FRANCIE PARTRIDGE GREW up Francesca Caserta less than a mile from Meadowbrook Plat. As she navigated the familiar path home, her car filled with the lilacs she had gathered for her grandmother, Francie felt like she was driving a long distance, traveling to a place far away. Once she passed the French church, where the French Canadians went to Mass, she entered the Italian part of town. Instantly, everything looked different. Vegetable gardens replaced backyards; shrines to the Virgin Mary stood in place of barbecue grills or patio furniture; fig trees and cherry trees dotted yards instead of leafy maples and elms. People sat on front steps and sidewalks. Men at folding tables at the edge of the street played cards, smoked cigars, drank homemade wine. Everyone was yelling—fighting, calling children, talking too loud. Francie hated it here. Hated the noise, the smells, the plastic Virgins watching her.
After her husband died, she had stayed here with her family until she’d saved enough money to buy the house in Meadowbrook Plat. Once, that land really had been a meadow, large and green and dotted with buttercups and black-eyed Susans. The brook still ran through the neighborhood, back near the older houses. Those houses were two stories, made of brick or painted yellow.
But Francie wanted one of the newer ones, away from the brook and the woods that still bordered the plat. She wanted to live in the crisscross of streets, in a house no one had lived in before, with shiny wood floors and Formica countertops speckled gold.
The house was called a ranch, and it made Francie think of open spaces somewhere out west, of rolling hills and towering trees. It was robin’s-egg blue, with black shutters. My nest, Francie thought when she saw it. The garage was attached and she could drive her car into it, open a door, and step directly into her kitchen. That small action delighted her each time she did it. Everywhere she could, Francie planted flowers. Along one side of the house, where her mother would have put tomatoes, zucchini, green beans, eggplant, Francie grew pansies, petunias, violets. In the backyard, her lilacs and roses and peonies.
Francie filled her arms with those lilacs and made her way up the cracked sidewalk toward her grandmother.
“Francesca!” she heard, and grimaced. It was her sister, Mary, pregnant again, waddling toward her with her arms outstretched.
“Don’t crush the lilacs,” Francie said, turning away from Mary’s hug.
“Look at those!” Mary cooed. “Did you grow them? You couldn’t!”
Mary’s son, Alfred, had followed her out. He was dressed in a saggy grayish diaper and nothing else. Staring from the screen door was her daughter, Joanne. Francie tried to like Joanne. She bought her pretty things, patent leather shoes and a furry white muff last Christmas, but the girl was too shy and dull. She wanted plastic baby dolls and old-fashioned dresses all stiff and scratchy.
“Where’s Nonna?” Francie asked. She knew she was supposed to fawn over the children, tell Mary how beautiful they were. She was supposed to pay attention to her sister’s bulging stomach, ask how she was feeling and when she was due. But Francie didn’t care about these things. And she wanted to go back to her little blue house and put an album on her stereo, maybe Patsy Cline, who sang so painfully about love.
“In the garden,” Mary said. She walked beside Francie, scooping up her son.
Mary had married Michele, one of Francie’s old boyfriends. He always stared at Francie’s breasts, maybe remembering them from when they were teenagers. He was doing it now, looking at her chest hard like he had Superman’s eyes that could see right through the olive-green cotton of her dress. Michele was short and dark and sweaty, with his hair greased back and a cigar clenched between his teeth.
“Francesca,” he said. Unlike her sister, he didn’t let her escape his hug. Lilac blossoms scattered to the ground when she pulled away from him. “When you going to find a husband, huh?” he said, grinning.
“Maybe I’ve found one,” she said.
“Oh! Really?” Mary said.
“He’s lucky,” Michele said. “Whoever he is. Is he from the neighborhood?”
Francie smiled as if she were keeping a secret, and hurried to where her grandmother stood hoeing manure. The smell, strong and sour, made Francie gag.
“Figlia mia,” her grandmother said, dropping the hoe and pinching both of Francie’s cheeks hard.
“I brought these for you,” Francie said. She was aware of Mary and Michele and Alfred watching her. “Take them,” Francie said harshly.
Her grandmother held out her arms and Francie dumped the flowers into them.
“Silly girl,” she said in Italian. “What am I supposed to do with a pile of lilacs?”