Have a Nice Guilt Trip (26 page)

It’s what I told myself.

But while her resilience has been an absolute marvel, I know her struggles have taken their toll. Talking—always my grandmother’s favorite pastime and greatest liability—has become difficult for her. She works with a speech therapist to get her smack talk back up to speed, but it’s been hard to get the words to match that wit.

I know all of this, but I try not to think about it.

So when I heard she was coming to visit last month, all I thought of was how excited I was to see her. Last year, she wasn’t well enough to travel, but this year she wanted to come up and celebrate her ninetieth birthday with all of us. She was at my mom’s house for three weeks, and I came down from New York so as not to miss a day with her.

There has never been a time that my grandmother visited and we didn’t cook together, and I didn’t want this visit to be any different. We decided on eggplant parmigiana, a perennial favorite in our family.

And a particularly good choice for my grandmother, because ever since she had radiation on her throat, she can only eat soft foods and finds most pastas too chewy.

We got the family all together in the kitchen: My grandmother was installed in a chair at the island, the catbird seat for recipe supervision; my uncle Frank was helping to organize the ingredients; my mother manned the bubbling tomato sauce; and I stood at the stove, frying the eggplant slices.

I’ve learned and relearned these recipes over the years, so much that I even make them at home for friends now. But making them on my own isn’t as special as making them with my grandmother. It’s more fun to do as a family, and my grandmother always coos over me.

But this time I couldn’t do anything right.

“Looks good, doesn’t it?” I said, showing my grandmother the growing pile of golden brown fried eggplant.

“No,” my grandmother said.

“No? What’s wrong with it?”

“Not dark enough.” Her speech was halting, as if the “d” in “dark” got caught in her throat.

“Ma, they’re perfect, she’s doing a great job,” my mom said in my defense. “You don’t want her to burn them.”

“Not burnt, brown!” My grandmother was angry now, and the words were almost indistinguishable. She has always been quick to sass you, but quick to anger was new.

The eggplant was cooked to the exact shade of toasty brown we’ve always made them. I have the timing down perfectly, three minutes in the oil each side, just like she taught me. The only possible explanation was that she couldn’t see them clearly. Her eyesight has gotten much worse, and she can no longer read type or see most pictures in a magazine.

“But they are brown, Muggy,” I said as gently as possible, trying to think of an excuse for her. “I bet it’s the light over the oven that’s making them look lighter.”

My grandmother frowned. “How ’bout the sauce?”

“You want to taste it? Hang on, here I come.” I cupped my hand beneath the wooden spoon and brought it over to where she was seated.

But when she reached for the spoon, her hands shook. Her face twisted in frustration and she banged her fist on the table.

“It’s okay, Muggy,” I said, using my pet name for her. “Take your time.” I remembered my uncle’s warning about her “intention tremors,” shaking that comes on with volitional movement, like reaching. But seeing the tremor wasn’t nearly as troubling to me as it was to see her upset.

My grandmother shot me a look from over her glasses, as if to say, “Can you believe this s--t?”

“I’ll help you hold it, okay? Try again.”

Her hand steadied this time, and the sauce was approved.

My mother caught my eye as she went over to my grandmother. “Ma, I think you’re tired. Why don’t you take a nap now? You can rest while we finish up.”

But Muggy waved her off. She wanted to stay and make sure we didn’t mess anything else up.

We ran into trouble again after I had finished frying the eggplant. I brought the heaping plate of them over to the kitchen island to begin assembling the stacks in the casserole dish.

“Did you count them?” my grandmother asked.

Of course, I hadn’t. We never did that, and it would be terribly tedious to do now. “No, why would I?”

“To make the sta—, the sta—” Her mouth was open, but the words weren’t coming out. Suddenly she shut her mouth and she shook her head, frustrated again.

“Don’t get upset.” I was more than happy to wait. “You don’t have to rush, I’m listening.”

She took a breath and tried again. “To make them even.”

“I’ll make sure the stacks are even by keeping track of how many layers as I go along, okay?”

That seemed to satisfy her, but her unusually exacting directions continued. When my uncle began sprinkling shredded mozzarella on the first layer of eggplant, my grandmother, words failing her, rapped a spoon on the table.

“Ma, what?” he said.

Her wide eyes were magnified by her glasses as she glared at him. “Spoon!”

“My hands are clean, I just washed them.”

She shook her head. “To measure.”

I have never in my life seen my grandmother use conventional measuring tools. She has taught me how to make ravioli, ricotta gnocchi, tomato sauce, and the best meatballs I’ve ever tasted, and she has never measured a thing. Instead she cooks by look, taste, and above all, texture: They should look golden brown. It should not stick to the table. The knife should cut it cleanly. Season to taste.

The joy of Italian cooking is that it is
not
an exact science. You know who taught me that?

My grandmother.

My uncle said, “Mom, we have made this fifty times at home, we’ve never used a tablespoon to measure.”

I knew he was right, and I suspect my grandmother did, too, but she wouldn’t admit she had made a mistake. Either that, or perhaps she was just craving control when so many things in her life that we all take for granted—the power of speech, the ability to see, to swallow—were newly out of her control. Getting a recipe exactly right took on heightened importance.

