Chapter Two #2
The windows of number four were flung open.
The residents weren’t too considerate of their neighbors—that’s what I thought, I’m sorry—because music boomed out.
Some honky-tonk blues thing. Maurice would know, but not me.
I heard the words Rub me raw, oh my God.
It was always a hazard, right? To wait for the door to open.
It was my one brave thing. Well, against my parents’ wishes and dire warnings, I’d gotten myself into this, the right to deliver pizzas like my brothers had, and now I had to face the music—literally, that day.
Doing deliveries took courage, my second-oldest brother, George, told me whenever he was trying to build up my confidence.
See? You’ve got guts. I couldn’t do it. George had a bit of swagger, too, a mini Dad minus the rage, and even he only delivered for a few weeks before quitting.
He’d rather run the kitchen, which could be brutal, hot, and intense.
During one delivery, he told me, a woman answered in a towel, and then dropped it when she reached for the box.
I rang the doorbell. A dog barked his head off, but still, no one answered. How could they even hear with that music? I pounded with my fist. I couldn’t stand around there forever. I had two more deliveries and then my biology test tomorrow.
I heard some negotiating with the dog. Firm talk turning to pleading, then the drag of toenails against the floor. A clang. The volume of the music lowered, still spewing blues guitar. Finally, the door opened.
I dropped the box.
“The fall of Roma?” you said.
“I’m so sorry.” Seriously, that box slipped right from my fingers when I saw you.
I knew it, see? I just knew it, that we’d see each other again.
It was something. And yet, I was shocked.
You were there. I’d spent so much time with the Mars of my imagination that it was almost too intimate, immediately both less and more.
Oh, God, my hands had already been on you in my mind.
We’d spent time together in my head, you telling things to me and me telling things back, honest things.
Jesus. This was so embarrassing. And yet, it was you, and you looked just like I remembered, not diminished at all, which seemed like a miracle, given the way a person can build things up.
Your eyes were just so sweet. So open. And your curly hair had actual ringlets, a word from a Victorian novel.
You wore a faded T-shirt with a comic book–like vintage rocket on it, and crumply chino shorts.
Bare feet, which I saw up close when I picked up that box.
“Hey. I know you,” you said.
“Green Lake Psychiatric Services waiting room,” I said. Way to kill a mood.
“Tangerine skirt.” You remembered what I wore. I blushed.
“Extra-large Roma.” I handed you the box.
Over your shoulder, I saw the dog, medium brown, undetermined origin, peering with interest from a metal baby gate barring his exit from the kitchen.
I’d spent time with you in my mind, so it was like I knew you, and yet, of course I didn’t.
There was so much to find out. A dog, for one.
This house, which seemed like a suitcase you had to sit on to close.
Too much stuffed inside, and bad planning, maybe.
You stared down at the box, with that circle and the triangles. Papa Angelo’s logo. “Are you an Angelo?”
“A Vittorio. Angelo’s his first name. He’s my dad.”
You didn’t respond at all. People usually loved this. They got all excited, but you didn’t. “Vittorio? No kidding. Is he related to Roberto?”
“Roberto?”
“The astronaut.”
I folded my eyebrows down. I had no idea what you were talking about. “I don’t think so. It’s just us. Arthur, George, Maurice?”
You shrugged an apology. You must have just moved here, I realized, if that didn’t ring some sort of bell.
Papa Angelo’s was famous around here. Only ten dine-in tables, and a small patio in summer, and we were booked into the next year.
Best Pizza in every poll in every year since forever.
An Italian family with a pizza place is a cliché, but we were an Italian family with a pizza place, okay?
It was what it was, whether it was convenient for breaking stereotypes or not.
No one needed to know that it was my mother’s sauce recipe and that she was Norwegian and hated pizza, hated all food, pretty much.
“The Arturo, all meat? The Giorgio, sausage with peppers? The Maurizio, a pizza bianca, with a white cream sauce…”
“Oh, right! The menu! Is the Roma a someone?”
“A somewhere. My dad’s dad came from a town nearby. Anguillara Sabazia?”
You looked baffled. Of course you wouldn’t know where that was. No one did, but you better not tell my father that. It was the center of the world, in his mind. “And you are…” You waited.
“Margaret.”
“The Margherita!”
“Right. But my name…It actually means daisy? In Italian?” Ugh! Who cared? But I didn’t want you to think I was named for a tomato. And that song that was playing. God, it was the longest bluesy guitar solo ever.
“Great to meet you. For the second time! I’m Mars.”
Like I could have forgotten that, your name being called out by Dr. Quentin Baleaf, a name that had been in my head for the last few weeks. I had to pretend like it was new. “Oh, wow,” I said, which covered it all.
I thought you were holding out your hand, and oh, man, I almost took it.
I almost slipped mine right into yours, but thankfully some infrequently generous part of me came to the rescue.
You wanted the receipt. I handed it over, and our fingers touched.
My skin met your skin, and it could have been our whole bodies.
And then the music changed.
It changed so drastically that it was startling.
A tender, tender voice began to sing: gravelly, heartbreaking, and beautiful.
Just the singer and his guitar, a ballad from the soul, you could tell that.
Keep me in your heart, he sang. Your eyes met mine.
They stayed there, too long, and there was meaning between us.
Undeniable meaning. It was like our eyes held our own space and the space held our own truths, all of them.
That moment was a promise. I’d never tell Addison or Maurice or Winnifred Evans that.
They’d think it was too much, that I was living in the safe and glorious gardens of my head again, but they’d be wrong.
The song—well, I thought it was about love, but I later learned it was about leaving. It was about loss. Which is also about love. At least when loss breaks you, you’ve loved and loved deeply.
And then the moment was gone. Your mom appeared.
She wasn’t what I expected at all. The idea of your mother or father or even a family hadn’t really occurred to me, but if it had, it wouldn’t have been this particular woman who hurried from your hallway.
A mom with long blond hair, in a tank top with both bra straps showing, waving a single flip-flop.
“Have you seen my shoe? Oh, is the pizza here, finally?”
I turned and fled. I don’t know what came over me.
I think I waved goodbye, though maybe I added that part in later to make myself feel better.
Fleeing is embarrassing. It’s a confession.
My whole body was filled with emotion, and it was more than I could hold.
Already, I was replaying it: the eyes, the eyes, the eyes.
When I got to the top of the dock, I saw the damage. My car door had been flung open, and the extra-large Maurizio and the extra-large Giorgio were both gone. My father was going to kill me. The smiling pizza with the waving hand was also now wearing a condom for a hat. It was maybe an omen.
I hadn’t locked the doors, so it was my fault. I hadn’t been careful enough. Maybe that was an omen, too.