The Patron Saint of Ugly Page 16

  Several times during those months I found Dad staring at his son, because dress shirts weren’t the only things Nicky pulled from his closet. He donned an invisible crown bejeweled with superiority. He started taking potshots at our Italian heritage, Dad’s profession, even the roof over our heads. “God, we live in a dump.” How easily my brother had succumbed.

  Dad and I were suddenly peons. At supper, Nicholas groused about our misplaced elbows and propensity to slurp. After the fourth correction Dad and I simultaneously blurted out, “Geez.” We looked at each other, both stunned by our shared sentiment. Dad picked up his coffee mug and extended his pinkie. I did likewise with my milk glass, and then Dad let out one of his juicy burps. I laughed so hard I nearly peed as I savored that blissful moment.

  “How vulgar.” Nicholas retired to the living room with the Sunday crossword, though he no longer lay belly-down on the rug to do it. Instead, he sat in a wingback and snapped the paper’s spine to attention as if he were a stockbroker.

  That Thanksgiving he couldn’t resist breaking out his new togs. Dinner would be at Uncle Dom’s, and Nicky boldly wore the starched dress shirt, silk tie, and sweater vest.

  “Where’d you get that outfit?” Mom asked as we slid on our old coats, a Saran-Wrapped bowl of orange-cranberry salad in her arms.

  Nicky spouted a well-rehearsed lie. “Grandma Iris gave it to me last year for Christmas. Don’t you remember?”

  Mom’s brow furrowed. It was absolutely a costume Zelda would have given him.

  Dad eyeballed his son with a look that begged Who are you? Only I knew the answer: Czar Nicholas, a boy tethered to La Strega by a golden rope, a boy who was counting the days until she could tug him up for good.

  We piled in the car to drive to Grover Estates, and for the first time I thought Nicky looked as if he belonged in that pricey subdivision. Uncle Dom laughed at the getup. “Who are you supposed to be, bucko?” Betty tugged Nicky’s earlobe. “I think you look handsome. Like a real gentleman.” I could tell she meant it by the pained look in her eyes as she no doubt considered the toads she had to live with. As if on cue, Ray-Ray farted. He was leaning against the china cabinet popping cocktail wieners in his mouth. When the adults weren’t looking, he flicked a wiener at Nicky’s sweater. Nicky dodged it, but Ray-Ray pointed a finger and mouthed, You’re in for it. Nicky started reciting a chronology of execution devices. Back home he stood at the bathroom sink for an hour scrubbing grass stains, not cocktail-wiener sauce, from the sweater.

  A month later Mom received an extraordinary phone call. I heard only her side of the conversation, but I could guess the rest. La Strega was inviting her and Nicky to afternoon tea. At first Mom thought it was a joke. “Betty, is that you?” But it was La Strega all right. Mom put her on our version of hold, letting the receiver bounce to the floor so she could ask what Nicky wanted to do, a democratic move on her part. Mom was as curious about our local witch as the rest of Sweetwater. Of course Nicky said yes.

  “We’d be delighted,” Mom said. “What time would you like the three of us to arrive?”

  Three of you? I imagined La Strega saying.

  “Why, Garnet, of course. I just assumed she would be welcome.” A pause, and then: “Wonderful, we’ll see you at three.”

  Nicky stood in front of his bedroom mirror trying on five different dress shirts. He even polished his shoes, Brylcreemed his hair, and splashed on some of Dad’s Old Spice. Finally he leaned into Mom’s room, where she was folding Dad’s boxers. “What are you going to wear?” He actually asked her that.

  Mom rolled her eyes; visiting the wealthy for high tea was old hat to her. She dressed up as much as she ever did, slacks and a sweater. She also swirled her ponytail into a bun and wore earrings. I appreciated this conciliation even if Nicky did not. He looked disappointed to see her in her same old duds and I was happy when she slapped his hand away when he tried to rearrange her hair. I purposely did not change out of my cereal-stained turtleneck. I did, however, tuck a lucky rabbit’s foot in my pocket along with Nonna’s talismans.

  Radisson answered the door slicked up in a suit and wearing one of those sweater vests.

  “Good afternoon. Follow me.” We trailed him into the parlor, where La Strega was seated on her clawfoot settee, blanket draped over her legs.

