Frankie
“It isn’t funny,” I tell my brother the next time I see him, which happens to be Sunday Gravy at our mother’s house.
“Oh, come on.” Mark gives me the same impish grin he’s been using since he was three years old and got caught with his fingers
in the biscotti jar. “It’s a little funny.”
“It’s not, Mark. Mrs. Baumgarten truly thought I was a parapsychologist who could help with her alleged haunting.”
“Try to see it from my point of view.” Mark assumes the stance of reasonable male business owner dealing with what he clearly
believes to be a hysterical older woman. “I come to your place to drop off some tuna, fresh from my fish purveyor—which I
have to say was very thoughtful of me, considering that this is your busy season and I know you aren’t getting out much—and
this old lady attacks me, claiming she’s been robbed by ghosts. What was I supposed to say?”
“How about that there’s no such thing as ghosts, she’s been robbed by humans, and she needs to call the police?”
“I did tell her that. She didn’t believe me. So I did what you always say you do with your patients: I embraced her reality.”
“By telling her that I’m a parapsychologist?”
“To get her to talk to you, because anyone can tell she needs professional help! I don’t know what you’re so mad about. It
worked, didn’t it?” He glances at his longtime girlfriend—now wife—Dina, who is sitting nearby, looking gorgeous, as always.
“Care to bail me out here?” he asks her. “It was a joke.”
“I believe that a joke is supposed to be funny.” Dina’s dark eyes glitter with good humor and intelligence over the rim of
her wineglass as she takes a sip.
“Jesus, I’m surrounded by ball-breakers.” Mark always pretends it bugs him when Dina “breaks his balls,” but he’s been with
her since high school, so I know that’s one of the things about her he loves most. He grew up with four women who treat him
exactly the same way. “I try to do one nice thing, and this is how I get rewarded. How was the fish, by the way?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I say. “I left it out for that cat I’ve been trying to lure from beneath my porch steps. I guess he liked
it, because later I found the plate licked clean.” Stray cat: 1. Me: 0.
“You left bluefin tuna out for a stray cat?” Mark almost chokes on his beer. “That’s it. You have officially lost it, Frankie. You’ve been alone
in that house for way too long. You don’t have a life anymore! Do you ever even go out, except to swim in that lake or come here? You desperately
need to—”
Dina cuts off my little brother. “Mark.”
“—get laid.”
“Mark!” she cries.
“But—”
“Frankie is doing fine, Mark. You’re the one with the problem. You can’t give someone a gift and then try to dictate how they use it. That’s rude.”
“But bluefin’s more than thirty dollars a pound—”
“Give your sister a break, Mark. She’s had a tough year.”
Dina smiles at me—a smile I recognize. It’s a tender and pitying smile, the kind I give to patients who’ve lost their life
savings to a romance phishing scam.
That’s what I am to my family now, thanks to my divorce: a victim. Who apparently needs to get laid.
Before I can tell Mark exactly what I think about his opinions on my sex life, Dina adds, hastily, “Violet was such a great cat.”
This is an interesting strategy: Distract me from thinking about my divorce by reminding me of the other recent source of pain in my life, the loss of my beloved pet.
Mark seems to catch on to what Dina’s doing. “Yeah, that’s true. Violet was a great cat. I remember when you got her as a little kitten—how old were you then, Frankie, seventeen? You had that cat for
twenty years! What cat lives for twenty years?”
“Most of them, actually, Mark.”
“Not true! That’s a sign of a great pet owner, is what that is. Violet had a great, long life. We should all be as lucky as
Violet. But you could just report this stray cat to Animal Control, and they’ll come out and set up a live trap for it. Or go to the animal shelter
and adopt a new cat, one that’s been socialized and isn’t living under your front porch. That’s how normal human beings usually get pets,
instead of trying to lure them into their homes with expensive tuna.”
This is rich coming from Mark, who not only sports twin sleeves of tattoos and hair that is almost as long as mine, but lives with three beagles and a practicing witch.
I love Dina, a lawyer who dabbles in both the supernatural and culinary arts in her spare time.
I support her belief that practicing witchcraft is a feminist act, since for centuries it was a commonly held opinion that women were more susceptible to corruption by the devil because we’re “weaker” than men, not only physically, but also spiritually and emotionally.
That’s why so many more women than men were executed for being “witches.”
Fortunately only misogynistic weirdos believe this outdated and sexist shit today. But even though I agree with Dina that
practicing witchcraft can be a healthy path toward spiritual growth and even empowerment, I wouldn’t call either her or my brother “normal.”
