As usual, everything looks smaller in reality than it does in my memories. It’s kind of like when you go back to see your elementary school teachers after moving on to middle school, and think that everything—the desks, the lockers, even the teachers—appeared to have shrunk.
Or am I the only dork who went back to visit my elementary school?
Probably.
Maybe the rest of the world transitions from milestone to milestone without ever looking back. Or trying to go back.
But I’ve always been the nostalgic type, especially when I’m here. So naturally, my hometown is loaded with scenes from my dorky past.
Thank God I outgrew it. Being dorky, not the town itself.
Though I guess I outgrew Brookside, too.
It was once—long before I was born—a busy rail destination and a major port on Lake Erie. But urban renewal ravaged it in the seventies. These days—apparently unlike Schenectady: The City That Lights and Hauls the World—Brookside is a small, increasingly run-down, unambitious city. Like the better part of upstate New York, the dwindling population here is plagued by unemployment as once-thriving factories and mills continue to lay off or shut down altogether.
You know, it’s depressing that so many people have abandoned this town, because it used to be a great place to grow up, raise a family…
Mental note: You have also abandoned the town, remember?
Well, moving to Manhattan was the right thing for me to do at the time—even if part of the reason I moved in the first place was to follow Will to New York.
But it doesn’t matter now how or why I got there. What matters is that I know I belong there—with Jack.
I just can’t help feeling a little guilty for so easily abandoning Brookside. And yes, I’m wistful, too, as we drive along the familiar streets lined with majestic old trees and affordable two-story frame houses.
The problem: who can make a decent living here these days? My family is among the lucky few who are still gainfully employed…so far. My father and my oldest brother, Danny, are hanging in there at a local specialty-steel plant that’s also hanging in there…so far. My middle brother, Joey, who worked his way through college and has an accounting degree, just started commuting to a job at a Buffalo accounting firm. My youngest brother, Frankie, is a licensed electrician. And Mary Beth, who mostly relies on alimony checks from her philandering ex-husband, Vinnie, is going back to a full-time teaching job next fall.
What would Jack do here? What would I do, for that matter? How would we make a living in Brookside? It’s not like we can open our own ad agency and start landing million-dollar accounts.
Still, it’s tempting to daydream about buying a Victorian fixer-upper for roughly one-twentieth of what the same house would cost in the New York suburbs….
Although now that I’ve got this ring on my finger and a future as Jack’s wife in New York, I need to accept that there’ll be no coming back here to live. Ever.
Of course I don’t have any regrets about that. And I’ve never really considered moving back here anyway. It’s just…that door is about to close for me now. And closed doors make me a little sad.
Like the one that recently closed with Buckley. Every time I hear from him—and it’s mostly been e-mail—I’m reminded how much I care about him, and that we’re destined to stay friends…and nothing more.
I know that’s not really news to me, but it sure feels like it. He and Sonja are in the midst of moving to a bigger apartment on the West Side, and are having trouble trying to extract themselves from their current lease. Plus, they’re going full speed ahead with their July wedding plans. Or should I say her July wedding plans? He doesn’t seem that gung ho about it.
But enough about Buckley and the road not taken.
As the tires splash through yet another slushy puddle that sprays the windshield with muck, I assure myself that I have absolutely no desire to ever move back to this dreary wintry weather. Sure, the white stuff is great when you’re bustling around Christmas shopping, hoping for a white Christmas—which is as guaranteed here as a hot Fourth of July is in Miami.
But by March, this weather is depressing. The snow may be long gone four hundred miles away in Manhattan, but here in the blizzard belt, it’s still heaped in dirty, crystallized, gravel-studded banks along the curb or in crusty mud-flecked drifts on muddy lawns.
Gazing at the bleak landscape beneath a low-hanging iron-gray sky, I’m seized by renewed urgency to set an October wedding date. Any later than that, and this is what we get as a backdrop for our photos, pretty much until May.
