An Italian Wife (19 page)

He threw his head back, teeth clenched, his face in the moonlight as pale as a ghost. The lights in all the houses on Mayflower Lane and Maplewood Street and Overhill Drive, all of them were off, the houses dark, the husbands snoring softly beside their wives.

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?”

“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.

“Do you want to come in?” Francie said. She had to squeeze close to Elaine to get the door unlocked and she could smell the woman's flowery perfume.

“No, no, that's not necessary,” Elaine said. Instead of looking at Francie, she looked in the direction of her own house, two doors down. It was a ranch too, white and red. “Mike thought I should come by.”

Francie pushed the door open and stepped with relief into her cool house. The floors were shining and the porcelain figures stood guard, one on each side of the mantel. In between, where she had once imagined photographs, there was nothing. She did not have any to put there.

“He wants me to invite you to a pool party next Saturday at our house. The Lefleurs are coming, and the Podaskis and the MacGuires and, well, just about the whole street.”

Francie looked right into Elaine's beady eyes. She thought of Elaine's husband with his head thrown back and his jaw clenched tight, and she smiled. “That would be lovely,” Francie said. “Thank you.”

FRANCIE PURPOSELY WORE
a low-cut red blouse to the party, and a skirt that showed her wide hips. She kept her legs bare, something that she knew would keep the wives talking all night. She watched the others arrive from her back stairs. All those women in their sweater sets or blouses with Peter Pan collars, their full skirts and tiny belts to emphasize their tiny waists. She waited until they all had drinks in their hands and then she walked down the street, through the gate that led to the Macombers' backyard and the pool. Francie saw the women take her in, the swell of her breasts and the dip of the
V
in the blouse. She smiled warmly at them all, pressed their soft pale hands into hers.

Mike came over and offered her a drink. There were stingers and there were grasshoppers. She didn't know what either of these were, but saw Elaine drinking something green.

“A stinger,” she said, as if she knew what she was getting into. Francie followed Mike to the outdoor bar, where the silver pitchers of cocktails sat sweating. All of the husbands were there, and she could feel the wives watching her. The rule was to stay with the women and let a man fetch your cocktail. The rule was to talk to the wives.

“Francie's husband was killed in Normandy,” Mike said.

Francie nodded at Paul Lefleur with his empty shirt sleeve pinned up to the shoulder. She looked at Stanley Podaski and Matt MacGuire and Bill Handy, all of them veterans.

Elaine came over and put her hand on Francie's shoulder. “You should come and help us bring out the salad and things,” she said.

Later, after more stingers and big undercooked steaks and vanilla ice cream with crème de menthe on top, Stanley Podaski said, “I'm sorry about your husband, Francie. Fucking Krauts. Fucking war.”

Stan was thick-necked and red faced, a solid man who would be fat someday when he lost all this muscle. He was short, about Francie's height, and she could see the red of his scalp through his blond hair. His wife, Dottie, was pregnant and sat smugly with her hands folded over her round belly.

Again Francie tried to remember her husband, but he was blurrier than ever.

“I should walk you home,” Stan said.

Francie laughed. “It's only two houses away,” she said.

But she did leave soon after. The men beginning to tell their war stories and the women sitting on chairs by the pool, talking about their children. Unnoticed, Francie walked home. She would write a thank-you note to Elaine and put it in their mailbox tomorrow. She had read in a magazine how to write thank-you notes: only three lines, the article had said. The first line complimented the hostess. The second line complimented the event. The final line said thank you.

Sitting at her kitchen table with its red enamel top, slightly drunk, Francie wrote the note:
Dear Elaine, You really know how to throw a party! Those steaks were delicious! Thank you so much for having me.
She was pleased with her note, and read it again out loud. But a soft knock on the kitchen door interrupted her. Stan Podaski was standing there when she opened it.