by Michelle Reale

Every Sunday after Mass, Katrina and her parents would walk the three blocks from St. Anne's to Nonna's house. Sundays at Nonna's were, like Mass, "non-negotiable." Katrina had been born amidst a maelstrom of resistance although she would have never called it that. She didn't have a word for what Sundays felt like, a strange balance between pleasure and pain. Sundays, in one way or another, always turned out to be a showcase for everyone's discontent.

As the only child of Nick and Margaret Manero, Katrina enjoyed the innocent pleasure of being fussed over by her father's family, Nonna in particular. Katrina's birth seemed to forgive, for a time, a multitude of sins. The sins of Margaret. What those sins were, exactly, Katrina never could say. She knew, instinctively though, that not every sin could be forgiven (and it seemed as though her mother either committed one or was the victim of one). One morning after church Katrina had overheard Aunt Philomena talking in her trademark husky voice, as she flicked cigarette ash into Nonna's porcelain sink. "Things will never change," she said. "Marge came into this family kickin' and screamin' and it's Nick and that kid who suffer." Katrina thought that kind of talk, which she overheard now and then, was because her mother wasn't Catholic. Or Italian either.

"Where do you want me to seeeervvee you, I feel you calling my name..." Katrina sang without inhibition as they approached Elk Street. It was the last song she'd heard in Mass that morning accompanying the procession to Communion. Katrina was much the opposite of her introverted mother. The extremes of personalities were not lost on Nick, since his taciturn wife and overly exuberant daughter conferred on him the status of "perfectly normal," whatever that meant, and he certainly had to wonder. Nick would promenade down Elk Street to calls of "Yo! Nick!" and various other greetings, enjoying the dubious status of a man who had never left the neighborhood where he was born and raised. Still singing, Katrina keeps her head down while skipping over the cracks in the sidewalk. Once in a while Margaret tips her head back to bask in the sun like a sleepy cat and fingers the gold cross hanging around her neck, the only jewelry besides the thin wedding band that she ever wears.   

Approaching Nonna's house, Margaret clasps her arms around her waist as if bracing herself for what is to come. Stepping over the threshold of Nonna's front door, Katrina grabs Nonna around the waist and buries her face into her soft, bulbous belly. Nick pecks his mother like a disinterested baby bird no longer hungry. Nonna reaches up to brush the bristles on her only son's cheek. A Mona Lisa-like smile adorns Nonna's face as Margaret steps into the door. Nonna and Margaret never exchange greetings. Today is no exception. As a sort of tacit agreement between the two, Margaret will endure the visit like she has every Sunday for nine years. She looks at the old lady, in soft felt slippers, and black wool skirt (in such heat!) with a navy blue shell and wonders to herself, "My God Almighty, how much longer has the old lady got?"

"Did you pray for me, Treasure?" Nonna asks Katrina, to whom prayer is like wishing on a star. She takes pink, tender skin between thumb and forefinger and squeezes hard. "Nonna, you ask me that every time! Yes, yes, three Hail Mary's and an Our Father!" Nonna doesn't look appeased yet. "Did you pray for your Pop Pop, God rest his soul, and your good, good father?" Katrina nods furiously. "Your mother, too?" And then: "Pray for your mother, too, Katrina, don't forget, your mother needs prayers, too."

Nick thinks "same old shit." Already comfortably uncomfortable, he shifts in his father's old chair and sighs heavily, aiming the remote control at the small television his mother never watches.

"Mmmmmhhmmmmm," Katrina obediently replies from the small and overheated kitchen. She dips a chunk of Italian bread in the hot and bubbling gravy. She is resorting now to stock comments and good girl reactions. Appeasing Nonna and minimizing humiliation to her mother is a subconscious Sunday duty. But she's not in the mood for duty today. Her loyalties probably lie on the wrong side, and most Sundays tend to feel uncomfortable like a shoe you outgrew a year ago but are still made to wear.

