by Mia Kerick
I’d been adopted into a large and boisterous pasta and gravy—the term for real Italian spaghetti sauce—eating Italian family. The Del Vecchio’s are family people, through and through. And after adopting me, Mom and Dad turned into baby-making machines. Within six months of my arrival, Mom was expecting. Along came Maria. And eighteen months later, Teresa. And a mere year later, Francesca. And surprise, surprise… my baby sister Lucia made her appearance in the world when I was in seventh grade—took us all by surprise. And so, just like that, Anthony Duck-Young Del Vecchio had four little sisters
“Sounds great, Mom.” If she knew the truth about me, she’d be so freaking disappointed.
“And when you’re at school today I’m going to make you a Sweet Pie. Nana Del Vecchio’s recipe. It will go very well with the hot cocoa….”
Guilt floods in on me as she details the delicious contrast between the flavors of milk chocolate and ricotta cheese. I need to get my condemned butt out of the kitchen that is brimming over with my mother’s adoring love and my four sisters’ innocent purity. “Mom, you don’t mind if I take off before Lulu’s finished with her toast, do you? I have to pick up Lazarus earlier than usual today.” So maybe I bend the truth there.
Very predictably, Mom ruffles up my longish silky black hair, which is profoundly different in color and in texture from that of her other four light brown, curly-haired children. “Of course, I’ll sit with Lucia. And don’t forget to grab your lunch bag off the counter. I wrote mio figlio on yours.” She sends me her buck-toothed grin and my heart flutters.
My son. She wrote “my son” in Italian on my lunch bag. For a moment, I wonder how you’d say “my homo son” in Italian. Pushing that disturbing thought out of my mind, I jump up and head for the island in the middle of the kitchen.
“Tony! Tony! Come back ‘ere, Tony!” Lucia detests change, even in the slightest measure. “Mama, make my Tony come back! I makin’ him a big heart with my toasty!”
I glance back at her, noticing how her adorable her chubby little fingers look all covered in peanut butter and whole wheat breadcrumbs. “Make a heart for Mama instead, Lulu.” With her new focus in mind, Lulu drops her curly brown-haired head down and gets back to work on her toast-heart. And when Mom smiles at me, I’m again reminded of the day we painted my bedroom with blue skies and clouds and kites, which makes my traitorous heart flutter again.
Be cool, I tell myself and then I grab my lunch, hoping Mom hasn’t put in any of those brightly colored Italian cookies from the awesome bakery near Nana Del Vecchio’s house in Revere, because I’ve given up cookies, along with watching all of my favorite old classic television shows, for Lent. I step out the front door, head down the walkway past the bathtub Madonna in our front yard, and only breathe once I get into my car.
Official Recognition Of My Deepest Flaw
Somebody forgot to send the memo to Scott Cartwright: These days, basketball shorts are supposed to touch your knees.
“Earth calling Anthony—come in, Anthony.” It’s not the most original way to capture my attention. Some people might even call it hokey. But since I pay close attention to all retro television references, it does the job.
I shake my head to clear the cobwebs. “You rang?” Take that, Elizabeth! I borrow Lurch’s catch phrase from TV Land reruns of The Addams Family—if Elizabeth can be trite and quote from Mork and Mindy, I can cite my own choice of classic TV show.
Elizabeth O’Donnell, the president of the Catholic youth group at Saint Mark’s leans over and nudges me with her elbow. This is not the first time in recent days I’ve felt its unyielding sharpness poking into my ribcage. Ouch. “We’re talking about the car wash that Our Way is sponsoring on Saturday.” She speaks in a low tone so as not to embarrass me in regard to the fact that I’ve been yet again attending a private workshop-for-one in my brain rather than paying attention to the group meeting, of which I am treasurer. “We want to know how much additional money we need to pay for our trip to Boston for the Catholic Pilgrim’s Tour this summer.”
“I…um….” I straighten up in my chair and clear my throat, making absolutely sure to remove my gaze from the muscular legs of Scott Cartwright, who’s obviously come to Our Way straight from basketball practice in shorter-than-should-be-allowed-at-youth-group gym shorts. Isn’t that some kind of sin? If it isn’t it should be.
