Best Friend for Hire Read online

  James hopped in my Toyota Camry with a smile and said, “Hang on, Sis, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.”

  “Very funny, get in, you goofball.”

  As we drove, James and I reviewed all the taboo subjects to be avoided. I told him about my plan to save The Garage.

  “So let me get this straight, you’re working upstairs from Dave’s Garage?”

  “Why, do you know him?”

  “Of course I know him. Everyone knows him. The question is, how well do you know him? I mean, how does a girl go from working in a high-powered career to working for Dave Germaine. Above a bar? Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”

  James fell back into the old sibling dynamic of taking potshots at me. My Dudley Do-Right status in the family had always rubbed him the wrong way and he always relished the opportunity for a bit of good-natured payback. I thought we had worked through most of that petty stuff years ago, but my current situation was too much for him to resist. His description of my life made it sound even more unbelievable than it was. I wondered if I had strayed too far from what I knew. Was it too late for me to reinvent myself across Manhattan at another publisher? That thought sent chills racing down my spine. I couldn’t go back, I had to move forward on this uncertain path. I recalled my only opportunity to reentering the publishing world, which was an interview with a friend of Daniel’s who ran a literary house in Soho. He was known for romancing most of the poets he represented and was widely regarded the industry as a “kook.” When I sat down to interview for a publicity manager job, which was two levels below my most recent position, he leaned back in his weathered swivel chair, looked me straight in the eye, and asked me if I were to be a cookie, what kind of cookie would I be? I stared at him, stunned, and then answered, “chocolate chip.” I immediately regretted my answer as if the choice of the very popular cookie might make me seem needy. And then it hit me—if this is the kind of nonsense that a new publisher is going to offer me, they can keep it. I was ready to break out on my own. My recollection was interrupted by James, who was pushing for some explanation as to why I was going against his and everyone else’s expectations.

  “It’s really not like that. Dave is different. Amazing, really.”

  “I know all about Dave and his type. He is different. He booked Nirvana for Christ’s sake. NIR.VA.NA…. That makes ya different, all right. I’m not talking about him. It’s you that’s different.”

  “Me, I’m not different. I just have a different gig, I mean, job. Well, maybe I am changing. Dave thinks…” I sensed this conversation revealed too much about my feelings. I backtracked, telling him that this was just a temporary gig, er, job, and that Dave was really an “amazing” person to help me out too.

  “Amazing? Did you just say amazing? Does that mean you ‘like him’ or ‘like him’ like him?” He winked at me.

  And then, suddenly, I was transported back to fourth grade with my nose pressed against the window as I tried to get a better look at my first crush and James’s best friend, Keith Muldane. Foolishly, I had told James that I was going to be Mrs. Keith Muldane. Well, I never heard the end of that one. Before James could go full force into a chorus of Jessie has a crush on Dave, I had to turn him back to the matter at hand this afternoon. It felt like I was on my way to a firing squad. James sensed my panic and proceeded to talk me down from the ledge.

  “Before we get too far entrenched in your rock and roll fantasy, what are you planning to do today? If you go in there all kissy face, talking about your new tattooed boyfriend boss and his ‘amazing bar,’ eggplant parm isn’t going to be the only thing on the menu—they are going to eat you alive.”

  With just a few minutes before we arrived at home, I had still had no idea how to explain my career choices to my family. James was right; telling my family that I had no intention of finding another corporate job, after I had led them to believe that I was diligently trying to find another, was not going to be welcomed news. Especially since the last time Ma called, she went on a tangent about applying for a job at a cooking magazine. And I told her I sent a résumé to the human resources department and things were looking good. As I thought back on that, what came to mind was the thought of Dave sitting across my desk as he drank a Heineken in the middle of our workday. That looked good. Working at Cooking Light, not so good. I might have said anything at that point. Those little lies were easier to tell than the truth.

  “You know she thinks you’ve been interviewing all over the city, so you better prepare for a full rundown. Working on top of a bar. Really…”

  “Okay, already, you don’t have to beat me over the head with it. I get it.”

  Bars were not something my family had any idea about. Going to dinner, the movies, or even a concert were the kinds of dates my parents understood, but going out solely for the purpose to drink, especially to get drunk, was tawdry. While it might be okay for James, he was a boy, but it’s not okay for their little girl. My mother still recoiled whenever I said I was meeting someone for a drink.

  Our plan for the afternoon was avoidance, just keep busy, which should not be difficult, after all; there is always a ton of task management on Sunday, and with the extended cast of characters in attendance today, it should have been easy to deflect the conversation from me and bury myself in some meal preparation task. I could do that for a few hours, if James were going to help me. He said he would.

  True to this plan: We arrived home, entered the kitchen, and were immediately put to work.

  “Grab the mozzarella out of the fridge and start grating,” my mother instructed.

  “Hi, Ma, how are ya?” I waved, and then crossed to the counter, where she was breading the eggplant. I pecked her on the cheek.

  She turned sideways to look at me and gave me a once-over from head to toe.

  “You look thin. Good. But fix that blouse; whaddya think this is?”

