The Patron Saint of Ugly Page 33

  Let me state for the record: It was Nonna’s prayer that woke my mother up, not mine.

  I won’t delve too deeply into Mom’s rehabilitation, into how we covered all the mirrors, hid all the pens and paper scraps, and judiciously doled out the news of where we were, of why we were living atop Dagowop Hill, of our vast fortunes, of her dead mother, of her half sister Cookie, of skull-cracked Grandpa Ferrari, of the resurrected Saint Garnet nonsense. I assured Mom time and again that all those probing eyes were not scrutinizing her. Aunt Betty carefully orchestrated their reunification, tempering it with the news that Ray-Ray was completely out of our lives, which meant we had to explain Vietnam. Though the TV was still abuzz with the news of Ford’s stunning pardon of Nixon—so we had to explain Watergate—Mom could not pardon Ray-Ray, and neither could I.

  Mom’s physical strength improved daily, as did her mental stamina, so many hours in the library or reading the paper to see what political, cultural, and sexual revolutions she had missed, Gloria Steinem her new hero. I wondered what Dad would have thought about his wife’s feminist leanings. Though Mom and I cried often about Nicky, she never brought up my father, and I was too afraid to bring it up myself lest she slip away from me again. Nor did we bring up the Night of the Cracked Mirrors.

  One afternoon as I played torch songs in the conservatory I felt someone watching and found Mom at the door, but she swiftly walked away. Later that night when I passed Nonna’s den, I heard whispers inside. I peeked in at Mom sitting on one arm of Nonna’s Barcalounger, hands looped with red yarn, which Nonna was twining into a ball.

  “How long has she been playing the saw?” Mom asked.

  Nonna shook her head. “Since I move-a here.”

  “Why does she do it?”

  “I no know for sure, but I think she miss-a her dad.”

  I watched Mom’s eyes to see if they sought out a shiny something to dive into, but they did not.

  The following Sunday, on the morning in July when Saint Brigid’s was dedicating the new stained-glass windows, Mom and I lay head-to-head on the pews in the chapel eating Popsicles. It looked as if Gethsemane Jesus could have used one too. We were admiring the light patterns speckling the ceiling when a sudden swell of adoration roared up from the pilgrims. “We love you, Saint Garnet! Thank you for healing us!”

  Mom had been apprised of my sainted status, of my belief that it was all so much bunk and that the real healing came from the water, or maybe from Nonna, but Mom had not divulged her opinion.

  Maybe it was because we were in that holy place, but after the spontaneous praise, Mom said, “They certainly adore you.”

  I snorted.

  “They do!” The top of her head bobbled against mine as she spoke. “And with good reason.”

  “Are you kidding?” I wondered if Rodney, Ms. Stork, or Father Shultz had gotten to her.

  “I’m not. You give them something to hope for.”

  I guffawed but immediately regretted it, since I think Mom needed something to hope for too. Still, I couldn’t help myself. “You don’t really believe I can heal people.”

  I imagine she was rolling back two decades to the time when she not only abided my pillowcase veil, but defended it.

  “I don’t know, Garnet. I see how the pilgrims look at you. Their devotion is so pure. I suppose I believe in their belief.”

  “What?” This was not the first time I had heard that cryptic sentiment from someone.

  “Garnet, it may be too late for me, but it’s not too late for you to believe in—well, something.”

  I was stunned even more by what came next. “That’s one thing I admired about your father, his faith.”

  Though I wanted to sit up and look at her, I resisted.

  “I did love him,” Mom said. “I know that wasn’t always apparent.”

  I swear I heard the sound of sawing wood. I swallowed hard. “What did you love about him most?”

  Mom sighed, as if in her mind she was unpacking the fifteen years they had lived together.

  “His decency,” she finally and graciously said, considering the infidelity of Annette Funicello. Over the years I had gathered enough clues to understand that they had, as Grandpa Ferrari would have said, consummated this. I’m sure Mom knew it too, but still she added, “He was the most decent man I ever knew.”

  Without any bidding, Mom related the story of how they’d met, that initial icy patch, their lopsided walk, his arm wrapped around her waist as he mumbled, “I’ve got you.”

