“Put them in a vase,” Francie yelled at her, knowing that there were no vases in the house. “Throw them away! I don’t care!”
Her grandmother shrugged, and let the flowers fall to the ground. Carefully, she stepped over them, and went back to hoeing the dirt and manure.
“They’re beautiful, Francesca,” her sister said as Francie walked past her. “Really.”
“Hey!” Michele called after her. “When are we going to meet this future husband of yours? Eh?”
Francie got into her car. Joanne was still standing at the screen door, staring out at her. Behind Joanne, Francie’s mother, Concetta, appeared, frowning. Mary was running as best she could with her huge belly and Alfred in her arms.
“You’re not leaving, are you?” she was saying. “Mama made egg biscuits.”
Francie put the car in gear and drove away, toward home.
WHEN FRANCIE FIRST moved into her robin’s-egg-blue ranch house in Meadowbrook Plat, she knew she was different. No husband. No children. The only Italian in a neighborhood of Irish and French and Polish families. These women’s foreign ancestry was far enough back that they had become a pleasant American blur—no accents, no strange-smelling spices or food with names difficult to pronounce. Their children were all Debbies and Kathys and Lindas; Michaels and Stevens and Bobbys. They did not keep rabbits in their backyards or grow vines with tomatoes and grapes or cover their good furniture with sheets of plastic. Their houses smelled of cinnamon. Their yards were mowed, sculpted, tended, uncluttered. She wanted to be one of them, but they were not inviting her in.
So Francie invited them. She spent a long Saturday afternoon handwriting invitations. Come for Tea! Carefully, she traced small teacups and teapots from a magazine onto tracing paper and then onto each invitation. She had read in Good Housekeeping about how to give a tea party, and she tore the article from the magazine and did everything it described, step-by-step. The recipes were time consuming and confusing. She only knew how to make the things her mother had taught her—red sauce and meatballs, braciole, polenta with kale. But now she was mashing bananas for banana bread, topping Ritz crackers with orange cheese and half an olive held on with a toothpick wearing fancy colored cellophane. She made ham and mayonnaise sandwiches on white bread, then cut them into shapes with cookie cutters: flowers, stars, and hearts.
When the doorbell rang, she was sweaty and tired. But the dining-room table where she had never sat, where she had imagined fancy dinner parties or bridge games, was set with a yellow tablecloth and platters of sandwiches, devilled eggs dusted with paprika, banana bread, and Waldorf salad. She had never even bought mayonnaise before, and now it was in almost everything she’d made, the smell sickeningly sweet and cloying.
Francie smoothed her skirt and checked that she did not have lipstick on her teeth. Then she opened the door wide to let in, finally, that gaggle of laughing women. They pushed into the house, thrusting a bouquet of daffodils into her hands, all of them talking at once. She tried to keep them straight, but they all had the same stiff hairdos, the same coral lipstick and blank faces. The women gushed at her table, admired her living-room ensemble, peeked into both bedrooms and what they referred to as the powder room. They sniffed and touched and poked like unruly children.
“Why,” one of them said, “is this the tea party from Good Housekeeping?”
And another added, disappointed, “We thought you’d make us some spaghetti and meatballs. We thought you’d use garlic.”
One of the women wrinkled her nose. “You just can’t get the smell of garlic out of a house, can you?” And the other women looked at Francie and nodded sympathetically.
They ate everything, complimenting her on each dish. Francie couldn’t bear to eat any of these mayonnaised things. She vowed to throw the jar out as soon as they left, which they did quickly, begging off to meet the school bus. They thanked her and as a group walked out the door. Francie watched from her picture window as they walked away, touching each other’s arms, heads bent together, laughing. At her? she wondered. They did not reciprocate by inviting her to their houses. She saw them gathering on doorsteps across the neighborhood. She still waved as she passed them, and sometimes one of them waved back.
WHEN FRANCIE PULLED into her driveway, she found Elaine Macomber standing nervously on her front steps. Francie considered driving away, but it was too late. Elaine had heard the engine and was looking straight at Francie.
“Elaine,” Francie said as she got out of the car and walked toward the woman whose husband she’d had sex with twelve hours earlier. Francie swallowed hard and forced a polite smile.
Elaine didn’t meet her halfway, the way a person would. She just stood on the top step, wringing her hands.