Everything Else in the Universe

by Tracy Holczer

  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 yel
ped 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.

  19

  al fine!

  “polenta waits for no one!” Great-Aunt Lilliana shouted and then blew a whistle, which brought aunts and cousins running. She directed one after the other to carry the pots of sauces and meats out to the tables while Lucy stood there covered in goop. Her pure white dress with pockets ruined.

  Milo’s mouth was a perfect O, but Great-Aunt Lilliana didn’t let him come to Lucy’s rescue. She sent him out with a fresh glass of grape soda for Grandma Miller, while she took Lucy by the arm and directed her to the spare bedroom. There, she slid open the closet door to all Nonnina’s dresses that Papo never had the heart to get rid of. Great-Aunt Lilliana swept the hangers, her rings flashing, along the wooden post, until she came to a particular dress. It was orange eyelet with a cinched waist and buttons up the front. Lucy, not thinking much about her own modesty, just shrugged out of her white sundress and stood like a stick bug in her undershirt and underwear. Obediently, she put her hands up while Great-Aunt Lilliana slid the new dress over her head. It hung loose on her nonexistent hips, about two sizes too big. Great-Aunt Lilliana put on her rhinestone eyeglasses and inspected her from hair to toes.

  “Here, I’ve got just the thing.” Great-Aunt Lilliana crossed the room to a bleached-wood dresser and opened the top drawer. She pulled out a long silky scarf with sunflowers and wrapped it around and around Lucy’s waist. “Some sunglasses, and you look like a young Audrey Hepburn.”

  Lucy peered in the floor-length mirror and was surprised to find it was true. She did have her dad’s wide brown eyes. And Audrey Hepburn’s nose wasn’t all that tiny, either. Plus, the dress was pretty great, even if it was from the fifties.

  “Let me just set this in some cold water,” Great-Aunt Lilliana said, and picked the white dress up off the floor.

  “No, I can do it,” Lucy said, but it was too late. Great-Aunt Lilliana had discovered the rocks in her pockets.

  “Is this something I should worry about?” Great-Aunt Lilliana said. She held out a handful of stones.

  “Counting them calms me down,” Lucy said with a shrug.

  Great-Aunt Lilliana nodded and peered into Lucy’s eyes. “Maybe you are Fattucchiera as well.”

  If she was Fattucchiera, it meant she’d know things deep in her Rossi bones. Lucy suddenly wondered how she ever could have thought superstition was such an unreasonable thing. In fact, wasn’t her Homeostasis Extravaganza really just a fancy name for her superstitions?

  Great-Aunt Lilliana rummaged around in Nonnina’s closet and came back with a small purse, one with a long strap that could go across Lucy’s body and over one shoulder. She helped Lucy transfer the stones, and then placed it over her head. She tucked in a sprig of rue for good luck, and Lucy didn’t mind as much as she once might have.

  “There. Now you are ready for whatever happens.”

  “I don’t feel ready.” Lucy was feeling like a sack of broken crackers again. Like she had when she’d first seen the Mac and Cheese men.

  “Anyone can do anything a few hours at a time.”

  Lucy wondered if it could, in fact, be that easy. As easy as changing her mind.

  It was.

  * * *

  —

  Lucy and Great-Aunt Lilliana had been gone only ten minutes or so, and rushed out to help with the last of the food preparations. Four extra-long rectangular tables festooned with herbs and flowers and small American flags sat in a square around the courtyard. There was a water fountain in the corner, three frolicking angels with water spouting from their mouths and fingertips, one on each tier.

  Papo sat in the center of one of the long tables, Nonnina’s urn in the chair to his right, Dad sitting to his left. Each table had large planks of polished wood set on top, evenly spaced, instead of plates. Milo had saved Lucy a seat and so she scooted in next to him. Great-Uncle Lando sat on the other side of Milo, pouring him a glass of pink champagne instead of apple cider because Great-Uncle Lando had had enough champagne for himself by now and didn’t know the difference anymore.

  A couple of burly muscled family friends, Carlo and Chooch, walked out into the courtyard, each carrying the handle of the copper pot of polenta. Great-Aunt Lilliana stood in the center of the tables and directed the boys to set the pot down on a rolling cart. She held a large serving spoon up the way the Statue of Liberty holds her torch.

  “Al fine!” Great-Aunt Lilliana said.

