Lucy woke with a rather large pit in her stomach in anticipation of the day. And not the fruit kind, either. The kind of pit that seemed it might swallow her instead of the other way around.
The house was quiet, and so she tiptoed to the kitchen for a glass of orange juice before anyone was up, hoping for a moment of peace and quiet. Orange juice, with its sweet-tart shock to the taste buds, had a way of cheering her and preparing her for the day.
“You’re up early, grandchild,” a voice called from the living room.
Grandma Miller. She sat on the old brown sofa, her hair already perfectly coiffed, false eyelashes applied, something white balled in her lap. Lucy feared it was the dress, had no idea what Grandma might be doing to it. She was funny about holding little grudges, like the time Grandma had asked Lucy if she liked the color mustard, to which Lucy had replied that no, she did not like the color mustard, only to find out Grandma had painted her house a bright, flaming mustard that reminded Lucy of Linda McCollam’s argyle socks. Grandma was snippy about it for the next two phone calls.
“Would you like some orange juice, Grandma?”
“That would be delightful.”
Lucy poured them each a glass and walked into the living room. She took two plastic coasters off the table next to Dad’s BarcaLounger and set them side by side on the coffee table. Then she sat down dutifully next to her grandma and prepared for the worst.
“There,” Grandma said, and held up the white dress.
“What?”
“I used an old sheet your mom had and sewed you some pockets.”
Of all the shocks Lucy had received in the last few days, this was the biggest, most outrageous shock of them all.
“A thank-you would be nice,” Grandma said.
“Oh, Grandma! Thank you!” Lucy said, and threw herself into Grandma’s arms, which was entirely unlike her and Grandma.
“Go on, start getting yourself ready. You certainly can’t go with your hair like that.”
“But we don’t have to be there for six hours.”
“You can never start the beautification process too soon,” Grandma said.
Lucy patted her hair. It was quite voluminous. She rushed into her room to tightly braid it into place.
It didn’t take long for everyone else to rise and shine and drink orange juice and get ready for the day. Mom, Grandma and Lucy played gin rummy most of the morning while Grandma talked and talked.
Grandpa, of course, watched the Wide World of Sports until it was time to leave, but not before he’d seen Lucy’s copy of Milo’s drawing with the symbol of the Dirty Thirty and the pictures of the family on her nightstand table. He’d come in to see if she wanted to ride with them in the Lincoln Continental.
“Whatcha got there, sport?”
Lucy nervously explained their quest. How Milo wanted to find the family so they could have their Purple Heart. She tried to read Grandpa’s face, his blue, blue eyes, to see if he thought that was a dumb idea or, worse, if he might feel the same as those men at the American Legion.
“He’s quite an artist, your Milo,” Grandpa said, studying the drawing.
Finally, Lucy couldn’t take it anymore. “Grandpa, I need to know if you think Vietnam veterans are bums.”
“What?”
“Some people think Vietnam veterans don’t deserve the same amount of respect as other veterans because they think they’re all on drugs or something. Or that they’re doing terrible things over there to innocent people.”
“Where did you get that idea?”
Lucy concentrated on the comb lines in Grandpa’s fine white hair. “We went to the American Legion and the VFW for some help. There was a guy who got angry and said it was a dirty war and a bunch of other stuff about Vietnam veterans.”
Grandpa’s face turned pink, then red. “You listen to me. Those boys over there have nothing to do with politics. They’re doing what they’re told. And they’re putting their lives on the line, just like I did. No different.”
He took a white handkerchief out of his back pocket and dabbed his forehead. Lucy knew Grandma ironed those white handkerchiefs, had seen the tiny perfect stack of them in Grandpa’s dresser drawer.
He stood tall, even though he wasn’t. “Your dad is a hero. And don’t you let anyone tell you different.” Then he took Lucy into his arms. “Don’t let anyone tell you different.”
“I won’t, Grandpa.”
After the eventful morning and early afternoon, Grandma and Grandpa Miller finally left for Papo Angelo’s in the Lincoln. Dad, after closing himself up in their bedroom for twenty minutes, came out wearing his prosthetic arm under a long-sleeved cotton shirt that he’d rolled up to the elbows. The prosthetic stuck out at a stiff angle in front of him, like he was waiting for a falcon to land, and Lucy could see the lumps under his shirt from all the bands and buckles that kept it strapped firmly in place. The only time Lucy had felt more relieved was when Dad stepped off the plane and she saw with her own two eyes that he was alive.