  She waved a hand to the three chairs arranged around her and a low table in the middle set with teacups and saucers, a bowl of sugar cubes, a miniature pitcher of cream, a plate of sliced lemons.

  It was cold in that room, but Radisson sneaked up from behind, helped us shuck our outerwear, and carted the pile off for a de-lousing.

  “Do sit,” La Strega directed. Mom and Nicky sat on either side of her, leaving me between them to eyeball a three-tiered tray of finger sandwiches, another heaped with those fruit-shaped indulgences.

  I imitated Mother as best as I could, crossing my legs at the ankles rather than at the knees, draping my arms in my lap instead of tightly across my chest. I thought I was doing well until Nicky pinched me when no one was looking and mouthed: Stop humming!

  Radisson filled our cups, and Mom used tongs to pick up a sugar cube and add a lemon wedge. I did likewise, stirring with the silver spoon on my saucer, trying not to clink.

  La Strega took her tea with cream, speaking as she stirred. “I apologize for not inviting you sooner, Mrs. Caudhill-Adams-Rutledge—”

  “It’s Ferrari.”

  “Yes.” La Strega refused to utter the cursed name. “I had no idea anyone of such caliber lived on my hill.” She smirked at Radisson, who stood in the doorway. I wondered what the penalty was for his incomplete research.

  La Strega leaned toward Mother. “I believe we have mutual acquaintances. The Claymores. Edmund, that is, the one in shipping. Not his brother the actor. And the Bernards.”

  “They were friends of my parents,” Mother said.

  On and on they droned. I was beyond bored. I think Mother was too, but she held up her end for Nicky, who drank his tea exactly as La Strega did, soundless sips, occasional stirring, though he lapsed once and licked the tea from his spoon and I thought, At last, Nicky with a silver spoon in his mouth.

  Then I made my grand faux pas by adding a splash of cream to my lemony tea, the mixture curdling into a clotted mess. “Gross!” I said, drawing everyone’s attention.

  Nicky looked mortified. “God, Garnet. We can’t take you anywhere.”

  “Nicky,” Mom scolded.

  La Strega looked as if this was exactly what she’d expected of me.

  Radisson crept up and removed the offense. “It happens all the time, miss.” He poured me a fresh cup, draped a new napkin across my lap, and offered me the tray of cookies. I shamelessly took two, but Radisson slid two more on my plate. I wondered what other clandestine acts of rebellion he might be committing.

  Mom and La Strega discussed Mom’s year at Wellesley and the atrocious state of our public school system. The topic shifted to books and soon La Strega asked, “Would you like to see my library?”

  “Yes!” Mom gasped, her cool demeanor shed.

  Radisson again appeared to undrape the blanket from La Strega’s legs; she did have legs, and sturdy ones. She marched us across the hall to the dim room half the size of our house. You may remember those mahogany shelves loaded with first editions. Ladders that rolled forward and back to fetch books from the upper tiers.

  La Strega pulled down Jane Eyre. “I’ve always been an avid collector.”

  Mom shivered when she held the tome in her hands, then she sat to inhale the musty pages. Nicky sat in the leather chair by the window and crossed his legs. He wore a peculiar smile, as if he alone were privy to some joke.

  I wondered if Mom planned on reading the entire novel in one sitting, but thirty minutes later she looked at her watch. “I have to start supper!” She gazed wistfully at the book.

  “Come again next week,” La Strega said. “By all means.”

  Mom gobbled the bait and I shook m
y head at how easily she, too, had succumbed. Apparently La Strega’s sandwiches were indeed laced with bat wings and worm breath. For several weeks, not only did Nicky get to oxygenate his blood with better air, but Mom got her literary fix.

  For Nicky’s birthday La Strega invited us for lunch in the formal dining room, where she introduced us to fondue. The stinky cheese bubbled in a cauldron set over an open flame. She showed us how to skewer the bread and dip it in. It tasted as gross as I’d feared and as soon as I spit mine into a napkin, the cheese bubbled so aggressively it exploded on me (no one else, mind you), particularly on Portugal on one arm and its colonial territory of Goa on the other. I looked at La Strega, wondering if she had orchestrated this, but she just sipped sherry and looked on passively. It took months for the red spots to vanish, and when they did, Goa mysteriously rejoined the shore of India on my ankle, where it belonged.

