November 1987
"Thanks for the invitation, Mrs. R., but this year we're gonna spend Thanksgiving in Connecticut," Tony said, gripping the red phone with one hand and twisting the cord with the other.
Angela sat at the kitchen table watching him and listening to his side of the conversation. She could tell the moment his words sunk in. She could hear Mrs. Rossini's voice – not her words exactly, but her voice. Tony pulled his head away from the phone and he and Angela winced at one another.
He held the phone out in front of him until the disembodied voice reached a more normal decibel level, and then slowly put it back up to his ear.
Angela held her breath slightly on Tony's behalf. She knew he'd been nervous about making this call, and it seemed that his concerns weren't unfounded.
"I know, but I've been doing so much driving back and forth from Connecticut to Brooklyn, and I just need a break."
"We won't be lonely, we'll be with Angela, Jonathan, and Mona!"
"Of COURSE I'll be the one cooking!"
Angela rolled her eyes. She heard where he put the emphasis. Maybe he didn't need her sympathy after all, she thought.
There was another pause as Mrs. Rossini must have put up another argument. But Tony wasn't backing down. He loved Mrs. Rossini, but after being at her beck and call for weeks helping her with the fish store after her husband left, Tony was exhausted. And not just by the work. Tony had admitted as much to Angela afterwards, when it was finally behind him, when Mrs. Rossini finally hired her new partner.
When Tony had mentioned to her that he'd like to cook, at home, she'd not only been a little bit relieved, but also a little bit thrilled. A nice meal at home with just the five of them? She'd said it would be lovely, a nice idea. She'd had to work to control her face, actually, so her smile didn't crack it right in half.
It would be the first Thanksgiving they would celebrate together as a family at Oak Hills Drive. It was hard to believe, since Tony and Sam had been living in Connecticut for over three years. But that first year, when they'd just been getting to all know one another, he and Sam had gone back to Brooklyn and Angela and Jonathan and Mona had gone out to dinner at the country club. The second year was the year they'd all gone to Brooklyn together. Angela had been happy to be invited and they had really become a little family by then so it made sense to spend the holiday together. And if she were being honest with herself, the more she had gotten to know Tony the more she wanted to know about Tony, so a chance to have a little peek into what his life would have been like in Brooklyn had he stayed there was so exciting and so tempting. But it had been a rude awakening with all the women falling over themselves to serve the men and then Mrs. Rossini had trotted out Gina, and well, she didn't want to think about it further. Then last year she was seeing Geoffrey so she and Geoffrey and Jonathan had been together while Tony and Sam again went to Brooklyn. But this year? There were no significant others or potential significant others who could get in the way.
"But I like cooking, Mrs. R." he said, a little loudly, bringing Angela back to the present moment and out of her thoughts. There was a pause. "Oh, I was thinking pumpkin and maybe pecan," he said. "Oh, yes, I did find that recipe for the apple tart! Remind me to give it to you the next time I see you."
She must have finally given up on convincing him, Angela thought in relief. The tension in the room dropped as Tony and Mrs. Rossini chatted for a few minutes more.
"Oh no, I won't forget, of course we'll have a lasagna on the side. I'm still Italian, aren't I?" He laughed. "Okay, thanks Mrs. Rossini, Happy Thanksgiving to you too," he said.
He hung up the phone and blew out a big breath. "Whew, that was harder than I thought."
"She didn't take it so well, huh?" Angela asked. She gestured to the seat next to her, and Tony flipped the chair around and straddled it. He rested his arms on the back of the chair and looked at her.
"She doesn't understand why I don't want to join her family this year." He shrugged. "I mean, I get it. The Micelli's have spent Thanksgiving with the Rossini's for as far back as I can remember. The last few years it's just been me and Sam, but when my father was alive, and farther back Marie, we all would join them."
"So it's a tradition."
"Yeah," he said. "And it's always nice, and the food, and the company, and the old neighborhood…."
"Listen, Tony, are you sure you don't want to join her? I know you said you were tired, and wanted a break, but is cooking a whole Thanksgiving dinner really going to give you a break?" As much as Angela wanted to spend a Thanksgiving home with Tony and their little family, she wanted to make sure this was really what he wanted.
"Yeah, I'm tried of hauling back and forth to Brooklyn, and I could use a break from Mrs. Rossini. Here's the thing." He cleared his throat. "We've been living here for three years, all been a family for over three years. We've spent Christmases together, and birthdays. Geez, we even vacationed all together in Mexico. But we've never had a Thanksgiving together, here, just us, as a family. Maybe it's time for a new tradition. We've got a lot to be thankful for."
