“Then un-complicate it,” he said. “Pick one and stick with her.”
“It’s not like I’m choosing between regular and pepperoni. There are conflicting emotions here: attachments, desires …”
“Now that’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “Every day people walk in here and have to choose between some excellent options. Attachments, desires…it’s all right here. I’ve seen it for forty years. The pepperoni looks good, but hey, you can’t beat a slice of plain cheese, not my plain cheese, that’s for damn sure. But that pepperoni smells great, you can almost taste that salty tang just by looking at those little red circles of meat on a hot bed of sauce and cheese.”
“Women aren’t pizza.”
“Everything is pizza. You pick one, you eat it, and it’s great. That’s life. If you think about it later, you might wish you’d had the pepperoni instead of the plain, or maybe the pepperoni gives you a little heartburn and you wish you’d gone regular cheese. That’s life, too. But either way you had a damn good lunch, so be happy about it. Because what are you going to do, stare at the slices all day and eat nothing? Walk out and go eat Chinese? Hell no, you’ll be hungry again in an hour, all worked up about the MSG and wondering ‘why didn’t I get a slice of that plain?’ So you make a choice and love what you have.”
He nodded, pleased with the advice.
“I doubt it matters, anyway. Kelly is probably done with me, and Amy and I never get it right.”
“Then write another play,” he said. I wondered if he’d noticed all those missing pizza boxes I’d used the other night. “Stop thinking, make pizza, and things will work out. As for your family, I need your signature to make you co-executor of the trust. Here you go.”
He offered the pen but still held on, his thumb and forefinger squeezing the cap.
“Before you sign, let’s be clear: this isn’t about cutting checks or looking after a bank balance. It means you take care of her the best that you can. Hire a nurse if you need to, and some of those assisted living facilities are okay—I’m not asking you to change bedpans or anything like that—but you’ll need to spend time with her, be her family; maybe not her son, if it’s too late for that, but a nephew or a damn good cousin or even just a friend. Don’t stick her in a home somewhere and let her spend Christmas alone. If that’s what you’re thinking, tell me now. I can make other arrangements.”
He let go of the pen, pointing at the dotted line awaiting my signature.
“So I can’t leave her in a pizza box on a stoop somewhere?”
“I never should have told you that.”
The dotted line waited before me, three inches on a sheet of white paper, but it seemed so much bigger, the pen like a knife pointed at my wrist, eager for a vein; forget the ink, this signature needed Grade A whole Marcino blood.
I looked over at Nancy, who was folding her napkins, humming her song, her fat body jammed between the table and the back of the booth, her feet on the floor tapping to some imaginary rhythm, slow, slow, quick-quick. Uncle Dan might easily outlive her, my signature on the trust nothing more than an I.O.U. no one would ever cash, but I couldn’t accept being that kind of weasel. If I was going to sign, it had to mean something. I handed back the pen.
“I need to think,” I told him.
He slipped the pen into his pocket, his mouth turned in a grimace.
“Just a day or two. I’m not sure about anything right now.”
“Sure, sure. I’m disappointed, but I get it.” He scooped the papers into a messy pile, corralling them with a rubber band. “Whenever you’re ready, let me know. But talk to her, okay? Can you do that for me? It means a lot to her, and to you too, I’m guessing, even if you won’t admit it.”
Papers in hand, he rose from the booth and ducked behind the counter, where soon he’d be pounding dough and spreading cheese. I turned around so I could watch Nancy, who, every few seconds, turned her head and looked at me, glancing over her shoulder then shifting back the moment we made eye contact, giggling each time, as if I were a clown or a dog with a funny face. That woman is your mother, I thought—it still seemed foreign and trippy, like a bad practical joke. As I kid, I’d sit in class and daydream, imagining her outside the classroom window on a two-seater bicycle, balloons tied to each handlebar, my mother young and pretty, the girl from the Sears circular decked out in a bright floral dress. One time they called my name over the loudspeaker and I thought this was it—my mother would be waiting in the principal’s office ready to squire me away to some amazing new life. Instead it turned out to be a head check in the nurse’s office—the kid seated next to me had reported a case of lice.
Go over and talk to her.
But she left me in a pizza box!
For once even I was sick of hearing it. I’d been in Holman Beach for a week and most of what I’d known had been flipped upside down and tossed on the ash-heap. Maybe it was time to add that pizza box to the pile.
I was nearly out of the booth, ready to talk to her, my mother, (mother—it sounded so strange!) when Jill and Maddie burst through the entrance, both in cut-off shorts and white T-shirts with Occupy the Beach hand-scrawled in tie-dye across the front of their chests, Jill bouncing like she’d just won a Tony, Maddie walking behind her as if the cops might jump out from behind the soda case with handcuffs and pepper spray.
“The revolution has arrived!” Jill said, rushing over and pecking my cheek. Maddie
