Smokin Seventeen

Grandma cut a wide swath around my mother and set the coffeepot on the table. “Margaret Gooley’s daughter got engaged, and they already got the Polish National Hall for a November wedding.”

“And?” Lula asked.

“I graduated high school with her,” I said.

Lula sat at the table and cut herself a piece of coffee cake. “And?”

My mother pressed the iron into a pair of slacks with enough force to set a seam for the rest of its days. “I don’t know why everyone else’s daughter gets married but mine!” she said. “Is it too much to ask to have a happily married daughter?”

“I was married,” I said. “I didn’t like it.”

Grandma slathered butter on her piece of coffee cake. “He was a horse’s patoot.”

“You’ve been seeing Joseph Morelli for years now,” my mother said. “It’s the talk of the neighborhood. Why aren’t you at least engaged?”

That was an excellent question, and I didn’t have an answer. At least not an answer I wanted to say out loud. Truth is Morelli wasn’t the only man in my life. I was in love with two men. How screwed up is that?

“Yeah,” Lula said to me, “you need to make a decision about Morelli or someone else is gonna snatch him up. He’s a real hottie. And he’s got his own house and a dog and everything.”

I liked Morelli. I really did. And Lula was right. He was hot. And I thought he’d make a good husband … probably. And there were days when I suspected he might actually consider marrying me. Problem was just when I thought marrying Morelli held some appeal, Ranger would ooze into my mind like smoke under a closed door.

Ranger was not husband material. He was a heart-stopping handsome Latino, dark-skinned and dark-eyed. He was strong inside and out, an enigma who kept his life scars pretty much hidden.

“I need to bring Ziggy Glitch in for a reschedule,” I said to Grandma. “I thought maybe you could call him and get him to go with me.”

“I could do that, but you have to wait until it gets dark. He don’t go out during the day.” Grandma paused. “He’s got a condition.”

I nibbled on a piece of coffee cake. “What kind of condition? A medical condition?”

“Yeah, I guess it could be considered medical. He’s a vampire. If he goes out in the sun it could kill him. He could burn right up. Remember when Dorothy threw water on the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz, and the witch shriveled up? It’s sort of like that.”

Lula almost spit out her coffee. “Get outta here! Are you shitting me?”

“That’s why he never married,” Grandma said. “Soon as a woman saw his fangs she wouldn’t have any more to do with him.”

“So when the cops said he was a biter they meant he was a biter,” Lula said.

Grandma topped off her coffee. “Yep. He’ll suck the blood right out of you. Every last drop.”

“That’s ridiculous,” my mother said. “He’s not a vampire. He’s a man with a dental problem and a personality disorder.”

“I guess that’s one of them politically correct points of view,” Lula said. “I don’t mind presenting things that way so long as I don’t get holes in my neck while I’m tryin’ not to offend some mother-suckin’ vampire. ’Scuse my French. And this is real good coffee cake. Is this Entenmann’s?”

“I didn’t see any fangs when he answered the door,” I told Grandma.

“Well, it’s daytime so maybe he was fixing to go to sleep, and he had his dentures in a cup,” Grandma said. “I don’t wear my dentures when I sleep.”

Lula leaned back in her chair. “Hold the phone. This guy has fake fangs?”

“They used to be real,” Grandma said, “but a couple years ago Joe’s granny, Bella, gave Ziggy the eye, and all his teeth fell out. So Ziggy went to Horace Worly — a dentist on Hamilton Avenue just down from the hospital. Anyways, Horace made Ziggy some new choppers that looked just like his old ones.”

I looked over at my mother. “Is that true?”

My mother sighed and continued to iron.

“I heard they found Lou Dugan,” Grandma said. “Who would have thought he’d be planted right there on Hamilton Avenue.”

“We saw him,” Lula said. “It was like he was trying to climb out of his grave with his hand sticking up outta the dirt.”

Grandma sucked in air. “You saw him? What did he look like?”

“He was all wormy and raggety.”

“They’re gonna have to work like the devil to make him look like anything for the viewing,” Grandma said.

“Yeah.” Lula added cream to her coffee. “We might never even have known it was him except for his ring.”

Grandma leaned forward. “He was wearing his ring? That ring was worth money. What numbskull would bury Lou Dugan with his ring still on?”

Lula cut a second piece of coffee cake. “That’s what I said. It would have to be someone in a panic. Some amateur.”

Or someone sending a message, I thought. It looked to me like the grave had been fairly shallow. Maybe Lou Dugan was supposed to be discovered.

“It sure is cozy here in the kitchen,” Lula said. “I bet if I stayed here long enough I could forget all about Lou Dugan and his wormy hand.”

My parents’ house is small and stuffed with comfortable, slightly worn furniture. The windows are draped in white sheers. The polished mahogany end tables hold lamps and candy dishes. An orange, brown, and cream hand-crocheted afghan is precisely folded and arranged over the back of the champagne-colored couch. My father’s favorite chair has maroon and gold stripes and an impression of his ass permanently imprinted in the seat cushion. The couch and the chair face a newly purchased flat-screen television, and the television fits into a newly purchased mahogany entertainment center. Coasters and magazines are neatly arranged on the narrow coffee table. A laundry basket filled with toys has been placed against the wall in the living room. The toys belong to my sister’s kids.

The living room leads into the dining room. The dining room table seats six, but can be enlarged to accommodate more. My mother keeps the table covered with a tablecloth. Usually rose or gold. And she places a lace cloth over the colored cloth. It’s been this way for as long as I can remember.

The dining room is separated from the kitchen by a door that’s always open. Just as my father lives in his maroon-striped chair, my mother and grandmother live in the kitchen. When dinner is being prepared and potatoes are boiling, the kitchen is hot and humid, smelling like gravy and apple pie. This morning the kitchen smelled like freshly ironed clothes and coffee. And Lula had added a hint of fried chicken scent.

“I hear Dave Brewer just moved back to Trenton,” my mother said to me. “Do you remember Dave? You went to school with him.”

Dave Brewer had been a big deal football player and entirely out of my league when I was in high school. He went on to college, married, and moved to Atlanta. Last I heard he was being investigated for illegal foreclosures in the state of Georgia.

“I thought he was going to jail for swindling people out of their houses,” I said to my mother.

“He beat that rap,” Grandma said. “But Marion Kolakowski said he got fired and lost his big house in Atlanta. And then his wife left him and took the dog and the Mercedes.”

My mother ironed a nonexistent wrinkle out of my father’s slacks. “Dave’s mother was at mass yesterday. She said it was all a mistake — that Dave didn’t do anything wrong.”

Lula took a third piece of coffee cake. “He must have done something wrong if his wife took the dog and the car. That’s harsh.”

“He comes from a good family, and he was captain of the football team and an honor student,” my mother said.

I was starting to get a bad feeling about the direction of the conversation. It had all the signs of my mother on a mission.

“You should call him,” my mother said to me. “He would probably like to reconnect with his