Twelve Sharp

Nineteen

'I made lasagna today,' my mother said. 'Your father wanted Italian. It's in the oven staying warm. And there's extra gravy on the stove. Maybe you can help your grandmother with the bread and salad.'

'I already got the bread and the salad,' Grandma said. 'And I got some antipasto going. We got salami and olives and anchovies and cheese.'

It was five minutes before six o'clock, and my mother was counting down. 'Grated cheese? Butter? Olive oil?'

I pulled the butter and cheese out of the refrigerator and got the olive oil out of the cabinet. I set them all on the table. The red wine was already uncorked. A bottle at each end.

The front door opened, and Morelli and Bob walked in, and bang we were off and running for the dining room. My father was first to sit. My grandmother skidded in right behind him.

'We don't want dinner to run over,' my grandmother said. 'Sally's coming here at seven and we're going to rehearse.'

My father was concentrating on the dish of lasagna, tuning my grandmother out. He mumbled something, and we all leaned forward to hear.

'Say again?' I said to him.

'Gravy.'

My mother sent the red sauce down to him, and he poured it over everything and dug in, never raising his head. At first glance the best you might say for my parents' marriage is that my mother never stabbed my father in the ass with the carving knife. If you look closer, you see they've found a lifestyle designed for the long haul. My father makes a huge effort to ignore my grandmother. My mother has a few rituals that make my father feel like he counts. And there's an underlying affection that's expressed mostly through tolerance.

Morelli filled his plate and passed on the wine.

'Working tonight?' I asked him.

'I don't think these are days when I'd want to risk impaired judgement.'

I admired his work ethic, but I had no intention of following it. I really needed a glass of wine.

'Did you find any stolen property?' I asked him.

He pulled a file card out of his shirt pocket. 'I got two hits. I have the details here for you. And the license numbers. You might not want to put too much stock in the license. If you have a smart thief, he'll swap out the plate. Should we be working harder to find these vehicles?'

'Yes, but you should be careful when approaching. I'll explain it all later.'

I called Ranger and gave him the camper descriptions. I disconnected, and Morelli watched me clip the phone onto my jeans. I now had two cell phones and the panic button clamped onto my waistband.

'New phone?' he asked.

'Goes directly to the Batcave.'

Morelli reached across me for the bottle of wine. 'Maybe just one glass.'

Grandma jumped when the doorbell rang. 'That's my band!' she said, running for the door.

My father had a plate of Italian cookies in front of him and a cup of coffee. 'Band?'

'You don't want to know,' I told him. 'Eat your cookies. Enjoy your coffee.'

Sally and his crew trooped in, carrying instruments and amps.

'Man, this is so cool that we can rehearse here,' Sally said. 'We've been kicked out of every place else.'

Lula was the last in. She was carrying a bunch of bags, and she was wearing a blond wig.

'Wait until you see what I got,' she said. 'It's the bomb. This is the best outfit yet. And it hasn't got any feathers.'

Sally started setting up in the living room, plugging the amps in, unpacking his guitar. The other three guys were working, hauling in a drum set, keyboard, bass.

'What the heck?' my father said. 'What's going on?'

'I thought Sally was coming over for dessert,' my mother said. 'Who are these people?'

'The band,' my grandmother said. 'Nobody listens to me.'

'Of course no one listens to you, you old bat,' my father said. 'I'd have to blow my brains out if I listened to you. How am I going to watch television? There's a ball game tonight. The Yankees are playing. Get these people out of my living room. Someone call the police.'

We all looked at Morelli.

'Do something,' my father said to Morelli.

Morelli slid his arm across the back of my chair and whispered into my ear. 'Help.'

'Wait a minute,' my grandmother yelled. 'I live here too. And this here's an important moment in my life. And you know how old I am… I might not have many more moments left.'

Clearly that statement represented the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for my father.

'We gotta go upstairs and get dressed,' Lula said to Grandma. 'And I got a wig for you too.'

'Maybe you should go to the lodge,' I said to my father. 'I thought Thursday was pinochle night.'

'It's always pinochle night at the lodge. I wanted to see the ball game tonight.'

'Don't they have a television at the lodge?'

'Yeah, they got one in the bar.' He looked at his coffee and cookies. 'I'm not done eating.'

'A bag!' I said to my mother. 'For God's sake, put his cookies in a bag.'

'I have to get changed,' Sally said, going upstairs. 'I'll only be a minute.'

