Fifty

Adriana opened her front door, appraised me. “You brought wine?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“We’ve got wine.”

“I know. I’m just being nice. Can I come in?”

“Yeah, of course.”

Adriana stepped back, I entered, and she kissed me on the cheek in perfunctory greeting.

Maria’s door flew open and she ran to me. “Hi, Tucker!”

I picked her up and she kissed me on the cheek, we being a family that saves lip kissing for other things.

I carried Maria down the hall to the kitchen where Catherine was cooking what looked like tacos, put down Maria, and raised my arms for a hug. Catherine looked up at me, said hi, and looked back at her cooking.

“So,” I said. “Tacos. Yum!”

“What’s wrong with tacos?” asked Catherine.

“Nothing’s wrong with tacos. I like tacos.”

“You sounded sarcastic.”

I shook my head slowly. “No. I was just saying ‘yum.’”

“Exactly. Very sarcastic.”

I asked Adriana, “Should I open the wine?”

“Sure.”

“I think it’s red wine with tacos.”

“I want white wine,” said Catherine. “I’ve got some in the fridge.”

“Okay, then,” I said. I opened the red wine, poured a generous helping for Adriana and me, opened the fridge, unscrewed Catherine’s white wine, poured her the same amount. I raised my glass to the ladies.

“Salute,” I said.

“Salute,” Adriana responded.

“Are you trying to get me drunk?” Catherine asked, looking at the glass.

“Look, should I just go back out and knock on the door again?”

“Why?” asked Maria.

“It just seems that we should start over.”

“Why do you have a new phone number?”

“I was getting a lot of phone calls I didn’t want,” I said.

“You mean like selling you stuff?”

“No, like people being mean and calling me—”

“You don’t have to tell her about that,” said Catherine. “She doesn’t need to know everything.”

Silence hung between the four of us. Maria walked out of the kitchen, down the hall to her room. Catherine stirred ground meat in a pan. Adriana sipped her wine. I sat at the kitchen table. Beginnings of conversations formed in my mind and were vetoed just as quickly by a superego that played them out and showed me how they would fail.

Catherine pulled warm taco shells out of the oven, dumped them in a bowl, and scooped the meat into another bowl. Bowls of lettuce, tomato, and shredded cheese sat on a counter, ready for the table. Still the silence hung in the air. I moved from deciding that I should break it to deciding that I should let it play out to deciding to just try to be normal.

“Could you call Maria?” Catherine said to Adriana.

Adriana walked to the door. “Maria, supper!”

I pointed to the bowls of food. “Should I put those on the table?”

“I’ve got them,” said Catherine. “Just sit.”

I sat in my usual spot. Maria returned, sat in hers. Catherine placed the bowls on the table. Adriana sat. We stared at the bowls.

“So,” said Catherine. “Eat.”

I took a shell, scooped some meat, lettuce, and cheese into it, started to spoon salsa onto it.

“She doesn’t like salsa,” said Catherine.

“You don’t?” I asked Maria.

She shook her head.

I served Maria the taco. Then gestured to Catherine. “Ladies first.”

“For crying out loud,” said Catherine. She grabbed a shell, splatted some meat into it, tossed on some toppings, dropped it on her plate. Adriana made a taco, and I followed.

Despite the mental warning bells, I started a conversation.

“You going back to school Monday?” I asked Maria.

“No, she’s not going back to school, Tucker,” said Catherine. “Monday is Patriots’ Day, then there’s school vacation.”

“Right,” I said. “I forgot.”

“Of course you did.”

I bit into my taco. The shell had burned a little in the oven. Carbon bitterness filled my mouth and nose, overpowering the taste of the filling. I chewed, swallowed, put the taco on my plate, drank some wine.

Catherine said, “What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“You don’t like it?”

“What’s going on here?” I asked Adriana.

Adriana had not touched her taco. She drank her wine and said, “Maria got in a fight today.”

“You did?” I asked her.

Maria nodded.

“Me too.”

“We know you too, Tucker,” said Catherine. “We saw the video of you beating up that poor kid. Maria showed it to us.”

I pushed my plate away. Drank more wine.