  Then the stunning revelation that the date she most treasured was when he took her to Easter Mass: Latin, incense, and hallelujahs swirling around the rafters. I pictured the hundreds of times I’d watched Dad kneeling in Saint Brigid’s, head bent over the pew in front of him, rosary laced through his fingers. His mouth moved as he silently chanted responsive prayer after prayer to God, millions of words all told. I was suddenly angry at my father, who spoke so few words to me. Maybe a thousand in all the years we’d overlapped on the planet, and only once did he offer those three words. Of course, I’d never said them either.

  Mother confessed that she’d watched him during that Easter Mass too. She admired his faith, which she’d never had. Such an odd curiosity, which made his willingness to elope all the more stunning. He loved her that much.

  “I always regretted that,” Mom said.

  “What?” I tried to act like a grown-up confidante and not a daughter sniveling over her lost daddy.

  “Not getting married in the Catholic Church. It would have meant so much to him. And Nonna. I was a selfish girl.”

  “You sacrificed a lot too.” I pictured the hundreds of times I’d seen Mom scrubbing the toilet, flushing her coddled Charlottesville life—and what that might have meant for all of us—into the sewer.

  “I do wish he’d shown you more affection, Garnet.”

  I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. “When did he ever show me any?”

  “I know, I know,” Mom said, “but he did love you. That’s one reason he bought you that bracelet.”

  I sat up and looked down at Mom, her eyes closed as she tapped a Popsicle stick against her temple.

  “What bracelet?”

  Mom’s eyes popped open and she assessed my alarm. She also sat and pushed my hair out of my eyes. “You know, the charm bracelet you wanted from Flannigan’s.”

  Sudden pressure behind my sternum as the heart-shaped box began shuddering. My throat tightened, but I sputtered, “He bought me the bracelet?”

  “Well, yes, honey, don’t you remember? With the locket on it. He gave it to you on—” Mom’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh God. He never had the chance.”

  I shook my head no. Mom wrapped her arms tightly around me as I cried for what that bracelet might have meant. A new charm for every birthday and Christmas, which he would pick out, or maybe we would pick them out together: a rue branch, an ankh, a globe.

  When the sniffling subsided I wondered where that bracelet was now, if it was tucked under the insulation in the cracker-box attic or if Mrs. Walczak had found it and was now wearing my father’s proclamation to me. At least I like to think he had had my heart’s desire engraved there. Then I longed to hold the bracelet in my hand as concrete proof, since I wasn’t sure how much I could trust Mom’s drug-addled memory.

  I was also working up the nerve to confess my own three-word omission, but Mom whispered the thing we had both been ignoring since she woke up.

  “That night at Grandma’s party, when I dragged you upstairs and—”

  A boa constrictor squeezed my throat.

  She tipped her forehead against mine. “I am so sorry.”

  All I could do was nod, but even in that small gesture, I felt something release inside of me, genuine forgiveness, an act of grace I didn’t think I was capable of.

  After several minutes we started to leave, but as we neared the chapel door Mom stopped me, as if we were in a confessional and now was her chance.

&
nbsp; “You know what else I regret?”

  I didn’t open my mouth in case it had to do with bearing too many children.

  “Not finishing college.”

  This was such a non sequitur I laughed in case she was kidding.

  She wasn’t.

  “Really?”

  She nodded.

  I could have said something like But you’re here now with me and we’ll be together forever! Instead I said, “You could always go back.”

  Mom glanced at Jesus kneeling in the garden, and then she looked at me. “I couldn’t,” she said, but her eyes pleaded, Could I?

  I wondered if she heard my thumping pulse. “You want to go back to Wellesley?”

  By the speed of her answer I knew she’d been considering this awhile. “Yes. Well, no. I want to enroll at Smith.”

  Gloria Steinem’s alma mater. I should have known.

  I stood there, agog. The woman who’d slept through forty percent of my life was going to abandon me again. I suddenly had a craving for a vodka martini. “You know Vandalia University is less than an hour away. You could still live with me and commute.” As soon as the words dripped from my tongue, I heard Grandma Iris adding: We have plenty of excellent schools for Garnet too.

