“Our spaghetti sauce cooks for four hours, our secret recipe,” Mama Lombardi told her proudly as she doled her out a huge portion. But Linda merely moved her fork around the plate.
“You marry a girl with no appetite?” Papa Lombardi asked, astonished.
Frank laughed. “Hey, she’s gotta get used to you guys. Get your garlic breaths off of her. Let her breathe air.”
After a massive dinner of six courses, which Linda only picked at, they finally reached the spumoni and espresso. The men lit up their huge cigars. And Mama asked the inevitable question.
“Linda, where are your folks?”
She spoke in a low, flat voice. “I have no family. I’m an orphan.”
There was a silence at that. Mama crossed herself.
Frank put his arm around his wife. “Well, honey bun, you sure have one now.”
The tense moment over, Papa grinned and said, “Welcome to la famiglia.”
Frank turned the key in the lock and made his way back through the foyer into his parents’ living room.
Knowing his brother could hear him, Vincent said, “It’s what I always said about him. Frankie’s such an easygoing guy. Ya have to kick him in the ass three times before he knows you’re mad at him.”
His sister Connie grinned. “Yeah, what a pushover. Girls always take advantage of him.”
Frank addressed his siblings, also grinning. “Thanks for nothing. You’re just jealous.”
They laughed.
The immediate family was sitting around drinking more espresso “She’s all right?” Mama offered him a cup.
“Just tired. Been a long day with a lot of new things to get used to.”
Papa said, “I like her. She’s quiet.”
Mama gave him a gentle hit across his head. “You always were a sucker for the blondes.” She patted her pitch-black hair, with the slight gray feathering at her forehead, and winked at him.
They sat quietly digesting.
Mama couldn’t resist a shot of guilt. “You had to go and elope? And disappoint the whole family?”
“Mama, what else could I do? I told you, Linda had no one to invite. I didn’t want to make her unhappy on her wedding day.” Mama sighed. “I understand. So, all right, she met everyone tonight.”
“And we saved a bundle in wedding costs,” Papa commented with satisfaction.
“And you lost a bundle in wedding gifts you didn’t get, dummy,” Connie laughed.
“I’m such a lucky guy.” Frank sipped his espresso.
“She’s not Catholic.” Mama poured Papa his after-dinner Strega.
“Well, she ain’t Jewish.” Al beckoned his mother-in-law for another refill.
Connie put her two cents in. “Not Irish either.” She pretended mock horror. “You mean we’ve got a Protestant in the family?” She laughed. “She will be so alone in this neighborhood.”
Linda was alone but not for cultural or religious reasons. Linda belonged only to the darkness within herself. In the numbing blackness of a fog that never lifted. In a mind that shut off unbearable memories. She left the apartment only when she had to. She spent her days reading forgettable books or watching mindless television. She cleaned the house obsessively and cooked simple meals that filled the belly, but not the imagination. She waited for time to pass. She waited for a way to get out of here.
For a month, Frank whizzed about in a whirlwind of happiness, insensitive to his wife’s lack of interest. Getting the office fixed up. Getting flyers out into the neighborhood. Though it seemed word of mouth was enough. Mayer’s gone, come see the new young doctor. They were lining up at his door.
“Sure you don’t want to help out?” he asked Linda on the fly. “I could really use my pretty nurse in the office.” He intended to give her a peck on the lips, but she turned abruptly and he got her cheek.
“Find somebody else.”
A week later, because it was so hot outside, Linda, carrying groceries, decided to take the shortcut through the outside office door to get to their own quarters. As she entered, a set of chimes rang out “O Sole Mio.” She thought they were annoying, but Frank liked them because they’d been a housewarming gift from Connie.
Linda was surprised to see someone sitting at the appointment desk. She was somewhat older than Linda. The woman’s long, thick black hair was piled haphazardly atop her head. Her blue eyes flashed. She obviously liked bright colors. She wore a dropped-shoulder red drawstring blouse and a multicolored dirndl. And high heels. This exotic-seeming woman smiled widely at Linda and reached out her hand. She had a husky voice. “I’m Anna Marie. I’ve known Frankie all his life. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”
Linda didn’t return the gesture, so Anna Marie lifted an eyebrow and placed her hand back on the desk.
Linda looked closely. A wedding band.
“I’m helping out temporarily until he finds time to get someone else.”
Linda glanced at her quickly to see if there was disapproval there. If there was, Anna Marie covered it.
Anna Marie reassured her that she wasn’t a threat to the newly wedded Mrs. Lombardi. “I’m married to Frank’s old friend Johnny. We all went to P.S. 93 together and then on to James Monroe High. Frank was the only one of us who went off to college.”
Linda didn’t comment, so Anna Marie had to fill the silence. “He got a scholarship, but you know all that…”
Luckily, Frank walked in from his examining room. He grinned. “At last the two loves of my life meet. I was mad about Anna until Johnny stole her from me,” he said to Linda with a twinkle. “But all’s well. We’re happy, aren’t we?”
Neither woman spoke. Linda was aware that Anna Marie was attempting to evaluate her.
Let her try, she thought.
The chimes were heard again as an elderly lady walked in the front door.
“Ah,” Frank said, “here’s Mrs. Green. Please get her chart, Anna.” With that he went back to his office.
“Nice talking to you,” Anna Marie said sarcastically.
“Yes,” Linda replied, and walked past her to get to the inside apartment entrance.
In her fog she learned the streets of the neighborhood. A chubby couple, Betty and Burt, ran the luncheonette, called the candy store by one and all. Everyone gathered there. The men came to schmooze and read the sports pages in the Daily News or the New York Post. The young mothers dropped in for black-and-white sodas or a two-cents plain. The younger kids hung out after school, poking playfully at one another like bear cubs. The teenagers flirted and did their mating dance. At one time or another, just about everyone checked in at the candy store for the local gossip.
Linda knew some of the gossip was about her. She imagined them asking, What do you make of her? But she didn’t care what they thought.
The grocery was next door. Murray used the stub of a pencil to add up Linda’s purchases on the brown paper bag, as other customers sized her up. Were they wondering, That Linda, who does she think she is — she stuck up or something? She imagined so.
The butcher was next, and as she waited her turn the women gaped and looked at her brazenly. “Give the pretty doctor’s wife a nice cut, Herman.” This was from a frumpy-looking housewife trying for sarcasm.