“Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom. Mom.”
I put down the spoon I am using to stir the tomato sauce and turn to look at Nico, who does not do “patient” very well.
He’s wearing the same jeans and T-shirt from his Little League practice today, even though I asked him to change when we got home because they were pretty dirty. But you have to pick your battles sometimes. He’s been on the team for two weeks, and the coach told me he’s one of the star players so far. And I especially liked the way all the other kids cheered for him when he came to bat.
“Mom.” Nico’s messy black hair flops in his eyes. “Where’s Dad? He said he’d practice with me tonight.”
“Maybe he meant after dinner?”
He juts out his lower lip. “But I want to practicenow. Dad said he’d show me how to throw a curveball!”
I raise my eyebrows. “He knows how to do that?”
“Yeah! It’s amazing. You think it’s going to go right, but then it goes left, then it goes up, then it goes down, and then it goes right again!”
I don’t know if this gravity-defying curveball is real or not. Nico hero-worships his father, to the point where I’m sure he imagines that curveball could go backward through time if that’s what Enzo wanted it to do. Ada is the same way—both kids think Enzo walks on water. And I’m just an ordinary mom who makes subpar Italian food. But that’s okay. Being ordinary has always been an impossible dream for me, so I’m happy to have achieved it. As far as I’m concerned, if my kids think I’m boring, that’s great.
“I’m sure he’ll be home soon,” I say. “And we’re going to have dinner in about half an hour.”
Nico crinkles his nose. “What are you making?”
“It’s your dad’s favorite: pasta alla Norma.”
“Can I have macaroni and cheese instead?”
If given a choice, Nico would eat macaroni and cheese for every meal, including breakfast. Ada would too. “I’ll set aside some spaghetti for you with butter and cheese.”
Nico seems happy with this compromise. “Can I practice by myself in the yard until dinner?”
I nod, thrilled that he’s satisfied to practice out in the yard without either me or Enzo needing to participate. Nico happily darts out to the backyard so that he can get as dirty as humanly possible before it’s time for dinner.
And now back to the pasta alla Norma.
The recipe says to sauté the eggplant until it gets brown, but they are not getting brown. They just seem to be getting mushyand disintegrating. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, because I’m a pretty good cook. It’s like I can’t figure out this one dish that I have to get right for Enzo. I mean, I don’t have to, but…
He always seems to like the food I cook for him. When we sit down at the dinner table and he sees the plate of food in front of him, he always immediately leans over and gives me a kiss on the cheek. It’s like a little way of thanking me for making him dinner, even if it’s something simple like chicken and rice. But I’ve never seen him react to a dish like he did to that one he ate at Suzette’s the other night.
What am I doing wrong? Why won’t the stupid eggplant just get brown already?
Crash!
My head jerks up from the stove at the sound of shattering glass. My son is the world’s expert at breaking things, so I am very familiar with that sound. And I’m very familiar with the panicked look on his face when he runs back in the house, clutching his baseball bat.
“Mom,” he says. “I had an accident.”
What. A. Surprise.
I follow him out to the backyard, and I’m expecting to look up to find one of our bedroom windows shattered, but the reality is much worse. There is a broken window, but it’s not in our house. It’s next door.
He broke one of Suzette’s windows. Great. He hangs his head. “I’m sorry, Mom.”
“Don’t say it to me,” I tell him. “You’re going to say it to Mrs. Lowell.”
And I’m probably going to have to say it too. Because I have a feeling that Suzette is not the kind of person who shrugs off a broken window.
This is bad. Very, very bad. I don’t know how on earth we are going to pay for this.
As I march Nico to the house next door, he acts like I’m leading him to the electric chair. I’m not excited about this either, but he’s beingreallydramatic. You would think with the number of times he’s broken something, he would be used to apologizing for it.
