The Patron Saint of Ugly (40 page)

“I’d like to talk to you about donating a new roof for the church!”

“Father!” Dee Dee scolded. “Now is not the time.”

I didn’t bother with farewells, just stepped inside my fence and slammed the gate on not only the priest but Dee Dee, the old nonnas, and the children, who were beginning to whimper.

I ran to my front door but before it closed behind me Father Shultz yelled, “We look forward to seeing you at Mass!”

Thus I started hiding again, not inside makeup, but inside another mansion, though this time it had nothing to do with shame. I couldn’t fulfill the requests of those aggressive old women and children, and I refused to grant Father Shultz his.

Eventually I moved into the main house, and one afternoon as I unloaded groceries delivered from the A&P (formerly O’Grady’s), the buzzer sounded. I thought it might be Dee Dee or those persistent nonnas, but when I looked out front I saw Nonna holding a shirt box of sweet bliss, Betty standing beside her. I ran outside to buzz open the gate, not put off by Nonna’s dingy braid or Betty’s acne-splattered face. Nonna enveloped me in her python’s grip, an E note pouring from her mouth. Her warm embrace sent surges of electricity through us both.

“You feel-a that?” Nonna said.

When we pulled apart, her hair—and mine—was charged with static.

Betty planted kisses on my face. “How we’ve missed you! You’ve gotten so skinny and tall!” We wept until a swarm of nonnas and children raced my way. I pulled the women inside, closed the gate, and we hustled to the mansion, where they gawped at the luxury.

Nonna paced the upstairs kitchen trying not to touch those frightening appliances, but she found La Strega’s coffeepot. She lifted the lid on that box of chocolate-dipped cannolis, and I sighed when she laid them on a platter. I built a fire in the parlor, where we sipped Nonna’s strong brew, the two women smiling, exposing stained teeth.

“The coffee is delicious,” Betty said, scratching a pimple.

“It’s a-true,” Nonna said. “Best coffee I make since a-before . . .”

She didn’t have to finish.

Betty delicately recounted how she and Nonna had reunited just a day earlier. Everyone in Sweetwater knew that someone had moved into La Strega’s mansion, and rumors abounded as to who it might be: Le Baron’s love child claiming his birthright; Jackie Onassis; Hugh Heffner, who would turn it into a Playboy mansion. Though several ordained people confirmed that they had seen Garnet Ferrari, for most of the populace, that was harder to believe than Jackie O.

Betty was determined to see for herself and used the opportunity to reunite the fam-i-ly, a brave maneuver, and I adored her for it. She convinced Nonna that it was time for the iron curtain to come down for my sake, if it was indeed me on the hill. They kept their mission a secret from their husbands, and now Nonna was sitting in my parlor glaring at her daughter-in-law, though she relaxed somewhat when Betty relayed the news that Ray-Ray was MIA in Vietnam, that land sliver on my right hip that had also gone missing. I watched her eyes to see if it pained her that her stepson was possibly, quite probably, dead or a POW in some jungle hellhole. She held her cards closer to her chest than I would have thought possible. I was not wearing a poker face, and neither was Nonna, our scowls expressing that we hoped the bastard was a pile of rotting bones sunk beneath a rice paddy.

Nonna mercifully changed the subject. “You know, the Plant-a, she close. The whole town, she is in-a ruin.”

“Dommy had to take a job selling shoes in Vandalia,” Betty added.

Why did my heart feel like singing?

We gossiped and ate cannolis until the women had to sneak back to their husbands, but for five days straight, they slipped out and visited me to guzzle that delicious coffee.

Eventually my identity was confirmed in the newspaper: “Garnet Ferrari New Hilltop Monarch!” Thus, on Nonna’s and Betty’s sixth visit, they came bearing not gifts, but ogres. When the buzzer sounded I spied Uncle Dom and Grandpa, each holding a grocery sack as they stood beside their apologetic-looking wives. I was tempted to ignore them, but I understood that if I wanted Nonna and Betty in my life I would have to endure their mates.

As I walked to the fence, Dom checked his breath and Grandpa adjusted his number-one newsie cap. When I clanked open the gate, Dom dove forward and hugged me for much longer than was necessary, though he kept looking over my shoulder as if he thought someone else would be traipsing from the house. Grandpa didn’t hug me, but he removed his hat, revealing a spectacularly liver-spotted pate.

“Garney.” His eyes scoured my face. “You look-a so, so . . .”

