Manicotti Kisses Read online

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  If this account is going to be completely honest, I have to admit to the last twenty minutes. I sat down in your recliner, Grampy, and cried until I simply had no tears left. I was all curled up in a ball, just crying my heart out. I hate that I’m being such a baby over this, but then again, I remember Grandma telling me that she cried herself to sleep for several weeks before you finally proposed to her. She said at that point, she was wondering if you wanted to marry her at all. And… she also told me something that I never told anyone. She said that three years was a ridiculously long time to date someone. I mean, come on! One would think that by the one year marker you know you either do or don’t want to spend the rest of your life with someone. She told me that your proposal barely slid under her calendar cutoff date. She said you were only three weeks ahead of when she was going to tell you that obviously you didn’t feel as committed to her as she did to you, so she was going to “dump” you. (I know they didn’t use that term back when you two were dating, but the point was that she was going to tell you that perhaps the two of you should step back, take a break, and re-evaluate your relationship.) She told me that her heart was breaking, because she felt like you didn’t love her as much as she loved you. Boy, you cut it close, son!

  • • • •

  I feel so drained. I think I would quit here and… do what? I’m too emotionally wrung out to work on packing up stuff up here in the attic. I feel too tired to even move much. Maybe I just need to continue telling the whole distasteful saga of my marriage proposal. The packing won’t be getting done, but at least I’ll feel like I’m getting something done.

  So… I can’t remember where I left off. I’m going to have to refer to the last page.

  Ok, I’m back. So, as I was saying… Five mishaps had already entered the picture before Jeremy even showed up at my door. And, even though my tooth was starting to tweak a bit more as the afternoon went on, I was determined not to let it get the best of me.

  Next on my agenda was to do something with my hair. Not that there was anything particularly wrong with it, but I figured at least I could wash it, and maybe trim just the slightest little bit off the ends to make sure it looked shiny and healthy. Mostly I was just concerned about the “shiny” part. I just wanted to look gorgeous for that evening, even if I had both a throbbing cut toe and a throbbing cracked tooth.

  Time was moving on. I knew that Jeremy would be picking me up at seven o’clock, which gave me only one hour and forty-five minutes to get ready.

  I decided that for that evening’s special and most memorable event, I wanted to wear my hair in long corkscrew curls down my back. Since even with a blow dryer it took quite a while for my hair to dry after washing it, I knew I needed to jump in the shower immediately. Wanting to stay ahead of my grooming tasks, I crawled under my sink, opened the cabinet and pulled out the curling iron. I love that curling iron. Every single time I curl my hair with it I get massive amounts of compliments on how gorgeous my hair looks. I had gotten compliments at home, from friends, from the cashier at the grocery store, random strangers I run into at the shopping mall, and even a little girl, no more than four years old, at the park, when I walked Worthington one afternoon.

  Worthington. What a stupid name for a worthless dog. It sounds so regal, aristocratic, and downright classy. Funny thing is, that dog is so dumb that we’ve had it two and a half years, and the idiotic beast can’t even learn the basic commands like Sit, Shake, and Heel. I asked Mom once if she… Oops! There I go getting sidetracked again. I think I had a synapse misfire or something. Ok, I’m back now.

  The curling iron. That’s where I was in this long, sad tale.

  So, anyway… I pulled the curling iron out, plugged it in and sat it up on my bathroom counter. Jumped in the shower, washed and scoured my entire person and opened the door to get out. When I did, I somehow managed to stub my hurt- and again bleeding toe. The very second my toe made contact with the floor, I knew it was going to end badly. I tried to compensate by jumping several times on the “healthy” foot, while cradling the bleeding foot. But, the only thing I managed to do was lose my balance, slide across the floor the several inches to the curling iron cord, which caught on my foot (kind of like the thong strap that goes between the big toe and next one). In that one fell swoop, I yanked the curling iron off the counter, where it crashed (and loudly I might add) to the floor.

