Chapter Twenty
The last few days have been busy … at least for me. Tony finally just stopped fighting - me and his own body - and agreed to sleep whatever he has off. He wakes up for food and the bathroom and maybe to listen to a little radio to TV. Sometimes I’ll take a break and listen with him; the reception is better upstairs anyway; the rabbit ears actually bring in a local station on the boob tube and we don’t need anything extra to pick up radio signals. Unfortunately, to some extent, all it does is aggravate both of us.
The news ain’t so happy-happy-happy as it was. The television broadcasts we manage to pick up if the weather is just right are the same way. And they’ve changed the broadcast anchors too. There’s this woman on there that drives me freakin’ nuts. I mean if it was any more obvious that she’s just a gorgeous bimbo being used to front someone’s agenda they’d have to hold a sign up behind her. But what really torques me is that when she tries to tell something sad or really concerning it looks like she’s going to crack her botox. The guy that sits beside her most of the time is just as bad though I have to admit it is kinda funny to see that his “Just For Men” dye job is growing out.
Yeah, I know I’m being totally snarky about it but I hate wasting the batteries listening to them say a lot of words that don’t mean really anything constructive no matter how they dress it up. For instance, they’re always talking about all of the good things going on in the cities now that the rioting is over with, how things are getting so much better. Problem is that if you pick the lid up off of that and look under it you begin to see that a lot of rights are getting trampled all over. Military and quasi-military roaming to “put down” anyone that causes unrest. People being rounded up in civilian drafts just because they know how to do certain jobs; the medical establishment has been particularly hard hit by this. And in some places it is nothing but a race baiting/race riot world.
Worse yet, they are on this serious “hoarding” kick where they try and say anyone that has more food than they need for immediate purposes is behaving irresponsibly, is a racist, is some kind of traitor or seditionist. If I hear it too many more times I’m gonna hurl. They blow a lot of smoke but the bottom line is they’re telling people it is their patriotic duty to turn their family and friends in if they have more in their house than the neighbors do. That’s like busting three of the Ten Commandments right there starting with thou shalt not covet.
“Tony?”
“Mm?” Poor guy was half asleep but I really needed to talk to him.
“I need to ask you somethin’ and I need you to be honest without blowin’ your stack.”
Cracking one eye open he said reluctantly, “I won’t promise not to be angry about something when I don’t know what it is.”
I sighed, “I suppose, but just hear me out first, OK?” At his slow nod I continued on. “You know this hoarding thing bothers me.” He nodded. “Well, look around Tony. You know … wait, maybe you don’t.”
“You’re not makin’ any sense Ragazza,” he said as if determined to stay calm so I wouldn’t be the one to blow my stack.
Getting a little frustrated I said, “I know and I’m sorry. Look, I’ve told you in general what we’ve got to work with here.”
“Sure. You brought me a basic inventory and kept me up to date on what you’re addin’ every day. And don’t think I don’t appreciate it. I wish …”
Shaking my head I said, “Don’t go there Tony. You’ll be up and around soon enough and you can help me with the grapes and stuff that’re more trouble than the apples and the like. I just mean you know that what we’ve got is way more than what the average person would have in their kitchen cabinets.”
He was beginning to understand my agitation. “Yeah Joey. I get it. Someone could think we’re hoarding things, come in and try and take it or take over.”
Relieved he’d seen it I told him, “That’s part of it. I figure no matter what we’ve got some risk to deal with but not anywhere what we’d have if we lived down in town or back in the city. But … but what if someone rats on us? What then?”
Looking at me close he asks, “You got some reason to think someone will? Is that what you’re worried about? ‘Cause if it is I’ve already thought about it. Why do you think it drives me crazy when you’re out in that orchard all alone?”
“Tony, I’m not worried about the locals. Nobody but the propane guy really knows where this place is and he was an old guy that had his own place. I think those guys that tried to take us out were just a one off … accident or somethin’. I’m more worried about …” I really hated to say it but it’s been eating at me. “Tony, do you think Leo … or … or your uncle … could or would turn us in?”
I kept waiting for Tony to blow but he didn’t he just looked sad. “I’ve thought about it. And don’t look so surprised. After what Uncle Nicky did to you … after what he tried to do to me … I can’t just pretend he isn’t a threat. But could he find his way back up here? I don’t know about that. I’m pretty sure Leo couldn’t as he had to follow me in and didn’t hang around long enough to get familiar with the landmarks to find his way back … you know how easy it is to get lost on that mining road. I remember going in circles a couple of times myself before we got here.”
Quietly I admitted, “I hated to bring it up but it’s been eatin’ at me. I don’t like the idea of going against your family, not even your uncle despite what he did. I sure don’t want to be on the other side of something from Lucia … or even Bennie who ain’t such a loser as you think he is … or your aunt … or … well, none of ‘em. It just bothers me that I can’t find it in me to trust ‘em and not worry about it. I just don’t know what I can do about it.”
Just as quietly Tony said, “I know Ragazza. It bothers me that it is my family that we have to be concerned about. I brought them here …”
Putting my hand on his shoulder I stopped him. “Don’t Tony. My parents agreed to it and probably even suggested it. You know how they could be. If it had been their side of the family you couldn’t have gotten the location of this place out of them with a rubber mallet and burning tongs but for the Moretti family … their best friends … to them that was better than family.”
He nodded. “Even if that is true it doesn’t change the fact we could have a problem on our hands does it? First off I been thinkin’ that we need to hide the entrance road. I kinda remember it being overgrown and missing it twice before I found it.”
“Yeah, it’s overgrown but it still stands out if you know what you’re lookin’ for. I know you didn’t like me walkin’ down day before yesterday but I wanted to check the fence line for more blackberries and to see what the nut trees looked like. I think stringing something across the road would only draw notice to it. I even thought about taking the chainsaw and knocking a tree or two down but then that would get in the way of the tractor if we needed it for some reason. A downed tree might also draw attention but …”
When I stopped and peeped at him from my eyelashes he cautiously asked, “But what? I know that look Joey.”
Cautiously I explained, “There’s that old bridge across the gully not too far from where the mining road breaks off from the old rural route highway.”
I’d caught his attention. “You want to destroy a public bridge.”
Knowing how it sounded I said, “Just hear me out. I know for a fact you can’t see the bridge from the highway. I know for a fact not many people use the old mining roads anymore because there ain’t nothing at the end of the road except some forestry land that was hunted over to the point the locals don’t even bother with it. It could be the best place for a road block; no one would tie it directly to this place.”
Tony was thinking about it. I could tell by the set of his face; he’s simply a cautious man. But then he raised something I hadn’t taken into account. “So’s if we actually figure out some way to knock the bridge down; can you live with someone getting hurt because they weren’t payin’ attention and drive off it into the gully?”
I winced. “OK, so I didn’t think of everything.”
“Let me think on it some. To be honest I’m less worried about someone coming in by road than I am being spotted from the air. Mr. Comb Over from that news show mentioned they were doing that in a lot of rural agricultural areas in order to pinpoint public resources.”
I snorted and added a very unladylike word making Tony give me the hairy eyeball. I said, “What? You want I should just squeal and faint and refuse to believe anything can be done about it?”
Shaking his head he said, “No, but you don’t need to sound a teamster. What would your mother say?”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine, whatever. Geez Tony.” I didn’t say anything more because he was obviously tired again. I also let it go because while I could have a mouth on me it was usually a clean one. I shouldn’t let those people get to me and change who I am. It’s just hard not to sink to the level of the people threatening you.
Leaving Tony in a half doze I went back downstairs and looked at my handiwork before putting it away. The day of rain let me pick up most of the mess in the main part of the house and move it to one of the downstairs bedroom. I make myself put away at least one box of stuff in the morning and one box of stuff at night. As a result I’m nearly half way through it all and feeling pretty good.
I’ve also changed the way I’m harvesting. I go early in the morning and harvest from the trees, brambles, and vines – mostly because it is cooler then and not so many gnats – and then bring it back to the house. I do this until about lunch time when I stop. For the rest of the day I work at processing the fruit. It isn’t a perfect system. Sometimes the mist is so heavy I have a hard time seeing down the trail to get to the orchard and it is as bad as working in the rain. And sometimes if I was up late the night before it is very hard to get up; but, I try and treat it like a school project … it is something that must be done, must be done well, if I am to survive the course and pass. Since I’m an overachiever by nature it all works out to the good. The afternoons are as much work as the mornings but with the right tools it usually goes smoothly unless I flub something up.
One such tool is Mom’s steam juicer; I love that thing. I steam about half the fruit I pick and process the juice in jars for drinking or for making jellies some other time. In about five hours I can get six quarts of juice from a half bushel of apples while at the same I’m canning fruit in other ways. I also keep the dehydrators full. I bring in a lot of buckets of fruit and set them in the basement. The goal is always before I stop for the night I have to have at least as many buckets processed as I brought in. I still can’t get ahead but I am keeping up.
I’m not just preserving food for future use. Since we gotta eat someone’s gotta cook and that someone is me. I get creative with our current meals when I’ve got the time. As I cook things I’ve noticed gaps in my ingredient list. Some are easy to substitute for, some are not. For example I had a recipe that called for apple pie spice. Well I didn’t have any apple pie spice but I did have cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and cardamom … it was an easy fix. On the other hand I have some recipes that call for fresh citrus fruit or citrus juice and sorry, that’s just not happening so it is either substitute with dry or canned ingredients or forget about it.
The biggie for me – in addition to coffee – has been cheese. Mom brought a few blocks of cheese with her but Dad couldn’t have much of the stuff so it was not a priority item. Tony said he didn’t even think of cheese or he would have grabbed some wheels form the deli on his way out of town. Lucky for us I’ve had some very interesting roommates. What does one have to do with the other? Kind of a lot all things considered.
One of my roommates was a girl from the Philippines; her father was an American serviceman and her mother Philippine. Over there they don’t really have access to fresh milk, everything is powdered but her father loved cheese. Imported cheese was too expensive so her mother learned to make cheese from powdered milk. Michaela – my roommate – learned from her mother and she taught me and that same summer I taught Mom and Mrs. Moretti, both of whom were at first extremely doubtful that such a thing could really be done.
Well, as you can guess it once I proved my point they took off with it and made it better. My mother’s Jewish friends had a blast with it too because so long as they had kosher rennet, or a vegetable based rennet, they could make kosher cheese and avoid the expense in the stores. For a while one of the Halal store owners was very upset until my father asked him why he didn’t just take advantage of a new market and stock kosher cheese making supplies. He actually expanded his customer base into the non-Jewish community and my mother had the ingredients she needed just a few blocks away; win-win for all concerned.
I will admit there can be a couple of extra steps for making cheese from powdered milk if you are making one of the traditional hard cheeses like cheddar but if you are making a soft cheese there is hardly anything to it. What I wanted yesterday – what Tony was craving too – was cannoli, and for that I needed ricotta cheese.
Now you can make ricotta a couple of different ways. Traditionally it is made with whey leftover from making other cheese which would be a great way to use it (no pun intended) except I hadn’t made any other cheese yet. You can also make ricotta using whole milk and this is the method I used only I started with powdered milk. We have plenty of powdered milk for the same reason we have lots of canned milk, whole grains, and other things stored here. Mom didn’t want to have to drive down the mountain just to get a quart of milk from the market when she wanted it.
I made up two quarts worth of powdered milk and used a whisk to beat the powder into the water and then let it set to make double sure that all the solids had dissolved. Once I had the two quarts of liquid milk I added one teaspoon of citric acid (you can also use lemon juice) to the milk and whisked it in for about half a minute. Then I added three tablespoons of red wine vinegar and did the same thing. As soon as that was completed I heated the milk solution to eighty-eight degrees F, and stirred it a few times while it was heating to keep it from scorching on the bottom and being cold on top. Next I added half of a rennet tablet that had been pre-dissolved in a quarter cup of cool water.
As soon as I had poured in the rennet and stirred it in I removed the milk solution from the heat source and let it sit for one hour. The whole point of adding all of that stuff to the milk was to make it curdle. I know that sounds gross but it is the curds that you need for cheese. Basically cheese is curdled milk if you think about it.
After an hour I lined a colander with cheesecloth and poured the curds and whey into it. They whey dripped through to a bowl I put beneath the colander and then I picked up the corners of the cheesecloth with the curds inside and hung it so it could “drip dry” for a while longer. Some people prefer their ricotta “wet” and some prefer a very “dry” ricotta; I prefer something in the middle, neither runny nor dry.
For the cannoli filling you take two pounds of ricotta and add one and a half cups of powdered sugar, four teaspoons of good vanilla, and if you really want to go on overload you can add a package of chocolate chips. I didn’t want to use the chocolate chips I had but I did have several bars of milk chocolate and baker’s chocolate. I took the Hershey Symphony bar I found in one of my mother’s boxes and grated about half of it into the cannoli filling. It looked like my cannoli had fleas but I didn’t care.
The cannoli shells are harder to make because they are pastry but it really isn’t any worse than making doughnuts which is nothing but another type of fried dough. Mix one and half cups of flour, one tablespoon of cocoa (if you have it), one tablespoon of sugar, one half teaspoon of baking powder, and one quarter teaspoon of salt. Then you work two tablespoons of good shortening or lard into your dry ingredients all the while adding a half cup of wine a little bit at a time as you mix. It doesn’t look like you wind up with much dough but trust me, it’s more than enough.
You take a piece of your dough about the size of a nickel and roll it out real thin and then wrap it around a cannoli tube; finally figured out that’s what the metal tubes were than were inside the box marked “Italian cookware.” Then you are going to drop the dough and tube into some grease to deep fry them … same as doughnuts. There’s a way to bake cannoli tubes as well but I was jonesing for something fried. When the cannoli pastry is as brown as you want them take them out and put them on brown paper or sheets of parchment to drain and then push the metal tubes out of them carefully. After that it is easy; just fill the tubes with the cannoli filling and chow down.
I think last night was the first complete meal – main dish, bread, side dish, and dessert – that Tony had eaten since he got here. Heck even I was as full as a Barbary tick afterwards. That sort of thing is too much work for every day but I think I can manage it a couple of times a month.
The fact that I’m thinking in months rather than days or weeks has finally escaped my subconscious and become a whole thought process. The reason why I’m worried about being considered a hoarder is if they take everything we are working towards how will we survive long term? Not just tomorrow, or next week … but next month and next year. I don’t want to be dependent on anyone … well, besides the obvious with Tony.
Tony’s said that isn’t realistic. We can’t produce our own sugar cane for sugar, wheat for flour, corn for meal, etc. I’m thinking that maybe we can or at the very least we can substitute for other things. When I told him so he said it is more than food. “Joey, even if you can sew where are you going to get the material for clothes? Even if I know how to reload bullet casings where is the black powder and primers going to come from? Even if we have this solar system to provide us with some energy what happens if one or more of the batteries go bad? No man is an island.”
I don’t know. It seems like all I can do is make it through the here and now going day by day; thinking of all of the possible future problems we are facing is just more than I can do. I’ll be glad when Tony is well enough to help with that part of it.
Monday, November 14, 2011
Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
As was my habit, I was up early and nearly had breakfast finished when I heard the toilet flush in the upstairs bathroom. I went to the bottom of the stairs and called up, “Get back in bed. I’m bringing your breakfast up on a tray.”
I turned to go back to the kitchen when Tony stuck his head out. He still looked tired despite all of the sleep he had but there was a determination in his eyes that hadn’t been there the day before. “Joey, do you see my shaving kit down there? I need it.”
“You don’t need it,” I told him. “You need to get back in bed. It’s raining so you are stuck with me inside – at least for the morning – and I’m boiling over with energy and want to spend it spoilin’ you instead of the other way around for a change.”
I heard him snort in disbelief and aggravation. “Joey, none o’ your mischief. I want my shaving kit.”
Having grabbed said shaving kit I’d already started up the stairs knowing that Tony was as Irish as he was Italian which meant he could be, as Gran had called hime, as stubborn as a whole team of mules. He’d just stuck his head out of the bathroom again and prepared to bellow when he caught sight of me standing there grinning wickedly. None too happy to be caught with his mouth hanging open he said, “You did that on purpose.”
Grinning in my own wicked way I said, “Of course I did. Did you really expect anything less?”
Trying not to crack a smile he growled, “One of these days …”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard that threat too many times for too long to believe it. Seriously though,” I said handing him his bag. “You should be in bed. And you don’t need to shave you know.”
