Page 84 of A Fabulously Unfabulous Summer for Henry Milch

“Oh, don’t be like that. You’re still new here. You need to get out and meet more people.”

“I don’t think ‘Hi, I’m tone deaf’ is great introduction.”

“Oh, you silly! You’re not tone deaf. Or at least you wouldn’t be if you came to rehearsal. All you need is practice. Maybe a lot of it, but if you’d only try. Tuesday. Seven o’clock.” After that she walked away, and I was left to go find Nana Cole. I mouthed that I wanted to leave, and she reluctantly began her goodbyes.

We left nearly an hour later. As soon as we got into the Escalade, she said, “Call Little Italy and order some fried chicken and a pizza. We’ll pick it up on the way home.”

Surprisingly, I was a bit hungry. I asked, “Why do they have fried chicken at a pizza place?”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“It’s not Italian fried chicken, is it?”

“I don’t think so. I think it’s just fried chicken.”

I dialed 411 and asked for Little Italy. For an extra charge, I was put through. As the phone rang, I asked my grandmother, “What kind of pizza do you want?”

“Oh, I don’t care. I’m just ordering it to be polite. It would be rude to just get the chicken.”

Even though that made no sense, I went ahead and ordered a bucket of the fried chicken and a meat lover’s pizza, medium. For the hell of it, I added a couple of Cokes. I was told it would be about half an hour. After I hung up, we drove the five minutes to Little Italy.

Once inside, I quickly discerned that little was the more important word. Italy seemed an afterthought. There were three tables, a long counter and a giant white board as a menu—much of which was far from Italian. We were the only customers.

On the counter was a bell, which Nana Cole hit.

“She said a half an hour. It’s not ready yet.”

“It’s only polite to tell her we’re here.”

After a moment, a woman in her late fifties came out. She had a wide face and thinning bangs that were meant to disguise a spider’s web of scars running across most of her forehead.

“Hello Dinah, it’s Emma Cole.”

“Yes, Emma, I can see you.”

That brought my grandmother up short. She stumbled for a moment and then meekly said, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I can never… this is my grandson, Henry.”

I had no idea what that was about. Dinah nodded at me.

“Your order will be ready in about twenty minutes. If you let me go back into the kitchen.”

“Oh. Yes, of course,” my grandmother said to Dinah’s back.

“What just happened?”

“Oh, I just… she has this thing. I can never remember it. It happened when she was in that awful car accident. Oh God, thirty years ago. She went through the windshield. Amazing that she—”

“What thing does she have?”

“She can’t hear voices—er, I mean, she’s not deaf. She can hear them, she just can’t recognize them. I always think it’s that she can’t remember faces but it’s not that, obviously. It’s a brain thing.”

“From the accident.”

“Yes. I said that.”

She hadn’t exactly. Had she?

“So, everyone knows she can’t recognize voices.”