About fifteen minutes passed and Jannie got an email from the listing agent. We could see the house in the morning if we wanted to. Ten AM. That sounded great to us. We were anxious to actually walk around some houses and come to a decision. Moving your family three hundred miles from the only place they ever called home is something you don’t want to drag out forever. My Old Man used to say “If the water’s boiling, make the macaroni!” Which was his version of “Strike while the iron is hot.” The water was definitely boiling.
Dinner was pleasant and we finished off with coffee and left Kirk and Jannie and headed back to the hotel. Angie and I talked about the old neighborhood. About our families. About the way we were treated back there. We were a little like royalty on Wolff Street. People came to us with questions or for help in a pinch. We liked that role. We all knew each other and most of the people our age and older had grown up in the same neighborhood, sometimes, in the same house. But that was changing, like I said. Angie said’ “Better we go now, than five years too late, babe.” She would get no argument from me and she knew it. I think she was saying it just to say it out loud and let the words roll around so we could get used to them easier.
“It Reminds Me Of The Campania”
Neither of us slept much that night. It’s funny; we both were convinced this was the absolute right move for us and our kids. We both loved it here. We both felt like it was a great place for our family. And yet we both felt like this was the hardest thing we’d ever attempted. Angie drifted off, finally, around midnight. I lay awake watching her sleep and thinking about our life so far. Thinking about our kids. Emily in particular. The night Emmy was born will always go down as one of my favorite fatherhood moments. Watching Angie sleeping next to me reminded me of those nights just before Emily was born, when I would talk to her through the paper-towel tube. Yeah, there’s a story there. The boys were easy for Angie. Bing, Bam, Boom. Just like that, they were out.
Now, Angie works out like a pro athlete, and she was blessed with great genetics. She bounced back from each of the boys and looked better than before she had kids. But with Emily it was different. Angie was battling preeclampsia from about the seventh month on. They had to start giving her Magnesium to stop the contractions. It scared the crap out of me. She was dilating and contracting at the seventh month. It made me nervous to even touch her. I was afraid something would go wrong.
I made the mistake of telling Nonna about Angie’s preeclampsia and Maddonn...what I went through! Nonna started to cry. Now, this was nothing new. My grandmother was –like all Italian women of her vintage- a professional wailer. She could turn on the faucets like Tammy Faye at the mere mention of a problem. But when I mentioned Angie’s preeclampsia, oh my Lord. She started to cry. Then she genuflected and started calling out to Mary and St. Jude. Now, I’m no expert on the various saints, but I knew that Jude was the patron saint of lost causes. Holy Mary! I needed this? Nonna was saying the rosary so fast that she sounded like the guy at the end of a car dealership ad, reading the legal section. Then she rounds up every reliquary and lucky amulet in the house. She tried to give me her lock of Giuseppe’s hair, that she kept in a little porcelain box next to the votives she had arranged into a grotto in the living room. Yeah...a chunk of my grandfather’s hair. I didn’t even know she’d taken it when he’d died. Zippie was practically bald as it was, so she must have worked for hours to harvest that sizeable piece that she’d braided and coiled in that box. The old girl was losing it.
I calmed her down and told her, “Nonna...it’s okay. The doctors have it under control and Angie is going to be alright. We just have to be careful.” Nonna dabbed her eyes with one of Giuseppe’s three dollar handkerchiefs that she kept folded up in the sleeve of her dress. Now, there’s another contradiction for you. When Nonno was alive, she hated that he carried a handkerchief. “My God!” she would say, with a look of disgust on her face like he’d just farted in front of a priest, “Giuseppe, do you know what kind of germs live on those things? Why can’t you carry a little pack of Kleenex like I bought you?” Then Zippie would wave his hand in the air like he was shooing a fly, and curse in Italian, and blow his nose like a trombone into the hanky she hated, and then stuff it back in his pocket. Nonna would look faint after this.