I stood outside the door with my back to it having glimpsed the fact that he only had a towel wrapped around his waist. Completely ignoring what I’d just said he told me, “I’m not a man that can wear a beard. I look ridiculous. It is too thick and grows every which way.”
I tried not to laugh when I said, “Vanity thy name is …” I didn’t get to finish what I was saying because there was a huge bang behind me. I turned to see that Tony had fallen.
I pushed the bathroom door open and saw him struggling to sit up but his eyes didn’t look focused. I fell to my knees beside him. “Tony?! Talk to me. Did you slip? Did you hit your head?”
He was getting angry and it wasn’t helping in the least. He continued to struggle while saying, “I don’t know. Move.”
“I am not moving and neither are you. Let me check your head.”
He spat, “I didn’t hit my head. And I’m not a child. I …”
“Tony!” That got his attention. The fact that he could tell I was done playing was a good sign. “Now listen. I need you to lay back. I’m going to poke on you a little bit and it ain’t for fun. I need you to tell me if something is uncomfortable or it hurts … don’t get macho on me, this is serious.”
“Ouch,” he said jumping as I gently felt around where I thought his spleen would be. I shouldn’t have been able to feel anything but I did. James’ spleen hadn’t gotten enlarged during his bought with mono but Ike’s had and he’d had some of the same symptoms … dizziness, irritability, anemic looking color.
Persisting despite his obvious anger I said, “Tony, listen. How did you feel yesterday after you ate?”
“Full,” he said with a smart aleck tone.
Now it way my turn to get angry, and that on top of my worry. “Do I look like I’m foolin’?” What he saw in my face must have convinced him to cooperate. “Is full all you felt? Any discomfort, pain, anything?”
He shook his head, “Just full. And tired. I couldn’t believe how tired I felt. When I work up I was fine … ok don’t give me that look, I felt better. Wanted a shower and felt even better after that then all of a sudden the floor started tiling … and now I feel as weak as a thrice used tea bag.”
Trying not to smile at one of Aunt Belinda’s odd sayings when it came out of Tony’s mouth I asked, “You promise?”
He sighed, “Yeah, I promise. Now what ‘s got you into a pet?”
“I don’t know that anything is wrong per se. This just … look, let me help you up. Don’t put any pressure on your abdomen, let me do the work.”
“I’m only in a towel Joey. And that ain’t real secure. You … uh …”
Trying not to giggle like an embarrassed idiot I admitted, “Kinda noticed that already. I promise not to look if you promise not to do somethin’ that draws my attention that direction.”
A few Anglo-Italian expletives later and a quick grab of the towel by him to keep it from falling off completely and he was walking back to the room mostly under his own steam though he was obviously feeling insulted. “I do not need to hold your arm like I’m some old guy.”
“You’re not old, and I don’t think of you like a little kid either so forget that one too. You’re ill and recoverin’ and I don’t want you to take no more headers. Now behave, I’m not foolin’ Tony. I’m gonna be the one with gray hair if you don’t knock it off. Kapish?”
He made me go down and bring his clothes bag up and then leave the room again so he could dress. “Are you done yet?!” I yelled through the door getting more than a little frustrated … and not for a good reason.
“Yeah,” he said opening it then turning to walk gingerly towards the bed.
He was dressed in athletic shorts and a t-shirt which wasn’t at all the pajamas that I knew for a fact were in the bag because I’d seen them there when I’d peeked just to be nosey. I knew he was setting limits on his “invalid state” but even if it caused an argument I needed to draw the line if I wasn’t going to go freakin’ nuts. I practically begged, “Don’t fight me on this Tony. I know you might be feelin’ a little better but you ain’t there yet. Just stay in bed; if you need somethin’ I’ll even bring you a bell to call me with if you promise not to have me runnin’ up and down the stairs like a crazy woman.”
After he sat down and let me fluff the pillows for him he asked me seriously, “You playin’ me or are you really worried about somethin’?”
“I think it’s …” I stopped frustrated. “Look, I told you it keeps sounding like mono … like the twins had that time; you remember. The swollen lymph nodes, the tender … er … parts, the fatigue; but it don’t make sense that it is mono if you didn’t get it until you got that stuff on you so what I’m thinkin’ what are all those symptoms if they ain’t mono? Well, the lymph system helps to fight infection; I remember that much from my anatomy class. You had some kind of infection and it has overloaded your body. You were dehydrated too and no tellin’ when the last time was you ate a good meal.”
“So?” he asked when I stopped.
“Geez, I’m no doctor Tony. I don’t know … I wish Lucia was here, she’d at least be able to tell me if I was being’ stupid.”
He grabbed my hand and tugged me to sit down and stop pacing. “Stop walkin’ a hole in the floor and just tell me.”
“The spleen; it’s part of the lymph system. Ike got real sick … worse than James … and his spleen got swollen like yours. The doctor said that isn’t necessarily a bad thing but that we had to be careful not to do anything that would rupture it … he was out of sports longer than James, couldn’t do no liftin’ for a while. You remember?”
Thinking Tony said, “Kinda I guess. I remember Aunt Belinda was goin’ nuts thinking the girls were gonna come down with it.”
“Anyway, I think you just need rest and stuff. You might be anemic – we can deal with that – but you gotta be careful and get as much rest as your body wants.”
His nose flared which was a sign that he was hearing me but not liking what I was saying. “I ain’t lyin’ around all day while you do all the work. We got things to do.”
“Don’t be crazy Tony. There will still be plenty to do when you get over whatever this is. The spleen helps filter the blood before the liver gets a hold of it. If it’s swollen that means it’s had to work really hard and gotten irritated or somethin’. Same thing with the lymph nodes. You don’t look so bad as you did and your head seems to be on straight so that means – I think it means – that you’re getting’ better. Just humor me on this. Take it easy, OK? I can’t … the thought …” I had to stop because I was shaking. “Don’t do this to me Tony. I don’t think I could live if I lost you too.”
“Aw Ragazza, don’t. I ain’t goin’ nowhere. You know what your tears do to me?”
I wanted to thump him. “Then don’t scare me and make me feel like cryin’. It won’t be for long, just until the swellin’ goes down and you feel more like your old self. Please.”
He leaned back on the pillows, out of juice to fight. “Looks like I don’t have no choice.”
“Sure you do, but it’s nice to know you’re a man of good sense. I always liked that about you,” I told him, sniffing and getting myself under control. “Now you sit and play king for a day and let me bring you some breakfast.”
After breakfast he fought for five minutes not to close his eyes but I just kept talking at him and saying nothing and finally he dozed off. Under any other circumstances I might be offended that listening to me talk put him to sleep but since that had been my plan I was pretty satisfied.
It was still raining, a slow and steady drizzle that would make picking fruit unproductive … no pun intended. I’d already been out in it once to check on the birds and they seemed more than happy to be left alone after I tossed in some fruit peelings and apple and pear cores. I also found a half dozen eggs and did the happy dance. I was pretty sure that wasn’t many eggs to be getting from over two dozen birds but considering the shape they were in to begin with I wasn’t going to complain.
The birds still looked kinda weird with feathers missing here and there and with a half-crazed look to their beady little eyes … but at least they didn’t look like they were going to fall over and die after two of three steps no more. Some were getting downright feisty and didn’t appreciate it when I took their eggs. What the heck though, it’s not like they were going to get anything for setting on them things. With no rooster all the eggs were just eggs and wouldn’t make chicks.
Instead of working outside in the rain I had decided that I could do more than stand around waiting for the dehydrator to finish. First thing in the morning I had gotten a batch of apple and pear sauce cooking only talking to Tony it had gone past the sauce state and into the butter state; nearly scorched it. No biggie; I had more than enough fruit to start another batch. I put the “butter” in jars and into the boiling water bath canner to seal just like Mom had taught me then I made another pot of chopped fruit and watched it more closely this time.
I wasn’t worried about power usage since the stove was gas but all day long as I made different batches of things I always tried to fill the canner up as full as I could so nothing would be wasted.
For lunch I heated up some Italian chicken soup but the tomatoes in it upset Tony’s stomach letting me know that I’d need to be careful for a while. I don’t think there is much else worse for a man that to puke his guts up when he isn’t drunk enough to dull the memory. Tony was stone cold sober and one sick puppy … and afterwards embarrassed enough that I barely got two words out of him. The soup wasn’t bad because I had some before he did, it was simply too much for his system to handle.
A couple of hours later he didn’t grumble too bad when I brought him some of the fresh made apple-pear sauce with a couple of piadinas. “You made this?”
I smiled and said, “Don’t lose your dentures. I do know how to cook you know.”
“Your Mom said so but … uh …”
Still smiling I said, “But you thought she was exaggerating just because Lucia acted like it was a death sentence to have to cook.” At his shrug I told him, “You never let me know when you were going to be in town or I would have made something rather than stopping at the deli or eating out. It woulda been cheaper too.”
He took my hand. “The money isn’t … wasn’t … a problem. I just liked surprisin’ you.”
Knowing Tony I said, “And checkin’ up on me.” Caught like a fish on a hook Tony didn’t say a word but it made me laugh out right. “I wasn’t doin’ nothin’ with no one. Why you had such a hard time believin’ that at first I don’t know.”
“’Cause I saw them guys lookin’ at you. You had chances to do somethin’.”
I shrug nonchalantly. “Sure. You should have seen some of the things some of the kids in the dorm would get up to. Honestly Tony, it was a university not a seminary school. And some of them kids weren’t all that particular if you know what I mean.”
A little ticked off he asked, “So if you had so many chances why didn’t you?”
“Geez you’re either blind or … or blind.” I shook my head. “If I’m spendin’ all my time dreamin’ of you how are boys like those gonna measure up and get my attention?”
Thoughtfully he said, “I didn’t know you were dreamin’ about me.”
I shrugged. “I tried to tell you a couple a times but … I don’t know … things were hard enough and confusin’ enough without makin’ it worse chasin’ somethin’ I wasn’t sure I could catch. And even if I did catch you I wasn’t too sure I’d know what to do with you. I just wasn’t ready for it all.”
Still rubbing my hand with his thumb he asks, “And you think you’re ready now?”
Uh oh, we’d slipped over into complicated things; ‘course I kinda sent in that direction on purpose. I shrugged. “Things are so … so wrong. The world seems to be comin’ apart at the seams and nobody is telling the truth about it. My parents … brothers … they’re all gone and I didn’t even have a chance to tell ‘em good bye. Lucia just left and that hurts too even though I knew it was what she would feel like she had to do, maybe the only thing she could do if she wanted to have any peace for herself. And then here you are. You risked your life to save my family … and not just on the road either. If you had gotten out of the city in the very beginning rather than trying to take care of them you wouldn’t have been stuck on that road and a sitting duck. You spend all that money … and don’t stop me from saying it ‘cause I know it wasn’t cheap to get that driver for us from the airport or give up your back up ride.” I leaned over and brushed his hair out of his eyes for what seemed the hundredth time. “Look Tony, I may not know what to do with my feelings for you, but I’m done hidin’ them. Doesn’t seem like there is any good reason’ to anymore.”
Tony sighed, “And I’m done hidin’ my feelings for you. But it don’t seem right for your father not to be here for me to ask his permission first; that had always been my plan. It ain’t right that your Momma isn’t around to give you advice and tell you you could do better and hate on me for a while.”
I gave a watery chuckle. “Don’t be stupid. Mom always thought you were something special. She’d thump the twins every once in a while and tell them to act more like you instead of like a couple of crazy park squirrels. And my brothers would have gone nuts thinkin’ about all the stuff you could help them get into. And I think … maybe … like I said … Dad wouldn’t have had a problem with you either. For sure he wouldn’t have had you here to the cabin so often if he didn’t trust you pretty good.”
That last thought really seemed to hit Tony hard. “I wish Uncle Nicky woulda been more like your Dad. They were good friends, I always hoped more would come of it.”
I nodded. “Dad had a way of acceptin’ people for who they were. Your uncle would get rattled and he’d come see Dad and most of the time it helped. Maybe … maybe Dad dyin’ is part of what broke your uncle so bad.”
Tony sighed. “Maybe but I don’t know as I could trust him no more.” He brushed my hair away from the side of my face where the spreading bruised was getting to the real ugly stage. “Hey, when you go out to pick that fruit, you take protection with you? Right?”
“Yeah. I found an LCP in your truck.” Smiling I said, “It has a pink slide on it so I figured you meant it for a lady friend.”
A little color rose on his cheeks. “Oh, that ugly thing. It … er … belonged to one of the partner’s … uh … anyway, she got wasted and was shootin’ at his lawn art and he took it away and told me to get rid of it someplace. Figured you’d get a kick out of it.”
Outraged I said, “What a clanker! You take me for stupid or somethin’? It was factory fresh when I took it out of the box.”
He was caught and he knew it. Biting my lip, unsure if I was funning or not, I told him, “Don’t tell me stories Tony. I think it’s sweet – even if it is pink – and I’d rather you be honest with me.” When he got quiet I knew just what he was thinking as if I had thought it myself. “I ain’t askin’ for details about your past. I know you got around some and I know the business you are … were … in needed ... er … discretion. If you can’t tell me then you can’t. Just don’t make up stories to fill in the gaps; I don’t need ‘em. OK?”
Pursing his lips thoughtfully then nodding he said, “OK. But Joey … I ain’t been gettin’ around for a while. I found I was happier waitin’ for my Ragazza than … er … anything else.”
I would have liked to have explored that a little more but he was obviously tired and I heard the timer go off downstairs. “Hah! Saved by the bell … but you won’t get away with that sweet talk forever Signor MacGregor.”
As was my habit, I was up early and nearly had breakfast finished when I heard the toilet flush in the upstairs bathroom. I went to the bottom of the stairs and called up, “Get back in bed. I’m bringing your breakfast up on a tray.”
I turned to go back to the kitchen when Tony stuck his head out. He still looked tired despite all of the sleep he had but there was a determination in his eyes that hadn’t been there the day before. “Joey, do you see my shaving kit down there? I need it.”
“You don’t need it,” I told him. “You need to get back in bed. It’s raining so you are stuck with me inside – at least for the morning – and I’m boiling over with energy and want to spend it spoilin’ you instead of the other way around for a change.”
I heard him snort in disbelief and aggravation. “Joey, none o’ your mischief. I want my shaving kit.”
Having grabbed said shaving kit I’d already started up the stairs knowing that Tony was as Irish as he was Italian which meant he could be, as Gran had called hime, as stubborn as a whole team of mules. He’d just stuck his head out of the bathroom again and prepared to bellow when he caught sight of me standing there grinning wickedly. None too happy to be caught with his mouth hanging open he said, “You did that on purpose.”
Grinning in my own wicked way I said, “Of course I did. Did you really expect anything less?”
Trying not to crack a smile he growled, “One of these days …”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard that threat too many times for too long to believe it. Seriously though,” I said handing him his bag. “You should be in bed. And you don’t need to shave you know.”
I stood outside the door with my back to it having glimpsed the fact that he only had a towel wrapped around his waist. Completely ignoring what I’d just said he told me, “I’m not a man that can wear a beard. I look ridiculous. It is too thick and grows every which way.”
I tried not to laugh when I said, “Vanity thy name is …” I didn’t get to finish what I was saying because there was a huge bang behind me. I turned to see that Tony had fallen.
I pushed the bathroom door open and saw him struggling to sit up but his eyes didn’t look focused. I fell to my knees beside him. “Tony?! Talk to me. Did you slip? Did you hit your head?”
He was getting angry and it wasn’t helping in the least. He continued to struggle while saying, “I don’t know. Move.”
“I am not moving and neither are you. Let me check your head.”
He spat, “I didn’t hit my head. And I’m not a child. I …”
“Tony!” That got his attention. The fact that he could tell I was done playing was a good sign. “Now listen. I need you to lay back. I’m going to poke on you a little bit and it ain’t for fun. I need you to tell me if something is uncomfortable or it hurts … don’t get macho on me, this is serious.”
“Ouch,” he said jumping as I gently felt around where I thought his spleen would be. I shouldn’t have been able to feel anything but I did. James’ spleen hadn’t gotten enlarged during his bought with mono but Ike’s had and he’d had some of the same symptoms … dizziness, irritability, anemic looking color.
Persisting despite his obvious anger I said, “Tony, listen. How did you feel yesterday after you ate?”
“Full,” he said with a smart aleck tone.
