Aida straightens. Her cousin Carmela—Cammie—dreamed of being famous and now she has her own show in Las Vegas. Now she drives a convertible. For all Aida knows, Cammie has met the Rat Pack. All of them. Frank and Sammy and even Dino.
“Cammie isn’t a dreamer,” Aida’s mother says. “She’s a doer. Isn’t she in Vegas? Isn’t she at Caesar’s Palace? You don’t get there by staring out windows.”
Aida catches a glimpse of white in the distance and hears the egg beater engine of a VW. Her heart quickens. She presses her face to the window, feels the tiny squares of the screen denting her flesh. The white Bug comes into view. He drives slowly down the hill, his own car window down, one arm casually draped outside it. As he turns the corner she sees the golden hairs on his chin; he isn’t shaving again. A sign of what? she wonders. Heartache? Laziness? Debauchery? She is not exactly sure what debauchery is, but she imagines it as something sophisticated—a rumpled tuxedo, martinis and cigarettes, late nights. With warm weather finally here, and all the windows thrown open, she can actually hear music coming from his car. She recognizes the song as one her sister, Terry, plays over and over: “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”: It’s about sadness and regret and loneliness. Oh! Aida thinks. He is heartbroken. She wonders if she can somehow mend him, or if he can mend her. “Yes!” Aida calls out the window. “Yes!”
The car slows. Stops. The boy looks around, as if he’s heard her. He even looks up, right in her direction. But he does not see her there, her face pressed to the window, yearning.
DOWNSTAIRS, THERE IS CHAOS. Noise and chaos. Chicken breasts split open, waiting to be stuffed. Manicotti cooling. Ricotta and eggs being mixed together in Mama Jo’s biggest bowl. Mama Jo herself elbow-deep in ground beef and eggs and parsley and garlic and breadcrumbs. The aunts are sitting, smoking, wrapping candy in yellow tulle and tying the small bundles with white ribbon. Platters of egg biscuits, wine biscuits, wandi fill the counter. Aida feels dizzy from the smells: cheese, smoke, hair spray, powdered sugar, something frying in oil.
“Finally!” her mother says. A cigarette dangles from her lips, the ash twitching precariously above the manicotti. She hands Aida a package of prosciutto, all waxy paper and pale pink flesh. “Roll.”
Aida peels off a thin piece of the ham and pops it into her mouth. She doesn’t chew right away. Instead, she lets the saltiness fill her mouth and nose, the ham dissolve slightly.
Aunt Gloria smacks her on the arm. “It’s for the people!”
Aida swallows. She is immediately thirsty. “I’m a person,” she says, and takes another piece.
Aunt Gloria takes the prosciutto away from Aida, shaking her head. Right away Aunt Connie hands her a platter of fried eggplant. “Go help Aunt Angie,” she says.
The air is blue with smoke. Aida sighs.
“Eh?” Mama Jo says, nudging Aida with her elbow. “I fried all those eggplants myself. My legs are killing me. You know the boy’s family? They don’t peel their eggplant. Tastes sour.” Her face wrinkles up in disgust. “I had to spit it out.”
“The boy” is what Mama Jo calls Eddie, the groom-to-be. He is nineteen years old, skinny, long. Long nose, long hair, long legs. He reminds Aida of Gumby, though she’s never told her sister this.
Mama Jo nudges her again. “You buy eggplant, you always buy the female. Eh?” She wags a finger thick with meatball mixture at Aida. “Female.”
Someone smacks Aida in the back of her head. “Stunare!” her mother says, taking the platter from her. “Why are you just standing here?”
“I don’t care about this stupid wedding,” Aida says, because no one is listening anyway.
It is true. Her sister, Terry, is nineteen years old and works answering phones at Chip Finley’s Ford down the street. Eddie fixes cars there. To Aida, the fact that they are getting married makes her queasy. They should go to South America; they should hike the Appalachian Trail; they should go to college, even junior college; they should learn to cook on a wok, sail a boat, play the guitar. They should do anything but get married and work at Chip Finley’s Ford and stay in this town until they die.
She sees Aunt Gloria stuffing the manicotti.
“Cammie coming to the wedding?” Aida asks, hopeful.
“She’s trying,” Aunt Gloria says. “That girl’s busy. When you’re in show business, you don’t just leave everything. The show must go on, right?”
Aida watches her cigarette bounce as she talks. They are all going to die of cancer, she thinks. Every one of them.
The door bursts open and Terry and Eddie, followed by their best man and maid of honor, practically fall inside. They giggle and hold each other while everyone except Aida beams at them.
“Oh, man,” Eddie says, and heads straight for the cookies. He pops them in his mouth whole, one after another.
“Save some for the people,” someone says.
Eddie laughs and tosses a few cookies to Frankie, the best man.