Second Helpings-Part I
Sometimes estrangement includes your favorites, and it sucks.
My Dearest, Guido Jr:
When we were seven and ten, my pop allowed me to come with him for Friday Bocce Nights at your pop’s. Even though Guido Sr. was still married to your mom, it was already his house. It’s been so long since I’ve been there, but I can still picture the midcentury modern designed, two-story palace, complete with a playroom and a game room for the kids, an open plan kitchen/dining room with state-of the art appliances, and the piece de resistance: Uncle Guido’s custom bocce court at the bottom of the hill, hidden from view of the main house by tall, fragrant eucalyptus and your father’s pigeon coop.
Do you remember the Friday Bocce days?
All the brothers would show, even the ones who loved their wives. They drank vinegary homemade wine and ate fat, juicy sausages, hot from the grill your pop kept by the court. They would be stuffed into bread rolls and garnished with peppers and onions that my pop brought wrapped in foil and kept hot on the grill.
It was important to family identity for the siblings-the brothers— to get together frequently. Friday night bocce followed by Saturday morning breakfast at Nonna’s apartment.
(Aunt Beatrice, of course, was only included when it benefitted the brothers.And she had her own family to cook for on Saturdays.)
The brothers were like strange and wonderful cookies formed crudely by hand from the same clump of dough: features echoing across each other’s faces, giving each brother a look that was at once like all the rest of their faces, yet distinctly his own. They all had some variation of a stocky build, short stature, barrel chest and big nose; some more aesthetically arranged than others’. Maybe it was the big noses and barrel chests that gave them their signature sneers and belly laughs.
On bocce fridays, it was the latter of those two attributes that caused me to hang around the court with the crickets in the twilight and listen to them. Their jokes were usually about women; or of perceived degrees of masculinity in other men. I stayed invisible until I made some smart remark and was sent to play. It was worth it to be sent away if I made the Brothers laugh. They even laughed when I made a little comment calling them out. It is the only time I have ever felt like I was on equal footing with any of them, let alone held their attention.
Their laugh was orchestral: a collective laugh made up of individual pitches and tones but with the same melody, cadence and lyrics. The sound was a cross between “heh” and “ha” and “nah” with a delivery containing a tinge of Foghorn Leghorn and a dash of the Penguin from Batman. Kind of like:
“Nyack! Nyack Nyack Nyack Nyehhhhhhhh that rose from their bellies into their chests, which bumped up and down with mirth before plopping back into their diaphragms with a satisfied “haah,” when they needed a breath.
Like that, only better and more glorious. All of the same-but-different cookies bouncing up and down in the cookie jar, practically breaking themselves in their doughful mirth.
You know what I mean, because although I was ejected from that space while I was still a girl, you were admitted there as you became a man.
Things are never what they seem in a Sicilian-American family. There is always another layer beneath.
Most likely to divert me from hanging out and hearing things that I shouldn’t, Pop took me to the Jiffy Market in Los Gatos and let me fill a lunch-sized paper bag with candy “to share with your cousins.”
To me, the outing became about seeing cousins, which as you know, Guid, was just a liiiiitle more important to me, the one with five half-siblings from another generation, than it was to the rest of you, who had a sibling close in age. The twins, Peggy and Annabella, had each other, while you and Peggy Elaine also formed an unit. Everyone with a built-in ally, plus me!
You have no idea how hard I pretended not to notice the politics and unevenness that grouping induced. You helped me, tremendously, by appearing to sincerely like me.
I am so glad that I didn’t doubt it then, during my formative years.
On that bocce Friday, you and I, without your sister, went into your parents room, where I dumped the brown-bagged booty on the floor. Your eyes got wide and you laughed, disbelieving that my Pop was that lenient and spoiling.
Your laugh was-and is, last I was treated to it— a single crack of a shotgun: “Hah!“ off it was really funny, or “Huh!” when less amusing. You and I stuffed ourselves with chocolate while watching reruns of Mork and Mindy, Three’s Company, and inappropriate movies interrupted by inappropriate commercials.
Then you got your older sister, who had a higher and more feminine version of the same shotgun laugh, to help herself to what was left after we had our own second helpings.
* * *
Later on, you would “babysit” me, even though you’re only three years older. I told you my other babysitter let me play “bar” at the bar and you gave me that look and that chuckle again, and we drank up.
After all that’s happened, and I’ve had time to piece it all together, after the estrangement, I came up with a theory.
