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.”
“Ma!” Danny protests.
“A sausage connection?” I ask.
“Forget it,” my father says.
“Can you get some for me?” Frankie asks Danny.
“No! Ma, why’d you have to go and say something? Lou doesn’t want it getting out.”
“It’s Lou?” Joey’s eyes widen. “Lou’s back in business? Whoa.”
“No! It’s not Lou,” Danny lies—badly.
“Hey, listen, I won’t say anything,” Frankie tells him. “Just hook me up, will you?”
“He’s your brother, Danny!” Michaela says. “Hook him up with the zau-zage.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Danny says grudgingly.
“For me, too,” Joey says, and Danny glares.
I look at Jack, who clears his throat and starts to push his chair back again.
“For God’s sake, Danny, get your finger out of your nose.” We all glance over, I guess to make sure that Michaela is speaking to her son and not my brother.
Yup, but you never know.
I nudge Jack. He starts to push his chair farther back, then stops as my mother remembers she forgot the salad and hurries to get it from the trunk of her car.
That’s as much a Brookside thing as bootleg sausage. Everyone uses their car trunk as a spare fridge when they’re entertaining during the cold months of the year—pretty much from Labor Day till Memorial Day.
Of course, you have to time it all very carefully in the actual winter months, or you wind up with your food frozen solid. Worse yet, you might not be able to get at it at all, if an unexpected squall blows in.
But March is safe, and my mother returns with the nicely chilled iceberg salad, which she swiftly and expertly dresses in a homemade balsamic vinaigrette.
Then everyone has to pass the cheese, the salt, the pepper, the butter, the wine, the plastic liter bottles of Pepsi, Diet Squirt, loganberry.
Then people are starting to eat, and Jack is still waiting for God knows what.
Catching him sneaking a bite of ziti, I nudge him again and whisper, “Well?”
“I’m waiting till everyone’s ready.”
“That’ll never happen!” I can’t help but think he’s got a lot to learn about being a part of this family. “You can’t wait, you’ve just got to jump in and do it.”
“Do what?” whispers my niece Kelsey, eavesdropping on Jack’s other side. “Poop? Because Mommy says never wait. That’s how accidents happen,” she informs Jack solemnly.
“Thanks,” he says just as solemnly. “I’ll remember that.”
After flashing me an amused smile, he pushes his chair all the way back and stands up. Yes!
No. Now my mother has dashed back to the kitchen for another forgotten item. He pauses, waiting for her.
“You better hurry. I hope you make it,” Kelsey tells him. “Good luck.”
“You hope he makes what, hon?” my brother Danny asks from the opposite side of the table.
“Jack has to go poop.”
“Is that any of your business, Kelsey?” Michaela asks.
“He told me!”
“What? He said he has to go poop? That’s terrific.” My mother has come bustling back in on the tail end of the conversation. She sets a stack of extra napkins in the center of the table and proudly tells us, “Joey and Sara have been working on it.”
“On what?” I am thoroughly confused now.
“On getting Joey to tell them when he has to go poop. He can’t start preschool until he’s trained.”
Vince leans over and sniffs Joey Junior’s butt in the high chair beside him. “Uh-oh…I don’t think he made it. Smells like he went in his pants.”
“Poop!” Joey Junior shouts. “Poop!”
“We weren’t talking about Joey!” Kelsey protests, screaming with laughter. “We were talking about Jack!”
“Jack went in his pants?” her older brother asks in disbelief, and all the kids gape at Jack, horrified.
“No,” Jack protests, looking shell-shocked. “I—”
“I don’t do that anymore,” Nino informs everyone proudly. “Right, Mommy? I have big-boy pants.”
“So? Jack has big-boy pants, too,” Vince Junior says. “And I bet he doesn’t have accidents in them like you do.”
“I do not. And Danny said Jack just went in his pants! That’s an accident,” his brother retorts.
“Poop!” Little Joey shouts gleefully again, and I wish my brother and sister-in-law would shut him up, but they don’t believe in what they refer to as “tough love.”
“Is this any kind of conversation to be having at the table?” my father asks, pounding his fist, a lot less jovial than before.
I look at Jack, who has shrunk back into his seat and refuses to meet my gaze. This would never happen at the Candell dining table.
Never
.
“Jack did not…poop,” I tell them all.
“But he has to,” Kelsey adds helpfully.
I sigh and manage to say evenly, “No, he does not have to. He just has something to tell everyone.”
“Well, I hope it doesn’t have anything to do with the bathroom,” my father says.