"We do." This time she didn't try to control her expression at all.
xxx
The Day Before Thanksgiving
Another bang from the direction of the kitchen startled Angela. Tony with a pot, she thought. He must be moving around the kitchen at lightning speed; he wasn't usually so noisy while he cooked. Well, sometimes he sang, but that was different. This—the slamming of the oven door, kitchen cabinets, pots clanking down on the stove, the stool being dragged across the floor—these were the noises of someone who was very, very busy.
Angela could not believe the amount of preparation that Tony was putting in for their Thanksgiving dinner. She knew he wanted it to be special, but it was just going to be the five of them. It was all foreign to her. She was used to going out to eat. That's the way it had always been for her growing up, and when she was with Michael and they had Jonathan, well, when Michael was even around anyway, they didn't have the time—and let's face it, the culinary talent—to do more than make a reservation anyway.
She caught a whiff of something delicious. He'd been cooking and baking for two days straight. Yesterday she was in the City but today she was working from home and the smells that were wafting from the kitchen, through the living room, and under the closed door of her office were unbelievable. What was he making now? Pumpkin pie, maybe? Her mouth started to water.
She checked her watch. 1:52. She had been working since 8:30, and her plan was to finish up at 2pm. A short day as everyone at the Bower Agency was given the afternoon off. Mona had hung in there for a few hours, but by 11, she was long gone. Angela hadn't even paused for lunch, so anxious to finish up as much as possible on these storyboards for a new potential client before shutting down for good for the long weekend. Always thinking of her, Tony had brought her some lunch around noon. She smiled thinking of him knocking and peeking in with a tray with two slices of pizza and a cookie. A taste test for the cookie, he had said. He needed to know if the pumpkin chocolate chip cookies had come out well. Was it any surprise that they were amazing?
Angela slammed her folder shut and put away the story boards. She could work on them over the long weekend, if she needed to. Right now, Tony might need some help taste testing. Or maybe just some company.
As she pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen, she caught a glimpse of Tony, before he noticed her. A split second when she could appreciate him, smiling as she watched him in his apron, adorably rolling out what she thought might be pie crust on the counter.
"Hey Angela," he called over his shoulder as he noticed her.
"Hi," she said. "Something smells really good in here!" She moved closer to him peering in a bowl to his left that had something reddish in it, probably cranberry, then in a platter on the kitchen table, with the pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.
"It's pumpkin pie you smell," he gestured with a flour coated rolling pin, "in the oven."
"Mmmm," she said, ducking down and studying the pie through the glass door. Tony flicked on the light for her.
"Almost done," he said.
"Anything I can do?" she asked.
"I'm in pretty good shape," he said, cockily.
"Oh, I know that," Angela said.
Tony laughed, put down the rolling pin and flexed his muscles, and said, "You better believe it!"
Realizing what she said, Angela reddened and said, "Show off. I meant that I know you've got everything under control."
"Sure, sure," he said. "But seriously, a mere bag of shells. I've got one pie in the oven, another here"—he gestured to the half-rolled out pie crust on the counter—"almost ready to go in the oven." He started ticking items off on his fingers as he talked, "I chopped all the vegetables last night, I baked the sweet potatoes AND the stuffing last night too, the turkey is defrosting in the fridge, and the cranberry sauce just came off the stove and is cooling here." He titled the bowl on the counter towards her so that she could see it. "And, you've already taste tested my cookies."
"Wow," Angela was impressed.
"Oh yeah, and I prepared the lasagna last night. I just gotta pop it in the oven."
"Tony, I don't think the pilgrims had lasagna…" she said, smirking.
"No, but I'm Italian and Italians ALWAYS have lasagna. You've always gotta have a little lasagna on the side."
"Ok…." She laughed. "Is there anything left?"
"Well, yeah, the stuff I can't do ahead, like peel the potatoes for the mashed potatoes and cook the turkey."
"Oh, I was hoping I could help with something," Angela said, disappointed. "You are doing so much!"
"I don't mind. In fact, I'm really enjoying it." He paused for a minute, and Angela could tell he was thinking about something. "Well, I did think of one thing."
"What is it, Tony?" she asked, excited. She didn't even wait to hear his answer. She was already crossing the room and pulling her pink and white apron out of the cabinet.
"What do you think of candy apples?" He said, grinning widely.
"I love candy apples! But can you make those?" She was puzzled. Candy apples looked like the kind of thing that just existed by magic, at carnivals and circuses. Not something that could actually be made at home, in a kitchen.
"Of course. You can make ANYTHING if you know how, Angela. And I happen to know how!" He clapped his hands and bits of flour poofed into the air. "Let me just finish this pie and we'll get started." He looked over at her. She was eyeing the cookies.