So anyway, she dabs her eyes with the hanky, and she looks at me and puts her hand on my cheek. Now this always means trouble. Always. Trouble in the form of a three- minute dramatic performance that would have won her an Oscar had she been doing it in Hollywood, instead of Shunk Street in South Philly. “Giuseppe...” she said. (She insisted on calling me Giuseppe, even though I hated being called Giuseppe and never ever went by it. I was always called Joe...or Joey. But she was old school and in her world, the oldest boy took the family patriarch’s name.) Anyway, Nonna puts her hand on my cheek and says, “Giuseppe, I had a friend who had the preeclampsia.” I loved this. It’s not “the” preeclampsia. It’s just “preeclampsia” but Nonna was from another generation. “I had a friend who had the preeclampsia. Mrs. Tessone, over on Passyunk Avenue. You remember her grandson, Lito? He was the little cross-eyed boy, who started going bald in the third grade.”
I had to bite my lip to make myself not laugh at her. Calling attention to his vision problem was bad enough, but I had forgotten about his going bald so early. I swear...hand-to-God, he had a receding hairline in the third grade. We called him “Charlie Brown” because of it. Nonna started tearing up again. “Mrs. Tessone had a daughter who died in seven seconds from the preeclampsia. They found her with the phone still in her hand; she died trying to dial 9-1-1. She only got to “9-1” before she went septic and dropped dead on the floor.” Nice. Thanks grandma! I might as well just take Angie to the hospital tonight and leave her there until Emily is born. “It’s going to be fine, Nonna. Trust me.” I assured her. But inside I was nervous. This wasn’t the first horror story I’d heard about preeclampsia...just the most horrifying. My grandmother had a way of delivering bad news with Shakespearean perfection.
I walked home that night and practically encased Anj in Bubble Wrap. I was afraid to even kiss her for the first three days after talking to Nonna. Now, this is a problem, because pregnant women are, ummm...affectionate, shall we say? Angie was wanting to continue in our marital bliss, and I was afraid I’d put her in labor and be delivering my daughter right there in the bedroom.
Of course, Angie didn’t believe me about it being because I was nervous about the preeclampsia. You know how pregnant women get. She got really upset and started saying “You don’t even want to touch me...you hate my body!” Two things: I love Angie’s body. Maddonn! She has an amazing body, like something Michelangelo carved. That and she never does the drama thing. Never. Angie is cooler about stuff like this than most men, but the pregnancy hormones combined with her own worries about the early contractions had her pretty edgy.
I always thought it was best to just be direct in times like this, and sometimes try to make her laugh if I can. I told her. “Anj, you know how I can’t hardly keep my hands off you. It’s always that way. But the doctor said you could go into labor if we aren’t careful with this preeclampsia stuff. You really wanna be right in the middle of it and Emily decides to come early?” Angie giggled a little. Then I said “You remember the time the boys walked in on us that afternoon at the beach, when we thought they were on the boardwalk with Pop? Well this would be much worse!” That got her. Angie and I still cringed about that episode at the beach. In the context of this conversation it struck her as hysterical and she burst out laughing until she got tears in her eyes. Then, you know how this goes with pregnant women, she peed herself.
At first I thought her water broke and I panicked. Now she was really laughing. Sitting there on the bed in a puddle, laughing at me until her sides hurt. I calmed down and ran her a nice bath. I sat there on the bathroom floor while she relaxed in the tub and I washed her hair for her. Then I changed the sheets and started the wash with the old ones. I know ho
w to score husband points when I want to. Garbage was not thing I was best at.
Later that night, we lay in bed and I grabbed my paper towel tube that I’d saved from the trash about a month before. Each night I did the same thing. I put one end of the tube against Angie’s belly and I talked into the other end. “Hello Emily, “I said, “It’s your daddy. I love you, and I can’t wait to see you!” I did this every night from the time Angie was five months pregnant. That night, after her bath, we lay there and I pressed the tube against Angie’s belly. As soon as I said “Hi Emily, it’s your daddy.” She kicked. She kicked really hard, enough to make a little rustle in the bedsheet. She recognized my voice! Angie and I both burst into tears.
