the shubaduh

by Trisha DiFazio

I am running around the Taste of Melrose Park, a large suburban food festival, when I notice two women not doing anything. I don’t know why I notice them — again, they are just standing there. But I can’t help it— I feel drawn to them. Like a bit of a creep, I circle around them.

I finally get up the nerve to ask if they would like some chairs to sit on, but they politely decline. Now, this is where our interaction should reasonably end, but for some reason, I find myself searching for something else to say. Why am I stalking these women?

I ask if I could get them a water or a soda. Again, they decline. I, however, am apparently crazy, because here I am acting like some sort of hospitality ambassador when I am not, in fact, currently working at this event. Still, I stand there awkwardly.

And then one of the ladies says, “You know, I always think about this one woman when I come to the Taste.”

“Oh really, who is that?” I say, thankful for the chit-chat.

“Her name is Joanne Larry. She passed away a few years ago. But I always think of her when I come here. I think her daughter runs it or something like that.”

I watch the lady smile to herself at the memory of this woman. She gets caught in a stare (you know the kind) and then shakes it off.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” she apologizes.

But I know why.

“I think it’s because Joanne’s daughter is Peggy DiFazio, and she does run the Taste,” I say.

“That’s right. Peggy! That’s her.”

“And I’m Trisha DiFazio, Peggy’s daughter. Joanne was my grandmother.”

Jaws drop.

I think about her, my beautiful grandmother. I think about her funeral two years earlier and how we couldn’t find a priest in time for the services. My mom asked a good friend, Father Vlad, to step in at the last minute to perform the ceremony. I think about how my devoutly Lutheran grandmother’s funeral was held in a Catholic church and conducted by a Russian Orthodox priest. She would have gotten a kick out of that — especially the part where my mom had me blast Willie Nelson’s “Old Rugged Cross” during her procession, even though secular music is strictly prohibited in a Catholic church. Sorry, God. My mom made me.

I wrote my grandmother’s eulogy on the back of a birthday card my brother had given me the day before. I told a story about some advice my grandmother had given me before my first day at Fenwick High School, a private school in another town. I didn’t know a single person and was scared to death. To make matters worse, that Catholic school uniform could not hide the Melrose girl underneath—equipped with a bad perm, blonde highlights, and a leather backpack. I looked like Snooki in a kilt. I cried to my gramma about how nervous I was to sit alone at lunch. My grandmother listened patiently and then shared that she too was an outsider in high school and ate lunch alone most days.

“Read a book,” she said. “You’ll get smart and you won’t be alone. Two birds, one stone.”

Clearly, this had worked for her, so that’s what I did. I sat alone in that cafeteria and read The Lord of the Flies upside down for ten minutes when a nice girl noticed me and asked me to sit with her. (Shout out to Alex Epstein, ya menche!)

After school, I ran to my grandmother’s house and told her that her trick had worked. Later, I looked through her high school yearbook, searching for that gawky outsider, when lo and behold, there was my grandmother — MOST POPULAR GIRL for like four years in a row. So, I go confront this 1950s Regina George.

I bolted into the kitchen, where she was making her famous Elvis Presley Poundcake, and shoved the evidence of her betrayal into her eyeline.

“An outsider? A nerd? You ate lunch alone most days?”

“Well,” she said calmly as she whipped the batter, “I had to get you to school somehow.”

That was my grandmother. She was 15 when she got her first job putting glitter on greeting cards at Woolworth’s. One day, she and her sister were riding a streetcar to work in downtown Chicago when three redheaded boys boarded and sat right across from them. As legend has it (that legend being my Aunt Roberta), my grandmother pointed to the ginger trio and said, “One day you’re going to have three redheaded boys just like them.” I shared that story in the church as I looked out at the faces of Aunt Roberta’s three grown sons — all redheaded.

I finish my speech and close the card. Some glitter falls onto the podium. My brother, not a card guy and definitely not a glitter guy, had chosen a card covered in glitter.

“This is crazy!” the other woman says. Now, I think maybe I was the one caught in a stare. I am back at the Taste.

“What are the chances that we would run into her grand daughter?” her friend adds.

“Honestly, I don’t know why I came over to you. I literally circled you twice before stopping,” I say.

“Well, we are so happy you did. Your grandmother was a great lady.”

“She was very popular.” I say.

We all hug.

Joanne Larry, Most Popular Girl

Sadly, I can’t remember their names, but if anyone knows these two nice ladies, I hope I see them this weekend at the Taste.