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 striding 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 cucida
ti 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.
“No.” I swallow a sigh. “He’s from near the city.”
“Where are his people from?” she wants to know, as she rolls out more dough on the flour-dusted vinyl poinsettia-covered tablecloth.
“His people? He’s not an emperor, Ma,” I say lightly.
She doesn’t laugh.
“Tracey, you know what she means,” my sister says.
She’s right. I do. And that’s why I’m feeling pissy. His ethnic heritage shouldn’t matter to my family.
“I don’t know where his people are from, Ma. His last name is Candell.”
“That’s not Italian.”
“How do you know? Maybe it was Candellini or Candello, and the guy at Ellis Island shortened it.”
My mother brightens. “Maybe.”
“Or maybe it was Candellinski,” I say, “or Candellowitz, or O’Candell or—”
“Maybe his mother’s people are Italian,” my mother decides. “Who was she from home?”
Translation from Spadolini Speak: What was her maiden name?
“I don’t know who she was from home, Ma,” I say as she checks the thickness of the dough, then keeps rolling. “I’ve never even met her or Jack’s father.”
“His name is Jack?”
“Yeah.”
“Short for John?”
“I guess.”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“Oh,” my mother says with a tight-lipped little shrug.
“What do you know about him?” my sister asks as my nephew drives the mini Harley up my jeans leg making brrm, brrm noises.
“I know that he’s bighearted, and smart and he, uh…”
Mental Note: Do not mention state capital thing. They won’t appreciate it.
Addendum to above: Do not mention vast Candell wealth. Remember how Ma always bad-mouthed the Carringtons back when she was watching all those Dynasty reruns.
“He what?” Mary Beth prods.
“He cooks.” There.
They can’t criticize that. They cook, too.
“He cooks?”
Sure, they can criticize it. They can criticize anything.
My mother frowns, deft hands working the rolling pin. “What, he’s a chef?”
“No, he works in advertising, but—”
“You mean he cooks for fun?” my sister asks. “Like a hobby?”
“Yeah.”
Clearly this, to the two of them, is as newfangled a concept as all-white holiday lights and store-bought Christmas cookies.
“He was going to surprise me by cooking dinner for me last week,” I say.
“Why didn’t he?” Mary Beth wants to know.
“Because I got sick.”
“That’s because you don’t eat,” my mother comments darkly.
Shit.
Before she gets on a you’re wasting away to nothing roll, I say brightly, “Jack went to Atlanta on business this week and he brought back peach jam for me.”
“He sounds like a smooth operator,” is my mother’s response.
A smooth operator?
Yes, of course. How could I have forgotten that smooth operators frequently use Southern preserves to lure unsuspecting women to their lairs?
“Be careful, Tracey,” warns my sister, devoted wife of Vinnie the Philanderer. “I’d hate to see you go jumping into something so fast.”
“I’m not jumping into anything, Mary Beth.”
“You just said you were thinking about marrying him.”
“I did not. Ma said that.”
“I didn’t say that,” my mother denies.
“Yes, you did, Ma. I said I met someone and you said, Are you getting married?”
My mother just shrugs.
My sisters says, “Tracey, you don’t have good judgment when it comes to men.”
Flabbergasting.
I say, “But—”
“Just don’t let him break your heart,” my mother says ominously.
“I won’t, Ma,” I say, because what else is there to say?
On Christmas Eve, Sara tells us that she doesn’t have the flu after all; she’s pregnant.
My mother and Mary Beth and my brother Danny’s wife, Michaela, crowd around her, giving advice and asking questions and sharing morning-sickness stories.
I stand apart, feeling left out, longing for…
Something.
To be a part of the married mommy club?
Or to flee?
I don’t know. I just have this unsettled feeling. Sara was my ally in the family, and now she’s one of them. And here I am, single Tracey, l
iving in New York, hopelessly hung up on a “smooth operator” who seems too good to be true and probably is.
At six on the dot, we go as a group to my grandmother’s for seven different kinds of fish and strufoli, which are a heap of little honey-drizzled balls of dough covered in red and green sprinkles. Later we go, again as a group, to midnight mass, and then back home through the snow to drink wine and eat the sausage that has been simmering in the Crock-Pot since dusk.
There was a time when I could dig into sausage with peppers and onions at two in the morning, then climb into bed and sleep soundly till noon.
Those days are as over as my size-fourteen jeans.
I think about Angie Nardone getting married, and about Sara having a baby, and I feel like crying.
I don’t want to be them….
Really, I don’t.
But sometimes, it’s kind of lonely being single.
Okay, excruciatingly lonely. I want to be in love. I want to belong to somebody. I want it so badly that…
That you’re not willing to wait for Mr. Right to come along? That you’re trying to convince yourself that it can work out with Jack?
Everybody knows that things that seem too good to be true really are too good to be true.
Which means, of course, that Jack will never call me again.
There’s always Buckley….
No. There isn’t.
He was great about the whole Radio City thing, but I know his feelings must be hurt. There’s no way he’s ever going to make a move on me again now, and I can’t do it, either. Not after I blew him off once. It just wouldn’t be fair to jump into his arms every time I’m lonely. Or horny. Our friendship is too important to me, and I get the feeling that Buckley and I are meant to be platonic. Period.
After a restless night and the worst case of heartburn I’ve ever had, I wake to the smell of bacon frying and the sound of my mother calling, “Tracey! Phone’s for you.”
Yawning, I fumble into my robe and go into my parents’ room. Unlike the cluttery rest of the house, the master bedroom room is spartan: just a double—rather than queen-size—bed, a bureau with mass cards stuck into the mirror, and white-painted walls that are bare aside from a framed wedding picture and the obligatory plaster crucifix.
I sit on their neatly made chenille bedspread and reach for the telephone—blue, with a curly cord—that’s on their bedside table.