I was trying not to cry as I lay in the hotel bed watching Angie sleep, and remembering that story. I thought about the night, just about six weeks after that night with the paper towel tube, when Emmy came into the world. I had been there for all three of my boys being born but there was something about Emily coming that was extra special. I felt like a first-time dad. We’d gotten Angie all the way through to the 39th week and Dr. Kennedy decided it was time to induce. The preeclampsia was taking it’s toll on Angie’s body, and he didn’t want to risk it.
Now when you give someone magnesium supplements for two months and then introduce the hormone pitocin (which induces labor) it causes terrible nausea. Poor Angie was pushing with all her might and in between contractions; she was throwing up into a bed pan. I was holding her hand with one hand, and the bedpan with the other, and also trying to catch glimpses of our daughter being born. At some point, Dr. Kennedy said something about Emily starting to get a little “distressed,” whatever that means. He said “I’m going to give her a little help.” Okay...now I’m curious. “Help? Help like what?” I said, nervously. He said “She has crowned, so I’m going to give her a little pull.” and he held up a big suction-cup looking thing. I said “Yo! Doc! You pulling some dents here? What is that thing?” Dr. Kennedy laughed. “No, no dents,” he said, matter-of-factly “I just attach it to the top of her head and give her a nice gentle pull and help Angie get her the rest of the way out.”
I didn’t like it at all, but he was the best Ob-Gyn in the city so I trusted him. So he attached this suction cup to her head, and I’m trying my best to comfort Angie as she’s pushing, and trying to catch all the puke at the same time. In the middle of this I’m also trying to watch my daughter enter the world. I sneak a peek, and then turn my attention back to Angie and right as I’m looking at her hear this loud “Pop!” and I see out of the corner of my eye, Dr. Kennedy’s arm jerk back. For a split second -the longest split second in my entire life- I swore Emmy’s little head had popped off. Honest-to-God! My face went ashen and my heart topped out at 220.
Dr. Kennedy laughed and held up the dent-puller. “Her head is just fine, Joe, relax.” Then he showed me the button on the side that releases the vacuum when he has gotten the baby far enough along. “Here, check her for yourself,” he said with a laugh. “Check, her?” I croaked, “Check my shorts for God’s sake!” Dr. Kennedy bellowed at that one. He always thought I was the funniest husband of any of his patients.
Emily finished the trip in another thirty seconds and we had our little princess. Angie was pretty pooped after the whole affair. Between the contractions, the pushing, and the wretching into that bedpan, she was dehydrated and worn out. So we laid Emmy on her chest for a few minutes, made sure she was able to nurse, and then I took over. I have to tell you, I never loved my wife more, or appreciated what she went through to have our kids, than I did after that last one. And one more thing: my friends were right. Having a little girl...wow was that different from the boys. The boys make a place in your imagination. They cause you to see the generations continuing down the road. But a daughter makes a place in your heart. Emily owns me. She really does.
So I’m lying in this hotel bedroom, watching Angie sleep, and thinking about the night our daughter was born, and thinking too, about the road since then. We’ve been lucky and very blessed. The business has been very good to us, our kids are healthy, our family is close by, and we love each other a lot. So why mess with it, right? That’s my nature...over-think everything. Especially the good things. I started to get out of bed at 1:45. Angie stirred lightly and muttered into her pillow: “Joseph Francesco Mezilli. If you are getting out of this bed for any other reason than to go pee, I will kill you in your sleep.” I froze. She rolled over and opened her eyes. “Babe, before we left I took the yellow legal pad out of your briefcase. No lists, Joe. We have already decided on this.” Then she rolled over and went right back to sleep. I had to put my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing. “What am I worried about here?” I asked myself. “I have more than I will ever need, my wife is on the same side as me, and my family is healthy and happy. What’s to worry?” I was right. And I fell quickly to sleep.
Angie and I met Jannie at ten the next morning. Before we even got to the driveway, we loved the place. It was a corner lot with five acres. The house was a nice fifty-ninehundred square foot colonial with some nice antebellum columns and a semi-circular driveway in the front and another long driveway leading to the enormous detached garage in the back. It turns out it was the builder’s personal house while this neighborhood was being built. He had set aside three lots and merged them, and built this house for himself. When the housing market slowed down, he sold this one and moved to Houston to cash in on the growth out there.