  I feared even worse tortures and started to claim appendicitis or toothaches before these visits, but Mom said, “It wouldn’t hurt you to pick up a book.” If I’d known there was a kaleidoscope chapel on the premises I might have been more agreeable. But Radisson, bless his Brazil-nut-shaped heart, once he discovered my passion, arranged a table with books about globes. He also brought me bologna sandwiches instead of the limp cucumber ones Mom had to endure. I brought him Bazooka bubblegum, and though I never again saw him blow a coconut-size bubble, I hoped he chewed the gum and stuck it under La Strega’s furniture, which is what I did with mine.

  Bits of La Strega hoodoo fluttered into our lives below, because Mom began spending more time in front of the mirrors before we ascended the hill, applying lipstick, spraying her hair. I once caught Nicky and her side by side staring into the bathroom mirror, he flattening his forelock, she checking her posture. “Shoulders back, dear.” Things did not look good for Dad and me.

  She also began staring into mirrors even when she wasn’t primping. More than once I found her with her nose against the glass as if she were looking through it to the life she might have had in Charlottesville if she’d married that handpicked beau. I imagined the world on the other side was filled with dazzling sunlight and privilege. When Mom left, I would sneak up to the mirror and press my face against the glass, but all I could see were reflections of our low-ceilinged Monopoly house. I began to wonder if La Strega’s witchery was powerful enough to rewind Mom’s life all the way back to Wellesley so that she would sidestep that icy patch and never meet my father.

  From then on I stuffed my pockets with not only the rabbit’s foot and charms but spools of red thread. Maybe they couldn’t erase the maps drawn on me, but perhaps they could keep my mother on this side of the mirror.

  During a visit in March, after having my fill of bologna, I lumbered to a divan in the corner, lay down unabashedly, and snoozed while Mom dove into yet another book. I’m sure I let out a cacophony of snorts, one so sharp it woke me. Nicky was by the window in his chair, which by now was indented with impressions of his skinny butt cheeks.

  I thought Mom and Nicky were alone until I saw La Strega standing in a corner surveying the tableau she had arranged. She wore such a smug look I wanted to smack her. My brother wore a similar expression, and then he turned his head toward La Strega and did the unthinkable. He winked! It was a conspiracy and I imagined the far-reaching implications of their plot. Mom and Nicky’s visits would increase to two nights a week, three, then weekends, and ultimately they would move in to the old bat’s cave, leaving Dad and me in the trash heap below. Maybe Mom wouldn’t have to move all the way back in time in order to recapture her life of luxury.

  Just then Radisson entered, carrying a tray. He set a china cup on the table beside Nicky, contents inside steaming. Radisson plopped not one, not two, but three giant marshmallows into the cup filled with hot chocolate. As he was about to back away my brother bawled, “I told you I wanted mini-marshmallows! Can’t you ever get it right, Nigger Toe?”

  Mother snapped out of her trance and stood. “What did you say?”

  Ah, the question I hated most when it was directed at me. That day I basked in it.

  Nicky tried to reel his arrogance back in his mouth. “I said I would like mini-marshmallows, please.”

  “Yes, sir,” Radisson said. “Right away.”

  As Radisson walked by, Mom reached her hand out to stop him. “No,” she said, softly.

  I imagine a little ping! sounded in her head as she looked at her surroundings with new eyes—La Strega, Nicky, the lure of books, the stench of superiority—and I could see her mentally pounding her forehead. How could I have fallen for this?

  Mother pulled Nicky by the wrist to his feet, walked to La Strega, and looked directly into her eyes. “My son is no longer permitted in your home. Do you understand me?”

  “But—” Nicky said, cornered-rabbit look in his eyes.

  “Do you understand me?” Mom repeated.

  “Yes.” La Strega never once broke eye contact.

  Mom scuttled forward and stopped in front of Radisson. “I apologize for my son’s atrocious behavior.” She squeezed the back of Nicky’s neck and he and I both knew what that meant. Nicky looked at his feet. “I’m sorry.” The most insincere apology ever uttered.

  I was elated that these outings had come to an end. I didn’t bat an eyelash in La Strega’s direction, but as I walked past Radisson, he held out his hand.

  “It’s been a pleasure, miss.”