The first thing we’re going to do after we drop our bags and eat lasagna—for which Jack has been waiting a week—is head out to Shorewood and book the date. I didn’t have time to call there during business hours this week to make sure it’s still available. I figure if it’s not, we’ll just take whatever we can get—a Friday night, maybe, or even a Sunday.
Now that we’ve arrived in Brookside, I feel like we should definitely spend our wedding dollars here. After all, what better way to combat blight than by pumping revenue into a community? Noblesse oblige, and all that.
Okay, maybe it’s a bit ridiculous to imagine that the Candell–Spadolini wedding can save Brookside…but it can’t hurt. All those out-of-town guests will need a place to stay…
Then again, I can’t quite picture my future in-laws or, say, Kate and Billy, feeling at home at the Super 8 out on the highway.
They’ll just have to book rooms at the Greenway Inn, a charming bed-and-breakfast outside of town.
Mental note: as soon as date is set, reserve the entire Greenway Inn for that weekend.
Jack doesn’t make a single wrong turn en route to my parents’ house, and I congratulate him on his Brookside navigational skills as he pulls in to their driveway.
“I’m impressed. And surprised,” I add, flipping down the visor mirror to see if my face looks as pasty as it did back at La Guardia.
Yup. Pasty as overcooked orzo, but there’s not much I can do about it now.
“Are you kidding?” Jack says smugly. “I’ve been coming up here for a few years now. I know my way around.”
All the more reason we should get married here! I tell him silently as he puts the car in Park.
We step out into frigid cold with a stiff wind blowing from the west, off the lake a few blocks from here. The sky in that direction is heavy with black clouds that promise a fresh coat of snow before the afternoon is over. I gasp at the chill, which gives me a lungful of icy air.
Ooh, brain freeze.
Ooh, brain storm: what about a destination wedding in some far-flung tropical locale, say, Saint John in the United States Virgin Islands?
I open my mouth to blurt the idea to Jack, but am stopped by two things:
1) the sight of my mother, Connie Spadolini, flinging open the front door and gleefully calling out to us…
And 2) the thought of convincing the aforementioned Connie Spadolini to fly to the Virgin Islands for my destination wedding.
Don’t get me wrong—my mother is all for virgins. As far as she’s concerned, I should have stayed one till my wedding day. And said wedding day should most definitely take place at Most Precious Mother, the local shrine to her personal all-time favorite virgin, Mary, Mother of God.
But the Virgin Islands?
She’s about as likely to trek down there for a wedding—even mine—as she is to dye her hair blond, lose forty pounds and get a tattoo.
“There you are! Finally!” she calls, standing there shivering in her stretch pants and a red fleece Kiss the Cook sweatshirt. She holds out her arms, so blatantly happy to see us that I feel guilty for not coming home more often.
(In case you haven’t noticed, my Catholic guilt complex kicks into a higher gear whenever I’m in Brookside.)
“Finally?” I echo, covering the last few icy yards of sidewalk to the door, my ring safely hidden beneath my gloves. “Ma, our plane was only an hour late, and we called to tell
you that!”
“No, I mean finally, because you were supposed to be here last week!” More guilt. Maybe we shouldn’t have given up those seats. “Come here…let me look at you.”
She hugs me hard, enveloping me in Jean Nate, then pushes me back a little so she can study my face. The wind is whipping my hair across it, and she lovingly pushes it back.
“Where’s your hat?”
“I forgot it,” I lie, because it’s easier than admitting I never wear hats anymore. They squash my hair and itch and make me look like a twelve-year-old boy.
“You’re pale,” she decides. “You’re not eating enough.”
“Ma, I’m eating plenty.” Not really. I lost two more pounds this week without trying, thanks to Abate.
The high-maintenance Client, not the product itself.
“Come on, we can eat right now. The lasagna is ready. Jack!” she exclaims, leaning past me to hug him warmly. “I hope you’re hungry!”
“I’ve had a whole extra week to work up an appetite, Mrs. Spadolini,” he tells her, and she smiles so hard I can see all her silver fillings.
