Part Four
Gemma, San Diego, 1961
Chapter 13

This is Gemma Kane, speaking with my husband, Todd Kane, at our home in San Diego, California. Today is Monday, May 8, 1961, and the time is 7:30 PM.

Todd: This feels a little weird. You haven’t given me the third degree since I proposed. (Laughs)

Gemma: Relax, sweetie. You know it’s not about you, it’s about Mama. I’m picking your brain in case she told you things she kept from me or something I’ve forgotten.

Todd: Forgotten? Your mind is a steel trap.

Gemma: (Smiles) And my mother’s mouth has a steel lock over it. So, back to the beginning. What do you remember about Mama?

Todd: She was relieved I wasn’t a sailor.

Gemma: Funny how Mama never wanted me to date anyone from the Navy base.

Todd: Do you suppose she was afraid he’d ship out and leave you, like your father left her?

Gemma: That assumes he was the one to leave. I used to wonder if my father was an Italian sailor. America and Europe traded a lot before the First World War. My parents could have met on the docks in New York.

Todd: An Italian longshoreman with green eyes? (Flutters his lashes)

Gemma: (Flutters back) Not necessarily. It’s a recessive gene. Emerald eyes are somewhere in my history, but it could be generations back.

Todd: Odds are your father’s Italian, though. Heritage matters a lot to your mother. She never came out and said it, but I know she worried when you married an Irishman that our children would lose touch with their Italian roots.

Gemma: You told her you loved me so much you’d learn Italian. Which was laughable, because I hardly speak it.

Todd: And Tazia said (mimics Italian accent), “No! No! In America we speak English. It’s the magnificent culture, not the language, I want to pass down.”

Gemma: Ah yes. The magnificent culture of San Diego’s Little Italy, the tuna fishing and canning capital of the United States. (Holds nose)

Todd: And yet you never lived in Little Italy. Anywhere. (Snaps fingers) It might help narrow your search, knowing your mother never stayed in Italian neighbourhoods. Although it seems odd.

Gemma: Maybe she figured that was the first place my father would look for her.

Todd: So, when she moved to California, she picked a city where the buildings are Spanish and the people are from Mexico. (Shakes head.) You’ve always liked Spanish architecture.

Gemma: Blame Yolanda. When we met, my first week of school here, I was so grateful to have a friend that I’d have sworn allegiance to a pagoda if she’d been Chinese. I was captivated when she took me to see the mission style buildings at Balboa Park. If Mama had raised a ruckus, I’d have argued that they were built by the Catholic church and deserved her respect.

Todd: And she’d have told you that Italian churches were nevertheless more beautiful. And older.

Gemma: I also loved corridos. When Mama caught me listening to Mexican ballads on the radio, she huffed that Italian operas had better stories with better music. Actually, I liked them too, but I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction by admitting it.

Todd: And you complain your mother withholds information. (Wags finger) I may not be Italian, but your mother was also relieved I was Catholic. In high school, you snuck off with Jewish boys.

Gemma: (Alarmed) How do you know about that?

Todd: Tazia told me. It worried her sick.

Gemma: I had no idea she knew. What else did she tell you about me?

Todd: This interview concerns what I know about your mother, not what she—or I—know about you. Non è così?

Gemma: (Grimaces, but concedes the point)

Todd: I remember meeting Tazia. It was 1931, our freshman year at UCLA, and you brought me home to go to a protest rally outside Lemon Grove Grammar School.

Gemma: The first successful school desegregation case, more than twenty years before Brown v. Board of Education. Mexican parents angry about their kids being sent to a separate building.

Todd: I was impressed that your mother wanted to march alongside Mexican parents.

Gemma: She wasn’t anti-Spanish about civil rights, just culture.

Todd: (Frowns, thoughtful) I don’t remember seeing Yolanda at the rally.

Gemma: (Laughs) She was there, but she didn’t march with us.

Todd: She wanted to march with her own people?

Gemma: No, she just wanted to avoid my mother.

Todd: (Chuckles) Tazia can be formidable. I was afraid of her too until I proved myself. After twenty-five years of our marriage, she’s finally convinced I’m not going to leave you. Or Frankie.

Gemma: She’s protective. I just wish I knew what it is about my father she’s protecting me from.

Todd: Maybe what she’s keeping from you isn’t about your father.

Gemma: What do you mean?

Todd: Maybe she’s the one with the big dark secret. She was a gangster’s moll and extorted money not to turn him in. Or she was a woman of ill repute and doesn’t know who your father is.

Gemma: Todd! You’re talking about my mother. (Long pause until sees his eyes twinkle) Are you sure there isn’t something she told you about her past that you’re not telling me?

Todd: Really, honey, there’s nothing. Tazia focused on the present and future, never the past. Speaking of which, who or what’s up next for you on this search?

Gemma: Interviewing Frankie and Yolanda, of course, then other people in San Diego before I head to Las Vegas next week. (Wrings hands) The farther back in time I go, the shakier my own memories get, until I hit a blank. Suppose I come back with nothing?

Todd: (Hugs me) You won’t be coming back to nothing. You have me, and Frankie, and Julia is going to be a wonderful addition to our family. Plus, you’ve always got your mother.

Gemma: I couldn’t erase her from my life if I wanted to. (Sits up abruptly) Todd, what if you’re right and there isn’t any big secret about my father? Suppose Mama hides his identity to keep me for herself. Maybe she’s afraid I’ll want a relationship with him and is too selfish to share me.

Todd: Like a mother cat. With a litter of one.

Gemma: Sometimes she makes me feel like a helpless kitten. If I had nine lives, she’d give birth to me every time. No Papa cat in sight. Before I’m reborn as a mother-in-law, I’m changing that.

Todd: Journalists don’t change events. They just record them.

Gemma: Not me. Beat reporters write because we’re convinced we do have an influence.

The interview ended at 8:10 PM.