Now it way my turn to get angry, and that on top of my worry. “Do I look like I’m foolin’?” What he saw in my face must have convinced him to cooperate. “Is full all you felt? Any discomfort, pain, anything?”
He shook his head, “Just full. And tired. I couldn’t believe how tired I felt. When I work up I was fine … ok don’t give me that look, I felt better. Wanted a shower and felt even better after that then all of a sudden the floor started tiling … and now I feel as weak as a thrice used tea bag.”
Trying not to smile at one of Aunt Belinda’s odd sayings when it came out of Tony’s mouth I asked, “You promise?”
He sighed, “Yeah, I promise. Now what ‘s got you into a pet?”
“I don’t know that anything is wrong per se. This just … look, let me help you up. Don’t put any pressure on your abdomen, let me do the work.”
“I’m only in a towel Joey. And that ain’t real secure. You … uh …”
Trying not to giggle like an embarrassed idiot I admitted, “Kinda noticed that already. I promise not to look if you promise not to do somethin’ that draws my attention that direction.”
A few Anglo-Italian expletives later and a quick grab of the towel by him to keep it from falling off completely and he was walking back to the room mostly under his own steam though he was obviously feeling insulted. “I do not need to hold your arm like I’m some old guy.”
“You’re not old, and I don’t think of you like a little kid either so forget that one too. You’re ill and recoverin’ and I don’t want you to take no more headers. Now behave, I’m not foolin’ Tony. I’m gonna be the one with gray hair if you don’t knock it off. Kapish?”
He made me go down and bring his clothes bag up and then leave the room again so he could dress. “Are you done yet?!” I yelled through the door getting more than a little frustrated … and not for a good reason.
“Yeah,” he said opening it then turning to walk gingerly towards the bed.
He was dressed in athletic shorts and a t-shirt which wasn’t at all the pajamas that I knew for a fact were in the bag because I’d seen them there when I’d peeked just to be nosey. I knew he was setting limits on his “invalid state” but even if it caused an argument I needed to draw the line if I wasn’t going to go freakin’ nuts. I practically begged, “Don’t fight me on this Tony. I know you might be feelin’ a little better but you ain’t there yet. Just stay in bed; if you need somethin’ I’ll even bring you a bell to call me with if you promise not to have me runnin’ up and down the stairs like a crazy woman.”
After he sat down and let me fluff the pillows for him he asked me seriously, “You playin’ me or are you really worried about somethin’?”
“I think it’s …” I stopped frustrated. “Look, I told you it keeps sounding like mono … like the twins had that time; you remember. The swollen lymph nodes, the tender … er … parts, the fatigue; but it don’t make sense that it is mono if you didn’t get it until you got that stuff on you so what I’m thinkin’ what are all those symptoms if they ain’t mono? Well, the lymph system helps to fight infection; I remember that much from my anatomy class. You had some kind of infection and it has overloaded your body. You were dehydrated too and no tellin’ when the last time was you ate a good meal.”
“So?” he asked when I stopped.
“Geez, I’m no doctor Tony. I don’t know … I wish Lucia was here, she’d at least be able to tell me if I was being’ stupid.”
He grabbed my hand and tugged me to sit down and stop pacing. “Stop walkin’ a hole in the floor and just tell me.”
“The spleen; it’s part of the lymph system. Ike got real sick … worse than James … and his spleen got swollen like yours. The doctor said that isn’t necessarily a bad thing but that we had to be careful not to do anything that would rupture it … he was out of sports longer than James, couldn’t do no liftin’ for a while. You remember?”
Thinking Tony said, “Kinda I guess. I remember Aunt Belinda was goin’ nuts thinking the girls were gonna come down with it.”
“Anyway, I think you just need rest and stuff. You might be anemic – we can deal with that – but you gotta be careful and get as much rest as your body wants.”
His nose flared which was a sign that he was hearing me but not liking what I was saying. “I ain’t lyin’ around all day while you do all the work. We got things to do.”
“Don’t be crazy Tony. There will still be plenty to do when you get over whatever this is. The spleen helps filter the blood before the liver gets a hold of it. If it’s swollen that means it’s had to work really hard and gotten irritated or somethin’. Same thing with the lymph nodes. You don’t look so bad as you did and your head seems to be on straight so that means – I think it means – that you’re getting’ better. Just humor me on this. Take it easy, OK? I can’t … the thought …” I had to stop because I was shaking. “Don’t do this to me Tony. I don’t think I could live if I lost you too.”
“Aw Ragazza, don’t. I ain’t goin’ nowhere. You know what your tears do to me?”
I wanted to thump him. “Then don’t scare me and make me feel like cryin’. It won’t be for long, just until the swellin’ goes down and you feel more like your old self. Please.”
He leaned back on the pillows, out of juice to fight. “Looks like I don’t have no choice.”
“Sure you do, but it’s nice to know you’re a man of good sense. I always liked that about you,” I told him, sniffing and getting myself under control. “Now you sit and play king for a day and let me bring you some breakfast.”
After breakfast he fought for five minutes not to close his eyes but I just kept talking at him and saying nothing and finally he dozed off. Under any other circumstances I might be offended that listening to me talk put him to sleep but since that had been my plan I was pretty satisfied.
It was still raining, a slow and steady drizzle that would make picking fruit unproductive … no pun intended. I’d already been out in it once to check on the birds and they seemed more than happy to be left alone after I tossed in some fruit peelings and apple and pear cores. I also found a half dozen eggs and did the happy dance. I was pretty sure that wasn’t many eggs to be getting from over two dozen birds but considering the shape they were in to begin with I wasn’t going to complain.
The birds still looked kinda weird with feathers missing here and there and with a half-crazed look to their beady little eyes … but at least they didn’t look like they were going to fall over and die after two of three steps no more. Some were getting downright feisty and didn’t appreciate it when I took their eggs. What the heck though, it’s not like they were going to get anything for setting on them things. With no rooster all the eggs were just eggs and wouldn’t make chicks.
Instead of working outside in the rain I had decided that I could do more than stand around waiting for the dehydrator to finish. First thing in the morning I had gotten a batch of apple and pear sauce cooking only talking to Tony it had gone past the sauce state and into the butter state; nearly scorched it. No biggie; I had more than enough fruit to start another batch. I put the “butter” in jars and into the boiling water bath canner to seal just like Mom had taught me then I made another pot of chopped fruit and watched it more closely this time.
I wasn’t worried about power usage since the stove was gas but all day long as I made different batches of things I always tried to fill the canner up as full as I could so nothing would be wasted.
For lunch I heated up some Italian chicken soup but the tomatoes in it upset Tony’s stomach letting me know that I’d need to be careful for a while. I don’t think there is much else worse for a man that to puke his guts up when he isn’t drunk enough to dull the memory. Tony was stone cold sober and one sick puppy … and afterwards embarrassed enough that I barely got two words out of him. The soup wasn’t bad because I had some before he did, it was simply too much for his system to handle.
A couple of hours later he didn’t grumble too bad when I brought him some of the fresh made apple-pear sauce with a couple of piadinas. “You made this?”
I smiled and said, “Don’t lose your dentures. I do know how to cook you know.”
“Your Mom said so but … uh …”
Still smiling I said, “But you thought she was exaggerating just because Lucia acted like it was a death sentence to have to cook.” At his shrug I told him, “You never let me know when you were going to be in town or I would have made something rather than stopping at the deli or eating out. It woulda been cheaper too.”
He took my hand. “The money isn’t … wasn’t … a problem. I just liked surprisin’ you.”
Knowing Tony I said, “And checkin’ up on me.” Caught like a fish on a hook Tony didn’t say a word but it made me laugh out right. “I wasn’t doin’ nothin’ with no one. Why you had such a hard time believin’ that at first I don’t know.”
“’Cause I saw them guys lookin’ at you. You had chances to do somethin’.”
I shrug nonchalantly. “Sure. You should have seen some of the things some of the kids in the dorm would get up to. Honestly Tony, it was a university not a seminary school. And some of them kids weren’t all that particular if you know what I mean.”
A little ticked off he asked, “So if you had so many chances why didn’t you?”
“Geez you’re either blind or … or blind.” I shook my head. “If I’m spendin’ all my time dreamin’ of you how are boys like those gonna measure up and get my attention?”
Thoughtfully he said, “I didn’t know you were dreamin’ about me.”
I shrugged. “I tried to tell you a couple a times but … I don’t know … things were hard enough and confusin’ enough without makin’ it worse chasin’ somethin’ I wasn’t sure I could catch. And even if I did catch you I wasn’t too sure I’d know what to do with you. I just wasn’t ready for it all.”
Still rubbing my hand with his thumb he asks, “And you think you’re ready now?”
Uh oh, we’d slipped over into complicated things; ‘course I kinda sent in that direction on purpose. I shrugged. “Things are so … so wrong. The world seems to be comin’ apart at the seams and nobody is telling the truth about it. My parents … brothers … they’re all gone and I didn’t even have a chance to tell ‘em good bye. Lucia just left and that hurts too even though I knew it was what she would feel like she had to do, maybe the only thing she could do if she wanted to have any peace for herself. And then here you are. You risked your life to save my family … and not just on the road either. If you had gotten out of the city in the very beginning rather than trying to take care of them you wouldn’t have been stuck on that road and a sitting duck. You spend all that money … and don’t stop me from saying it ‘cause I know it wasn’t cheap to get that driver for us from the airport or give up your back up ride.” I leaned over and brushed his hair out of his eyes for what seemed the hundredth time. “Look Tony, I may not know what to do with my feelings for you, but I’m done hidin’ them. Doesn’t seem like there is any good reason’ to anymore.”
Tony sighed, “And I’m done hidin’ my feelings for you. But it don’t seem right for your father not to be here for me to ask his permission first; that had always been my plan. It ain’t right that your Momma isn’t around to give you advice and tell you you could do better and hate on me for a while.”
I gave a watery chuckle. “Don’t be stupid. Mom always thought you were something special. She’d thump the twins every once in a while and tell them to act more like you instead of like a couple of crazy park squirrels. And my brothers would have gone nuts thinkin’ about all the stuff you could help them get into. And I think … maybe … like I said … Dad wouldn’t have had a problem with you either. For sure he wouldn’t have had you here to the cabin so often if he didn’t trust you pretty good.”
That last thought really seemed to hit Tony hard. “I wish Uncle Nicky woulda been more like your Dad. They were good friends, I always hoped more would come of it.”
I nodded. “Dad had a way of acceptin’ people for who they were. Your uncle would get rattled and he’d come see Dad and most of the time it helped. Maybe … maybe Dad dyin’ is part of what broke your uncle so bad.”
Tony sighed. “Maybe but I don’t know as I could trust him no more.” He brushed my hair away from the side of my face where the spreading bruised was getting to the real ugly stage. “Hey, when you go out to pick that fruit, you take protection with you? Right?”
“Yeah. I found an LCP in your truck.” Smiling I said, “It has a pink slide on it so I figured you meant it for a lady friend.”
A little color rose on his cheeks. “Oh, that ugly thing. It … er … belonged to one of the partner’s … uh … anyway, she got wasted and was shootin’ at his lawn art and he took it away and told me to get rid of it someplace. Figured you’d get a kick out of it.”
Outraged I said, “What a clanker! You take me for stupid or somethin’? It was factory fresh when I took it out of the box.”
He was caught and he knew it. Biting my lip, unsure if I was funning or not, I told him, “Don’t tell me stories Tony. I think it’s sweet – even if it is pink – and I’d rather you be honest with me.” When he got quiet I knew just what he was thinking as if I had thought it myself. “I ain’t askin’ for details about your past. I know you got around some and I know the business you are … were … in needed ... er … discretion. If you can’t tell me then you can’t. Just don’t make up stories to fill in the gaps; I don’t need ‘em. OK?”
Pursing his lips thoughtfully then nodding he said, “OK. But Joey … I ain’t been gettin’ around for a while. I found I was happier waitin’ for my Ragazza than … er … anything else.”
I would have liked to have explored that a little more but he was obviously tired and I heard the timer go off downstairs. “Hah! Saved by the bell … but you won’t get away with that sweet talk forever Signor MacGregor.”
Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
It would have been nice to sit at the table and have a cup of coffee – I really am attached to my caffeine – but two things stopped me. First off I needed to check the truck before it got dark. I didn’t like feeling stupid and not having bothered to look in the truck to make sure it was completely empty was not excusable in my book. I hadn’t been thinking, just assuming. I promised myself no more mistakes like that.
The second thing that stopped me was remembering that one of the things that Mom had nixed from the new family diet was caffeine. When I found out I coulda just died. When I came home on my breaks from college I was constantly scrounging coffee or cola from somewhere. I had to hide the habit from Mom and always felt like a junkie trying to hide from my family that I was hooked and looking for my next fix. I’m sure that means that any so-called coffee I find in the house will likely be decaffeinated or that upscale stuff that has more flavoring ingredient than coffee bean in each serving. I hid a small stash of espresso beans hidden in an old cookie tin in my room upstairs last summer and it was still there; Mom never found it. I also bought coffee at that Dollar General along with the colas but even drinking it just a cup at a time it wouldn’t last forever.
It isn’t a problem for Tony. He mostly drinks those crappy herbal teas one of his early girlfriends turned him onto. He is so laid back about it he doesn’t even mind the ribbing he gets sometimes from other guys because he drinks tea instead of coffee. I suppose those teas aren’t really bad but if I’m gonna drink swill I’d at least like some kick to go with it. I don’t know what I’m going to do when the coffee runs out. Caffeine is my cure-all. When I’m really jonesing for a treat I’ll chew on one or two chocolate covered espresso beans and it fixes me right up. I’ve got a stash of those goodies too, but I’m saving them for emergencies like a serious case of PMS.
Thinking about caffeine being my drug of choice made me think about something Lucia had mentioned hearing on the radio. People had already started to run out of their medications within days of what I have begin to think of as the national shut down. I hadn’t worried about it at the time because I knew that my parents kept a six months of Dad’s medicine at any given time and even had a three month supply here at the cabin. But now, thinking more seriously and long term, I knew that any type of illness or injury had the potential to be a disaster for us.
My parents always kept an extensive medical kit in all of their vehicles and I was relieved to find one tucked in the rear of the cab. My brothers were both Eagle scouts and as flibberty gibbet as they could be, they definitely knew their stuff when it came to first aid. They’d also been CPR certified and I kinda got pulled along for the ride when they were younger since there was no way I was going to let my little brothers get something over me. I definitely didn’t like the idea that I might have to put into practice what I’d learned but I was still glad I had the training in case we needed it. I would have preferred to have Lucia around; she knows way more than I do about first aid and medical needs, but that thought pattern is something I ran from rather than suffer through another burst of grief.
Dropping the tail gate I could have pounded on my own head if I wasn’t already as bruised as an overripe a banana. Since everything was pushed back against the cab I had to take off the sections of the bed cover so I could reach. First thing I found were boxes of my mother’s home canned goodies. I should have known, considering the circumstances, she would refuse to leave home without bringing as many as she could. I also found a box filled with Splenda, powdered coffee creamer and instant coffee … decaf of course. There were a couple of boxes of salt and some pickling spices, and other seasonings in another box. Mom came ready for bear that’s for sure; I guess she didn’t think she would be getting back home for a while. How prophetic … and that’s all it took to set me off again but not nearly as violently as before. Maybe I’m getting used to the idea of them being gone; geez, what an awful thought.
Hauling everything into the house from the truck was work. I could have used Bennie’s muscles but in another sense it was good to do it myself. It was stuff my mother thought important enough to pack and as I moved everything item by item I did my best to figure out why. Most of it was easy; food to feed the family, ingredients to preserve more food, gardening stuff from the community garden to have one of our own up here.
Some of the items I had to think about. There was a little metal ball with holes in it on the end of a chain that I finally figured out was a tea ball that you used for loose tea leaves. There was a chestnut roaster that I think she used maybe once when she was on an old-fashioned Christmas kick. A box labeled Italian cookware that I’ll have to ask Tony about since it just looks like funny shaped pots and pans to me. There was also a cast iron bacon press. When I saw it I thought, “Be serious.” After Dad’s first attack Mom wouldn’t let bacon anywhere near our front stoop so I have no idea why she brought the thing with her … maybe for pressed sandwiches. I finally just gave up. My mother and I were very close but we couldn’t read each other’s minds … thank goodness or I would have had some serious ‘splainin’ to do.
