When my grandmother had originally announced she was moving back to Rome to spend her golden years with her sisters, everyone was overjoyed for her. After all, Nonna spent most of her life raising the six of us after we lost our dad. Now that we were grown, she deserved an adventure of her own.
It made sense forthemto be happy. My siblings had all graduated out of the little brown house on Hughes Street.
Lea had her brood in Belmont, the first of us to step out.
Matthew had a life in Boston, complete with a new wife, stepdaughter, and the little girl they were about to have.
Kate had her vintage clothing shop in Riverdale and too many new celebrity clients to count.
Frankie was raising her family in London with Xavier, the actualdukeshe had married last year.
And Marie, only ten months older than me, was currently attending culinary school in Paris.
Which left me, the family fuckup who still lived at home, with little more than a bright smile and a tight ass, to find her way into the world.
If I were a baby bird, I wouldn’t just be kicked out of the nest. I’d be hurled.
“I wish I could say I’m surprised.” Lea’s voice took on that almost metallic ting of her particular brand of scolding, like a triangle that never stopped ringing. “But you knew this was coming. Nonna booked her ticket a month ago, and the new tenants signed a lease. Don’t you have a calendar on that phone of yours? At least some way to keep track of things? Honestly, Jo, when are you finally going to grow up?”
The question pierced, just like every time she asked it.
“I don’t know. When are you going to stop being such a freaking nag?” I retorted. “I’m at a doctor’s appointment, and it slipped my mind. Shit happens. Besides, it’s not like I can lift heavy boxes with this garbage knee.”
I swung the knee on the exam table as if she could see it, making the paper under my leg crinkle like laughter.
“No, but you could at least do the bare minimum. Watch the kids while the rest of us move boxes, maybe. I can’t exactly do much right now with these four running around me.”
“No one told her and Mike to procreate like rabbits,” I mumble to the smiling woman in a poster for vaginal rejuvenation surgery on the other wall.
“What was that?”
I sighed and tipped my face toward the light on the ceiling. I grinned. Finally, a place where boob lights made aesthetic sense.
“Joni! Are you even paying attention?”
Immediately, I sat up straight, yanked out of my daydream like I was still that kid in the fifth grade who couldn’t pay attention from the back row. “Yes. Look. I’m…I’m sorry, but I really can’t come today. Tom threw me an extra shift, which starts at five, and since, as you pointed out, I’m going to be homeless in three days, I need the money. I’ll come up tomorrow, I promise.”
There was another heavy sigh before something crashed in the background. “Dammit, Pete! Tommy, I told you to watch your brothers!”
I held the phone away from my ear while Lea finished berating her eldest. Better him than me, I supposed. Tommy was a sweet kid, but sometimes I thought she expected a little much of a ten-year-old. Then again, the same and more had always been expected of her—including taking care of me.
“Tomorrow,” Lea repeated once she was back on the line. I could hear the warbling of Lupe, her youngest, in the background. She had maybe two minutes left on this call. “And for Mass.”
I huffed. “On Saturday? Come on, I don’t want to go to Mass two days in a row?—”
“Tomorrow. And we are taking Nonna to Mass. She wants to go one last time with us, so we’re doing it.”
I huffed. “Fine, sure. I’ll be there tomorrow.”
“For Mass too.”
“Oh my God, yes, I got it! Yes, for Mass too.”
“And then you’ll help cleanandget your things. Your room’s the last one, Jo. We need your stuff out.”
With every task she threw at me, I felt like a sunflower at the end of fall, ready to wilt straight into the ground. I hated it whenshe did this—piled on the tasks. I wasn’t going to remember all of them anyway, and they just made everything feel that much more undoable.
But Lea didn’t hang up. She’d wait me out. She always did.
