The Patron Saint of Ugly (7 page)

Imagine my mother’s fascination when she tore into the back row of crates to find choice specimens from Grandfather Postscript’s other obsession: globes. Mom hauled out world globes made of leather, globes made of marble, globes inlaid with malachite, mother-of-pearl, lapis lazuli, and bloodstone. There were styles galore: Franklin, Lancaster, Westminster, Queen Anne. Sherbrooke floor globes, desk globes, illuminated globes, globes that dangled from the ceiling with counterweights, globes held up by statues of Atlas, flip-top globes hiding decanters of brandy.

Grandma had calculated wisely. The detritus of her late husband’s passions so entranced my mother that she happily handed over her son. I don’t know how Dad endured the invasion, but I imagine that was the minute he flew to the basement, pulled out a beloved saw with a curlicue-etched handle, and began filling the house, and my prenatal ears, with a rhythmic sound that was sweeter to me than any lullaby.

Grandma found a practical application for Dad’s carpentry skills: she had him build shelves for the reference books that would go into Nicky’s room and for the globes that would go into baby number two’s. Grandma picked up the first volume of the
Encyclopaedia
Britannica
, A to Anno, and started reading to Nicky pronto so he could catch up to all the well-nurtured aristocratic Virginian babies. When she wasn’t stuffing his gray matter, she held him in front of various mirrors, taming his forelock or centering his bib. “One must always look one’s best, Nicky. You don’t know who might be watching.”

Mom had a love-hate relationship with the mirrors, by turns dodging them like Nonna dodged evil-eye
gabbos
and peering into them for hours picking at imaginary imperfections.
There she goes
, Nicky and I used to say whenever we caught her diving into herself.

Mom also spent hours in the globe room rearranging planets, spinning a dozen Earths. It was an innocuous distraction, or so everyone thought. Mom was not weakened or nauseated during this pregnancy. In fact, she was ravenous. Nicky said her cravings included slug livers, blue skink tails, turtle eyes, and canine testicles. I question this menu because I have never had a yen for dog balls in my life.

Grandma Iris had been excluded from Mom’s first pregnancy, and the Ferrari mob was barred from her second. Partial blame goes to Grandpa and Uncle Dom, who refused to haul their nondriving wives up Dagowop Hill. The rest goes to Mother, who forbade any visits from her pee-dribbling in-laws.

It would take a miracle—or a calamity—to bring them together. After supper on June twenty-third, 1950, Mom sat in my soon-to-be room palpating a three-inch 1890 Abel-Klinger wooden globe, the varnish shiny with the oils of a thousand caresses, including Grandfather Postscript’s. Then Mom’s inner ocean gurgled.

“It’s time!” she called.

In dashed Dad and Grandma Iris cradling Nicky. Mom held tight to the Abel-Klinger—the one world she could control—and they skedaddled to Scourged Savior, where Dad again kissed Mom’s forehead before they whisked her through the swinging doors to the delivery room.

Ever the dutiful, if shrinking, son, Dad phoned his father, and soon the elevator doors clanged open. The Ferrari clan (sans Ray-Ray and Betty, whose walleyed presence had been prohibited) tumbled out and landed at Grandma Iris’s Ferragamo-shod feet. Though Grandma Iris was a towering blonde like my mother, Grandpa would not be suckered by beauty again. I bet Nonna couldn’t help comparing herself to this sparkling rival who was only a decade younger but centuries apart in looks, language, and deportment. Nonna ultimately crept to the shadows in her limp jersey dress, coiled white bun, and swollen feet rammed into sensible shoes.

Dad tried to keep the peace. “It won’t be long. She’s probably delivering right now. Anyone for coffee?”

Finally they took their seats. Nonna hadn’t brought her embroidery kit this time since she assumed I would be as considerate as Nicky and enter the world swiftly on a pain-free wave.

Au contraire. For twenty-one hours, Mom writhed in anguish, sweating and cussing and ruing the day, especially ruing the drugs that did nothing to dull the pain. Her shrieks pierced the waiting room—the expletives, the threats to Dad’s manhood—and then, suddenly, nothing. Not a peep, just a foreboding silence.

I was not presented to the fam-i-ly in the waiting room. Once Mom and I were situated in her room, a nurse brought the fam-i-ly to her, the Abel-Klinger globe resting on a water glass on her bedside table. The mob rushed toward me, filled with anticipation. Mother’s face bore an expression that must have hinted their hopes would be dashed. She peeled back the pink blanket to reveal a port-wine globe of a girl, flaming hair coning up like a volcano.