Feeling grateful, I carefully arranged the food in the pantry. I was also grateful that my mother’s handwriting was clear and legible on each jar recording when each had been sealed. With this information I was able to continue the FIFO (first in first out) system I’d grown up learning from Mom; oldest in the front to be used first. The commercially canned and boxed foods – some of which had to be from the Moretti household or from Tony - weren’t as easy. Some were clearly dated with a use by date, some were in code, and some didn’t have a date on them any place I could find. I did the best I could to keep things neatly grouped together so it would make some sense to me long term.
To be honest I was happy to work so as to avoid being frustrated. I kept waiting for Tony to wake up so we could get around to talking about those “complicated things” but every time I checked on him he was snoring just a little louder. Finally I started laughing at myself, able to find humor in the irony of it. I stopped looking for work to keep me up, closed and locked down the house, and then headed up stairs to change.
I got nervous all over again when it came time for me to climb into my bed. I’d never shared a bed with anyone; it was a very strange feeling. And for it to be Tony of all people just didn’t do a thing for my composure. But as he lay there looking completely innocent when I knew for a fact he was oh so not, I finally chuckled and admitted that “complicated things” couldn’t be rushed. And we were definitely going to have to talk about his snoring.
It would have been nice to sit at the table and have a cup of coffee – I really am attached to my caffeine – but two things stopped me. First off I needed to check the truck before it got dark. I didn’t like feeling stupid and not having bothered to look in the truck to make sure it was completely empty was not excusable in my book. I hadn’t been thinking, just assuming. I promised myself no more mistakes like that.
The second thing that stopped me was remembering that one of the things that Mom had nixed from the new family diet was caffeine. When I found out I coulda just died. When I came home on my breaks from college I was constantly scrounging coffee or cola from somewhere. I had to hide the habit from Mom and always felt like a junkie trying to hide from my family that I was hooked and looking for my next fix. I’m sure that means that any so-called coffee I find in the house will likely be decaffeinated or that upscale stuff that has more flavoring ingredient than coffee bean in each serving. I hid a small stash of espresso beans hidden in an old cookie tin in my room upstairs last summer and it was still there; Mom never found it. I also bought coffee at that Dollar General along with the colas but even drinking it just a cup at a time it wouldn’t last forever.
It isn’t a problem for Tony. He mostly drinks those crappy herbal teas one of his early girlfriends turned him onto. He is so laid back about it he doesn’t even mind the ribbing he gets sometimes from other guys because he drinks tea instead of coffee. I suppose those teas aren’t really bad but if I’m gonna drink swill I’d at least like some kick to go with it. I don’t know what I’m going to do when the coffee runs out. Caffeine is my cure-all. When I’m really jonesing for a treat I’ll chew on one or two chocolate covered espresso beans and it fixes me right up. I’ve got a stash of those goodies too, but I’m saving them for emergencies like a serious case of PMS.
Thinking about caffeine being my drug of choice made me think about something Lucia had mentioned hearing on the radio. People had already started to run out of their medications within days of what I have begin to think of as the national shut down. I hadn’t worried about it at the time because I knew that my parents kept a six months of Dad’s medicine at any given time and even had a three month supply here at the cabin. But now, thinking more seriously and long term, I knew that any type of illness or injury had the potential to be a disaster for us.
My parents always kept an extensive medical kit in all of their vehicles and I was relieved to find one tucked in the rear of the cab. My brothers were both Eagle scouts and as flibberty gibbet as they could be, they definitely knew their stuff when it came to first aid. They’d also been CPR certified and I kinda got pulled along for the ride when they were younger since there was no way I was going to let my little brothers get something over me. I definitely didn’t like the idea that I might have to put into practice what I’d learned but I was still glad I had the training in case we needed it. I would have preferred to have Lucia around; she knows way more than I do about first aid and medical needs, but that thought pattern is something I ran from rather than suffer through another burst of grief.
Dropping the tail gate I could have pounded on my own head if I wasn’t already as bruised as an overripe a banana. Since everything was pushed back against the cab I had to take off the sections of the bed cover so I could reach. First thing I found were boxes of my mother’s home canned goodies. I should have known, considering the circumstances, she would refuse to leave home without bringing as many as she could. I also found a box filled with Splenda, powdered coffee creamer and instant coffee … decaf of course. There were a couple of boxes of salt and some pickling spices, and other seasonings in another box. Mom came ready for bear that’s for sure; I guess she didn’t think she would be getting back home for a while. How prophetic … and that’s all it took to set me off again but not nearly as violently as before. Maybe I’m getting used to the idea of them being gone; geez, what an awful thought.
Hauling everything into the house from the truck was work. I could have used Bennie’s muscles but in another sense it was good to do it myself. It was stuff my mother thought important enough to pack and as I moved everything item by item I did my best to figure out why. Most of it was easy; food to feed the family, ingredients to preserve more food, gardening stuff from the community garden to have one of our own up here.
Some of the items I had to think about. There was a little metal ball with holes in it on the end of a chain that I finally figured out was a tea ball that you used for loose tea leaves. There was a chestnut roaster that I think she used maybe once when she was on an old-fashioned Christmas kick. A box labeled Italian cookware that I’ll have to ask Tony about since it just looks like funny shaped pots and pans to me. There was also a cast iron bacon press. When I saw it I thought, “Be serious.” After Dad’s first attack Mom wouldn’t let bacon anywhere near our front stoop so I have no idea why she brought the thing with her … maybe for pressed sandwiches. I finally just gave up. My mother and I were very close but we couldn’t read each other’s minds … thank goodness or I would have had some serious ‘splainin’ to do.
Feeling grateful, I carefully arranged the food in the pantry. I was also grateful that my mother’s handwriting was clear and legible on each jar recording when each had been sealed. With this information I was able to continue the FIFO (first in first out) system I’d grown up learning from Mom; oldest in the front to be used first. The commercially canned and boxed foods – some of which had to be from the Moretti household or from Tony - weren’t as easy. Some were clearly dated with a use by date, some were in code, and some didn’t have a date on them any place I could find. I did the best I could to keep things neatly grouped together so it would make some sense to me long term.
To be honest I was happy to work so as to avoid being frustrated. I kept waiting for Tony to wake up so we could get around to talking about those “complicated things” but every time I checked on him he was snoring just a little louder. Finally I started laughing at myself, able to find humor in the irony of it. I stopped looking for work to keep me up, closed and locked down the house, and then headed up stairs to change.
I got nervous all over again when it came time for me to climb into my bed. I’d never shared a bed with anyone; it was a very strange feeling. And for it to be Tony of all people just didn’t do a thing for my composure. But as he lay there looking completely innocent when I knew for a fact he was oh so not, I finally chuckled and admitted that “complicated things” couldn’t be rushed. And we were definitely going to have to talk about his snoring.
Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Nothing like a threat to get you motivated. “Complicated things” my Aunt Fanny’s fanny. I got him up the stairs – him wincing with every step – and got him into my room. He was tired but still looked around with more than mild interest.
Puzzled he asked, “This is your room?”
“What? Did you expect rainbows and unicorns with lots of lace? Or maybe you were thinkin’ it would look like you’d gone off to summer camp like the other room.”
He sighed, “Have I done something wrong Joey?”
I brushed a hand across my face, “No … no I … Never mind, I just wanted you to like it. I’m just acting stupid.”
“But I do like it.”
Shaking my head and trying to clear it I told him, “You don’t have to say that. Just tell me what is …”
“Josephine.” Tony didn’t often get that tone with me but when he did it always caught my attention. When he was sure I was really listening he said, “I … like … it. It just … surprised me. It is very … uh … different from the rest of the house … very …”
“Italian,” I finished for him with a slight smile. “I know. You can imagine what Dad thought of it when he got his first look at it. Actually it’s Tuscan. I used krylon to make an old brass headboard and frame Mom picked up at a yard sale to look like an antic bronze one I saw in a magazine. I painted the walls …”
Sounding amazed and looking around he asked, “You painted these? Ragazza …”
I shrugged embarrassed and pleased at the same time. “So maybe … maybe there are some things I can surprise you with after all.”
“These murals are very good, even better than the ones up in the executive wing’s conference room. Those are cartoons compared to these. These … I could believe we are in a villa overlooking the countryside.”
“That’s the effect I was going for,” I said with a smile. “I got so tired of the sterile walls in the dorm but we weren’t allowed to do anything to make it better. It had to be in the exact same shape we got it in and they inspected things constantly and would cite us for violations.” I shrugged again. “Hopefully this will prevent you from feeling all cooped up. And with the window open and breeze coming in …”
“Siete abbastanza una donna.”
It always tickled me when he spoke Italian despite only being able to understand about half of what he said, even when we were arguing. “What did you say?”
“I’ll explain it when …” A cough caught him off guard and he doubled up in a great deal of pain.
“OK, you can stop feedin’ my vanity Tony. You need to rest and all I’m doing is keepin’ you standing around strokin’ my ego.” He was pale and a little shaky so I pulled the comforter back and helped him to lie down, fighting him just a moment for the sheet he’d draped around himself from the other bed. By the time I went down the stairs and brought a fresh pitcher of water back up he was asleep. I left him there and headed downstairs again after making sure the fever hadn’t come back.
I looked at the mess of belongings strewn all over the place and my need for order was so overwhelming that I nearly changed my plans in order to clean and organize to have more than a narrow foot path to walk in. But no, as much as I hated it the mess could wait … the fruit – our future food – could not. One of the first things my mother taught me as a little girl was that feeding the family or taking care of a sick family member took precedent over everything else, including having a sparkling clean house. If a visitor couldn’t understand that then they weren’t really family and could come back another day. It was a lesson I tried to keep in mind but I found for me personally that a messy living space led to a messy mind and with my schedule and workload a messy mind was something I could ill afford. In this instance though taking care of Tony and taking care of the orchard would simply have to win the internal battle.
I spent the rest of the day picking fruit and bringing it back to the house, checking on Tony between each run. I stopped long enough to eat and to take a cup of soup up to him but that was it.
The soft fruit I put into the food dryer or the frig. Because of the brand of dryer quite a bit could fit in it at a time, because Mom brought her duplicate machine from the city I could dry twice as much as I had been before. The downside to that was that I was pulling twice as much power. I had wanted to wash clothes … needed to at least get towels and sheets started … but the fruit came first. I put off the other stuff so that I wouldn’t completely drain the batteries.
The hard fruit like the canning pears and apples I put down in the basement where it was cooler. When I came back to the house with the last two buckets of apples for the day and walked into the kitchen I found Tony – again wearing a sheet like a Toga – sitting at the table with his head down on his arms.
He shivered when I put my hand on his shoulder to see if he was awake. “Are you feeling sick?”
“No.” He hesitated but then admitted, “Hungry.”
I smiled despite my concern. “That’s easy to fix. How about some chicken soup and the last couple of piadina and if you’re still hungry after that, for dessert you can have baked apple.” He’d over done it. I could see it as if the words were written across his face. He had dark circles under his eyes again and his shoulders slumped like he carried the weight of the world on them.
“Don’t go to any trouble Ragazza, maybe just a piece of the piadina.”
Shaking my head and already moving to take care of it I told him, “You need more than that. Besides, what trouble? The soup is some Mom canned and just needs to be heated. The flat bread is left over from breakfast. And the apples have been cooking on the pilot light. Explaining it takes longer than actually getting it put in front of you.” A mumbled “OK” was my only response.
I debated trying to get him to go back to bed with a tray but just let him be. Tony obviously needed to feel in some control of what was going on around him and it would only be counterproductive to try and bend him to my will every time. It would cause a fight and Tony didn’t need that and neither did I.
I sat his meal on the table in front of him and then had to deal with him complaining that I wasn’t eating as I moved around the room cleaning up. “I’ve been munching on fruit off and on all day. About the only thing I want is water to wash all this sticky out of my mouth and throat.”
Then he asked about the orchard and what I had been doing and I could see that as he ate his brain seemed to be back in working order. I told him, “We need to get you to eat better. I can get away with missed meals and just grazing through the day – I’m used to it – but you’re a big guy, you need three squares.”
Being stubborn as only he is he said, “No, not until we get an inventory. We may need to ration things out and I will not eat if you do not.”
“Hah!” I told him. “I am my mother’s daughter. You really think I don’t know that we’re OK for a while? Don’t know how to make do with what is here? You’ll not go hungry while I’m in charge of the meals … not if I want to keep my mother from haunting me with guilt for the next couple of decades.”
Then I had to stop and take a breath. I’d shocked myself. I pushed back from the counter where I had been leaning and rushed out onto the porch; it was like I couldn’t breathe. How could I make fun of something like that so quickly?! What kind of daughter did that make me? And who knows where else my thoughts would have flown if Tony hadn’t come out to find where I’d run to.
There’s no sense in describing what followed. Grief is grief and sometimes you just have to let it wash over you. Tony was the only thing to hold onto in the middle of the storm. He did some grieving of his own. It was enough for me to know he felt some of what I did and I was able to come back to shore from the dark sea. Both of us beyond quiet we walked back inside and I helped him back up to the room and to bed. He wanted me to stay but I needed to work. I think he understood but either way he was simply too exhausted to fight about it.
Despite Tony’s prohibition about planning larger meals I knew they were necessary and I added that task to my highest priority list. Tony’s a big guy but trim; not skinny but definitely slim. It’s no surprise given his build that his metabolism is pretty fast; he needs a decent number of calories just to make it through an ordinary day. I could tell he’d lost weight since the last time we went to the beach but it wasn’t a healthy look for him; he’d lost muscle mass and definition. My metabolism was slower but I wouldn’t last long either, working like I was and only munching on fruit. We needed protein to maintain muscle mass and strength and we needed carbs for energy.
When Dad had his first heart attack my mother changed a lot of the stuff we kept in the house. It felt pretty dramatic at the time but it really wasn’t that bad. We ate healthy before but we also had a lot of unhealthy habits like snacking and drinking too much coffee and cola. Mom stopped letting the junk food in the house and that was enough for a while. When Dad had his second heart attack though Mom kicked things up into another realm of change all together.
It wasn’t enough to not eat unhealthy stuff; no, the actual ingredients she used began to change. And since you can still get fat eating healthy food, portion control became an anchor in her new plan. Another big change was the lack of processed foods in her kitchen. Processed flours and meals were no longer allowed through the door so while pasta was still on the menu it was made with whole grains with Mom making it all herself until she found a brand she liked and everyone in the family would eat. Bread was dealt with in the same way; she still served it, but it was all homemade without preservatives and other unnecessary ingredients. In fact she started grinding her own flour, and not only wheat. Dad wasn’t on a gluten free diet but she used many recipes that were – and their various non-wheat grains – because it helped to control his glucose which was something Dad had began having problems with as well. Technically he wasn’t diabetic but had something called Syndrome X. Mom found cooking like he was diabetic, even though he wasn’t, mean he just felt better and his blood levels were healthier.
One of the biggest changes came after she started fussing at me about what could I possibly be eating in the dorm, that it couldn’t be healthy since I only had a small kitchen to cook in that I shared with three other people, and so on and so forth. I told her at the time one of my roommates was from Costa Rica and most of the time she and I split a pot of rice and beans as our primary meal of the day. It was cheap, easy to fix, stuck with us, and tasted good on top of all of that.
Mom went a little berserk and tried to go off on that but then Dad’s nutritionist told Mom that beans and rice was one of the healthiest meals there were, forming a complete protein, and that the majority of the world survived on an almost exclusive diet of those two ingredients. Of course when the doctor explained it she understood and acted like she hadn’t threatened to send me meals in the mail to, and I quote, “keep her only daughter from winding up sick and in the hospital like her father.” As a matter of fact she kind of co-opted the dishes I’d been eating started using a lot of beans and rice at home much to my father’s pleasure since he remained – regardless of how silly it was – a little prejudice against all of the Italian dishes we had incorporated into our lives after we moved to our slice of Little Italy.
The only fly in Mom’s ointment was that these changes were easy to make in the city where there was a corner market every few blocks, but here at the cabin was another story. Mom got tired of constantly running down to town to shop for fresh ingredients or bringing large amounts of food with her when she and Dad would travel. She also got irritated that the small stores she did have access to within driving distance of the cabin didn’t have the specialty items she could get at home so much more easily; and when they did they were always much more expensive. That’s when Mom got her brilliant idea. Dad loved it because it cut the grocery bill in half and then some. My brothers loved it because there was always something good here to eat; and they could be eating machines. I loved it because it made the men in my life easier to deal with and it made Mom feel good about herself.
