All This Talk of Love (24 page)

One night, Prima was standing next to the holly bush when a new guy showed up. She was always standing in front of that holly bush, snapping off one leaf at a time, tearing it at the seam, snipping each thorn with her nail, a circle of friends around her. She got so she could do that with her left hand while holding a beer in her right and making small talk with a boy.

She wasn’t into baseball at twenty-two, but from her time with Dante’s crowd she’d learned enough key phrases to impress a boy. “
Th
ey have no defense,” she’d say, a fact that seemed to be true enough for every team in history.

“You think?” some U of D frat guy would say.

Th
is new one’s eyes were a glassy blue. He parted his hair in the middle. On his feet were boat shoes; tied around his neck was a pastel polo.
Th
ese preppy qualities were pluses, light-years from the boys on motorcycles and souped-up Camaros she usually took to. His friends were friends of Linda’s brother, whom no one had ever met.
Th
e house parties on Academy Street were like that then—a revolving door of tangentially connected strangers bearing six-packs and joints and armfuls of record albums.
Th
ere was a lot of sitting around, asking each other who they wanted to be. No one planned to spend her life as a Wilmington housewife or a teacher at the local elementary school or a graveyard-shift nurse, though that’s how each of the girls turned out. Prima used to say she dreamed of parlaying her high school theater career into a recurring role on
Days of Our Lives;
and in the meantime, like all the girls (except Colleen), she made out with various guys on the couch and on the curb and on roof decks and anywhere else they could be alone.

Th
omas Patrick Buckley, this new guy, was the first to request a kiss; the others just dove in.
Th
ey’d been standing on the porch, Prima asking him about his twin sister, when he’d interrupted her question with the question.

“I’m sorry,” he’d said afterward. “I couldn’t concentrate on anything except how much I wanted to kiss you.”

Now a blond girl in pink sweatpants opens the torn screen door halfway and squints at the middle-aged woman in the silver BMW. When she doesn’t recognize her, she slams the door.
Th
e entire porch rattles. Prima doesn’t drive off. She has as much right to sit here as the girl does to be young and suspicious. She could tell the girl a thing or two about men and marriage, how quickly they come, how you have to prepare for them like you would an exam.

Tom’s first kiss was enough to hook Prima. His Grand Prix, his cleft chin, his steadiness—those kept her on the line. She and Amy hit it off, too, though the girl was stoned most of the time and would have hit it off just as well with a palm tree. Tom liked numbers, Prima liked people; this seemed complementary. So after three months, she informed her father that she was bringing somebody around. She had to pretend she’d just met him, because even though she was in college, if her father knew she’d already let this young man drive her to the beach and buy her dinner and meet his own parents, he’d have called her a
disgraziata,
and maybe even closed the bank account he’d opened for her the day she graduated. Dazed as her father was at the time, he knew nothing of the running around Prima did after Tony died; by the time he came out of his daze, Prima was going to church with Linda on Sundays and had enrolled at the U of D after putting it off a semester, and father and daughter silently agreed to pretend those years never happened.

Th
at first night at her parents’, they sat in the den, Antonio in his recliner with his arms stiff on the rests, Tom and Prima on the couch opposite him, hands folded in their laps. Maddalena clattered around the kitchen, making coffee and assembling a tray of cookies and chocolates. Tom wore a blue button-down shirt and pressed dress pants. His face was pink and clean shaven. He called Antonio “sir.”
Th
ey discussed his goal of starting his own accounting firm with two friends from college. He’d liked UPenn, he said, but wasn’t a fan of the city, which was too loud. As soon as he could afford one, he’d buy a house on a golf course. No, he didn’t want to become a dentist like his father. No, he had no plans to settle down in another state. He liked Delaware; his family had settled here in 1802.

“Your mother, she’s still living?” Antonio asked.

“Yes,” said Tom. “Of course.”

“You don’t mention her once. Why? You say ‘my father,’ ‘my sister,’ even ‘my uncle with the boat business.’ ”

Tom looked at Prima, then back at him. “She’s at home, Mr. Grasso. We play golf together sometimes; she’s better than me.” He laughed and put his head down. “Besides that, she’s just, you know, my mom. Not the best cook, but otherwise like any other mom.”

“Hm,” said Antonio. “
Th
e mother is everything.”

Th
ey stared at each other.

“Her name is Diane. Maiden name Blanchard.”

Antonio looked at his watch.
“Maddalé!”
he called. “You’re coming to meet this Tom Buckley or not?”
Th
en finally he smiled at him. “We raised our daughter right. She’s a good girl.
Th
e best. She belongs to us first, always, no matter what. Husbands come and go. You’ll do all right in life. You have a good head on your shoulders. But don’t forget what I’m telling you: She’s not yours. She’s ours.”

“We just met, Dad.”

“What are you saying to him?” said Maddalena, appearing in the doorway. She loved to make an entrance. She had her hair up and wore blue eye shadow, red lipstick, and a party dress. Frankie was a toddler then, and she’d quickly lost the pregnancy weight. Right away she went to Tom and took him by the hands and kissed him on both cheeks. She was playing a part—the flirty housewife, Sophia Loren in
A Special Day
—and so was Antonio, the vaguely threatening mafioso. “Don’t pay any attention to him, sweetheart. You two have fun together. Don’t get married too soon. You end up like us.”

Soon Maddalena brought in the tray of
amaretti,
and they ate them with spiked espresso, though in real life Tom never touched caffeine or liquor. His leg kept shaking. After a while, they turned on the TV and sat in stress-free silence, like two middle-aged couples after a bridge game.

“Handsome,” said Maddalena later, pinching Prima’s side.
Th
e Grand Prix pulled away, and Tom honked twice and waved. “And nice. Rich. You really did it, Prima. I was so afraid for you, but now—”

“Don’t jump ahead,” Prima said. “We barely know each other yet.”

