Lazy Mary Wasn’t So Lazy After All
Not quite white. Not quite wrong. Not quite what I was expecting.
Pull up a chair. I’ll pour you a glass.
To understand my family, you have to understand a song called Lazy Mary.
Every Italian wedding had its soundtrack.
Frank for the dinner hour. Dean for the cocktails.
And somewhere between the antipasto and the ziti, the accordion player would squeeze out Lou Monte:
Lazy Mary, you better get up,
She answered back, “I am not able.”
Lazy Mary, you better get up,
We need the sheets for the table.
That’s how the song went.
They’d blast it just after the first course, before the Sambuca.
We’d stampede onto the dance floor, napkins tied like bandanas, arms flailing in a way that suggested dancing—or possibly distress.
We didn’t know the words. We didn’t care.
We thought it was about a sleepy lady and some missing sheets.
It wasn’t. Not originally.
I grew up in suburban Ohio in the ’60s.
Split-level homes, tidy lawns, and good public schools.
My parents were first-generation Sicilian Americans, both raised in “Little Italy,” both eager for a driveway, a backyard, and less shouting.
Outside: sprinklers, Schwinn bikes, Wonder Bread sandwiches.
Inside: semolina loaves, cousins on couches, laughter and chaos.
The kitchen smelled like garlic and Spic and Span. Sinatra on the radio.
A pot already simmering on the back burner by the time we walked in.
The kind of smell that clung to your clothes until Tuesday.
But they brought the noise with them.
And the wine.
And the plastic-covered sofas.
There was always someone staying over.
Or dropping by.
Or halfway into a second helping.
Sundays were an Olympic sport: pasta, yelling, cousins, wine, yelling, dessert, yelling.
Yelling mistaken for joy.
And joy mistaken for yelling.
We didn’t call it culture.
We just called it Sunday.
In the neighborhood, things were quieter. Lighter. Paler.
Even the bread had a different name.
We weren’t quite like the families on our block.
Darker—especially under the eyes. A Presti trademark.
Hairier.
Louder.
Even our joy took up more space.
And one afternoon, on the school bus—I don’t remember the argument, just the ending.
A boy stepped down from the stairwell, turned back toward me, and yelled:
“You—You Negro, you!”
Not kindly.
I stood there, stunned. My little head trying to work it out.
How could I be something I wasn’t? And why was it hurled like that?
The bus engine hummed. Nobody spoke.
It didn’t compute.
But it stuck anyway.
Like swallowing a popsicle stick—sharp, strange, and not supposed to happen.
We weren’t quite white. Not then. Not there.
We were in-between.
Too loud, too dark, too much of everything for that zip code.
The questions followed me out of Ohio.
Just got more polite.
As a young man in Florida, I spent most weekends at the beach—shirtless, sun-drenched, and increasingly tan. Very tan.
Once, while writing a check at a hardware store, the cashier paused mid-demographic form.
“I don’t know how to ask this,” she said, “but… are you Black or white?”
She apologized. I smiled.
“I guess there’s really no good way to ask that.”
We both pretended it was normal for a stranger to fill out your race for you while you bought screws.
Another time, I was standing at a urinal when a man leaned in—never ideal—and asked,
“You like our country?”
“I do,” I answered, not sure where this was going.
He nodded, zipped up, and left.
Odd. Like taking a citizenship exam—next to a urinal cake.
And then there was the birthday cake incident.
A lovely Indian patient brought one in—sari, bindi, the works.
Later, my receptionist told me another patient in the waiting room leaned over and whispered,
“How sweet of Dr. Presti’s mother to bring him a cake.”
Apparently, my mother had started wearing saris, grown an accent, and begun waiting in lobbies with birthday cakes.
Depending on the haircut, the tan, the lighting—I could pass for anything.
And that seemed to bother people more than if I’d been one thing or another.
The last time I heard Lazy Mary, I wasn’t in a banquet hall.
I was in a friend’s kitchen. It was playing from her Italian playlist while she made carbonara sauce.
Part joke, part tradition.
The designated guest—usually an out-of-towner—sat cross-legged on the floor in an apron, holding a giant mixing bowl filled with hot pasta.
When the sauce was ready, she’d pour it in.
The guest had one job: stir with passion, or risk ruining dinner.
The whole kitchen smelled like pancetta, black pepper, and laughter.
Halfway through the song, she laughed and skipped it:
“That one’s ridiculous.”
I didn’t say much. Just smiled. Let it keep playing in my head.
We used to dance to that song.
So did my parents. Aunts, uncles, everybody.
We thought it was just a goofy wedding tune.
Nobody mentioned the original version—the one about tradesmen, their tools, and what they planned to do to the bride.
The fireman had a hose. The gardener brought vegetables. Let’s just say it wasn’t about salad.
Lou Monte cleaned it up for American radio.
Turned a bawdy Sicilian folk song into something you could play between toasts.
The original still gets played. Just not at family parties.
Both versions know their audience.
Both keep the party going.
It’s the story of the whole family, really.
What we softened. What we saved.
What we sang out loud anyway.
Still sounds like Sunday.
Still makes me want to sing along.