I walked down to the basement and only had to use the flashlight to get down the stairs. I’d caught myself flicking the overhead bulbs on and off as often as I would have in the city and realized I was using power unnecessarily. Earlier I opened the shutters on the two basement windows and once down off the stairs I had enough light to see by. I headed for one of the side storage rooms located just off the finished basement area and opened the door to look at the metal trashcans inside.
Each trashcan was lined with this stuff mom had bought online and then filled with packages of different grains and starches, dried fruits and veggies, beans and lentils, dried whole grain pastas and other goodies like that. Above the trashcans a couple of shelves ran around the room and there was olive oil, condiments, jars of preserved lemons and other citrus fruits, and healthy sweeteners like agave, maple, sorghum, and honey. I decided I’d inventory it later but I double checked just to make sure that no mice or bugs had gotten in. Mom had learned the hard way that “plastic bad, metal good.”
I hadn’t gotten into any of those supplies while Lucia and Bennie were around because frankly I was still thinking of it all as belonging to my parents. But after that crying jag I had on the porch I knew I needed to start understanding that Mom and Dad were gone and that the reality was that I had inherited the cabin and needed to make the most of it as they had always intended to do for themselves. This was their legacy and that Tony and I needed to use it the best way possible.
I got back upstairs and saw that the timer had gone off on the dryers and proceeded to empty and then refill the trays in both machines. The dried fruit that came out I put aside to cool before packaging it in jars to sit in the pantry. Walking into the pantry I also tried to take stock without doing an actual inventory. There were a lot of jars on the shelves but there was a lot of empty space as well. I knew there were empty jars out in the barn; some of them had belonged to Gran and to my other grandmother and some had belonged to one of my mother’s sisters that had decided there was no way she would ever do things the “old fashioned way” again. Some were also jars that Mom had picked up over the years at yard sales and through accumulating her own from store sales. Racking my brain for any chink in my plans I mentally reminded myself that Mom started using tattler jar lids when I was a kid so I knew I could reuse the rings and seals.
Returning to the kitchen table I sat down for a minute and pulled out my list. I checked ff several items and felt better. I’d given Tony the impression that everything was under control so that he would relax but now I was absolutely sure I could do this. I had the tools so all I needed to do, at least for a long while, was do the work. Work I could handle, I’d been bringing in a paycheck since I was fourteen, but with the tools my work would actually produce something. And with Tony’s input on the planning I’ll feel even better about everything.
Nothing like a threat to get you motivated. “Complicated things” my Aunt Fanny’s fanny. I got him up the stairs – him wincing with every step – and got him into my room. He was tired but still looked around with more than mild interest.
Puzzled he asked, “This is your room?”
“What? Did you expect rainbows and unicorns with lots of lace? Or maybe you were thinkin’ it would look like you’d gone off to summer camp like the other room.”
He sighed, “Have I done something wrong Joey?”
I brushed a hand across my face, “No … no I … Never mind, I just wanted you to like it. I’m just acting stupid.”
“But I do like it.”
Shaking my head and trying to clear it I told him, “You don’t have to say that. Just tell me what is …”
“Josephine.” Tony didn’t often get that tone with me but when he did it always caught my attention. When he was sure I was really listening he said, “I … like … it. It just … surprised me. It is very … uh … different from the rest of the house … very …”
“Italian,” I finished for him with a slight smile. “I know. You can imagine what Dad thought of it when he got his first look at it. Actually it’s Tuscan. I used krylon to make an old brass headboard and frame Mom picked up at a yard sale to look like an antic bronze one I saw in a magazine. I painted the walls …”
Sounding amazed and looking around he asked, “You painted these? Ragazza …”
I shrugged embarrassed and pleased at the same time. “So maybe … maybe there are some things I can surprise you with after all.”
“These murals are very good, even better than the ones up in the executive wing’s conference room. Those are cartoons compared to these. These … I could believe we are in a villa overlooking the countryside.”
“That’s the effect I was going for,” I said with a smile. “I got so tired of the sterile walls in the dorm but we weren’t allowed to do anything to make it better. It had to be in the exact same shape we got it in and they inspected things constantly and would cite us for violations.” I shrugged again. “Hopefully this will prevent you from feeling all cooped up. And with the window open and breeze coming in …”
“Siete abbastanza una donna.”
It always tickled me when he spoke Italian despite only being able to understand about half of what he said, even when we were arguing. “What did you say?”
“I’ll explain it when …” A cough caught him off guard and he doubled up in a great deal of pain.
“OK, you can stop feedin’ my vanity Tony. You need to rest and all I’m doing is keepin’ you standing around strokin’ my ego.” He was pale and a little shaky so I pulled the comforter back and helped him to lie down, fighting him just a moment for the sheet he’d draped around himself from the other bed. By the time I went down the stairs and brought a fresh pitcher of water back up he was asleep. I left him there and headed downstairs again after making sure the fever hadn’t come back.
I looked at the mess of belongings strewn all over the place and my need for order was so overwhelming that I nearly changed my plans in order to clean and organize to have more than a narrow foot path to walk in. But no, as much as I hated it the mess could wait … the fruit – our future food – could not. One of the first things my mother taught me as a little girl was that feeding the family or taking care of a sick family member took precedent over everything else, including having a sparkling clean house. If a visitor couldn’t understand that then they weren’t really family and could come back another day. It was a lesson I tried to keep in mind but I found for me personally that a messy living space led to a messy mind and with my schedule and workload a messy mind was something I could ill afford. In this instance though taking care of Tony and taking care of the orchard would simply have to win the internal battle.
I spent the rest of the day picking fruit and bringing it back to the house, checking on Tony between each run. I stopped long enough to eat and to take a cup of soup up to him but that was it.
The soft fruit I put into the food dryer or the frig. Because of the brand of dryer quite a bit could fit in it at a time, because Mom brought her duplicate machine from the city I could dry twice as much as I had been before. The downside to that was that I was pulling twice as much power. I had wanted to wash clothes … needed to at least get towels and sheets started … but the fruit came first. I put off the other stuff so that I wouldn’t completely drain the batteries.
The hard fruit like the canning pears and apples I put down in the basement where it was cooler. When I came back to the house with the last two buckets of apples for the day and walked into the kitchen I found Tony – again wearing a sheet like a Toga – sitting at the table with his head down on his arms.
He shivered when I put my hand on his shoulder to see if he was awake. “Are you feeling sick?”
“No.” He hesitated but then admitted, “Hungry.”
I smiled despite my concern. “That’s easy to fix. How about some chicken soup and the last couple of piadina and if you’re still hungry after that, for dessert you can have baked apple.” He’d over done it. I could see it as if the words were written across his face. He had dark circles under his eyes again and his shoulders slumped like he carried the weight of the world on them.
“Don’t go to any trouble Ragazza, maybe just a piece of the piadina.”
Shaking my head and already moving to take care of it I told him, “You need more than that. Besides, what trouble? The soup is some Mom canned and just needs to be heated. The flat bread is left over from breakfast. And the apples have been cooking on the pilot light. Explaining it takes longer than actually getting it put in front of you.” A mumbled “OK” was my only response.
I debated trying to get him to go back to bed with a tray but just let him be. Tony obviously needed to feel in some control of what was going on around him and it would only be counterproductive to try and bend him to my will every time. It would cause a fight and Tony didn’t need that and neither did I.
I sat his meal on the table in front of him and then had to deal with him complaining that I wasn’t eating as I moved around the room cleaning up. “I’ve been munching on fruit off and on all day. About the only thing I want is water to wash all this sticky out of my mouth and throat.”
Then he asked about the orchard and what I had been doing and I could see that as he ate his brain seemed to be back in working order. I told him, “We need to get you to eat better. I can get away with missed meals and just grazing through the day – I’m used to it – but you’re a big guy, you need three squares.”
Being stubborn as only he is he said, “No, not until we get an inventory. We may need to ration things out and I will not eat if you do not.”
“Hah!” I told him. “I am my mother’s daughter. You really think I don’t know that we’re OK for a while? Don’t know how to make do with what is here? You’ll not go hungry while I’m in charge of the meals … not if I want to keep my mother from haunting me with guilt for the next couple of decades.”
Then I had to stop and take a breath. I’d shocked myself. I pushed back from the counter where I had been leaning and rushed out onto the porch; it was like I couldn’t breathe. How could I make fun of something like that so quickly?! What kind of daughter did that make me? And who knows where else my thoughts would have flown if Tony hadn’t come out to find where I’d run to.
There’s no sense in describing what followed. Grief is grief and sometimes you just have to let it wash over you. Tony was the only thing to hold onto in the middle of the storm. He did some grieving of his own. It was enough for me to know he felt some of what I did and I was able to come back to shore from the dark sea. Both of us beyond quiet we walked back inside and I helped him back up to the room and to bed. He wanted me to stay but I needed to work. I think he understood but either way he was simply too exhausted to fight about it.
Despite Tony’s prohibition about planning larger meals I knew they were necessary and I added that task to my highest priority list. Tony’s a big guy but trim; not skinny but definitely slim. It’s no surprise given his build that his metabolism is pretty fast; he needs a decent number of calories just to make it through an ordinary day. I could tell he’d lost weight since the last time we went to the beach but it wasn’t a healthy look for him; he’d lost muscle mass and definition. My metabolism was slower but I wouldn’t last long either, working like I was and only munching on fruit. We needed protein to maintain muscle mass and strength and we needed carbs for energy.
When Dad had his first heart attack my mother changed a lot of the stuff we kept in the house. It felt pretty dramatic at the time but it really wasn’t that bad. We ate healthy before but we also had a lot of unhealthy habits like snacking and drinking too much coffee and cola. Mom stopped letting the junk food in the house and that was enough for a while. When Dad had his second heart attack though Mom kicked things up into another realm of change all together.
It wasn’t enough to not eat unhealthy stuff; no, the actual ingredients she used began to change. And since you can still get fat eating healthy food, portion control became an anchor in her new plan. Another big change was the lack of processed foods in her kitchen. Processed flours and meals were no longer allowed through the door so while pasta was still on the menu it was made with whole grains with Mom making it all herself until she found a brand she liked and everyone in the family would eat. Bread was dealt with in the same way; she still served it, but it was all homemade without preservatives and other unnecessary ingredients. In fact she started grinding her own flour, and not only wheat. Dad wasn’t on a gluten free diet but she used many recipes that were – and their various non-wheat grains – because it helped to control his glucose which was something Dad had began having problems with as well. Technically he wasn’t diabetic but had something called Syndrome X. Mom found cooking like he was diabetic, even though he wasn’t, mean he just felt better and his blood levels were healthier.
One of the biggest changes came after she started fussing at me about what could I possibly be eating in the dorm, that it couldn’t be healthy since I only had a small kitchen to cook in that I shared with three other people, and so on and so forth. I told her at the time one of my roommates was from Costa Rica and most of the time she and I split a pot of rice and beans as our primary meal of the day. It was cheap, easy to fix, stuck with us, and tasted good on top of all of that.
Mom went a little berserk and tried to go off on that but then Dad’s nutritionist told Mom that beans and rice was one of the healthiest meals there were, forming a complete protein, and that the majority of the world survived on an almost exclusive diet of those two ingredients. Of course when the doctor explained it she understood and acted like she hadn’t threatened to send me meals in the mail to, and I quote, “keep her only daughter from winding up sick and in the hospital like her father.” As a matter of fact she kind of co-opted the dishes I’d been eating started using a lot of beans and rice at home much to my father’s pleasure since he remained – regardless of how silly it was – a little prejudice against all of the Italian dishes we had incorporated into our lives after we moved to our slice of Little Italy.
The only fly in Mom’s ointment was that these changes were easy to make in the city where there was a corner market every few blocks, but here at the cabin was another story. Mom got tired of constantly running down to town to shop for fresh ingredients or bringing large amounts of food with her when she and Dad would travel. She also got irritated that the small stores she did have access to within driving distance of the cabin didn’t have the specialty items she could get at home so much more easily; and when they did they were always much more expensive. That’s when Mom got her brilliant idea. Dad loved it because it cut the grocery bill in half and then some. My brothers loved it because there was always something good here to eat; and they could be eating machines. I loved it because it made the men in my life easier to deal with and it made Mom feel good about herself.
I walked down to the basement and only had to use the flashlight to get down the stairs. I’d caught myself flicking the overhead bulbs on and off as often as I would have in the city and realized I was using power unnecessarily. Earlier I opened the shutters on the two basement windows and once down off the stairs I had enough light to see by. I headed for one of the side storage rooms located just off the finished basement area and opened the door to look at the metal trashcans inside.
Each trashcan was lined with this stuff mom had bought online and then filled with packages of different grains and starches, dried fruits and veggies, beans and lentils, dried whole grain pastas and other goodies like that. Above the trashcans a couple of shelves ran around the room and there was olive oil, condiments, jars of preserved lemons and other citrus fruits, and healthy sweeteners like agave, maple, sorghum, and honey. I decided I’d inventory it later but I double checked just to make sure that no mice or bugs had gotten in. Mom had learned the hard way that “plastic bad, metal good.”
I hadn’t gotten into any of those supplies while Lucia and Bennie were around because frankly I was still thinking of it all as belonging to my parents. But after that crying jag I had on the porch I knew I needed to start understanding that Mom and Dad were gone and that the reality was that I had inherited the cabin and needed to make the most of it as they had always intended to do for themselves. This was their legacy and that Tony and I needed to use it the best way possible.
I got back upstairs and saw that the timer had gone off on the dryers and proceeded to empty and then refill the trays in both machines. The dried fruit that came out I put aside to cool before packaging it in jars to sit in the pantry. Walking into the pantry I also tried to take stock without doing an actual inventory. There were a lot of jars on the shelves but there was a lot of empty space as well. I knew there were empty jars out in the barn; some of them had belonged to Gran and to my other grandmother and some had belonged to one of my mother’s sisters that had decided there was no way she would ever do things the “old fashioned way” again. Some were also jars that Mom had picked up over the years at yard sales and through accumulating her own from store sales. Racking my brain for any chink in my plans I mentally reminded myself that Mom started using tattler jar lids when I was a kid so I knew I could reuse the rings and seals.
Returning to the kitchen table I sat down for a minute and pulled out my list. I checked ff several items and felt better. I’d given Tony the impression that everything was under control so that he would relax but now I was absolutely sure I could do this. I had the tools so all I needed to do, at least for a long while, was do the work. Work I could handle, I’d been bringing in a paycheck since I was fourteen, but with the tools my work would actually produce something. And with Tony’s input on the planning I’ll feel even better about everything.
Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
The shutters were opened and the upstairs airing out nicely. I’d cleaned up from breakfast and even managed a quick hop in a cold shower to knock out the cobwebs where they were hanging on for dear life. I needed to do something with the fruit I’d picked but I also needed to do something with the man I’d dropped the bombshell on. I picked up the ibuprofen bottle off the table – I’d just taken two myself to try and alleviate all of my own pulls and strains – and started in the direction of the lion’s den.
I stuck my head around the door and found him watching for me. I stepped into the room. “How’s your stomach?”
“Full.”
“Think you could handle a couple of these?” I asked showing him the bottle in my hand.
He grunted and I took it as an affirmative answer so I took out two and poured him a glass of water as he eased himself into a sitting position. He washed them back and then I didn’t know what else to say.
I was relieved to find out I didn’t need to start the conversation. Tony’s eyebrows came together and he said, “Sit down a sec. My head is finally clear and we need to talk about what’s happening.”
Sitting on the bed with him was a little more than I could handle and sitting on the bunk seemed too insulting after what I’d already said and done. I didn’t want him to think I was afraid because I wasn’t, not really; I was nervous though, definitely nervous. Compromising I sat on the floor beside his bed, leaning against it so that I wouldn’t have to look him in the eye unless I turned my head.
He wasn’t angry like I expected but was definitely puzzled when he said, “Explain to me what happened. Why isn’t the family here? And Bennie? I expected Leo to take off, that was the deal, but the rest of them … I ain’t puttin’ it together. What freakin’ happened to turn it all upside down?”
“You gonna let me get through the explanation without yellin’?”
He sighed. “That bad?”
“Depends on how you look at how things turned out I guess.”
