The Patron Saint of Ugly (24 page)

“What kind-a daughter you raising with a foul mouth like this, Angelo? No granddaughter of mine is-a gonna speech like that. See?” He looked at my father, and so did I, remembering that horrible Corpus Christi day when he’d draped me across his knees.

“But he pushed up my shirt!” I finally sputtered. “He touched my—” I couldn’t finish, didn’t want to expose my private anatomy to any more humiliation.

“What?” my mother said.

“He did what?” Aunt Betty said.

I looked down at my chest and smoothed the fabric over it with my right hand, my other arm still clamped in Grandpa’s claw. “He—” was all I could say.

Aunt Betty stood and ran into the kitchen. “Raymond!” she yelled in a tone I’d never heard from her. Even Uncle Dom pushed out of his chair, already whipping his leather belt from around his waist. “I’ll take care of this,” he growled, pounding after his stepson.

Grandpa released my wrist. “Well, it’s a terrible thing, that’s-a for sure.”

Finally I could breathe, but then Grandpa added, “It’s just as bad for a girl to speech that kind-a filth. Angelo,” he said in a syrupy voice, as if he really loved his maybe-maybe-not son, as if he knew what was best. “There’s only one way that children learn, and that’s with a firm hand.” He held up the back of his hand as proof.

Nonna’s knitting needles clicked furiously.

I shuddered as I looked at Dad.

“Angelo,” Mom said as if she were trying to rouse him from a deep sleep. “Angelo!”

But he didn’t budge; he just kept looking at Grandpa, who was drilling his
Don’t you dare
eyes into Dad’s, a look so fierce I could only imagine the punishment I was in for.

Instead of spouting indecipherable verse, Mom stamped across the room and looped her arm through mine.

“Come on.” Mom steered me to the front door, voice urgent. I wanted to wrap my arms around her neck and kiss her, but first we had to make our escape. “You too, Nicky.” I only then saw my brother standing by the front window, drapes wadded in his hands, naming murdered Romanov children.

The three of us pushed outside and started walking the four miles home. No one breathed until we turned the corner and passed the alley with all those rotting carnations. I rubbed the Indochinese peninsula on my hip—including the raised welt of Vietnam that had suddenly appeared on the eastern coast—which was now scraped and pulsing thanks to Ray-Ray. I spit on my finger, dabbed at the tender flesh, and wished I could airmail Ray-Ray there and strand him in the jungle without a map or compass.

As we marched onward Nicky kept looking behind us. I didn’t know why until Mom said, “He’s not coming.”

My brother had been watching for the station wagon to pull up and for Dad to lean out his open window.
Get in
, he would say,
it’s too far to walk home
. It reminded me too much of the long walk home Nicky had made the day he had tossed Radisson and me to the Four Stooges. Except Nicky had redeemed himself.

My father did not rescue his family and save them from the slog along Appian Way and up Sweetwater Hill, from the blisters on their heels and the balls of their feet from wearing the wrong shoes.

As we huffed toward our house, I pictured him, a thirty-seven-year-old husband and father of two, kneeling in Grandpa’s backyard staking the old man’s tomatoes. I imagined him bent to his work, Grandpa standing over him, arms crossed, barking orders. Dad obeyed and he once again started shrinking, bones shortening, vertebrae compressing, pant legs bunching around his ankles, shirtsleeves swallowing up his hands until he was a timid six- or seven-year-old whimpering under his father’s might. Little Angelo kneeling in the dirt, holding back tears and sniffling up snot because he hopes this time, for once in his life, he might get it right.

TAPE THIRTEEN

Portafortuna

Father:

I’m sipping Alka-Seltzer so forgive the fizzing. I have a queasy stomach, which started when Betty brought Nonna back from the hairdresser several nights ago. I knew something was amiss even before they returned, because it was after six o’clock and supper wasn’t on the table. Finally Nonna schlepped into my bedroom in tears followed by Betty, who blubbered, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” Nonna wore a headscarf, though I saw pink bangs poking out. I actually groaned. Nonna clutched a Whitman’s Sampler to her bosom, so I thought she was consoling herself with decadence number three. She opened the lid and I reached for a caramel, but what I found was Nonna’s lopped-off white braid coiled inside like a snake.

I pulled my hand back as if it had bitten me, and I swear it did, Archie. Two pinpricks of Pergusa blood beaded on the tip of my thumb.

