'74 & Sunny (19 page)

My mother had a way of defusing things with a wave of her hand and also by walking away to tend to her sauce. “Well, Geneva, they saw it and they loved it. No harm done. It's a beautiful story about family.”

“That's one way of looking at it. But it's not something I would have ever approved of,” Aunt Geneva said to Aunt Mary, sitting across the table.

“Okay,” my mother yelled out to the backyard, through every screen door and open window. “Sauce is done. I'm putting the pot up. Ten-minute warning!”

Those simple sentences, those arrangement of words, were a big type of structure in my life. With the meat sauce being slow-cooked since 10:00 a.m. and my mother telling two households that the pasta she was cooking would be ready to eat in ten minutes, that meant that all our loves and differences were about to be aired out at the big dining room table. And when she finally poured the macaroni into the
scolapasta
and the steam rose up all around her upper body and gathered at the framed portrait of Frank Sinatra above our sink, it was as close to religion as we ever got.

As we all gathered in the dining room and found our chairs, Gino began to tell his mother how much he enjoyed Aunt Mary's artwork. Whether it was a ceramics project or a clay sculpture or her tiny oil paintings inside giant, empty clamshells, Aunt Mary's work was fairly accomplished, despite the fact that she had been pretty much blind as a bat since birth. The unfortunate fact being, she was delivered while my grandmother had caught a case of syphilis on account of my grandfather stepping out one night too many. Anyhow, she never complained about it. Never even got mad at her father. She just decided it wasn't going to slow her down, and, as a
result, she spent her life traveling the world, and her artwork was a testament to the things she could best remember that flashed before her eyes—a charging elephant in Africa, sunsets in South America, hula girls in Hawaii. Many of those sights got the large-canvas treatment, but a hundred more ended up delicately detailed on ordinary clamshells we dug out from the bay. And they were all over our house. It was like living with a far-sighted Dalí.

“Aunt Mary has been teaching me how to draw better,” Gino said to his mother, holding up a drawing of a turkey that he had traced from his handprint.

“Well, look at that. I remember when you did the same thing when you were five or six years old,” she said.

As my mother brought out the big pot of pasta and meat sauce, that comment took on a mean tone. And, as if on cue, her eyes met my father's at the same exact moment.

“Yeah, but Aunt Mary told me how to make it more special,” Gino said. “She said to use my imagination so that the turkey can stand out from all the others.”

Aunt Geneva grabbed his drawing and adjusted her glasses to get a better look. “Let me see,” she said, as her jaw started to drop and her eyebrows furrowed. “Are these
pearls
around the turkey's neck?” she asked him.

“Yeah,” Gino said with excitement. “A.J. drew his turkey with an Italian horn around its neck and high-top sneakers on its feet. I gave my turkey pearls.”

“I see that. And it looks like you gave it high heels too,” she said without any enthusiasm.

“Yeah. Isn't that funny? A boy turkey wearing pearls and high heels.” Gino laughed, along with my sisters.

“I think it's hysterical,” I said across the table.

“Why'd you stop there?” Aunt Geneva shot back. “Why not give him earrings?”

“That wouldn't look believable,” my father piped up, as he sat in his chair at the head of the table. “Where would you hang 'em?”

Whether Aunt Geneva liked it or not, it became immediately apparent that my father—my whole family, in fact—accepted Gino's quirks without judgment. As a matter of fact, we began to celebrate them.

As usual, our table was overflowing with food. The meat sauce was just the start. And even though the sauce had meatballs, sausage, and braciola inside, that didn't mean my mother didn't also serve a London broil. And then there was always a big garden salad and some roasted peppers for good measure too. It was endless. As my mother and sisters began plating the food for all the men seated, my father was flipping through his albums, trying to find the right Sinatra song to go with the meal.

“Maybe we'll give Ol' Blue Eyes a break tonight,” my father said. “I'm taking requests for dinner music. Anybody have anything they want to hear?

Lorraine was first to speak up. “Daddy, please play the
West Side Story
sound track.”