When we, the adored youngest children in our respective nuclear families, started showing signs of youthful rebellion, our dads formed a collective pact that they would let the two of us, and sometimes, your sister, explore the world if we bumbled through these experiences together. We all had cars. We all got to do what we wanted.
Or maybe your dad forced you to spend time with me because my pop asked your pop a favor. You got, in exchange for “babysitting” me, your own dad to look the other way while you misbehaved.
None of this would ever need to be verbally expressed in a Sicilian-American family, you would just know. Things would be expected.
The thing about estrangement and toxic legacies is, I’ll never know for sure.
Even if we were still close.
When I turned thirteen, you gave me a giant bud and the LP of Bob Marley’s Natty Dread. I listened to that vinyl over and over. The bud—kind of a controversial gift for a new teen, don’t you think?— went quickly.
It was not until researching this essay did I realize two—ope, no, three— things: one, the record that you gave me wasn’t in shrink wrap.
Two, Natty Dread is actually Bob Marley and the Wailers’ least-grossing album, and the most unapologetically full of social and political commentary.
Insight came, years later, but in an instant: you regifted me that record, because you were willing to part with it. Most of the songs you would have liked from that album would be on Legend.
Last, as I’m realizing, right now, after having writer’s block for a week and then actually listening to Bob Marley and the Wailers’ masterpiece—celebrating it’s 50th anniversary at the time of this writing—
Guid, those songs are, as one might say woke as fuck and you knew that playing them over and over within earshot of your dad would make him go bat shit, but that also my Pop was so absentee, self-absorbed, lenient, and spoiling that he would either not hear the music because he simply was not around, or he would play a game of emotional chicken with me and not bring up the music I was listening to. (There’s also an equally good chance he would have not understood the Jamaican accents.)
My birthday intro to reggae wasn’t the only special kindness you bestowed. That time we all went camping in Gualala, and my parents ditched me in the motorhome to stay at a hotel, and I was afraid of my siblings so I stayed with you in the two front seats in your van. We thought we heard bears, but it was just these drunk assholes who stole all our parents alcohol, but we didn’t know that, and you and I were in the front two seats and you looked at me, eyes wide, and said “I love you, Lia.” It was the sweetest thing in the world, and meant the world to me, a kid who felt unloved much of the time.
Isn’t it funny that in the past few weeks, the internet has been in a flurry over the “would you rather be stuck in the woods with a man you don’t know, or a bear?” We were actively relieved that it was three men and not bears. We were so innocent to what men can do.
I would have been certain that you would grow up to become the man that I would have chosen to be in the woods with over a bear.
* * *
You always got the second helpings first. It’s true, you ate faster, and seemed to be more hungry.
Do you remember Nonna’s soup? Fucking delicious. I called her from college once, to ask how to make that soup. Remember that she pronounced it “chiggen” instead of “chicken”? I still say “chiggen” in my head when I make chiggen soup.
When we were kids, everyone would get a bowl, and there would be more courses coming, but you wolfed yours down first, and were praised and chuckled over. The boy! At long last.
People who don’t come from families full of women don’t understand how these same women get when a boy-child comes along. Here, Guidigno! You couldn’t possibly be expected to sit patiently and wait for the next course. You had appetite! have another bowl.
The pick of the litter, you got chubby. Little round cheeks, round belly, round eyes. I can still see you doing cannonballs into our pool. You were adorable and the apple of everyone’s eye, growing up around all those women. Looking back at photos, you, like me, weren’t fat, just not skinny.
I wanted you to be my brother. At the time I pretended that I thought that I was as cool as you were, but I idolized you, and tried to copy you as much as would be permitted without looking like a loser. I am starting to think that I did, though. I thought Peggy and Annabella looked pretty desperate and obvious in their idolization of your sister, and thought I was much better at hiding my open adoration for you. Besides, as far as adoring Guido Jr. goes, get in line.
You grew older and stayed pleasingly plump, but still attractive to girls, a Jack Black type. Except even Jack Black doesn’t want to be a Jack Black type when it comes to girls. You had long hair and you were a beautiful hippie child, barefoot with a guitar. Plenty of girls swooned, but even then, you were accustomed to having the best.
Even though I corrected people to tell them we were first cousins and not brother and sister like everyone thought, I kind of pretended you were my brother. My actual brothers never wanted to hang out with me.
You also wanted to hang out with my friends, which was so cool, because you were a senior and I was a freshman and you had a bunch of cute, older friends who knew where the kegs were, and I had a bunch of young, pretty gal pals. We were kind of one big group.
The day you gave me Natty Dread, you had already met a bunch of my friends. About a year later, you started dating one of them.
to be continued