“He sure is,” reflected Stan with a touch of pride.
“You wouldn’t think he could still get it up at his age,” Carmela mused out loud.
“Carmela!” Mary waggled her head. “Such thoughts!”
Zinnie looked up from her manicure. “Aw, c’mon ma. We’re grown-up, divorced women.”
“Well, I’m not divorced. Neither is your father and neither is Michaelaen. Majority rules.”
“I am too divorced,” insisted Michaelean.
“Oh, yeah?” Zinnie shook him around on her lap. “Where’s ya papers, huh?”
“Claire’s not divorced, either,” Carmela added, somewhat viciously, for they all knew that Claire had been “involved” with two different men, neither of whom she’d told them much about.
“The last one was a duke, you know,” Zinnie, still impressed, reminded them.
“That and a token will get you on the subway,” Carmela said.
Zinnie helped herself to another poached egg. “A hell of a lot more interesting than that dip shit accountant you were married to.”
“At least Arnold didn’t live off my money, like hers did.”
“Right. He left you so well off. That’s why he’s got a house in Bayside and you’re back in Richmond Hill with us.”
“Arnold might be tight,” Carmela smiled, “but he never took it in the kicker.”
“Now, girls.”
“That’s ok, Mom,” Zinnie shrugged. “It wasn’t Freddy’s fault he turned out gay. And it wasn’t mine, either.”
Mary frowned. “Well, then, at least not in front of Michaelaen.”
“I don’t know why the hell not,” Zinnie buttered her English muffin. “At least when he grows up he’ll know enough to marry someone who knows what they’re there for.”
“It says here,” Stan interjected, “that they’re thinking of making the old Valencia Theatre into a landmark.”
Mary’s coffee pot suspended in midair. “I remember going there with my cousin Nancy as a girl. She took the trolley in from Brooklyn and we packed a lunch and went to the Valencia. This was the country to her, can you imagine?”
“Really, Zinnie,” Carmela snorted. “You talk as though you’d never heard of homosexuality when you married Freddy.”
“That’s just what I mean. I knew it existed in Greenwich Village, but no one ever spoke of it in normal terms. Everyone around here whispered about things like that while we were growing up. I never imagined it happened in normal people, too. What I say is, the more matter of fact you are about something, the less it can hurt you.”
Mary Breslinsky cupped her face and shook her head. “Well, if anything, this family has become more matter of fact. More coffee, Stan? Stan? Arsenic in your coffee?”
“Hmmm? Uh. Uh huh.” Stan was lost in Jimmy Breslin’s column.
“See what I mean?” She filled his cup.
“Who does this Breslin think he is?” shouted Stan. “He’s got it in for the entire NYPD!”
“Just the corrupt ones, Dad,” Carmela spoke with elaborate patience, “and there are enough of them.” Carmela had exchanged three words with Jimmy Breslin at a press party. Now she was keeper of his every motive and intention.
“No,” Stan grew agitated. “He accuses the whole force!”
“He’s practically right,” Carmela said.
“Oh, no he’s not. You’re not, Zinnie. And Michael sure as hell wasn’t.”
Mary Breslinsky didn’t look up then, because Michael was dead and had been for ten years, and it hurt just as much now as it had then. He was Claire’s twin and he had died at the hands of a young killer he’d tried to talk into surrendering. He’d looked at the thirteen-year-old, tear-stained kid huddling in the stairwell and he’d taken off his gun and walked right into the arms of death. Rookie good-hearted, valiant, stupid Michael.
The Mayor walked into the kitchen.
“I gotta go to work,” Carmela stood.
“Me too,” said Zinnie, but she didn’t move, she sat there, because she knew that if the Mayor was here, Claire was coming in, and she loved Claire, loved to look at her face. Claire had Michael’s clear blue eyes, pure as sea glass, and Zinnie hadn’t had them to look into since she was fifteen. Zinnie had thought she’d lost the both of them back then, because Claire hadn’t been able to stay home after Michael died.
“If you’re going to put on something cooler,” Mary told Stan, “you’d better get cracking.”