  The blouse, which I had agonized over, was opening right around the bust line. I thought it would stay in place with a little tug in the back, but my mother had detected this flaw immediately. At least she thought I looked thin. She never thought I was thin enough, actually.

  I took out the metal hand grater, a bowl, and the two packages of mozzarella she had purchased from the Italian Market in town, and began my job.

  “Wait—before you do that, go downstairs and grab another jar of tomatoes, a half pint and the big pot. The uncles, your other grandmother and pop are coming too,” she warned, already on edge about the mixing of the two rival family factions. The War Between the States had been less contentious.

  Our basement was like a supermarket, overstocked on all the important items, which were lined up on shelves down there. You could get anything from paper towels, toilet paper, and bottled water to the trove of canned tomatoes. In the second refrigerator and freezer, another family could have survived for weeks on the frozen meat alone stored in there. And, of course, like most Italians homes, another dining area was set up in the basement.

  There’s something about Italian people—they all eat in basements as if the dining room is to be saved for some other occasion. My mother broke away from this tradition and used the dining room for bigger, more important meals. Although my mom was a simple person really, she had the entertaining style of Queen Elizabeth. Her Drexel dining room set cost, “at that time,” over $10,000. Her china was Lenox. Her solid silver tea set and flatware were by Reed & Barton.

  We never used any of the china or the crystal, and based on what she thought about my father’s side of the family, I was surprised that she bought it all. When she was still a newlywed, she hosted an elegant family dinner that did not go as expected. The Waterford water pitcher was passed to Uncle Cheech. Since the table was so crowded with food and serving dishes, he could not find a place to put it, so instead he placed it on the floor. That was the dinner that we affectionately called the night that “Cheech” became a �
�Chooch.” Chooch is a derogatory Italian slang term for “dummy.” Since that night, the beautiful china and crystal remained unused in the large china cabinet, which had been purchased to display it.

  James received his first assignment as well, to pick up Na, Pop and the boys.

  “Go get my keys.”

  Ma’s keys were kept inside a series of containers like Russian nesting dolls. She claimed that if you put things in the same place you would never have trouble finding them. Her key case was one of those leather cases with a metal hook for each key; it looked more like a wallet. She tucked the case inside a zippered compartment in her purse. Her purse was inside her closet. This was all very logical to her.

  I thought she had a deep-seated fear that burglars would find all of her important things, and theft could be avoided if she created intricate hiding spots. You would rarely see clutter that most homes had, like a shelf with mail or a key hook. Things were always put back where they belonged. It’s a concept I grappled with, because at this point in my life, nothing was where it belonged. I was riddled with self-doubt and, in an effort to gain control, tried to manipulate the topic away from me and on to something or even better, someone else.

  “Where’s Nana?”

  “She’ll be right out; she’s still getting ready.”

  This process was familiar to me. Nana was one of the vainest women I had ever met, even though she was nearly 80, or so we thought (she lied so much about her age that no one could figure out the year she had actually been born). She was plump and wore a large apron double-tied across her barrel waist. In the den, off the dining room, which had become her room, she fixed her lipstick and adjusted her perfect bun. Nana slid the accordion door and opened her arms to me.

  “Ah, disgraziato,” she said. “Disgraziato” loosely means unhappy, in Italian, but in this case, she was showing me pity. She had not seen me in weeks and the way she greeted me made me feel as lost as the day I’d been fired. She brought my head to her chest as if to comfort me, but I was in such an awkward position, because she was about one foot shorter than me. I felt as though my neck were going to break from the awkward angle in which she was holding me.

  She then ran her arms across my back and down my arms and said, “She’s too thin. Sest, she’s too thin.” (Sest, pronounced like the soap name “Zest,” was my grandmother’s shortened name for Celeste. No one else called my mother that. I had the feeling that she did not like that nickname very much.)

  Nana had a habit of talking about me as if I were not standing in front of her. All this talk about being too thin made me feel like I deserved a taste of the cheese I’d so diligently grated. I used to sneak samples as a child, as well. Without turning around, my mother said, “Grate, don’t eat. You don’t look that good.”

  My father, who had overheard my mother’s last remark, started talking on the way up the stairs.

  “Whaddya sayin’ that for? She looks great. She always looks great. You look great, Jessie. Great. Great. Great.”

  He greeted me with a hug and somewhat painful neck pinch. He also made a squeaking noise as he did this. He’d been down in the workshop fixing a perfectly good hedge clipper. He fixed anything, from electronics, to eyeglass arms, to telephones. In the workshop were ancient parts from machines that didn’t even exist anymore, like tubes for television sets. A separate closet off the workshop housed a collection of vintage televisions that could rival the Smithsonian in scope and condition. Dad didn’t like throwing anything away he might later find useful. He would often retrieve things that we had discarded and then later question us. “Why’d you throw that away, it’s still good,” he would say about a broken rubber band or a Dixie cup.

  He also had a specific and personal way of storing information. Like a precursor to the Internet, he sorted items in larger categories and then put them each in a brown paper bag that he labeled in his deliberate cursive handwriting.

  “Ton, grab me some more basil, would ya?” said my mother.

