The Patron Saint of Ugly (27 page)

Authors: Marie Manilla

BOOK: The Patron Saint of Ugly

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After the Accident I felt as if I were trapped in an underwater world waiting for someone to reach down and rescue me. And the hill was a soggy mess. That night in Snakebite Woods, as volcanic pressure was building inside me, the pressure that had been building inside the hill finally found an escape, the mouth of a sweet-water spring. The belch thrust upward with such force it blew Le Baron’s whippet-tipped springhouse to smithereens, spewing water and bricks down on the hill and village; it coated our phone lines, TV antennas, and trees. Slate shingles were found miles away embedded like hatchets in telephone poles. City workers soon stoppered the jet, forcing the water to find an alternative exit at the base of the hill beside the Plant, collecting who-knows-what along the way. Of course, all of this was the least of my worries, and Mom’s.

After Dad’s wallet and keys were returned, Annette escorted my mother home, one hand on her elbow as if it were a rudder. I followed in their wake, marveling at this pairing. Once inside, Annette lowered her eyes, establishing Mother as primary widow, with all the consolation prizes that would come her way.

As Annette walked home, where she would secretly mourn, several ladies congregated in the street even in that snow: Mrs. Bellagrino, Mrs. Evangelista, all the old nonnas making signs of the cross. They were organizing the hill’s collective response:
You make the minestrone; I’ll make the risotto;
you take up a collection for the novenas
, their words coming out in puffs as they looked up at our home. They could have been watching a drive-in movie screen or an aquarium perched on a high shelf.

The air in our house suddenly liquefied, our footsteps sluggish against the wet weight of it. The phone rang and Mom went to the kitchen to answer. I heard mumbling and she hung up, but it rang again, and again, until Mom let the receiver drift to the floor with a muffled clunk. The front door opened though no one had knocked, and in tumbled Grandpa and Nonna.

Grandpa waited in our living room for Mom to stand before him. I cowered behind her as he swished that newsie cap in one hand and droned on and on, about what, I couldn’t say. His words sounded garbled, each syllable encased in a bubble. Nonna stood beside him still wrapped in her apron, the strings floating up behind her along with the end of her braid, which she hadn’t yet swirled into a bun. Clumps of tacky pasta dough in the crotches of her fingers. She was as inert and anchored as one of those underwater divers planted at the bottom of so many fish tanks. An oddly sweet look was imprinted on her face, as if in her mind she was a young mother bouncing a four-tooth-chisel baby on her lap, cooing and trilling as she predicted a future for him that she’d thought would last much longer than this. And so had I.

Not long after, Uncle Dom and Aunt Betty arrived. No Ray-Ray. Dom was haggard and unshaven. Betty pushed past her father-in-law in an uncharacteristic display of boldness and dove for my mother, who held both arms straight out to stop the advance. Mom’s mouth opened and a foghorn sound poured out that hammered our eardrums, and Betty froze cold when she learned the truth about her not-really son.

I couldn’t bear the look on Betty’s face, so I swam down the hall to Nicky’s room and closed the broken-hinged door.

I looked at Nicky’s unmade bed, the sheets rumpled just as he had left them that morning, a rabbit hole where his legs had been before he yanked them out in a moment of nerve. The divot in his pillow where his head had rested. I reached my hand for it, hoping the downy feathers would still be warm. It was cool to the touch, no hint of the boy who had slept in that bed for the last thirteen years. I felt absurdly sad for his mattress, an inanimate thing that would never feel the bony weight of him again.

I mourned for all of it: his bedside lampshade decorated with Heckle and Jeckle stickers, the on/off button Nicky’s finger had pressed countless times. I grieved for his desk, for the contact-paper-covered soup can filled with pencils and pens he would no longer grip. The shelves of
Britannica
s, the stacks of them too, piled around the room. Pickle jars filled with marbles, a few steelies mixed in that Dad had snuck home from the Plant. I felt a fist in my gut at the thought of him. Dad. A tormented image I pushed away from me as fast and as far as I could because I could not yet face the full breadth of our loss, and my hand in it.

I felt weary under the weight of all that water and I sank down on Nicky’s bed, burrowed under his covers, and tried to inhale the scent of him, because I could breathe this water, draw in the stinging scent of Ivory soap, the pilfered aftershave Nicky had begun to splash on after his pointless attempts to use Dad’s razor.

I nestled my face into Nicky’s pillow, specks of my purple landmasses embedding in the cotton weave, and I imagined his fury at this defilement. I rubbed my arm, Buttholia, and I longed for the sharp crack of Nicky’s fist, a purple bruise that would blossom and eventually evolve into a muted yellow-green. A fleshy sea anemone.

My eyes burned and I closed them, let the tears soothe the grit, and I felt myself floating up, a surfacing buoy. Footsteps pounded down the hall and I was once again weighted to the bed. I just knew it was Nicky coming to thrust open the door and ask me what the hell I was doing in his room. I clutched the edge of his covers and giggled as the handle turned and the door eased open one inch, two, just enough for me to see Nicky’s hand on the knob, then his shoulder, and finally his head leaning in.

Though of course it wasn’t Nicky at all.

