“I want to use one of my nudges,” Vivi says. “Let the kids know I’m here.”
“I’d wait,” Martha says. “Until they need you.”
“Are you not watching? They need me now.”
“They’re fine,” Martha says. “This is normal.”
Vivi supposes it is normal—their mother died suddenly, without warning, and they had no time to prepare or say goodbye.
The thing is, Vivi knows exactly how they feel.
Just like that, she’s sucked out of this church and plopped into the front row at St. John Bosco Catholic Church in Parma, Ohio. It’s February 18, 1987. Vivi is seventeen years old, a senior in high school. Her applications to college have all been mailed in, and her father has just killed himself by running the family car, a 1982 Ford Country Squire station wagon, in the garage.
Her father’s death is not only a tragedy （a person dying in the prime of his life）; it’s also a scandal. There are whispers in the church, in the neighborhood, and in the community as a whole. Why did he do it? Was there a note?
There was no note, no explanation.
Vivi’s father, Frank Howe, works for the phone company, Ohio Bell. He’s a “manager,” so he wears a shirt and tie to the office but no jacket. Vivi knows nothing about his work life; what it is he manages, she has no idea and doesn’t ask. Once a year, Vivi and her mother, Nancy, go to the “company picnic,” which is held at Frank’s boss’s house in a subdivision that’s nicer than the Howes’。 Mr. Ricard, the boss, has an in-ground pool and a tiki bar, and Vivi appreciates these things even though she dreads the company picnic because she’s expected to hang out with the other employee kids, none of whom she knows. She always brings a book and spends the afternoon on a chaise, reading. On the way home, her mother always calls her “antisocial,” and Vivi shrugs and says under her breath, “Sit on it.” One year when Vivi attends this picnic, her reading is interrupted by the sound of a barbershop quartet singing “Coney Island Baby.” This is startling enough, but Vivi sits bolt upright when she realizes that the man singing the baritone part is her father.
Vivi didn’t know her father could sing! How and when did he learn the harmonies, the lyrics? This is the first time Vivi thinks of her father as a person, someone who has talents and interests of his own.
Vivi’s mother is deeply, almost painfully religious; her idea of interior decorating is to hang up as many crucifixes as possible. She’s the head secretary at the church rectory; she’s on a first-name basis with the priests and knows the business of all of the parishioners. Everyone calls her a saint—she organizes the canned-food drives, the clothing drives, the relief for the famine in Ethiopia. She ministers to the sick and the elderly when the priests are busy; she volunteers at the battered women’s shelter. She runs the soup kitchen and leads the women’s Bible study.
Only Vivi and her father know that Nancy isn’t a saint. At home, she’s dictatorial and impatient. It’s her way or the highway. Nancy Howe is in a constant battle with her weight, and Vivi and Frank are casualties, even though they’re both thin as rails. If Nancy is on a diet （which she always is）， Vivi and Frank are on a diet. They eat bizarre and awful dishes like lasagna made with cottage cheese, dry-broiled fish fillets, sugar-free cake. They say grace before dinner, holding hands; Vivi’s mother goes on and on for full minutes while dinner grows cold.
Nancy smokes like a chimney, though always outside in the garage. Everyone is allowed one vice, she says. This is the only thing that lets Vivi know her mother is human.
On Saturday mornings, Vivi and her father go to the Perkins in Middleburg Heights for breakfast while her mother works at the soup kitchen or picks up floral arrangements for the weekend services. Both Vivi and her father look forward to these breakfasts all week. They always sit in the same hunter-green vinyl booth and have the same waitress, Cindy, who has a high ponytail and wears bright pink lipstick. “It wouldn’t be Saturday without my two favorite customers,” Cindy always says. “Coffee?”
Yes, Vivi is allowed to drink coffee at these breakfasts. Cindy brings Vivi her own silver pitcher of cream and the sugar dispenser. Then Vivi and Frank pore over the huge laminated menu and order whatever they want: scrambled eggs and bacon and sausage or hash browns and lightly buttered rye toast that comes with little packets of jelly or pancakes that have a fluffy dollop of butter on top or waffles with strawberries and whipped cream or French toast sprinkled with powdered sugar or omelets oozing with cheese and soft brown onions and tomato and green pepper. Frank brings the Plain Dealer and he gives Vivi a section to read, which makes her feel grown up and also keeps her from eating too fast. They savor not only the food but the freedom from Vivi’s mother’s rules and regulations, her diets and diatribes. The real grace that Vivi experiences growing up are these stolen hours in a chain restaurant sitting across from her father as they scrape the syrup off their plates with the backs of their forks and Frank winks at his daughter and slides two quarters across the table so Vivi can go buy her horoscope from the vending machine in the breezeway while he pays their bill and leaves Cindy a tip.