Angie loved the colors, she loved the yard, and she loved the bedrooms and the closets. I think we had decided on this place before we got out of the car. We pulled into the half-circle driveway and went inside to meet with Jannie. Angie and Jannie took the lead on the tour. Again, this is where a smart husband stays quiet and let’s his wife decide whether “we” love it or not, because to be honest, it would take an awful lot to make me hate this house. Other than bleeding wallpaper, and voices warning us to “Get out now,” I knew this was the place for me. I let Angie convince me anyway, just to earn some good hubby points for future use.
So Jannie gave us the walking tour and then she and Anj disappeared for a few minutes to look at the size of the closets in the guest room. These things might be stirring and inspirational, but not a deal breaker for me. I slid the patio door open and walked out into the back yard. There was a nice deck and a beautiful view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Just to the left was the “Peaks of Otter,” a favorite sight-seeing location and the first real mountains I had ever hiked in my life. When I was a student at Liberty, we took day trips on Saturdays to hike the trails leading up to the Peaks. The view is breathtaking, especially for a city boy from a very flat South Philadelphia.
The girls came back into the kitchen and slid open the patio door. Angie stopped in her tracks. “Joey...this view!” she said, catching her breath slightly. “I know,” I was whispering and I don’t know why, except maybe the beauty demanded it. “When Giuseppe used to tell us about Montecassino, and the Campania, I imagined it looking something like this. Jannie had gone to her car to retrieve the sales brochure for the house, but she was really giving us time to talk, just Angie and I. Jannie is smart like that. “I don’t even want to haggle with this, Anj. Do you like it?” Angie was ecstatic, but remained cool. “I love this place, babe.” She said. “What about you?” I drew a breath. “It’s a beautiful home, Anj,” I said. If you want it, let’s write it up today, and close as fast as we can. We can move at Thanksgiving.” Angie looked at me startled. “That soon?” she said, “The kids are in school. You want to move them out in the middle of the semester?”
“I know, babe,” I answered, “But they’re going to go to the Academy here, not public school so the transition will be easier, and I would really like to be down here for Christmas. The emotions and all, you know?” “Yeah but Joey, it’s eight weeks to Thanksgiving. You really think we can do it that fast?” Angie was starting to sound like she was up to the challenge. “If we don’t, we won’t be
moved in until after the Holidays, Anj” I said, “And you know how our families will work on us about this over the Holidays. Better we’re gone by then.”
Jannie slid open the patio door and walked over to where we were standing. She handed us the ring-bound prospectus on the house. “This won’t be necessary, Jannie.” I told her. “We would like to put in an offer.” Jannie smiled hesitantly, not sure if we were kidding, or maybe just stunod and didn’t realize just what this place cost. Lynchburg is an incredibly reasonable place to live and seven-hundred-thirty-five thousand is very high end around here. Back home, it’s lower middle range.
Jannie paused and then suggested we go inside and write up an offer sheet. “What are you going to offer, Joe?” Jannie asked, probably expecting us to try to low-ball, since the house was unoccupied and had been vacant for over a year. “The asking price, Jannie,” I said, “Providing we can close in ten days.” Jannie literally dropped her pen. I picked it up for her and set it on the counter, where she had been preparing to write the offer sheet. “Oh...” she managed, “Well, do you have any special conditions?” “No,” I said, “Just the usual stuff. A good home inspection.
We want a home warranty thrown in, and a full survey. Otherwise, just make it happen for us. We can have the money wired tomorrow if the terms can be met before noon. If not, it would be Monday next week because tomorrow is Friday.” Jannie was smiling openly now and not even trying a little bit, to hide it. I thought this was great. Realtors are so stuffy. I was really glad we made her day like this. I figured she was too flustered to ask for the earnest money so I brought out my check book. “How much earnest money do you require?” I said off handedly. Jannie said that a thousand would do it. I wrote the check and she finished writing out the contract.
The Legend of Joey Trucks: The Accidental Mobster Page 10
