The Spia Family Presses On - By Mary Leo Page 0,77
me and Carla. So she pushed that millstone on top of him, pulled off that stupid ring, and shot Dickey in the head so she could get her revenge. She’s worse than the men in the family. At least they wouldn’t have squashed the prick first.”
“Like I have the strength for that kind of action,” Aunt Babe shot back. “You’re the doll who can boost a fifty-pound bag of flour over her shoulder. You did it because you still think the son of a bitch killed your precious Carla. DNA proved he didn’t.”
Babe got a better grip on the cake. Hetty quickly went over to the walk-in and pulled out the top of a perfectly frosted wedding cake.
That’s when what Babe had just said struck me.
“Wait,” I yelled turning to Hetty. “Your precious Carla? What does that mean?”
Lisa said, “It means what you think it means.”
I turned to Babe. She nodded and shrugged.
I turned back to Hetty. “You’re a lesbian? Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but I—”
She flung batter at me. “Don’t give me that Seinfeld bunk. In this family there’s a lot wrong with it.” She turned to Aunt Babe. “Now you’ve done it real good. She’s going to blab it to Benny and Ray and pretty soon no one will talk to me. I may as well wear a big red L on my back.”
Hetty put the wedding cake down, dropped to the floor, sat with a plop right on a smashed pound cake and began to cry.
Babe carefully placed Snoopy back on the island, pushing broken cakes and globs of cookie dough out of her way then she rushed over to Aunt Hetty, plopping down on the floor next to her.
“I won’t tell anybody, honest,” I said, but it was too late. Tears gushed as Hetty slid down on the floor in a heap. I’d never seen her cry before, not even at funerals, and believe me, in this family, there were a lot of funerals. I somehow thought she was incapable of any other emotion but contention.
Lisa glared at me as she walked over. “Nice move.”
I shrugged. “I had no idea.”
She leaned in and whispered. “Do you live on another planet or what? I think you’re the only one who hadn’t figured it out years ago.”
“Then why is she so upset if everybody already knows?”
“Sweetie, by definition your family has that don’t ask, don’t tell policy going on. It’s how a borgata thinks.”
“I know that,” I said, crossing my arms. “But it just irks me that I know so little about my own family.”
Lisa raised an eyebrow.
Aunt Babe threw me a sympathetic sigh while Aunt Hetty gazed up at me, cake-smeared cheeks stained with tears, her lipstick in big streaks across her lips and chin, cake, cookies, and batter encrusted on all parts of her squat little body. For once her hair didn’t stick straight up. If it wasn’t for the occasional brown glop dripping off of it, the new ‘do looked rather normal. “Nobody knew back then. It was our secret. Me and Carla were moving to Amsterdam to start a new life.”
“Amsterdam!” I bellowed, wondering why the heck would two middle-aged Italian women move to Amsterdam.
Hetty wiped her tears away with her gooey fingers, streaking chocolate chip cannoli filling under her eyes and across her puffy cheeks making her look like a vanilla ice cream cone with sprinkles. “She had connections. We were going to open our own marijuana bar. She even had the location all scoped out. While Dickey was busy in Italy buying that miserable antique millstone, Carla was in Amsterdam putting a down payment on our future. But we never got the chance to move, or even begin our love affair. She was murdered before anything happened.”
“You mean, you two never—” I didn’t quite know how to ask about the details.
She looked at me. Waiting. Then she said, “If you mean did we ever sleep together? No. We kissed a couple times, but Carla was a virgin and she wanted to wait until we had a commitment ceremony in Amsterdam before she’d sleep with me. She was like that. Wholesome. Pure. Just like our oil.”
Aunt Babe made a gesture behind Hetty’s back telling me that something Hetty was saying wasn’t true. “You better get ready for bed, honey,” Aunt Babe said to Hetty, while gently rubbing Hetty’s back. “We have an early morning.”
Hetty nodded and stood. “But who’s going to clean all this up?”