“Hell no. Why? So you can hear Rita Moreno sing about wanting to live in America? Of course they want to live in America. We took them in and look where it got us. Every day there's another Puerto Rican murder in the papers.”

“I guess the Jackson Five is out of the question?” I asked.

“No colored music,” he mumbled. “Especially from the most fucked-up family in America. All of you will see one day. That family is just not right, and it starts with the father.”

Aunt Geneva's cheeks were growing more red by the second. “Does this kind of talk go on all the time? My God, Al. Your language.”

“It's nothing he hasn't heard before,” my father said. “Or, if he wasn't hearing it . . . maybe he should have been.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Aunt Geneva said, pushing her plate aside.

With the grown-ups on full tilt, and everybody about to spill their guts about the one sensitive topic we were all biting our tongues over, it was Aunt Geneva who threw the first blow.

“I'm okay with no music at all during dinner,” she said. “Dinner is a time for talking about your day, and I haven't seen Gino in many, many days.”

It was impossible not to make eye contact with my entire family seated around me. And that comment was unfathomable for us. No one came to our house for quiet chitchat and
casually catching up with each other. My house was a coliseum of emotions. And the dinner table had all the passion of an Italian opera. And you don't turn down the sound at the opera.

It didn't matter long, anyway, since my father paid Aunt Geneva's comment no mind and got back to work thumbing through his albums.

“Uncle Al . . . you know what I would really love to hear?” Gino said, quietly. “Do you have any Liza Minnelli records?”

I never remembered seeing any Liza Minnelli albums in the big green stereo console on those nights when my father was quizzing me on who were the world's “real” musicians, so I wasn't sure how he could make Gino's out-of-the-blue request come true.

“Ah, shit,” my father said, genuinely disappointed, since Gino never asked for much. “I don't have any Liza here.”

He turned to my sister Rosalie. “Ro, do you or Jack have any Liza at your house?”

Jack and Ro were a bit taken aback by the request and my father's true desire to make Gino's idea come to life. “No, Daddy,” Ro said. “I'm sorry, Gino.”

“Ah . . . it's okay,” Gino said. “I just felt like hearing Liza.”

My father was obviously intrigued. “How did you come to like Liza?” he said. “You know her mother, Judy Garland, was a real nut, right?”

“Yeah . . .” Aunt Geneva said. “Since when do you like Liza Minnelli? That's kind of random.”

“Larry listens to her a lot,” he told the table. “Sometimes he calls me in his room and plays her records and it helps me go to sleep. You remember, Mom?”

“I remember you falling asleep in Larry's room, yes,” she said. “But I don't remember hearing the music.”

And it was almost as if the memory of what his mother had just confirmed lifted his spirit right there at the dining room table. “I remember the music. I remember the words,” Gino said. “I can still hear it in my dreams.”

“Well, I'm sorry I can't get you Liza today,” my father said. “But I think I have the next best thing right in here somewhere. Do you want to hear some of the songs from the man she was married to until a few weeks ago?”

There were a lot of men on album covers, so I had no idea which one of them might have been Liza Minnelli's former husband. I was just as confused as the rest of the table. I knew my father loved music and that he also had a fascination with all performers from the UK and Australia. He just thought that part of the world had a better sense of humor. But I didn't think his interest stretched into a song-and-dance man who wore sequined shirts with three buttons undone on the album sleeve.

“This is Peter Allen,” my father said, holding up the record. “He's a helluva writer and a great performer. He's gonna be big.”

“I've heard of him,” both my sisters said.

“Well now listen to him.”

The first song he dropped the needle on was “Tenterfield Saddler,” as sad and syrupy as it gets, where Allen sings about his grandfather being an old, wise man who made saddles for people in a tiny Australian town, a father who found it easier to drink than go mad, and a little boy who grew up to marry a girl with a pretty face. Three generations of family delicately explained, whose dilemmas made ours seem like a walk in the park.

Gino was hooked immediately. “Wow, I
love
his accent,” he said. “What else does he sing, Uncle Al?”