  “Al fine!” the whole world responded.

  Which meant “to the end.”

  To the end of what? Lucy wondered. The end of life? The end of time? The end of how much a person could take?

  Great-Aunt Lilliana ceremoniously glopped the polenta out onto each of the plywood planks on each of the four tables, quickly designing the boot of Italy with her spoon. The Belly Button Aunts then followed with glops of sauce on top of the polenta.

  “What is she doing?” Milo said, fork in hand.

  “It’s a family tradition. The wood is treated, like a cutting board. And we all eat together without the boundaries of a plate.”

  Lucy looked around for Grandma and Grandpa Miller to see how they might be taking the news about eating off a plywood board instead of plates. She wasn’t sure if Mom had warned them about the polenta, as she usually did about whatever they were having for dinner at Papo’s house. They both sat next to Mom with matching looks of stunned incomprehension.

  Lucy picked up her napkin to hide her unexpected fit of giggles.

  “What?” Milo said, smiling along with her. Mrs. Bartolo sat on the other side of Great-Uncle Lando, who was explaining how pink champagne was manufactured by adding red wine to the white wine or by simply using grape skins, and wasn’t that fascinating? Mrs. Bartolo giggled instead of saying that it was fascinating, which made Lucy laugh even more.

  “Look at my grandparents,” Lucy whispered. Grandma had her large black handbag in her lap and was digging around in it.

  “Did your grandma just give your grandpa a sandwich?”

  Lucy had to bend over into her napkin to keep herself from howling, and Milo laughed alongside her.

  Finally, they turned to the board of polenta, and Lucy explained, “You take the meat and some sauce and just drop it over your portion of the polenta. See, my section is Calabria. You can have the boot. And don’t stuff yourself. This is just the first course.”

  Milo didn’t talk. He just ate. Lucy looked around at her family and watched Gia and Josh at the long table directly across from her, the Belly Button Aunts like bookends on either side. Gia was staring into her lap, and Josh had his long arm wrapped around her shoulder. He kissed her temple and whispered something into her ear. Gia nodded but didn’t look up, and Lucy felt a shiver of longing. Not for the kiss, necessarily. The idea of someone’s mouth on her face sounded about as tempting as being attacked by a swarm of bees. But Lucy knew Gia could tell Josh anything because she’d seen evidence of this over and over again. They’d lie in the backyard grass on a blanket whispering to each other and
weaving daisies into each other’s hair. She’d seen the way they looked at each other sometimes, like there was no one else in the universe but the two of them. They were connected by that invisible string she’d imagined, just like the rest of her family.

  It wasn’t fair.

  After fifteen minutes or so, when everyone had taken the edge off their hunger, Papo Angelo stood and raised his glass. “I want to give a toast to my son. We’re so grateful to have our boy home.” He opened his mouth to go on, but instead broke down into tears, which made Lucy’s throat grow tight. Dad stood up, and they hugged, clapping each other on the back.

  What followed was a series of toasts to Dad.

  Salute!

  Cent’anni!

  Cento di questi giorni!

  Without even knowing it was happening until it was happening, Lucy found herself standing with her own glass of sparkling apple cider in her hand, wanting desperately to feel that invisible string of connection.

  “To my brave dad. I’m glad you’re home.”

  The feelings of sadness and fear and anguish and longing came swooping in and took her breath away. Afraid of sobbing right there in the middle of her entire family, she sat down quickly and put on the bravest face she could find so Dad would know she was his brave, strong girl.

  Dad stood up, walked all the way around the table and wrapped her with his good arm, taking her off her feet and swinging her around.

  “My brave, strong girl,” he whispered before setting her back on her feet.

  There weren’t any dry eyes left after that. Once Dad made it to his seat, after being thumped on the back and touched on the arm and attacked by the Joes, the volume of the conversation slowly turned up once again.

  Soon, the plywood boards were removed and more food was put down in their place. Platters of rosemary-and-garlic-stuffed porchetta, herb-roasted potatoes, rotisserie chickens, plates of spicy Italian sausage, roasted red peppers and Great-Aunt Lilliana’s famous dinner rolls. There were all sorts of sautéed vegetables that had come from many gardens, broccoli, asparagus and chard. Even Grandma and Grandpa Miller filled their plates with a few bites of the less spicy offerings.