I blame Scott’s athletic legs as the catalyst to my frivolous mental straying. Yes, those hairy limbs have practically forced me to reflect on what I’ve come to think of as “The Problem”. My official recognition of “The Problem”, however, had first come to town two years ago during Freshman Honors Biology class, on a Tuesday morning in late November. I’m very good with times and dates.
I find the presence of mind to glance over at Mrs. Martine, the adult in charge, to see if she caught me staring at those amazing legs and/or zoning out as I dwelled on “The Problem.” Thankfully, she is wrapped up in her knitting and my laptop is already open, conveniently displaying the correct page, so I force my attention there. And ignoring the fact that eighteen sets of eyes are now fastened to my heated face, I muster sufficient composure to answer. “Well, there are twenty of us going, including chaperones. The trip is thirty-six dollars per person, which means we need $720.00, including what we have to chip in toward the bus, and now we have $475.00. Which translates to this: between now and June we need to earn $245.00.”
A rush of relief that I answered so efficiently washes over me. But finding the answer itself has never been the tricky part. My personal challenge has always been formulating the audible expression of said answer, and imagining the entire listening audience sitting in front of me in its collective underwear had long ago lost its effectiveness in relieving my anxiety over public speaking. And just like that, I’m again reminded of the day I’d recognized my big problem, because on that day Jacob Ryder had similarly been experiencing difficulty providing the class with oral answers. As poor Jacob had stood at the whiteboard in the front of the classroom, intellectually wrestling with the Population Growth and Decay Equation, I’d strived to subdue a level of excitement that had surpassed the emotional and was fast approaching the physical realm.
I didn’t even have to ask myself what had been the reason for my heady reaction to a fellow student who was visibly struggling to determine population growth based on generational number. And no, I’d never been overly passionate about the concept of offspring per parent in a single generation. In any case, the explanation for my predicament wasn’t quite as dignified as that, and it went something like this: Jacob Ryder definitely didn’t belong in honors bio as his skills of analytical deduction were significantly lacking, and I safely wagered that he was never going to manage to work out exactly how Nn= N0Qn. But at the same time, I’d long been glad his father had made the “put my son in Honors Bio, or there’s gonna be trouble” phone call to Principal Craigson, because Jacob Ryder was hot. It was that simple.
Despite the fact that she raises it with characteristic tentativeness, Kerry Curry’s bony hand, feebly swaying back and forth on its skinny support system of an arm, still manages to catch my attention. I automatically look toward Elizabeth to set me back on course, and she nods, in effect, directing me to answer the girl. So with my customary obedience, I point in Kerry’s direction, calling on her like a teacher would do in class.
“Um…does that amount include lunch?” she asks, licking awkwardly at her chapped lips between words.
I lick my lips in chapped-lip empathy and then shake my head, hoping that will suffice, but Elizabeth raises her eyebrows, tosses her thick auburn hair back behind her shoulders, gives me that look, and asks me with evident patience, “How much more will we need per person, Anthony, if we want to have lunch at one of the tour stops? Like maybe at Quincy Market?”
“We could probably do lunch and dessert for twenty dollars more per person and.…” I start poking figures onto the calculator on my laptop in an attempt to make my escape in
to a welcoming state of mathematical oblivion, but unfortunately the topic of dessert is now on my mind. And again I’m reminded of that ominous day freshman year, when I’d first acknowledged that a boy had been my idea of visual dessert. Yeah, Jacob Ryder, I’d admitted to myself that day, was eye candy personified.
“Well, it’s gonna be cold, everybody, since it’s February—I’d suggest you dress warmly. I’d suggest layers. But we have the use of one of the two indoor bays of the Wedgewood Self-serve Car Wash, which the Ramirez family has very kindly loaned us and….”