“Why would you think that?” my mother swats his arm. “What’s the matter with you?”
“What’s the matter with
me?
” my father protests. “I’m not the one who—”
“Don’t worry, it doesn’t have anything to do with the bathroom,” I cut in. “It’s good news.”
“The bathroom is good news when you’re getting potty-trained,” Kelsey informs me and turns to my sister-in-law, who’s trying to tie a bib on her squirming toddler. “Right, Aunt Sara?”
“Right, honey, but we’re not talking about Joey getting potty-trained right now.”
“Poop!” little Joey shouts, and bangs his high-chair tray, laughing demonically.
“Honey!” Sara helplessly tosses the bib aside and shoots Jack an apologetic look. “Sorry. Go ahead.”
Jack looks at me. I shake my head slightly.
I mean, who wants their engagement to be announced in the midst of this circus? “Everyone just eat,” Jack says. “We’ll tell you later. Go ahead.”
I pat Jack’s arm, wondering if he’s having second thoughts about marrying into this madhouse. Who would blame him?
“Tracey!” Katie blurts, then clasps her hands over her mouth.
“What?”
“Never mind,” she says, averting her gaze abruptly.
But now Mary Beth is gasping and staring, too. At me. Below the neck.
“What? You guys, is there a bug on me?” I ask, brushing off my clothes fervently.
“Where? I love bugs!” Danny Junior announces.
“What bug? It’s March,” my mother protests, “and we’re inside. No bugs. What’s going on?”
Oh.
My ring. I forgot to sit on my hand and obviously Katie caught a glimpse when I patted Jack on the arm. Mary Beth saw it, too.
So much for the big surprise. It’s now or never.
“It’s not a bug,” I say, standing and pulling Jack up with me. “Jack has something to say. Go ahead, Jack.”
He nods, chewing a huge mouthful as the room falls silent.
Jack swallows audibly, puts his arm around me to pull me close and announces, without further ado, “Tracey and I are engaged.”
And there it is.
A moment of silence…
Then the room erupts. Sheer bedlam. Laughter, tears, screams of joy, my mother wailing something in Italian that sounds suspiciously like a prayer of thanks. Through it all, Joey Junior bangs on his high-chair tray triumphantly shouting, “Poop!”
Of course everyone has to hug us, then see the ring.
Except my father, who doesn’t care about the ring and only wants to hug me hard, too choked with emotion to say anything other than, “I’m happy for you, baby.”
“That ring is absolutely gorgeous,” Ma says tearfully, mostly to Jack.
“Huge stone, too!” Mary Beth puts in approvingly.
“You have excellent taste,” Ma says, this time entirely to Jack.
“He does, doesn’t he?” I jump in before Jack can mention that the diamond came from his mother’s engagement ring.
I forgot to tell him that we need to keep that little tidbit to ourselves till death do us part, as far as my family is concerned, anyway. For all I know there’s some old Sicilian superstition about engagement rings from failed marriages cursing anyone who wears them afterward.
Beside me, my father is pumping Jack’s hand and saying heartily, “Well, it’s about time, son, don’t you think?”
“Dad!” I protest.
“What? It’s been three months since he asked me for your hand. I’ve been wondering what’s taking so long.”
“You asked for my hand?” Stunned, I turn to Jack.
“Of course he did. That’s how it’s done,” my father informs everyone. “Just like Vinnie asked me for Mary Beth’s hand.”
“Yeah, and you should’a said no,” my brother Frankie mutters, and my sister glares at him even though she’s probably wishing Pop had said no, too.
“When did you talk to Pop?” I ask Jack, amazed that my father didn’t tell my mother and she didn’t tell my sister and my sister didn’t tell me.
Or maybe he did…
Nah. My mother and sister can’t keep secrets from each other or anyone else. Everyone—especially my father—knows that.
“I asked him when we were here for Christmas,” Jack says with a shrug.
“Really? Where was I?” Probably upstairs going through Jack’s luggage, looking for the ring.
Just kidding. I didn’t resort to that until we were in the Caribbean in January. Even then, I wasn’t looking for the ring, technically. I was looking for a warm sweatshirt. I found one, and the ring, too.
I was so convinced we were going to get engaged on that trip. But it took him another month.
“You were asleep when I asked him,” Jack informs me.
“Jack and I sealed the deal with some Black Velvet,” my father puts in fondly. “Didn’t we, Jack?”
“We sure did, Mr. Spadolini.”
“Call him Dad,” my mother instructs him. “And call me Mom. No more of this Mr. and Mrs. stuff.”