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“Yes, it’s me,” my grandmother says to me. Her accent is a little sharper than my dad’s, but she speaks a little slower when she uses English. “Your parents were just telling me that you are on your way home. Am I to assume that you are coming home alone, again?”
I’m not even there yet, and it’s already starting. I take a deep breath. “Nonna, I—”
“Lucia, everyone is getting married. At your age, your parents were already married. Look at your cousins, they’re all happily married and with babies. You need a man to take care of you.” I close my eyes and let my head drop to rest on the steering wheel. “Are you really going to let me die before I see great-grandchildren? My time is running out,cara.”
Her doctor must have told her to watch her blood pressure again. She already has a lot of great-grandchildren, but she’s undeterred by my silence as she continues.
“We don’t have much time left on this planet. Before I leave, I want to see all my grandbabies happy and settled with good people. Now, you coming home alone does not make me happy and—”
“I’m not coming home alone, Nonna,” I breathe out quietly.I’m bringing along my best friends, Anxiety and Familial Guilt.
My father’s shocked voice pierces through the noise in the background. “Are you serious?”
“Cara, is it true? You are bringing someone with you?” Nonna follows right after. Oh no. I should have guessed. I’m on speaker. Everyone in the room on the other side of the line can hear everything I’m saying.
And they just heard my shitty joke to myself.
I sit up sharply in my seat as I start to panic. I have to fix this before it begins to careen out of control.
“I-I—well—I didn’t mean it quite like—”
“Oh,cara! Who is he? Tell us everything about this new man!”
What new man?! I didn’t say who orwhatI was bringing home, let alone if they’re romantically involved with me! It was a joke and it was stupid and I’ve never regretted anything more in my life. “Nonna, you heard me wrong! I meant—”
“Don’t worry about any of it,cara. This family does not care who he is or where he’s from as long as he makes you happy and takes care of you. That’s all that matters. I can’t wait to tell everyone about this.” There’s a little bit of feedback, probably from trying to cover the mouthpiece as she shouts, “Lucia is bringing home a boy, someone get out the nice wine!”
I can hear excited shouts and babbling in the background. Oh no. Oh no oh no oh—
“Nonna, I didn’t—”
But it’s too late. The sound on the other end of the line cuts out suddenly, and when I pull my phone away from my ear, I discover that she’s hung up.
My blood runs cold as the horror sinks in.
My family thinks I’m bringing home someone to meet them. I don’thavea someone to meet them. I don’t have anyone. It’s just me and my suitcase and my anxiety. Nothing else. What will they think when I don’t show up with anyone? My grandma … she sounded so happy on the phone. My dad too. Everyone sounded so happy to hear that I’d finally found a person to love.
A weight starts to press down on my lungs.
Nothing I ever do matters to them. All of the hard work I’ve put in for school means nothing because I don’t have a guy around to take care of me. Why am I learning how to run a business, then? Why am I working hard to keep my scholarship? None of it makes them happy.
My hands start to shake. I put my coffee down in the drink spot before I have a chance to spill it. I stare down at my phone in my other hand, the screen becoming blurry as tears start to well up in my eyes. The weight in my chest gets heavier and it becomes harder and harder to breath.
I need to call them back. I need to set the record straight. I need to give them more to be disappointed in me about because who in their right mind would lie like this? Me, I guess. I can hear it already.“Why would you joke about something so important to us, Lucia?”
I can’t breathe. The weight in my lungs is squeezing me too hard. I wrestle with the door latch and scramble out of my car to a patch of dry grass on the nearby island in the parking lot. The cold winter air, even more crisp because of the elevation, does nothing to clear my head. I wish there was snow I could lay down in, but we haven’t gotten any up here yet.
How pathetic is this? A panic attack in the parking lot of a coffee shop two hours away from my destination? I don’t even have the gumption to lady up and get back into my car. That would mean I have to drive, and then I’d have to face my family. It would mean more about hearing how school can’t keep me warm at night like a man does.
The tears turn cold as they run down my cheeks. My heart pounds against my ribcage. This is the worst. I’m the worst. And my family is going to think the same thing as soon as I turn up man-less and single to Christmas. I can hear the whispers from my aunts and cousins and everyone already.
“Maybe if you started to put more work into your appearance than your classes—”
“No one takes unmarried women seriously in the corporate world anyway!”
“I’ve known girls like you before, they end up living all by themselves with their sixteen cats.”
I can’t lie to myself anymore. I used to think that whatever they said or thought about me didn’t matter because I was doing something I wanted to do with my life. But really, I do care what they think. I want them to see what I’m doing at school and be proud of it. And this constant disappointment they show me instead is absolutely awful.
