Francesca's Kitchen (10 page)

L
oretta stood at the window and watched until the old woman had driven off into the cold night. When the car was out of sight, she turned from the window and started back to the kitchen, biting her lip all the while. She was furious at herself for not having had her checkbook ready. What must the woman have thought of her? That she was some kind of charity case? Her ruminations on the matter grew even darker when she reentered the kitchen and regarded the cluttered table and the sink full of dirty dishes, which she had meant to take care of that morning before work, but for which there simply hadn't been time. Loretta had purposefully bustled into the house and hurried to the kitchen when she had come home. She had hoped against reason that Mrs. Campanile would stay put in the living room for two minutes and spare her the humiliation of seeing the disaster all around while she put out the food for supper. Instead, the old nosebag had waltzed right over to see what she had brought home, forcing Loretta to feign blissful ignorance of her surroundings. As if that weren't insult enough, there was the not-so-subtle dig about learning how to cook! That's all she needed right now: to have a guilt trip laid on her by her babysitter.

Steaming, Loretta poked her head out the kitchen door to call the kids for supper, but by then, they were already on their way down. Struggling as always to be the first wherever they happened to be going, the two siblings squeezed and pushed and elbowed their way down the staircase. Despite his sister's size advantage, Will managed to squirm away and leap the last three stairs to victory. He stuck the landing like a gymnast and raised his arms in a victory salute, a gloating smile across his face.

“Cheater,” muttered Penelope, giving her brother an elbow to the midsection as she passed. Will doubled over and let out a howl of pain, but in truth, she had given him little more than a nudge. Her brother's dramatic sufferings were all an act.

“Hey!” cried Loretta. “How many times have I told the two of you, no roughhousing on the stairs?”

“She started it,” complained Will, his face contorted in phony agony. “Plus she just punched me in the stomach. You must have seen her do it. Aren't you going to do something?”

“Yes,” replied his mother. “I'm going to give both of you a good wallop if you don't learn how to behave.” In all her years as a mother, Loretta had never once made good on her threats to use corporal punishment on her children. Such being the case, Will and Penny had long ago stopped paying any attention to them. Loretta herself paid them no heed, but it made her feel better to utter them from time to time. “Just go wash your hands and sit down for dinner,” she told them in exasperation.

“Oh, my God, Mom,
where
did you find her?” exclaimed Penny a short time later when the three had gathered at the table to serve themselves. “She must be like—I don't know—a hundred and
fifty
?”

The young girl served herself a helping of mashed potatoes and carried her plate to the living room to watch television while she ate.

“Really, Mom,” Will chimed in just before stuffing a forkful of meat loaf into his mouth. He took a couple of loud, unpleasant sounding chomps and swallowed before adding, “Where did you find that Mrs. Compa-bompa-whatever-her-name-is anyway? At a nursing home?” With that, he took his plate and sauntered off to join his sister.

“That's enough from the two of you,” his mother called after him. “She seems like a very nice woman. And her name is Mrs. Campanile, Mister Eats-Like-a-Horse. Try closing your mouth when you chew. You can call her Mrs. C if that's too hard for you to remember. And don't forget, we're lucky to even have her, especially since she came here on such short notice.”

This last remark sounded even less convincing to Loretta than it did to the children. Loretta did not feel lucky at all. She felt penciled into a corner, like she always did. It was a state of affairs she had grown too weary to bother fighting or even lamenting anymore; these days, when time and circumstances conspired against her, she simply adapted herself to them. Experience had taught her that it was generally the most efficient course of action. Not wanting to dwell further on this particular subject, she decided to change the conversation to another.

“So, I hope no one has any big assignments due on Monday,” she told them. “If either of you do, get working on it now, because I'm not going to want to hear about it on Sunday night at ten o'clock. Don't leave it until the last minute, like someone I know does all the time.” This comment was aimed at her son, who pretended not to hear as he came back into the kitchen with his empty plate. Instead, he set his sights on another helping of meat loaf. The container of vegetables never once caught his eye.

“I have a team project I'm working on with Jenna,” announced Penny. “So I'll need to use the computer tonight.”

“But I was going to go online to check out the Yu-Gi-Oh Web site!” cried Will.

“My schoolwork is more important than your stupid game-card thing,” replied his sister.