We step into the warm house and I inhale the familiar smell: fragrant Italian cooking, my father’s citrus-scented aftershave, Comet cleanser, a hint of bleach and that indescribable something else I can never put my finger on. It just smells like home.
It sounds like home, too. Connie Francis—my father’s “second favorite Connie,” as he likes to say—is singing in the background, almost drowned out by the din of voices. Naturally, the entire Spadolini clan is in residence. Only my parents actually live here, of course—the others, in longstanding family tradition, have homes within walking distance.
There’s Danny and his hugely pregnant wife, Michaela, plus their children, Kelsey and Danny Junior. Joey and his wife, Sara, and their little Joe Junior. Frankie and his cute redheaded, freckled wife, Katie. And of course, my sister, Mary Beth, with her two boys, Nino and Vince Junior.
I take in the sound and sight of them, for the moment so glad to be home again that I forget why we’re here. When I remember, I feel as though my heart is absolutely bursting, pushing a lump of emotion into my throat.
I look for Jack over my brother Frankie’s shoulder as he sweeps me into a bear hug. I find him, swinging my gleeful nephew Joey high into the air.
“Guess what? He’s going to be your uncle Jack!” I want to tell Joey exultantly, but it’s not time.
Not yet. Soon.
After a whirlwind round of hugs and chatter, we shed our coats—and my gloves—and make our way, en masse, toward the dining room. My left hand is securely tucked into the pocket of my jeans, waiting for the big moment.
Aside from the Christmas decorations being removed, the house looks exactly the same as it did last time we were here, in December. Which is pretty much exactly the same as it’s looked my entire life.
The bric-a-brac never moves an inch. Nor do the gazillion picture frames, though new ones are slipped among them every time the grandkids go to the Wal-Mart—for some reason everyone here calls it the Wal-Mart—for a sitting.
Sure, an occasional piece of furniture might be swapped out, but the replacement is always similar, and it always goes precisely wherever the old piece sat. When the walls are painted it’s in the same color they were before. On rare occasions that window treatments or carpets are replaced, the color scheme and style are identical to the original.
When Connie Spadolini likes something, she sticks with it. Forever. Not just when it comes to decor, either.
The Conster has been wearing her dark hair in the same style my entire life, trends be damned. It’s short and kind of poufy, a little teased and sprayed but not drastically so. She goes to have it “done” every Wednesday morning without fail at Shear Magique.
We pass the wall that holds a trio of framed family wedding portraits, plus the empty hook and faint whiter-than-the-white-wall rectangle where the fourth, Mary Beth’s, used to hang. I find myself wondering whether my mother left the hook in hope that my sister’s marriage might somehow survive after all, or in hope that I’d eventually get married and she could hang mine there.
Probably a little of both. Like I said, Ma doesn’t believe in divorce. To this day, she’s more heartbroken over Mary Beth’s failed marriage than anyone, including Mary Beth. My sister finally woke up and realized she’s better off alone than married to a man who cheated on her constantly, even when she was in labor.
Ma doesn’t necessarily agree.
And as critical as she is about my sisters-in-law, she would be absolutely destroyed if any of my brothers’ marriages disintegrated.
There she is at each of their weddings, looking exactly the same, give or take fifteen pounds and the shade of her dress. Teal, aqua, powder…it’s always blue, always long and shiny with a cowl neck. The hair is identical right down to the little forward curlicues at the tops of her cheekbones.
Maybe I can get her to change it up a little for my wedding. The hair and the dress. Not that I care, personally. I just don’t want her to feel funny next to Wilma, who is incredibly chic.
Then again, I’ve never in my life seen my mother looking insecure, so maybe it’s just me that I’m worried about.
In the dining room, the long table is set with the extra leaves and layered with two of my mother’s “good” fake-lace vinyl tablecloths. It’s already loaded with cold food—crudités, chips and french onion dip, a relish tray, a cold-cut platter, a basket of rolls, an enormous antipasto. My mother, sister and sisters-in-law immediately start carrying in the hot dishes: baked ziti, eggplant Parmesan, veal Parmesan, sausage and peppers, and of course, the famous lasagna.
