Household Saints (13 page)

It was then that she noticed the violets on her dresser.

Last night, when she’d gone to bed, those plants were dead: crisp leaves curled up on dry stalks.

This morning they were in full bloom.

“Joseph,” she said. But Joseph was asleep. Climbing over him, she picked up one of the pots and touched the purple blossoms. It was impossible. She didn’t understand and didn’t try. For by then, she had realized that the perfume wasn’t coming from the violets, but seemed to be wafting in beneath the bedroom door. She put on her robe and went out into the hall.

The apartment looked like a garden, and the air was moist with an earthy greenhouse smell. Healthy plants, perfect as pictures in a seed catalogue, grew everywhere. Curtains of ivy hung from the kitchen shelves; asparagus ferns grew matted as birds’ nests and overflowed their pots; spider plants sprouted tendrils tipped with star-like white blossoms. On the mantel, two geraniums climbed up toward San Gennaro, offering scarlet flowers which the saint received with outstretched arms.

This time Catherine knew she hadn’t put them there.

She ran back to the bedroom.

“Joseph!” she cried. “Wake up, there’s been a miracle!”

To Joseph, this meant only one thing: The miracle he’d been praying for, the miracle it would take to make Catherine go to bed with him again.

“You want to see a miracle?” Laughing, he reached out and pulled her down on top of him. “I’ll show you a miracle.”

“Why not?” said Catherine.

After so long, Joseph’s kisses seemed so sweet that Catherine began to think she was experiencing a second miracle. She wound her arms around his back, feeling not only the physical pleasure, but also the rare and more complicated exaltation known to those chosen few who are lucky enough to make love after witnessing a miracle.

Afterwards, as she lay with her head on Joseph’s chest, Catherine thought of the men and women, side by side in their tents on the night Moses led them across the Red Sea. She thought of the women at the well, going back to their husbands after seeing Jesus risen. She thought of the bride at Cana and smiled as she tried to imagine
her
wedding night.

“Was that enough of a miracle for you?” asked Joseph. “Or do you want more?”

“It’s enough.” Catherine turned to kiss his shoulder. “But there’s more.”

“More?”

“The plants. They’re alive. All over the apartment …”

“Damn right they’re alive. I thought you’d never notice. I’ve been watering them for weeks. Somebody had to take care of them, it was getting depressing around here.”

“You?”

“Yours truly. The Italian gardener.”

“Wait a minute.” Catherine shook her head. “Water or no water, those plants were dead when we went to bed last night. And now they’re—”

“They were fine last night, same as they are now. You’ve just been out of it for so long, you didn’t pay attention.”

“Not so out of it that I don’t know: You can’t bring dead things back to life.”

“What kind of thing is that for a Catholic girl to say?”

“Joseph, I’m serious.”

“Okay, okay. The ones that didn’t recover, I bought new ones at the florist. What’s the big deal?”

“You cheated. I thought it was a miracle.”

“What a believer.” Joseph laughed. “I pour a little water on your houseplants, you think you’ve seen a miracle. Well, try some of this”—he took her hand and put it on his thigh—“next thing, you’ll be saying I’m a saint.”

It was almost noon when they got dressed. Out in the hall, the smell of flowers was gone, obliterated by metallic smoke.

“Come on.” Joseph grabbed Catherine’s hand. “Mama’s burning the teapot again.”

They ran to the kitchen, where they found a blackened saucepan smoking on the stove and Mrs. Santangelo sitting on the floor—one cheek pressed against the bottom of the sink, like a child grown tired in the midst of playing, overtaken by a nap. Her eyes were shut, her skin gray. There was a purplish stain around her lips, as if death had caught her eating blueberries.

“Mama.” Joseph gave her a gentle shake, and she slumped forward. “Holy Christ. This isn’t the miracle you meant, is it?”

“God no.” Catherine crossed herself. “I didn’t know….”

And then as she looked at her mother-in-law, surrounded by all those leafy and blossoming plants, Catherine began to think that maybe it was a miracle: How nice of God and His saints to send Mrs. Santangelo flowers.

