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“Ma, don’t your feet get sore?” her boys had asked.
“So what’s a little soreness? My husband goes off to risk his life every day. If he doesn’t make it home, god forbid, I want him to see me like this one last time. It’s what Big Mike likes.”
Big Mike sat at the table reading theSan Diego Tribune, drinking coffee, and waiting for a plate of eggs to be put down in front of him.
“Pop, Ma, I have something to tell you.”
Roberta looked at him with a spatula in her hand. “You want eggs?”
“No, sit down, please, Ma.”
Big Mike put the paper down and looked at his son. “What?”
“Patty and I broke up for good.”
“Oh no, why? You two have been together forever. Her father is going to give me hell.”
“Just a minute, Mike,” Roberta said before he could go off on a tangent. She placed his perfect eggs, three sunny-side up, with six perfectly straight strips of bacon and four perfectly buttered pieces of toast on the table in front of her husband of thirty-five years. “Let Anthony talk.”
“There’s nothing else to say. It’s been a long time coming, and I finally had the nerve and a reason to do the deed.”
“The new EMT?”
“Yep.”
“She’s a cutie, son, even though she has a baby.”
“I’m okay with the baby.”
“But you got Patty’s cherry—”
“Oh, Mike, for God’s sake, and at the breakfast table?” Roberta cried with her nostrils flared.
“It is what it is, Bertie. And it’s no secret, they were together for ten years, so it doesn’t take a rocket scientist. How am I going to face her father?”
“George is no angel,” Roberta said, slapping a dish towel on the edge of the counter. “Don’t forget Napa.”
“Ha! I did. So I’ll use that if he gives me a hard time.”
“What happened in Napa?” Tony asked, glad for his mother’s memory.
“Don’t tell him,” Big Mike pleaded.
“The hell I won’t. When we all went up there for a wine tour, George stayed out all night. Nine months later, the owner of the vineyard slapped him with a paternity suit.”
“Patty has a sibling?” Tony asked, frowning. “That’s intense.”
“They recently had to tell the kids because the child wants a relationship with the family.”
“Patty never said a word to me,” Tony said.
“She’s probably angry about it,” Roberta said. “Tina almost divorced George at the time.”
“Promise me you won’t say anything to Patty about this,” Big Mike implored. “It could get ugly.”
“I’ll probably never speak to Patty again, so no worries.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Roberta said. “So now this girl, the EMT, the girl you’re interested in, she’s the one with the baby, right?”
