How I Saved My Father's Life (and Ruined Everything Else) (9 page)

Cody ran into the towel, into her arms.

“I can't wait to go to Italy,” he said.

Our mother looked startled. “Good,” she said. Then she nodded. “Good,” she said again, as if she had just won something.

How could he give in like that? Secretly I had been imagining meeting the Pope, praying to saints, going to all the churches. But I had not let my mother know that, of course.

Cody and I never liked the Friday night dinners our mother made us eat. This Friday was even worse: The Boyfriend was joining us. Cody sat at the kitchen counter, watching her cook, sullen. I sat at the table trying to move a glass of water across it using telepathy. Too much distraction, I thought. Too many bad vibrations.

Our mother said, “Is there anything in the world as lovely as the smell of fresh basil?”

We weren't expected to answer. Our mother had asked what was called a rhetorical question. But Cody said, “Peanut butter.”

“Peanut butter smells as good as basil?” she shrieked. “Oh, that's a good one.”

I rolled my eyes at Cody. We didn't agree on many things. But we both agreed that Friday night dinners were awful. We also agreed that our mother should not have a boyfriend. Especially this boyfriend. Things were already weird enough in our life.

She put a bowl of celery sticks on the table. I bit into one right away and spit it out. A trick! Instead of celery this tasted like licorice without the good candy part.

“Fennel,” my sadistic mother said, smiling. “Isn't it an interesting celery substitute?”

“No,” I said, just as sweetly. “It's disgusting and repulsive.”

I knew she didn't care. She would write in her column how much we'd loved it and then other unsuspecting mothers would give fennel sticks to their children. She would write something like, “They'll be delighted at the surprise taste of licorice instead of the blandness of celery.”

She was humming, not really paying attention to my misery.

“What time is The Boyfriend getting here?” I muttered.

My mother narrowed her eyes at me. “Why do you work so hard at being unpleasant?” she said.

What I worked hard at was being
pleasant
, but I didn't say anything. I just stripped the long threads from the stalks of fennel.

“If I were a sculptor,” Cody said, “I would make things out of metal so they couldn't break. What good is making things that no one can touch?”

“No one can touch the Sistine Chapel,” Mom said. “Does that mean Michelangelo shouldn't have painted it?”

Cody frowned. He didn't know what she was talking about.

The doorbell rang and she tousled Cody's hair on her way to answer it. “You'll see it in Rome,” she said.

“It's a ceiling,” I told him. “A famous ceiling.”

“Uh-huh,” Cody said.

Mom turned toward us, her face all desperate, and she said, “You know, your father is soooo happy with his new family and his new life as a celebrity. Am I asking too much to want a little happiness of my own? Am I?”

We just stared at her, surprised and blank-faced. She stared back and I wondered if she was going to cry. But then the doorbell rang again and she scurried off.

We could hear her laughing her new laugh, the one she'd acquired around men lately, full of fakeness and flirtiness.

“Why would anyone waste their time painting a ceiling?” Cody asked me. “How do you even do it?”

I put out bread for a sandwich, inhaling the familiar smell of Wonder Bread. Then I smeared on peanut butter and grape jelly and handed it to Cody.

“Doesn't the paint drip on your face?” Cody was saying.

“He did it on his back,” I said patiently.

Cody's eyes widened. “Wasn't he afraid he would fall?”

“No, he was on scaffolding.”

Cody looked all confused, but I didn't know how to describe what scaffolding was so I just said, “It's a beautiful, famous ceiling. You'll see.”

Then I made my way past my mother and The Boyfriend, heading for the door.

“Hey!” my mother said. “We have polenta.”

“Enjoy it,” I said. “I'm going next door to Sophie's.”

Being at Sophie's was like being in a museum: all fancy and quiet. The rooms were all painted colors that made me feel
calm; the floors had intricate patterns made with wood. The kitchen had two of everything—two stoves, two refrigerators, two dishwashers—and cupboards that reached the ceiling. Those cupboards had glass doors so that I could see all of the food Sophie's parents kept on hand. Crackers and chutney and fat pretzels, Little School Boy cookies and Mint Milanos, three different kinds of salsa and smoked almonds. On and on it went. At home there was yogurt and granola bars and bags of dried fruit and trail mix bought in bulk from the natural food store.