Instead of a hand at the end of the prosthetic, there was a metal hook with a clamp that was probably meant to help Dad grasp. “I think it will be easier to get through the party with a fake arm than a missing one. Easier to pretend nothing is amiss.”
Lucy could see how that was logical, but couldn’t help but feel ignored. That her family’s feelings were more important to Dad than hers.
“I don’t know if I’m more a spectacle with it or without it,” Dad said.
“You were born a spectacle,” Mom said. She smiled at Dad. He smiled back, big and wide, and Lucy thought, if only for a moment, everything was how it used to be.
Papo Angelo’s house was directly next door to the San Jose Fire Department, Station 16, Battalion 2. Often, his Sunday night dinners would be accompanied by sirens and flashing red lights coming through the dining room window. When that happened, Papo Angelo would raise his glass and shout, “In bocca al lupo!” and the family would shout back, “Crepi!”
Which meant “Into the wolf’s mouth!” and “May he choke and die!”
Or, basically, break a leg.
So it was no surprise to Lucy that the firemen stood around with everyone else on the lawn and in the driveway waiting for them to get there. She noticed Milo and Mrs. Bartolo standing amongst the aunts and Hairy Uncles, the cousins and second cousins and all the family friends. So many people, in fact, that when she was younger, Dad had made her a chart to keep them all straight.
“Salute!” all the lawn people roared as soon as Dad got out of the car. He went to raise the stiff prosthetic, realized he couldn’t because of all the straps and buckles, and raised the other hand instead. Great-Uncle Lando shoved a glass of pink champagne in it, and then they all mobbed him.
In a panic, Lucy flung herself out the car door and tried to make her way through the crowd to get to Dad, to make sure he wasn’t going to have another shaking attack like he’d had at the airport, but when she got close enough, she saw he was laughing and hugging, patting backs and kissing cheeks. Mom gave him enough space to let his family love all over him, so Lucy took herself and her racing heart straight to where Milo stood.
“Hi, Mrs. Bartolo. Thanks for coming,” Lucy said.
Mrs. Bartolo wore a Happy New Year tiara and blew a horn in her face. “I never miss a party!” she said.
Milo had changed his uniform. Today he wore a nice pair of pressed khaki pants and a blue collared shirt that he kept fidgeting with. He still wore his Converse, though, and his glasses glinted in the sunlight. His blond bristly hair reminded her of a horsehair brush.
“This is something else,” Milo said. He held up a plastic champagne glass filled with what Lucy knew was sparkling apple cider. Great-Uncle Lando was known to walk around with a bottle of both apple cider and pink champagne, filling and refilling glasses.
Lucy took it from him and swigged the whole thing down, then wiped her mouth. “Let’s go see if we can help Great-Aunt Lilliana. It’s always worse if she has to come looking for you.”
“Your dress is beautiful,” a voice said from behind her.
Lucy turned around. It was Gia, with Josh right beside her. And whether Lucy wanted her to or not, Gia gave Lucy a tight squeeze. “I’m sorry you missed Papo’s last dollar. I wish you could have been there.”
“It’s okay,” Lucy said. “I’m sorry I screamed at you.”
Lucy wanted to stop being mad at her cousin. Not just about Papo’s dollar, but the fact that Gia had gotten older and left Lucy behind. Maybe that’s what Lucy had mostly been mad about all along. It was like a knot in her hair, all that anger. Hard to untangle.
Josh pulled on Lucy’s right braid, just like always. Then Gia and Josh were pushed along in the crowd.
Lucy wanted to introduce Milo to Mom and Dad, but figured now wasn’t the time. The large crowd of lawn people moved to the side of the house and through the gate into the large, grassy backyard, where someone, Uncle Joe Senior most likely, was playing the accordion music Dad loved so much. Lucy and Milo squeezed through the crowd, and after Milo found Mrs. Bartolo a nice place to sit in the shade of Nonnina’s fig tree, right next to a rip-roaring game of bocce ball, they both headed for the back door and the kitchen just inside.
“Lucy!”
