They were so family oriented that chatting with neighbors over the picket fence was regarded as a waste of time.
We spent every holiday with my grandparents and Uncle Buddy. . and every non-holiday, and every weekend, and most weeknights. And the thing is, I loved being with my family because they were funnier and smarter and more interesting than most other kids’ families. It’s true that if I talked about a classmate’s parents-for example, what a kid’s dad did for a living-my own parents showed little interest, even wondering aloud why I cared about someone else’s personal business. But they weren’t being dismissive or rude. They were just being themselves, which was extremely private, and they encouraged Lou and me to be private, too. My dad was strict when it came to us talking about what he did for a living, which never made sense to me, since he and Grandpa Enzo and Uncle Buddy were bakers-there wasn’t much to tell about cookies, cakes, and pies. But my dad would just shrug and say, “You never know what means something to other people.” The result was that most of my time outside school was spent almost exclusively with my family.
In other words, a kiss from Walter J. Thurber was not to be taken lightly.
It happened at Gina’s thirteenth birthday party.
Gina was my best friend, but is much less of a friend now. Part of the reason for that is we simply drifted apart, and part of it was due to her inborn nature as a supergossip. One afternoon, shortly before that momentous first kiss, my mom overheard Gina reporting to me the loves, losses, and general scandals sweeping the neighborhood. After Gina left, my mom sat me down and gently explained why it was best that I put some distance between me and her-that if Gina so easily talked about other people, then she’d just as easily talk about me. She opened her arms and said, “This is our home, Sara Jane, and we all have to respect it. We don’t want it violated by idle chatter.” Of course I understood how my parents felt about our family’s privacy. But I have to admit, even though I’d never been friend-centric, the idea of not hanging around Gina bothered me. It was nice to be with someone who was bubbly and outgoing (my opposite), and besides, a challenge was part of the basis of our relationship-she knew I cared nothing about gossip and was determined to feed me that one golden nugget that would actually intrigue me. It was almost like a contest and it was fun. Still, my life was built around my family and their opinions mattered more than anything else. So, little by little, I drew away from Gina.
In the intervening years, she went on to achieve gossip superstardom, which equals popularity (kids love to talk about other kids), while I’ve retreated into the shadows, not talking much to anyone. She and I are still sort of friends, but I don’t tell her much. Gina trades classified information like a double agent, just like she did when she was thirteen.
Just like she did when I told her that Walter J. Thurber had just kissed me.
We were celebrating her birthday in a basement with streamers and balloons, a half-eaten cake and twenty other kids. A sugary pop song was playing with a guy half-whining, half-yodeling, “You’re Beautiful” over and over. It was all very seventh grade.
Walter materialized next to me and said, “You are, too.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, and said, “What?”
“You. You’re beautiful.”
With my nose definitely taking on a life (and zip code) of its own, I’d begun to feel the complete opposite of beautiful. Also, although I’d forgone my usual attire of jeans and T-shirt (worn denim and anything soft bearing a Cubs or Bears logo; my mom told me I looked like a model in a secondhand sports store) for a new skirt and top, I was aware that I wasn’t exactly the best-dressed girl at the party. That’s why his praise was such a surprise, but also seemed suspicious. It just wasn’t in my nature to trust a compliment, and I leaned over and said, “What’s your point, Walter?”
“No point. You’re so quiet and I never see you at any parties or anywhere, and I always wanted to do this,” he said, and pressed his lips against mine. There was no mashing or movement like in a movie. It just sort of was-a long moment of moist facial proximity that smelled like spearmint gum-and then it was over. Instead of seeing stars or fireworks or whatever was supposed to happen, my truest feeling was gratitude. Walter had given me a small but important gift, opening the door just a crack to what it would someday be like to actually want to kiss someone and be kissed. I smiled and said, “Thanks, Walter.”
He smiled back, showing naturally straight teeth, and said, “You’re welcome. So, uh. . later,” and walked back to his friends like he’d conquered Mars single-handedly.
I made a beeline for Gina and told her what had happened.
Five minutes later, the room had broken into small groups of whispering kids.
