Grandma Miller called every Wednesday night—rain or shine, through sickness and in health—at seven o’clock sharp. It was the only evening during the week that Grandma wasn’t otherwise engaged, or so she said. No bridge, no volunteering for the Junior League. No teas, garden parties or quilting groups. Wednesday was Grandma’s “Me” day, and she’d often remind Mom and Lucy of it. They were lucky, she’d said many times, that she found time to call them at all.
And every Wednesday night, Lucy prepared herself for Grandma’s nonstop talking. Grandma didn’t believe in question marks.
Your last letter could have used better penmanship. I won three penmanship awards when I was your age. Schools these days are not what they used to be.
Your mother tells me you aren’t starting with the Junior League until the fall. That is a bit late. Most girls are well under way by junior high school.
I’ve sent a packet of seeds for your garden. Zinnias. Every garden needs zinnias.
By the time Lucy would hand the phone over to Mom, Lucy felt as though she’d been poked repeatedly with a sharp stick.
This Wednesday was no different.
“We’ll be there on Saturday, of course. I assume there is much to do for your father’s party, and we want to be helpful. Don’t force your mother to remind you to get a bag ready. We aren’t leaving without you. Grandpa and I simply won’t take no for an answer.”
Lucy tried to tell Grandma that she was in the process of making a friend. That she was also involved in an important task. Maybe even a heroic task, depending on the outcome. Lucy wondered if they might even get their names in the papers.
KIDS REUNITE PURPLE HEART WITH WOUNDED WARRIOR!
It was possible, anyway. But Grandma, as usual, wasn’t listening. Except to herself.
When Lucy finally handed the phone back to Mom, relieved that it was over, Dad said, “You should go. You know how much Grandpa wants to take you fishing.”
He sat at their small dining room table next to a pile of reference books on blood disease. The table was a rattan upgrade Mom had brought home from the apartment complex. They were remodeling the clubhouse.
Lucy couldn’t imagine leaving, couldn’t imagine spending one more minute away from her father. She was heartbroken he didn’t feel the same way. So heartbroken, she couldn’t find the words to respond.
Later, Mom and Dad were in their room whisper-fighting about it, Dad insisting Lucy would be better off sent away. At least for a little while.
“She’s watching you, Anthony. She’s watching every choice you make right now.”
“That’s my point! I don’t want her following me around, watching me. I can’t think straight.”
“What will that say to her, if you send her away?”
While Lucy tried not to listen, she laid out the three photos from inside the helmet on her nightstand: the man and the little girl, the girl and the boy, and the blustery-haired woman. All three were taken at the beach, on a blanket spread out across the sand. The picture of the man and the little girl had names written on the back: Johnny and Amanda, 1963.
Had Johnny come back home and buried his helmet and his family? Did that mean he’d left them? Or had he died and someone else did it for him?
And if he had left his family, what was the final straw?
A wife who fought with him?
A daughter who followed him around too much?
Lucy wanted to gather as much information as she could so she would understand what to watch for in her father, what sorts of things might drive a person right over the edge. Then, at least, she would know what not to do.
By Thursday, Lucy was caught up in Rossi family pandemonium. With Dad’s Welcome Home party this weekend, everyone was going crazy making food and plans. And even though there had been no word on Stanford Hospital, Dad seemed optimistic, while also compiling a list of other possibilities, so Lucy felt that way, too. At least about his job prospects.
Lucy and Milo also came up with a plan. Milo sketched multiple copies of the insignia for the Dirty Thirty, and they decided to ride their bikes to the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion. In both places, they would explain what they had found and what they were trying to do. Lucy suggested they go to the city library and see Ms. Lula, since she had access to more information than President Nixon.
Lucy had asked Uncle G about Milo. He informed her that Milo was an only child and that his mom was working back in North Carolina. That usually she came during the summer for a visit with Milo, but not this summer. He told her that Milo was staying through August, as his family thought it might be nice for him to have a change of scene, a vacation of sorts.
“Why didn’t you tell me his dad was in Vietnam?”
Uncle G smoothed back his wavy hair. “If Milo wants to talk about his personal life with you, then he can. It’s not my story to tell.”
Which was true, but also extraordinarily frustrating.
It seemed Uncle G knew something Lucy didn’t.
On Friday, Lucy and Milo were set to visit the American Legion, but one of the Joes got sick with food poisoning, so it was up to Lucy to fill in his meatball delivery schedule. When she told Milo they’d have to go later in the day, he asked to help. That way they could finish in half the time because Lucy wouldn’t have to go back to the deli for a second round.
Because most of her family would be in and out of the deli preparing food for Dad’s party, she worried, of course, that Milo would take one look at the more colorful members of her family and she’d never see him again. Besides losing the only friend she’d been able to make in San Jose, he’d go about the Purple Heart mission without her, and then she’d have no way of proving to her dad she was still his brave, strong girl.
Lucy tried to suggest that they meet after she was finished with her work, but Milo wasn’t having it. He wanted to meet the rest of her family. She reluctantly agreed.