Sophie was probably the busiest person on the planet next to Mai Mai Fan. She played field hockey and she took clarinet lessons and horseback riding lessons and a million other lessons. A ballerina has to be focused. A saint has to sacrifice. In other words, I had my hands full, too, just in a different way. Also, my mother believed that kids should not lead overly organized lives.

Sometimes I pointed out that Sophie's mother hired someone to keep her organized and drive her from one thing to another, but of course that only opened the door for my mother's ranting about money and my father and how unfair life is.

“I can't afford an outrageously expensive loft in Tribeca, can I?” she liked to ask me. A rhetorical question.

Sophie's parents were at a play in Boston and wouldn't be home until late. Tonight, Sophie's older sister Emma was in charge, which meant she would sit upstairs on the third floor in her room and read. Emma was an overachiever. She wanted to read one hundred books this summer—an admirable goal, I thought.

“I've got a surprise for you upstairs,” Sophie said. “Grab some Snapple.”

I opened one of the giant refrigerators. A half-eaten turkey stared back at me.

“Not that one,” Sophie laughed. “In the beverage one.”

I went to the other refrigerator and swung its heavy door open. Top to bottom drinks: beer and seltzer and fancy root beer and all kinds of milk: skim, 2%, and whole. At my house we only drank skim milk and water from the tap. Finally I found the Snapple and grabbed a bottle.

“Come on,” Sophie said, her hands full of snacks for us.

I walked through the double parlors, with the furniture that begged you to sit on it, then into the foyer—
foy-ay
, Sophie called it—and up the big front staircase to the
second floor and Sophie's room. Sophie stacked all the food on a table and plopped onto her bed, which looked like a giant sleigh. I plopped next to her, imagining for a moment that we were in Russia, long-ago Russia when they still had a czar and people wore tall fur hats and ermine cloaks, and I imagined we were in a real sleigh, gliding across miles and miles of snow. I sighed. If I didn't already have so many more important things to wish for, I would want to be Russian.

“Ready?” Sophie said.

I glanced over at her. Tonight she had on a lime green headband with one yellow stripe in the middle and small earrings shaped like seashells. My mother would not let me get my ears pierced until I was sixteen. She did not believe girls should think about things like earrings until they got older. I sighed again. I didn't really like Sophie, but being near her always made me long for every single thing I could not have.

“If it's smoking I've already tried it,” I said. “In New York with this girl named Lola who already has her belly button pierced and she's only twelve.” I tried to sound nonchalant but it was hard. Smoking in New York City on a roof was
too cool. Lola was too cool. So cool, in fact, that I was actually afraid of her. She lived in the loft above my father's with just her mother, a performance artist. I wasn't even sure what that meant, but it sounded very dramatic.

“This is better,” Sophie said.

Sophie thought everything she did was better but it usually wasn't. She reached under her bed and pulled something out.

“Ta-da!” she said.

I gasped. “A Ouija board.” I had to admit it, this
was
better than almost anything.

I swallowed hard, running my hands over the board's slick surface.

“We should turn off the lights,” I said.

Sophie went around the room flicking off lights, leaving just the small one beside the bed lit.

“Let's concentrate first,” I said. “Try to connect with the spirits.”

We both put our hands very lightly on the mover and closed our eyes.

“Concentrate,” I said.

I thought about how I'd saved my father's life, how I'd
made that glass slide across the table. Out of the blue, I thought about Antoinetta's dead mother. I wished Antoinetta were here so she could communicate with her mother.

Under our fingertips, the indicator moved ever so slightly.

“Are you doing that?” Sophie whispered.

“No,” I said, feeling all trembly. I peeked under my eyelids to see if Sophie was doing it. But she looked pretty worried.

“Should we ask a question?” Sophie said. “Like who we will marry or something?”

I rolled my eyes. I had bigger things on my mind, like miracles. I stared hard at the board. “Is someone with us?” I asked.

The indicator skidded in jerky movements across the board again.

I glanced up at Sophie.

“Are you doing that?” Sophie asked again.

“Why would I move it?” I said. I looked at the board again. “Who are you?” I whispered.

This time the movements were smoother. The small needle went first to
G
, then
R
,
E
,
E
,
R
, where it stopped.

We looked at each other. “Greer,” I said, so pleased I could hardly stand it. “It's Mr. Greer.”