  Mother’s eyes closed and I knew she was also hearing Grandma’s voice.

  “No. You should go to Smith,” I said. “It’s not that far away and you deserve this.”

  Mom looked at me to see if I meant it.

  “You do. You really do.”

  Mom hugged me tighter than she ever had, which was a good thing, because a month later, just this past August, she drove off in a brand-new Volkswagen Beetle to begin her life as a forty-five-year-old coed.

  Don’t feel bad, Archie. She calls every night, her head swimming with philosophy and contemporary literature. In fact, to celebrate the completion of her first semester, at this moment she is enjoying a European adventure, which includes trips to not only the Sorbonne and Oxford, but the town of Tredegar in South Wales, Grandfather Postscript’s birthplace. She’s not alone on her quest to flesh out that side of her fam-i-ly tree. She’s accompanied by Cookie, her sister, my aunt, a woman who was devoted to me even before she fully knew why.

  TAPE TWENTY-ONE

  La Vigilia

  Buon Natale, Padre:

  It’s Christmas Eve and we’re all waiting for something, keeping La Vigilia until midnight, less than an hour away, when the Christ Child will slip from His mother’s womb for the 1976th time. I’m shivering on the widow’s walk, not easy to get to (especially while one is tipsy, which I am, I confess, a state heightened by the insomnia I’m still suffering). I’m also out of breath from climbing into the attic and up a spiral staircase, then wedging through a hatch beneath the cupola. Still, it’s beautiful up here. Worth the cobwebs and dust and bird shit on my hands (this has always been a favorite perch for the chimney swifts too).

  The night sky is splattered with a million stars. The hill and village below are swaddled in snow; Christmas lights illuminate houses all the way to Grover Estates and beyond, to the Ohio River, where a barge draped in red and green lights is chugging downstream. The water behind it roils as if forty-nine Nereids are in search of a lost sibling who has been pining for too long. Someone has strung Madonna-blue lights around Nonna’s statue so it looks as if she’s spitting cerulean water. If only she would wave so her nymph sisters might spot her.

  (Wave, Nereid, wave!)

  Shit. Almost dropped the binoculars.

  Father Shultz just trudged from the rectory to the church to prepare for Midnight Mass, the stained-glass windows looking glorious with the light pouring through, making psychedelic patterns on the snowdrifts outside—patterns that seem more swirly than usual, given my inebriation. The church has been packed daily, the many pilgrims plunking their coins into boxes, one under the sign that reads The font where Saint Garnet was baptized! and another one under the sign saying The pew where Saint Garnet prayed!

  Betty is already down there fashioning two hundred poinsettias into a giant tree on the chancel. I’m sure Father has asked if I’ll be in attendance. I will not. I did, however, give Betty a fat check to toss into the collection plate so Father will stop hounding me about new school desks to accommodate the swelling student population.

  Betty is also there because she has been keeping her own vigilia concerning a certain lounge-owning widower—baseball-bat-wielding Dino—who has been making incremental advances for the past two months. First sitting three rows behind her during Mass, then two, then at the end of her pew, then moving five inches closer by the week until just last Sunday, he knelt so close their shoulders grazed. Betty hopes that tonight when they offer the sign of peace he’ll keep hold of her hand. That’s my wish for her too, since she deserves one decent man in her life.

  I’m on the widow’s walk for two reasons, Padre. The first is that Christmas Eve is the one night when most of the pilgrims go home to their families. This year there are two dozen or so stragglers, folks who have no family or no home. They are the lowest of the low, the Lowlies, Nonna calls them, an unwashed, raggedy lot who camp in shadows down by the Plant. They are also cursed with such severe lesions that other pilgrims shun them. I just found out about them last week. The news broke my heart and only added to my sleep deprivation. The Lowlies’ plight breaks Nonna’s heart too, which is why she’s skipping Midnight Mass. It’s also why she called Sister Dee Dee half an hour ago and asked her to round the Lowlies up and bring them to the hilltop so Nonna can feed them our leftovers. My aim is to get them a shot at the healing pond water.

