Chapter Twenty-one: A Good Pot of Red Sauce

Closing the restaurant was a big deal. Five years! What was up with my Aunt Connie? The thing was I liked working at the restaurant when my aunt was in a good mood. I liked the way the kitchen smelled of a mixture of garlic and onions when I got there after school. It was a refreshing scent after the smell of mothballs and bleach that permeated the hallways of my high -school. I loved the array of colors in the refrigerator, from the dark green romaine lettuce to the bright red cherry tomatoes, and the salty smell of the parmesan that took my breath away every time I opened the door to the refrigerator. I even liked the dirty grease smell of the alleyway behind the restaurant where I had to carry out the trash every evening. And when times were busy and good, I liked the excitement of the hustle and bustle of the kitchen. Anna at the big counter top cutting the vegetables, laughing at the funny faces Connie would make as she yelled out an order to my Ma, who’d be frying up the calamari or the eggplant. My Nanna would be at the big steel industrial stove, humming a Frank Sinatra song as she stirred her red sauce. There was even a time when my dad worked in the back making his clam sauce.
And then Connie just started drinking and stopped eating and the kitchen cheerfulness was replaced with silence and off-hand, under your breath, snotty comments like, “where the hell is the white wine for the scallops”, and Nanna would say “down your throat”, and then Connie would grumble something about Nanna having wasted her life on a good for nothing, thieving husband. And then there would be silence. And then the customers stopped coming largely due to Connie closing for lunch but, really for me, it all started to unravel when Nanna quit and I became the dishwasher.
The good thing was I wasn’t going to have to wash any more pots and pans. No more dealing with my aunt’s rants and raves. Now, I could get a job after school at the record store near the university. The possibilities were endless, I thought as I walked up my back porch stairs. And then I heard, “If you think you are going to hang around this summer with your new punk rock look and do nothing you got another thing coming.” Mother was sitting at the kitchen table, the phone dangling from her hand. “I’m not punk rock,” I said, running through the kitchen and slamming my bedroom door.
The next day after school I went over to the restaurant. I had been ordered by my mother to help with the packing. She was still pissed at my haircut and was not speaking to me. However, she couldn’t resist saying for the 100th time that I was not going to spend my summer just hanging out on some street corner with my new punk rock look. “Oh, that’s what I intend on doing Mother,” I screamed back. “And in a couple of weeks I am going to shave my whole head, and be a skinhead and carry a rat on my shoulder, and I am even going to steal your weed, and get high all summer long.”
“Are you trying to be funny, Gianna?” she asked, “Because if you are trying to be funny, you aren’t very good at it,” she said as she turned toward her bedroom, “You better watch yourself.”
“Yeah, whatever,” I said, turning my back on her and storming out of the apartment. She didn’t get it at all. She was such a MOTHER!
Aunt Connie was sitting at the front counter, a cigarette in one hand, and a cup of coffee in the other. There were dark circles under her eyes and she looked like she had lost another ten pounds. She looked tired. I leaned over and gave her a kiss on her cheek while taking a seat next to her. The countertop felt sticky under my elbows, so I quietly placed my hands in my lap, waiting for her to say something. I liked her when she wasn’t drinking, which was a rarity these last couple of months.
“What’s up?” She asked without looking at me.
“Nothing much, just the same old, same old.”, I mumbled. I didn’t want to tell Connie about how I thought my mother was from another planet, how she didn’t understand me, or how I really wanted to run away and find a normal family. But then again, what was normal anyway? I mean, if I thought about it, what family is really normal? But I didn’t say anything to Connie because she was the one that was recently causing the stress in the family with her drinking and stupid decision to close the restaurant.
I still had my hat and jacket on from weathering the artic blasts that were coming off the lake as I walked from the EL station.
She took a long drag from her cigarette, exhaling it really fast and still talking with smoke coming out of her mouth. Sliding off her stool she said, “Well, let’s get started.”
“Aren’t you going to open for dinner tonight?”
Finally she looked at me; her eyes were swollen from crying as well as lack of sleep.
“Did you get new glasses? They’re ugly as all shit.”
“Yeah, like two weeks ago.”
“You need something a little more hip to go along with your haircut.”
“Did mother tell you?” I asked, taking off my hat.
“Nope, Sally.”
I followed her back to the kitchen. It looked as if she had already started packing things up, because the salad counter was completely bare where all the utensils used to be. It was obvious from the state of things and the fact that there was no food in the refrigerator that we were not opening for dinner.
Tears started steaming down my face. I took my glasses off and wiped my eyes with the back of my jacket shelve. It didn’t help much. I heard the bell from the front door and heard my Aunt say we were closed as she banged more silverware into the cardboard boxes.
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