A Future First Lady, With Cheese

   Roma Pizzeria    Third Avenue and 87th Street

 One of the things I love about a pizza parlor is how one minute it’s packed, the next empty.

 No one lingers; you pay, you eat, you leave.

 Thinking I’d have to sit squashed by the window next to a man the size of Michigan, when my slice is ready stacked with mushrooms, my favorite table in the back facing a poster of the Brooklyn Bridge becomes free.

 A family of five is seated to my right.

 Young parents with two little boys; one around 3, the other not even a year, dressed in identical brown corduroys and navy long-sleeved polo shirts. A girl maybe 10 in droopy jeans and a pink Taylor Swift hoodie is doing a great job taking care of her brothers both headed for Juvenile Hall.

 The parents whose bodies tell me they feast on cookies and chips for comfort, look as if they haven’t slept since their honeymoon.

  As I carve my slice with my third plastic knife since they keep breaking, the young girl with cheese in her hair thanks to her brother, watches me.

 Hey, in Connecticut you use utensils.

 When that knife breaks, she gets up, gets four more placing them on my table.

  I thank her, as her youngest brother toddles over like a baby Dillinger, helping himself to a mushroom.

  “I’m so sorry,” she says, horrified, as if he grabbed my ass instead, saying she’d tell her mother who would get me another slice.

  “No, no,” I say, “sit here,” pointing to the empty chair across from me. “There are plenty of mushrooms to go around.”

   She plops Dillinger on her lap and we sit face-to face while the parents wave like I’ve been hired.

   Turns out her name is Abigail and hates being called Abbey. She’s in the 5th grade and likes to read and write. She wants to be a writer when she grows up, or a First Lady.

  I just loved that!

  I tell her that a very famous one was also called Abigail.

  I pull a notebook from my pocket and write…Abigail Adams was married to John, our second President and she too loved to write.

  It was the first time she smiles with cheese still in her hair, as baby Dillinger keeps stealing mushrooms.    

 SB