  Tonight we celebrated the Festa dei Sette Pesci, Feast of the Seven Fishes, an Italian tradition on this particular day. Grandpa never let Nonna prepare it before, probably because he was a carnivore who refused to give up bloody clumps of meat for anyone, not even his Savior.

  But this year Nonna decided to inaugurate the tradition, and she cooked all week. So much baking, nut-cracking, fruit-peeling, pasta-cutting. I tried to help, but I annoyed her with questions about why seven dishes. She had a different answer every time:

  They stand for the seven-a sacraments.

  The seven days of-a creation.

  The seven hills of-a Rome.

  The seven deadly-a sins.

  The number seven, she means-a perfetto.

  Seven gifts of-a the Holy Spirit.

  The seven utterances of Jesus on-a the cross.

  If you ask me one-a more time I’m-a gonna clock you for sure!

  The meal was spectacular, made even more so by the fact that we had to wait until eight thirty to eat. Nonna had nestled a Pergusa blossom into her pink ringlets, and the roasted-almond-and-nutmeg scent of it lingered as she led us to the antipasto in the parlor, where she uncorked wine number one. Then we migrated to the ballroom, that virtual glasshouse, where the moon bathed us in cool light. Nonna had set the most beautiful table, the one that seats thirty, and she had thirty place settings, though there were only us three. La Strega’s best-best china and crystal and silver gleamed. At the center of the table sat a gigantic bowl of pasta aglio e olio, a simple pasta to mix and match with any of the surrounding seven platters of calamari, steamed mussels, scungilli, clams, shrimp, baccalà, snapper.

  Nonna stressed the importance of sampling all seven, no gulping tonight, since endurance was key. She also had a different wine to go with each dish, which is why I’m blotto, but I couldn’t insult our hostess. When we could eat no more she served brandy and sambuca in the library before the fireplace, she and I humming with content, until we had enough room for dessert: strong espresso with panettone and struffoli, over which I made a discovery: espresso has an amazing ability to clarify one’s buzz without killing it.

  Afterward we snuggled around our candlelit Christmas tree in the conservatory while Bing Crosby crooned carols from the Victrola. We swapped well-chosen gifts, though the real paper-tearing will be tomorrow. I gave Nonna season tickets to the Vandalia B
ruisers, a girls’ roller-derby team she cannot get enough of. To Betty I gave front-row tickets to see Elvis. I only hope Dino is a fan.

  Betty gave me an antique snow globe from Sicily with Mount Etna inside. When you shake it, orange glitter pours out of the volcano and swirls a firestorm around the watery sky. She also gave me an herbal remedy that supposedly cures insomnia. I probably shouldn’t have taken three—okay, five—since now everything that moves leaves the faintest tracer.

  Nonna gifted me a basket of imports from her hometown: chestnuts, cork bark, and goat cheese. When she handed it over she pressed her warm hand on my forehead and uttered: May God grant-a to you your heart’s desire.

  How I wish someone could. I’m no longer yearning for my mother, but I am longing for something.

  Yesterday, because I couldn’t keep the secret bulging in my mouth, I presented Nonna her heart’s desire: Angelo, the original, now eighty-six, my maybe-maybe-not grandpa. It took a year to track him down in Sicily, where he had acquired, not a wife, but a vineyard named Profezia di Diamante. Tonight Nonna is keeping La Vigilia not only for Jesus but for Angelo, who will arrive tomorrow by train, the second reason I’m on the widow’s walk. I want to clean it up, since I know she’ll be here in the morning scanning the horizon for her lost love. I have a feeling I should also ready the bridal chamber, though perhaps I’m being overly optimistic.

  A jet is flying overhead and I bet a hundred Sweetwater children are pressing their faces to their bedroom windows because they are certain that’s Santa whooshing across the sky.

  The plane is heading northeast toward New England and any number of boarding schools where discarded children are crying themselves to sleep. But not me. Even farther east, across the iceberg-strewn Atlantic, Cookie and Mom are having a fabulous time. They called earlier, both drunk on Welsh beer, giggling over their supper of cockles and faggots. They sounded like schoolgirls instead of middle-aged sisters, which was a Christmas gift in and of itself.