The Patron Saint of Ugly (35 page)

“Don’t get messed up before the guests arrive,” Grandma said as she left.

I posed before the mirror, scrutinizing the geography-less girl staring back at me. She could walk the streets of Sweetwater or Charlottesville without drawing undue attention. Inside my gut, a clown juggled balls of both sadness and joy.

Soon I heard Mom thumping down the hall. “Garnet, are you getting ready?” I instinctively closed my bathroom door. “Yes!” I turned on faucets, flushed the toilet. I think I already knew how Mom would feel about my getup.

My room faced the circular drive in front of the house so I was able to watch the cars pulling in. Convertibles and glossy numbers with leather roofs circled the three-tiered fountain now spewing aquamarine water. Not a station wagon among them. I thought about Dad, who couldn’t even afford to buy us a used set of wheels. I thought of him even more as young couples unfolded from their vehicles, the women with upswept hair and pastel dresses carrying beautifully wrapped presents. Every husband was taller than his wife and dressed in a pricey suit and polished shoes. I could identify a few by their nicknames: the big-toothed one had to be Chompers. The one who refused to relinquish his hat, Bowler. They handed their keys to Cedrick, who passed them to Muddy, who parked cars beside the tennis court. Only one man arrived without a companion. Judging from the way he primped in his rearview, I knew it was Skiff. He was also taller than my father, but the hair on his crown was thinning, a satisfying defect.

Mom called from the other side of my door: “They’re here!”

“I’ll be down in a second!”

“Oh God,” she said before padding away. I rushed to my door, peeked out, and was disappointed to see her wearing her same skinny pants and an aqua shell, her hair in a ponytail without a velvet rose. She headed not to the grand staircase but to the steps that led down to the kitchen and the back door.

I crouched behind one of the two vases that flanked the top of the stairway and looked through the railing into the Hall of Mirrors. A black version of Radisson led guest after guest to Grandma, who was standing beneath the chandelier that Fanny Brice had swung from. “Zelda!” They offered hugs and kissy-kissy. Grandma didn’t look offended by the nickname.

Opal directed her staff from a corner, sending envoys with trays of champagne and canapés. The women clustered around Zelda asking sensitive questions. “How is she doing really? No, really?” The men migrated to the jazz combo, tapping their feet, looking at my mother’s painting. Chompers said, “She was a beauty.” The rest of them sighed, particularly Skiff, who positioned himself at the back of the pack, a lone dinghy facing Zelda, who kept scanning the room for her truant daughter.

“Wonder what Zelda’s got cooked up over there.” Bowler nodded across the room at what I assumed was another portrait, hung directly opposite Mom’s but covered in a white sheet with a pink bow at the top, a dangling cord at the ready for the grand unveiling. My heart ka-thunked and I was actually moved by the notion that Grandma clandestinely had had my portrait painted so that Mom and I could wink back and forth at each other in perpetuity. Then I wondered which version of me Grandma had commissioned: the au naturel me or the Kabuki one. The Kabuki one, no doubt, or at least—at that moment—I hoped.

Mom didn’t come, and she didn’t come, even as more guests arrived and my legs began to cramp. I wasn’t about to go down there without her to hide behind, and besides, it didn’t look as if any necks were craning in search of a birthday girl. Regardless of the presents now heaped on the table, I understood then that this party wasn’t for me.

The men swapped champagne for bourbon and sat at the tables, where they pulled cigarettes from cases and tapped ashes into crystal bowls. Soon they began making blunt inquiries.

“I heard she flunked out of Wellesley and has been living in West Virginia. Why in the world would anyone live there, for God’s sake?”

“I heard Zelda cut her off for marrying a Jew.”

“What did her husband do? Does anyone know what her husband did?”

“I have a joke, Yummers. A Jew, a nigger, and a clappy whore walk into a bar . . .”

I was stunned that this fashionable set included versions of Uncle Dom. And I was even more shocked when they kept trading racist jokes while Black Radisson leaned in with their fresh drinks, his expression fixed. He went back to the bar for the next round and nodded at the bartender, who pulled a bottle from his vest pocket, unscrewed the eyedropper lid, and squirted a dose of something into each drink. I don’t know for certain what the liquid was, but it was yellow and I think, in another culture, might be considered excellent counter-
malocchio
juice.