Margaret wasn't expected to help in the kitchen at Nonna's. This was something that was made clear to her from the beginning. There was nothing to do but wait for the early afternoon meal. Nick was occupying the only comfortable chair in the small living room, what used to be his father's chair, leaving the plastic slip-covered couch for Margaret. She detests the feeling of her sweating legs, and peels them awkwardly off the plastic with a strange noise that makes Nick turn his head a few times. She stares at their wedding photo that Nonna keeps on a small shelf above the television. In a borrowed white shift with eyelet on the bottom, a younger Margaret clutches a small bouquet of fairy roses, eyes closed to the sun but smiling nonetheless. Nick is young and handsome with his chin jutting up, showing no shame over his getting his girlfriend pregnant before marriage. Instead, a look of achievement, his arm draped around Margaret's shoulder, uneasily it seems to her now. Marrying Nick in Church, something of paramount importance to him, was easy enough once she agreed to Monsignor Sullivan's directive that any and all children (including the one that she was carrying) would be raised Catholic, even though she wasn't. The Monsignor stressed the importance of being a "good" and "faithful" wife though the definition of "good" he left blithely undefined. She laughs to herself now, because it should have been obvious to her. She was ridiculously obsequious to Monsignor, who nodded and smiled at Margaret all throughout her premarital "interview," but disapproved of the union anyway and made no secret of it to the largely Italian immigrant parishioners at St. Anne's. Margaret felt the marriage judged harshly before it even began. She was aware of the stares and whispers of people who felt that Nick, good and obedient son that he had always been, was really getting the short end of the stick, settling as it seemed, for "damaged" goods. He wasn't exactly an innocent bystander, but of course in the neighborhood - his neighborhood - they didn't see it that way. "Poor shanty Irish," they'd said. "And godless to boot," she'd overheard. "Not even the good sense to be Irish Catholic."

"Marge, for chrissake, make an effort. Go in and see if she needs you to do something. Stop sitting there like some goddamn cigar store Indian." Nick often spoke this way to her, not out of any kind of malice, which is what it sounded like to other people, but because he wanted Margaret to be the right kind of wife. More importantly (and he hated to admit this to himself) he needed Margaret to be the right kind of daughter-in-law. Nick realized that this said more about himself than about Margaret, but it was something he didn't allow himself to dwell on.    

Margaret snapped back to the present and almost smiled, conscious of Nick's irritation. She was ignoring it. Today, anyway. She knows that every once in a while he makes a gratuitous remark, solely for his mother's benefit. It's a game they play, and everyone is guilty of complicity. What would happen, Margaret thought, if everyone's real feelings, long festering, should bubble to the surface?

When Nick was introduced to Margaret at a St. Anne's basement dance when they were both 18, he was intrigued, as most Italian boys tend to be, by her distinctly non-Italian looks: light and fair, freckled delicate arms and hair the color of a copper penny. He'd never seen her before, and thought that she was probably a member of St. Patrick's in the predominantly Irish side of town. She smoked her cigarette outside with some other girls, delicately blowing smoke sideways, shy-like, a lock of hair falling over one eye. He was surprised that she let him kiss her that night, run his dark hands over the creamy white skin on her body. He cupped her crotch through her short skirt and gave a gentle rub. He waited for the familiar protest, the stiffening of limbs, her soft white hands on his wrists pushing him away. Instead, he saw a film of sweat on her chest, like a fine, sparkly mist under the florescent lights of the parking lot and felt the arch of her back and the tilt of her head. A soft moan, like a baby and he felt like he owned her, felt almost like he could love her and protect her.

Walking home in the evening heat, they shared a cigarette and he watched carefully how she strolled through his neighborhood so slowly, unashamedly, and with such seeming disinterest. For days afterwards, they saw each other compulsively. She would come to this house when his parents and sister went out. He would lay her down on the plastic slip covered couch and spread her white, thin thighs and enter her roughly, hurting her on more than one occasion. Once he laughed loudly when she slid right off and fell onto the floor. The two of them used to joke that clean up was easy, just a quick wipe up with a paper towel. Immediately after, Margaret would need to escape the confines of the small living room. Escape the crucifix and votive candles and old family photos that make her feel, perversely, like a lesser human being. In this small room evidence of family was all around. Clan. Generations of men fulfilling family duty, women falling easily into the prescribed roles of wife, mother, dutiful daughter-in-law, a goal she once aspired to, the lure of belonging being more desirous than the rough and furtive sex that Nick offered. Legitimacy. When her mother learned of her upcoming marriage to Nick and the pregnancy that precipitated what had seemed inevitable anyway, she sneered. "And what do YOU bring to the table, Miss Margaret?" And Margaret, at only eighteen, would have to admit that she brought empty hands to the table, but never wanted to believe the accusations, all around that she brought an empty heart as well.