He just looked at me so I turned my eyes back to the bunk bed. I tried to figure out where to start and then decided to go all the way back to the plane landing. That first week was easy as the three of us hadn’t had any real problems beyond the normal sorta stuff that really didn’t matter. But when I went past that point it got harder. My eyes lost focus and I musta cried a little because at some point I remember Tony pulling me up onto the bed with him and then both of us lying down, me in front and him in back holding me and telling me it was OK.
“You gotta get well Tony. I’m sorry I couldn’t figure out another way for things to work but Mr. … I mean your uncle … was so … crazy determined and just being awful to you and so angry at every little thing. And you know your aunt would follow him to Hades no matter what the consequences were; I can count on one hand the number of words she said and not one of them was don’t or stop. And Lucia and the girls wouldn’t leave their mother and Bennie wouldn’t leave Lucia and …” I was in a panic, sure that he was going to blame me.
“Shhhhh Ragazza. Shhhh. I get it. I still can’t believe he hit you and woulda done more if Leo and Bennie hadn’t pulled him off.”
Trying to find an answer, rationalize it, I told him, “Maybe some of that stuff did get on him or something. Maybe through the air conditioner vents in the car.”
In a hard voice Tony said, “Don’t make excuses for him Joey. All of them would have been the same way as him if it were true. It’s simpler than that. Uncle Nicky’s temper is famous … he’s just never turned it on the family before; first time for everything I suppose. He and my father were friends growing up, that’s how he met Aunt Belinda. Uncle Nicky always denied it but I’ve heard he was as bad as my father before he decided he wanted his friend’s sister more than he wanted … living that other way. He was reformed but it still was inside him.”
I shook my head, “It was more than just temper Tony. Something in your uncle … it’s cracked, sick. I hope maybe getting someplace he knows and getting quiet and calm will help him pull himself together.”
Tony musta heard my internal debate on it. “But you don’t think so.”
I shook my head and said, “I didn’t say that.”
“Then what?”
Hesitantly I said, “I … I just don’t think there’s going to be a lot of quiet and calm in too many places for a while.”
Tony stopped talking for so long I figured he’d gone to sleep but when I tried to get up he had enough strength to stop me. “Don’t,” came his coarse plea.
“Ok.”
After more quiet he asks, “You sure you’re OK? I ain’t said nothing about the bruises but …”
“I’m fine Tony, really. I was sore this morning but that’s mostly gone now.”
“Am I hurting you? Holding you like this?”
I forced myself to relax in his arms and said, “Probably not nearly as much as holding me is hurting you. You need to rest. You want me to put some more of that topical stuff on?”
“Better not. At least not now that I’m thinking clear.”
“Huh?”
His quiet chuff of laughter tickled my ear. “Never mind Ragazza.” After a moment he said, “We got other things to talk about too, important things.”
“I know. I got a long list in my head but if you’re staying …” A sudden thought almost put me in a panic. “You are stayin’ aren’t you Tony? I mean … you aren’t going to try and go after them? Do you want to leave? Is that the important stuff you want to talk about?”
“Hush that crazy talk,” he said and I could feel him moving my hair out of the way. I needed to remember to put it up and not let it go all over the place like I usually let it unless it was in a net at the deli. “I ain’t goin’ no where. Why would I when you’re here?”
I thought about that for a bit and said, “Good. That’s real good.”
“We gotta talk about some things first.”
I sighed in resignation. “You’re gonna make this complicated.”
I could feel him trying not to smile. “Not yet I’m not … but soon.” He cracked a yawn and then when he tried to stretch he jumped like it hurt.
“Tony, you need to rest. You scared me near to death when you were so out of it.”
He sighed and got comfortable again, still not really turning loose of me. “I’ll rest, don’t seem like I’ve got much choice. But first we need to talk.”
“I already told you all I know about the family. I keep thinking they’ll realize their mistake and come back.”
Tony gave a slow shrug. “Maybe they will, maybe they won’t.”
Surprised at his tone I asked, “You saying you’re OK with this?”
“No, but ain’t nothin’ I can do about it. They left.”
Beginning to wonder I said, “But … but they’re still family.”
A pause and then he said, “Some of ‘em.”
“Oh Tony.” I felt so bad. Tony was all about family and for him to say something like that … it was awful.
He sighed. “Joey, let it go. That’s the way I feel right now. Best I can do.” I tried to turn but he wouldn’t let me I wiggled and then felt a damp spot on my neck. Just one place.
I stayed quiet while he mastered himself and when he changed the subject I let him. “You have an inventory of what there is?”
“An inventory? Of like the stuff here in the house?”
“Yeah … like food and clothes and stuff. We can’t make a plan if we don’t know what we got to work with. You’d think with your finance degree you woulda thought of that.”
I sighed, “I did think of it, just haven’t wanted to face it. Let me up Tony so I can get a piece of paper and make some notes. I been putting this off, waiting for my family and you to get here I guess. We’ll you’re here now and … and it’s time to see what kind of shape we’re really in.”
“You shouldn’t a have waited Joey. What if we hadn’t ever gotten here?”
I so did not want to think about that so instead told him a little defensively, “I wasn’t a complete do nothing you know. Let me get the paper and I’ll be right back.”
When I came back I told him about what I’d been doing … cleaning the house, trying to save the stuff in the orchard, the chickens – he was surprised about the birds but then I reminded him how we’d come by then. He started asking questions. Some of his questions made me feel smart and some made me feel stupid.
“So you been doing that thing your mom taught Aunt Belinda … all that food preservin’ and stuff.”
“Yeah. But there is still a lot to go and all I can hear in my head is Mom saying ‘waste not want not.’ It’s driving me batty with the need to get more of it done.”
He was very tired but he kept at it. “You got any idea how much you done already?”
“You mean how much … oh wait you mean how much fruit turned into how much dried stuff?” At his nod I answered, “Not really but I might could give it a guess if I think about it.”
“Why don’t you wait and start measuring from here on out. Like how much fruit you put in that dryer thing and how much comes out in volume when it’s done. Then we’ll go back and see how much of the other stuff you did and be able to work backwards from there.”
I wrote it down and realized that would mean that I would have to keep everything separate until I could get caught up with the counting. Then he asks, “What about what was left here in storage and what was left from what you three arrived with?”
All I could tell him is, “Not a specific list but I can work it out.”
“It needs to be done. And we need to figure out what Leo left us. What was left in your parents’ truck?” When I didn’t answer he asked, “What? Something happened to the truck?”
“No,” I told him. “They moved your uncle and aunt’s stuff to the van where it had been in the truck.”
“What about the other stuff?”
“The other stuff? My parents’ things? That came out of the van.”
“Not that stuff … wait, have you even looked in the truck to see if there is anything in there?” That’s when I started feeling stupid. “Joey, how many times I gotta tell you? Never assume anything. You need to get out there and see what is in there.”
He sat up and acted like he was about to start the inventorying himself but he turned pale and his eyes got big. “Oh no you don’t,” I told him pushing him back down. The fact he didn’t give me any trouble told me he was weaker than he’d admit out loud and he’d pinched something to make it hurt again. “Tony, you gotta be careful. Here we are talking and you need to rest. You’re hurtin’ all over again aren’t you.”
Grimacing he tried to distract me by asking, “Does this mean I don’t get to move upstairs?”
I snorted. “Fine time to bring that up. If you want to, I want you to. But only if you promise to get some rest when we move you up there. You’ve given me a long list of things to think about on top of my own list and when I come up with more questions you need to be in shape to be able to help me figure some answers out.”
He gave me a look. “You sure Ragazza? I ain’t gonna be moving like an old man forever.” Despite feeling a little warm in the face, despite everything that had happened, despite everything period, even myself, I nodded. “Then after I … I rest a bit … we need to talk about complicated things.”
The shutters were opened and the upstairs airing out nicely. I’d cleaned up from breakfast and even managed a quick hop in a cold shower to knock out the cobwebs where they were hanging on for dear life. I needed to do something with the fruit I’d picked but I also needed to do something with the man I’d dropped the bombshell on. I picked up the ibuprofen bottle off the table – I’d just taken two myself to try and alleviate all of my own pulls and strains – and started in the direction of the lion’s den.
I stuck my head around the door and found him watching for me. I stepped into the room. “How’s your stomach?”
“Full.”
“Think you could handle a couple of these?” I asked showing him the bottle in my hand.
He grunted and I took it as an affirmative answer so I took out two and poured him a glass of water as he eased himself into a sitting position. He washed them back and then I didn’t know what else to say.
I was relieved to find out I didn’t need to start the conversation. Tony’s eyebrows came together and he said, “Sit down a sec. My head is finally clear and we need to talk about what’s happening.”
Sitting on the bed with him was a little more than I could handle and sitting on the bunk seemed too insulting after what I’d already said and done. I didn’t want him to think I was afraid because I wasn’t, not really; I was nervous though, definitely nervous. Compromising I sat on the floor beside his bed, leaning against it so that I wouldn’t have to look him in the eye unless I turned my head.
He wasn’t angry like I expected but was definitely puzzled when he said, “Explain to me what happened. Why isn’t the family here? And Bennie? I expected Leo to take off, that was the deal, but the rest of them … I ain’t puttin’ it together. What freakin’ happened to turn it all upside down?”
“You gonna let me get through the explanation without yellin’?”
He sighed. “That bad?”
“Depends on how you look at how things turned out I guess.”
He just looked at me so I turned my eyes back to the bunk bed. I tried to figure out where to start and then decided to go all the way back to the plane landing. That first week was easy as the three of us hadn’t had any real problems beyond the normal sorta stuff that really didn’t matter. But when I went past that point it got harder. My eyes lost focus and I musta cried a little because at some point I remember Tony pulling me up onto the bed with him and then both of us lying down, me in front and him in back holding me and telling me it was OK.
“You gotta get well Tony. I’m sorry I couldn’t figure out another way for things to work but Mr. … I mean your uncle … was so … crazy determined and just being awful to you and so angry at every little thing. And you know your aunt would follow him to Hades no matter what the consequences were; I can count on one hand the number of words she said and not one of them was don’t or stop. And Lucia and the girls wouldn’t leave their mother and Bennie wouldn’t leave Lucia and …” I was in a panic, sure that he was going to blame me.
“Shhhhh Ragazza. Shhhh. I get it. I still can’t believe he hit you and woulda done more if Leo and Bennie hadn’t pulled him off.”
Trying to find an answer, rationalize it, I told him, “Maybe some of that stuff did get on him or something. Maybe through the air conditioner vents in the car.”
In a hard voice Tony said, “Don’t make excuses for him Joey. All of them would have been the same way as him if it were true. It’s simpler than that. Uncle Nicky’s temper is famous … he’s just never turned it on the family before; first time for everything I suppose. He and my father were friends growing up, that’s how he met Aunt Belinda. Uncle Nicky always denied it but I’ve heard he was as bad as my father before he decided he wanted his friend’s sister more than he wanted … living that other way. He was reformed but it still was inside him.”
I shook my head, “It was more than just temper Tony. Something in your uncle … it’s cracked, sick. I hope maybe getting someplace he knows and getting quiet and calm will help him pull himself together.”
Tony musta heard my internal debate on it. “But you don’t think so.”
I shook my head and said, “I didn’t say that.”
“Then what?”
Hesitantly I said, “I … I just don’t think there’s going to be a lot of quiet and calm in too many places for a while.”
Tony stopped talking for so long I figured he’d gone to sleep but when I tried to get up he had enough strength to stop me. “Don’t,” came his coarse plea.
“Ok.”
After more quiet he asks, “You sure you’re OK? I ain’t said nothing about the bruises but …”
“I’m fine Tony, really. I was sore this morning but that’s mostly gone now.”
“Am I hurting you? Holding you like this?”
I forced myself to relax in his arms and said, “Probably not nearly as much as holding me is hurting you. You need to rest. You want me to put some more of that topical stuff on?”
“Better not. At least not now that I’m thinking clear.”
“Huh?”
His quiet chuff of laughter tickled my ear. “Never mind Ragazza.” After a moment he said, “We got other things to talk about too, important things.”
“I know. I got a long list in my head but if you’re staying …” A sudden thought almost put me in a panic. “You are stayin’ aren’t you Tony? I mean … you aren’t going to try and go after them? Do you want to leave? Is that the important stuff you want to talk about?”
“Hush that crazy talk,” he said and I could feel him moving my hair out of the way. I needed to remember to put it up and not let it go all over the place like I usually let it unless it was in a net at the deli. “I ain’t goin’ no where. Why would I when you’re here?”
I thought about that for a bit and said, “Good. That’s real good.”
“We gotta talk about some things first.”
I sighed in resignation. “You’re gonna make this complicated.”
I could feel him trying not to smile. “Not yet I’m not … but soon.” He cracked a yawn and then when he tried to stretch he jumped like it hurt.
“Tony, you need to rest. You scared me near to death when you were so out of it.”
He sighed and got comfortable again, still not really turning loose of me. “I’ll rest, don’t seem like I’ve got much choice. But first we need to talk.”
“I already told you all I know about the family. I keep thinking they’ll realize their mistake and come back.”
Tony gave a slow shrug. “Maybe they will, maybe they won’t.”
Surprised at his tone I asked, “You saying you’re OK with this?”
“No, but ain’t nothin’ I can do about it. They left.”
Beginning to wonder I said, “But … but they’re still family.”
A pause and then he said, “Some of ‘em.”
“Oh Tony.” I felt so bad. Tony was all about family and for him to say something like that … it was awful.
He sighed. “Joey, let it go. That’s the way I feel right now. Best I can do.” I tried to turn but he wouldn’t let me I wiggled and then felt a damp spot on my neck. Just one place.
I stayed quiet while he mastered himself and when he changed the subject I let him. “You have an inventory of what there is?”
“An inventory? Of like the stuff here in the house?”
“Yeah … like food and clothes and stuff. We can’t make a plan if we don’t know what we got to work with. You’d think with your finance degree you woulda thought of that.”
I sighed, “I did think of it, just haven’t wanted to face it. Let me up Tony so I can get a piece of paper and make some notes. I been putting this off, waiting for my family and you to get here I guess. We’ll you’re here now and … and it’s time to see what kind of shape we’re really in.”
“You shouldn’t a have waited Joey. What if we hadn’t ever gotten here?”
I so did not want to think about that so instead told him a little defensively, “I wasn’t a complete do nothing you know. Let me get the paper and I’ll be right back.”
When I came back I told him about what I’d been doing … cleaning the house, trying to save the stuff in the orchard, the chickens – he was surprised about the birds but then I reminded him how we’d come by then. He started asking questions. Some of his questions made me feel smart and some made me feel stupid.
“So you been doing that thing your mom taught Aunt Belinda … all that food preservin’ and stuff.”
“Yeah. But there is still a lot to go and all I can hear in my head is Mom saying ‘waste not want not.’ It’s driving me batty with the need to get more of it done.”
He was very tired but he kept at it. “You got any idea how much you done already?”
“You mean how much … oh wait you mean how much fruit turned into how much dried stuff?” At his nod I answered, “Not really but I might could give it a guess if I think about it.”
“Why don’t you wait and start measuring from here on out. Like how much fruit you put in that dryer thing and how much comes out in volume when it’s done. Then we’ll go back and see how much of the other stuff you did and be able to work backwards from there.”
I wrote it down and realized that would mean that I would have to keep everything separate until I could get caught up with the counting. Then he asks, “What about what was left here in storage and what was left from what you three arrived with?”
All I could tell him is, “Not a specific list but I can work it out.”
“It needs to be done. And we need to figure out what Leo left us. What was left in your parents’ truck?” When I didn’t answer he asked, “What? Something happened to the truck?”
“No,” I told him. “They moved your uncle and aunt’s stuff to the van where it had been in the truck.”
“What about the other stuff?”
“The other stuff? My parents’ things? That came out of the van.”
“Not that stuff … wait, have you even looked in the truck to see if there is anything in there?” That’s when I started feeling stupid. “Joey, how many times I gotta tell you? Never assume anything. You need to get out there and see what is in there.”
He sat up and acted like he was about to start the inventorying himself but he turned pale and his eyes got big. “Oh no you don’t,” I told him pushing him back down. The fact he didn’t give me any trouble told me he was weaker than he’d admit out loud and he’d pinched something to make it hurt again. “Tony, you gotta be careful. Here we are talking and you need to rest. You’re hurtin’ all over again aren’t you.”
Grimacing he tried to distract me by asking, “Does this mean I don’t get to move upstairs?”
