Cold Fury

I looked at Lou, thinking about his theory. “Are you saying I’m insecure?”

“I’m not going there,” he sighed, doing that Italian “discussion over” thing, patting his hands together just like my grandpa.

We never discussed my “essential core” again, but Lou and I talked about everything else. My little brother has an informed opinion on a multitude of subjects, combined with an uncanny ability to figure out what a person is thinking just by studying her expression. That’s why I tried to hurry past him into the kitchen that afternoon. I knew that if I paused, Lou would see Walter J. Thurber and Mandi Fishbaum all over my face. I was almost through the swinging door when my grandma said, “Sara Jane! Non bacio per tua nonna e tuo fratello? ”

My Italian was, and is, pretty mediocre, but any kid who’s even slightly Italian knows the word for kiss- bacio. The irony that I’d just run ten blocks because of an ill-placed bacio was not lost on me, and I struggled to hold back tears. When I was sure I wouldn’t weep, I leaned over and kissed my grandma’s soft cheek, and Lou’s too, who smelled like molasses. He stared at me with bits of cookie on his lips and frowned. “You look weird,” he said, pointing the cookie at me. “Weirder than usual, I mean.”

“Thanks a lot,” I said, thumbing crumbs from his mouth.

“Sara Jane,” he said as I moved toward the kitchen. I turned, and Lou extended a pinkie toward me. “All or nothing. Right?”

I’d taught Lou that move on his first day of pre-K, when he seemed a little iffy about venturing into a classroom full of hyperactive hurricane kids. I took him aside, lifted my pinkie, and said, “Remember, Lou, you and I are Rispolis. We stick together even when we’re not together. All or nothing.” He’d smiled then, hooked his little finger through mine, and it had been our thing ever since; whenever one of us needs a boost, the other reminds us that we always have each other’s backs. I hooked his pinkie, then turned and pushed through a set of double doors.

My dad, uncle, and grandpa spent every day working together in the kitchen of Rispoli amp; Sons making the fancy pastries the neon sign advertised. They seemed to live with flour and frosting all over their aprons, all over their hands and shoes. It was clear that they had been boxers (Grandpa Enzo too, in the 1950s) by watching them move like ballroom dancers, completely aware of one another and completely in sync. My uncle mixed gallons of batter and kneaded buckets of dough. My grandpa built intricate cakes, towering cakes, wedding and everyday cakes, all baked in pans with a distinctive R stamped on the bottom, so that every cake top bore our family initial. My dad’s job was patting, shaping, and rolling cookies of all varieties. Together they swirled whipped cream on top of tiny fruit pies, squeezed smiles onto the faces of gingerbread men, and slid fat slabs of cocoa brownies into the enormous fire-breathing oven. It was built into the wall, lined with white glazed bricks, and dominated by an enormous iron door stamped with the word VULCAN in capital letters. The oven was so large that if I bent over, I could easily fit inside. As I entered the kitchen, my dad was sliding in trays of molasses cookies. I wanted everyone to know how victimized I felt, and sighed dramatically, saying, “Lucky cookies. Can I climb in, too?”

“What?” my father said, clanging shut the heavy door.

“Cosa?” my grandpa said.

“Never, ever go inside that oven!” my father said.

“Non mai! Never!” my grandpa echoed, pounding his little fist on the long steel rolling table, sending a puff of flour into the air.

I stepped back, shocked at their overreaction. “I was kidding. I’m just. . I’m having a bad day.”

“Of course she was kidding,” Uncle Buddy said, wiping his hands on his apron and placing them on my shoulders. He put on his big trademark smile. “You think she’s dumb enough to climb inside that thing?”

My dad stared at me, and what I remember specifically is how sad he looked. He and I share a similar trait- blue eyes decorated with little flecks of shimmering gold-and his seemed to be seeing something far beyond the here and now. Softly, he said, “No, Buddy. I think she’s the smartest girl I know.”