“I just ran out for a minute to get cigarettes,” Betty said. “I told Sherri not to do anything drastic, but by the time I got back—”

Nonna tugged off the scarf to expose tight pink ringlets covering her head like flower petals on a swim cap.

“Pink?” I said, flabbergasted.

“It was supposed to be strawberry blond,” Betty said. “And just a trim. Nonna, I am so, so sorry.”

Nonna sank onto my bed and held the braid in her hand as if the essence of her being were woven inside. “It took-a my whole life to grow and she lop it off in-a two snips.” She cried for half an hour, enough tears to fill the Strait of Messina. Betty and I patted her shoulders and her brutalized locks.

Eventually Nonna shrugged us off and pulled a hankie from her bra to sop up the wetness. “We have to bury this in-a the backyard.”

Though it was dark outside, Betty and I wouldn’t dare deny Nonna.

We snuck to the garage, Nonna in the lead with a flashlight since we didn’t want to give our mission away to the pilgrims. Betty followed with the Whitman’s Sampler. I grabbed a shovel and Nonna led us into the yard, her arms outstretched like divining rods. Nonna wove us around the birdbath and the barbecue pit and finally stopped at the patch of Fiore Pergusa she had planted and where stood a statue of Mary of Lourdes nestled in her own grotto.

Okay. Let’s get this over with:

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been thirteen years since I last make-a confess. The only thing I want to admit besides a heart filled with unbelief is that two years ago I stole a holy statue from Annette Funicello’s backyard. To be fair, it was no longer Annette’s backyard. Turns out, Jake had been having an affair with a woman in Peoria with a prosthetic hand. The new homeowners are Baptists who don’t believe in saints and they let the statue become overgrown by wild morning glories. And to be doubly fair, it wasn’t my idea. Nonna had had her eye on the statue from the minute she did
not
win it all those years ago. Betty helped me lug the thing up the hill in the middle of the night, so half of the penance rightly belongs to her. And, umm, we’d been drinking.

But on the Night of the Braid, Nonna knelt before Mary and made the sign of the cross. Betty and I knelt and crossed ourselves too. This was Nonna’s ritual, after all. She whispered a smattering of prayers, handed the flashlight to Betty, and heaved Mary to her chest.

“Move-a the grotto,” she instructed me.

I obeyed as Betty shone the light on the flattened disc of earth beneath the base where startled centipedes and potato bugs scampered into shadows.

“Now dig,” Nonna said.

I jammed the blade into the earth; its damp smell was rich and musty. I wasn’t sure if I needed to make a six-foot-deep rectangle, so I just kept heaving pumice-speckled dirt to the side until Nonna said, “At’s-a good.” We knelt before the gaping wound as Nonna took the cardboard coffin from Betty. More tears slid down Nonna’s cheeks as she laid the cord of herself into the grave and scraped earth over it, dirt raining on the yellow lid like a drum. We helped her fill the hole and tamped it down with our hands before setting the grotto back in place and nestling Mary inside, the roasted-almonds-and-nutmeg smell of crushed Pergusa blossoms wafting through the air.

Later that night I found Nonna in her bed raking a four-tooth chisel through her hair as if it were a comb. “Angelo. Oh, Angelo,” she muttered before tucking the chisel under her pillow. I cleared my throat, made my way to her, and pressed my lips to her forehead. “Now you look just like Maude.”

Nonna’s feet wiggled beneath the sheets.

The next morning I went out to make sure it wasn’t all just a dream. I saw the raw dirt around the statue, the forgotten shovel leaning against the forsythia. I was about to walk away when I glanced at Mary and spotted a long plaster braid snaking over her shoulder, though I didn’t remember her having one. I spun around looking for someone to ask—Annette Funicello, perhaps—if the braid had been there all along or if it had sprouted overnight.

I’m sitting before the statue right now, Archie, in a lawn chair pulled up for the occasion. It’s November tenth, Betty’s birthday, but instead of blowing out candles together we have all gone our separate ways. Betty no longer celebrates her birthday, and with good reason. It’s dusk and I can’t ignore the tang of freshly dug earth that overpowers even the Pergusa blossoms, a stench that brought on yet another wave of nausea that no Alka-Seltzer will cure. I’ve been putting off question forty-seven long enough. It’s time to get into that horrible chain of events, so here goes.