  Without thought, I wrapped my arms around this broomstick of a man and hugged him as tightly as I would from then on hug Nonna whenever she made cannolis. He was stunned at first, probably because no one had touched him kindly in years, but he patted my back as I slipped a fistful of Bazookas into his jacket pocket.

  No one spoke as we descended the hill. Within thirty minutes Mom had hefted every one of our gilt mirrors—and the secret world hidden within them—from the walls and hauled them to the curb, mumbling, “No gold-framed future; no gilded windows; no fall of man or boy.” Now there was a vacant hole on her bedroom wall surrounded by scraps of poetry that fluttered in the breeze. By the time Dad got home from work, the mirrors had been scooped up by foraging nonnas, who never looked a gift mojo in the mouth.

  Maybe Nicky stopped seeing La Strega, maybe he didn’t. He certainly didn’t stop inventorying the prized bounty that had trickled down the hill to him: the chess set, the fountain pen, the Chinese teacups, and the porcelain statue of a golden-locked boy forced to bow before his widowed queen for all eternity.

  TAPE TWELVE

  Sibling Rivalries

  Well, Arch-Support, it’s official. The country has lost its mind. A ghost writer called yesterday wanting to pen my autobiography, although with one tiny detail altered—the setting. “Couldn’t we say you were born someplace sexier?” Apparently West Virginia is too provincial for her elite readership. I wanted to ram a fistful of cannolis down her throat. Provincial this! Her alternatives astounded me: Manhattan’s Alphabet City. Chicago’s South Side. The Gaza Strip.

  Well, maybe Sweetwater isn’t so dissimilar to the Gaza Strip, Irish and Italians squabbling over a sliver of land. People have fought over less, and right now I’m on the widow’s walk looking at our old house below, cars lined up out front to get a peek at my childhood abode, Mr. Bellagrino raising his fist at a gawker who’s blocking his driveway.

  The people who bought our house, the Walczaks, posted a massive sign in the yard reading Saint Garnet’s Birthplace. A red X on my bedroom window indicates where I snored during my formative years. My old neighbors must be ruing the day the Polacks moved in. How are those Polacks ever going to screw in a light bulb (change a tire, make ice, have sex)? One would think those West Virginians—and Cat-lickers to boot, the butt of so many lame jokes—would be more sensitive.

  Pilgrims are bolting from their cars for a photo op with Mrs. Walczak, who’s dressed like an old nonna, though she’s only in her thirties. She’s set up a booth in the driveway where she sells baggies of dust bunnies
she swears are artifacts from my youth. Before she knew about me, a spooky face materialized in her borscht with the outline of Poland on its forehead. It scared her so much she dumped it down the sink. Once she was better informed, she understood the great value of what she’d tossed, and now she makes a hopeful pot of the purple soup every day. I don’t know who appeared in her stockpot, but it wasn’t me, since Poland is lodged behind my left knee.

  Two men have snuck around to the back of our old house, brothers, by the looks of their regrettable noses. They’re peeking into Nicky’s window, and the kitchen, and—

  (Stop that! Stop that!)

  Archie, they’re pulling up one of Dad’s grapevines, the root Nonna planted, and they’re fighting over it. It’s a real shoving match and—wow!—the big one just punched the little one in the jaw, and he’s down for the count as the victor scrambles off, leaving his little brother in the dirt.

  Amazing, this sibling rivalry I’d like to think I was too mature for—but alas, I was not. Of course, I learned from the masters, Uncle Dom and Dad. I have no idea why Dom felt the need to engage my passive father in jousting matches with the ultimate prize of earning Grandpa’s respect. Dad always lost to his big brother, as did I. I’ll never understand what power Grandpa had over his adult sons.

  One of his dictates was that every First Friday the entire Ferrari clan had to gather at his house for an hour of Caruso prior to schlepping to confession. Dad and Dom brought tangible offerings for Il Duce in addition to their deference and dread. My father offered pork rinds, jars of pig knuckles, a pouch of tobacco. Uncle Dom brought Grandpa’s pricey favorites: a wedge of Fontina cheese, a bottle of sambuca, Playboy magazine, and the litany of off-color jokes he’d collected all month, usually beginning with “This ignorant nigger boy walks into a saloon . . .” or “This clap-infested whore walks into a saloon . . .”