I snorted. “Fine time to bring that up. If you want to, I want you to. But only if you promise to get some rest when we move you up there. You’ve given me a long list of things to think about on top of my own list and when I come up with more questions you need to be in shape to be able to help me figure some answers out.”
He gave me a look. “You sure Ragazza? I ain’t gonna be moving like an old man forever.” Despite feeling a little warm in the face, despite everything that had happened, despite everything period, even myself, I nodded. “Then after I … I rest a bit … we need to talk about complicated things.”
Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Oh man, even my eyelashes hurt. Only half awake I thought at first that the bunk bed mattress was the culprit but slowly the memories started falling in place, clicking like the tumblers on a safe, until my brain opened and I saw all the “treasure” that I’d experienced for the last two weeks.
Then with a soft groan I said it out loud, “Oh man.”
A guttural and somehow fragile “Ragazza?” came to my ears. I rolled over and sat up so fast I cracked by head on the bunk above me.
“Ow!” I wanted to say more – and probably would have – but when I flipped on the lamp my eyes finally focused and got a good look at Tony.
He was feverish again. The pitcher was empty so he must have been drinking it off and on all night, or maybe this morning and I hadn’t heard him. “Hang on Tony.”
He started drinking as soon as I got back from the kitchen and brought a cup with a straw in it close to his mouth. I went back and brought clean cloths and more water to wash him down with. Putting cool cloths on the places where the worst of the lymph node swelling was seemed to bring him relief and I left him like that while I went to the bathroom, got dressed, and then filled the tub with water.
“Tony, if I put you in the tub can you hold yourself up? Not go under?”
He’d woken up enough to give me a look that would have burnt toast. “I’m not a child Josephine. And I can take a shower like a grown man.”
“Uh uh. I haven’t had my coffee yet so forget about it. You’ll let me pay some attention to you so I can have some peace of mind one way or the other.”
It was the right tact to take with him. It left him with his male pride and also gave him a sense that he was allowing me to take care of him because it made me feel better, not because he actually needed me to. That’s the same thing Mom did with Dad. I know it won’t work all the time but thank goodness it worked this time because I wasn’t kidding about needing some coffee real bad.
Getting him in the tub was easier than I expected. He wouldn’t drop his shorts so he climbed in still about as dressed as he had been then told me to get lost and give him some space. The snarky tone he used made me want to give him some space all right … by cleaving his head open and making some more right between his ears.
When I realized where my thoughts were going I stumbled to the kitchen and made me a cup of instant cappuccino. I grimaced as I realized that it was the French Vanilla flavor but it was better than nothing. I would have preferred straight espresso shots at that point but I couldn’t remember which box I saw the instant stuff in. I knew it was at my feet somewhere between the kitchen and the living room but I needed the caffeine before next Juvember.
I cranked open the security door – it can be done from the inside or outside for fire safety reasons – and then stepped onto the porch. It was a good morning, not glorious, but fresh after the rain that did indeed come over night. I was glad to have taken the effort to bring everything in. Then I saw it, the bucket of blackberries I had run back to the house with yesterday. It sat forlorn, half filled with berries and half with water that had ruined said berries. I watched gnats swarming the mess and sighed, finished my cuppa, then eased my way down the stairs trying to get the kinks out of places I hadn’t known I had.
Bending over was just as fun as fighting the swarm of gnats but I did it and started carrying the bucket and its contents to the chickens. I nearly swore when I saw that two of the hens had died, hopefully the last of them because I’d already lost three. I distracted the rest of the brainless wonders with my offering of blackberry soup and picked up the two corpses. Picking up dead animals ain’t sexy and is just plain gross so I wasn’t no happy camper. Then I saw another hen just sitting there inside the opening of the little house they called home.
I growled, “Freakin’ great, another one.”
Only this time I go to grab the bunch of feathers and this one ain’t dead. Not only ain’t it dead, it’s in a hacked off mood and gives me what for before finally moving off like I’ve affronted its dignity or something. I’m the one that is in flip flops, picking up dead chickens and getting bird crap on me and it’s the one with affronted dignity. Go figure. I was about to kick the door shut when I spotted three somethings in the grass she’d been sitting in.
“Well hot dog, maybe you birds will be good for something besides cacciatore after all.”
I picked up the three eggs – because sure enough that is what they were – and after tossing the birds carcasses off into the woods where I knew something would eventually carry them off, took them into the house. A lot of cursing and splashing was coming from the bathroom and I ran in there to find an awful mess.
“Tony! Look at this. Couldn’t you have just called me?”
He snapped, “I did. You didn’t answer. How am I supposed to know you ain’t lying someplace hurt?!”
“Stop yelling! You’re giving me a headache!” I turned and grabbed an armful of fresh towels and start trying to soak up the inch of water all over the floor.
In a suddenly conciliatory tone Tony said, “Come here.”
“You know, I’m getting tired of you bossing me around all ready. You ever heard of the word please?” I was three steps from the tub when I spotted his wet jockies thrown in the sink. I stopped and crossed my arms giving him a look. “Tony I ain’t in the mood for trouble.”
He tried to look innocent but it didn’t work. Then he tried to look wicked … and that didn’t work neither. His shoulders slumped and all he looked was tired. “I ain’t up for givin’ you none. Just give me a hand getting out of here, I’m turnin’ into a freakin’ prune.”
I did as asked but kept my eyes averted until he had a towel wrapped around his waist. “Maybe you look a little prune-y … but you sound better.”
He grunted then said, “Feel better.”
He still walked like he was sore and I couldn’t blame him for that. I remember the pain my brothers had been in and how embarrassed they’d been about what had caused the worst of it. “I’m gonna bring you some fresh clothes and then get you some breakfast. As soon as you get something in your stomach I want you to take a couple a pills to keep that fever down now that it’s broke.”
“Joey you don’t need …”
I shook my head. “Yeah I do and we both know it. Maybe someday you can return the favor.”
I’m glad Tony is one of those guys that has common sense. He may not always like what it tells him but at least his follow through is pretty good. I got him to the bed and then realized the sheets needed to be changed so I helped him to sit on the bottom bunk, stripped the bed he’d slept in and put clean sheets on it, then went to get him some clothes.
It was kinda distracting to be digging around in Tony’s luggage much less dealing with things like his undershorts and socks but I tried to think of it as if I was dealing with my brothers’ things. That hadn’t bothered me so there was no sense in letting Tony’s things bother me. When I got back to the room however I found that I wasn’t the only one a little uncomfortable with the sudden intimacy.
“You coulda just brought my bag Joey.”
I shrugged, “Sure I coulda but I don’t guess you really saw the mess out there. It was just easier to bring the clothes than to try and drag the bag through everything else.”
He got real quiet, “Gimme some privacy already.”
I looked at him and then stepped close and bent down and kissed the top of his head gently so he wouldn’t jerk away. “Tony, the only thing that matters is that you get better. I need you … and for you to get better. So it takes a little time? That don’t matter to me, only that you keep getting better. Let me help you.”
Still he shook his head. “Maybe next time Ragazza. This time I need to do it myself.”
I sighed knowing it was his pride talking but Mom had told me that sometimes you just had to let a man’s pride talk because it is part of what made a man a man. I left him to it and then went to make some scrambled eggs and toasted piadina, something I knew was one of Tony’s favorite breakfasts.
Piadina is real common in Italy and in real Italian neighborhoods but it’s hard to find anyplace else. Most people who see piadina think they are tortillas but they are a little different. Instead of being made with flour and corn oil or lard the piadina is made with flour and olive oil or lard and you also add milk to it; and instead of being cooked in a skillet you are supposed to cook the piadina on a terracotta dish. There was a little bakery not too far from our house that still made it in the most traditional way.
I pull all of the ingredients together first: a pound of flour, two and half ounces of lard, a half cup of milk, a half cup of water, a half teaspoon of baking soda, and a half teaspoon of salt. The milk came from some powdered stuff I found in the cabinet but someone had been smart and brought a couple of cases of canned evaporated milk. I knew I needed to ask Tony some questions about what he brought but I wasn’t too sure he was ready for that kind of worry.
I put all of the ingredients into a big bowl and started kneading it until I got a good dough and then I gave myself a dope slap. The dough would need to rest for an hour before I could do anything with it. I went in to check on Tony and found him asleep – and no fever. I knew I’d caught a break.
I wrote a note and left it beside the water pitcher which I also refilled and then went out to the orchard. The rain of the previous night had knocked some fruit off the trees and I spent forty-five minutes picking it up and adding some I’d pulled from branches then started back to the house. I had three five-gallon buckets to move uphill … so not fun. I played the leap frog game with them; move a bucket and go back and get the second bucket and move it ahead of the first, then go back and get the third bucket and move it ahead of the second and then start over. Eventually I was within sight of the house and just muled them the rest of the way. Good thing my upper body strength has been developed from all the years I worked in the corner market and then in the deli because I really needed it.
I was hot and sweaty and could have used a shower but didn’t have the time. Tony was still sleeping which was a good thing; it didn’t even look like he’d moved. I decided to wash up just enough to finish cooking then while Tony was eating I’d open the upstairs shutters and see if he wanted to move up there. I would be able to open the windows upstairs and he’d be more comfortable. I didn’t go past that point because I wasn’t sure if Tony would want to talk, sleep, or what.
The piadina was easy enough. I divided the dough into egg-sized portions and then rolled it out until it was about as big as a pie plate and about as thick as two quarters stacked on top of each other. At the same time I was heating my mother’s rectangular griddle. One side I prepped for the eggs and the other for frying the piadina.
Practice makes perfect but it had been a while since I had made the flatbread so a couple of pieces rose a little too much before I pricked them with a fork to keep them from bubbling. I only took two with a small portion of the eggs to Tony on a tray with a small glass of watered down Tang. I walked into the room just as he was waking up.
Blinking like an owl when I turned the lamp on I think he must have taken a moment to decide whether I was real before letting me help him to sit up and put the bed tray across his lap.
“You didn’t have to do this Ragazza.”
I smiled and brushed his hair out of his eyes. “I know. And it’s nice to know you know it too. Appreciation is a good thing. Now eat. If you want more I’ll put some nutella …”
“Mmmm …” was his response when he put the eggs in his mouth.
Smiling slightly I asked, “Is that a yes or no?”
“Don’t know yet. Wait,” he said stopping me as I started to walk away. “Have you eaten? I’m … I’m trying to remember …”
I walked back over to the bed and sat on the edge. “Well stop trying so hard, it looks like it hurts. I’m fine, mine is in the kitchen and I’ll eat as soon as I open the shutters upstairs. When you’re finished you might want to move up there, it isn’t so stuffy and I can open the windows. The bed is bigger too.”
He put his fork down forcefully. “I won’t take your parents’ bed.”
I could feel the heat in my checks as I told him, “Not theirs … mine. You decide and let me know.” That time I did make it out of the room, ignoring his wheezing as a bit of egg went down the wrong way.
Oh man, even my eyelashes hurt. Only half awake I thought at first that the bunk bed mattress was the culprit but slowly the memories started falling in place, clicking like the tumblers on a safe, until my brain opened and I saw all the “treasure” that I’d experienced for the last two weeks.
Then with a soft groan I said it out loud, “Oh man.”
A guttural and somehow fragile “Ragazza?” came to my ears. I rolled over and sat up so fast I cracked by head on the bunk above me.
“Ow!” I wanted to say more – and probably would have – but when I flipped on the lamp my eyes finally focused and got a good look at Tony.
He was feverish again. The pitcher was empty so he must have been drinking it off and on all night, or maybe this morning and I hadn’t heard him. “Hang on Tony.”
He started drinking as soon as I got back from the kitchen and brought a cup with a straw in it close to his mouth. I went back and brought clean cloths and more water to wash him down with. Putting cool cloths on the places where the worst of the lymph node swelling was seemed to bring him relief and I left him like that while I went to the bathroom, got dressed, and then filled the tub with water.
“Tony, if I put you in the tub can you hold yourself up? Not go under?”
He’d woken up enough to give me a look that would have burnt toast. “I’m not a child Josephine. And I can take a shower like a grown man.”
“Uh uh. I haven’t had my coffee yet so forget about it. You’ll let me pay some attention to you so I can have some peace of mind one way or the other.”
It was the right tact to take with him. It left him with his male pride and also gave him a sense that he was allowing me to take care of him because it made me feel better, not because he actually needed me to. That’s the same thing Mom did with Dad. I know it won’t work all the time but thank goodness it worked this time because I wasn’t kidding about needing some coffee real bad.
Getting him in the tub was easier than I expected. He wouldn’t drop his shorts so he climbed in still about as dressed as he had been then told me to get lost and give him some space. The snarky tone he used made me want to give him some space all right … by cleaving his head open and making some more right between his ears.
When I realized where my thoughts were going I stumbled to the kitchen and made me a cup of instant cappuccino. I grimaced as I realized that it was the French Vanilla flavor but it was better than nothing. I would have preferred straight espresso shots at that point but I couldn’t remember which box I saw the instant stuff in. I knew it was at my feet somewhere between the kitchen and the living room but I needed the caffeine before next Juvember.
I cranked open the security door – it can be done from the inside or outside for fire safety reasons – and then stepped onto the porch. It was a good morning, not glorious, but fresh after the rain that did indeed come over night. I was glad to have taken the effort to bring everything in. Then I saw it, the bucket of blackberries I had run back to the house with yesterday. It sat forlorn, half filled with berries and half with water that had ruined said berries. I watched gnats swarming the mess and sighed, finished my cuppa, then eased my way down the stairs trying to get the kinks out of places I hadn’t known I had.
Bending over was just as fun as fighting the swarm of gnats but I did it and started carrying the bucket and its contents to the chickens. I nearly swore when I saw that two of the hens had died, hopefully the last of them because I’d already lost three. I distracted the rest of the brainless wonders with my offering of blackberry soup and picked up the two corpses. Picking up dead animals ain’t sexy and is just plain gross so I wasn’t no happy camper. Then I saw another hen just sitting there inside the opening of the little house they called home.
I growled, “Freakin’ great, another one.”
Only this time I go to grab the bunch of feathers and this one ain’t dead. Not only ain’t it dead, it’s in a hacked off mood and gives me what for before finally moving off like I’ve affronted its dignity or something. I’m the one that is in flip flops, picking up dead chickens and getting bird crap on me and it’s the one with affronted dignity. Go figure. I was about to kick the door shut when I spotted three somethings in the grass she’d been sitting in.
“Well hot dog, maybe you birds will be good for something besides cacciatore after all.”
I picked up the three eggs – because sure enough that is what they were – and after tossing the birds carcasses off into the woods where I knew something would eventually carry them off, took them into the house. A lot of cursing and splashing was coming from the bathroom and I ran in there to find an awful mess.
“Tony! Look at this. Couldn’t you have just called me?”
He snapped, “I did. You didn’t answer. How am I supposed to know you ain’t lying someplace hurt?!”
“Stop yelling! You’re giving me a headache!” I turned and grabbed an armful of fresh towels and start trying to soak up the inch of water all over the floor.
In a suddenly conciliatory tone Tony said, “Come here.”
“You know, I’m getting tired of you bossing me around all ready. You ever heard of the word please?” I was three steps from the tub when I spotted his wet jockies thrown in the sink. I stopped and crossed my arms giving him a look. “Tony I ain’t in the mood for trouble.”
He tried to look innocent but it didn’t work. Then he tried to look wicked … and that didn’t work neither. His shoulders slumped and all he looked was tired. “I ain’t up for givin’ you none. Just give me a hand getting out of here, I’m turnin’ into a freakin’ prune.”
I did as asked but kept my eyes averted until he had a towel wrapped around his waist. “Maybe you look a little prune-y … but you sound better.”
He grunted then said, “Feel better.”
He still walked like he was sore and I couldn’t blame him for that. I remember the pain my brothers had been in and how embarrassed they’d been about what had caused the worst of it. “I’m gonna bring you some fresh clothes and then get you some breakfast. As soon as you get something in your stomach I want you to take a couple a pills to keep that fever down now that it’s broke.”
“Joey you don’t need …”
I shook my head. “Yeah I do and we both know it. Maybe someday you can return the favor.”
I’m glad Tony is one of those guys that has common sense. He may not always like what it tells him but at least his follow through is pretty good. I got him to the bed and then realized the sheets needed to be changed so I helped him to sit on the bottom bunk, stripped the bed he’d slept in and put clean sheets on it, then went to get him some clothes.
