Lynda Curnyn - Engaging Men

There really was no escaping Vanessa’s reign over a room, I thought, heading to the dining room for an extra chair as I heard Sonny begin to regale Nonnie and my mother with story of Vanessa’s latest sonogram. “I saw something on that screen. I swear it’s gonna be a boy….”

There was only one thing that could dispel the Vanessa obsession. Well, actually two things. Tracy and Timmy, the Twin Terrors, who had just now exploded through the front door and into the living room, practically barreling Vanessa down in their six-year-old exuberance.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Joey called out in admonishment, as he came through the door, his hand firmly around Miranda’s tiny waist.

It still amazed me to see Joey in “dad mode,” as he’d taken on the role rather abruptly when he met Miranda a year earlier. Up till then, he had devoted all his time and energy to running the auto-parts empire my father had left to him. And whatever spare time he’d had was spent waxing and detailing the ’67 Cadillac that was his pride and joy. Now, suddenly, Tracy and Timmy were his pride and joy. Miranda, his raison d’être.

My mother should have been satisfied with this turn of events. For years, she worried Joey wouldn’t lift his head up from the Caddy long enough to settle down and give her the grandkids she craved. But somehow she couldn’t swallow down the idea of Miranda. It was as if she saw Miranda only as some destitute single mother scheming to get her hands on the dough from our family’s business.

Fortunately, Miranda didn’t notice—or at least acted as if she didn’t. “Hi, Mrs. Di,” she said, leaning in to embrace my mother. I saw my mother’s arms go around Miranda’s petite frame, though I could tell she refrained from her requisite squeeze until she moved on to Joey, whom she not only hugged but gave a firm swat on the butt. “He gets better looking every time I see him!” she said to Nonnie, a wistfulness in her voice that indicated to the more astute observer, like myself, that she felt all that magnificence was somehow being wasted on Miranda.

“He’s all right,” Nonnie responded, with a wink that said Joey was more than all right in her eyes, as she engulfed him in a hug that practically swallowed his six-foot frame. “You remember Artie Matarrazzo, right, Joey?” Nonnie said, dragging Joey to Artie, who sat obediently on the couch. “Hey, Mr. Matarrazzo,” Joey said, shaking the older man’s hand with the same surprise my brother Sonny had displayed at the sight of my grandmother, flushed and beaming over a man other than Grandpa, who had been dead a good ten years now.

But no one had too much time to wonder over Artie, now that Tracy and Timmy had launched a full attack on the living room. They had already pulled all the cushions off the couch and were about to proceed with a pillow fight when my mother swooped down to hug them and shower them with the gifts she kept handily beside the sofa they had all but destroyed. It was as if she would gladly have taken on Tracy and Timmy, who with their big blue eyes and curly brown locks were irresistible, and put Miranda, who stood by gazing on the scene with love, out to pasture.

But whatever lingering animosity there was, it was immediately dispelled when, moments after Nonnie went into the kitchen to check on the sauce, she returned and announced, “Dinner’s ready. Let’s eat!”

Once we were all settled around the table, with me sitting between Tracy and Timmy to keep them from tearing at each other’s hair while we were eating, it suddenly occurred to Sonny that my other half was missing.

“Hey, where’s Kirk?” he said, between mouthfuls of eggplant and linguine.

“Who’s Kirk?” Tracy asked, completely forgetting the guy who had kept her giggling all afternoon with his silly little jokes the last time we were here.

“You idiot,” Timmy declared. “Kirk is Angela’s boyfriend.”

“I’m not an idiot, you’re an idiot,” she said, reaching behind me to yank her brother’s hair and sending my head jutting out neatly over my plate, giving my mother an easy aim as she set about taking it off.

“He went home to see his parents,” my mother supplied, eyebrows raised as if inviting speculation about Kirk’s intentions.

“Oh, yeah?” Sonny said. “I didn’t think that guy had a home, judging by how often he eats with us.”

“Doesn’t his family live in Massachusetts somewhere?” Vanessa said, clearly proud of herself for remembering the details of my boyfriend’s life. For whatever you wanted to say about Vanessa, she really did make an effort when it came to family.

“Newton, Massachusetts,” I replied, leaning back and neatly frustrating Tracy’s effort to get a grip on her brother’s head in turn. With a glance at my mother, I continued in what I hoped was a matter-of-fact voice, “It’s about six hours by train.” Not that Kirk ever took the train. He had so many frequent flier miles, he could probably take us both on the shuttle out of LaGuardia without making a dent in his considerable savings account. The jerk. Still, I had an argument to win here. “So it’s not exactly a hop, skip and a jump from New York.”

“I didn’t say anything!” my mother protested, completely denying the subtext her raised eyebrows were sending everyone at the table.

And just in case anyone missed the subtext, Miranda innocently laid it out for all to see. “Have you ever met Kirk’s parents?”

As I stumbled toward an answer, my mother declared, “No, she hasn’t. Don’t you think that’s wrong?”

“Wrong?” Joey said, as if he weren’t following.

“I just think that if a man is serious about a girl…” my mother began.

“What? You thinking of marrying this guy?” Sonny said, as if marriage for his baby sister was an option he had yet to think of.

“I don’t know what I’m—” I began.

“Why shouldn’t she be thinking of it?” my mother chimed in. “She’s thirty-one years old.”

“Believe me, you’re better off waiting,” Miranda said. “I married Fred when I was twenty-five, and look where that got me,” she continued with the habitual roll of the eyes she made whenever she referred to her ex-husband.

My mother’s mouth dropped open, then she shut it soundly. But her expression, as it roamed over her prized firstborn son sitting next to his bride-to-be, said that she didn’t think Miranda had done too badly in the long run.

“Hey, Vanessa was only twenty-five when she married me. And you’re happy, baby, aren’t you?” Sonny said, turning to his wife, who scrunched up her nose and rubbed it against his, as her hand roamed over her ever-present abdomen. Somehow the sight of them made me feel…wistful. But only for a moment.

“Well, I was a young bride, too,” Nonnie said, “and all that made me was a young widow,” she continued, giving Artie a significant look. “But things are different today. Women today like to date around. Test-drive a man before they take him home for good.”

“What? I was wrong to marry my husband at twenty-two?” my mother said defensively. “We were in love. We wanted to be together.”

And there, I thought, lay the thing that stabbed most about Kirk’s weekend away. Did he even want to be with me? Really be with me?

“Tell you the truth,” Sonny said now, “I always liked that first guy you went out with. Vincent Salerno. Whatever happened to him?”

“Married,” my mother said, as if whatever point she was trying to make was already proved. “For over nine years now.”

“Whoa-ho,” Sonny said with a barely contained laugh. “Another one bites the dust. And didn’t you recently go to the wedding of that guy you went out with in college? What was his name? Randy?”