As Elizabeth goes on with her car wash pep talk, sounding like a high school cheerleader rather than a youth group leader, my mind once again wanders back to Freshman year when I’d finally made myself read the signs—the signs of my inexplicable and undesired “gravitational pull” toward other boys that popped up in more ways than one, every now and then…and unfortunately, again and again. Not being one to go looking for trouble, I’d long found it fitting to shove those feelings, and that other persistent entity, back down. It had been, however, becoming increasingly difficult to live the lie, particularly since up until last year I’d been living my untruth beneath a jet black cassock with a chalk white surplice draped over it—I’d served as an altar boy every Sunday at St. Mark’s Catholic Church, in downtown Wedgewood, Massachusetts.
“Let’s make this car wash rock! Woohoo!”
S.U.C.C.E.S.S.!! Our Way Youth Group is the best!! I don’t shout it out, but I will admit to thinking this overly peppy thought. But it’s the sharp sound of meeting-concluding clapping that drives me from my contemplation.
My brain is a yo-yo at the end of a string—up and down, past and present —I can’t keep doing this much longer.
Despite the casual attitude Elizabeth’s let’s-get-pumped-up hand clapping might suggest, she is about the most devout person I know, other than Mrs. Martine, Father Joseph, and my mom, of course. She actually makes a sign of the cross before eating her chicken burger and tater tots in the school cafeteria. You gotta respect that devotion.
“Where was your brain, Anthony? You’ve sure been spacing out a lot lately.” When the meeting breaks up, Elizabeth comes over to me, wrinkles her freckled nose and scours my face for signs of distress. “Is there something wrong?”
“No, E. I’m fine. I’ve got two tests tomorrow and I’m a couple of hours behind on the studying, that’s all.”
“Well, then, I guess I won’t ask you to go to Friendly’s to share a banana split with me, as I’d planned.” A still hopeful, and bright crimson, blush rises up her neck quickly, cluing me in on the fact that Elizabeth has placed all of her cards on the table—a straight flush, all hearts. I can actually see the color encroach upon the pale freckly skin of her cheeks. No matter how hard I pretend otherwise, I know that Elizabeth O’Donnell has it bad for me. And although she is what you might call a direct person, this overture has clearly cost her a major emotional expense.
“You were sweet to think of me, E, but AP U.S. History and Calculus are calling my name.” I shift my posture so all my weight rests casually on my left hip, in an effort to display a glib combination of regret and nonchalance.
However, I’m “saved by the bell”—which just so happens to be the name of a classic Saturday morning television series I’ve tracked down on YouTube—when my best pal, Laz, makes his entrance. He slides across the floor and does what resembles a hockey stop beside Elizabeth’s left foot. “Duck-Young! Duck-Young! You must study us!”
Just a wild and crazy guy—the 1980’s Saturday Night Live reference does Laz Sinclair justice. Oddly, his pious and straight-laced parents named him after Saint Lazarus, the Biblical poor man at the gate of the rich man, but Laz is only poor in the monetary sense. He’s quite full of piss and vinegar, like Grampa Simpson sometimes says on another of my TV favorites.
I’m getting completely carried away with my nerdy TV land references. Focus, Anthony, focus….
Laz drops his big paws onto my shoulders and shakes me hard enough to make my bones rattle. Although he’s tall and well built, with dark shaggy hair and perpetually-tanned skin—not to mention he has these killer wide, brown eyes I used to have to try hard not to get lost in back in middle school—he’s also the class clown.
“Study us if you want to be valedictorian next year!” Laz speaks in a squeaky high-pitched voice, which, by itself, without the added notion that it’s my AP classes calling out to me, is rather comical. I stifle my laughter.
“Need a lift home, Laz?” I ask. Elizabeth’s chin drops a few inches and it hits me that she may have wanted me to offer her a ride. But that would lead to nowhere healthy for either of us—I already know that for a fact. I wish she’d turn her attentions to the devastatingly handsome Lazarus, instead of me.
“You kidding, dude? Course I do!” He shakes me again, which forces a tiny drip of saliva to sail from between my lips, landing in the vicinity of Elizabeth’s left forearm, and I allow myself to get dragged away.
To be honest, we are both what people might call the poor guys, like the saint Laz was named for, but I am the poor guy with a beater 2010 white Chevy Malibu. I’d been gifted my own car the very day I got my license, seeing as it was easier for my parents to have me cart myself around town than to leave all of my little sisters and cart me around themselves.
