Snow Globes and Hand Grenades (4 page)

“Thank you for calling Community Federal Time and Temperature,” the recording said. Mimi started breathing faster. By dialing Time and Temperature, no one else in the house would hear the phone ring when her public school boyfriend called. The Maloney's had the new Call Waiting system. All Mimi had to do was wait for the beep-beep, then click over to get the incoming call in secret. That's what she had been doing for months and she hadn't been caught yet. But lately—for the past nine days to be exact—there was nothing to get caught about. For some reason her boyfriend had stopped calling. Maybe tonight was the night. Yes, she could feel it. Tonight, he was going to call again and apologize and tell her he loved her. She could feel that phone call coming. He was probably dialing right now. She waited and listened for the beep-beep to interrupt the Time and Temperature recording.

“Do you need a loan for an engagement ring? At Community Federal, we can help…”

But there was no beep-beep. She felt her eyes getting wet as she looked around the room at her unmade bed, the Almond Joy wrapper, the pile of 45s by her Close and Play record player, the
Seventeen
Magazine on the floor, the cluttered desk with a brass lamp shining on the black typewriter
she had used to type the fake letter from Holy Footsteps Academy. She grabbed the letter from under her pillow eager to read it to her boyfriend, like a love letter.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Maloney,

We are writing to let you know your daughter can't come to our school after all. It seems we admitted too many girls and won't be able to fit them all in our classrooms. It would be too crowded and your daughter wouldn't be happy or able to learn right. The good news is we have checked with Webster High School, which is a really good school for girls and boys, and they have plenty of extra desks on hand. We know that Mimi will enjoy her high school years there and save you a lot of money you would have spent with us on tuition. Thanks for understanding, and please don't call us about this, because everyone is very busy at this time and our decision is final.

Sincerely,

Sister Jeanne Flourie, Principal

Holy Footsteps Academy

The Time and Temperature recording got near the end. “The time is 9:01. Downtown temperature 66 degrees—”

Beep-beep.

Mimi's heart leapt. She drew in a joyful breath and pressed the button to click over to her boyfriend.

“Hello?” she whispered.

“Mimi? Is this Mimi Maloney?”

“Yeah, who's this?”

“This is Patrick Cantwell, from school.”

“Patrick Cantwell? Look, I'm expecting a call. What's up?”

“Oh, I'm sorry. It's just that I have this friend … and well, he likes you.”

There was a hundred-year silence on the line. Mimi stuffed her fake letter under her pillow and pointed her finger at the phone the way her dad had pointed at her. “That's nice of you to call. But you've got to understand, somebody else already likes me. I can't go with anybody else, ever.”

Patrick looked for some crack of light, for Tony's sake. “Ever? You mean, forever, ever?”

Mimi hesitated, but then whispered out sharply, “That's right. Look, I gotta go.”

“OK, well, first, though, don't you at least want to know who the guy is who likes you? He really cares about you all around, as a person. Don't you want to know who?”

There was another hundred-year silence on the line.

“Hello?” Patrick said.

“OK, who?”

He told her it was Tony Vivamano and she burst out laughing, and then all Patrick heard was a dial tone.

A POLICE CAR AND A BLACK VW BEETLE arrived outside the school. It was early the next morning. Detective Sergeant Kirk Kurtz, a man with neatly trimmed nostril hairs, was behind the wheel of the police car. Kurtz had a list of unsolved juvenile crimes in the area, similar in style to the snow globe incident. The VW was driven by Father Clive Ernst, a devout member of the Archdiocese special investigations committee who had just last Christmas cracked the case of the three wise men stolen from St. James parish. This was a powerful alliance of church and state. Together they were determined to not only catch the snow globe perpetrator, but to also extract confessions and put an end to the wave of juvenile anarchy around Mary Queen of Our Hearts. Patrick and Tony walked whistling across the church lawn, not yet noticing the two cars parked by the school flagpole.

“I don't know about Mimi,” Patrick said, “Maybe she's holding us back from our own future.”

“Women take time, believe me. Anyway, thanks for calling her for me,” Tony said. “You're my best friend at this rock pile.”

