“We’re So Glad Johnny Saxon Didn’t Pick A Glamor Girl . . .”

Johnny had called the night before.

“Mama,” he said over the crackling long-distance telephone between Hollywood and Brooklyn, “I’m coming home, and Vicki’s coming with me. Can you put her up? I want everyone in the family to meet her.” When pretty, dark-eyed Mama Orrico put down the pink telephone in her spacious apartment on Eleventh Avenue in Brooklyn, she took a deep, filling breath and closed her eyes as she recited a silent prayer to God. Please God, she asked, have Johnny bring us a good girl. All through the past months, for over a year now, the Orrico family had heard rumors that their son, Carmen Orrico (the famous movie star, Johnny Saxon), was steady-dating Vicki Thai. There was gossip in the newspapers that the two of them had married. But Mama Orrico knew such a thing wasn’t true. Surely her son would call and share such wonderful wedding news with them all.

Now he had called to announce he was flying home to Brooklyn with Vicki, the girl they had never met but whose pictures they had looked at over and over again in the movie magazines. “What’s she like?” the Orricos all asked each other as they studied her face in the date layouts of the film books. She was different, not like the Hollywood glamor girls. She didn’t have the delicate, chiseled features the movie cameramen like, but, then, she wasn’t an actress. Yet, wasn’t there something about her face, a haunting look in her eyes, something . . . was it kindness?

Once, one of the apartment house neighbors had commented, “Gee, Johnny’s girl isn’t very pretty, is she? I just saw her in a movie magazine.”

Mama Orrico’s heart shuddered.

“Do you know her?” Mama Orrico retorted.

The neighbor nodded no.

“Then don’t be so hasty with comments about her looks. Meet her first and find out what she’s like.”

Now, of course, that Johnny was bringing Vicki home, they would all meet her and find out what she was like. And, like all mothers, Mama Orrico wanted her son to find the right girl who would give him her love and look after him, bear his children and make a home for him that was happy and full of life.

Mama Orrico walked into the kitchen to tell the good news to her short, husky husband whose housepainting and contracting business had seen them through a decent life.

“Tony,” she said, “Johnny’s coming home. Tomorrow. And he’s bringing Vicki!”

Then she called her attractive teenage daughters, Dolores and Julie-ann, who were watching television, and she shouted excitedly, “Girls, your brother’s coming home, and he’s bringing Vicki!”

Both girls rushed to the kitchen.

Preparing the homecoming

“I want you to help me get everything ready tomorrow,” Mama Orrico told them. “I want to fix ravioli, and a big turkey, and I’m going to make a big rum cake for dessert. And maybe, tomorrow, after you wake up, you can go to the department store and buy presents for Vicki. I think that would be nice, don’t you? Maybe some cologne or a cute bracelet or a nice pair of stockings.”

Mama Orrico proceeded to make a big pot of coffee, and the family—mother, father and the two darkhaired daughters—all sat around the yellow chromium-edged kitchen table and talked excitedly in quick sentences about what Johnny’s girl would be like. . . .

The next day the Orrico household was in a flurry; it buzzed with the anticipation of Vicki’s arrival.

Sweet smells of cooking drifted from the big kitchen. Johnny’s eighteen-year-old sister, Dolores, who worked as a dentist’s assistant in midtown Manhattan, took the day off and helped sixteen-year-old Julieann dust the living room and dining room. Dolores offered to turn over her room to Vicki.

Though there was much to get done through the morning and afternoon, the day passed slowly until five o’clock arrived. By then everyone had bathed and dressed in neatly pressed finery. Mama Orrico wore a ruffled white organdy apron over her sky-blue silk dress. Grandmother and Grandfather Orrico were dead, but Grandmother Julia Probatore, Mama Orrico’s mother, had been invited to the family dinner to meet Vicki.

“I’ll bet anything Vicki’s nervous,” Dolores confided to her mom as they waited on the porch for Johnny and Vicki to arrive from the airport. “I know I would be if I were going to meet my boyfriend’s family. Do you realize she’s coming into a houseful of total strangers?”

“But every girl, sooner or later, has to face her boyfriend’s family,” Mama Orrico’s voice was comforting.

“A girl’s real lucky,” Dolores added, “if she marries her childhood sweetheart. Then she knows her boyfriend’s family right from the start. . . .”

