“Hey, honey!” Her husband Anthony came over, smiling his warm smile, his espresso-hued eyes meeting hers, telegraphing I know you’re beat but we’ll get through this together, then giving her a big hug.
“Hi, love you.” Mary hugged him back, melting into the comfort of his arms and soft Oxford shirt. She knew he must’ve heard about the lawsuit against them, though she hadn’t had a spare minute to text him, since they’d worked all afternoon preparing their Answer and discussing it with Roger on the phone. Luckily, her parents and The Tonys didn’t go online, except Tony-From-Down-The-Block, who supplemented his Social Security playing PokerStars.com.
“MARE, HOW YA DOIN’? HOW YA FEEL? COME AN’ SIDDOWN!” Her father grabbed Mary and hugged her, and The Tonys clustered around her like a cloud of cigar smoke and Ben Gay fumes.
“Mare, you’re getting bigger every day!” Feet patted her belly, and Mary didn’t stop him. Everybody in the family touched her belly, and she figured it was preparing the baby for DiNunzio World, where you had to hug and kiss everybody anytime you left the room.
“Mary, it’s so good to see you!” Tony-From-Down-The-Block took her right arm. “You feeling okay?”
“Maria, Maria!” Pigeon Tony took her other arm, leading her into the kitchen, where she was love-attacked by her mother.
“Maria, come and siddown!” Her mother tugged her into the kitchen and placed her bodily in a seat at the table, which was already set for dinner.
“Honey, you look so tired!” El Virus hustled over with a full plate of ravioli covered in tomato sauce, or “gravy” in South-Phillyspeak. “You gotta eat somethin’ or you’re gonna faint!”
“Mare!” El Virus picked up Mary’s fork, stabbed a ravioli, and was just about to try to put it in Mary’s mouth when Anthony intercepted the fork.
“Ma, stop, she can feed herself.” Anthony set the fork down on Mary’s plate.
“But Ant, look at her! She looks so tired!”
“She looks fine,” Anthony said, patting Mary’s arm.
Tony-From-Down-The-Block said, “I think she looks good.”
Feet said, “I think she looks good, too.”
“OF COURSE SHE DOES! SHE’S GORGEOUS!”
Mary smiled at her father, but let the others talk, having grown accustomed to everyone discussing her as if she weren’t in the room, deciding what she should and shouldn’t do, what she should and shouldn’t eat, or whether she should or shouldn’t work, exercise, or otherwise exist.
El Virus was saying, “Matty, are you blind? Take a good look at your daughter! Her face is white as a ghost!”
Anthony looked over at his mother. “Mom, she’s not sick, she’s pregnant.”
“Right.” Mary managed another smile, but sometimes pregnant felt like sick, though it would’ve been politically incorrect to say so.
El Virus waved him off, her gelled nails thickly red, like a manicured vulture. “Ant’n’y, you’re a man, you don’t know! I fainted all the time, carryin’ you and your brother. She has to eat for her blood sugar!”
“Her blood sugar is fine.” Anthony sat down as Mary’s father and The Tonys settled into their seats and began passing the steaming platter of ravioli, which trailed an aroma of tomatoes, oregano, and fresh basil. Mary’s mother hovered, waiting for Mary to need something before she sat down, dressed in her flowery housedress, with her arthritic fingers forming a gnarled ball at her waist and her gray hair teased to cover her bald spot.
“Maria, drink some water, you gotta drink.”
“I will, Ma.”
“Drink!”
“Look, see?” Mary raised the water glass and took a sip, like a drinking demonstration, and her mother smiled, leaning over and giving her a kiss on the cheek and a little back rub.
“Love you, cara.”
“Love you, too, Ma.”
“So good you come home.”
“I’m happy to.” Mary kept her smile on, feeling guilty that she didn’t mean it completely. Her mother loved her to the marrow, as did her father and The Tonys, and her family meant everything to her. But she’d had such a horrible day at work, with the firm being sued, the press conference that went sideways, and the fighting between John and Anne, that everything suddenly seemed like too much, on top of her pregnancy.
“Mare, you need to take it easy, you work too hard.” El Virus pulled up a chair next to Mary, her Opium perfume as thick as tomato sauce. Mary tried not to breathe in, newly sensitive to smells, but the scent was her mother-in-law’s trademark, along with her jet-black shag, bedazzled skinny jeans, and white tank top that read World’s Best Grandma. It struck Mary that her mother-in-law dressed much younger, while her mother dressed much older, in the stop-time tradition of the DiNunzios.
Mary looked around, seeing the kitchen with new eyes. Everything was from another era; the dented spaghetti pot and coffee percolator had to be fifty years old, and her mother didn’t own a garbage disposal or dishwasher, still doing the dishes by hand and collecting the “slop” in a metal bin in the sink. An old church calendar faded on the walls, with a washed-out Jesus Christ looking heavenward, or maybe rolling his eyes, undoubtedly wondering why her parents had no air conditioner but still used a fan, which whirred away on the kitchen counter, evenly distributing the humidity. The Mass cards tucked behind the switchplate with dried palm were the only thing that ever changed here, growing in number as their relatives and friends passed away. Vita and Matty DiNunzio were getting older, and Mary felt the years closing in, along with everything else.
Tony-From-Down-The-Block tucked his napkin in his T-shirt collar like an adult bib, which Mary happened to know he had on with his adult diapers, so like a one-man Circle of Life. He said, “She should quit work. That’s what I think. She shouldn’t work while she’s pregnant.”
“Si, si, e vero.” Pigeon Tony nodded, his bald head already deeply tanned since he spent so much time outside with his homing pigeons.
Feet pushed up his Mr. Potatohead glasses, clucking. “Mare, you gotta slow down. It’s crazy, it’s too much.”
“SHE LIKES TA WORK. SHE’S GOT A BUSINESS TO RUN.”
Feet frowned, his milky-brown eyes magnified by his bifocals. “But she can’t work right up to the time the baby comes.”
“Sure, I can, I’m fine.” Mary glanced at Anthony, who was looking down at his plate as he ate.
El Virus pointed at Mary’s food. “Mare, eat!”
Her mother, nodded, watching Mary. “Maria, mangia.”
“I got it, Ma,” Mary tried not to sound testy, picking up her fork. It seemed so Olive Garden that her mother actually said mangia, but some stereotypes rang true for a reason. She looked at her full plate, and her stomach rumbled. She knew she should eat, but the tomato sauce and Opium weren’t mixing with the progesterone.
Feet frowned. “Mare, when are you gonna quit work?”
“When the doctor tells me to.” Mary didn’t want to have the discussion right now. She had been ducking this subject because it touched on a sore spot for her and Anthony. The subject made him feel terrible, since he didn’t have a job. She wanted to keep working, and given their finances, she really didn’t have a choice.
Feet persisted, “And then how much time you going to take off? Like a year, two years?”
“I don’t think that long,” Mary answered, keeping it vague, but she noticed her mother eyeing her, chewing slowly, and her father blinking behind his glasses. Both of them had to be wondering what Mary and Anthony had planned, but she didn’t want to make any announcement right now, especially not with The Tonys here.
El Virus brightened. “Mary can go back to work right away. I’ll babysit every day. It’s no problem. I can’t even wait! I already bought a playpen.”
Mary’s mother pursed her lips. “Elvira, I tol’ you, I can take care a the baby. Every day, we’ll come and sit.”
“RIGHT! WE GOT YOU COVERED, MARE. ME AND YOUR MOTHER. I WONDER IF IT WILL BE A GIRL OR A BOY!”