“You're welcome,” Patrick said, his voice skipping like a record with guilt he hoped Tony didn't notice. He hoped Tony didn't realize that he too was also attracted to her. And how could he not be? After seeing Mimi in her underwear and watching her sneak into a high school and run out during a fire alarm? She had a lot of good qualities. Before yesterday Mimi was
just an average girl, but now she stood apart from all the other girls in vivid Technicolor. Only for Patrick, she was even more vivid. He was the one who had called her on the phone and heard her voice—even heard her laugh.

Patrick looked at Tony and thought about their friendship, all the good they'd accomplished together since they met in fifth grade. They had been fired together as altar boys, rolled the dumpster down the playground hill into the fence, made a UFO out of two pie tins with a string attached and hovered it from a tree branch by Father Maligan's window, captured a rabbit and let it go inside the cafeteria, set off fire hydrants near the homes of girls they liked, and even done some homework together.

“Maybe you should call her next, not me,” Patrick said.

“No, I trust you. You'll know what to say. Hey, look!”

They both spotted the police car with the officer standing by it and the priest in a long black trench coat slamming his door. They knew right away what it was all about and stopped dead on the hillside.

“The snow globe!” Patrick whispered.”

“Who else did you tell about it?”

“Nobody.”

“That's good. Just remember, God is on our side, and if you have to, lie about everything.”

They shook on it and went inside to take their seats in Miss Kleinschmidt's classroom. Patrick wondered if this would be the day he and Tony would finally get into some real trouble and get to head for the tracks.

PATRICK SAT AT HIS DESK relaxing with a paperback about bank robber John Dillinger, while Tony read
The Scarlet Letter
to prepare for writing a late book report. Mimi picked at her fingernails and wondered why her public school boyfriend hadn't called for so long. What was he doing right now? Was he thinking of her? Did he still love her? She looked up at Miss Kleinschmidt and wondered if she had ever been in love. Not likely, Mimi thought. Who would love someone as mean as her?

The whole class held a grudge against Miss Kleinschmidt. Earlier that month, she had promised to let them go to the zoo for the spring field trip. But on the day of the trip, a blooming May morning, she rescinded the offer. “Your scores on the science test were abysmal,” she told the class. “Some of you don't even know all the planets.” That's when she turned to Tony in the front row and used him as an example. “Mr. Vivamano, you could only name Earth, Pluto, the moon, and the sun, two of which aren't even planets.”

Tony hung his head and Miss Kleinschmidt kept after him. “Do you expect to just waltz into that prep school … where is it you're accepted?”

“St. Aloysius,” Tony said.

“That's it, St. Aloysius. You expect to just waltz in there on the first day of high school, knowing you're on earth, but not knowing the rest of the planets?”

“I'll never leave earth,” Tony said shrugging.

She smacked her hand on his desk. “You'll never leave
here
until you know the solar system. Tell me, if you can, what's the temperature of the sun? Where is it hottest?”

“July?”

Everyone sunk down in their desks and unzipped their windbreakers for a full review of the solar system. By the end of the morning, every kid in the eighth grade knew that the hottest part of the sun was the core, that it's twenty-seven million degrees Fahrenheit, and every kid wished Miss Kleinschmidt was there.

Miss Kleinschmidt hadn't given another thought to canceling the zoo trip. She'd been preoccupied with following the news about President Nixon, and this morning was no different. She had her head buried in the newspaper reading an article about how Nixon said he had “no knowledge” of burglars breaking into Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel when there was a knock at the door. She placed her newspaper on the desk and stood as all the students looked up.

It was Father Ernst and Detective Kurtz. Even as they greeted Miss Kleinschmidt, they studied the eyes of the students as if trying to sift their very souls from a distance. Patrick marked the page on his Dillinger book and turned it upside down on his desk.

“Class, these two men are here to help us,” Miss Kleinschmidt said, coughing up a glob of phlegm, then swallowing it back down. She nodded at the priest and he stepped forward as she retreated to the back of the classroom.

Father Ernst was a tall, thin man with high cheekbones, short black hair and brown bulging eyes. Those eyes! They looked out at the class like the eyes on a church statue, when the air smells of burning candles and you remember about the money you stole, or the curse words you said, or the lie you told your mother. And then he spoke. His voice was even worse. His voice was deep and arresting like a sudden sermon.

“In 1917, the Virgin Mary appeared to three shepherd children in Fatima, Italy,” he began. “Is anyone familiar with this miracle? Please raise your hand.”

No hands were raised.