“Gino, dear, let Uncle Al eat,” Aunt Geneva said.

“Forget it, Geneva,” my mother countered. “He won't eat on Sundays until he finds the right music.”

“Hey, Pop,” Jack shouted, seeing that the room's usual stench of machismo was being compromised. “How about some Rolling Stones?”

“
Aspetta
,
aspetta
. This is more important.”

Jack and Frankie both knew their place, and they were respectful to a fault. They quietly laughed across the table, seeing that there was an obvious shift taking place.

“Here, I found a beauty,” my father said. “I can sit down and eat now.”

The stereo played “Everything Old Is New Again,” and as Gino listened, he developed a quiet ease about him. I knew my father always played with everyone's mind on a subliminal level, but it was more apparent than ever to me that the seeds he had planted a couple of months ago were finally giving
way to a little sapling that was just beginning to get the right nourishment and light.

After dinner, Gino and I headed back into the pool to take another crack at finally teaching him to dive headfirst.

“Shouldn't you boys wait a half hour after you've digested dinner before you go back in the pool?” Aunt Geneva said.

“That's horseshit,” my father told her. “Let them play. They're young boys. No one's gonna drown.”

My mother and Aunt Geneva were seated across from each other at the kitchen table, having some coffee before my aunt headed back to Jersey. I was sitting in a giant black inner tube, and Gino, after a few more painful belly flops, had drifted off to sleep in an even bigger raft. He was one of those kids who could nod off anywhere, but drifting lazily in the shallow end of the pool was his favorite spot. He was like a cat that'd found a sun spot on the kitchen floor. And right about then the ladies got loud.

“Lil, I don't know how to say this, so I'm just going to say it,” Aunt Geneva started.

“Say what, Geneva?” my mother said, at the same time motioning for Aunt Mary to leave the kitchen and head to the TV room.

“Well, I'm very thankful for you and Al being there for us. And allowing me time to recuperate. But, Lilly, I'm not sure I would've sent Gino here if I had known what he was getting into.”

My father walked out the kitchen door, passed the pool,
and headed to see Jack and Ro. “Let them go at it,” he told me. “It's overdue.”

My mother grabbed her heart, pulling at her own shirt. “What the hell do you think he ‘got into' over here?”

“I don't know where to start. . . .”

“Why don't you start with Larry's phone call, Geneva?” my mother said. “Your husband cried to us. He cried and you know why he cried. My heart still breaks from that night. But all we've done is given Gino support. So tell me what we're doing wrong.”

“Oh, Lil,” Aunt Geneva started. “The cursing, playing guns in the pool, and don't think I haven't seen the
Playboy
magazines in the bathroom. I just don't know what else to say. Isn't that enough? Forget about
my
son. . . . Aren't you worried about
your
son?”

“No, Geneva. I'm not worried about my son whatsoever,” my mother said. “And the more you talk, the more hypocritical you sound. He was brought to us for a reason. Something, whatever it is, he wasn't getting. But he seems very, very happy this summer.”

I quietly slid out of the pool, ran through the gate that separated our backyards, and poked my head in Rosalie's kitchen door. “Dad, it's getting bad in there. You guys gotta go break it up.”

As I slid back into the pool, I heard the last few minutes before my father, Rosalie, and Jack entered the kitchen.

My mother was standing, her hands shaking too much to
light her own cigarette. “Maybe we didn't do what you
had
been doing. We didn't diagnose him. We just showed him love. He doesn't need medicine or a psychiatrist. This boy is wonderful.”

My father didn't say a word—a first!—and let the women air it out.

“I'm sorry,” my mother said. “I don't mean to say you and Larry don't show him love. I know you adore him.”

“I know you didn't, Lil. I'm afraid I know exactly what you mean,” she said.

“For chrissakes, Geneva, we're doing it the only way we've ever done it. Have you asked him how he feels about being here?”

“I know he loves his aunt Lil and uncle Al and everyone else,” she said, tearing up. “It's hard on all of us. Please, let's not fight.”