“Nostra ragazza intelligente! Our smart girl!” my grandpa agreed.

Uncle Buddy looked at Grandpa and then at my dad, as confused as I was by the outburst. He was still smiling but there was a trace of suspicion in his voice when he said, “Is it just me or is there something weird going on here?”

“Sara Jane, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell. .,” my dad said, ignoring the question. But my feelings were hurt, and I turned to Uncle Buddy.

“Can I talk to you?” I said. “Just the two of us?”

Uncle Buddy looked over me at my dad, who sighed and shrugged. My uncle took off his apron and said, “Okay, sure. Let’s go outside.” It was early evening and the summer sky was warm and orange as I told him about Walter’s kiss and Mandi’s word. He sat on the hood of his convertible puffing a “Sick-a-Rette,” a non-cancerous concoction of organic herbs prescribed by his doctor to help him quit smoking. The good news was that it was working; the bad news was that it smelled as sickly sweet as a Dumpster full of garbage on a hot day. At the end, I told him what little Max Kissberg had said about ignoring knuckleheads.

“Smart kid,” Uncle Buddy said, flicking away the stinking Sick-a-Rette. He produced car keys and said, “Get in. I want to show you something.” We didn’t talk much as he drove through the Loop and parked off Michigan Avenue. We climbed steps past the lions guarding the entrance to the Art Institute, walked inside the cool, quiet building, and went directly to a gallery where a handful of people loitered silently. One wall was dominated by an enormous painting. Uncle Buddy nodded at it and said, “It’s called A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.” I’d seen it before, shuffling past with other kids on field trips, but now my uncle urged me to inspect it closely. I stepped forward and stared, and slowly my eyes divided a picture of people relaxing on a small island into millions of tiny painted dots. He explained that one of its meanings is that life is made up of an endless series of events and incidents-painful, joyful, and all connected in a way that makes a person who she is. “Just like this painting, Sara Jane,” Uncle Buddy said, “point by point, you’re in the process of being made. Just keep moving forward and you’ll be all right. Trust me.”

I did. I trusted my uncle, and it was a mistake.

I would remember his advice later, when I was trying to find out what had happened to my parents and Lou, trying desperately to see the big picture.

Once I began to connect the dots, they were as big as the famous Rispoli amp; Sons molasses cookies.

4

Sometimes things change in a family as slowly as a melting glacier, so you don’t notice them until they’ve begun to rearrange the landscape.

For us, that glacier was named Greta Kushchenko.

It was only about a year ago, when I was fifteen, that Uncle Buddy casually mentioned he was dating someone, which surprised us all. That someone became Greta, and then she was around, not always, just sometimes, at a birthday party or dinner at my grandparents’ home-shy, quiet, plain, and, in her own words, humble, based on her upbringing by poor Russian immigrants. And then as the months fell away she was there all the time, at every event and holiday, growing louder and flashier and more opinionated by drips and inches. Her manner of talking crept from mousy to brassy, her views on the world from whispered to blared, and her style of dress from nun to showgirl. She was all bright-red lipstick, huge fake eyelashes, and hair that bloomed from a dull mushroom into a cascade of white-blond curls and ringlets. Even a casual observer could see that she had become an unofficial member of the Rispoli family.

To a noncasual observer (me) it was glaringly obvious that “unofficial” wouldn’t cut it with Greta.

Her goal was to fully infiltrate the family by strong-arm tactics, her favorite being to mock and humiliate Uncle Buddy into submission and then kissy-face him until he’d do anything she asked. I once overheard her whisper to him how as the second son, he was regarded as only second best, igniting suspicions that already existed within his insecure psyche, and then tell him how much she loved him-that to “Gweta” (yes, nauseatingly, she used baby talk) he was just as smart and capable as his big brother Anthony. She’d perfected the art of driving a wedge between a close-knit group of people (us) and one of its own (my stupid uncle) until we were