  He winked at me and went outside with a little army salute. Dad knew not to disagree with my mother. She needed to think she was in charge at all times. They had adopted a comfortable rhythm to their banter. My mother would make extreme comments like, “I am never going to Walmart again.” And my father would say, “You shouldn’t, it’s lousy there.” The next day, my mother would say, “You know, Ton, we really should go to Walmart.” And my father would say, “Yeah, I hear it’s great there.” He had figured out a long time ago that agreeing with this Sicilian person is the best path to his inner-happiness. Her moody disposition kept everyone guessing, so it was easier to go along to get along, especially in her kitchen, where she was clearly the commander-in-chief.

  The next group of recruits arrived; the uncles were here. They were small in stature, but loud in voice. After hugs and kisses on each of identical cheeks, Uncle Cheech pulled back and stared at me as if he were about to ask me a very difficult question. My stomach dropped; was Uncle Cheech going to bring up work? But he had a more serious concern.

  “Jessica, tell me why are you still living in Hoboken?” He, along with most of my family members, could not understand why I would pay so much rent for such a small old-fashioned apartment. My father had returned with a handful of basil. As he deposited it next to the counter for my mother’s inspection, he threw his hands up in display of solidarity with Uncle Cheech.

  “When we were your age, we were trying to get out of Hoboken, not move in, right, Cheech?” asked Uncle Pep rhetorically.

  “Right, Pep.”

  The twins always needed immediate agreement from each other; they were big on physical, as well as verbal, reinforcement, so their conversations usually combined a verbal agreement, a hand slap, something like “Right?” Slap. “Right?” Slap.

  Next in the door was Pop, who had an announcement to make.

  “May I present Emma Mastro, straight from the runway in her new pantsuit.” In walked Na, in a velvet Juicy Couture sweatsuit. Everyone turned to stare at the tiny 80-year-old woman who wore something that looked like she had purchased it in Macy’s junior’s department. James was the first to endorse this statement.

  “You look amazing, Na. Right, Jessie? Wouldn’t you say amazing?”

  I jabbed James with my elbow to ensure his silence, but I was uncertain at that point what his plan was. He had already downed a glass of Chianti. My mother and her mother huddled together in conspiratorial horror. My father moved in to touch the fabric.

  “Nice stitching,” he remarked to his father, who agreed.

  And then my little old grandmother turned around to reveal the word “Juicy” scrolled on her bottom. My mother gasped and managed to blurt out, “What’s on the bottom of your pants?”

  “Just some letters,” Na explained.

  “Does that say, ‘Juicy’?” James asked, as he belted back another glass of wine.

  “It helps her figure out which is the front and which is the back,” Pop answered proudly.

  In contrast to Na, Pop was dressed in pressed black trousers and a crisp white shirt with his sleeves rolled up. His shock of thick, white hair was well combed. Pop used to own a dry cleaning and tailor shop in town, and he still had the look of a properly pressed businessman. One should never play favorites in a family, but if I had to pick, I loved Pop most of all. When I was a child, he always gave me little treats on the side, and I knew that if I got into enough trouble today, he would be the one to bail me out.

  James and I shared a conspiratorial grin as Cheech told Pep, “If ya got it, flaunt it, right Pep?”

  “Right.”

  Slap.

  “Right.”

  Slap.

  At first, things looked like they might actually go my way. My new-pants-wearing grandmother and her dress-wearing doppelganger had already set a tense foundation for the dinner to build upon—and we hadn’t even ha
d the antipasto yet. As soon as Ma finished layering handfuls of mozzarella over the eggplant and adding gravy, we were given our next mission.

  “Set the table and put out the antipast…,” she directed.

  The “antipast” was shorthand for antipasto, a habit that I had seem most Italians do, leaving off word endings. “Parm” for parmigiana, “mozz” for mozzarella. Maybe Italians are too busy to finish words; they are already on to the next thing, or at least my mother was. Large platters overflowed with cheese, salami, roasted peppers, and olives. Raw fennel was sliced and fanned out alongside the bruschetta; thin toasted bread was topped with a mix of fresh plum tomato and garlic. For a moment, the preparations had been completed.

  Another bottle of Chianti was passed around as we lingered over the dining room table with our small appetizer plates and feasted on the pre-meal. I enjoyed a short-lived moment of silence while everyone ate instead of talked. But in my family, like on General Hospital, secrets don’t keep for very long. There was trouble brewing, and it was on my own team. My mother felt compelled to comment on my brother’s wine consumption.

  “Take it easy, James, this is not a saloon.”

  Instead of heeding her advice, he could not resist another jab at me.

  “A saloon, kind of like a bar. Right, Jessie?”

  In an effort to deflect this subtle transition, I asked Ma how she made the bruschetta topping, but she brushed me off. There were more pressing matters at hand.

  “Tomatoes, basil, garlic,” she reeled off in a cut-to-the-chase fashion.

  That was not the elaborate explanation I had hoped for. But as luck would have it, the conversation next turned to James and his girlfriend. His turn on the hot seat. My family was desperate for someone to get married, and since James had a girlfriend, he was more likely to be the first. The table needed an update. Everyone wanted to know. Marriage trumped all other conversational topics, like an accident trumped all other news stories.