  Even worse, however, was the fact that when I fell, I hit my hip against the shower door frame. For the dramatic sake of the story, it would probably cause more of an overwhelming impression on you if I said that I lacerated my hip, causing blood to stream everywhere. But, that’s not what happened. The frame and my hip made only enough of a jolt in their collision with each other to slightly bruise my hip. Actually, it only hurt a bit when it came in contact with anything. (I just checked it out. The bruise is worse today, but it still only hurts when I touch it.) Grampy, know how well I knew you? In response to me saying that it only hurts when I touch it, you would have said, “Then…” You would have left it open-ended, drug the word out long and slow, and it would be my turn to respond with, “Don’t touch it.” (I think this recollection has caused the only smile I’ve donned all day. I hate today. I hate everything about it. I feel so miserable! I could sure use your arms around me, Grampy, where I could just sit and not have to talk, just be.)

  Chapter 3

  By the time I recouped from the fall, the re-stubbed toe, and the bruised hip, I noticed the clock was striking six p.m. That meant I had been meandering away the time, nursing my wounds, and getting positively nothing done. By that time, I wasn’t sure if I could be ready for Jeremy’s seven o’clock arrival. Still so much to do.

  Quickly I plugged the curling iron back in, deciding that I would dry my hair, do my makeup, then curl my hair. Sounded right. What could possibly go wrong?

  Hey, what’s the d al here??? Ee eee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. The “e” is starting to stick. Great! Well, with or without the “e,” I’m plunging ahead. I’v ( ugh!) gotten too far in this story to stop now. Eeee eeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Well, maybe it’ll be ok. And, believe me, you don’t want to miss this part.

  Wondering why I made mention of this part in particular? Well, standby. You ar n’t eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee going to believe this. (I’m not going to worry about the stuck “e” anymore. I’m going to ignore it. Grampy, I’m sure you’ll be able to discern what words are, with or without the “e’s” in them.) And… BTW… where do you keep the white out for typing mistakes, or did you get rid of it when you brought the typewriter up here to the attic?

  Well, anyway, moving along…

  I thoroughly dried my hair. It was a little frizzy, but dry. As the afternoon progressed, it got more and more humid (weird… so weird), so that was the expected outcome. I wasn’t stressed about it, though, because that is the wonder of curling irons. They remove all the frizz and leave a stunning shine to your hair. Well, at least that was what was supposed to happen.

  I finished the drying process, I successfully applied my makeup. It’s not like the makeup is that big a deal. Just a little smoky eye shadow, blush, and a soft pink lip gloss. I did, as an after thought, use some mascara. I wanted my eyes to look wide and bright, so that when he popped that anticipated question, he could clearly and easily see the abundance of tears that would flow from them. (In my imagination, I would respond with a resounding “yes, my love,” then we’d embrace as we stared into each other’s eyes. How we would be able to stare into each other’s eyes while embracing, I have no idea! But, it would be a magical and Hallmark kind of moment.)

  All the makeup preliminaries completed, I used my fingers to separate the first section of hair to be curled. However…. Yes, of course, there’s a “however!” When I began wrapping the first section around the iron, I noticed it didn’t feel right, nor did the small poof of heat wave arise from it, letting me know that the curling process was complete on that strand. In fa
ct, when I released the curl, it wasn’t curled at all. It was board straight, and still filled with an abundance of frizz. My left hand shot directly to the iron to find that it radiated no heat. No. Heat. At. All. It was as cold as the grave. Dramatic, I know, but you weren’t there, so you can’t imagine how it felt. Apparently, when I dropped the curling iron on the floor by catching my toes on the cord, it broke the stupid thing. That’s right! Broken, as in, what do I do with my hair now?! Mom and I shared the curling iron, so it wasn’t like I could go to her bathroom and borrow hers.

  I sunk to the floor in despair, with the dilemma of what I could do with my hair, and knowing full well that trying to think up a solution would be difficult at least somewhat by the growing ache in my molar.

  Out of sheer determination, I actually spoke out loud, telling my tooth and hair both that they were not going to ruin what I knew was the day in history that I would be accepting a marriage proposal from Jeremy. Which meant, of course, that I needed to buckle down and come up with something in the way of a hairstyle that I actually had the wherewithal to pull off.