“Yes, you do,” Dom finished.

We approached the front door, Grandpa growling at the gargoyles his brother had sculpted and that I had once been so afraid of. Now I was delighted to have them protecting my stoop. I allowed the men inside, and naturally they tromped ahead of me and their wives. Betty leaned close to my ear. “We are so sorry.”

The men crossed the hallway, picking up vases along the way to read markings, looking behind paintings for secret wall safes—something that had not occurred to me, but, boy, would I be flipping paintings that night.

We settled in the library in those clawfoot chairs, Grandpa claiming the one Nicky used to sit in, me in the one beside him, Uncle Dom on La Strega’s settee. Betty and Nonna hovered by the door.

“So where’s your mother?” Dom asked. “She upstairs?”

Mother. No one had asked about her, Betty and Nonna perhaps too afraid or angry.

“She’s living with Grandma Iris.” I didn’t know what else to say.

Dom’s shoulders slumped. “Oh. Well, I brought you a few gifts.” He pulled out of his grocery sack a wedge of Fontina cheese and a bottle of sambuca, but no
Playboy
.

“Me too.” Grandpa heaved a jug of homemade wine onto my lap. Grandpa looked at his wife. “Go get-a some glasses.”

“And cut up this cheese,” Dom ordered Betty.

Nonna and Betty left me alone with the men, Dom standing to scan bookshelves for first editions.

“So we hear you inherit quite the
fortuna
.” Grandpa’s eyes roved from treasure to treasure.

“Such-a big house. Bigger than Dommy’s over in Grover Estates.”

Uncle Dom sneered.

“With a lot of-a rooms. So many, many rooms.”

I already knew where he was heading and wanted to spit out,
Guess the hill is good enough for you now
.

“You know, Nonna, she is-a getting so old she no clean-a the house so good. She no cook-a so good and the laundry, she comes out gray. Look. Look at my shirt!”

The shirt was indeed discolored.

“It would-a be so nice if she no had-a to clean no more. If she had more space to, uh, put up-a her feet.” He paused, hoping that I would immediately invite him and Nonna—but mostly him—to move in. I didn’t utter a peep.

Betty and Nonna returned with a teacart loaded with fruit and cheese and cordial glasses—not a single juice glass. Betty had filled Grandpa’s wineglass with mini-cubes from the automatic icemaker, a contraption that both confounded and frightened Nonna. “That thing will bite off-a you hand!”

Betty rolled the cart in front of Grandpa and me. Dom sat back down, casually sliding one of my books into his jacket pocket. I was about to say something when Betty tucked a napkin into her husband’s shirt and filled his plate with food. Nonna did likewise for Grandpa. I wanted to protest and make Yvette proud, but I didn’t want the women to pay the consequences later for my outburst.

They stayed for an hour, the men blabbering about themselves. I was never more relieved in my life than when Grandpa untucked his napkin, threw it on his plate, and took his leave.

The next day all four showed up again, though this time Grandpa paraded to the sunniest expanse of lawn in the backyard, near where the springhouse had once sat. He walked heel-toe in a rectangular formation as if he were engineering a project. I finally ushered him inside, where he again sat in Nicky’s chair and he and Dom ordered their wives around. That was the day the gold candlesticks went missing.

The pattern continued, them showing up to eat my food and be waited on by their women. Uncle Dom broadened his snooping to include every room on the main floor; he scribbled in a notebook and even snapped photos when he thought I wasn’t looking. Little figurines and silver lighters disappeared, though when I questioned him, he always said, “What lighter? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I brought you more Fontina!” I began to wonder if the man actually did have a job selling footwear, as his afternoons were habitually free and his own shoes looked worn.

On the last Friday in March, though the hill had been hit with a hefty early-spring snow, I again opened my gate for the fam-i-ly. Grandpa and I went to the library, and he sat and tapped his fingers on his knees. As I built a fire I could hear Dom in the conservatory strumming the harp, tickling the ivories, taking pictures for whatever photo album he was assembling. Finally he strolled in holding something that made my blood shudder.

“This is Angelo’s saw.” He traced his fingers over my father’s curlicues.

Grandpa grumbled at the Sicilian import, but I ran to Dom and yanked the saw from his grip. “Leave that alone. It’s private.
Private!”

“Sorry,” Uncle Dom said. “That’s a beautiful Steinway. Betty always wanted a piano. Of course, there’s no way we could afford one now.”