"Go ahead," he laughed. "Why don't you taste another and make sure they are still good enough for me to serve."
She grabbed one and popped it in her mouth, mumbling "thanks".
"Meet me back here in about 15 minutes," he said, glancing at his pie crust and at his watch. Angela waved over her shoulder, still munching, as she headed back towards the living room. "Oh and Angela," he called.
"Hm?" she asked.
"You're in pretty good shape too," he said, winking.
xxx
Fifteen minutes later, Angela rejoined Tony in the kitchen. He was sliding the pumpkin pie out of the oven onto a cooling rack, and placing the new pie, pecan, Angela could tell by the looks of it, into the oven.
"Hey, Ange. Grab some of those apples, will ya?" he asked, tilting his head in the direction of the bowl of fruit on the counter by the fridge. "I'm just cleaning up here a bit."
He brushed off the counter, wiping it down, and then cleaned his hands off on his apron. Angela picked a couple of apples, and brought them over, as Tony was pulling out the ingredients for the candy coating.
Angela washed off the apples one at a time, while Tony poured the sugar, and corn syrup and water into a pot and started up the stove.
"So how do we do this?" Angela said.
"We just gotta boil this here, add the red food coloring, and voila! Candy apples." Tony took one apple from her as she finished washing it and dried it off. He jammed a stick in the top, just as Angela finished with a second apple. They worked like this, a little assembly line, until all 8 apples were ready.
Angela listened as Tony told her a story about making candy apples with Sam when she was little, and she was quiet, marveling both at Tony's forearms and how strong and handsome he was as he stirred the pot, and at how amazing this man was, both in the kitchen and in all of life, really. What had she done to deserve such a wonderful guy—wonderful friend, she mentally corrected herself—in her life?
When the bright red liquid was ready, Tony showed her how to tilt the pan with one hand and hold the stick and turn the apple in the liquid with the other. His apple turned out perfect.
"OK, Angela, you're up! Give it a try," he said, moving out of the way.
"Like this?" she asked, holding the pot at the right angle.
"Yep, now dip the apple."
She gingerly held the stick and lowered the apple into the liquid, but she pulled back with the left hand holding the pot so that it was horizontal.
"Quickly, Angela, the candy is going to start to harden," Tony said.
She tried to turn the apple faster, but it wasn't coating in the liquid because the pot was at the wrong angle.
"Here, I'll help you," he said, coming up behind her and taking the pot from her. He tilted it and held it still, "Now, go. We don't have much time." He urged her to hurry up with a rolling motion of his free hand.
Angela was so concerned about doing it right, coating the apple perfectly, that she was inching it along.
"No, like this," Tony said, moving in closer and grabbing hold of her hand, his hand covering hers on the stick. He guided her hand around the pot.
"Oh, it's so pretty!" Angela said, admiring the apple.
"No time to gush, Angela." Tony guided her hand to place the apple down on the wax paper and helped her pick up another. The moved together, dragging the apples through the liquid candy, and setting them up to cool on the paper. She enjoyed having him so close, almost but not quite pressed up against her from behind and thought how sometimes it paid to be completely inept in the kitchen.
When they were done, Tony let go of her hand and stepped away, placing the pot back on the stove. Angela felt the loss of warmth of his body behind her. She turned sideways and they both stared at the row of 8 apples on the wax paper. Seven perfect candy apples, hot candy shining like rubies, and one more apple than candy, with a slight crust of oddly shaped candy, pulling away from the apple like taffy. The candy had dried before they could coat the final apple.
"They are perfect!" she said.
"Well, seven of them are anyway," Tony said.
"The last one is perfect too. Perfect for us to taste test," she said, reaching for the stick, laughing.
xxx
Licking her fingers after finishing her half of her candy apple, Angela wandered off at Tony's insistence to take a bath. He assured her that there wasn't much else to do and he wanted her to relax and enjoy the rest of the afternoon.
She enjoyed a nice long bubble bath, without music—she hadn't been able to wear headphones and take a bath since Tony had walked in her years ago. She needed to be able to HEAR if anyone was approaching these days, just in case.
She had stepped out of the tub and was starting to towel off when she heard a loud shriek from the kitchen, following by howling. She flung her robe around her and ran downstairs, panicked that Tony had hurt himself, or that one of the kids was injured.
She burst into the kitchen. "What happened?" she said, out of breath.
Tony was sitting forlornly at the table, his head in his hands.
"Tony, are you okay?" she asked.
He didn't speak, but pointed towards the fridge. Angela looked, but it just looked like, well, the fridge. She looked at him in confusion.
