Bad Games

38



Maria Fannelli usually didn’t bake cookies this time of night. On any other evening she would have been finishing the last drop of her chamomile tea, switching off the television, and making her way upstairs to prepare for bed.

But there would be an exception tonight. A very special exception. Her grandchildren were on their way over.

Her son had phoned ahead and told her to expect the children soon. Maria had no sooner hung up the phone before she began gliding from one corner of her kitchen to the other, snatching the necessary ingredients from both her cupboard and refrigerator. Her smile, the kind of smile only a grandmother awaiting the arrival of her grandchildren is capable of producing, never waned for an instant.



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Once the cookies were in the oven, Maria returned to her den. She was too excited to sit, so she stood, waiting in front of her recliner—pink house-robe from neck to ankles, red fuzzy slippers on the feet, warm, welcoming blue slits beneath a pair of thick lenses, and shoulder-length white hair that was just slightly tangled and unkempt.

Ask five people to draw a lion and you’d get five different lions. Ask those same five to draw a grandmother and you’d get five Maria Fannellis.

Maria waited in front of that recliner, wringing her soft white hands together as though she had four winning lottery numbers, the impending knock on her front door the official announcement of the fifth and final.

When the knock arrived she found herself moving with a speed that surprised even her. She opened the front door and those blue slits behind the lenses stretched wide and that grandmother-smile took up half her face.

She bent forward and hugged her grandchildren with as much love and vigor as her body could muster. When she was finished she stood upright, smiled adoringly at her son, and gave him a hug of equal love and vigor.

Arty Fannelli hugged his mother back and said, “Hi, Ma. Are those cookies we smell?”