Rococo Read Free

up.” I try not to snap. “These are historical terms we use in the design field. Please respect them. Make an effort.”
    Toot shrugs as she pries open a large Tupperware cookie saver and carefully lifts iced coconut cookies out onto a plate. “I’ve got so much on me, B.” She breaks off a corner of a blue frosted cookie and eats it, then hands me a pink cookie. Soon our blood sugar reaches a comfortable high and we relax into the soft booth like spoons in cake batter. Toot pours hot coffee into two red-and-white polka-dot mugs. She scoots the sugar bowl and creamer toward me and places a small silver spoon on a red-and-white gingham napkin next to the mug.
    The crease between her eyes relaxes as she takes a larger piece of cookie and dunks it into her coffee. I can’t count the number of times in my life I have sat at my sister’s kitchen table and dunked something sweet into a mug of something hot. The ritual always brings me great comfort. Toot picks up the cookie like it’s the Sacred Host at Mass and says, “After the new year, I’m giving these up for good.”
    “It’s April.”
    Toot chews. “I need a few months to practice.”
    My sister has delicate hands for her size. Her given name, Nicolina, means “Little Nicky,” but I don’t remember her ever being small. I remember my mother taking us shopping for bathing suits when I was little, and Toot weeping behind a muslin curtain, saying, “The size sixteen is too tight.” Of course, I was young during the final sputtering of the Great Depression. The girls wore one-piece black wool bathing suits to the shore, and the only embellishments were buttons. Toot had her heart set on a boat-neck maillot she’d seen Myrna Loy wearing poolside in
Modern Screen
magazine. No one had the heart to tell her that the only thing she had in common with Myrna Loy was the occasional freckle. My mother, God bless her, kept steering her toward the old-lady styles and away from the Young Sophisticates, knowing that Toot wouldn’t fit into the fashionable suits. Toot kept arguing, telling Ma, “I’m young! I want a girlish suit!” Finally my mama lost patience and said, “
Non puoi uccidere una mosca con un cannone,
” which, loosely translated, means, “You can’t stuff an olive with a drumstick.”
    “Good, huh?” Toot watches me chew. I give her an okay sign with my fingers so as not to choke on the crumbs. “So are you with me on the teeth?”
    “Whatever you want to do is fine.”
    “It’s not just cosmetic, B. Though, at my age, you look for little avenues of self-improvement even if they lead you up a blind alley of ugly. I wish it were just naturalism—”
    “Narcissism.”
    “Uh-huh. But it’s medical. I can’t chew. I have to chop my salad so fine it’s like soup. What the hell, maybe I’ll lose a couple of pounds.”
    It occurs to me that my sister has grown larger over the years out of necessity. Without a man around, she had to stay the size of her sons to keep order in this crazy home. I did all I could to help, but it wasn’t enough. My nephews, Nicholas and Anthony, are, sadly,
gavones.
Yet there’s a ray of hope: Her youngest son, my namesake, Bartolomeo the Second (whom we call Two), seems to have my artistic eye. He’s a theater major at Villanova.
    “Well, who are you going to?”
    “Dr. Pomerance. The man is a genius. They say he did Hubert Humphrey’s teeth.”
    “He had his teeth capped? It doesn’t look it.”
    “Old pictures.” She shrugs. “Listen. I need a flavor.”
    “Uh-huh.” My sister, who doesn’t know “longue” from “lounge,” has always said “flavor” instead of “favor,” and I’m not about to start correcting her now.
    “It’s my Nicky. He’s moved into a house in Freehold with . . . her.”
    “The girlfriend?”
    “Ondine Doyle. Sounds cheap, doesn’t it?”
    “Actually it sounds like a flounder special at the Mayfair.”
    “That’s not even slightly funny.” Toot fans herself.