The Patron Saint of Ugly (44 page)

Father Shultz just trudged from the rectory to the church to prepare for Midnight Mass, the stained-glass windows looking glorious with the light pouring through, making psychedelic patterns on the snowdrifts outside—patterns that seem more swirly than usual, given my inebriation. The church has been packed daily, the many pilgrims plunking their coins into boxes, one under the sign that reads
The font where Saint Garnet was baptized!
and another one under the sign saying
The pew where Saint Garnet prayed!

Betty is already down there fashioning two hundred poinsettias into a giant tree on the chancel. I’m sure Father has asked if I’ll be in attendance. I will not. I did, however, give Betty a fat check to toss into the collection plate so Father will stop hounding me about new school desks to accommodate the swelling student population.

Betty is also there because she has been keeping her own
vigilia
concerning a certain lounge-owning widower—baseball-bat-wielding Dino—who has been making incremental advances for the past two months. First sitting three rows behind her during Mass, then two, then at the end of her pew, then moving five inches closer by the week until just last Sunday, he knelt so close their shoulders grazed. Betty hopes that tonight when they offer the sign of peace he’ll keep hold of her hand. That’s my wish for her too, since she deserves one decent man in her life.

I’m on the widow’s walk for two reasons, Padre. The first is that Christmas Eve is the one night when most of the pilgrims go home to their families. This year there are two dozen or so stragglers, folks who have no family or no home. They are the lowest of the low, the Lowlies, Nonna calls them, an unwashed, raggedy lot who camp in shadows down by the Plant. They are also cursed with such severe lesions that other pilgrims shun them. I just found out about them last week. The news broke my heart and only added to my sleep deprivation. The Lowlies’ plight breaks Nonna’s heart too, which is why she’s skipping Midnight Mass. It’s also why she called Sister Dee Dee half an hour ago and asked her to round the Lowlies up and bring them to the hilltop so Nonna can feed them our leftovers. My aim is to get them a shot at the healing pond water.

Tonight we celebrated the Festa dei Sette Pesci, Feast of the Seven Fishes, an Italian tradition on this particular day. Grandpa never let Nonna prepare it before, probably because he was a carnivore who refused to give up bloody clumps of meat for anyone, not even his Savior.

But this year Nonna decided to inaugurate the tradition, and she cooked all week. So much baking, nut-cracking, fruit-peeling, pasta-cutting. I tried to help, but I annoyed her with questions about why seven dishes. She had a different answer every time:

They stand for the seven-a sacraments
.

The seven days of-a creation
.

The seven hills of-a Rome
.

The seven deadly-a sins
.

The number seven, she means-a
perfetto.

Seven gifts of-a the Holy Spirit
.

The seven utterances of Jesus on-a the cross
.

If you ask me one-a more time I’m-a gonna clock you for sure!

The meal was spectacular, made even more so by the fact that we had to wait until eight thirty to eat. Nonna had nestled a Pergusa blossom into her pink ringlets, and the roasted-almond-and-nutmeg scent of it lingered as she led us to the antipasto in the parlor, where she uncorked wine number one. Then we migrated to the ballroom, that virtual glasshouse, where the moon bathed us in cool light. Nonna had set the most beautiful table, the one that seats thirty, and she had thirty place settings, though there were only us three. La Strega’s best-best china and crystal and silver gleamed. At the center of the table sat a gigantic bowl of pasta
aglio e olio
, a simple pasta to mix and match with any of the surrounding seven platters of calamari, steamed mussels, scungilli, clams, shrimp,
baccalà
, snapper.

Nonna stressed the importance of sampling all seven, no gulping tonight, since endurance was key. She also had a different wine to go with each dish, which is why I’m blotto, but I couldn’t insult our hostess. When we could eat no more she served brandy and sambuca in the library before the fireplace, she and I humming with content, until we had enough room for dessert: strong espresso with
panettone
and
struffoli
, over which I made a discovery: espresso has an amazing ability to clarify one’s buzz without killing it.

Afterward we snuggled around our candlelit Christmas tree in the conservatory while Bing Crosby crooned carols from the Victrola. We swapped well-chosen gifts, though the real paper-tearing will be tomorrow. I gave Nonna season tickets to the Vandalia Bruisers, a girls’ roller-derby team she cannot get enough of. To Betty I gave front-row tickets to see Elvis. I only hope Dino is a fan.

