Acts of Contrition (6 page)

For the next three weeks, Landon and I merged into one person; we inhabited the same space, we held nothing back. We ate lunch together, we met for drinks, we sat on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, our view stretching across the Mall. On nights when I had school, he would wait for me afterward, with a few bottles of Sam Adams and a bag of burgers and fries. He’d carry my backpack home as we discussed con law theory, and then we’d sit on the steps of my brownstone, eating and drinking. Some nights he would help me at the law library, locate cases and decipher the decisions. And we kissed, and touched, and kissed some more, and drove each other wildly crazy.

A few times, we went fishing. Landon was an avid fly fisherman but guarded that activity as his solitary pleasure. When I asked if I could come, he cocked his head and said, “You don’t want to fish.”

“I do, seriously,” I said, even though, truly, I
didn’t
want to fish, but I did want to be with him. And so he took me along, let me enter into his private world that he had shared with no one else. As we sat on the bank of the Shenandoah River, our legs warmed from the glittery rocks, he showed me his collection of flies.

“Where’d you learn to tie them?” I asked.

“My dad,” he said. “The best thing he did for me.”

“What’s he like?” I asked.

“He’s not like anything,” Landon said. “He left early on.”

“Why?”

“Who knows,” Landon said. “He used to say that living an honest life was like the river. You might start in one place and end up somewhere entirely different.”

“Poetic,” I said.

“Bullshit,” Landon said. “He’s a deadbeat. That’s all.”

“And your mother?”

“She’s a train wreck. Because of him, of course. When he walked out, my mother checked out. I kind of bombed it in the parents’ department.”

“How old were you?” I asked.

“Eight.”

“That’s when he left?”

“Uh-huh,” Landon said. “I was down by the creek behind our house. It was summer and I was bored. I was skipping rocks. He squatted down beside me and said, ‘Son, people leave all the time. Better to learn it now. Always best not to get too attached. Fact of life: people leave.’ ”

“What’d you say to that?” I asked.

“I said okay. He had never steered me wrong before. He taught me to tie these flies and to cast my rod, so I figured he knew what he was saying.”

“Then what?”

“A year later he drove his point home when he packed his bags and left. He never came back. He never called.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“Sometimes I think about that conversation down by the creek. He must have known he had one foot out the door.”

“Your poor mom.”

“She fizzled to nothing. Spent her days in the kitchen—coffee cup in hand, same terry-cloth robe over the same ratty
nightgown. Hair pulled back into a greasy ponytail. Dead eyes staring out the window at the tire swing. Some days she’d look out the other window, the one with the road leading up to our house. I always wondered about that. Were those her good days or her bad days? The ones when she thought he might come back?”

“I’m sorry you went through that,” I said, pressing in next to him, resting my cheek on his shoulder.

“I’m not whining about it, but in a lot of ways, I don’t think you can really overcome a childhood that messed up,” he said. “The damage is done.”

“I don’t believe that,” I said. “There’s always room for forgiveness, for redemption.” That day I fell a mile deeper for him. My assumptions—that Landon came from a wealthy, upper-crust family—were enormously wrong. He wasn’t just gorgeous, smart, and sexy. He was also in need of saving.

“Maybe,” he said, and at that moment I really believed that we had started something. He told me he was falling hard. I reciprocated, and told him I could get used to this: us spending every weekend together, me with a fishing vest of my own.

A few days later, the reality that Landon had opened a door he hadn’t intended to open must’ve hit him in the face like ice water. He more than just eased off and assumed a cooler stance; he canceled our plans, stopped showing up at my school, and avoided passing my desk. He and the other summer associates were due to go home in a few weeks, and the partners had them heavily scheduled with cocktail parties and baseball games and other events meant to sweeten the pot in order to entice the soon-to-be lawyers to choose Becker, Fox & Zuckerman. We talked a few times in the hallway, on the way up and down
the elevator, but it seemed Landon had decided that spending every weekend with Mary Russo was too big of a risk to his heart. Whatever that said about me, my craving for him grew with every step he took away from me.

