Jack always said. “You could set your watch by his coming and going.”
Although, I pointed out, there was a difference between having a set schedule and being reliable and responsible. But that didn’t seem to help Jack undo the damage of the past or relax in his current relationship with his parents, which was fraught with suppressed rage on all sides, dashed with guilt and suppressed anger.
After the singing-cod incident, I settled the kids into a back room with some videos, handheld computer games and a small bowl of crackers. From holidays past I remembered that tonight’s menu was definitely not kid-friendly and had plied the children with chicken fingers, applesauce and macaroni before we left the house. “No crumbs on the floor, please,” I admonished in a low voice, knowing Mira would have me whipped and tied for smuggling a snack onto her plush white wall-to-wall.
“We’ll be careful,” Becca promised, both girls nodding solemnly while Dylan’s runny nose threatened to drip on the carpet. I gave it a quick wipe and returned to the party, where Frank had arrived.
“There she is, Long Island’s next star!” Frank held out a hand to his mother and she twirled into his arms. “Ready to shoot your big commercial, gorgeous doll?”
Feeling as if I was watching a failed dance sequence on American Idol, I dared ask: “Are you doing another mattress ad, Mira?”
She air-kissed her oldest son on each cheek. “Frankie insisted on it. He said sales shot up after the first one aired, so I couldn’t say no, could I?”
“Still a beauty, my Mirabella,” Conny said from his favorite leather easy chair. “You wouldn’t believe the number of people who recognized her after she did that last commercial. One woman came up to her, right at the supermarket. She comes up and says, ‘You have the most exquisite skin.’ Exquisite, she says. And I say, yup. That’s my bride.”
Frankie winked at me over Mira’s shoulder, an indecipherable gesture. Did it mean the sales increase was all a lie, or was that just his way of saying Merry Christmas?
“We’d better watch out or producers from Project Runway are going to be calling. They’ll want you on the show, Ma.”
Talk about buttering the goose!
Mira rolled her eyes. “Get out! What can I say? Success is sweet, though I do wish my sister was here to enjoy all this with us. I do miss her at the holidays.” She turned to me, as if I hadn’t heard it all a million times before. “Died of ladies’ disease. You know.” She gestured awkwardly toward her shoulders, which I had learned was her way of designating breast cancer since she couldn’t bring herself to say the “B” word. According to what I’d gleaned from Jack, his Aunt Angela had contracted breast cancer before the days of selfexamination and regular mammography.
“Very sad. I’m sure you miss her,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic.
“I do,” she cooed, “every day.”
I felt for Mira, really, I did. But it seemed to me that she might focus on getting back the loved one who was still retrievable, the daughter who’d fled this madness years ago. What about Gia? Why didn’t anyone ever mention her—a phone call, a childhood anecdote? “Why would anyone want to bring her up?” Jack would counter when I asked about his sister. “She didn’t get along with Ma at all.”
Was that any reason to banish the poor girl from the family?
Frankie rubbed his pudgy hands together. “What delicious morsels have you concocted this Christmas, Ma?”
Thank God for Fat Frankie, able to change the subject if it meant a segue to food.
“Shrimp, anyone?” Mira set the platter of pink curls down on the coffee table, and Jack leaned forward to snatch one and dip it in sauce.
“Delicious, Mom,” he said, and I realized the poor man probably hadn’t eaten since breakfast, as I’d had him locked in the basement closet for most of the afternoon, assembling a tricycle for Dylan. He reached for another, but his mother smacked his hand away from the platter.
“Leave some for Frankie,” Mira snapped. “It’s his favorite.”
“I like shrimp, too.”
“No, you don’t,” his mother retorted tartly. “Remember when you spit it into your napkin at Aunt Lucia’s anniversary?”
“I was like, five, then.”
“Still, it never agreed with you.”
“Frankie is the one who always loved shrimp,” Conny added, launching into the old family yarn as if we hadn’t heard it a hundred times. “I remember when he was really little, just a tiny thing. Most kids wouldn’t go near seafood, but there was Frankie, powering it down, cocktail sauce and all—the whole nine yards.” He pointed the remote at the fireplace and a gas flame burst over the fake logs.
I felt the temperature rising in the overheated room. Or maybe that was the heat of my anger.
“Ma, I love shrimp,” Jack insisted.
“Jack, please. Don’t start with me.”
“I’m just saying, I like it.” He reached for the platter and grabbed two pieces quickly, on alert for a second slap.
Mira sucked her teeth in disdain. “I said save some for your brother. You never listen. Some things never change.” With a sigh, she picked up the platter and moved it to the piano, where Frankie was leaning with a tall glass of Dewars and water, mostly Dewars. “Shrimp, Frankie?”
“Thanks, Mommy.” He dipped into the red sauce with a coy smile.
Ooh, how I hated the way Frank still called her “Mommy,” and the way they showered him with adulation while Jack received sloppy seconds. I wanted to overturn the platter, dump the cocktail sauce in Frankie’s lap, or, better yet, smear it into Mira’s white carpeting with the slick soles of my designer heels.
But no. I clenched a handful of Mira’s ivory velvet pillow and sucked in a cleansing breath. No, I would not be moved to physical violence by shrimp. The shrimp incident was just the latest in a lifetime of unfairness and abuse that Jack had endured. If he could survive an alcoholic mother, a neglectful father and a prodigal brother, surely I could endure a few social irritations to keep the peace.
Endure, yes. Forgive? That was another story. Watching the way Jack’s parents mowed over him on Christmas Eve, I coddled our secret, vengefully glad that we were leaving them behind and sure that they’d miss us, miss having Jack to kick around, miss manipulating the grandkids. Ha! Wouldn’t they be sorry when they no longer had Jack as their scapegoat.
I pictured future Christmases with just the three of them huddled by the fire, the toothless grins of Mira and Conny gloating as Frank stuffed his mouth with shrimp, shrimp tails littering the floor and red sauce staining Frankie’s polo shirt covering his growing belly.
Ironically, this morbid fantasy brought me little consolation, knowing that family members had faded into obscurity, never to be discussed again. After all, Jack’s older sister Gia now worked for a technologies firm somewhere in California—where, no one was sure, as they’d “lost touch,” as Jack put it, soon after Gia graduated from high school.
“Promise me you will never give up on any of our children,” I told Jack the few times we’d discussed his missing sister.
“Of course not!” He always seemed indignant that I’d lump him in with his dysfunctional family. “Anyway, they didn’t really give up on her. More like they drove her away.”
“The same thing, or worse,” I said, hoping he understood how important it was to keep in touch with our children and let them bond among themselves.
Oddly enough, when I married Jack I thought I was saving him from his dysfunctional family, that I was the one person who could bring stability and love to his rocky world. When I had expressed this theory to my friends, they were quick to point out that I