Betty gave me an antique snow globe from Sicily with Mount Etna inside. When you shake it, orange glitter pours out of the volcano and swirls a firestorm around the watery sky. She also gave me an herbal remedy that supposedly cures insomnia. I probably shouldn’t have taken three—okay, five—since now everything that moves leaves the faintest tracer.

Nonna gifted me a basket of imports from her hometown: chestnuts, cork bark, and goat cheese. When she handed it over she pressed her warm hand on my forehead and uttered:
May God grant-a to you your heart’s desire
.

How I wish someone could. I’m no longer yearning for my mother, but I am longing for something.

Yesterday, because I couldn’t keep the secret bulging in my mouth, I presented Nonna her heart’s desire: Angelo, the original, now eighty-six, my maybe-maybe-not grandpa. It took a year to track him down in Sicily, where he had acquired, not a wife, but a vineyard named Profezia di Diamante. Tonight Nonna is keeping La Vigilia not only for Jesus but for Angelo, who will arrive tomorrow by train, the second reason I’m on the widow’s walk. I want to clean it up, since I know she’ll be here in the morning scanning the horizon for her lost love. I have a feeling I should also ready the bridal chamber, though perhaps I’m being overly optimistic.

A jet is flying overhead and I bet a hundred Sweetwater children are pressing their faces to their bedroom windows because they are certain that’s Santa whooshing across the sky.

The plane is heading northeast toward New England and any number of boarding schools where discarded children are crying themselves to sleep. But not me. Even farther east, across the iceberg-strewn Atlantic, Cookie and Mom are having a fabulous time. They called earlier, both drunk on Welsh beer, giggling over their supper of cockles and faggots. They sounded like schoolgirls instead of middle-aged sisters, which was a Christmas gift in and of itself.

After I hung up I went to my room to open the present I received today from Yvette: a pair of Chinese slippers. Seems she made it to the Far East, but this time her traveling companion is her mother.

Here come the Lowlies, Padre, led by Dee Dee, carrying candles as they trek up the last turn of the hill. Underweight mothers with children, old-old men and bent women relying on canes. I should have sent a fleet of cars. Dee Dee is leading them to the reflection pond. Earlier today, Nonna and Betty positioned half a dozen metal drums loaded with firewood around the deck. A few minutes ago Nonna marched from drum to drum squirting in lighter fluid and dropping in lit matches, flames erupting, heat pulsing so intensely I can feel it up here. Nonna has also scattered luminary candles around the rim of the pond, and it’s unbelievably charming. The Nereid below the surface shimmers. It looks as if she’s pulling water into her gills, her giant fishtail quivering as if she might push off at any moment.

Dee Dee is instructing the Lowlies to remove their shoes and socks or stockings, roll up their pant legs or lift the hems of their tattered dresses, and dip their feet into the warm water. She’s handing out washcloths and bars of soap so they can slough off the grit behind their ears, around their necks, under their nails. I should yell down and tell them to soak for a while, let the healing water do its job, but I don’t want to call attention to myself. The old women are at one end of the pool, the old men at the other, all of them flagrantly peeling down to nothing, easing their liver-spotted flesh into the liquid. Dee Dee doesn’t seem perturbed by the skinny-dipping. In fact she’s laughing, and so is everyone else, mothers stripping their children bare, lathering soapsuds to rub over filthy arms and legs, dipping their heads in the pool, scrubbing their scalps, all of them giggling at the clean-clean feeling they likely haven’t felt in months.

Here comes Nonna through the gate with a wheelbarrow full of red towels for the mothers to wrap their children in, for the old men and women to dry themselves with as they huddle around the barrels. Nonna is taking Dee Dee by the hand into the springhouse and now here they come pushing more wheelbarrows filled with a mishmash of La Strega’s old clothes: dresses and shoes, underwear and minks, and an assortment of hats, which the old women are tittering over. Dee Dee’s barrow contains armfuls from Le Baron’s closet, and the men are sifting through the finery, modeling the vests and spats and ascots. These clothes have never been put to better use.