CHAPTER FIVE

Unmanageable

WE HAVE DINNER AT MY
parents’ house every Sunday night. Regina and Robert Russo live in the same Arlington split-level I lived in as a kid. The house sits at the end of a cul-de-sac, is brown clapboard with yellow shutters, and is shaded by a gigantic oak tree. The three bedrooms and two baths now seem more like a dollhouse with miniature furniture, but somehow the six of us lived comfortably there. Somehow we all found ample space kneeling around my parents’ bed each night to say the Rosary. Somehow we always went to bed with full bellies in a heated house with love in our hearts.

Hand-me-down shoes, sharing a bedroom, and stretching one pound of ground beef into a meal for six made up our roots, dug us deeper into our family soil, braided our branches around one another. None of us ever complained about hardship because it never seemed that way to us. Dad brought home a modest government salary, Mom stayed home and cared for us, and we had everything we needed. We were public school kids who walked home together, played outside until dark, and ate dinner
around the same table every night. Summers were spent at the community pool, vacations were trips to visit relatives. Nothing fancy, but there was a lot of fun, a lot of laughter.

Growing up, everyone in our neighborhood was in the same boat: trying to make ends meet while juggling kids and a mortgage. Birthday parties were simple: backyard games and a homemade cake. When I was older, I was allowed to have a friend spend the night. These days my kids are invited to birthday parties at gyms and bounce houses and bowling alleys and petting zoos. It’s an excess that’s easy to fall into. We all want to give our children so much. But then I think of my birthday parties, the flour-sack races, pin the tail on the donkey, Mom’s beaming pride as she’d round the corner with candles flickering on her birthday cake masterpiece, and I think,
What can be better than that?
There was a deep richness in the simplicity of it all.

Once when I was in high school, I asked my mom, “We’re middle class, right?”

She scrunched her face and considered the question. “Lower middle class, I’d say,” she said. “If you’re talking in terms of economics.” She knew I was—my free enterprise book was sprawled across the counter. “But you can’t label what we have. Not truly what we have,” Mom said.

The house I share with Tom and the kids is a step up in terms of space and style from my parents’ house, but still, there’s something primal about driving up to the house I called home, a gravitational pull that summons me when I get within a half-mile radius of 29 Terrace Circle. I never tire of approaching the three steps that lead me home. My shoulders always drop a half inch as I step through the front door and inhale the smells that accompany my history. If my world exploded tomorrow, if I were in need of refuge, at least I would have this home.

My four kids barrel into the house as if it’s their own, yelling hellos to Nana and Pop. My mom has carved out special nooks and crannies for each of them, places they know they’re allowed to go, things they’re allowed to touch. Sally loves to flip through the photo albums, as if secrets are hidden in each one, and it’s her job to see beyond the obvious. She especially loves the pictures of me and my sisters when we were young. She has just finished reading
Little Women
, and she is certain I was the Jo in the bunch. I’m honored that she regards me that way—brave and principled—but I definitely wasn’t the Jo; that would have been Martina or Teresa. Sally would be disheartened to know how unsure of myself I am most of the time.

Emily has been granted access to my mother’s hatbox, which overflows with costume jewelry. In no time, my daughter is swimming in heavy strands of pearls and dangly clip-ons. The fact that my mother
has
a hatbox teeming with jewelry kills me. My no-nonsense mother wears the same three pieces of jewelry every day: a tight pearl ball in each ear, her wedding ring, which has nearly burrowed under her skin, and a thin gold crucifix around her neck. So where’d she get all of the costume jewelry? She picks it up here and there, flea markets and garage sales, just for Emily. Mom doesn’t part easily with a dime, so it touches me every time I see that the hatbox has a new addition. It tickles me that Emily’s nana is so different from the mother who made me beg for three years before getting my ears pierced.

The twins head to the coat closet, where they sit under the drape of garments, playing with the Old MacDonald’s Farm and Lincoln Logs from my childhood. The toys are in mint condition. The four of us girls veered more toward Barbies than building cabins. Another non-Jo fact about me that Sally would be disappointed to learn.

