Page 13 of Love Me Not
We were gathered for Labor Day at Janet’s house. She was the premier hostess of the family. Her backyard was the only one big enough for the whole bunch, and she’d inherited Babka Maja’s love of feeding people. Folks thought Italian grandmothers were the food pushers, but the Poles were just as pushy.
By the age of ten, I’d eaten enough pierogi for a lifetime, and enough cabbage rolls—or golabki as Maja called them—to resemble one. Some put on that Freshman fifteen, but not me. I lost fifteen pounds my first year at college. When Maja saw me that Christmas, she feared I had a horrible disease and was wasting away.
From then on, every time anyone drove over to see me at Penn State, they came with a pan of food from Maja. My dormmates looked forward to the visits more than I did because they knew they’d get real food for once. Sadly, Babka Maja passed away four years ago, but her food and her love of family lived on in all of us.
The food part mostly in Janet.
“How is Becca’s little one?” asked Vivie, sitting on the lawn chair beside me and swaying her one-year-old from side to side. His eyes were closing, though I had no idea how he could sleep through the cacophony echoing around us.
“Noah’s good. Cutest baby ever, present company notwithstanding.” Frankie Jr. gave out and his head fell against his mom’s arm. “How does he do that?” I asked.
She glanced down to look at her sleeping son. “I have no idea, but he can sleep anywhere. Last week he slept through the entire church service. We were in the baby room, but since he was so quiet and the other children weren’t, I went back into the sanctuary. He never made a peep.”
I’d be worried if I hadn’t seen him wide awake plenty of times and knew he possessed as much energy as the rest of the brood.
Lowering her voice, she said, “What about you?”
Odd question. “Me? I can sleep well enough. I have more of an issue with light than with noise.”
Vivie laughed. “No, I mean what about you and kids? Don’t you want one of your own?”
With my friends all pairing up, I’d actually given this some thought. “It’s not that I don’t want kids,” I said. “I don’t want a spouse, and that has traditionally been the first step to getting kids. At least in this family.” Because I liked my sister-in-law and she seemed to be the progressive type, I added, “Maybe someday I’ll use a donor and try to have one if I really feel the urge, but that’s highly unlikely.”
“You could adopt,” she suggested. “You’d be a fantastic mom.”
She had to be joking. “That’s doubtful.”
Vivie looked offended on my behalf. “Why would you say that? I’ve watched you with all of these kids.” She tipped her chin in the direction of the heathens taking turns on the inflatable water slide. “No matter what age, you’re great with them. Plus, you’re a teacher. Kids are your life.”
I was way more selfish than she realized. “Not really. I love teaching, but I also love when I’m not teaching. I sleep in on weekends, eat cereal for dinner, and you could probably run a chem lab with samples from my pantry.”
To my surprise, she did not look concerned. “The sleeping in would probably go away, but the rest is whatever. All a kid needs is love and kindness and a good person they know will protect them. You’re one of the best people I know, and the most protective sibling Frankie has.”
Threaten a girl one time and she holds it against you for life.
“Also,” she went on, “who doesn’t love breakfast for dinner? Nothing wrong with that. Oh, and don’t tell your mother, but baby Frankie gets more screen time than she’d approve of. He isn’t watching twenty-four-seven, but when I’m desperate for a half hour to recharge, I load up some YouTube videos and he’s happy as can be.”
Mom was very much against screens these days. She’d put the five of us in front of the television plenty when we were kids, so where this hypocritical stance came from I had no idea.
“Your secret is safe with me.”
“Hey, Linds!” called my brother Joe from the back porch. “Come here a minute.”
“What does he want?” I mumbled.
Vivie grabbed a chip from the paper plate between us. “I don’t know, but better you than me.”
Joe was a bit of a blowhard. The joke among the women in the family was that we wouldn’t be surprised to find his picture next to the word mansplaining in the dictionary. His wife, Gloria, didn’t find the joke funny, so we made sure to mention it as often as possible whenever she was around. Gloria was the female version of my brother, and they both thought a lot of themselves.
The rest of us did not.
Accepting the inevitable, I crossed the yard and climbed the steps up onto the porch. “What’s up?”
“This is Owen,” Joe said, gesturing toward the stranger beside him. “He’s an accountant.”
Unsure what I was supposed to do with this information, I said, “Good for him.”
“Yinz should talk.”