Which is why I say to Mark, “I’m not certain there is such a thing as ‘normal human behavior.’ But if there is, you’re definitely not qualified to determine what it is.”
He bristles as Dina snorts into her wineglass.
“That’s it!” he cries. “I’m not wasting quality seafood on you again, Frankie, especially if you’re just going to turn around
and give it away to stray cats. And for all you know that old lady is being haunted.”
“She isn’t.” I lift a piece of Mom’s garlic bread and nibble on it. Delicious. “She was robbed. And I can prove it.”
I’m not about to go into the details of everything I’ve been doing to help Mr. and Mrs. Baumgarten get their complete—or prorated
at the very least—refund. But it’s a lot.
“Behind you,” Mom warns as she bustles from the kitchen carrying a casserole dish, lobster-shaped pot holders on either hand.
Mark and Dina leap out of her way. “Look out, this is hot.”
“Hmm, smells good.” Mark reaches to pluck off a piece of perfectly crisped cheese from the side of the dish. “As always.”
Mom slaps his hand away, just as she’d done when he was a little boy and tried the same stunt. “Marco, make yourself useful for a change and get me a trivet to put this on.”
“I’m useful.” Mark grabs a trivet from the sideboard and lays it on the table so Mom can put down the dish. “I made that ziti.”
Our sister Angelica, who has followed Mom out from the kitchen, snorts. “All you did was layer the pasta. Mom made the sauce.”
“Layering the pasta is the hardest part!”
They continue to bicker, just as they have every Sunday for as long as I can remember. Mom started the tradition of Sunday
Gravy shortly after Dad died. During those first tear-soaked, uncertain weeks, Mom decided to leave the running of the restaurant
to the weekend staff on Sundays because, she said, “Sunday is a day of rest.”
To Mom, “resting” means putting a big pot of homemade tomato sauce on the stove, along with meatballs, Italian sausage, pork,
and whatever other cuts of meat happen to be around the house, allowing it to simmer all day, then requiring all four of us—myself,
younger brother Mark, and younger sisters Angelica and Caterina—to show up and eat it with her, no matter our schedules. She
calls this Sunday Gravy. It’s her way, she says, of honoring Dad, who worked himself into an early grave trying to make the
restaurant a success and life better for us.
Twenty years on, Mark, Angie, Cat, and I are still expected to show up every Sunday for dinner at 4 p.m., so it’s more like lunch . . . only now we’re also expected to bring
our friends, children, spouses, and even romantic partners . . .
Those of us who still have one, anyway.
“Hey, Frankie.” Angie’s husband Troy has come striding into the dining room from Mom’s den, where he’s been watching a ball game. “What’s going on out there by your place? We’ve had a ton of complaints recently of trash being dumped at the Seat.”
The Seat—or Satan’s Seat, its proper name—is in the middle of Center Island, directly across the lake from my house. It’s
a pointy rock formation that looks like a throne the Devil might sit on (if one believed in the Devil). I can’t see the Seat
from my back deck—or even on my daily morning swims to the island’s shore and back—because it’s hidden from view by a thick
forest of trees, even in the winter when all the leaves have dropped.
That’s probably why the Seat has been a haunt for local teens for as long as I can remember. It’s a secluded area they can
easily boat to, then have sex and/or get drunk and high far from the disapproving eyes of parents . . . but not from law enforcement
like my brother-in-law Troy, a ranger with Fish and Wildlife.
“It’s been a real mess this summer,” he goes on with relish. “Lots of partying. We’ve been finding empty wine bottles and
beer cans every single day.”
“How is that different from any other summer?” I ask. Center Island is beautiful, but all the illegal camping there has been
a continuous problem for law enforcement. Not as big a problem as the noise pollution coming from Ash’s house, in my opinion.
But having a brother-in-law in Fish and Wildlife has so far been completely unhelpful in that regard.
Troy shrugs again and takes a swig of beer. “Like I said, there’s more of ’em than usual. A lot more. Not to mention all the holes.”
“What holes?”
“Someone’s been digging holes all over the island, like they’re looking for something.”
“Are they fairy holes, Daddy?” Seven-year-old Portia, Troy and Angie’s oldest daughter, has wandered in from the den with her little sister, Bianca. Both of them have evidently been listening to our conversation with great interest.
“Fairy hole?” Troy looks momentarily confused. It’s not often his job—which usually consists of fining RV owners for illegally
dumping wastewater—involves mythological creatures. “What’s a fairy hole?”
“Where fairies live!” Portia’s tone suggests that she thinks her father very silly for not knowing this. “Fairies dig them