Once inside the front door, there’s no room for indecision. Two steps up brings me to the dining room and kitchen, where I’ll find my mom. Two steps down brings me to the dark-paneled den, where I can reliably find my father. I choose to go up to the kitchen first to see my mother, who is standing guard over the stove like a sentry, a Diet Pepsi in one hand, a cigarette in the other. When she sees we’re here, she smashes her cigarette into the tray and flicks on the little air purifier that sits on the table. With the cigarette extinguished, the kitchen now fills with the aroma of sauce.

“Hi, Ma,” I say, kissing her cheek. She smells of rosemary and Virginia Slims, and though it baffles me that she and my father still smoke in this day and age, I love it because it’s always been her. She swears that she’s cutting down, only two cigarettes at night, one in the morning. The State Farm office where she has been office manager for twenty-five years has gone “smoke free,” so she’s given up daytime smoking completely.

“How’s my girl?” she says. Mom wears black slacks, the pleated polyester kind that have the elastic waist around the back. On top she wears a blouse—polyester, too. Mom runs the risk of being highly flammable. Once she gets home from work she covers up in an apron, which she’ll wear until dinner is finished and the dishes are done. Her hair falls in long brown waves, and for as long as I can remember she has twisted the length of it into a bun at the base of her neck. A few rogue curls spiral around her face, springing in every direction. Though my sisters and I cringe at her ancient wardrobe and the fact that she still smokes cigarettes, Mom is Sophia Loren beautiful.

“Sauce smells good,” I say. “How’d you make it?” I ask every time. She never tells.

“No recipe,” Mom says. “Just a little of this, a little of that.”

“I’m your daughter,” I say, faking heartbreak. “How could you not tell your own flesh and blood?”

“It comes out a little different every time,” she says with a shrug. “It’s no secret.”

The thing is, it
never
comes out different. It’s always exactly the same, fresh and earthy with spicy notes of oregano. When I was little, I used to eat Mom’s sauce straight out of a bowl, like soup. The only thing that changes is whether there’s hot and sweet sausage swimming through it or Mom’s meatballs. Always a fresh loaf of soft Italian bread from the bakery. Always thick pats of butter. And always the imposter of a salad: torn pieces of iceberg lettuce drenched in two parts oil, one part vinegar, heavily salted and peppered.

Tonight we’re celebrating Emily’s ninth birthday. For the next six days, Emily gets to claim being “the same age” as Sally, until her sister turns ten on the third day of November. I see Mom’s made her famous double-layer chocolate cake. It’s decorated with sprinkles that shimmer like diamonds. Perfect for Emily, our little diva.

Though Mom cooks every night, she’s as thin as a rail. A healthy regimen of Diet Pepsi and cigarettes will do that. Her real pleasure is from watching her family eat. She and my dad are addicted to Diet Pepsi, though they drink a pot of decaf with dinner every night. Mom sits with her coffee, a small bowl of pasta that she’ll only pick at, and watches everyone else eat. She scans our plates, passes bowls, and throws in the occasional “Are you sick? Not hungry?” for anyone who pauses or begs off seconds or thirds. Mom reserves her fondest affection for the person who eats the most and, since we all want her love, we stuff ourselves to win her prize and leave uncomfortably full every Sunday night.

“Go say hello to your father,” Mom says, and kisses me again. I head back down the two short levels of steps. Dad’s pushed back in his recliner, each foot pointing outward, his arm behind his head. His vices are the same as Mom’s: Diet Pepsi and cigarettes, both purchased in bulk at Costco. I see that I’m not the first to get to him. Sally’s on the arm of his recliner, her arm slung around Pop, his around her. They’re sitting cheek to cheek, watching the highlights from the baseball game. Dad’s a man of few words, but he’s accessible.

“Hey, Pop,” I say, leaning over to give him a kiss on his cheek. I slide one over to Sally, too.

“How’s my angel?” he asks, chucking my chin with his hand.

“Great! Good,” I say. “What do you have Tom doing in the basement?” I can hear him rumbling around down there.

“Just looking through some of my old tools,” Dad says. “What am I going to do with three ratchet sets?”

Dad is always talking like he’s going to keel over and die at any moment. You’d think he’d lay off the cigarettes, sausage, and bacon. He’s always sticking Post-it Notes on miscellaneous items: For Mary. For Tom. For Teresa.
Whomever.
It makes him feel better knowing that his prized possessions will be in good hands.