“It's not fair, Mom,” he protested. “All's she gonna do is instant message her friends.”

“Enough!” pleaded Loretta. “This nightly bickering over who gets to use the computer is enough to drive a person to drink. I have half a mind to throw the whole thing out the second-floor window. Let your sister do her work for a little while, and then you do whatever you want on it later. The two of you are old enough to sort this out between yourselves. If you can't do that and this constant commotion continues, I'll just get rid of the computer, and that will be that.”

This was another of Loretta's occasional threats that she and her children well knew she would never make good on.

“Whatever,” said Penny.

“So, what's the deal, Mom?” asked Will. “Is she coming back on Monday?”

“Mrs. Campanile? I certainly hope so.”

“How come?”

Loretta gave a sigh. “Because at the moment, I don't have a plan C,” she told him.

“Sounds like Mrs. C
is
plan C,” chuckled Will, quite amused with himself.

“Very funny,” said his sister, rolling her eyes.

After they finished eating, Loretta closed up the leftovers and put them in the refrigerator, while Penny logged on to the computer upstairs and Will settled in to play a video game on the television. It had been a long day—a long week, for that matter—and the urge to lay down and sleep was weighing heavier and heavier upon her. She cast a forlorn look at the growing pile of dirty dishes in the sink. Her kitchen was crying for attention, just like everything else in her life, but at the moment, she had no energy for it. The lure of relaxing in a nice hot bath while the kids were quiet coaxed her away. She had earned it, she told herself, and besides, the dishes would all still be there in the morning.

“S
he didn't
pay
you?” cried Peg.

“Didn't I say she was crazy to do it?” added Connie.

“This is exactly how it starts,” concluded Natalie.

They were in the library by the collection of movie videos and audiobooks. It was early Saturday afternoon, and Francesca had stopped by to drop off the books on babysitting she had taken out. She had read about as much of them as she could tolerate; they weren't much help. Peg and the others had been there when she had walked in, each of them browsing through the videos for something to watch on television later that night. Francesca had hoped not to encounter any of her three library friends that day, for she had anticipated what their reaction to the account of her first day as a babysitter would be. The three of them, though, had spied her the moment she had walked through the front entrance. There was no way to escape giving a full report.

Francesca shrugged and gave a sigh. “She wanted to pay me,” she insisted. “It's just that it was late, and I wanted to go home, and she couldn't find her checkbook. Besides, it was only one day.”

Peg wasn't buying any of it. She stood there, gaping at her friend. Rolling her eyes, she clicked her tongue and shook her head as if to say that Francesca had just set a world record for gullibility.

“Oldest trick in the book,” clucked Connie.

“Told you something like this would happen,” added Natalie.

“Well,” Francesca groused, “at least I didn't have to do any cooking or cleaning—not that I wasn't tempted. And I was so
bombalit`
yesterday morning, trying to get myself organized, that I didn't even think to make a little something for the kids to eat after school. You should have seen the junk they ate!”

“So what?” said Peg with a dismissive wave. “Let them eat what they want. You're better off. You do it once, and they'll expect it all the time. Besides, you never know if one of them might have a food allergy.”

“Food allergy?”

“That's right,” agreed Natalie. “Didn't all those babysitting books tell you anything? Lots of kids these days are allergic to peanuts and God knows what else. You've got to be careful what you give them.”

“That's all you need to have happen,” added Connie. “One of the little brats goes into anaphylactic shock, and then what do you do?”

“So, give us the rest of the dirt,” said Peg. “Was the house really a mess?”

“Oh, not so bad,” Francesca told them, trying to put the best spin possible on the situation. “I never got a chance to see the upstairs, but things were a little lived-in downstairs, if you know what I mean. I thought about straightening up a little before the mother got home—”

“Don't you dare!” huffed Peg.

“Don't worry. I didn't lift a finger,” Francesca assured them. “But it wasn't easy. It was all I could do to just sit there on my hands.”

Connie leaned closer and gave her a nudge. “So, what about the kids?” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “What were they like?”

“Oh, my God, you should have seen them!” cried Francesca, holding her hands over her heart.

“Really cute?” sighed Natalie.

“You would pinch their cheeks for an hour if you saw them.”

“Hey, cute is what cute does,” warned Peg. “It's the cute ones that are always the most trouble.”