When the first thud of dirt hit Mrs. Santangelo’s coffin, Joseph and Augie hugged each other and wept. But theirs were the only tears. The old people grieved less for Mrs. Santangelo than for themselves, and for the end of that part of their lives. Carmela Santangelo’s existence was something they’d taken for granted, like the sidewalk under their feet; and now the sidewalk had vanished. At the chapel, the younger mourners spoke of God’s kindness, of blessings in disguise, as if the death were some kind of divine mercy killing (“Face it,” said Evelyn, “she was getting on”), until Joseph almost believed it.

As he reached for Augie’s handkerchief, a curious numbness overcame him, blunting the realization that his mother, however crazy, was the only mother he would ever have; he had loved her and now she was gone. At the cemetery, on Long Island, it was a sunny spring day; birds were singing in the bare branches. His mother’s grave was side by side with his father’s, and it was comforting to think of them bickering about Zio’s cigars for eternity.

But when the family went back to Augie and Evelyn’s for a spread of supermarket bologna, white rolls, and processed cheese, Joseph couldn’t eat for thinking what his mother would have said about the food. And when he and Catherine returned home, his mother’s presence was standing at the stove, kneeling by the altar, settled in her favorite chair. Joseph needed to use the bathroom, but couldn’t bring himself to walk past her room. He felt like crying again, but it was easier at the graveyard with Augie for company; alone with Catherine, he would have been ashamed.

Catherine seemed unaffected, or perhaps she was showing it differently: The first thing she did on arriving home was to put on one of his mother’s old aprons and haul out the sausage grinder.

“Do me a favor,” she said. “Go down to the shop and get me a small side of pork.”

“Now?”

“It’s what your Mama would have wanted.” Even as she said it, Catherine knew that it was and wasn’t true. Mrs. Santangelo would have wanted the family business to continue, the sausage to be made. But she didn’t want anyone else to make it.

Joseph was glad to have something to do. The smell of sawdust soothed him, and he could use the toilet downstairs. When he got back, Catherine was dicing garlic with his mother’s paring knife and speaking of her new respect for Mrs. Santangelo: “If anyone could come back as a ghost and ruin things in the kitchen, it’s your mother. But the fact is, Joseph, I can practically hear her mumbling the recipe.”

Only this time, Catherine could understand every word; from this remove, she could appreciate her mother-in-law’s forbearance. The whole process went so smoothly that in two hours the kitchen was clean, and there was fresh sausage and pasta on the table.

They sat down to a meal which consoled Joseph more than all the talk of blessings in disguise. For the food allowed him to remember his mother without her superstitious and passionate meanness, but simply as a wonderful cook. Her spirit was with them in the food and he ate three helpings, which is just what his mother would have wanted.

The smell of fried sausage drifted out through the neighborhood until even the old women—depressed by Mrs. Santangelo’s mortality and their own—couldn’t wait to get up the next morning and compare Catherine’s work with her mother-in-law’s.

The first batch sold out by noon. By dinnertime, the word had spread: Catherine’s sausage was Mrs. Santangelo’s at its best. That night, husbands got up from the table with tears in their eyes, as if they’d actually eaten that something special which Mama used to make.

“Life goes on,” said their wives. “An old lady dies and the next day her daughter-in-law’s making sausage good as ever.”

One morning, nearly six weeks later, Catherine was stuffing sausage when she felt a sinking in her stomach, like dropping in an elevator, only more evocative, like something recalled from another life—or, more specifically, from her first pregnancy. It was on her mind: She’d skipped an entire period. But until that morning, she’d blamed the delay on overwork and nerves. What else could it be? After Easter, she and Joseph had quit making love again—first out of respect for Mrs. Santangelo, and then because the sudden demand for sausage left them little time for married life. Either Catherine stayed up working hours after Joseph went to bed, or collapsed hours before.

If she were pregnant—and suddenly Catherine knew she was—the child had been conceived on that Easter morning when Mrs. Santangelo died and the houseplants came back to life. Catherine shuddered. Just last month,
Photoplay
had queried fifty Hollywood stars for their views on reincarnation, and most of them seemed to believe….

This child, Catherine promised herself, would not be suffocated in her womb by the weight of all that ignorance and superstition. This baby would be carried and born like an American. This time there was work to do—pork to grind, peppercorns to crush, fennel and parsley to chop—and not one minute to waste lighting candles.

It was the end of May, the kind of weather which usually starts women thinking of seafood and salads. But the shop was full of waiting customers.

Catherine greeted them, looking each one in the eye, daring them to guess she was pregnant.