Ten minutes later, everyone at the party knew Walter had kissed me.
The problem was that the information changed as it moved kid-to-kid, like that game at camp where a story travels around a bonfire and at the end it’s completely different from the beginning. Some crucial fact about the kiss had been altered in that whispering merry-go-round, because the next thing I knew, Mandi Fishbaum and her little gang of look-alikes-each a variation on the theme of perfect hair plus expensive clothes equals bad attitude-were marching toward me. Mandi was well known for having rich parents, a body that was a decade ahead of every other girl in seventh grade, and being the perennial girlfriend/ex-girlfriend of Walter J. Thurber. Although they’d broken up a month earlier, Mandi acted as if she owned not only Walter but the air he breathed and the ground he walked on, and woe to any girl who trespassed.
She stopped in front of me with her look-alikes fanned out behind her.
Mandi crossed her arms and spit a single word in my direction.
“Slut.”
The terrible word echoed around the basement until it hit me with stinging precision, igniting something low and chilly in my gut-I was furious but completely in control as a small blue flame flickered and leapt. It had been three years since I’d experienced the cool, sizzling internal phenomenon while doing sidewalk battle with Caterpillar Girl, and I’d nearly forgotten about it. But when it reappeared, I registered it as natural as breathing or fighting, while the idea of doing something violent to Mandi filled my brain and crept behind my eyes.
As the blue fire roared in my belly, I realized how different it was than at age eight and ten. This time, it was as if I could command her to do absolutely anything through the power of my gaze.
She must have seen it on my face, because her own face filled with fear-in fact, I felt like I could feel what she was feeling, which to her was terrible but to me was, well, pleasant. But then, just as quickly as that cold fury rose, it faded, and the only things my eyes projected were tears. When Mandi saw them, she smiled and turned away with her look-alikes in tow, mission accomplished. As a thousand needles pierced my heart and voices whispered around me, I felt a tap on my elbow. I wiped my eyes and looked down at a small boy-much shorter than me, and even skinnier. He had curly hair, metal braces as huge as a bear trap, and warm brown eyes behind a pair of glasses.
“Ignore her. You can’t argue with knuckleheads,” he said, looking at me closely and smiling. “And Mandi and her friends are world-class knuckleheads.”
That was the first time I met Max Kissberg.
I wouldn’t see or talk to him again until high school.
In fact, I didn’t talk to Max then, just nodded, trying not to cry any harder. I hadn’t done anything, certainly hadn’t made a move on Walter, and what made it worse was that I was the center of terrible, unwanted attention. I’d been encoded from birth never to make precisely the type of scene that I was starring in now, and the weight of the stares and glares crumpled my heart. By then the room was blurred by tears, so I rushed from the basement and ran all the way to the bakery. The reason I wanted to talk to Uncle Buddy instead of my mom or dad was because they had something else on their minds rather than me. It was an odd chapter in our lives, not unlike when Lou was born,
except that instead of a baby, they were preoccupied by a secret.
I came to think of this period as the beginning of the “whispered conversations.”
My parents stopped talking abruptly whenever I entered the room and would mutter in the kitchen or in their bedroom late at night.
It would not end until my family disappeared.
One of the first times I eavesdropped on them, the subject seemed to be money.
Only days before Gina’s birthday party, I’d listened at their door as my dad spoke in low tones about having “enough to live on,” which had never been an issue at our house. My mother wondered how we would make ends meet “when we go through with it.”
“If we go through with it,” my dad said.
“Anthony. We have to eventually. We can’t go on like this forever.”
“You’re right, Teresa. The time is coming. Besides, it’s the right thing to do.”
I wouldn’t understand what they were talking about for a long time. But once I did, it would be plain how hard their decision had been, and what it had cost our family.
At the time, though, with Walter’s fresh spearmint flavor on my lips and Mandi’s bitter epithet ringing in my ears, I couldn’t stand the thought of not having a family member’s complete attention. I pushed through the bakery door, the bell jingling madly, and rushed past my grandma, who was cleaning the display case. Lou sat on the marble counter eating a melassa biscotto-a rich molasses cookie. Next to him was his perpetual sidekick and best friend, Harry, glaring at me with hatred.