Grandma Miller. How could she forget about Grandma Miller?
She and Grandpa were standing a bit stiffly by the table of antipasto salads that had been set out before lunch was served. It wasn’t that they didn’t like Italian food, necessarily. It was that Grandpa was more of a “meat and potatoes sort of person,” and all the sauces gave Grandma “indigestion.” More than once, when Grandma and Grandpa had shown up for a Rossi family event, Grandma had snuck food out of her purse. They were fans of hot dogs, salads without dressing, and pot roast with mushy carrots. Lucy had given up on their taste buds long ago.
“And who might this be?” Grandpa said, looking Milo up and down.
“This is Milo. He’s the one I told you about. He’s here for the summer, staying with his grandma.”
“Nice to meet you, sir,” Milo said, and shook Grandpa’s hand.
“Now, that’s how we should raise our American youth!” Grandpa said, and clapped him on the back.
“Can you be a dear and find me some of that grape soda?” Grandma said. She fanned herself with a paper doily that she’d taken from under the small plate of affettati misti. “You know how much I love your papo’s secret stash.”
“Sure thing, Grandma.”
Lucy and Milo zoomed into the kitchen. Nonnina’s pink kitchen where the cabinets were pink, the tile counters were pink. Even the refrigerator and stove were Pepto-Bismol pink. Which was enough to make any person in their right mind stop and look around in wonder.
“Holy moly!” Milo said. “It’s even more pink than the deli!”
Great-Aunt Lilliana stood on a short kitchen stool and stirred the polenta in a saucepot big enough to hold one of the Joes. A slightly less gigantic saucepot simmered with the sugo meat, or sauce-soaked meat, and marinara Lucy could smell bubbling away in its cauldron.
Lucy dug through Papo’s fridge—past the cranberry juice Papo drank for a healthy bladder, and the dandelion wine—and found the grape soda all the way in the back. What Grandma didn’t know was that Papo kept his special stash just for her.
“Stir the polenta, Lucy!” Great-Aunt Lilliana shouted like thunder from the sky. “And you, Milo, stir the sauce.”
“But I—” Lucy started.
Milo immediately jumped to where Great-Aunt Lilliana was pointing and stirred the sauce. He waggled his eyebrows at Lucy.
“Basta!” Great-Aunt Lilliana tossed her hand in the air in Lucy’s general direction, like she was tossing one of Uncle Joe’s pizzas, and went to knead a hippopotamus-sized lump of dough. The rest of the aunts each had a task and moved around the kitchen in a frenzy.
Lucy looked for someone to deliver the drink to her grandma, but the only people nearby were two distant cousins from Fresno carrying their mother like the Queen of Sheba, on a throne of tattooed arms, from her spot in the living room to a spot at one of the outside tables. She laughed like a little girl.
Milo tried to hide a snickery smile as he watched the tattooed cousins, his chin tucked into his neck. He snorted, so Lucy snorted, and then Great-Aunt Lilliana shouted at them both, “Germs!”
“Is she calling us germs or afraid of them?” Milo whispered.
“I’ll be right back, Great-Aunt Lilliana! I have to take a soda to Grandma Miller,” Lucy said. Great-Aunt Lilliana threw her hand up in the air again and got Milo to stir the polenta, which would turn into a giant mass of glue if he didn’t.
Just then, two of the Joes ran in, beelining for the stove. One of them grabbed a meatball out of the saucepot with his bare hands, just like a nincompoop. He yelped and tossed it to the other Joe. Back and forth they went, with Great-Aunt Lilliana shouting even more curse words, shooing them out with the rolling pin she always kept handy when the Joes were around.
Lucy hurriedly grabbed the glass of grape soda, turned around and promptly slipped in the tomato sauce spilled during the Joes’ meatball-juggling act. In slow motion, it seemed to Lucy, the grape soda went flying all over her as she landed in the tomato sauce.
Lucy froze. The whole world froze. The Milky Way and the galaxies and all of time froze.
Then, as if that weren’t bad enough, the sirens went off at the fire station next door.
“In bocca al lupo!” Papo Angelo shouted from outside, and it sounded like the whole world shouted back, “Crepi!”
“Marone,” Great-Aunt Lilliana said, looking Lucy up and down.
And wasn’t that the truth.