I imagine Mom looked for a shiny object to dive into, but she couldn’t, so she held me toward them, tears of something in her eyes. “Isn’t she beautiful? Isn’t she absolutely beautiful?”

Perhaps it was hormones talking; more likely, those were the words of a desperate woman who couldn’t fathom the monster she had knit together in her womb. But I was
her
monster, and if she didn’t claim me, nobody would.

When the fam-i-ly members caught their first glimpse, a collective gasp erupted, along with a shriek from Grandma Iris. “Nooo!” she bawled before fleeing the room in search of a martini. Grandpa Ferrari and Uncle Dom tiptoed backward out the door to upchuck their gnocchi. Nonna spun around, certain that Aunt Betty had snuck in and cursed me. No Betty, but Nonna soon discovered the Abel-Klinger globe. Her eyes bounced from the orb to me and back as she recognized landmasses.

“Dio mio!”
She scooped up the globe and tucked it in her purse. “Why you no let me visit and prevent-a this!” Nonna tugged amulets from around her neck, flashed those hand signs, offered her prayer.
“Malocchio che causi tanta miseria, noi ti caviamo
l’occhio e ti mandiamo sulla luna!”
She lunged out the door and ran home to her arsenal: the rue branches, the blue-eyed glass beads, the spaghetti pots full of pee.

Which left only my father, admirer of fair Nordic traits, choking on the ball of
I love you
s he’d been gestating just for me, most of which, now, would never be born.

TAPE FIVE

The (Abridged) Life of a Saint

Archie:

I’ve barricaded myself in my bathroom, so I apologize for the sound quality; lovely for saw playing, not so much for tape sessions, but tonight I needed to soak in a hot tub. I’m in hiding because Nonna and Betty are determined to give me a haircut. “You look a bit haggard, dear,” Betty said, but I know what she’s up to. I caught her sobbing over a stack of letters this morning. She is so gullible—she married Uncle Dom, after all. Sometimes I want to insert one of my skeleton keys into Betty’s keyhole eye and unlock the mysteries behind her bad, bad choices. She believes I can fulfill every request I receive.
Dear Saint Garnet: Just one strand of your healing locks and my son’s harelip will de-hare
, or
my daughter will grow an earlobe
, or
my sister will ungrow a third nipple
.

(Garnet! Open up, honey.)

(Go away, Aunt Betty.)

(Just a little trim. I promise.)

(If you don’t leave I’ll shave my head and flush every bit down the toilet. Pubes too!)

(Oh, dear.)

I would never do it, of course. I’ve grown quite fond of my free-spirited tresses. Now when I’m luxuriating in a hot bath, I delight in coifing them into ever grander beehives. I’m a sucker for bubble baths, Padre, where I can add topography to the secret landmasses few ever see. I suppose I shouldn’t detail female anatomy to a celibate man, not that anything about me would inspire a manly twinge, and that’s okay by me. With the help of the only explorer who fully traversed my globe, I have learned to appreciate this earthly vessel: one hundred forty pounds of red Carrara marble. As my intrepid surveyor said, “Imagine what Michelangelo could have sculpted out of you.”

Today I’m going to tackle question twenty-three:
Earliest manifestation of miraculous signs?
My quote-unquote powers didn’t surface until I was four, though I suppose I did perform one trick just by being born: I made Grandma Iris disappear.

What Dad and Grandma had in common was an appreciation for corporeal beauty, and while Dad could retreat to his saw in the basement indefinitely, Grandma could stew in her vodka for only so long. After just three days she slurred, “I’m leaving.”

Mom probably said, “Thank God.” A similar sentiment rose from the basement, Dad’s “About time!” wafting with sawdust through the heater vents.

Grandma packed everything into the car herself, except for one Vuitton valise, which she protectively clutched during the farewells at the door.

Dad was suddenly solicitous. “Allow me.”

“No, no. I’ll carry it.” Grandma held on tight, rushing outside and down the steps. “No need to see me off. Get back inside now.” She was anxious to make a clean getaway and might have succeeded if she hadn’t dropped her Vuitton. Out spilled Nicky’s Roy Rogers pajamas and math flash cards.