It was shortly after six o’clock and the sun was shifting to the west of the pale blue sky when the yellow cab pulled up to the curb. Dolores, dressed in a pumpkin-colored shirtwaist dress, bolted to the cab to greet Johnny, and as she ran to the cab, she threw out her arms and suddenly, unexpectedly, she found herself embracing Vicki.

“Hi,” she managed breathlessly, trying to swallow the lump in her throat. “I’m Dolores and gee, I’m glad to meet you!” Vicki hugged her back. She was wearing a stunning emerald-green silk suit with a matching polka-dot blouse.

Johnny, in a handsome olive-green continental suit, stepped out of the cab and she ran over and embraced him and kissed him on the cheek.

All of a sudden everyone was embracing and kissing, and Mama Orrico found warm, happy tears trickling down her cheeks.

Getting to know you . . .

“Johnny, Johnny,” she was saying through her tears, “it’s so good to have you home.” And, after hugging and kissing Vicki, she took her hand and led her to Dolores’ neat bedroom and said, “I know it’s a long ride by airplane, all the way from California, and if you want to rest up a little bit, just take off your shoes and lie down for a while.”

But Vicki said, “I’m too excited, Mrs. Orrico. I’ve been counting the hours since yesterday, and I’m looking forward to talking to everyone and getting to know all of you!”

Mama Orrico looked into Vicki’s wide, coffee-brown eyes. “We’re so glad Johnny’s brought you home!” she said, and her eyes started to smart again. Taking Vicki’s hand, she led her into the living room and asked her husband to open the gallon of wine for a toast.

Standing there, in the pink and applegreen living room with its beautiful French provincial furniture, lifting the crystal wineglass into the air to welcome Johnny and Vicki to Brooklyn, Mama Orrico recalled the Sunday afternoon, years ago, when Johnny turned sixteen. Grandfather Orrico was alive then, and Grandmother Orrico, too. All the relatives—uncles and aunts and cousins—had come to celebrate Johnny’s birthday, and as they lifted the thin-stemmed wine glasses into the air to toast Johnny’s golden future, somebody spoke out—wasn’t it Aunt Tess?—and said, “And here’s to the pretty girl, wherever she is, who someday’s going to be Johnny’s wife!”

Now, they were toasting again on this early autumn day. And they were toasting to Johnny and the girl who might be Johnny’s wife.”

She was nice, like Aunt Tess had predicted, and there was something about her that drew her right into your heart. . . .

In the dining room with its massive fruitwood furniture, the table was set with Mama Orrico’s finest damask tablecloth, polished silverware, a crystal bowl of sweetheart rosebuds surrounded with trails of glossy ivy.

They had eaten an antipasto that was a meal in itself: prosciutto and vinegar peppers, stuffed celery and pimento. There was Mama Orrico’s tempting ravioli, a big roast turkey, glazed browned potatoes, a huge Italian salad, fresh bread, plenty of red wine and the dessert of tangy rum cake.

Grandmother Probatore, her diamond earrings glittering, shook a finger at Vicki. “Don’t be ashamed,” she said. “Eat! Just like you were in your own home!”

“I’m . . . I’m nervous,” Vicki said, her voice throaty and low. “I can’t eat too much when I’m nervous.”

“Oh,” Grandmother Probatore added apologetically. “I just don’t want you to be ashamed. I want you to feel like you’re one of us.”

“I could never feel ashamed,” Vicki admitted. “Everybody’s been so nice to me!”

There were smiles and more toasts to the future.

A wonderful girl

Johnny’s father, at the end of the big meal, patted his wife on the back. “You cooked a wonderful dinner, Mama,” he said. He was a quiet man, as a rule, observing, taking in everything around him but seldom commenting on what he saw. So it came as a surprise to everyone when he announced openly, “You’re a wonderful girl, Vicki, and I’m proud of my Johnny for bringing you home!”

Mama Orrico dabbed her eyes. Grandmother Probatore said, “Poor girl. Everyone’s making such a fuss over her she must feel funny!”

Vicki told them, “No, no. I don’t feel funny. It’s just that I’m so happy meeting all of you. I’ve heard so much about you I almost feel I know you all very well. You’re all so wonderful, just like Johnny said you’d be. . . .”

Vicki cleared her throat; her voice was faltering and her eyes were glassy. And she bit her lips to hold back the tears.

After dinner, the three girls, Vicki, Dolores and Julie-ann, retired to Dolores’ blue and white bedroom to powder their faces and to indulge in a little girl-talk.