“You’re all dressed up,” said Joseph. “Where you going?”

“For a walk. Uptown.”

Catherine walked uptown to St. Vincent’s Hospital where, like a true American woman, she submitted to a complicated series of indignities to confirm what she already knew. She undressed with her eyes shut and kept them shut until at last she opened them to find herself fully clothed, sitting in a cubicle with a young red-headed intern who was filling out a form.

“Can you remember the exact date of your last menstrual period?” he asked, coloring slightly, as if he secretly knew that it was none of his business.

“Two weeks before Easter,” said Catherine.

On the way home, she stopped at a bookstore and spent a week’s household money on three books. At the cash register, she put them down so that
The Mother’s Medical Encyclopedia
was on top. Beneath it was
The First Nine Months of Life
and beneath that,
Childbirth Without Fear.

It was an impulsive purchase, and later she regretted her haste. She opened the childbirth book at random and got so scared that she had to put it away.
The Mother’s Encyclopedia
turned out to be packed with information about bedwetting, orthodontia, and chicken pox.

But
The First Nine Months of Life
was just what she’d wanted.

Afternoons, Catherine lay on her bed and studied the diagrams, compared the lists of symptoms and sensations with her own, and forced herself to look at the line drawings of embryos—half-tadpole, half-baby, with their swollen heads, their clawed hands and feet. Always she paid particular attention to the section entitled “Old Wives’ Tales.” It is not true, she read, that a baby will strangle on its cord if you raise your arms above your head. It is not true that a child born in the seventh month has a better chance of survival than one born in the eighth. It is not true that you can make your baby musical by listening to music, nor can you mark it by exposing yourself to bad influences.

Each time Catherine read these paragraphs, she embraced science for the most superstitious of reasons and vowed anew that this child would be born scientifically.

Occasionally this promise proved difficult to keep. When Catherine felt the baby’s first quivering practice kick, she was on her bed, reading her book. This time, she knew what it was: There was life inside her, and she thought, “It’s a miracle.” Then she turned straight to the chapter on “quickening” and read the medical explanation till she had it memorized. When Joseph, reaching for her in bed, felt the change in her shape and said, “Hey, are you—,” Catherine clapped a hand over his mouth.

“Shush,” she whispered. “The walls have ears.” Then she said, “Yes!” very loud, angry at herself for having made such an unscientific remark.

That weekend she talked Joseph into accompanying her to Klein’s where, in defiance of every age-old warning against flying in the face of God, they purchased a complete baby layette, in yellow. And early Monday morning, as soon as Joseph left for the shop, Catherine—armed with a dry mop, rags, and a stack of cardboard boxes—invaded Mrs. Santangelo’s bedroom.

Since her mother-in-law’s death, Catherine had not had the time, and Joseph had not had the heart, to deal with her possessions. Yet now she went at it with the optimistic, impersonal efficiency of someone moving into an apartment, staking claim by scrubbing away every trace of its previous occupant. First the crucifix came down from the wall and went into the bottom of the largest box. On top of it went Mrs. Santangelo’s clothes, forming a sort of nest on which Catherine laid the rosaries, the pictures of Zio, San Gennaro, the Holy Family. The knowledge that no one would ever use these things again gave her packing a certain carefreeness; and yet without thinking she wrapped the statuettes of the Virgin and Child in Mrs. Santangelo’s aprons, so they wouldn’t break. Likewise it never occurred to her to throw or give the boxes away; she stacked them in back of the hall closet.

Returning to the room, she hung the yellow organdy curtains, soaked the decals of bunnies and frolicking lambs, and pasted them over the bare white spot where the crucifix had hung. She set up the changing table, the bassinet, the crib, then stepped back to contemplate the gleaming, cheerful, sexless nursery, equally suitable for a girl or boy.

For Catherine refused to predict or even speculate about the baby’s sex, nor was she anxious to hear such predictions from anyone else. She told no one but Joseph about her pregnancy; the most old-fashioned grandmother could not have taken greater pains to foil the Evil Eye than Catherine took to evade her neighbors’ curiosity. By Thanksgiving, she had stopped leaving the house, and instructed Joseph to tell people that she was allergic to turkey feathers. Around this time, Evelyn marched upstairs and knocked on her door, but Catherine wouldn’t answer.