Sophie's hands flew off the mover. “I don't like this,” she said. “I thought it would be like the Magic 8-Ball. That we'd ask who we were going to marry and how many kids we'd have. Stuff like that.”

“Come on,” I said. “This is better.”

Sophie hesitated.

“One more minute,” I said.

Reluctantly, Sophie put her fingers back onto the mover.

But before we even asked a question it started to move, so fast that Sophie had to shout out the letters. When it finally stopped, she scribbled them onto a pad for us to interpret.

BEWAREM
.

“‘Be warm'?” Sophie asked, confused.

But I couldn't speak. The letters were all too clear to me.
Beware M
. It was a warning and it was directed right at me.

M
ay meant so many things that when it arrived I didn't know if I'd get through them all. For one thing, my ballet recital. For another, the announcement of who made the junior company of the Boston Ballet. On top of all that, it was First Communion Day at church. Although this was not something I personally had to do, or be involved in, the excitement around it at the Calabro house was contagious. I spent the entire afternoon there on the day of my ballet recital layering fried eggplants with mozzarella cheese and gravy, which is what they call red sauce, which is what my mother calls marinara. Then I raced from their house to
the college auditorium where I would perform Spring for hundreds of people.

Antoinetta came, too, smelling of fried eggplants. Her father dropped her off and waited in the car. I could see her sitting alone from the wings, holding a little bouquet of carnations dyed blue. Secretly, I wished my mother would see Antoinetta and sit with her. But I also wished she wouldn't, because who knew what she might say or do that would be completely embarrassing.

Randy came up to me and said in his weird accent: “What are you?”

“Spring!” I said.

“Yes, Madeline, you are Spring. Be Spring. Be it!”

When he walked away, Demi Demilakis came up to me. She was all white and silver, for Winter, and she said, “Do you have a crush on him? Because people from Transylvania are vampires.”

“He's not from Transylvania,” I said. “He doesn't even know where Transylvania is.”

Her eyes bulged out at me and she looked even weirder than usual because of the silver glitter all over her face.

“Where's he from, then?” she said.

“Estonia,” I lied. That's where my father was. Estonia. He couldn't be at the recital because he was writing about Estonia for
National Geographic
.

Thinking about my father missing my performance made me sad, so I tried to think of spring things: tulips and baby birds and First Communions.

But Demi said, “Does your family want to come with my family for ice cream after?”

In one corner, all of the Summer ballerinas stood together in their pale blue costumes, their heads bent, their smiles radiant. Everywhere I looked, in fact, girls were helping one another pull their hair into buns, or sprinkle glitter on their cheeks. Demi and I were the outcasts. She looked so shimmery and hopeful standing there, but still I said, “Sorry. We already have plans.”

“Maybe next time?” she said hopefully.

“Right.”

The overture began, and Randy clapped his hands. “Places,” he said in his mysterious accent. Maybe he was Estonian, I thought. I got into my line, the first one. I was Spring.
And I was magnificent. I could see my mother and Cody, both of them grinning and proud. I could see Antoinetta, impressed, maybe even dazzled not just by me, but by all of it. For a small moment, I actually felt happy. And it felt really, really good.

Holy Communion Day. The little girls wore white dresses and veils like brides, small crowns decorated with fake pearls and rhinestones, short white gloves. Some of them had a hint of pink lipstick on their lips, a splash of rouge on their cheeks, their hair twisted into French braids or buns high on their heads. They walked down the aisle of the church with a partner, a boy in a small navy blue suit and white shirt and bow tie. Two by two, in the same halting steps they would one day use when they got married. The boys' hair was parted, greased back, slicked down. They all looked terrified.

I squeezed Antoinetta's arm. “They're so lucky,” I whispered.

But Antoinetta did not answer. She didn't talk in church. Especially not this church, Sacred Heart, the one her Aunt
Eleanor and Uncle Tootie attended. It was their daughter, Rachel, who was walking down the aisle now, her head held high beneath her fat bun and stiff veil. She clutched a small white cardboard purse with rosary beads and a picture of Jesus tucked inside.

I elbowed Antoinetta. “There she is,” I whispered. Even though Antoinetta didn't answer, she smiled.

