Valerie's two girls from her first and only marriage, Angie and Mary Alice, were on the edges of their seats, hoping for a fun disaster . . . like Grandma Mazur setting the tablecloth on fire or Albert Kloughn spilling hot coffee into his lap.
Grandma Mazur was happily sipping her second glass of wine. My mom was at the head of the table, all business, daring anyone to find fault with the chicken. And my dad shoveled food into his mouth and acknowledged me with a grunt.
“I read in the paper where aliens from a different galaxy are buying up all the good real estate in Albany,” Grandma said.
“They'll get hit hard with taxes,” Kloughn told her. “They'd be better to buy real estate in Florida or Texas.”
My father never raised his head, but his eyes slid first to Kloughn and then to my grandmother. He muttered something that was too low to carry. I suspected it was in the area of good grief.
My father is retired from the post office and now he drives a cab part-?time. When my grandmother came to live with my parents, my mother stopped storing the rat poison in the garage. Not that my father would actually take to poisoning my grandmother, but why tempt fate? Better to store the rat poison at cousin Betty's house.
“If I was an alien I'd rather live in Florida anyway,” Grandma said. “Florida has Disney World. What's Albany got?”
Valerie looked like she was ready to drop the baby on the dining room floor. “Get me a gun,” Valerie said. “If I don't go into labor soon I'm going to shoot myself. And pass the gravy. Pass it now.”
My mother jumped to her feet and handed the gravy boat to Valerie. “Sometimes the contractions are hardly noticeable in the beginning,” my mother said. “Do you think you could be having hardly noticeable contractions?”
Valerie's attention was fully focused on the gravy. She poured gravy on everything . . . vegetables, applesauce, chicken, dressing, and a heap of rolls. “I love gravy,” she said, spooning the overflow into her mouth, eating the gravy like soup. “I dream about gravy.”
“It's a little high in saturated fats,” Kloughn said.
Valerie glanced sideways at Kloughn. “You're not going to lecture me on my diet, are you?”
Kloughn sat up straight in his seat, his eyes wide and birdlike. “Me? No, honest, I wouldn't do anything like that. I like fat women. Just the other day I was thinking how fat women were soft. Nothing I like better than big, soft, squishy pillows of fat.”
He was nodding his balding head, trying hard, running down dark roads of panic.
“Look at me. I'm nice and fat, too. I'm like the Doughboy. Go ahead, poke my stomach. I'm just like the Doughboy,” Kloughn said.
“Omigod,” my sister wailed. “You think I'm fat.” She went into open-?mouthed sobbing and the plate slid from her stomach and crashed onto the floor.
Kloughn bent to retrieve the plate and farted. “That wasn't me,” he said.
“Maybe it was me,” Grandma said. “Sometimes they sneak out. Did I fart?” she asked everyone.
My eyes inadvertently went to the kitchen door.
“Don't even think about it,” my mother said. “We're all in this together. Anyone sneaks out the back way, they answer to me.”
When the table was cleared and the dishes were done, I made my move to leave.
“I need to talk to you,” my mother said, following me out of the house to stand curbside, where we had privacy.
The bottom of the sun had sunk into the Krienski's asbestos shingle roof, a sure sign that the day was ending. Kids ran in packs, burning off the last of their energy. Parents and grandparents sat on small front porches. The air was dead still, heavy with the promise of a hot tomorrow. Inside my parents' house, my father and grandmother sat glued to the television. The muffled rise and fall of a sitcom laugh track escaped the house and joined the mix of street noise.
“I'm worried about your sister,” my mother said. “What's to become of her? A baby due in two weeks and no husband. She should marry Albert. You have to talk to her.”
“No way! One minute she's all smiley face and crying because she loves me so much and then next thing I know she's grumpy. I want the old Valerie back. The one with no personality. And besides, I'm not exactly an expert at marriage. Look at me ... I can't even figure out my own life.”
“I'm not asking a lot. I just want you to talk to her. Get her to understand that she's having a baby.”
“Mom, she knows she's having a baby. She's as big as a Volkswagen. She's already done it twice before.”
“Yes, but both times she did it in California. It's not the same. And she had a husband then. And a house.”
Okay, now we're getting somewhere. “This is about the house, right?”
“I feel like the old lady who lived in a shoe. Remember the rhyme? She had so many children she didn't know what to do? One more person in this house and we're going to have to sleep in shifts. Your father's talking about renting a Porta Potti for the backyard. And it's not just the house. This is the Burg. Women don't go off and have babies without husbands here. Every time I go to the grocery, I meet someone who wants to know when Valerie is getting married.”