Maddalena leaned in. “You don’t have to lie,” she whispered. “Not to me, OK?”

Th
ough Antonio said nothing, Prima knew he was as pleased as he could be with a ’
merican.
British, Irish, German—they were all the same to him.
Th
ey didn’t love their families the way Italians did; they had no sense of humor and lacked warmth; they ate mayonnaise and sour cream and watched too much football; but this one, this Tom Buckley, seemed as good as those people got. Prima didn’t disagree with any of these assessments. At the very least, he’d be an excellent provider, and she could relax into a long marriage. At best, he’d be strong and decisive and romantic—a rock with flowers growing underneath.

As Prima lay in bed that night, beneath the canopy her mother had sewn for her, a Carpenters album on the turntable in the corner, her father lingered outside her bedroom door. Just stood there, listening. She could hear him shift his weight, breathe. He paced for a little while.
Th
en she fell asleep.

On New Year’s Eve came Tom’s proposal. Ten months after the wedding, Ryan was born. Prima never made it to nursing school. Tom and one of his buddies opened the firm right on schedule, and since then the money’s flowed like a fountain. January to April—tax season—her husband’s a ghost, but the summers are their rewards. When summer comes, they take walks around the development in the evenings and eat ice cream cones and chat with the neighbors.
Th
ey listen to baseball on the radio even though they have a big TV.
Th
ey’ve road-tripped with the boys through thirty-six states. Together the Buckleys have seen everything.

Th
e pretty girl appears again in the doorway.
Th
is time she’s dressed for class: jeans, pink fleece jacket, backpack hanging off one shoulder. Another girl’s right behind her.
Th
en another, each in fleece with a ponytail and backpack. It’s a clown car still, the old Academy Street party house, and might be forever.
Th
ere will never be a shortage of girls.
Th
ey narrow their eyes at Prima when they walk by her car, but she’s not moving.

She could visit her mother, but even she is too busy. She has a dance lesson today, or so they discussed last night on the phone.
Th
e tango. Her friend Arlene is driving her, and afterward Arlene is taking her to a flower show at Winterthur. Her seventy-two-year-old mother is doing the tango, fighting for every step, as full of life as she can be, strolling among flowers. And Prima is alone in her car, scanning her mind for happy memories.

She gets out of the car, pulls off a branch from the holly bush, gets back in, and drives off.

IN BED WITH
Kelly Anne McDonald, the fog in a chilly hover outside her dorm window, their bodies entwined under her pink down comforter, George Winston on her stereo, Frankie is stalling. He should be showered by now, at least, and on his way to the passport office downtown. Instead he nuzzles his head deeper into the glorious warmth of Kelly Anne’s breasts and shoulders, holds her tighter against the morning. For Frankie, she has set aside the first few hours of her Fridays, her days of relative rest, free of classes and appointments with her mentor in the Education Department. Leave it to the paternalistic US government, which requires Frankie to show up with his birth certificate in order to obtain a document that allows him to escape it, to disturb this one brief stretch of peace.

“So, what you really mean is, your family hates the Irish,” says Kelly Anne playfully. “
Th
at’s why I can’t go to Italy with the Grassos.”

“
Th
ey
do
hate the Irish,” Frankie says. “And you
can
go with us. I’m just saying you’ll regret it. You’ve heard of the Warren Commission?
Th
at was nothing compared to the grilling you’ll get.”

“I’m a big hit with families.”

Frankie can’t tell how serious she is.
Th
ey’ve been dating only three months. She has zero funds for a plane ticket. She’d never miss Easter with her beloved clan of McDonalds. And yet she’s been passive-aggressively inviting herself on his family trip since Prima rejiggered the schedule and sent him his ticket certified mail.

“Here’s a plan,” she says. “I come home with you on the twenty-fifth. I meet your family, turn on the charm, flirt a little with your brother-in-law, talk recipes and gardening with your sister, they get inspired, and before you know it they’re paying my way.”

“I don’t think so,” says Frankie. “
Th
is trip’s all about family. And you’re not.” He’s aiming for matter-of-fact, but it comes off harsh. Does she really think three months gets you a seat at the table?

“Not
yet,
” she says.

Sometimes he forgets she’s a Catholic girl of twenty-two who’s seen too many romantic comedies.

“I’ll meet them anytime, anywhere,” she continues, “but no pressure.” She tugs on his earlobe. “Well, OK,
some
pressure.”

Frankie’s instinct tells him that this thing with Kelly Anne McDonald, whatever it is, won’t survive the semester, let alone her summer internship at a bombed-out youth shelter in Jersey. Here’s how he sees it going: over the next few months, before and after they part ways at the end of the school year, she’ll write him letters and call every other night, and maybe even persuade him to rendezvous with her in Philly or New York some June weekend, but by the end of July the interest on both sides will have moldered.
Th
ey are similar creatures of habit, he and Kelly Anne, unsuited to the randomness and unpredictability of summer. He can see all this as clearly as the sad face of James Dean, which stares back at him from the life-size poster on her dorm room wall. Before long, Frankie’s cynicism and persistent flirtation with bleakness will have exhausted Kelly Anne; likewise, her sunny enthusiasms and dogged faith in the essential beauty of humankind will have bred contempt in him. Which is why he should enjoy her body and her sunshine and her adorable dabble with him now, while it still pleases them both. Which is why there is no need for her to meet his family on March 25 or anytime after.

“Call me,” she says after he has showered and dressed and slung his satchel over his shoulder. “Let me know how it goes.” On his way out, she hands him a fistful of quarters from the top of her dresser. “
Th
ere are lots of pay phones downtown.”