Chapter Sixteen: A Good Pot of Red Sauce

The storm was brewing amidst the aromas coming from the platters of food being laid out on the tables. Everyone was complimenting my mother and Nanna for a lovely meal as they heaped the food upon their plates. Mother told me to take my cape off and then handed me a plate of fried calamari and told me that since I decided to dress like a waiter for Christmas Eve I was going to be one for the evening. I thought of flipping her off but I was way too exposed, so I mumbled the appropriate expletive.
I made my way to the living room. It was hard to see through the cloud of cigarette smoke which had already formed. Thank goodness, someone opened a window. I still don’t understand how my family (not my father’s side) can eat and smoke at the same time. My third cousin Tina has a unique way of maneuvering a cigarette in her mouth. She talks, drinks and eats without ever removing the nasty thing protruding from her mouth; only taking it out to flick the ashes on my mother’s good china. I set the fried calamari at the first table where my Papa was sitting with Uncle Leo. He too was wearing a red silk blouse; two peas in a pod, both seeing who can tell the better story—I should be serving them a plate full of bull-shit, not the fried calamari!
Aunt Connie was sitting with Aunt Stella, not touching her food. I went over to her and asked if she was alright. She just told me to get her another drink, rum and Coke. I had noticed that she was losing a lot of weight, I told this to Nanna when I made my way back to the kitchen.
“She doesn’t eat, only drinks, what do you expect?”
The thing was I liked my Aunt Connie despite her problem. I was kind of feeling bad that I had called her a bitch, even though she was most of the time, but I did like her in a weird way. It was kind of a love-hate relationship. I loved her because she was my mother’s sister and she was part of the family, but I hated her because she was mean to my Nanna always picking a fight with her and calling her mean words like, whore and bitch, and then telling her she was a bad mother because she married my Papa. I felt bad for her as I set her drink down. I made it mostly with coke.
No one mentioned the restaurant. Everyone knew that it was on the verge of closing down because of my mother’s big mouth. She had called everyone to tell them that things were not looking good. Everyone knew except my Papa that is.
Back in the kitchen, Nanna was scooping her red sauce with eel over the pasta. She handed the bowl to me.
“Hey when am I going to eat?” I asked my mother.
“When you go put the red dress on that your Nanna bought you.”
“Real funny Ma”, I said as I made my way back to the living room.
Finally, Nanna and my mother decided to get out of the kitchen and take a seat. All the food was laid out, the lobster had been served, and Carla, my cousin was telling me about the Duran Duran concert she went to last summer, making me feel all jealous. I heard a shout and the sound of broken glass coming from the living room. Papa was yelling that my aunt Connie was a good for nothing blah, blah, blah, while he did his hand gesture, the one that looks as if he is flicking dirt from under his chin. I guess someone had told him that Aunt Connie was closing down the restaurant because right then he said, “I invested so much Goddamn money into that shit hole.” Uncle Leo was trying to calm him down by telling him to take a seat. Papa is standing up and looks as if he is going to throw one of my mother’s expensive crystal wine glasses at my Aunt. The glass that had broken was just a regular water glass. And then, there is another crash. Aunt Connie falls off her seat and lays passed out on the Oriental rug. As I stood in the hallway entrance, I said a little prayer and asked God not to let her vomit on it, as I would most likely be the one cleaning it up.
Papa continues to wave his hands around a little more and then says he is leaving. Uncle Leo leaves as well, and Nanna runs over to Aunt Connie. Mother is in the kitchen crying. Father’s way to console her is to say, “So this is why we max out our credit cards every holiday for this bullshit drama?”
I went back to my seat and continued to eat my half lobster because there was no way I was going to let a good meal go to waste regardless of the family drama around me.