Mom rushed toward the lump nestled in her son’s bed. “Oh my God! Nicky, is that you?”

Though of course I wasn’t Nicky at all.

SANCTUS INTERRUPTUS, DUO

Dear Archbishop Gormley
,

This is Betty Ferrari, Garnet’s aunt. I have to whisper because I’ve just stolen Garnet’s tape deck and I’m hiding behind the bromeliads in the solarium. I need to talk to someone because everyone here is so sad, crying at the drop of a hat. Mother Ferrari has been cooking like she’s feeding an army, which I guess she is since we lug pots of spaghetti and pinto beans to all those people outside. We have to sneak the food out since Garnet forbids us. “Don’t feed them or they’ll never leave!” But they all look so hungry. Plus I think Nonna needs to cook for them, but even that doesn’t stop her tears. Yesterday she wept into her apron for two hours straight, blaming it on the diced onions, but I know better. This anniversary is so hard on us.

Did you hear that? Even the pilgrims have been crying for days. About every four hours they start howling and there it goes again. It’s as if a dark cloud has settled over this hilltop and we’re all one raw nerve of pain.

I know where it’s coming from. Garnet has been in the conservatory night and day playing the saddest songs over and over on her daddy’s saw. Last week I was in the backyard and I overheard her telling you about, well, everything. I know you need to understand her history, our history, but really, is it necessary to dredge that up now?

Oh, dear. I know it’s impolite to blow my nose like that. And there goes my mascara. Give me just a minute to blot up this mess. Do forgive me, but what I really need forgiveness for is bringing this tragedy into our lives. It’s all my fault. I have been cursed from birth, just ask Mother Ferrari, who tells me so every other minute.

I take all the blame for bringing Ray-Ray into their lives. He was never a child I would have chosen as my own. I just know that if I had birthed any children they wouldn’t be monsters. I didn’t even choose his father, but it’s not as if boys were knocking down my door to ask for my hand. But Louis, that was my first husband, was a widower who didn’t seem to mind my eye malady, though sometimes I wish I were as brave as Saint Lucy and could pluck it out. Maybe then Mother Ferrari would love me like a daughter, because she is the only mother I have left.

Anyway, Louis was more interested in my cooking skills and the two thousand dollars my father scraped together for a dowry, money I had to use for Louis’s funeral seven months later, leaving me to raise that child by myself.

Since it’s just you and me here I need to confess that I never loved Ray-Ray. Maybe he knew. That boy was a terror, which is why I married Dommy. Ray-Ray needed a firm hand and Dommy surely had that. But Dommy is gone now too, and I don’t miss him one bit. Is that wrong? And now Ray-Ray is halfway around the world and I confess I don’t miss him either. I never was like all those other war mothers who wore those POW-MIA bracelets to show off their grief for their real sons. Wherever Ray-Ray is, shot dead in the jungle, locked in some bamboo cage, I hope he stays missing forever. God forgive me.

Father, sometimes I don’t know why I do what I do, especially after Garnet invited me into her home after everything that’s happened, not just with Ray-Ray, but with Dommy and Grandpa Ferrari, but I don’t know if she told you about that yet. I’ll say it again just like I told the bank and those thugs who showed up at my door: I don’t know why I should be held responsible for Dommy’s gambling debts or overdue loans, which I knew nothing about. Which makes Garnet’s generosity so much richer since there is no family tie any longer. She could have tossed me to the curb . . . or to those thugs. And how did I repay her? I talked to Mike Wallace and his Sixty Minutes crew. I couldn’t be rude, and I tried not to say anything Garnet wouldn’t want me to, but honestly, people need to know about her healing powers, which are real. I’ve seen them. Anyway, the episode aired last night and it wasn’t easy to keep Garnet away from the TV. She would have had a fit if she saw it. I’m not sure if you caught it, but Mr. Wallace’s assistant said he’d send me a transcript. I’ll mail you a copy just as soon as—

(Aunt Betty! Have you seen my tape recorder?)

Shit. I have to go now, Father. But please pray for us. Please pray for all this crying to end.

60
MINUTES
,
SUNDAY, DECEMBER
7, 1975

Transcript: “The Reluctant Saint”

MIKE WALLACE
: The holiday season is in full swing as Christians prepare to commemorate their Savior’s birth and as Jews celebrate the Festival of Lights. Not every child longs for a bicycle or plate of latkes; some long for the healing of an ailment or a birth defect. Over the past few years an increasing number of hopefuls have made a pilgrimage to see alleged miracle worker Garnet Ferrari here in Sweetwater, West Virginia, a lowly site for a saint, but no lowlier than a straw-lined manger.

Sweetwater’s primary industry was once a metal-processing plant, but as you can see from the tchotchkes in storefront windows—Saint Garnet coffee mugs, volcano lighters, lava lamps—the town’s chief product these days is its reclusive healer. Jimmy Katzenberger bought Flannigan’s Pharmacy after the original owners passed away a couple of years ago. The pharmacy no longer fills prescriptions, but it maintains a candy counter and soda fountain that offers the Saint Garnet Float and the Mount Etna Fizz.