It was kinda distracting to be digging around in Tony’s luggage much less dealing with things like his undershorts and socks but I tried to think of it as if I was dealing with my brothers’ things. That hadn’t bothered me so there was no sense in letting Tony’s things bother me. When I got back to the room however I found that I wasn’t the only one a little uncomfortable with the sudden intimacy.
“You coulda just brought my bag Joey.”
I shrugged, “Sure I coulda but I don’t guess you really saw the mess out there. It was just easier to bring the clothes than to try and drag the bag through everything else.”
He got real quiet, “Gimme some privacy already.”
I looked at him and then stepped close and bent down and kissed the top of his head gently so he wouldn’t jerk away. “Tony, the only thing that matters is that you get better. I need you … and for you to get better. So it takes a little time? That don’t matter to me, only that you keep getting better. Let me help you.”
Still he shook his head. “Maybe next time Ragazza. This time I need to do it myself.”
I sighed knowing it was his pride talking but Mom had told me that sometimes you just had to let a man’s pride talk because it is part of what made a man a man. I left him to it and then went to make some scrambled eggs and toasted piadina, something I knew was one of Tony’s favorite breakfasts.
Piadina is real common in Italy and in real Italian neighborhoods but it’s hard to find anyplace else. Most people who see piadina think they are tortillas but they are a little different. Instead of being made with flour and corn oil or lard the piadina is made with flour and olive oil or lard and you also add milk to it; and instead of being cooked in a skillet you are supposed to cook the piadina on a terracotta dish. There was a little bakery not too far from our house that still made it in the most traditional way.
I pull all of the ingredients together first: a pound of flour, two and half ounces of lard, a half cup of milk, a half cup of water, a half teaspoon of baking soda, and a half teaspoon of salt. The milk came from some powdered stuff I found in the cabinet but someone had been smart and brought a couple of cases of canned evaporated milk. I knew I needed to ask Tony some questions about what he brought but I wasn’t too sure he was ready for that kind of worry.
I put all of the ingredients into a big bowl and started kneading it until I got a good dough and then I gave myself a dope slap. The dough would need to rest for an hour before I could do anything with it. I went in to check on Tony and found him asleep – and no fever. I knew I’d caught a break.
I wrote a note and left it beside the water pitcher which I also refilled and then went out to the orchard. The rain of the previous night had knocked some fruit off the trees and I spent forty-five minutes picking it up and adding some I’d pulled from branches then started back to the house. I had three five-gallon buckets to move uphill … so not fun. I played the leap frog game with them; move a bucket and go back and get the second bucket and move it ahead of the first, then go back and get the third bucket and move it ahead of the second and then start over. Eventually I was within sight of the house and just muled them the rest of the way. Good thing my upper body strength has been developed from all the years I worked in the corner market and then in the deli because I really needed it.
I was hot and sweaty and could have used a shower but didn’t have the time. Tony was still sleeping which was a good thing; it didn’t even look like he’d moved. I decided to wash up just enough to finish cooking then while Tony was eating I’d open the upstairs shutters and see if he wanted to move up there. I would be able to open the windows upstairs and he’d be more comfortable. I didn’t go past that point because I wasn’t sure if Tony would want to talk, sleep, or what.
The piadina was easy enough. I divided the dough into egg-sized portions and then rolled it out until it was about as big as a pie plate and about as thick as two quarters stacked on top of each other. At the same time I was heating my mother’s rectangular griddle. One side I prepped for the eggs and the other for frying the piadina.
Practice makes perfect but it had been a while since I had made the flatbread so a couple of pieces rose a little too much before I pricked them with a fork to keep them from bubbling. I only took two with a small portion of the eggs to Tony on a tray with a small glass of watered down Tang. I walked into the room just as he was waking up.
Blinking like an owl when I turned the lamp on I think he must have taken a moment to decide whether I was real before letting me help him to sit up and put the bed tray across his lap.
“You didn’t have to do this Ragazza.”
I smiled and brushed his hair out of his eyes. “I know. And it’s nice to know you know it too. Appreciation is a good thing. Now eat. If you want more I’ll put some nutella …”
“Mmmm …” was his response when he put the eggs in his mouth.
Smiling slightly I asked, “Is that a yes or no?”
“Don’t know yet. Wait,” he said stopping me as I started to walk away. “Have you eaten? I’m … I’m trying to remember …”
I walked back over to the bed and sat on the edge. “Well stop trying so hard, it looks like it hurts. I’m fine, mine is in the kitchen and I’ll eat as soon as I open the shutters upstairs. When you’re finished you might want to move up there, it isn’t so stuffy and I can open the windows. The bed is bigger too.”
He put his fork down forcefully. “I won’t take your parents’ bed.”
I could feel the heat in my checks as I told him, “Not theirs … mine. You decide and let me know.” That time I did make it out of the room, ignoring his wheezing as a bit of egg went down the wrong way.
Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
This time putting the topical pain relief on him wasn’t so bad but it still wasn’t a joy ride for either one of us. He was sweating and shaking by the time I was finished and just pulled up the sheet and turned his face away.
“You gonna be OK if I turn the lamp off? It’s eatin’ the batteries.”
He didn’t answer for a minute and then when he did it was with a question of his own. “You … you really OK Joey?”
I sighed. Tony could be so hard headed. I really didn’t want to talk about it all but I’ve known Tony long enough and well enough that if I didn’t throw him a bone he wouldn’t sleep and it would keep eating at him. And he needed to sleep. He was better – not so much like the half dead guy he’d been earlier – but any little thing might set him back.
“I’m as OK as I’m gonna get for a bit. It just ain’t sunk in yet. I mean it has but … but I’m sure it’s gonna be like when Papa Ralph and then Gran died. Things are under control and then you suddenly think on something only you have to remind yourself they’re gone and then you gotta deal with the hurt all over again.” Sighing I finally said, “I’ll live. I’ll live because it’s the right thing to do. Just we both know sometimes the right thing to do ain’t the easy thing to do.”
I thought he was done but then he said, “Turn the light off.”
I switched the lamp off and started to slide into the bottom bunk on the opposite wall but stopped when he said, “Come here.”
“Tony?”
Quietly he said, “I swear I ain’t gonna do nothing Joey, ain’t in no shape to … just come here.”
The room was pitch black but since I knew there wasn’t anything in the floor between the bunk and the twin bed it was an easy couple of steps to make. He was waiting for me and I felt his hand take mine and tug me down beside him. He kept holding my hand and rubbing it with his thumb. There’s no forcing Tony to get where he’s going any faster so even though I was so tired I coulda passed out I just sat on the edge of the bed and waited.
Like the words were being pulled out of him a syllable at a time he said, “I need to ask you somethin’.”
“I’m right here and it ain’t like you ever had trouble talking to me before.”
He sighed. “Don’t know how to do this.”
The grip of his hand on mine was getting uncomfortably tight but I didn’t say nothing or budge. Whatever was coming Tony needed it. I could feel it building and building and building until I was nearly as suffocated with it as he seemed to be.
“I … I need you to forgive me Joey. I can’t … can’t get away from it. I see ‘em, everywhere I look I see ‘em. I see ‘em in my sleep too. I know you say you don’t think it’s my fault but … but it feels like it. I’m drownin’ here and you’re the only thing that I got to keep me from goin’ under for the last time.”
He was shaking like he was cold so I used my free hand to pull the sheet up around him better. “Tony, you don’t need my forgiveness but if you gotta have it then it is all yours to have. This ain’t your fault. Trust me. Right now you … you just ain’t thinkin’ clear. You’re … you’re sick from that stuff you got on you. If you wasn’t you could see it for yourself. You really think Dad would want to see you like this?”
I heard the rasp of his hair on the pillow as he turned his head. “Look what he said about me. He thought I’d mess with you when you wasn’t nothin’ but a baby. I still don’t know what I did to make him think that but that your ol’ man could think it – him bein’ the way he was – it just kills me. I figured I’d have time to prove to him I could wait, that I’d be good to you … we were supposed to have all the time in the world.”
I swallowed and could hear the dry click. I was scared. It was handle this right or accidentally destroy something that I might be miserable without.
“Tony, Lucia told me a few things recently. Said she overheard your Aunt Belinda and my mom talking. Heard Mom say Dad wasn’t set against you … or you and me … just he wanted something different for me than … than just being your girl, being a piece of arm candy for a while for some important schlub, getting’ my heart broke and then tryin’ to find the next guy to fix it. We’ve both seen women like that. Dad … well … I been thinkin’ and maybe … maybe Dad kinda set us up. I mean, he was sick and we all thought he was dyin’ … he was dyin’ accordin’ to those doctors … I heard Mom say he was puttin’ his house in order. Dad was old fashioned so maybe … maybe he wanted to have a hand in picking who … well who took care of me when he wasn’t around no more. He liked you for the job ‘cause you made good money and had a future but I was still too young and nothing but a little sister to you. And maybe he liked you but not everything about you … you was still going around with a lot of girls back then, and some of ‘em wild. So maybe he planted some seeds, put ideas where they weren’t at before, hoping they’d grow … but grow the way he wanted ‘em to and not … not just any old direction.”
I felt him right behind me and his face pressed into the small of my back. When he spoke, the words caused vibrations to run up my spine. “Lucia really tell you that?”
“About what she heard our mothers talking about? Yeah. The rest … the rest is me thinkin’.”
He breathed in and it’s like he didn’t want to let it go but finally I felt the heated air escape, felt it curl around me about the same way Tony’s arm was trying to do. I told him, “You move too much you’re gonna start hurting.”
“Don’t care,” he muttered. “Just need to know you’re here and real. Saw you on the road too … looking at me with them big bits of chocolate you got for eyes. Only it was me that was meltin’. Sometimes the only thing that brought me back around was Ana screaming like a freakin’ banshee. Got to where I didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. Didn’t know if I wanted to know because if I lived I’d have to explain …” His voice cracked.
“Tony, you need me to say it again? It ain’t your fault and I don’t blame you. Someone someplace cheated me … us … of something precious. They had no right to do what they did. It was wrong and I hope they rot in hell for it. But I ain’t gonna let what they did take you from me too. Stop hurtin’ yourself Tony. I need you to get well. I need you to help me make some plans. I can do this by myself if I have to … but I really don’t want to.”
He didn’t say anything after that. He’s breathing just slowed down and got deeper and eventually even his arm relaxed enough for me to wiggle off the bed. I was frustrated but figured something as broke as Tony seemed to be wasn’t going to get fixed in a day. And he was really sick even though he seemed better than he had been. I still didn’t know what was wrong with him and was worried that he wasn’t out of the woods yet, but at least we’d made a start. I could live with that … and could sleep on it too.
This time putting the topical pain relief on him wasn’t so bad but it still wasn’t a joy ride for either one of us. He was sweating and shaking by the time I was finished and just pulled up the sheet and turned his face away.
“You gonna be OK if I turn the lamp off? It’s eatin’ the batteries.”
He didn’t answer for a minute and then when he did it was with a question of his own. “You … you really OK Joey?”
I sighed. Tony could be so hard headed. I really didn’t want to talk about it all but I’ve known Tony long enough and well enough that if I didn’t throw him a bone he wouldn’t sleep and it would keep eating at him. And he needed to sleep. He was better – not so much like the half dead guy he’d been earlier – but any little thing might set him back.
“I’m as OK as I’m gonna get for a bit. It just ain’t sunk in yet. I mean it has but … but I’m sure it’s gonna be like when Papa Ralph and then Gran died. Things are under control and then you suddenly think on something only you have to remind yourself they’re gone and then you gotta deal with the hurt all over again.” Sighing I finally said, “I’ll live. I’ll live because it’s the right thing to do. Just we both know sometimes the right thing to do ain’t the easy thing to do.”
I thought he was done but then he said, “Turn the light off.”
I switched the lamp off and started to slide into the bottom bunk on the opposite wall but stopped when he said, “Come here.”
“Tony?”
Quietly he said, “I swear I ain’t gonna do nothing Joey, ain’t in no shape to … just come here.”
The room was pitch black but since I knew there wasn’t anything in the floor between the bunk and the twin bed it was an easy couple of steps to make. He was waiting for me and I felt his hand take mine and tug me down beside him. He kept holding my hand and rubbing it with his thumb. There’s no forcing Tony to get where he’s going any faster so even though I was so tired I coulda passed out I just sat on the edge of the bed and waited.
Like the words were being pulled out of him a syllable at a time he said, “I need to ask you somethin’.”
“I’m right here and it ain’t like you ever had trouble talking to me before.”
He sighed. “Don’t know how to do this.”
The grip of his hand on mine was getting uncomfortably tight but I didn’t say nothing or budge. Whatever was coming Tony needed it. I could feel it building and building and building until I was nearly as suffocated with it as he seemed to be.
“I … I need you to forgive me Joey. I can’t … can’t get away from it. I see ‘em, everywhere I look I see ‘em. I see ‘em in my sleep too. I know you say you don’t think it’s my fault but … but it feels like it. I’m drownin’ here and you’re the only thing that I got to keep me from goin’ under for the last time.”
He was shaking like he was cold so I used my free hand to pull the sheet up around him better. “Tony, you don’t need my forgiveness but if you gotta have it then it is all yours to have. This ain’t your fault. Trust me. Right now you … you just ain’t thinkin’ clear. You’re … you’re sick from that stuff you got on you. If you wasn’t you could see it for yourself. You really think Dad would want to see you like this?”
I heard the rasp of his hair on the pillow as he turned his head. “Look what he said about me. He thought I’d mess with you when you wasn’t nothin’ but a baby. I still don’t know what I did to make him think that but that your ol’ man could think it – him bein’ the way he was – it just kills me. I figured I’d have time to prove to him I could wait, that I’d be good to you … we were supposed to have all the time in the world.”
I swallowed and could hear the dry click. I was scared. It was handle this right or accidentally destroy something that I might be miserable without.
“Tony, Lucia told me a few things recently. Said she overheard your Aunt Belinda and my mom talking. Heard Mom say Dad wasn’t set against you … or you and me … just he wanted something different for me than … than just being your girl, being a piece of arm candy for a while for some important schlub, getting’ my heart broke and then tryin’ to find the next guy to fix it. We’ve both seen women like that. Dad … well … I been thinkin’ and maybe … maybe Dad kinda set us up. I mean, he was sick and we all thought he was dyin’ … he was dyin’ accordin’ to those doctors … I heard Mom say he was puttin’ his house in order. Dad was old fashioned so maybe … maybe he wanted to have a hand in picking who … well who took care of me when he wasn’t around no more. He liked you for the job ‘cause you made good money and had a future but I was still too young and nothing but a little sister to you. And maybe he liked you but not everything about you … you was still going around with a lot of girls back then, and some of ‘em wild. So maybe he planted some seeds, put ideas where they weren’t at before, hoping they’d grow … but grow the way he wanted ‘em to and not … not just any old direction.”
I felt him right behind me and his face pressed into the small of my back. When he spoke, the words caused vibrations to run up my spine. “Lucia really tell you that?”
“About what she heard our mothers talking about? Yeah. The rest … the rest is me thinkin’.”
He breathed in and it’s like he didn’t want to let it go but finally I felt the heated air escape, felt it curl around me about the same way Tony’s arm was trying to do. I told him, “You move too much you’re gonna start hurting.”
“Don’t care,” he muttered. “Just need to know you’re here and real. Saw you on the road too … looking at me with them big bits of chocolate you got for eyes. Only it was me that was meltin’. Sometimes the only thing that brought me back around was Ana screaming like a freakin’ banshee. Got to where I didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. Didn’t know if I wanted to know because if I lived I’d have to explain …” His voice cracked.
“Tony, you need me to say it again? It ain’t your fault and I don’t blame you. Someone someplace cheated me … us … of something precious. They had no right to do what they did. It was wrong and I hope they rot in hell for it. But I ain’t gonna let what they did take you from me too. Stop hurtin’ yourself Tony. I need you to get well. I need you to help me make some plans. I can do this by myself if I have to … but I really don’t want to.”
He didn’t say anything after that. He’s breathing just slowed down and got deeper and eventually even his arm relaxed enough for me to wiggle off the bed. I was frustrated but figured something as broke as Tony seemed to be wasn’t going to get fixed in a day. And he was really sick even though he seemed better than he had been. I still didn’t know what was wrong with him and was worried that he wasn’t out of the woods yet, but at least we’d made a start. I could live with that … and could sleep on it too.
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