“The new total Our Way needs to come up with is $645.00, so we need to make $32.25 per person.” And then I call out over my shoulder as Laz pulls me in the direction of the door, “President E, make a note of it!”
I sincerely hope that my intense relief to be leaving Elizabeth in our dust doesn’t ring out in my voice.
I’ll Pass On The Kool-Aid, Thank You
It sounds like a joke, but it’s all true. Every student who volunteers his or her time on a weekly basis at an animal shelter, a hospital, or a home for the elderly receives a free lunch on the last Monday of the month, putting to rest the veracity (got that word on the last SAT practice test I took at my desk in my bedroom the other day) of the old idiom, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” And as I spend every Sunday afternoon patting and playing with cats at the Centerton Humane Society, I qualify. If nothing else, it gives Mom a day off from making me lunch.
“It was so disgusting.”
I drop down into my usual seat in the cafeteria beside Laz, my tray with the bowl of free macaroni and cheese, a slice of bread, and milk, sliding onto the lunch table in front of me. “The mac and cheese?” I ask. “Last time I had it the stuff wasn’t too bad.” It’s not one of Mom’s gourmet lunches, but it gets the job done.
“No, Anthony.” Emma Gillis rolls her eyes and swallows her bite of free mac and cheese she earned by reading classics to the elderly on Saturday mornings at the New Horizons Elderly Center. She gulps in a breath and informs me with her usual haughtiness, “I was telling everybody about these two old men I read to last Saturday who think they are some kind of couple. They actually kissed each other.” She fake-gags.
“I threw up a little bit in my mouth when I saw that!”
For my own personal reasons, I gasp, while everybody else snickers.
“Those old dudes must be losing it, as in, they could have Alzheimer’s or something, and they forgot that dudes belong with ladies, not other dudes.” I glance over at Lazarus, who abruptly stops babbling to suck down the first of three cartons of chocolate milk. “But seriously, that’s messed up.” Laz wrinkles his nose in distaste and runs his hands through his shaggy dark hair, before moving on to carton number two.
I’m basically frozen, my hand still hovering over the slice of wheat bread on the corner of my tray, my mouth hanging open. I might even be drooling.
“It’s not their fault, Emma.” Elizabeth-the-devout always takes the case of the underdog. It’s how she’s wired. “They’re merely sick in their minds.” She sends Emma a you-ought-to-be-ashamed-of yourself sort of frown. “We, as Catholics, are called to compassion.”
Everyday single da
y at lunch since freshman year, I’ve sat with the kids from the Our Way youth group. In fact, the other kids in my grade have long referred to our lunch table as “Our Way to Survive Cafeteria Food”, which somewhere along the line got shortened to the “OWSCF Table”, which eventually morphed into “awe-scoff”. I have always felt safe and secure sitting at the awe-scoff table. These are the kids I’ve prayed with three times a week at Our Way, and the ones who I was confirmed with in ninth grade. I’ve collected toys for the poor with these kids—in fact, for three years running we’ve made sure that no child in Wedgewood missed out on having a small stack of Christmas gifts, and that brings about major bonding. We’ve shared weekends camping in the Maine woods, singing and holding hands and sometimes crying when the Spirit moved us.
This is my safe spot at school, like my tiny room is my alone spot at home.
“If you ask me, all fags deserve to die for going against Christ and everything that’s natural. They should be forced to drink poison Kool-Aid, like those cultists had to do down in Jonestown…’member that?” Is that Rinaldo Vera who just suggested mass murder as the “final solution” to the gay problem?
Sweet, passive Rinaldo—the gentle giant. Um, not so much.
“I saw a TV movie called the Jonestown Massacre.”
“I caught that too…those people were warped.”
The conversation drifts away from the vileness of homosexuality, toward the disturbing personal stories of the few survivors of the Jim Jones Cult Kool-Aid Massacre. But I’ve heard enough, in terms of stuff that pertains to me.
Feeling as if I’m going to lose what little lunch I ate, I jump up off my chair and race toward the boys’ room in the hall near the cafeteria.