'Hurry!' I shouted to my mother. 'What's holding up that bag?'

The bass player started tuning, adjusting the volume on the amp. The first sound that came out was Wangggggg!

'Holy crap,' my father said. 'What in the beejeezus was that?'

'Bass,' Morelli said, eyeing a cookie on my father's plate.

'I see you looking at my cookies,' my father said to Morelli. 'Don't even think about it. Go get your own cookies.'

I poured myself another glass of wine.

'Okay,' Lula shouted from the top of the stairs, 'don't anybody look. Everybody close their eyes until we get into position.'

'I'm not closing my eyes,' my father said. 'The Italian Stallion here will eat my cookies.'

The drummer beat out a couple heart-thumping bars, the bass and keyboard came on at a deafening level, and the dining room chandelier jiggled and swayed on its chain. Plates danced across the dining room table. A half-eaten cookie fell out of my fathers mouth. And Bob tipped his head back and howled.

My mother ran in from the kitchen with the bag, but it was too late. Lula and Grandma and Sally were onstage in front of us. Grandma and Lula were wearing black leather hot pants and ice-cream-cone bras. Grandma looked like a soup chicken dressed up like Madonna. She was all slack skin and knobby knees and slightly bowed legs. Her blond wig was slightly askew, and her ice-cream-cone bra hung low, not from the weight of her breasts but from breast location. Gravity hadn't been kind to Grandma. Lula's body spilled out of her outfit. The hot pants were reduced to black leather camel-toes in front and what looked like a leather thong in the rear. And the ice-cream-cone bra precariously perched at the end of Lula's basketball breasts. They were in big platform heels and they had spiked leather dog collars around their necks. Sally was in a dog collar, black leather thong with a silver zipper inexplicably running the length of his package, and over-the-knee swashbuckling black leather high-heeled boots with huge platform soles.

My mother made the sign of the cross and staggered into a dining room chair. Morelli had his teeth sunk hard into his bottom lip to keep from laughing out loud. My fathers face was stroke red. And Bob ran upstairs.

Lula and Grandma went into their dance routine and Morelli broke out in a sweat from the effort of maintaining composure. Grandma wobbled into an amp, snagged her heel on the cord, and fell over into the drum set, taking the bass player down with her. She was on her back, under cymbals and the bass player, with only her platform shoes showing. She looked like the Wicked Witch of the East when Dorothy's house fell on her. We all jumped up and rushed to help Grandma, except for my father, who stayed like stone in his seat, his face still red.

We got Grandma up on her feet and fixed her wig and adjusted her breasts.

'I'm okay,' Grandma said. 'I just caught my heel on the wire and unplugged the thingy.'

Grandma bent to plug the amp back in and farted in the black leather hot pants.

'Oops,' Grandma said. 'Someone step on a duck?' She farted again. 'Broccoli in the salad,' she said. 'Boy, I feel a lot better now.'

I looked over at Morelli and saw that he had a cookie in his hand. 'Is that my fathers cookie? You're in big trouble.'

'He's beyond noticing,' Morelli said. 'I've seen that look on people passing by horrific car crashes. Trust me, he's lost count of the cookies.'

'Maybe you should turn the amp back a little,' I said to Sally. 'I think I heard glasses breaking in the kitchen.'

My mother had her fingers curled tight into the front of my T-shirt. 'You have to stop her,' she said. 'I'm begging you.'

'Me? Why me?'

'She'll listen to you.'

'If this works out I think I'll try to get a gig with the Stones,' Grandma said. 'I'd fit right in with them. They could use a chick in the band. I wouldn't mind going on one of them tours. And I can do that walk like Jagger. Look at me walk.'

We all watched Grandma strut around like Jagger.

'She's surprisingly good,' Morelli said.

My mother's eyes cut to the kitchen door, and I knew she was thinking about the booze in the cabinet by the sink.

'What do you think of this outfit?' Lula asked me. 'Do you think it's too small? They didn't have my size.'

'It looks painful,' I told her.

'Yeah, I think I'm starting to get a hemorrhoid.'

'Maybe tomorrow we can go out together and look for new costumes,' I said. 'It would be fun to go shopping together.'

'That's a deal,' Lula said. 'We could have lunch and everything.'

'You name it,' my mother said to me. 'What do you want? Pineapple upside-down cake? Chocolate cream pie? I'll make any dessert you want if you can guarantee me that your grandmother won't wear that leather outfit.'