“Well, you might have a point there,” said Francesca. “I didn't exactly hit it off with the two of them. I don't think they're bad kids—I didn't get that impression at all—but they need something.”

“What?” her three friends asked in unison.

“I don't know yet,” said Francesca with a shrug, “but I'll figure it out.”

“So, you're going back there again on Monday?” said Peg.

“Of course.”

“But why?”

“It's hard to explain,” she said thoughtfully. “I guess it's because I think they need somebody—maybe not me, but somebody. And
I
need to be needed. I need to be doing something useful. It's like I told you once before: It's a way for me to keep breathing.”

“And like I said before,” sighed Peg with another shake of her head, “I think it's a good way to give yourself a big pain in the backside. But what can I say? It's your backside. Just make sure you get your money next week.”

“Ayyy
,
don't worry, I will,” Francesca assured her friend. Then, with a sly grin, she added, “And if she doesn't pay up, I'll send you three to collect for me.”

At that, she and her friends all laughed aloud, until they were shushed by an annoyed library patron hidden somewhere among the book stacks. The librarian herself would have also done so, but she knew better than to tangle with the four biddies.

“Okay, girls,” whispered Francesca. “Guess we better quiet down before they call the cops on us.”

“Now wouldn't
that
be exciting?” whispered Peg in return, and the four covered their mouths to stifle their giggling, like schoolgirls sharing a private joke.



Francesca went to church later that afternoon. She arrived early enough to go to confession before the start of mass, but she chose instead to stay in her pew and pray the rosary. It was something she did quite often. Francesca loved the quiet, contemplative minutes in the church before mass, especially when things were weighing on her mind—as they so often did. For a few tranquil moments before the celebration began, she would let it all go. Her worries for her children. Her fears for the future. Her occasional anger over trivial things that she knew, in the final analysis, really didn't matter, but tormented her still. All these she handed over to God for a time, to let Him sort out the whole thing, while she allowed her mind a brief, refreshing rest. She often emerged from her weekly hour in church feeling far more renewed than she ever did after a month of vacation.

On this particular evening, however, the rosary and the mass did not prove to be the elixir to her spirits that they normally were. From the opening prayers through communion, Francesca struggled to pay attention, her mind dwelling on her first day with the Simmons children. She was feeling a little guilty about not telling her own children what she was up to, even though she was of the firm opinion that it was her business and none of theirs. She felt an additional twinge at not having been completely forthright with her friends at the library. There was more to why she had not cooked or cleaned up the house for the Simmons woman than she had let on to Peg and the others. They all were right, of course, that there were people out there who would not hesitate to take advantage of someone caring for their children. Somehow, though, Loretta Simmons did not strike her as being one of them. From the little Francesca had, to this point, seen of her, the young woman simply seemed overwhelmed by all she was facing, but was too proud to admit it. Pride was something about which Francesca knew more than just a little, and the last thing on this earth she would intentionally do is wound that of another. She understood that, until she knew the young mother and her children better, she would have to tread lightly. It would be a challenge, one she wasn't completely certain that she was up to.

Feeling a bit glum, Francesca gave only a brief hello to Father Buontempo when she walked out of the church after mass was finished. The winter night had fallen like a dark cloak over the city, a cold sliver of a moon rising in the east, and she shivered as she picked her way across the parking lot to her car. When she installed herself behind the steering wheel and turned the key, the engine did not turn over right away, adding a layer of apprehension to her ruminations. On the third try, it roared to life, and Francesca put it in gear before it had a chance to stall. The car gave her no trouble on the way home, but the thought that it might traveled with her the whole way.

When she pulled up to the house, Francesca was surprised to see a car parked out front. She pulled into the driveway, collected her things, and hurried up the front walk to the door. When she stepped inside, she threw off her coat and hat, and went straight to the kitchen. There she found a young man sitting at the table, perusing the newspaper. Her hands on her hips, Francesca stood in the doorway, tapping her foot as she gloated at him. For his part, the young man said nothing, but merely looked up, gave her a nod and a smile, and went back to reading the paper. Peeved at such a complacent greeting, Francesca tried to force herself to frown at the young man, but it was no use, for inside, her heart was soaring a mile high. How could it not?

Joey was home.