodils will be up in March. The neighbors will have to be happy with that.
October 11
Yard guys are back again. The Pile is bigger. Enough to bury a small body under. Pile now joined by friends of leaves. And distant cousins. Rotten teenagers walking home step off the sidewalk to kick leaf pile that can in no way defend itself. I wish curable, but annoying, sexually transmittable diseases on them all.