Mary laughed, incredulous.
“Now, we have a running gag. Dom and my sisters are in on it, too. He gives me Cher and Celine Dion CDs for Christmas. My sister took me and my mother to the Barbra Streisand concert last year. They think it’s a riot. I did, too. Until now.”
Mary blinked. “What about when you bring home a girl? Someone you’re seeing?”
“I say they’re my friends, because they are, and she assumes it’s platonic.”
“And when it gets serious?”
“I haven’t met anyone I wanted to get serious about, yet.”
Mary tried to wrap her mind around it. “The funny thing is, I only went to dinner with you because I thought you were gay.”
“Oh no. Are you seeing someone?”
“No, but I’m really sick of fix-ups.”
“Perfect.” Anthony raised his glass, his easy smile returning. “To no more fix-ups.”
Mary took a big swig of wine, suddenly stiffening, and Anthony met her eye in the candlelight.
“So you didn’t know this was a date?” he asked softly.
“Uh, no.”
“It is, and I hope it’s not the last.”
Mary’s mouth went dry.
“Is that okay with you?”
No. Yes. No way. Sure. Mary felt a warm rush inside, but it had to be the alcohol. If Anthony was straight, her makeup needed freshening. She set down her glass. “Order for me, please,” she said, getting up and grabbing her bag just as her phone started ringing. She stepped away, dug in her bag for her cell, and slid it from its case while she fled to the ladies’ room.
“Yes?” she said into the phone, on the fly.
“Mare?” It was her father.
“Pop, hi.” Mary pushed the swinging door into a tiny ladies’ room. “Sorry I didn’t call you back. I spoke with Bernice.”
“That’s not why I’m calling.” Her father sounded panicky. “Can you come home right away?”
“What’s the matter? Are you okay? Is Ma?”
“She’s fine. Just get home. Hurry.”
Mary’s heart tightened in her chest.
“Hurry.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
T he sun ran for cover behind the flat asphalt roofs, and Anthony pulled the Prius in front of her parent’s rowhouse. “I’ll park and be right back,” he said, and Mary thanked him. She got out of the car in front of her two older neighbor ladies, who were standing close together on the sidewalk. They turned and looked at her, oddly hard-eyed in their flowered dresses and worn cardigans.
Mary ran up her parents’ steps. “Hey, Mrs. DaTuno. Mrs. D’Onofrio.”
“Hmph.” Mrs. D’Onofrio sniffed, uncharacteristically chilly, but Mary didn’t have time to deal. She shoved her key in the front door and hurried inside, where a small crowd filled the dining room.
“You’re just in time,” her father said, upset.
“Dad, where’s Ma?” Mary asked, and just then, the sound of a commotion came from the kitchen.
“Oh, sweet Jesus!” Her father took her arm and hustled her back through the crowd, as fast as he could on bad knees and slip-ons. They all frowned at Mary as she passed, but she didn’t understand why.
Her father was saying, “Thank God we got the heads-up from Cousin Joey. That’s when I called you.”
“It’s okay, Pop, I’ll handle it,” Mary said, but when they reached the kitchen, she wasn’t so sure.
An angry Mrs. Gambone stood on one side of the kitchen table, an older version of Trish, too much makeup, deep crows’-feet, and tiny wrinkles fanning out from her lips. Stiff black curls trailed down the back of her long black jacket, which she wore with black stirrup pants and black half-boots. Mary’s mother stood near the oven, distinctly Old World with her puffy hair, smock apron, and flowered housedress, and she held a clear plastic bag in her hand. Christening dresses blanketed the kitchen table, as if she’d been interrupted while she was wrapping them.
“Mrs. Gambone?” Mary asked, and Trish’s mother turned on Mary, her dark eyes flashing.
“You!” Mrs. Gambone said in a chain-smoker’s rasp. “What do you have to say for yourself? You let that monster take my daughter.”
“No, that’s not true.” Mary felt stung, and her mother stepped forward, shaking her fist holding the plastic bag and defending her daughter in rapid Italian.
“Don’t you dare talk to our daughter that way,” her father said, a running translation. “This is our home.”
“Don’t talk to me that way!” Mrs. Gambone yelled back, straining her voice and setting her neck veins bulging. “You’re scum, Mare, pure scum!”
“Mary’s a big shot now!” a man shouted from the dining room, and the crowd murmured in angry assent. All that was missing were the burning torches, and Mary felt like Frankenstein with a law degree. If she wasn’t Responsible For The Neighborhood, somebody forgot to tell the Neighborhood.
“Let me explain,” Mary began, but Mrs. Gambone cut her off with a hand chop.
“My daughter came to you for help. You coulda helped her but you didn’t! Now she’s gone!”
“I wanted to help her,” Mary almost cried out, as the words hit home.
“She knew he was gonna kill her and now he did. She’s gone!” Mrs. Gambone’s lower lip trembled. “I told her to go to you. She didn’t know what to do. She was too scared to leave him. But you didn’t lift a finger! You didn’t care what happened to her!”
“Mrs. Gambone, I did care. I wanted her to go to court and I went to the Roundhouse today-”
“Yeah, right, and you yelled at Giulia because she went on TV! She’s tryin’ to save my baby’s life. Why didn’t you help my Trish? If you had done something, she’d be home now. All safe.”
No, no. Mary felt stricken. It was true. Once she set aside her lawyerly rationalizations, the fact remained that she was the one Trish had gone to for help.
“She called me, last night, but I musta missed the call. She left a message, she said he was gonna kill her, she said where she was, but it was all static.”
“What?” Mary couldn’t process it fast enough. “Please, slow down and tell me what happened.”
“What do you care?” Mrs. Gambone shot back. “I told the police, they know. She called me for help. She said he was with her, he was going to kill her. Then he grabbed the phone. She didn’t have time to talk, she said he was comin’ right back in the room.”
“What time did she call you?”
“It was around ten o’clock she called, but I didn’t get her message till today. I must not a heard the phone, sometimes it’s weird, it don’t get messages right away.” Mrs. Gambone’s voice broke, anguished. “I came here because I wanted your family to know what you did to my daughter. She’s all I had, all I had, and he took her! She’s gone!” Mrs. Gambone’s eyes welled up. “My beautiful, beautiful baby. My only baby, my little girl.”
Mary felt her heart break. Her father, her mother, and the crowd fell silent, stunned by the depth of Mrs. Gambone’s agony, raw and unvarnished, echoing in the quiet house.
“Can you know…what that feels like? To be a mother, and your baby…your baby’s gone?” Mrs. Gambone finally broke down, and her ladyfriends supported her as she sagged, still trying to speak. Suddenly, she banged her fist on the kitchen table in sheer frustration, and the force of her hand jostled a cup of coffee sitting next to the christening dresses. Before anybody could stop it, the cup tipped over and coffee spilled on the pristine white dresses.
“No!” Mary yelped.
“Dio!” Her mother plucked the tiny dresses from the table, but it was too late. The espresso soaked instantly into the soft cotton, even as she hurried them to the sink. Mary sprang to her side, twisting on the cold water.
“I didn’t mean it…I’m sorry,” Mrs. Gambone said, her tears subsiding.