When she rode her bike over to pick him up, Mrs. Bartolo was on the porch, holding a ladder in place. Milo hung a hummingbird feeder, its bright pink liquid sloshing.
“I don’t know what I’d have done without Milo this summer,” Mrs. Bartolo said to Lucy as she walked up with her bike. “It seems like everything is falling apart at once.”
“Grams, you’re the one who taught me how to do all this stuff.”
“Yes, but it’s nicer to drink lemonade and watch someone else do it,” Mrs. Bartolo said, and snort-laughed.
As they rode their bikes from Mrs. Bartolo’s to the Pink Kitchen Deli, all Lucy could think about was the Frank Sinatra music that would be blaring and the gilt-framed photo of the Pope and Nonnina’s urn. So by the time they stopped in front of the bright pink building that was the same bright pink as Papo Angelo’s kitchen at home, which he had never changed from Nonnina’s original design—and declared he never would so long as he was in his right mind and free from drooling—Lucy was ready to fall over from pure thinking-exhaustion and anticipated embarrassment.
“It’s like Pepto-Bismol,” Milo said with wonder.
“I should warn you . . .” Lucy said, but had absolutely no idea what else to say that might prepare Milo for the rest of her family, so she didn’t say anything at all.
Great-Aunt Lilliana and the other two Belly Button Aunts—Ida and Florence—were Papo Angelo’s sisters. Each aunt wore a white butcher’s apron, her hair pinned up in a net. They spoke Italian, cackling and laying fresh dough out on white bedsheets as Lucy and Milo walked in. Papo Angelo stood behind the counter running prosciutto through the meat slicer with his thick hands. He wore a shower cap, insisting it was far more hygienic than hairnets.
“Why are you slicing prosciutto instead of helping?” yelled Great-Aunt Lilliana to Papo, motioning to the crank machine she was using to flatten the dough. “My shoulder isn’t getting any younger!”
“You rather slice the prosciutto, sis?”
“Lucia! Grab a couple of hairnets!” Great-Aunt Lilliana threw her hand in the air, her large diamond ring sparkling. When Lucy and Milo didn’t move quickly enough, she went on. “Why are you two just standing there like a couple of yokels?” She pointed at Lucy with one crooked finger. “You. Go fetch me another bag of flour. And you”—she pointed to Milo—“grab the cooler in the back and load six packs of meatballs from the freezer. Plus bring me some eggs. Chop-chop.” Great-Aunt Lilliana clapped her hands, sending a puff of flour into the air.
“Not hairnets, shower caps!” Papo Angelo reminded everyone.
“His name is Milo, for the record,” Lucy said to no one in particular.
Lucy and Milo tucked their hair into shower caps, Lucy’s blue, Milo’s green, both clearly marked HARRAH’S RENO from Papo’s last gambling trip. Lucy then led Milo to the back room and handed him the cooler they used for deliveries. Next, she took him into the walk-in freezer stocked with meatballs and all the other packaged meat Papo had gotten on his last meat run. Stock was running low.
“Sorry about this,” Lucy said, meaning the shower caps, but ended up gesturing to everything.
“Who’s that?” Milo asked, pointing to a large portrait of Nonnina that hung on the freezer wall.
“That’s my grandma. Papo likes to hang her picture everywhere. He’s afraid he’ll forget what she looks like. She died two years ago.”
Milo nodded, looking serious. “She has very red hair.”
Which was true. Nonnina used to get her hair dyed every month by a lady named Vera, who wore hotpants. The aunts used to cluck about it at family gatherings as though it was a tragedy, like Romeo and Juliet, only with hair. Although whether they meant the red hair or Vera’s hotpants, Lucy was never sure.
They hurried back out, and Milo set the cooler on the pink Formica table next to the refrigerated case of sliced lunch meat and salads. Lucy showed Milo how to stack the meatballs in the coolers. Then they went outside to attach the coolers to the handlebars of their bikes with Papo Angelo’s bungee cords.
When they went back inside for the list of deliveries, Great-Aunt Lilliana spied Milo up and down. “You’re Italian.”
It wasn’t a question. Since Great-Aunt Lilliana was Fattucchiera, she thought she knew everything. She was the reason Lucy feared tomatoes and chanting.
“Nope,” Milo said.
“Bah. On your father’s side. There is someone.”
Great-Aunts Ida and Florence made tsking sounds as they pressed the dough into circles, which would eventually be deep-fried and stuffed with cannoli filling. The aunts were tiny, fluttery like birds, and all the children in the family usually grew taller than the aunts by the time they hit ten years old. No one teased them, though, or they might find a chicken foot in their soup or worse. Their lunch box.
“Aunt Lilliana,” Lucy said, “not everyone is Italian. Plus, he has blond hair.”
“Northern Italians have blond hair. Your aunt Catarina had blond hair, may she rest in peace.”
“Well, now that that’s out of the way,” Papo Angelo said. “Don’t worry. We’ll make you an honorary Italian, Milo. You just have to pass the test.” Then he rang the Alaska bell beside the cash register for no reason whatsoever. Normally, he only ever rang that bell when someone tipped him. He’d been saving tip money since before Nonnina died for an Alaskan cruise she’d always wanted to go on. He claimed he was still planning on taking her, no matter when that day came.