“What the hell?” Dad rushed down the steps to the car and found his son wiggling in the passenger foot well.

Dad lifted Nicky out. “How dare you kidnap my boy, you son-ama-beetch!”

Grandma jumped in her car, rolled down her window, and squealed away, yelling, “You will rue the day, Marina! Absolutely rue the day!”

I think maybe, years later, Mom did.

After Grandma skedaddled, Mom warped under the weight of two infants at once and a husband who worked all day and fussed over only his son. Mom reluctantly allowed Nonna to help so that she could continue to compose the weird verse she’d taken to taping to her bedroom walls:
Err well, wellborn heir, cast off your forebear’s fate
.

Delighted, five days a week, Nonna schlepped her valise of incantations to our doorstep so that while Mom tended to Nicky or wrote, Nonna could work her magic on me. Day after day, she sat in my room surrounded by globes she could do nothing about because Mom refused to let Nonna haul them to the curb.

During those crucial months, my pre-sentient eyes scoured globes lining shelves, standing on pedestals, dangling from the ceiling; a solar-system mobile spinning over my crib matched the tiny system swirling on the underside of my right wrist—the only celestial masses I sported, Pluto barely a pinprick. Nonna scattered her own talismans around, all those ankhs and horseshoes. That four-tooth chisel that once protected Nicky’s prenatal room was now hidden beneath my bassinet. She burned rue—a slightly better kind than Grandma Iris’s—smeared me with ashes and salt, practiced her olive-oil arts, embroidered my diapers with red crosses, and even broke out the ceremonial pee, though in much smaller doses. Nothing worked. Finally she held me to her bosom, illuminated globes casting eerie shadows on the walls, and cried rivulets of tears that may have washed away my original sin but wouldn’t rinse away my geography. Nor would they soften my father’s heart, because he still refused to even tuck his finger under my chin.

Nonna swiped the wetness from her cheeks and started spinning the fable that she hoped would earn me favor with Dad, the golden threads coiling me in a cocoon that I was swaddled in—and believed—for far too long:

Once upon a time in the village of Sughero
a baby girl was born. With pale skin and blue eyes, Garnet was destined for greatness . 
.
 
.

I picture Mom ducked down outside the door as Nonna spouted her fable, Mom muttering,
Sainted lobes budding amidst globes
.

In my infancy, I was introduced to the sound of Dad’s sawing and to a comforting hum that would be the soundtrack of my life. It was more distinct when Nonna held me in her arms but present even when I was on the hill and she was down in her village kitchen. Eventually I understood that Nonna heard the note too: all her humming perfectly matched the vibrating
mmmmmm
in my head. Apparently no one else heard it, though as I grew, I asked whoever was in proximity time and again, “Don’t you hear that?,” a question Nonna had been asking all her life. Over the years I tried to find an instrument that duplicated the noise and finally heard it on
The Ed Sullivan Show
. A man in a tuxedo played a theremin, or, more specifically, his fingers stroked the air between two perpendicular antennas. His hands acted as grounding plates, producing a woeful sound that eventually included our note, which I would later identify as a low E.

Nonna remembers when the neighbors got their first look at me. It was a fall afternoon when she and Mom tried out the new strollers. Mom went first, pushing Nicky, with Nonna and me several paces behind. The hill women had not seen their flaxen-haired boy in months, and they had never seen his cloistered little sister. They raced forward with offerings, their own children toddling beside them. “Where is our beautiful boy?” Nonna sputtering
ptt-ptt-ptt
. Next they veered toward me; Mom and Nonna hoped decorous manners would prevail.

They did not. When the women inspected me, their hands flew to their mouths. “What’s wrong with her? Is she contagious?”

“Of course-a not!” Nonna said.

But the children bawled at the sight and ran home, chased by their mothers who slammed their doors, windows too, and then the drapes.

Mom could have run home also, but that brave soul directed Nonna to take Nicky’s stroller. Mom would steer mine and they would continue their walk. Mom held her head high as if I, antithesis of everything about her that was comely, were her Cracker Jack prize, yelling at the top of her lungs, “Behold, cruel hearts, untampered loveliness!”

Mom might have been content to snub the neighbors for good, but Nonna understood the power behind communal belief.

She wisely waited until Mom hustled Nicky to the village for a doctor’s appointment, snarling at all the young housewives squealing after my mother, nickels and Walnettos in their outstretched hands once they realized the cursed one was not present.