Nonna is making yet another trip to the springhouse and now she’s hauling out shopping bags full of new clothes for the children. Mothers are sobbing as they rifle through coats and boots. “Take-a more,” Nonna is saying. “She need-a more undies. Take-a the six-pack. No! Take it-a for sure!”

Listen! Can you hear the Saint Brigid choir warming up? Organ pipes luring in the congregants who are funneling into church. I keep waiting for Nonna to roll out teacarts filled with food, and she’s heading to the back gate that’s been meager protection between me and the pilgrims, whose devotion might lead them to gouge out my eyes. But Nonna is opening the gate and motioning for Dee Dee and the Lowlies to come through.

(No, Nonna! No!)

Oh crap. Now they’re all looking up here.

(It’s her!)

(It’s Saint Garnet!)

(Saint Garnet! Come down and heal us, we beg you!)

Thankfully, Nonna is drawing their attention away from me, but I can’t believe she’s leading them past the springhouse, her garden, the grape arbor, and through the French doors into the ballroom and that thirty-seat table. So the Lowlies have been the primary guests all along.

They’re behaving themselves quite well, Padre. Not slipping the silverware into their coats, their posture immediately improving as they sit and drape napkins across their laps. Dee Dee and Nonna are wheeling food out and centering dishes on the table. Again I am amazed that the Lowlies aren’t diving right in, since they all look as if they could use a good meal, or seven. But they are waiting for Nonna to sit at one end of the table, Dee Dee at the other, and now they’re holding hands, a linked chain as they bow their heads. Nonna’s mouth is moving as she prays and I can read her lips to make out the last words:
Now dig-a in!

It’s off to the races as hands reach for platters and bowls, mothers doling out fish and pasta for the old folks first, then the children, and finally themselves. I imagine La Strega is seething in her tomb, but if bliss has a face, I’ve seen it on these beggars who for once have a seat at the queen’s table.

I could stay here all night, but the church bells are pealing so it must be midnight. Nonna hears the bells too, her head perking up, and now she’s standing and slipping quietly out through the French doors. She looks absolutely angelic fingering that flower in her hair, her face tipped to the heavens as “Ave Maria” pours into her ears. She’s going back in now. No, wait. She’s heading to the springhouse, through the gate to the pond ringed with luminaries and piles of dingy clothes. I hope Nonna isn’t planning on collecting them.

No, she’s—what is she doing? Padre, Nonna is slipping off her shoes, reaching up her legs to roll down the support hose with the elastic tops. Now she’s—what the hell is she—unbuttoning her jersey dress and letting it fall to her feet. And there goes the slip, the bra, the parachute panties. I can’t believe I’m watching my roly-poly nonna with her drooping breasts and ripply belly baring it all. But what the hell; it’s Christmas and stranger things have happened on this night. She’s easing into the heated pond and I wonder how many other nights she’s been indulging in an au naturel swim. She’s walking to the center of the pond, directly over the Nereid, and lying down over it, her body mimicking the maiden’s beneath the surface, Nonna’s face the only thing exposed. There it goes beneath the water, once, twice, thrice, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each time she comes up she shoots a playful spray of water to imitate her sister statue below. Now she’s completely underwater and I’m counting for her: one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, one-thousand-three . . . one-thousand-eight. She has remarkable lung power, but it’s making me nervous, and the red Pergusa just bobbed to the surface. One-thousand-twenty-four. Come on up, Nonna. Nonna?

(Nonna! Come out now!)

One-thousand-thirty-two.

Fuck. She’s not coming out. I have to get down there. Goddamn trapdoor and—shit. I just slipped on the stairs. Wait. I have to run. Running. Running. Through the foyer, the hall, the solarium, now out the back. Passing the springhouse, through the gate and I still see Nonna hovering beneath the water though I have to get at her. Forget the shoes. I’m going in.

(There you are! Thank God.)

Nonna just lifted her head from the water.

(You scared the hell out of me! What are you laughing at?)

You should see her, Padre.

(Nonna. Say hello to Padre.)

(
Buon Natale,
Padre!)

(What are you doing? You’re getting me wet!)

She’s kicking her legs, flapping her arms, working up a swirling froth of water, more commotion than I thought she could churn up at her age. And there she goes again, sliding beneath the surface, still roiling the water, which bubbles like mad. I wonder if one of the heating elements has gone kablooey.