I watched Rachel as she continued down the aisle to her assigned pew. She kneeled deeply before she slid along the wooden bench and made a very precise Sign of the Cross. Only a couple years older than Cody, but little Rachel had such dignity. I sighed, too loudly, because now Antoinetta elbowed me and glared. But I didn't care. Not only was my poor brother being deprived of having a family that was not broken, but he was deprived of being a Catholic. Right then I wished I could pick him up and hug him tight. But all I could do was sigh again and have Antoinetta glare again and elbow me even harder.

Antoinetta had put on makeup: globby blue on her eyelids and two circles of blush on her cheeks. She had lipstick on her lips and dots of it on her front teeth. She
tried to pull her hair into a chignon, but already strands had fallen loose, and her eyebrows looked even thicker and more like caterpillars with her hair off her face. Antoinetta always looked like a mess, even when she wasn't trying so hard to look good. She had two runs in one leg of her stockings and her skirt had twisted so that the zipper, which should have been on one side, was in the front. It was probably her sister's skirt, a hand-me-down, along with the mismatched jacket. Both were dark green, but different fabrics and shades. Her disheveled look made me love her even more.

I, on the other hand, had purposely dressed plain, in a sleeveless cotton dress with a cardigan to match. Still, Antoinetta's grandmother had frowned at me and muttered something in Italian, and Aunt Eleanor had tried to put lipstick on me, a scary shade of red. But I was only allowed to wear lip
gloss
, not lip
stick
, at least until I was thirteen. When I pointed out that I had lip gloss on, they all stared at my mouth and shook their heads. No matter how hard I tried, I would never fit into the Calabro family. But I didn't really care. Being around them was enough, standing in the kitchen on Sunday mornings while Mama Angie
fried sausage and Aunt Clara and Aunt Fanny smoked cigarettes and pressed the tines of forks into dough to make gnocchi.

The church bells started to ring and Antoinetta yanked on my sweater, pulling me down to the kneeler. Content, holy, saintlike, I knelt.

Antoinetta had told me that Aunt Eleanor thought she was better than everybody. That's why she was having Rachel's First Communion party at Wright's Chicken Farm instead of at Mama Angie's, like everybody else always did.

“She's a big show-off,” Antoinetta had said. But then she added, “I don't care. I'd rather go to Wright's Farm, wouldn't you?”

I shrugged. “I don't know what it is.”

Antoinetta had given one of her really big laughs, the kind that sounded like a donkey hee-hawing. “You've never eaten at Wright's Farm?” she finally managed to say, before she started laughing all over again. “Where does your family go for special?”

“If my mother just doesn't feel like cooking we either go to Minerva's for pizza or Hot Pockets for falafels. If it's
Cody's special night we go to China Inn for pupu platters. If it's my special night I don't care where we eat as long as we go to Pastiche for dessert, and I always get Key lime pie. And my mother makes us go to Al Forno to celebrate her special things, but we have to go at five and sit in the bar area so we don't bother the serious diners.”

Antoinetta shook her head. “Well,” she said, “you don't know what you're missing. Do you get the ziti at Al Forno? Big platters of it?”

“No.”

“Just wait,” Antoinetta had said.

Now we were inside Mr. Calabro's big Oldsmobile on our way to Wright's Chicken Farm. He was going to wait in the car while we all went inside and celebrated Rachel's First Communion. He wouldn't let that big show-off Aunt Eleanor pay for his meal, and also, Antoinetta had explained as we left the church, he didn't like parties very much since her mother died.

Antoinetta was talking about Johnny Depp; she had seen the movie
Pirates of the Caribbean
forty-seven times. But I wasn't listening. I'd already explained to Antoinetta that I thought Johnny Depp looked like a girl. Still, I let her
keep talking about his girly face because I knew that eventually she would get around to something Catholic to talk about—she always did.

Until then, I was happy to think about all those little girls dressed like brides, how solemnly they'd knelt at the altar to receive the Communion wafer. You couldn't chew it, Antoinetta had explained. That would be like chewing Jesus's body up. You just had to let it dissolve on your tongue.

“Who's your patron saint?” Antoinetta asked all of a sudden, done with her Johnny rant.

I smiled. Boy, did I have Antoinetta figured out. “Maybe Saint Agatha?” I said.

Antoinetta looked horrified. “You don't want her,” she said. “She's for breast cancer. That's too creepy.”

“Who's yours?” I asked her.

“Saint Teresa. The Little Flower.”

From the front seat, Antoinetta's father snorted.