“What test?” Lucy said. This was news to her, and she panicked, sure she wouldn’t pass because she had so much Miller in her. But then Uncle G, Gia and Josh came in the front door to start making the Italian sausage and distracted everyone. Uncle G kissed his first two fingers and placed them on the gilt frame of the giant picture of Nonnina that hung next to John F. Kennedy and Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini, otherwise known as the Pope.
Great-Aunt Lilliana smacked Uncle G on the shoulder. “You here to be a scoundrel?” she said.
Uncle G winked. “Always.”
“I’m not wearing a hairnet or a shower cap, just so we’re clear,” Gia said, and flopped herself down in one of the chairs, flinging her hair over her shoulder. Josh good-naturedly reached for a shower cap and pretended to tuck his buzzed-short hair underneath. He crossed his eyes at Lucy, and she feared her heart might race itself to death. His hazel eyes. His tanned arms and wide shoulders. Her physical reaction was baffling. Or maybe it was pheromones. Lucy had read that humans secrete chemicals in their sweat that other humans can sense and are attracted to, like bees to honey. It was all disgusting and mysterious, but she was at a loss as to what else could be happening to her.
All three aunts stopped what they were doing and stared at Gia. She sighed, grabbing a hairnet out of the basket. Since she had blow-dried her curly hair straight, she was having a tough time shoving it all into the hairnet. “Doesn’t anyone respect the child labor laws in this family? You should at least let us unionize, right, Lucy?”
Gia was obsessed with politics. Lucy didn’t remember the last time they’d had a conversation about anything else. She missed her cousin.
On his way to grab a biscotti out of the tin on the counter, Josh tugged Lucy’s right braid and winked as though he knew what she might be thinking.
Lucy wondered how Josh felt about the upcoming draft lottery. Nervous, probably, but would he go to Vietnam? Or would he be one of those conscientious objectors? Would he go to Canada? Would he burn his draft card so that he’d always be on the run from the law? Was he willing to go to prison for his beliefs? Lucy knew how Gia felt, about everything, whether she wanted to or not, but not Josh. She only knew he’d played football, wanted to be a veterinarian and was the irrational love of her life.
As if there wasn’t enough going on, Papo turned on the music and “North to Alaska” blared over the speakers Nonnina had put up in the corners of the deli.
Uncle G twirled Great-Aunt Lilliana around the table, the other aunts tapping their feet to the country-western tune. Josh twirled Gia, and Lucy wished it could have been her. She wondered sometimes if all her family was connected with invisible string, the kind connecting one can to another like an old-fashioned walkie-talkie. Except her. When the music blasted, everyone danced, while Lucy preferred to watch.
“Your family is very . . .” Milo said, his eyes wide open. “Enthusiastic.”
Lucy wondered what they must look like from the outside, dancing around in shower caps and hairnets, and sighed. Why did her family have to be so peculiar? Why couldn’t they be more respectable, like the Millers? Photographs in the freezer. Aunts who tried to heal the flu with a tomato. Grandmothers in brass urns. It was all too much. Even if she had tried to make friends last year, one look at this family, and they would have scattered like cockroaches under a too-bright light.
She half wondered what might be wrong with Milo that he didn’t scatter, too.
Great-Aunt Lilliana handed Lucy a bouquet of flowers.
“But it’s only Thursday,” Lucy said.
“And we’re going to be at your father’s party on Sunday when Joe usually takes them. What? You don’t want your uncle Ralph to have his flowers? You don’t want Big Papo or Big Nona to have theirs?”
Great-Aunts Ida and Florence both stopped what they were doing and looked at Lucy, which made her worry about chicken feet.
“Of course not,” Lucy said. “I just don’t like cemeteries.”
“Bah,” Aunt Ida said. “It’s the only place where no one talks back!”
Great-Aunts Ida and Florence both cackled while Great-Aunt Lilliana said, “Except ungrateful nieces.” Then she turned to Milo. “It will be tough. But you can do it.”
Which was Great-Aunt Lilliana being Fattucchiera again, thinking she knew something when she didn’t. Either that, or Uncle G had told her Milo’s dad was in Vietnam, so she was taking a wild guess at how he might feel about cemeteries at the moment.
Great-Aunt Lilliana cupped Milo’s chin in her hand and gave him one of her tight Fattucchiera hugs. The kind that usually meant prepare for the worst.
“Now, andare avanti! Get going!” Great-Aunt Lilliana said, wiping at the corner of her eye.
Oh, good gracious. If Milo stuck around after all this, he deserved a prize.
“Here’s to Alaska!” Papo Angelo said while he wiped at the small glass cabinet that held Nonnina’s urn. A plain brass urn that Nonnina had picked out at a garage sale as a joke one day. When I’m dead, I don’t want anything fancy. Just stick me in this pot and take me with you everywhere.
Trouble was, that’s just what Papo Angelo did.
This family, a bunch of cans and string tied together.