A Page From the Reagan Era Diary of Tina Scompigliati
Boston Outsider / Humor
Now that my Friday shift at the Bonbon Salon is over, I’m sitting at one of the mirrors working on my own coif, using a ton of hair spray to get it nice and high, and in my head I’m saying, “Screw you” to all the hippies who bitch about the ozone layer, because I don’t take crap from people who piss me off. The streets here in Somerville are only semi-plowed after yesterday’s storm, and after I leave the shop and drive to my neighborhood, I get a nasty surprise. My parking space across from Mrs. Flaherty’s house, the space I shoveled myself and marked with two trash barrels, is occupied by a big black Oldsmobile, and I have to park three blocks from home instead of three doors away. Somebody is going to pay.
When I open the door at home, my big Italian nose picks up the scent of pasta fazool, the macaroni and bean soup that my mother makes on Fridays during Lent. It’s supposed to be meatless, but Ma starts it by sautéing salt pork and herbs in olive oil. She says that a little meat is okay if it’s, “just for flavor.” Yeah, right, I’d like to see the catechism where she found that loophole. When I go in the kitchen, I see that there are two soup pots on the stove, and I figure that Ma has invited her cousin Chooch, who has an appetite like a Clydesdale with the munchies, over for dinner.
“How was work today, Tina?” Ma asks when she sees me.
“Work was okay, Ma, but somebody stole my parking space,” I tell her, and she gives me a little sermon about loving your enemies. Then she shuts off the soup and heads to the cellar to do laundry.
Well, I decide to give my latest enemy some tough love. I go to the fridge, grab a carton of eggs, and bring them outside to where that stupid Olds is parked. Then I smash the whole dozen on the bastard’s windshield, hoping that the mess will freeze. I retrieve the trash barrels from the sidewalk, remembering to put the egg carton in one of them. I wouldn’t want to litter.
About a half-hour later, I’m eating at the kitchen table with Ma while my brother Eddie is on the kitchen phone calling in basketball bets. Ma opens the fridge to get some cheese.
“Where’s that dozen eggs I had?” she asks. “I need them to make manicotti on Sunday.”
Shit, why didn’t I think to replace the eggs? Those chemical fumes I inhale every day at the Bonbon are rotting my brain.
“Um, I brought them to Mrs. Flaherty,” I lie. “She usually eats seafood or eggs on Fridays, and I thought she’d have a hard time getting to the store with all the snow.”
“What a little saint,” Eddie smirks. “Maybe next Friday you can go fishing and catch her an eel.”
“Mrs. Flaherty?” Ma says, sounding surprised. “That’s who the extra pot of soup is for.”
Before I can think up another whopper, the doorbell rings. And because it’s my lucky day, in walks Mrs. Flaherty, who just turned seventy-five, and she’s with her sixty-year-old baby brother, Ed “Happy” Duggan.
“Happy drove down from Woburn to check on me,” Mrs. Flaherty informs us. “He found a parking space right across from my house, but someone egged his windshield. What’s happened to this city?” she sighs.
Now I remember that Happy, who needs to wise up, drives a black Oldsmobile. Ma looks hurt, but if she rats me out, Mrs. Flaherty is going to find out just what’s in that soup.