Harry was an Italian greyhound.
To me, he looked like a sleek, oversized rat.
Harry disliked me intensely and I felt the same way about him, but we both loved Lou with all of our hearts, so we tolerated each other, barely.
As I think back now, it’s plain that our mutual revulsion was based on simple jealousy. Lou is one of the coolest kids I know (and cutest, with my mom’s jet-black hair and a lighter version of the Rispoli blue eyes) with an intellect that surpasses his age. Not only is he incredibly smart, but he can rip through and absorb massive amounts of material-books, maps, journals, essays, DVDs, you name it-and synthesize it so he can put the knowledge to actual, practical use. What I mean is that when he researches a subject and then thoroughly analyzes the result, Lou can be good at-well, anything. Something nudges his attention, then captures it, and then he masters it. For a while it was photography (he built his own camera) and then abstract expressionism (he painted his bedroom magenta, black, green, and orange a la Mark Rothko) and then physics (he constructed a mini-volcano to test Galileo’s law of falling bodies) and on and on. With his analytical and deductive abilities, we all knew he was destined for something great. My parents’ attitude was to let him try as many things as he wanted until he found it for himself.
That’s how Harry came into the house.
Lou developed an irrepressible interest in studying animal behavior.
He was obsessed with the idea of training the untrainable.
His research showed that the most effective way was an obscure method called “salutary discipline.” It was created on the premise that animals had shared the earth with people for so long that they had a much deeper comprehension of human language than they were given credit for. Lou believed that if he spoke to them politely and with empathy, as equals, they would respond in kind. When he was ready for a real challenge, we went to the rescue shelter and requested the meanest dog with the lousiest attitude and nastiest disposition. Harry was brought out, scarred and snarling, straining on a leash. Maybe Lou was right, animals really do understand human language, because Harry has hated my guts since I looked at him and said, “You’re not bringing that horrible thing home, are you, Lou?”
My little brother ignored me, smiling at Harry and offering a hand. “And how are you today, my fine fellow?”
Harry responded by biting him.
Lou didn’t wince, just smiled again, but sadly, and said, “Life can be tough and weird, huh, pal? But then things change. Things always change.”
There was something so true in the statement that Harry’s growl lowered to a rumble, then a whimper, then his ears folded back and he looked like he was going to weep. Lou patted his pate. Love was in the air.
At least, love between the two of them.
For me it was a daily snarlfest, Harry at me and me right back at him.
I once asked Lou why he didn’t just train the dog to like me.
My brother shrugged. “He is who he is. I can teach behavior but I can’t change how he’s made. It’s the same reason you box well, but I never will.”
“What are you talking about?”
“According to my studies, all the best boxers have something burning at their essential core. They use it to dominate their opponent in the ring. You have that thing and I don’t.”
“Wait. . are you saying I have, like, hidden anger or something?”
“I didn’t say it was hidden and I didn’t say anger. I said core, and it could be anything strong enough to fuel a boxer in the ring. Yeah, maybe anger, but also maybe fear, or insecurity, or a need for revenge. Whatever it is, it burns like a nuclear reactor deep down in a fighter’s gut.”
I looked at Lou, thinking about his theory. “Are you saying I’m insecure?”
“I’m not going there,” he sighed, doing that Italian “discussion over” thing, patting his hands together just like my grandpa.
We never discussed my “essential core” again, but Lou and I talked about everything else. My little brother has an informed opinion on a multitude of subjects, combined with an uncanny ability to figure out what a person is thinking just by studying her expression. That’s why I tried to hurry past him into the kitchen that afternoon. I knew that if I paused, Lou would see Walter J. Thurber and Mandi Fishbaum all over my face. I was almost through the swinging door when my grandma said, “Sara Jane! Non bacio per tua nonna e tuo fratello?”