I ignored him, set the saw on the mantel, and rearranged logs with an iron poker.

“Real shame. She always, always wanted a piano.”

I kept my lips tightly shut.

Grandpa took over. “And Nonna sure like-a your kitchen. All those fancy machines.”

Pah. Just the day before Nonna had discovered the rustic kitchen beneath the main one, and she knelt down and kissed the floor. The old-timey refrigerator with the motor on top and the metal ice trays was a convenience she could understand.

“She said she could-a cook up a storm in a kitchen like-a that. If only she could somehow make-a use of it three or four times a day. But that’s a lot of going back and a-forth, back and a-forth lugging food from her tiny, tiny house down on Via Dolorosa. Back in Italia, you know, the grandparents live with their children.”

“You could always move in with Uncle Dom.”

Dom choked on a hardened gumdrop he’d dug from a candy dish.

Grandpa pursed his lips. “Perhaps, but he no have-a the room you have here. So many, many,
many
rooms.”

“Plus, I’m not your child.”

Grandpa squinted at me. “That-a may be, but you are my only grandchild. And Nonna’s. You know she want to move in here with-a you. Why you want to break-a her heart?”

I nearly laughed, since this man had been breaking her heart for decades. “Maybe I’m your granddaughter, maybe I’m not.”

Grandpa’s face drained of color as he tried to decipher all the four-tooth-chisel innuendoes gouged into that statement. His hands balled into fists and he opened his mouth just as unsuspecting Betty and Nonna wheeled in the teacart.

Nonna handed Grandpa his wineglass, ice cubes tinkling inside.

Grandpa looked at the glass. “What the hell is-a this?”

Nonna looked at him, puzzled.

“I tole you I wanted mini–ice-a cubes. Can’t you ever get it right,
puttana
?” Grandpa flung his cubes on the floor, where they skittered across the parquet. “Go getta me the good ice cubes. Now!”

Nonna started to leave, but I pounded my iron poker against the hearth. “No! Get them your-goddamn-self!”

“What did-a you say?” Grandpa stood to face me.

I thought he was brave, considering I wielded fireplace tools. “I said get them your-goddamn-self.”

Grandpa started to slap me, but I held up the poker. His eyes bored into mine. Instead of hitting me, he shoved Nonna’s shoulder, knocking her backward so that she stumbled over the teacart and fell. I lunged toward her, but Grandpa blocked my way.

“Now go get-a my goddamn ice.”

Nonna cupped her right elbow and moaned.

Dom squatted to help the woman who had birthed him, but Grandpa yelled, “Leave her!”

We all looked at Dominick, and like my father all those years ago, Uncle Dom suddenly began shrinking back into a quivering child. The thought of Dad fully ignited my fury at Grandpa, who had been bullying us all for too long.

“You son of a bitch. I want you out of my house!”

Grandpa looked at me with loathing and opened his mouth, so I clocked him in the head with the poker, not fatally, just enough to knock his newsie cap onto the floor and deliver a lovely welt.

“Get the hell out!” I seethed.

Grandpa harrumphed, scooped up his hat, and headed to the front door, followed by Dom.

I herded the men to the gate and pressed the button to bluster them out. They realized their wives were not with them, and Grandpa shouted over my head, “Diamante! Get-a you ass out here right now!”

Dom parroted him, his voice cracking like a pubescent boy’s: “Betty! Get your ass in the car!”

The women appeared; Betty ushered Nonna through the door as Nonna clutched her arm to her bosom.

“Not you!” I called to them. “You live up here with me now!”

They looked at each other in disbelief. Betty pointed a finger to herself to see if she was included in this deliverance.

I nodded vigorously. “Both of you. Please stay.”

It was as if the millstones tied around their necks had suddenly been cut loose: their shoulders straightened, their chins jutted out.

“The hell-a you will!” Grandpa tried to push back inside, but I used that strength of a mother protecting her young to muscle him out, and then I pressed the button to close the gate.

“I’ll get-a you for this!” Grandpa pointed at the bump on his forehead. “I’ll sue you for every penny you have! Then you’ll-a see who lives in-a this fancy house. And I no make-a room for you either!”

Dom by then had lost all language skills, but he raised his tiny fist through the gate, babbling. Grandpa hefted Uncle Dom and shoved him into the car like a watermelon, got in himself, and off they sped, Grandpa rolling down his window to offer obscene hand gestures as he barreled away.