Page 83 of Just A Little Fling

“I messed up, and he saved the day with pasta. I appreciated it, but that doesn’t make a relationship.”

“Do you want him to be your boyfriend?”

And that was the killer question. I wanted to hang out with Babbo and send silly memes again. I liked sleeping with him and waking up with him too. I missed being little with him. A lot.

“You kids always make things so difficult with this need to have perfect relationships and have things go exactly the way you want them to and look the way you think they should. Maybe it was easier in my day, although PopPop, god rest his soul, he’d tell you I was a pain in the ass.”

“That’s a little hard to believe, Nonna,” I said with a finger wag. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why were you a pain in the ass?”

“Did I ever tell you I didn’t want to get married?” I shook my head, and she continued, “Women were expected to get married, and if you weren’t, there was something wrong with you. In the big cities, I knew women didn’t get married and were perfectly happy, but they damn sure didn’t live in Port Townsend, Washington. Being married or being pitied was the only option we had.”

“You didn’t want to marry PopPop? You didn’t love him?”

“Those are two very different questions. I loved him from the day I met that man. He was kind, sweet, and funny, and he listened to what I had to say and didn’t give a shit that I couldn’t make proper pasta sauce. We were the only two Italian families there, and everybody expected it, and I was a failure at it the first time I tried to make it for him. He choked it down, and I thought he was going to have a heart attack at the table while trying.” As she spoke, a smile played across her lips and she stared into the water like she was seeing something I couldn’t.

“And he still married you?”

“The next time I invited him to dinner, he brought jarred pasta sauce with him, and it became our favorite meal.”

“So if you loved him, why didn’t you want to marry him?”

“It wasn’t that I didn’t want to marryhim. I didn’t want to marryanyone. I didn’t like the idea of it. What if he was unhappy? What if I was unhappy? Things were different then. Get a divorce and move on wasn’t common, and it was especially true when you lived in a small town. I didn’t feel like I’d be able to go against my family.

“But you did marry him.”

“I did, and I don’t regret one day of it.”

“So how did he convince you?

“He asked me, and I said yes.” She chuckled when I rolled my eyes. “But he knew I had reservations, so we came up with an idea of the installment plan.”

“What the hell is an installment plan for marriage?

“Every year, your PopPop would ask me if I still wanted to be there. And if I said yes, we kept going, but he always gave me the option of saying no. This isn’t complicated…stuff.”

“You wanted to say shit, didn’t you?”

“I’m trying to watch my language.”

“But why?”

“So I don’t corrupt you.”

“Oh, my sweet, sweet Nonna, I have been corrupted for much longer than this conversation.”

“I’ve heard that about you.”

“Don’t listen to anything Copy and Paste say. I’m not getting distracted though…tell me more about this installment plan.”

“What a terrible thing to call your brothers.” But then she added with a wink, “Even if it’s true.” Her raucous laughter had other tables looking at us and smiling because who didn’t love an old lady with a belly laugh. “Anyway, it’s not that hard to figure out. Your PopPop would ask me if I still wanted to be there, and if I said yes, we just kept going, but he always told me I could say no and he’d accept, and that was good enough for me.”

“So, on your anniversary, you would decide if you still wanted to be married?”

“I wouldn’t do it on my anniversary. That’s depressing. We would do it at the six-month mark between them so we weren’t clouded by hearts and flowers.”

“Did you ever say you wanted out?”

“No, it was enough that I knew I could get out. I didn’tneedto be out.

---