My Italian was, and is, pretty mediocre, but any kid who’s even slightly Italian knows the word for kiss-bacio. The irony that I’d just run ten blocks because of an ill-placed bacio was not lost on me, and I struggled to hold back tears. When I was sure I wouldn’t weep, I leaned over and kissed my grandma’s soft cheek, and Lou’s too, who smelled like molasses. He stared at me with bits of cookie on his lips and frowned. “You look weird,” he said, pointing the cookie at me. “Weirder than usual, I mean.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said, thumbing crumbs from his mouth.
“Sara Jane,” he said as I moved toward the kitchen. I turned, and Lou extended a pinkie toward me. “All or nothing. Right?”
I’d taught Lou that move on his first day of pre-K, when he seemed a little iffy about venturing into a classroom full of hyperactive hurricane kids. I took him aside, lifted my pinkie, and said, “Remember, Lou, you and I are Rispolis. We stick together even when we’re not together. All or nothing.” He’d smiled then, hooked his little finger through mine, and it had been our thing ever since; whenever one of us needs a boost, the other reminds us that we always have each other’s backs. I hooked his pinkie, then turned and pushed through a set of double doors.
My dad, uncle, and grandpa spent every day working together in the kitchen of Rispoli amp; Sons making the fancy pastries the neon sign advertised. They seemed to live with flour and frosting all over their aprons, all over their hands and shoes. It was clear that they had been boxers (Grandpa Enzo too, in the 1950s) by watching them move like ballroom dancers, completely aware of one another and completely in sync. My uncle mixed gallons of batter and kneaded buckets of dough. My grandpa built intricate cakes, towering cakes, wedding and everyday cakes, all baked in pans with a distinctive R stamped on the bottom, so that every cake top bore our family initial. My dad’s job was patting, shaping, and rolling cookies of all varieties. Together they swirled whipped cream on top of tiny fruit pies, squeezed smiles onto the faces of gingerbread men, and slid fat slabs of cocoa brow
nies into the enormous fire-breathing oven. It was built into the wall, lined with white glazed bricks, and dominated by an enormous iron door stamped with the word VULCAN in capital letters. The oven was so large that if I bent over, I could easily fit inside. As I entered the kitchen, my dad was sliding in trays of molasses cookies. I wanted everyone to know how victimized I felt, and sighed dramatically, saying, “Lucky cookies. Can I climb in, too?”
“What?” my father said, clanging shut the heavy door.
“Cosa?” my grandpa said.
“Never, ever go inside that oven!” my father said.
“Non mai! Never!” my grandpa echoed, pounding his little fist on the long steel rolling table, sending a puff of flour into the air.
I stepped back, shocked at their overreaction. “I was kidding. I’m just. . I’m having a bad day.”
“Of course she was kidding,” Uncle Buddy said, wiping his hands on his apron and placing them on my shoulders. He put on his big trademark smile. “You think she’s dumb enough to climb inside that thing?”
My dad stared at me, and what I remember specifically is how sad he looked. He and I share a similar trait-blue eyes decorated with little flecks of shimmering gold-and his seemed to be seeing something far beyond the here and now. Softly, he said, “No, Buddy. I think she’s the smartest girl I know.”
“Nostra ragazza intelligente! Our smart girl!” my grandpa agreed.
Uncle Buddy looked at Grandpa and then at my dad, as confused as I was by the outburst. He was still smiling but there was a trace of suspicion in his voice when he said, “Is it just me or is there something weird going on here?”
“Sara Jane, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell. .,” my dad said, ignoring the question. But my feelings were hurt, and I turned to Uncle Buddy.
“Can I talk to you?” I said. “Just the two of us?”
Uncle Buddy looked over me at my dad, who sighed and shrugged. My uncle took off his apron and said, “Okay, sure. Let’s go outside.” It was early evening and the summer sky was warm and orange as I told him about Walter’s kiss and Mandi’s word. He sat on the hood of his convertible puffing a “Sick-a-Rette,” a non-cancerous concoction of organic herbs prescribed by his doctor to help him quit smoking. The good news was that it was working; the bad news was that it smelled as sickly sweet as a Dumpster full of garbage on a hot day. At the end, I told him what little Max Kissberg had said about ignoring knuckleheads.
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