Addio Easter Bunny

“About time you got here Frankie,” my father said. “Your mother’s been driving me crazy. ‘He’s gonna miss dinner. I made all this food. Where is he?’”

“Yeah where were you, Francis?” my younger brother Tony asked. He introduced me to his new girlfriend, Brenda, a Jewish girl from West Orange. “It’s her first Easter dinner.”

I was 26, living in the Bronx and working as a staff accountant for the New York Yankees. Every Easter Sunday I went to my parents’ home across the river in Montclair, New Jersey.

“Hey, Ma, the big shot from the Yankees is here,” Tony announced. My mother came into the living room from the kitchen. She was wearing an apron over her new pink dress she wore for Mass that morning. She wasn’t the stereotypical Italian American women though. She was as trim as she was when we were kids.

“You went to Mass this morning, I hope?” She asked.

I nodded as I glanced around the kitchen, checking the table and the countertops. There was a bottle of rye on the kitchen table, with shot glasses, but what I was looking for wasn’t there.

She gave me a peck on the cheek. “Where’s Lisa?”

“We broke up again.”

“When? How many times do I have to tell you she’s the one, Frankie?”

“The one for you, not him,” my father said. He turned to Brenda. “Don’t worry, Brenda, my boys don’t let their mother pick their wives for them.” Brenda was clearly embarrassed to be addressed as a possible mate for Tony. They had had only been dating for a month. My father seemed to enjoy it.

“Now you know why Lisa isn’t here,” I said to Brenda, for which my mother gave me a smack on the back of the head.

“Mind your manners.”

Easter was always the biggest holiday in our house, at least when it came to dinner. My mother made a leg of lamb and a baked ham. There were lots of vegetables, potatoes and in a nod to our heritage, she served an antipasto before we got to the main event. For dessert, she made a Pastiera Napoletana, an Easter wheat pie. 

The doorbell rang. It was my mother’s brother Cal and his wife, Aunt Minnie. They had a huge box of Italian pastries from Ferrara’s Bakery in Newark. My aunt Minnie said the same thing she said every Easter. This year she didn’t even bother to say hello first, or yell at my Uncle Cal for helping himself to my father’s rye. “You gonna sing for us Frankie like you did when you were a little boy?”

My mother loved to sing. When I came along she decided to name me Francis Albert Simonetti, hoping that one day I would make it big just like Ol Blue Eyes. After all, Sinatra came from New Jersey too. Not wanting to slight her second born, she named him Anthony Dominic Simonetti, a nod to another Italian crooner, Tony Bennett. “I remember how you used to sing songs for us every Christmas and Easter,” Aunt Minnie said. She wasn’t being serious. She just liked to remember. As a teenager, I was embarrassed every time she mentioned it. She was oblivious.  

I went into the bathroom, not because I had to go; I wanted an excuse to check my parents’ bedroom. Nothing on the bureaus and nothing in the modest closet they shared. I felt silly sneaking around, and I hated the thought that such a good tradition might actually be over.

My father was standing in the hallway when I walked out of their room. “Find anything?” he asked.

I felt a sheepish smile cross my lips. “Where did Mom put it?”

“Put what?” Now he was smiling. We walked out into the kitchen where my mother and Aunt Minnie were putting the finishing touches on the antipasto. Uncle Cal was sitting in the living room flipping through the channels, looking for the Yankee game. My father walked over to where my mother was standing. “Your son wants to know where his Easter basket is,” he said.

She shook her head. “Don’t start with me.”

“What does that mean?” I asked. Tony walked in with Brenda. The small kitchen was getting crowded.

My father looked at Tony and me. He smiled again, pleased by what he was about to say. “Il coniglietto di Pasqua è morto.” My uncle Cal laughed out loud all the way from the living room.

“Your father, he made me stop,” My mother said. She gently slapped my father’s arm. “I told you they would look for their baskets.” 

Tony shrugged. “No Easter egg hunt either, I guess.”