Rococo Read Free Page A

“It makes me sick. Rosemary Callabuono has loved my son since high school, and he won’t give her a tumble.”
    “Rosemary With The Lupus?”
    “Yeah, but it’s in remission. Better a woman with lupus than a woman with no virtue. Of all the girls in the world, he chooses
that.
Please.”
    I try to picture Ondine. It’s not easy, since my nephew changes girlfriends as often as he changes pants. I recall a curvy, petite blonde with short legs and an upturned nose. “Is she the one who sat in his lap at the Feast party?” I ask, remembering her grinding into my nephew like a drill bit while the band played “Louie, Louie.”
    “That’s the one! She hooked him with sex. They’re not kidding me. Nicky said, ‘I love her, Ma.’ I said to him, ‘You love your ass!’ ”
    “Why is it fast girls always have French names?”
    “How the hell would I know?” Toots’s eyebrows weave together, the lines quizzically forming the shape of a bird in flight.
    “If Nicky’s moved out, that means you have an empty room.”
    “Don’t get any ideas,” she warns. “I’m not ready to redecorate. I think I’m going to put an exercise bike in there.”
    “Wonderful!”
    “Maybe I can build up a little muscle tone.”
    “Good idea.” I am nothing if not supportive.
    “What? I look flabby?”
    “No, no, it’s just that exercise gives you pep. And who couldn’t use a little extra pep?”
    “You have a point.” Toot smiles.
    I’ve learned over the years to stay mum with my sister on the subject of physical fitness. She’s never broken a sweat in her life, yet the basement is filled with every new piece of exercise equipment that comes on the market. A couple of years ago Woolworth’s carried the revolutionary Tummy Chummy, a small wheel with two handles for toning stomach muscles. Toot bought it, took it home, got down on her knees, and commenced rolling; but her abdominal muscles were so weak she collapsed on the wheel, hit her head on a chair, and gave herself a black eye.
Ciao, ciao,
Tummy Chummy.
    “I’m so ashamed of my son. Shacking up in Freehold like he was raised in a barn. They live in the nicer section, but still . . . it looks like a rat hole.” Toot holds her nose. “Everything about it is
stashad.
Mark my words. Nineteen seventy is the beginning of the end of civilization. Morality has gone right out the window.” Toot sips her coffee. “They need curtains—”
    “Draperies,” I correct her.
    “Draperies. Furniture. Lonnie said he’d pay.”
    “Good. Because I’m busy. I don’t have time to run around shopping for deals.”
    “Believe me, if she was a quality individual, I could trust her to do the decorating, but she’s from the side of the tracks where the houses shake when the trains go by, so she doesn’t know from nice. She doesn’t own foundation garments. I know for a fact she doesn’t own a slip, because I saw France when she climbed into Nicky’s car after we visited Aunt Mary Mix-Up at the home.”
    “At least she visits the infirm.”
    “Nicky dragged her. Oh, I could cry. No class. She wears open-toed sandals in December without stockings. You get the picture. Everything about her clings.”
    “She’s young.”
    “Seven years older than Nicky. No prize there, I’m telling you. She’s well on her way to wizened. You don’t know. You don’t have children. How could you know the disappointment, so deep I get a shooting pain in my pelvis—”
    “Stop,” I interrupt. Toot has a terrible habit of getting pains in places men would prefer never to hear about.
    “My pelvic bone. Right here.” She points south. I don’t look. “No wonder it became inflamed when Nicky passed through the birth canal. It was like an omen. Nine pounds of him dragged through me like a wagon wheel. And didn’t the little bastard bring me pain for the rest of my life?”
    “Come on. You adore him.”
    “I know. I hate him and I love him so much I could kill him. Why would my firstborn