Chapter Twenty-Six: A Good Pot of Red Sauce

It took me an hour to scrub the kitchen the way my Nanna likes it from the mess left by Papa and his cohort,called his Son!. Dishes pilled high on the kitchen counters, red sauce stains on the stovetop, and coffee cups everywhere. And to top it off no one had bothered to see if Nanna needed anything. I was glad when they left; the apartment lingered with their cheap cologne until I knocked it out with the Lysol. There really was nothing more to do. I only wished I could have packed their suitcases and left them waiting for them at the front door but that was unwise, we needed Papa to buy Nanna a new car. I was hoping for something a little sportier, like a Honda or maybe even a Bronco.
Nanna was asleep, the apartment was clean, I washed out the bathtub from their soap scum, and I even made Uncle Leo’s bed. I just didn’t understand why they couldn’t stay in a motel. There were plenty of them down on Clark and Diversy where they were headed, because that’s where Papa still had a couple of his rental apartments.
Being that I was bored out of my mind, I decided to snoop around. I knew that it would take my Aunt at least a half hour to get down Sheridan Ave., and then over to Devon Ave., from her apartment on Chase St. Maybe even forty –five minutes with the Saturday traffic on Devon Ave., if I was lucky. But then again, she did drive kind of crazy down the side streets, and knowing her, she’d zoom over to Pratt Ave., by-passing Devon Ave. all together and making it in twenty minutes. I decided to play it safe and just have a snoop in the hall closet. That way, if I got caught, I’d say I was looking for a blanket for Nanna.
The hall closet is where Nanna keeps all things that once belonged to Papa or were given to her by Papa. Items of clothing she no longer wears and does not have the heart to throw away are in the hall closet. It is a long narrow closet that reaches back at least 10 feet. This is where I had found the cape and fedora hat. This is where I have been snooping for years without anyone really suspecting because this is where everything is stored by my Nanna; extra blankets, sheets, pillows, trucks full of stuff. On the right side of the closet are all of Papa’s old suits and jackets. On the left side Nanna’s fur coats. I let my fingertips run lightly past the shelves of her fur coats. She never wears any of them anymore, not even when it is 3 below zero and the wind-chill makes you feel as if it is 30 below zero. She says they are things of the past—just like her marriage.
I knew this closet like the back of my hand. I knew that the big black trunk used to belong to my great-grandfather (Nanna’s father) and that it contains all of his old clothes and tap-shoes and pictures of his days on the vaudeville stage. There is even a picture of my great-grandmother Tillie posing for the camera, her hair piled high on top of her head. I had found the picture a week ago and Nanna was right, if I squinted just right, I did look like her. It was indeed the shape of her face. A small woman with almond shaped eyes the color of my Nanna’s—Hazel. Nanna says she got her height from her father’s side and her eyes from her Mom. Funny thing, none of her children can carry a tune nor keep step. Nanna blames it on my Papa—his genes polluted any creativity in her children that they might have gotten.
The trunk next to it contains all of my Nanna’s family pictures. I like to rummage through it to see what my Nanna looked like in her youth. There is a cute black and white picture of her when she was 5 years old, standing in front of an apartment building somewhere on the north side. On the back of the photo it is dated November 12th, 1919—Garfield St. And then there is a photo of my Nanna, tall and skinny with her hair cut short into a bob. She is wearing a full-piece dress; again she is standing in front of an apartment building, this time she is smiling for the camera. On the back of this one, it is dated 1924 and someone had written ‘The Skinny Minnie.”
Pictures of her with my mother and then with my Aunt, there is one baby picture of Uncle Leo riding a pony. Pictures of her around a crowded table, a cigarette in her hand, she is wearing a fancy 1950’s style cocktail dress, her hair is sternly pulled back in a bun, pearls hang from her neck. Papa is on her right side, arm draped around her. My Nanna’s smile is more like a grimace, but she was pretty in a very stylish way. Mother says that Nanna always had a groomed look to her; she always knew what to put on to make herself look better. And then no more smiling pictures of my Nanna-- just headless photo’s of her with her two daughters smiling for the camera. She is headless in a group photo of her and all the Italian relatives, in front of one of Papa’s restaurants and headless again at my parents wedding. When I asked her about it she said that she didn’t like the way she was aging and she didn’t want to be remembered as being ugly, so she tore all her faces out of all the photos she didn’t like of herself.
I questioned my mother about this and she said that Nanna went through a bad time when she hit a certain age—thinking she was becoming ugly and she was only growing old.
I like looking through the family pictures from before I was born, even if I wasn’t in any of them. These pictures were of my mother’s childhood. I liked to see what my mother used to look like and what Papa looked like, and of course I liked to see what old neighborhoods looked like in Chicago. Tree lined streets, old fashion cars—Papa always owned a Buick, and he liked to have his picture taken in front of them on the day he brought them. Now Papa drives a white Cadillac in Palm Springs, California. Nanna calls it a pimp car, so he can attract all the young whores.
I hear the front door open and then my Aunt’s voice calling for Nanna, and then whisperings from her bedroom, muffled cries, the words “I’m sorry” and then more quiet sobs. I let my fingertips once again brush against the shelves of my Nanna’s fur coats, and noticed for the first time a gold diamond broach on one of them. I carefully unpin it from the collar of a brownish red thing, and slip into my pants pocket and then tip toe to the back door. The afternoon sun makes me squint as I take the back porch stairs two at a time, running down the alleyway up the hill to my apartment where I hear my mother screaming at my sister to get in the car, and then she spots me and tells me to get in the car.
“Why can’t you just leave your hair alone, Gianna? Why do you always have to do funny things to it?” My mother says as she slams the back door on me. Anna giggles. I reach across to her in the front seat and slap her on top of the head. “Don’t even start Gianna,” my mother says as she pulls out of the parking place, and with her right hand gets me right across the ear.
“We are we going?” I ask rubbing my ear.
“Dominick’s. We are having a few of the relatives over tomorrow.”
“Just fucking great,” I say to myself.
“What did you say?” my mother asks as she makes a right on to Arthur Ave.
“Nothing.”
“And why do you smell like mothballs?” she says, checking me out in the rear view mirror.
“I don’t know,” I say, looking out the window.
“Have you been snooping again in your Nanna’s closet?”
I didn't say anything as I finger the broach in my pants pocket and listen to my mother blow her horn at some guy that has just pulled in front of us, and hear the ever familiar curse word come out of my mother’s mouth: “Fanculo!”
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