Finally Mom appeared from the kitchen, Cookie, her equal in height, behind her, guiding her in by the shoulders, whispering in her ear, shoving a drink in her hand.

The women squawked like gulls and flocked to her. “Marina! You look stunning! How we’ve missed you!”

Cookie drifted to Opal’s station as the women circled Mom. Even in her old clothes and uncoifed hair, Mom was striking. The women scoured her from stem to stern, some baring their teeth while pretending to be cordial. “I can’t believe you’ve kept your figure after having children.” The men stopped yammering and gawked at Mom, particularly Skiff, who crossed his arms and appraised the jewel amid this cluster of lesser stones.

Grandma had been sipping a martini but slipped off to the bar to knock back a few, leaving the women to interrogate Mom. “What happened at Wellesley? Why didn’t you come to Monaco? So where exactly have you been?” The questions were relentless with no pauses for answers, thankfully, since I don’t know what Mom would have said.
I’ve been scrubbing toilets and eating capocollo with Italians
.

“We were so sorry to hear about your son,” a chunky woman said. It looked as if she genuinely meant it.

“Nicky.” Mom’s head bobbed ever so slightly, as if the God she didn’t believe in were flicking her forehead with a giant finger.

Uh-oh
, I thought. From the looks in Opal’s and Cookie’s eyes, I could tell they were thinking
Uh-oh
too.

But Mom shook it off. “Thank you, Bonbon.”

A woman wielding a cigarette holder said, “Yes, Zelda told us about your son, and about your husband who died in the war.”

“My husband didn’t die in the war.” Mom’s eyes shot virtual flames at Grandma.

Grandma fiddled with her pearls and sort of tap-danced across the floor without spilling a drop of martini. “You must have heard me wrong, Taffy. I said he
served
in the war.
Served
.”

At the mention of war the men’s jokes became militaristic, sort of. “Bumpy, remember that little bistro we celebrated in after we liberated Paris? One time a frog, a kike, and a pig-alley whore walked in and found a table of heil-heinies . . .”

Skiff inched over to Mom, clearly on a prearranged mission, judging from the way he and Grandma traded looks. I wondered what would happen to me if Mom and Skiff married. He would whisk her across the pond and I would be stuck with Grandma taking etiquette lessons.

Skiff nudged Bonbon and Taffy aside and cupped his hand around Mom’s elbow.

“Marina.” His voice was tinged with both yearning and spite.

Mom looked at his hand, and her eyes drifted to his. “Skiffy.”

They did the kissy-kiss and Mom stared at the silver bracelet on Taffy’s wrist.

“You look marvelous.” Skiff scrutinized my mother in the same way the women were scrutinizing him. “You broke my heart.”

Mom looked at him, and then at Grandma, who merely tilted her head in a way that communicated:
You did, dear
.

Bonbon started to sidle away, but Taffy held her in place. She recognized theater when she saw it.

Skiff slid a tendril of Mom’s hair behind her ear. “One day we were canoeing and the next you were gone. Where did you go? Zelda was always a little dodgy on the details.”

Zelda glared at him as if to say,
This wasn’t part of our plan
. “What does it matter where she was
specifically?
If Marina had wanted you to know, she would have told you.”

“Ouch,” Taffy said.

“Touché,” said Skiff. “At least tell us about your old man. What did your husband do?”

The glass in Mom’s hand shook, its contents sloshing close to the brim.

I looked at Grandma to see if she would again rescue her daughter, but she just stood, another statue among so many.

Bonbon, bless her plump heart, tried to throw Mom an oar. She took the shaking glass from Mom’s hand. “How did you meet him? What was he like?” She assumed those were innocuous inquiries.

I wondered how Mom would describe her choice of spouse: a barely high-school-educated runt who wore paint-splattered work boots and carried a lunch pail.

I felt like a stranger floating above this superior set, a part of Mom’s secret life that was so disconnected from this one.

“He was a wonderful man,” Mom said. “And a hard worker.”

A sob lodged in my throat.

“But what did he
do?
” Skiff wore the same expression Uncle Dom would have worn.

The light in Mom’s eyes dimmed. She tugged at the hair at her temple and I imagined that in her mind she was replaying the movie of her life with that horrible ending.