For five months after the head-in-the-rotting-carnations incident, Mom not only barred Dad from her bedroom but also refused to let Dom and Betty and their monster cross our threshold. I’d thought the ban was forever, but that Saturday in November I watched Mom frost a caved-in sheet cake with lemon icing. She had even borrowed Mrs. Bellagrino’s pastry-chef gizmo to blob on orange flowers.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Mom stopped and looked at me. “It’s Betty’s birthday, honey. I invited them for cake and coffee this afternoon. Just cake and coffee.”

“But Mom!”

“I know.” She offered an adult admission I couldn’t rebut. “Honey, she’s my only real friend.”

The compromise was that I would get to stay in my room with a box of Froot Loops. Plus I got to write
Happy Birthday, Betty
on the cake, though it looked more like
Holly Barfly, Bebby
, which was still nicer than the message I wanted to leave:
Vaffanculo, Ray-Ray!

I was rinsing frosting from my fingers when Dad came up from the basement. “I’m heading to the pharmacy for cigars.”

As he shrugged on his coat Mom said, “Take Garnet with you.”

Dad looked at her, then me, and he hesitated only a second before saying, “Get your coat.”

I seldom rode in the car alone with Dad. Usually Nicky called shotgun and I ended up in the back ramming my knees into his seat. That day, though Dad and I didn’t utter one syllable, I relished that up-front drive.

The bell over the pharmacy door sounded as we entered. Mr. Flannigan was in the rear dusting the display case that held sundry last-minute gifts: aftershave and cotton handkerchiefs, costume earrings and brooches, an assortment of rosaries.

He called to my father, “White Owls and your
Play
—” He switched gears when he saw me. “Howdy there, Garnet. How about a cherry Coke?”

I looked up at Dad, who said, “Sure. And coffee for me.”

Dad sat on the stool Nicky had swiveled on the day we celebrated the bells. I sat beside him, though it felt, frankly, weird.

Mr. Flannigan made his way to the soda fountain, slid a box of White Owls onto the counter, and served us our drinks. He and Dad started yammering about the Cuban Missile Crisis, which had been at the forefront of every adult conversation for the past six weeks. The Cuba on my left elbow had been at the forefront of my attention for the past six weeks too, since it had been itching like the dickens. I still wasn’t sure if it was La Strega or someone else playing tricks on my skin, but I glided off my stool to peruse the ointments lining the back shelves that might offer relief. I also drooled over the penny candy, spun the comic-book rack, scanned the rows of greeting cards and the display case of baubles Mr. Flannigan had been dusting. Amid all the trinkets I saw something that stopped my breath: a heart-shaped charm on a bracelet, exactly like the one Mr. Giordano had given Donata last spring when my class made its confirmation. It was really too much; first the holy day he had carried his broken-legged daughter into church, and then the bracelet with a silver charm inscribed with my heart’s desire:
I love you
. All the girls tittered, especially when Donata added, “He’s going to buy me a charm every year until he walks me down the aisle on my wedding day.” As I stood in Flannigan’s I wondered what charm Mr. Giordano would buy Donata next: a horse, a four-leaf clover, a ballerina. It lifted my spirits to think that the bracelet had been a last-minute purchase while Mr. Giordano picked up shaving cream or Preparation H.

Just then the back of the display case slid open and Mr. Flannigan smiled across the crowded shelves at me. “See something you like?”

“That bracelet,” I whispered.

“It’s a nice one.” He picked it up, walked out from behind the case, and slid it into my palm. “The heart opens up too.”

I wedged my dirty thumbnail between the two halves and easily pried it open to reveal the slots where two tiny photos could go, or perhaps a piece of hair. I closed it and studied the back, imagining an improbable inscription.

“What’s that?” Dad asked, now standing beside me.

I wasn’t even thinking when I handed it over. He held it close to his face. “It’s a beaut.”

This was my chance. “Mr. Giordano just gave one to Donata. Lots of fathers do. Give their daughters charm bracelets.”

“That so?”

“Want me to ring it up?” Mr. Flannigan asked. “Free engraving included.”

For a minute it looked as if my father was seriously considering it. “Maybe later. We need to get going. Don’t want to miss the big party.”

I lagged behind as Dad pushed outside clutching a brown shopping bag.

The drive home was wordless and not because I was pouting. I was bubbling inside because Dad had left the little door open.
Maybe later
, he had said, words I polished on the ride back, since Christmas was coming, that season of miraculous births and of so many things.