Housebroken by Laurie Notaro

Author:Laurie Notaro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2016-07-12T04:00:00+00:00

“Nicholas just called me,” my sister said the moment after I picked up the phone. “You won’t believe what he said!”

“I already told him that syphilis was making a huge comeback, so don’t blame me,” I shot quickly.

“What? No, he was making a frozen pizza in his apartment,” she continued. “And he called me with a question, because he said the directions on the box said to preheat the oven to four hundred degrees, but then told him to cook it for fifteen minutes. And he didn’t know what to do.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“He was stuck. He said, ‘I don’t know how to make this thing. The directions say “cook for fifteen minutes,” but the knob only says “bake” or “broil.” Not “cook.” ’ ”

“This would have never happened if you had girls,” I said, shaking my head. “Never.”

Now, honestly, I don’t care if that’s a sexist thing to say; I don’t care if it’s too gender-specific or stereotypic; it’s true. Had my sister had girlfolk, she wouldn’t have been laughing at my niece at the same level we were laughing at my nephew now. He’s a smart kid. A National Honors student, got a full scholarship to the honors college at his chosen university, and has claimed business and finance as his double major. Still has over a 4.0 GPA. Kid’s no dummy.

Except when it comes to survival. And, when I thought about that, it hit me: My two sisters had three sons, three boys none of us had prepared for life outside the womb, who were breathing and speaking and existing due to sheer luck. It wasn’t Nick’s fault that he didn’t know that “cook” and “bake” were the same things, according to Whirlpool and Kenmore.

Had I ever once dragged Nick or my other nephews into the kitchen and said, “Today is the day you learn about our family. Today is the day I pass on to you the legacy that I learned as a child, which you will pass on to your children. Today we are going to make a meatball”?

While my nephews were very interested in eating, they never once showed any interest or curiosity when it came to the regular rotation of meals that were placed before them. And, as a matter of fact, neither had their mother. She will still call me and ask me how to make a chicken cutlet, which in an Italian family is like saying, “How do you open a box of Pop-Tarts?” I don’t remember ever learning; I just knew.

Cooking is an important part of an Italian family. We like to feed people, and if you don’t leave my house at least five pounds heavier than when you walked in, that means you did not have a good time and the food sucked as bad as the buffet at a Mormon picnic. There’s only one thing you can call an Italian girl who can’t cook, and that’s a nun. “Go marry Jesus,” her family will say. “He doesn’t have much of an appetite anymore.

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