Page 70 of Forked (Frenched 2)
At the bottom, in black ink, was printed, Tiny and Joey, 29 July, 1923.
I stared at it for a moment, gooseflesh rippling down my arms. “What’s today’s date?”
“July twenty-ninth,” Nick answered. Then he leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Fucking weird, right?”
Weird?
No. Cheez Whiz was weird. Olive loaf. Haggis- and-cracked-pepper potato chips.
This was alarming as fuck.
What did it mean???
“Oh yes, that was a pretty famous family story.” Noni picked up a coffee cup with a picture of a cat on it and took a sip. “Apparently, Tiny had turned Papa Joe down, and so he’d decided to go back to Chicago. Well, wouldn’t you know, she realized she was in love with him as soon as he announced he was leaving. She shows up at his house to tell him, but he was right in the middle of cooking Sunday dinner for his family.”
I smiled, although my heart was beating in a peculiar and uneven fashion. “Really?”
“Yes,” she went on. “He was in the kitchen surrounded by his sisters. And she tried to get him to speak privately with her but he refused.”
“As he should have,” Nick put in, lifting his cup to his mouth. “Fickle women.”
“So then what?” I asked. “She wrote him a note?”
Noni laughed. “Yes, in the bathroom, with her
lipstick, on her handkerchief. Then she marched into the kitchen and handed it to him. And according to his sisters, they disappeared into the pantry downstairs for quite an inappropriate length of time.
I clapped my hands over my cheeks. “I love it! Nick, you should put the note in your restaurant too. Frame it or something. With the picture.”
“Not a bad idea.” He set his cup down. “Noni, do you think I could have it?”
/> Noni waved her hand. “Take the whole book. You know, I’m surprised it was just stuck in the photo album like that. It was so important to her. She must have forgotten it was there. They were married sixty- seven years, you know.”
“It’s a good thing Nick found it then. Otherwise it might have been lost to time forever.” I couldn’t get over the matching date. What did it mean?
Noni nodded, eyeing me thoughtfully. “Yes. Although, nothing is really lost forever. When a thing is meant to be found, the right person will find it. So I bet there’s a reason why that note was discovered again after all this time.”
“You mean…you think it was a sign?” I asked carefully.
Nick laughed. “You’re getting to her, Noni. Coco believes in signs. Keep going with it, please.”
I was too flustered to even hit him.
“Not a sign, necessarily. I just meant that I think it’s right Nick came across the note. That he was meant to have it.” She took another sip of coffee and winked at me over the rim of her cup.
Later that morning, Nick painted the Adirondack chairs while I typed up some of Noni’s stories on her desktop, which reminded me of the kind we used to have in our elementary school classrooms. In addition to the Lupo stories she knew, she talked about growing up on the farm, what it was like to be a teenager during the Depression, and meeting her husband Joe at a USO dance in 1944. I printed a copy of the file for Noni and emailed a copy to Nick and myself—maybe it wasn’t my family, but I felt emotionally invested in the stories somehow.
After lunch, we said goodbye to Noni, and got on the road. It looked like rain, so we didn’t put the top down on the convertible, and sure enough, after about ten minutes on I-75, it began to sprinkle, and then pour. Visibility was so bad, I wouldn’t have blamed Nick for pulling over and waiting out the storm, but he just slowed down and stayed focused.
“Sorry. This ride home might take us awhile,” he said without taking his eyes off the road.
“That’s OK. I’m not in a rush to get back.” Crossing my arms over my chest, I thought ahead to the task I was dreading—a pregnancy test. After we got back to Detroit, I’d leave right from the parking garage and stop at a drugstore on my way home. The thought of taking a test at my parents’ house was pretty cringe-worthy, but I didn’t want to do it at Nick’s apartment either. I wanted to be alone. Maybe I could do it at the Devine Events office.
“Want to talk?” Nick glanced at me briefly.
“Not really…” I rubbed my hands up and down my arms. “I don’t have anything new to say yet. I’m still…working through some things.”
“OK. Do you want to stop at a store on the way home?”