Nick's mother enjoyed Margaret's unease and her misguided attempts to "take care" of her husband. "Clumsy Margaret," Nonna's eyes seemed to say, "Sad Margaret," and once even "Stupid Margaret," said out loud. Nick's love for his mother was too great, too complicated, but most of all too conditional to protest her treatment of his wife. He, too, felt Margaret's stupidity at times, but like most men in his family, he was a married man and overlooked her shortcomings unless they affected him directly or interfered with his comfort. And he intended to stay married, had grown to love Margaret, the mother of his daughter, had moments like sparks of bright light that reminded him of what attracted him to her in the first place, though he managed to fail to express this in any meaningful way. His mother did exactly the opposite. Her loving care was virtually seamless from the time of his marriage to Margaret. She reveled in her daughter-in-law's total lack of prowess in the kitchen and worried out loud to her daughter Philomena that Nick would never eat properly again. Philomena, used to her mother's intrusive ways, would laugh as she would watch her mother tote pastas, stews, meats roasted in wine, soups, and her bread, the "bread of life" Nick always called it, to Margaret's doorstep. Margaret never objected, not that it would matter anyway. She felt a growing resentment towards her mother-in-law's impunity.That she lavished attention on Katrina was a source of comfort to Margaret, happy that something so loved and so accepted by her mother-in-law was something that came out of her body.This was her offering to this family. Her only chance of belonging.

Sitting on the plastic coated couch, television droning on, and hearing the familiar sounds of her mother-in-law and Katrina in the kitchen, Margaret thinks of her father-in-law, gone now for five years, but perhaps Margaret's staunchest ally. Joe was a big man with a big heart always with a hug and a kind word for her. He made Sundays bearable. With Joe gone Nick slid into the role of surrogate husband to his mother, something that she imagines Joe would be appalled by, but what difference does it make now?

When Nonna yells "Ready!" Nick rises from his heat and TV-induced stupor and heads for the small kitchen where they've eaten since Joe died, away from the dining room where Joe had seemed so regal at the head of the table. Margaret extricates herself, always with that haunting peel of noise, from the plastic slipcovers and tentatively enters the kitchen, bringing the tote bag that she carried to church with her.    

Katrina carefully fills glasses with water, as Nonna fills each plate with pasta, spooning extra gravy on the top of each. Salad with vinegar and oil is placed in the center and though Margaret would like some now, she knows that salad is for after the meal. She thinks how hot it is, as the steam from her pasta scorches her face. Nonna, oblivious to the heat, watches with unconcealed delight as Nick digs in, looking like a pig at the trough, food always being his distraction from discomfort. Katrina is happily twirling her extra long spaghetti, but is momentarily distracted watching her mother reach into her tote bag. Katrina, curious and good- natured, asks with excitement, "Something for me?" Confusion and then mild shock registers on Katrina's face as she watches Margaret reach inside her tote bag and remove a Ziploc freezer bag with three pieces of store-bought Italian bread. Stunned, Nick stops eating for a split second, and Margaret thinks she sees him blink his eyes slowly at first, then rapidly. Nonna is blowing softly on a twirled forkful of pasta unaware that everyone has stopped eating. Katrina and Nick watch as Margaret, in a determined and pointed gesture, reaches over and dabs her bread into the gravy on the side of Nick's plate. Nonna looks up and immediately sees the bag of bread on her Sunday table. Foreign bread, bread that is unwelcome, traitor bread, the female equivalent of emasculation. Margaret eats for what seems like an eternity, but is only a minute or two, without speaking a word to anyone.

For Margaret, leaving Nonna's on Sunday is the best part of the day: she is satisfied that she has fulfilled her duty. Today, Margaret looks expectantly towards salvaging what is left of the afternoon. Nonna, betrayed, seethes with an uncharacteristic silence. Margaret leaves the house first, followed by Katrina and then Nick. Nonna grabs onto Nick and pulls him down towards her, and spits words into in his ear: "Take her home and beat her. Beat her good!"

Nick looks ahead and sees Margaret striding slowly down Elk Street, with the disinterested gait that so puzzled and attracted him long ago. He feels a pang for his wife, watching the back of her coppery head with a few strands of gray lying limp on her shoulders. 'To honor and protect' invades his head, an unbidden phrase. Heading toward home and anxious to get there quickly, he grabs Katrina's hand to hurry her along.

With a backward glance toward the house Katrina looks at her Nonna's face, contorted in a malignant rage, with spittle in the edges of her mouth. She has to turn quickly. Katrina feels, for the first time ever, the relief of just going home.

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