"Open it, Angela," he said in a whimper.
She opened the fridge, tentatively, a little nervous about what she was going to find. It looked ok. The light came on. The food was all there. She didn't see the problem. Certainly nothing that would make a person scream.
"Uh," she said, confused and sheepishly raising her shoulders.
"Angela! It's warm! Put your hand in there!" he said, rising up out of his seat and ushering her over to the fridge. He pulled the door open.
She stuck her hand inside. "Oh no," she said. "Bad timing for the fridge to break."
"Bad timing? BAD TIMING? I have an entire Thanksgiving dinner's worth of food in there and all you have to say is bad timing?"
"Tony! Relax. I'm sure it'll be okay. We can move stuff to my mother's fridge." She shrugged. "Don't worry, Tony! It is just an inconvenience."
"Angela, I have no idea when it stopped working. I haven't opened the fridge in hours. Hours! The candy apples didn't have any refrigerated ingredients, the pie crusts were in the freezer. Jonathan was helping me earlier, so he took out the eggs and the milk and put some of the already cooked things away for me. I ordered a pizza for lunch...The fridge could have been dead since last night and I wouldn't even have known it."
"But it was closed, right? So everything will be fine." She didn't know much about cooking, but surely this was fine. Tony was just overreacting, wanting everything to be perfect.
"No, Angela. Unless we all want to spend Thanksgiving night in the emergency room, it will not be fine." He took a deep breath. "I have to throw it all out."
"What? No way. Let's just smell everything, and take a good look at it. If it smells ok and we don't see any mold, it's fine."
"Angela. You know everything there is to know about advertising, right? Well, I know everything there is to know about cooking. This dinner has got to go."
He got up and pulled out a new garbage bag from the cabinet. Shaking it open glumly, he opened the fridge and started dumping food out. He whimpered a bit as the stuffing went in, creased his brow as the sweet potatoes tumbled in, bit his lip as he tossed the chopped vegetables, swiped a hand down his face as the lasagna disappeared into the bag, and flat-out cried a bit as he heaved the 16 pound turkey into the garbage.
The only things that were salvageable were the two pies, both still cooling on the counter, the cookies, and the candy apples.
Tony grumbled as he hauled the stuffed garbage back out the back door to the garbage pail. Angela was frozen in place, not sure what to do, and she was still standing there helpless when Tony came back in through the door from outside.
They looked at one another, Angela at a loss and Tony looking so disappointed. "So," Angela started. "Chinese food?"
This must have shocked Tony back into action. He sputtered, "What?! No!" He looked completely and utterly shocked. "I wanted us to have a nice homecooked family Thanksgiving together and as God as my witness"—he shook his fist and raised his eyes up towards the ceiling, "we will have a homemade family Thanksgiving meal together!" His mourning period was clearly over, she realized.
He clapped his hands. "Ok!" he said. "We've got a lot to do!"
"A To-Do list!" Angela said. This she could handle. This was where she would shine. "We need a To-Do list."
"Yes!" Tony said, grabbing her by the forearms, a little manic and overexcited.
Angela grabbed a pad and pencil from the junk drawer and sat down. Tony paced behind her between the fridge and the back door.
"Buy new turkey!" he said.
"Take pies to mother's fridge!" she added. She scribbled furiously.
"Go food shopping for new ingredients!" he said.
"Call the appliance repair company!" she said.
"Clean out the rest of the fridge!" he said.
"Find the kids and get them to help shop!" she said.
"Ask Mona to make a few of the sides!" he said.
They both looked at each other then shook their heads and said, "Nah!" simultaneously. That almost elicited a chuckle from Tony. Almost.
While the stress of an impending Thanksgiving with no working fridge and having to start over from scratch was still there, Angela had every faith in Tony that he could pull this off. She'd help as much as possible of course, but she knew that this meal was really all him. She honestly didn't care if they ordered Chinese or reheated frozen pizzas. As long as Tony was there—as long as the family was all there, she mentally corrected herself—that was all she needed.
Their larger To-Do list written out, Tony grabbed the pad from her to start a new page, a new list just for groceries. He was writing at a frantic pace. Angela grabbed his hand, stilling it.
He looked up at her in confusion.
"Tony, you know that whatever we eat, it's going to be great, right?" She tried to channel calm through her hand and into his.
"I know Angela," he said, shaking his head, "but I don't do "whatever"," he said. He pulled his hand away from hers and reached over to their original, big-picture list. He pointed, "Here, can you call the appliance repair company, and take these pies to Mona's?"
He wasn't going to relax, she could see that. Well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, she thought. "Yes, sir!" she said, saluting him and getting up to get some things done.