The smelts sizzle. Connie fights back nausea as their acrid smell fills her nostrils.
Behind her, her mother slaps the octopus down hard, slicing it into small pieces.
“Mama G,” Davy says, oblivious to the tension that fills the kitchen, “why are there seven fishes?”
“For the Holy Blessed Sacraments,” his grandmother tells him. “Your mother should remember that.”
THREE MORNINGS A WEEK, after Connie drops Davy off at kindergarten, she drives across town to Dr. DiMarco’s office. He has given her what he calls Mother’s hours, working just while Davy is in school. She wears a white uniform that shows off her small waist, unbuttoned just enough so that if Dr. DiMarco wanted to, he could glimpse the white lace of her bra, the swell of her breasts. Connie hopes he is sneaking looks at them, at her. He is movie-star handsome, with thick, dark hair and a high forehead, thick black eyebrows above piercing black eyes.
The diplomas that hang behind her in the office are from Williams College and Yale Medical School. Fancy schools. Connie imagines Williams College, which she knows absolutely nothing about, as a beautiful place with brick ivy-covered buildings and smart, handsome men debating great ideas on brick-lined paths. She imagines pink dogwoods in bloom, and bright azalea bushes, and a clock tower that chimes on the hour. Davy will go there, Connie has decided. Davy will go to Williams College just like Dr. DiMarco.
Sometimes, Connie spends the ride from Davy’s school to Dr. DiMarco’s office planning how she will seduce him. Maybe she will call him into one of the examining rooms on the pretense of something in a patient’s file and when he enters she will slowly unbutton the buttons on her uniform and take his hands and place them on her breasts. Or perhaps she should offer to cover for Bea, who works on Tuesday nights when the office stays open till eight. After all the patients were gone, Connie and Dr. DiMarco would be left alone in the office. It would be dark out, and just the two of them would be there with the hum of the fluorescent lights and the smell of ammonia and cough syrup.
So far, Connie has not executed any of her plans. Dr. DiMarco’s wife, Becky, Doris Day–blond and cute, calls several times a day just to say, Love ya. Every time Connie has to take one of Becky’s calls, her chest fills with such jealousy that she can’t breathe. How did Becky get so lucky? How did Becky get born into a family with a dentist father and a mother who bred golden retrievers? How did she get to go to Mount Holyoke, an all-girls college that is maybe even more beautiful than Williams? Connie hates Becky, hates her turned-up nose and tanned cheeks and the tennis skirt she seems to have on every time she stops by the office.
One day Connie went so far as to call Dr. DiMarco into an examining room under false pretenses. She held a manila file in her hands. She’d unbuttoned her buttons one lower than usual.
Dr. DiMarco did not seem to notice the extra button.
Connie glanced down at the file to see who it belonged to.
“The Pattersons,” she said. “They’re ninety days late with their bill.”
He frowned. “Gee, that doesn’t sound like Peggy, does it?”
Connie shook her head. Her throat had gone dry from being so close to Dr. DiMarco and she couldn’t speak.
“Let me think. She brought Billy in for tonsillitis—”
“Whooping cough,” Connie managed.
Dr. DiMarco nodded. “And Peggy had—”
“Gallstones. Or you thought she might have gallstones but the X-ray showed her gallbladder was clear,” Connie said. She had so much to give him, so much information, so much of herself. Surely he must see that?
Dr. DiMarco smiled at her. “What would I do without you, Connie?” he said.
“Fall apart,” she said, shifting so that he could definitely see the white lace of her bra, surprising herself with her boldness.
This was flirting, wasn’t it? Connie thought. No one had ever really flirted with her before. But this must be it, the smiles, the joking, the double entendres.
“I’m sure it was just an oversight,” Dr. DiMarco said. “Thanks, Connie, for being so efficient.”
Then he was gone. Just like that.
Connie felt her heart tumbling around beneath her ribs. She waited until she heard his deep voice greeting Pamela Sylvestri and her three kids, waited until she heard the door of that examining room close. Then she went and locked the door of the room she was in.