  Unfortunately, my tooth was distracting me from being able to think about my “couf,” so I ran to Mom and Dad’s bathroom, opening the medicine cabinet to see if there was anything in there to soothe my tooth pain. Finding absolutely nothing (only discovered after wasting fifteen minutes or so doing so), I ran into the kitchen, pulled down the bottle of over-the-counter pain reliever and dropped two pills into my free hand. However, while I was doing so, I remembered that Mom had once told me that two pills was the over-the-counter dosage, but three hiked it up to prescription dosage. Easy decision. Three it was! Within twenty minutes my toothache was actually receding, however, my stomach began aching just slightly. Like a lightning bolt, I remembered that I had trouble with aspirin causing stomach problems. But, surely I had not popped the pills from the aspirin bottle, but rather one of the others not containing aspirin. Running back into the kitchen to examine the bottle I’d used, it was, of course, the aspirin I’d taken. Nooo!

  Panicked that I would be possibly writhing in pain within a short time, I opened the fridge, grabbed the container of milk. Never allowing myself the irresponsible gesture when anyone else was home, I tipped the carton and began guzzling its contents. I figured I would be able to estimate when I’d drunk an eight-ounce glass equivalent.

  It was fortunate that I had not already put on my dress, because I managed to pour almost an equal amount of milk down the front of me as what I consumed. Yes, Grampy, I made a mess on the floor. Before I even grabbed the dish towel to wipe it up (definitely a no-no in this family!), I could hear Mom’s antique floor clock chiming the half hour. Thirty minutes was all I had until Jeremy would arrive. Interestingly, though, rather than panicking further, I allowed myself a deep intake of breath, released a sigh of resignation, took the now damp dish towel out to the garage and laid it on the washing machine, then walked back to my bedroom.

  It’s amazing what a little talk with oneself will do to calm down a negative situation. At least it helped me… this day… this particular time.

  “Ok. You have thirty minutes to get your act together. You can do this. Let’s see… if you put your hair in a spikey, messy chignon, pull it to the side of your head, on the nape of your neck, that’ll take about fifteen minutes. A chignon could be cute. I mean, didn’t I just read that it’s considered to be one of the most stylish hairstyles this year for celebrities? Ok, a chignon it is. Then… brush my teeth, slip on my dress and accessories. About another ten minutes. That’ll give me five minutes to settle down and gracefully float to the door when Jeremy rings the doorbell.

  “Ready? Yes. Ok. Let’s go.”

  It really did work. I actually finished five minutes ahead of time, which was good, because I really needed to check my chignon one more time and maybe pick a few more “spikies” out of it. Once the spikey-picking was completed, I ran into Mom and Dad’s room and gave myself a once-over in Mom’s full length floor mirror. Actually pleased with the way I looked, I walked (gracefully, I might add) into the living room, sat down on the sofa and awaited Jeremy’s arrival.

  Chapter 4

  Twenty minutes past the hour, I caught myself pacing the living room. How in the world could Jeremy be late on the evening we were to become engaged? I mean, he was going to propose to me tonight, wasn’t he? I felt certain. I mean, he told me he was going to take me to Manicotti Kisses, the elegant Italian restaurant downtown. And, I knew for a fact that you had to have reservations to get into that place on the weekends.

  Grampy, I remember how you told me that you took Grandma there for your forty-eighth anniversary. From your description, it sounded glorious. Elegantly appointed and ever so romantic. The atmosphere sounded beyond conducive to proposing to one’s beloved. So when Jeremy, after me talking about the place for the last six months off and on, told me he was going to take me somewhere special last night, I started nagging him for more information on where… specifically what restaurant. I knew it was a restaurant, because he said to be sure to bring quite an appetite. He never would have said anything like that if it was just a fast food place or a casual restaurant.

  After mercilessly bugging him, he finally told me that he was taking me to Manicotti Kisses, both because he knew my favorite food in the whole world was manicotti, and because he new it was fancy. Since it wasn’t my birthday, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Take-a-Friend-to-Lunch Day, nor any other holiday, I knew for certain that this was “the night.”