I got a tablespoon to measure.

We finally managed to get the eggplant parm into the oven, but we were all a little more exhausted than I remember us being in the past. My grandmother finally went to take that nap.

Ironically, she slept through dinner and didn’t have any eggplant at all.

It’s not easy for me to adjust to my grandmother’s changes, but it’s a lot harder for her. I wish she would realize we don’t mind being patient, and I wish she would be more patient with herself. There is no shame in letting us see the cracks in her tough-girl façade; she doesn’t have to be tough with us.

Sometimes I catch myself looking away when she has a coughing fit, not because I don’t want to see it, but because I don’t want her to feel like I see it. I catch myself finishing her sentences for her when her speech falters, not because I can’t wait, but because I don’t want her to get frustrated. She’s a proud woman, and I want to let her save face.

But that isn’t helping.

What I need to show her is that I love her regardless, and that I can be patient regardless. Love, like Italian cooking, has a lot of give in it. We don’t need to be exacting with the ones we love, there’s wiggle room. And likewise, she doesn’t need to worry so much. She can give up control, because we’ve learned the lessons she taught us so well. She built this family, and now I want her to take her time and enjoy it.

None of the changes in her make any difference in the way I feel about her. When it comes to my grandmother, the world can wait, as far as I’m concerned.

And Heaven, too.

Acknowledgments

By Lisa and Francesca

We would like to express our love and gratitude to everyone at St. Martin’s Press for supporting this book and its predecessors. First, thanks to Coach Jen Enderlin, our terrific editor, as well as to the brilliant John Sargent, Sally Richardson, Matt Baldacci, Jeanne Marie Hudson, Steve Kleckner, Jeff Dodes, Brian Heller, Jeff Capshew, Michael Storrings, Paul Hochman, John Murphy, John Karle, Caitlin Dareff, Stephanie Davis, Talia Sherer, and Anne Spieth. We appreciate so much your enthusiasm for these books, and we thank you for everything you do to support us. And we will always love and remember the late Matthew Shear, whom we adored.

We’d also like to thank Mary Beth Roche, Laura Wilson, Esther Bochner, Brant Janeway, and St. Martin’s audiobook division, especially for giving us the opportunity to record our own audiobook of this volume and the others in the series. We love to do it, and we love audiobooks! And there is simply no substitute for our Philly accents, which come free of charge!

Huge thanks and love to our amazing agents, Molly Friedrich, Lucy Carson, and Nicole Lefebvre of the Friedrich Agency. Thanks to
The Philadelphia Inquirer,
which carries our “Chick Wit” column, and to our editor, the wonderful Sandy Clark.

One of the best people in the world is Laura Leonard, and her advice, friendship, and love sustain us. Laura, thank you so much for all of your great comments on and suggestions for this manuscript. We owe you, forever.

Love to our girlfriends! Lisa would like to thank Nan Daley, Paula Menghetti, and Franca Palumbo, and Francesca would like to thank Rebecca Harrington, Katy Andersen, Courtney Yip, and Megan Amram, and the men she trusts just as much, Ryder Kessler and Nat Osborn. We’re blessed in all of you.

Family is the heart of this book, because family is the heart of everything. Special thanks and love to Mother Mary and Brother Frank.

The Flying Scottolines

We still miss the late Frank Scottoline, though he is with us always.

Finally, thank you to our readers.

Now, you’re family.

Other Nonfiction by
Lisa Scottoline and Francesca Serritella

Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim

Best Friends, Occasional Enemies

My Nest Isn’t Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space

Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog

Fiction by Lisa Scottoline

Keep Quiet

Accused: A Rosato & Associates Novel

Don’t Go

Come Home

Save Me

Think Twice

Look Again

Lady Killer

Daddy’s Girl

Dirty Blonde

Devil’s Corner

Killer Smile

Dead Ringer

Courting Trouble

The Vendetta Defense

Moment of Truth

Mistaken Identity

Rough Justice

Legal Tender

Running from the Law

Final Appeal

Everywhere That Mary Went

About the Authors

LISA SCOTTOLINE is a
New York Times
bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author of twenty-two novels, including the most recent,
Keep Quiet
. She has served as president of Mystery Writers of America, and her novel
Look Again
has been optioned for a feature film. This is her fifth collection of humorous essays written with her daughter, compiled from their weekly column in
The Philadelphia Inquirer
. There are 35 million copies of Lisa’s books in print in the United States, and she has been published in thirty countries. She lives in the Philadelphia area with an array of disobedient pets. Visit Lisa on Facebook, Twitter, and at
www.scottoline.com
.

FRANCESCA SERRITELLA graduated cum laude from Harvard University, where she won the Thomas Temple Hoopes Prize, the Le Baron Russell Briggs Fiction Prize, and the Charles Edmund Horman Prize for her creative writing. She is working on a novel, and she lives in New York with only one dog, so far. Visit Francesca on Facebook, Twitter, and at
www.francescaserritella.com
.

HAVE A NICE GUILT TRIP.
Copyright © 2014 by Smart Blonde, LLC, and Francesca Scottoline Serritella. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.