I elbow Jack and whisper, “Do you want to say it, or do you want me to?”
“I want to. After we eat,” he adds, riveted by the sight of my mother cutting the first gooey, piping-hot wedge of lasagna and putting it on his plate.
“But I’m going to have to sit on my hand until then!” I hiss.
“Oh. Right. Okay, let’s tell them first,” he says—somewhat reluctantly, I might add.
I guess that’s understandable. My mother’s lasagna is pretty amazing. My own mouth is watering furiously.
But as hungry as I am, I’m anxious to share the big news with my family at last. I’ve been waiting weeks for this day.
Weeks? More like years.
Only I used to imagine, in my sadly misguided relative youth, coming home to announce my engagement to Will, God help me. Not that I’d have thought—if I ever stopped to think back then, which I don’t seem to have done—that anyone here would rejoice at that news.
Will, with his dramatic flair and raging actor’s ego, never did grow on my family the way I’d hoped. He fit in around here like a stray and slightly bitter arugula leaf in a good old-fashioned iceberg salad.
Not Jack. He might have come from a drastically different background than our family’s, but he fits in like a sweet and very welcome extra tomato in that Spadolini salad.
And I can’t wait to tell them all that he’s here to stay.
When everyone seems to have filled their plate, I nudge Jack.
But before he can move or speak, my mother shouts for quiet. “Who’s going to say grace today?”
“I will!” That, of course, is my nephew Nino, the biggest ham in the family.
We bow our heads.
“GodisgreatGodisgoodletusthankhimforourfoodamen.”
“Amen,” everyone echoes.
Brimming with anticipation, I look at Jack.
He opens his mouth, but before he can speak, Vince Junior announces, “I don’t get it.”
“What don’t you get?” Mary Beth asks, cutting up Nino’s food into tiny pieces. Have I mentioned that she babies him?
Then again, she learned from the best. There seems to be this thing about Italian mothers and youngest sons. At least, there is in my family.
I glance over at my mother to make sure she isn’t cutting Frankie’s veal.
She’s not, but she is spooning a little extra sauce on his lasagna without asking him and of course he’s letting her, because that’s how he likes it.
Katie, long accustomed to this quirky little scenario, pays no attention.
“Why,” Vince Junior is asking, “do you start out by saying God is great, then you say he’s only good?”
“Because that’s how the prayer goes,” Nino informs his brother stubbornly. “Sister Joseph Anthony taught it to me in CCD.”
“Yeah, but it’s stupid when you say it in that order.”
“Mommy! Vince just called me stupid!”
“I did not. I said the prayer was stupid. Great, then good? That means God is going downhill. It should be good, then great.”
“Then it wouldn’t rhyme,” Mary Beth protests. “And we don’t call prayers stupid.”
“It doesn’t rhyme now,” my brother Joey points out. “Good—food?”
“Maybe it’s supposed to be fud.” With a sly smile, his wife, Sara, pronounces food to rhyme with good, hood and wood.
“Or maybe it’s supposed to be gewd,” Katie puts in, pronouncing good to rhyme with nude, lewd and dude.
“You’re all nuts,” my father declares jovially, his eyes twinkling behind his glasses as he shakes his balding head. “Connie, pass the zau-zage.”
That’s how people say it here in Brookside. Or at least, my family does. Zau-zage. I never even noticed until Jack pointed it out once.
My mother passes it, but not before putting another choice morsel on Frankie’s plate and asking, “Jack, did you get enough zau-zage?”
He did. He got enough everything. His plate, I see, is heaped higher than anyone else’s. My mother beams.
“The sausage is even better than usual,” Jack tells her. “Did you get it someplace different or something? It’s amazing.”
My mother looks at my father, who looks at Danny, who shakes his head just a little.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing,” all three of them say in unison—and exchange another furtive glance and headshake.
“Seriously, what?” I ask.
“Nothing,” my mother says. “Danny just has a connection. That’s all.”