  When it dolefully struck half past the hour on Mom’s floor clock, I began not only stressing big time over Jeremy’s tardiness, but for the first time I began wondering why Mom and Dad chose this weekend to go off on one of their rare us-only-time outings. I mean, when Dad gave his blessing to Jeremy, and then he told Mom, when I told them Jeremy was taking me out on this special evening’s date, wouldn’t Mom have wanted to stick around so that she could be the first to see (and thoroughly analyze) my engagement ring? I knew she would! I just knew she would!

  Then began the questioning. Was I wrong all the time? Was he not going to propose this evening? Was he just taking me to Manicotti Kisses because I ran on about it so much and he wanted to do something special for me? At the end of tonight, would I still just be his “girlfriend,” not his “fiancé?”

  Managing to put myself in those few moments into quite the funk anyway, I gave more attention to two other negative items of relevance. My scabbed over-, but still throbbing toe, and the matching throb that was growing in intensity in my right molar. Since I was already concentrating on those two, I decided to throw in a third item… my stomach. It felt like the milk I’d consumed to counteract the aspirin was actually curdling inside me. My stomach was feeling uneasy. Not really queasy, but not one hundred percent ok either.

  No, I refused to let those three things ruin the evening! No, they weren’t going to turn us away at the restaurant, even though we were late for our reservation. And, yes, Jeremy was going to propose to me. He was! He’d better!

  At seven-forty-three, I decided perhaps I’d better phone Jeremy. Granted, he’d been late for a couple of our dates, but always with good reason. Something was wrong.

  Jumping up from the sofa, and running to my bedroom to retrieve my iPhone from my purse, the front doorbell rang.

  Jeremy! It had to be Jeremy! And… it was.

  “Oh, babe!” The first words out of his mouth when I flung open the door.

  “I am so sorry. I asked Trent to fill up my car this afternoon while he was using it. But, terrific brother that he is, apparently he couldn’t be bothered.” Jeremy’s face was red, sweaty, and gave indication that if I didn’t re-direct his focus, he was going to burst forth with a ranting that would consume most of the conversation on the way to the restaurant.

  “It’s ok, Sweetie. It just gave me a few extra minutes to get myself ready for our date.” I think, as I look back now, Grampy, that I probably made the comments with too much int
ensity, and at a break-neck speed. At first he looked at me with an expression that said to me that he wished I hadn’t said anything, but given him a few minutes to re-hash the whole episode. But, finally he just shrugged his shoulders and grunted.

  Refocusing on my presence, Jeremy looked me up and down. “Wow, Sweetheart! You look beautiful. I love that dress! That’s the one you wore to the Valentine’s Day thing, isn’t it?” I grinned and nodded affirmation. He leaned in to hug me, which he did, but when he did, I noticed that he didn’t smell “delicious” like he usually did. He wreaked of gasoline fumes and body sweat. Whew! My scrunched up face was barely masked by a quickly-gained smile by the time he pulled away.

  “You ready to go?” he asked.

  With throbbing tooth, throbbing toe, throbbing stomach, and a throbbing feeling that tonight wasn’t going to fit into my romantic vision of a marriage proposal, I exuberantly smiled and sweetly replied, “Yes, Sweetie. More than ready.”

  Giving me one last once-over, Jeremy’s eyes focused on my feet. I assumed he was going to tell me that he really liked my polish, or my sandals, or both. What he said was neither.

  “What happened to your sandals? Looks like you lost a couple of stones out of them. Do you want to go change into some other ones?”

  Chapter 5

  The twenty minute drive to Manicotti Kisses was not going to be a dream made in heaven. One filled with winks and smiles and whispered “sweet nothings.” The car was, instead, a vat full of oozy hot, bubbling stew. Yes, Grampy, I said “stew.”

  Jeremy was still “stewing” over Trent’s not topping off the gas tank. He began what I thought would be a short re-hashing of it that I could handle… for a few minutes. But, that wasn’t good enough. Jeremy began dredging up every single bit of brotherly-conflict minutia, covering their entire lifetimes. How much of that was I expected to have my ears assaulted by? Remember me? I’m the one you’re so in love with that you’re going to propose marriage to me tonight? What happened to all the evening’s verbal foreplay, like, “I love you,” “I’m so thankful for you,” “I’m so grateful the Lord brought you into my life?” Give me somethin’ here, Jeremy!