“Hi, mom,” Tony Marino said into the telephone. “How are you?”
“Tony, what’s wrong?” his mother asked.
“Nothing’s wrong. Why do you think something’s wrong?”
“It’s Thursday.”
“Alright, so it’s Thursday,” he said.
“You only call on Sunday.”
“But I wanted to call on Thursday to see how you’re doing.”
“What are you trying to do, give me a heart attack?” his mother asked. “You call on Sunday. When you call on Thursday, it makes me think something’s wrong.”
“Ma, nothing is wrong. I wanted to see how you were.”
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” she said, and he could imagine her making the sign of the cross as she said it. “You met a girl, didn’t you?”
He hesitated. How did she know that? “No, I didn’t meet a girl,” he said, not wanting to discuss it. “I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”