“The Blessed Mother showed them many wonderful things, many
secrets, but first, she showed them what was at the center of the earth, and do you know what it was?”

No one knew.

Father Ernst walked up and down the rows of desks with his black leather trench coat resting on his shoulders and flowing behind him like a cape. “It was a burning lake of fire and it was full of bad people, people flailing and screaming in agony, people with no hope for all of eternity.” He paused by Patrick's desk, reached out and turned over the paperback. A low
hmm
rumbled from the base of his throat, and then he put the book down and kept walking. “As Miss Kleinschmidt told you, we are here to help you because we care about your future. Both of us care about you.”

Father Ernst looked toward the front of the class, where Detective Kurtz stood at attention in his blue uniform shirt with a shiny badge. He was a shorter man whose face was red with determination and high blood pressure. On his belt was a holstered pistol and shiny handcuffs. Kurtz patted his gun, then ran his hand across his bristly, gray crew cut. He was sure that someone in this very class was involved in the snow globe incident—and that that someone was probably also involved with the wave of crimes he was determined to solve. He took a breath and reached over Miss Kleinschmidt's desk for the snow globe.

“Careful!” she blurted out from the back of the room.

Detective Kurtz nodded to her, and slowly picked up the snow globe. Snowflakes swirled between his fat, pink hands, and Mimi, as if hypnotized by the scene, was transported to the night she met her pubic school boyfriend on the golf course. Snow was falling steadily and the fairways glowed a soft bluish white. The hills were crowded with children sledding. There was laughter and danger and no adult supervision. An older boy smiled at her and invited her to share his sled. Before she realized he was a non-Catholic, they were racing down suicide hill, walking and talking, warming themselves by the fire and feeling each other's steamy breath on their cold faces. He held her hand. She smiled. Without warning, he kissed her. It was a quick, confident, public-school kiss that opened a bank vault of emotions Mimi never knew she had on deposit.

“This stolen snow globe represents just one of the crimes I'm interested in,” Detective Kurtz told the class. He put the snow globe down randomly on Mimi's desk and she watched the snowflakes fall as he continued.
“There have been too many acts of vandalism in this area. One of you must know something. It's my job to catch the bad boys who are doing these things and see that they are punished.”

Miss Kleinschmidt walked up, snatching the snow globe from Mimi's desk. Mimi's tear ducts burned.

“I've already warned them that whoever is responsible for this will have their Catholic high school acceptance rescinded,” she said. Miss Kleinschmidt held the snow globe tight in her hands and looked at the detective and priest for approval.

“We'll take it from here, ma'am,” Detective Kurtz said.

“To finish,” Father Ernst interjected, his voice booming from the back of the room, “we want to give you a chance today to make a good confession.” He walked to the front of the class with his black cape trailing and stood alongside Detective Kurtz and Miss Kleinschmidt. He cleared his throat dramatically. “If anyone here wants to clear his conscience today, let him simply raise his hand and admit that he took the snow globe and put it in Mary's hand.”

Patrick and Tony's palms got sweaty. Blood pumped through their temples. The room was quiet except for the tick of the clock and the buzz of the overhead florescent lights. No one moved. Seconds went by. The priest and the detective narrowed their eyes and studied the faces of the boys, gauging for any signs of nervousness or concealed guilt. Then a hand shot up.

It was Mimi.

All eyes turned to her.

Detective Kurtz cocked back his neck in surprise. So the culprit was a girl! He got out a pen and paper to write down the girl's name. Then, overcome by his feelings for Mimi, and the memory of her white underwear shining brightly in the afternoon sun, Tony raised his hand. Patrick's heart raced. This was it. Tony was in trouble. Big trouble. The big day had finally arrived. He closed his eyes and raised his hand, thinking of boxcars rolling across barley fields. But while Patrick's eyes were closed, another boy raised his hand. He raised it because Miss Kleinschmidt had once told him not to sign his name so fancy, with so many loops. Two girls whom Miss Kleinschmidt had called “hussies” for wearing slightly shorter uniform skirts also raised their hands. A boy she once scolded for falling asleep during a planetary slide show raised
his hand. Left and right, up and down the aisles, students who had endured months of her bad breath and constant carping shot their hands into the air. It was an avalanche of confessions. It was the best the class had felt since she canceled their field trip to the zoo. When Patrick opened his eyes, he saw that every single student in the class had a hand raised.