The Patron Saint of Ugly (43 page)

I heard sniffling and found Nonna standing outside the window resting her chin on a hoe, tears welling.

Later that night, there was a full moon, and I padded through the house in my bare feet looking at moon shadows trembling on the parquet floors.

A familiar droning of bees drew me out onto the patio, where I tilted my ear at the noise that was coming from beyond the springhouse. I was drawn to it and walked there, the cold wetness of the grass on my exposed soles. Soon I recognized the drone as the rosary, someone gently chanting, “Our Father, Who art in-a heaven,” followed by the congregants, “Hail Mary, full of grace.”

Just inside the fence, I hid behind a clump of pampas grass at the edge of the pond’s concrete deck and spotted Nonna, her back to me, sitting on the lip of the reflection pond, mist rising up as warm vapors met chilled air. She was surrounded by pilgrims, though they did not crowd her. Some were kneeling in the pond, all with their heads bent, eyes closed. Mother was draped across Nonna’s lap, her head cradled in Nonna’s arms. As she prayed, Nonna dipped her hand down into the water time after time and poured the warm liquid over Mom’s head, her drenched ponytail hanging in the pond and fanning out like gold kelp. Some of the water spilled onto the concrete deck, slid beneath the fence and through the pampas grass, and enveloped my feet.

When the rosary was finished Nonna traced her fingers over mother’s lovely jaw and offered one final prayer. “I was the one who bring this curse on-a you, not Garney, so now I must-a remove it. God, please restore this mother to her daughter. Bring her back-a to life.”

“Bring her back-a to life,” prayed the pilgrims.

“So amen,” said Nonna.

“So amen,” sighed the crowd.

Suddenly the puddle I was standing in felt charged with electricity; a surge shot up my leg, torso, and neck and into my hair, which flared into a staticky cone. Nonna’s bun wiggled until it sprang free, the end of it levitating like a magic trick. I jumped back onto dry ground, severing the current that connected Nonna and me, and raced to my room wondering if La Strega had somehow enchanted this land before she died.

The following morning, Nonna, Betty, and I were eating waffles in the upstairs kitchen. Betty was hogging the syrup, and I was about to wrestle it from her when Mom walked in in her nightgown, hair disheveled, and asked, “Is there any more coffee?”

I don’t remember tipping out of my chair, but the next thing I knew I had my arms wrapped around her, dampening her nightgown with my tears. Nonna and Betty surrounded us, our twined arms hugging, prayers of thanksgiving squeaking out from Nonna and Betty until Mom asked, “Where the hell are we?”

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.

“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.