There was a snapshot of Dolores on the bleached oak dresser. Dolores was being hugged by her fiance, John San Marco.

“When are you planning to get married?” Vicki asked Dolores.

“Next year, sometime.”

“He looks nice. What does he do?”

“He works with his dad in their butcher shop,” Dolores answered.

“Maybe we can all double-date some night this week,” Vicki suggested. “That’s a darling hat you’re wearing in the picture. You know, I’ve always wished I could wear hats!”

“Why can’t you?” Julie-ann chimed in.

“Oh, I always look so cluttered when I wear a hat. I look top-heavy.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Dolores said, opening her closet and pulling out a couple of hat boxes from the shelf. “Try this one on,” Dolores said, offering Vicki a white pique cloche.

“Hmm,” Vicki’s voice sounded surprised. “It doesn’t look bad.” She turned her head from side to side to look at herself in the large mirror on the wall. “You know this is the first hat I’ve tried on that doesn’t make me look like a Christmas tree. Maybe the salesgirls have been trying to sell me the wrong kind!”

Dolores insisted Vicki keep the hat.

“Maybe all three of us could go shopping one day in the Fifth Avenue stores,” Vicki suggested.

“We’d love it!” Julie-ann replied.

“I thought I’d get tickets for a matinee of The Music Man. Would you both like to see it?”

“It’s one of the biggest hits on Broadway,” Dolores commented. “Everyone who’s seen it raves about it.”

“Well, that settles it,” Vicki said. “We’ll go. And the treat’s on me!”

One of the family

In a couple of minutes the girls returned to the living room where Pop Orrico played a Renato Carosone album on the hi-fi set, and everyone sat back and listened to the romantic music of Italy.

Johnny was happy to be home. His face beamed now as he sat on the pale green couch holding Vicki’s hand while the soft, airy music played.

There was small talk about how Johnny and Vicki met. Grandmother Probatore wanted to know the whole story.

“I was going to college, UCLA,” Vicki explained, “and I was working nights in Wil Wright’s ice cream parlor, and one night Johnny came in and I could tell he was lonely so I said ‘Hi’ to him, and we became friends.”

“We dated,” Johnny added, “but then when she brought me home to meet her mom and dad, I’ll never forget how comfortable I felt. They made me feel like I was one of the family. And I was three thousand miles away from home! So it felt good, real good, to know her folks liked me, and I just couldn’t stop seeing them all they were so wonderful.” Then his eyes stared into Vicki’s, “And . . . well, Vicki was just too nice to give up . . . ever!”

After a while of conversation, Mama Orrico and her daughters tried to retire quietly to the kitchen to do the dishes, but Vicki followed them. “Remember,” she said, “you told me I should feel just like I was a part of the family? Well, I want to help clean up!”

“No, you don’t!” Mrs. Orrico begged.

“I insist!” Vicki answered.

“No, not tonight, please! Tonight is special. Otherwise, we’ll let the dishes go altogether.”

But Vicki was insistent, and finally she was permitted to help with the drying. The dishes all done and put away, Mama Orrico took Vicki into her bedroom and said, “I want to give you a little gift,” and she gave Vicki a goldfoil-wrapped box containing a lovely slip, trimmed with beige lace from Belgium. “The girls have little gifts for you, too.”

Dolores gave Vicki a white silk scarf with lilac embroidery and Julie-ann gave her future sister-in-law a bottle of flower-scented cologne.

“You’re all just too wonderful to me,” Vicki said. “How . . . how can I ever repay all your hospitality?”

One by one she hugged them all. Then they walked into the living room and Vicki stood in the center of it, an expression of thanks and love and goodness on her face. That was the wonderful thing about her. She was just herself, a plain and simple person. She didn’t pose, and there was none of the la-de-dah starlet stuff all the Orricos were afraid might attract Johnny in Hollywood.

That night, after everyone had gone to sleep, Mama Orrico tossed in her double bed. Her husband was snoring; he had fallen asleep so quickly. The wine had probably gone to his head. As she lay there, looking out the window at the full harvest moon, she sighed and repeated her thankfulness to God.

Thank You, Dear Lord, for giving our Johnny such a good girl!

THE END

John’s in United Artists’ CRY TOUGH and THE UNFORGIVEN and Buena Vista’s THE BIG FISHERMAN.

 

It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE DECEMBER 1959