This time I genuinely expected Grandma to dive in with some elevated lie, to save herself, if not her daughter, since Mom’s choice of a husband reflected poorly on Grandma.
He owned a steel company. He was an oil tycoon
. But Grandma just stood there with a strange look on her face. Not embarrassment, which is what I would have expected. More like smug satisfaction.
Let’s see how you’re going to get out of this one, dear
. As if today’s festivities were staged to show her daughter just how much she would rue the day.

Mom roused herself a bit. “He sawed the gnawed wood.”

“What’s that?” Skiff asked.

“What did she say?” Taffy whispered.

“He sawed the gnawed wood and inlaid the T-bone floor.”

I don’t know what stunned me more, that my mother was blurting her nonsense in public or that I actually understood it. Regardless, as I watched her silently backflip into herself, I uncoiled my imaginary rope to lasso around her waist. I genuinely thought I could be Mom’s savior. I could be the savior of Dad’s reputation too if I pranced downstairs in my fancy dress, tidy hairdo, and de-geographied face. I would show everyone how refined we all were, how well Dad had provided for us. So I stood, smoothed down my collar, sucked in my gut, and clomped my shoes on each step as I descended to draw attention away from my caved-in mother and place it squarely on me.

“My father was a lumber tycoon!” I bellowed. “Our house is on top of a hill; it’s bigger than this one, and it has its own bowling alley and a room just for mink coats.” I don’t know where all that came from, since this was before I even knew about the bowling alley and fur vault in my current chateau.

“Is that the daughter?” Taffy’s cigarette holder tipped limply toward the floor.

Bowler eyed my overly powdered face. “
That’s
Marina’s daughter?”

I could feel the oily disappointment oozing from their pores.

“Yes, I am.” I stepped into the Hall of Mirrors.

All eyes were on me as the guests made their assessments and no doubt determined, even without knowing the secret beneath my war paint, that I was miles below their offspring. Skiff’s eyes pivoted from Mom to me, probably in the same way my father’s did on the day I was born.

I looked over at Cookie and Opal, bug eyes about to pop out of their heads, Cookie hiding her gloved hand behind her back.

Grandma and I looked at Mom, who looked at me but didn’t see me. The spark of consciousness in her eyes was gone. I bet Grandma was thinking,
Whew
.

Grandma hustled over and yanked me offstage. “Well, now that you’ve all met, it’s time for the unveiling.”

She deposited me beside Mother and went to the giant painting. The guests murmured with anticipation. I was miffed that my grand entrance had fizzled to nothing. I wanted Mom to see my hurt, but she stared so intently into one of the mirrors across the room that I waved my hand in front of her face and whispered, “Mom? Mom?” She didn’t even blink.

Grandma cleared her throat. “It is such a pleasure to have my family reunited.”

“Hear, hear!” Skiff clamped his arm around Mom’s waist. I don’t think he cared that she was a shell of herself. She was a beautiful shell who looked smart on his arm.

“In honor of my daughter’s return I took the liberty of commissioning a painting that will grace the Caudhill walls for generations to come.”

I slipped my hand into Mom’s ice-cold one to steady my nerves, since I knew that once again all eyes would be on me as they compared my face to, perhaps, a mulberry-stained one.

Grandma’s eyes actually moistened as she wrapped her hand around the rope. I was moved by her newfound familial pride. “Ladies and gentlemen, behold.”

I couldn’t bear to watch, so I squeezed my eyes shut and listened to fabric swishing to the floor, the gasping awe of the crowd, the feet shuffling forward to better admire the vision.

“How beautiful. How stunning. It’s Marina all over again,” they said. I wondered how much license Grandma had given the artist.

Finally I peeled open my eyes, expecting to see a gentrified version of myself, but the figure staring back at me was Nicky.

The crowd mused: “Is that her son? That must be her son. How beautiful. And tragic.”

“Nicky?” Mom’s hand warmed in my grip. “Is that my Nicky?” Her fingers slipped from mine as she inched toward the painting. Skiff let his hand fall from her waist to watch the heartbreaking reunion.

It was a stunning painting, Padre, not with my brother holding a stupid plumed hat or wearing knickers but fashioned after his last school picture, when he wore his La Strega duds and held a chess castle in his hand. The flawless porcelain skin, the rosebud lips that had earned him slugs from the Four Stooges earned him respect here.