“Pop hates her because she's French,” Antoinetta explained. “But I don't care. She was so beautiful and young. All three of her sisters were nuns.” Then she added, “She died of tuberculosis.”

“Like Bernadette!” I said. “Maybe I should choose Bernadette as my patron saint?”

I thought of Jennifer Jones in the movie
The Song of Bernadette
. I had seen it in New York, and then I'd made my father rent it on video about a hundred times. “She was so beautiful, too,” I said.

Antoinetta's father snorted again. She leaned forward and tickled the back of his neck with her fingertips. He swatted her hand away, but he was smiling. I could see him really clear in the mirror. I thought of my own father, who was so handsome and young. He had so many things Mr. Calabro didn't. Hair, for one. Nice teeth, for another. I would hate to have a father like Mr. Calabro, someone who always sat in his car and almost never talked.

Antoinetta leaned close to me. “He's been talking about your mother,” she whispered.

“What?” I said, shocked and maybe even disgusted a little.

Antoinetta nodded. “He thought she was a knockout.”

“What are you whispering about back there?” Mr. Calabro said.

“After the dinner,” Antoinetta said, “we're going to Saint
Teresa's shrine, right, Pop? You promised. I was just telling Madeline.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mr. Calabro said.

“We always go after Wright's Chicken Farm,” Antoinetta said, winking at me.

Wright's Chicken Farm was big and noisy. Out front in a cage were chickens, as if to prove that their chickens were that fresh. All the food came in big platters. Salad and ziti with red sauce and then the chicken and French fries. I could hardly eat it all, but Antoinetta's relatives kept asking for the platters to be refilled.

“You eat like a bird,” Aunt Fanny said to me, without even looking up from the chicken leg she was eating right down to the bone.

Finally, they were finished. The aunts went shopping in the gift store attached to the restaurant and the uncles took the little kids to see the chickens in the cages out front.

“Is Al Forno this good?” Antoinetta asked. But I knew it was just another rhetorical question.

As soon as we were done eating, Antoinetta asked her dad to take us to Saint Teresa's shrine. It was right down the street from the restaurant. Mr. Calabro led us to the car and we drove in silence.

“Go ahead,” he said, turning off the engine. “Don't take all day.”

“Doesn't he get bored in there?” I asked Antoinetta as we made our way across the gravel parking lot.

She shrugged. “Sometimes he keeps the car running and listens to talk radio.”

I followed Antoinetta up a small hill where the statue of Saint Teresa stood.

“Isn't she beautiful?” Antoinetta said in a hushed voice.

She clasped her hands and fell to her knees before I could answer. My admiration of Antoinetta's reverence was endless. I dropped to my knees beside her, and stared up into the white stone face of The Little Flower.

“What did she do?” I said, making sure to keep my voice low. “You know, to become a saint?”

“Miracles,” Antoinetta said. “Thousands. Maybe even millions. They say that in France, in Lisieux, there are
offerings from around the world, Brazil and Alaska and China.”

I studied Antoinetta's face. Even with the rouge and blue eyeshadow, she was so open, so pure, I couldn't help myself. I had to tell her. “I performed a miracle.”

Immediately Antoinetta's face clouded.

But I didn't give her time to doubt me. I grabbed her arm and held it tight. “I've never told anyone before but I know you'll understand. It was when my mother and father were still married and we were all happy. My father went off on an assignment, to Idaho, and he was in an avalanche. Except none of us knew that. But the morning it happened, a voice called to me and told me he was in danger and I went alone to church and prayed all day.” I had begun slow and hesitant but now a torrent, a waterfall of words, spilled out of my mouth. “And when I got back he was saved. A miracle. Right? A bona fide miracle.”

I waited. I didn't know what I had expected. Questions, definitely. A demand for details. Or a rush of emotion. But not this nothingness. Antoinetta did not move. She hardly seemed to blink or breathe. In the distance, a horn sounded, a long blare.

“My father,” Antoinetta said, though she did not get up.

“Before that,” I added, feeling desperate, “I made a glass of water slide across our kitchen table just by concentrating.”

“When your father got back, he left your mother, right?”

I nodded.

“So why the miracle, then? You saved him and he ruined your life. Everyone's life.”

“No, no,” I said. “He didn't. My mother did. She's awful with her stupid column and her boring clothes and the way she carried on, crying and hysterical. Maybe he would have come back if she'd only been different.”