“Is that why you got in a fight?” I asked Maria.

“Olivia Incaviglia said you were a crook,” said Maria. “She said that all the Rizzos were crooks. So I pushed her down like you did in the video.”

My lizard brain smiled, but I blocked the expression before it could reach my lips.

“That was the wrong thing to do,” I said.

“I see how it is,” said Catherine. “Do as I say, not as I do.”

I ignored Catherine and said to Maria, “I apologized to Russell—”

“Who’s Russell?” asked Maria.

“The guy I pushed.”

“You did more than push him,” said Catherine. “You have a serious anger-management problem.”

“I apologized,” I repeated to Maria, “because it was wrong to hit him.”

“What did he say?”

“It doesn’t matter. Did you apologize to Olivia?”

“No. She said my father was a crook even after I hit her.”

But he was a crook.

I looked at Adriana. She shrugged.

“You should apologize,” I said.

We crunched our tacos. I hit a burned spot, but decided to chew and swallow the bitter piece of carbonized corn rather than spit it out and start a fight. More crunching, more chewing, more swallowing, no talking.

Finally, I said, “What’s going on?”

Adriana and Catherine exchanged a glance, with Adriana giving Catherine a pointed look, then inclining her head toward me.

“He’s your cousin,” Catherine said.

“It’s your idea,” Adriana said.

“You said you’d support me.”

“I am supporting you, but you tell him.”

“Tell me what?” I asked.

“Fine!” Catherine said. She looked me in the eye. “We don’t want you to be part of our family anymore.”

“Who’s we?” I asked. “Don’t you mean you?”

“We think that you’re a bad influence on all of us.”

“You all think that? Does Maria think that?”

Maria said, “No!”

“Don’t bring her into this,” said Catherine. “She’s a child.”

“I want Tucker in our family!”

“Maria, go to your room.”

“No! I’m staying with Tucker.”

“You see what I mean?” said Catherine to Adriana.

“Maria, you know what?” I said. “Why don’t you go to your room and let us talk about this.”

“I don’t want you to leave!”

“It will be fine.”

Maria hopped off her stool and looked daggers at Catherine. She yelled, “I hate you!” and stormed out of the kitchen.

“So you support this?” I asked Adriana.

Adriana shrunk inward, picked up her taco, put it down, looked up. “There are safety concerns.”

“What safety concerns? You’re afraid of those dweebs at Anonymous?”

Catherine said, “No.”

“No? Then what safety concerns?”

“I’m afraid of you.”

“Me? What did I do?”

“Twitter says you killed a man.”

“I did not kill Peter.”

“Not Peter.”

My mind jumped to a kick in the nose, bone driven into brain. Nobody knew about that.

“What are you talking about?”

“Have you killed a man?”

I swallowed.

“You have?”

Adriana said, “Oh my God, Tucker!”

Lying seems like a simple proposition. You just say words that don’t reflect what really happened. We do it all the time. We tell people that their clothes don’t make them look fat, that we were late because of traffic, that they weren’t invited to the wedding because we ran out of space. We tell ourselves that we’re going to quit drinking or smoking or snarking. We go online and tell the world that we’re having a great day, that we actually like the photo of someone’s dog wearing a party hat, that we give a shit about how delicious their lunch was. Lying seems simple.

But it’s not. At least not for me, not when it matters, not when I’m talking to people I love.

“Who did you kill?” Adriana asked.

Where should I start?

“That settles it,” said Catherine. “You have to go, get out of our family, don’t come back.”

I looked deep into Catherine’s eyes. “No.”

“No?”

“No. I refuse.”

“You can’t refuse! It’s my right to tell you to stay out of our lives.”

I stood. “I’m leaving now.”

“And don’t come back.”

I looked at Adriana, who sniffled back tears. “I’m disappointed in you,” I said.

The dam burst. Tears splashed down her cheeks. “It’s for Maria!”

“Sure it is,” I said, and to Catherine: “This isn’t over.”

“I’ll get a restraining order!”

I said to Adriana, “You need to fix this.”

I left the table, walked down the hall, past Maria’s room, and out into the night.