Bad Habits (7 page)

In case you aren’t that Catholic and don’t know what that means, it’s basically a four-foot statue of the Virgin Mary that travels around the world. It is then up to a lucky parish to choose an even luckier family that is holy enough to have it in their home.

At thirteen, the problem I was having at the time was that puberty and religion just didn’t mix. I was embarrassed by the whole thing and prayed we didn’t win. If we did, my mother would be required to put Mary on a table in our front living-room window to display to the whole neighborhood, much like in the movie
A Christmas Story
when the father of the Ovaltine kid wins the leg lamp with fishnet on it and his wife is horrified that he is displaying it for all to see.

To make matters worse, the other obligation is to have an open-door policy for strangers to come in and join the rosary reciting all day and into the night. That would be beyond embarrassing.

When we arrived at the church, my mom and my baby sister Amy, who was my mother’s minion, were ecstatic. Me and my two other sisters, Lynette and JoJo, were not that happy. My older sister, Lynette, at this point was goth and had half of her head shaved bald and the other half dyed jet-black. She looked like she was going to sacrifice a chicken, but she never did. Probably because she turned out to be a vegetarian. JoJo just did and felt whatever I did and felt, so she seemed equally embarrassed.

Once we got to the parish, families ran up to greet us, telling us that the McCarthys were one of two finalists.

“God damn it,” I accidentally said.

My mother snapped her head around and gave me her famous evil eye, then continued to talk to her fans. “So who is the other finalist?” she asked.

“It’s the Baruchs.”

If this were a movie, it would be directed by Quentin Tarantino. The camera would zoom into my mother’s face, with an eyebrow raised, and then scan the room for her archenemy.

Now I wanted to win. I wanted to win and shove our trophy … uh … our victory up Diana Baruch’s ass. Screw being embarrassed. I wanted to win!

Father Patrick took the stage and began the presentation talking about the significance of the Traveling Mother Mary statue—about how it had graced many homes around the world.

“But now Mary has made it to Chicago to be displayed at one family’s home for one year. This family was chosen after much consideration as the holiest family in the neighborhood.”

The McCarthys and the Baruchs joined Father Patrick and stood on each side of him while my mom and Janet Baruch exchanged competitive grins.

Father Patrick continued: “The holiest family on the South Side of Chicago, who has never missed Mass and who best displays purity of truth, love, and devotion, is …”

My mom’s eyes grew large, but mine grew smaller as I scratched my itchy nose with my middle finger, catching Diana Baruch’s stare.

With a perfect
American Idol
dramatic pause, Father Patrick continued. “… the McCarthys!”

We all jumped into the air and screamed as if we had just won $2 billion. The parish applauded us. As I turned around to look at the Baruchs, they had already gotten off the stage and disappeared. Part of me felt bad. Even though I hated them, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for people when they were sad.

When the parish officials delivered Mary to our home, I couldn’t have been more embarrassed.

As a teenager in a poor family, I was already incredibly ashamed about my house. Now throw a four-foot Mother Mary statue into the mix and, well, it’s darn right humiliating. What made up for it, though, was how proud my mother was.

She put Mary on a table surrounded by flowers she handpicked. She felt so proud, and she loved opening her door to strangers to come inside and kneel in our living room to pray all day and night.

Living in a house with strangers praying the rosary out loud for a year is really not normal, though.

I tried to get used to it, but there were so many old people that our house started to resemble the set of
Cocoon
.

Right around this time, I met a boy who I really, really liked, but I knew I could never let him know where I lived. A Virgin Mary statue is not an aphrodisiac. He went to a public school.

In the past, I would be terrified to talk to any kid who didn’t attend a religion class, but when I hit thirteen, I wanted to make out with all of them.

“Hey, Derek.”

“Hey, Jenny. Can I come sit in your basement and hang out with you?”

“Um, no,” I said. “Why don’t I just come over to your house and we can make out?”

“That’s dope,” he responded, using the perfect 1986 slang term for “yes.”

I went over to his house.

I hardly got past the door before he jumped on top of me. He did something I hadn’t experienced yet at the age of thirteen—he kissed my neck.

It felt naughty. He seemed to either be really enjoying my neck or just not confident yet about his ability to French kiss. It’s kind of like when a guy tells you he doesn’t like going down on girls, but it’s really because he has no idea what the hell he’s doing.

Anyway, after about an hour of necking, I was getting bored, so I pushed him off me.

Derek began laughing at me.

“Why are you laughing?” I said.

“Don’t know,” he responded.

“You’re weird,” I said.

“Later,” he quipped.

And with that, we broke up. I wish it were that easy to break up in my thirties.

I went home and saw more old people filing into the house. I didn’t want to deal with it anymore. I wanted Mary to go away—now. I walked inside and was pulled by an old lady to sit next to her and pray.

She handed me a rosary and I began to recite a Hail Mary.

I spotted JoJo doing what I had taught her to do, which was to sell rosaries to old ladies as “blessed rosaries” and we would split the money seventy-thirty, because it was my idea (even though I had JoJo do all the work). This was an early sign of the incredibly sinful entrepreneurial skills you will continue to read about throughout this book.

“Psst, JoJo.” I waved my hand for her to come over and save me.

As she walked closer to me, her eyes widened. She quickly sat down next to me and whispered, “What’s wrong with your neck?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

She then grabbed my arm and pulled me into the bathroom.

I took one look and screamed at the top of my lungs. “
Aahhhh!!!!
”

That asshole Derek had given me hickeys. Not just a couple of hickeys. He gave me thirteen huge, bloodsucking hickeys.

“Why would you let someone do that to you?” JoJo asked. “You look so stupid.”

I defensively cried back, “I didn’t know what he was doing! I thought he was just really into my neck. I didn’t know! What am I going to do?”

“Well, now I think is the perfect opportunity to ask for a raise,” JoJo said. “I want fifty-fifty for the rosary money.”

“JoJo, stop that. I’m in a crisis right now!”

“I’m in a crisis now too! Christine Szarski is about to get her eleventh Cabbage Patch doll! I can’t let that happen! I need to go buy three of them right now!”

If it were anything other than a Cabbage Patch doll, I would have fought her, but I was sympathetic to JoJo’s problem. I caved and gave her the fifty-fifty split, even though I knew she would never tell my mom about the hickeys anyway.

The next day at school, word got out that I had thirteen hickeys on my neck. I was terrified of only one person in school finding out. That’s right—Diana Fucking Baruch, who was one grade older than I was.

“Jenny, Diana just found out about your hickeys,” said Ann Krybus.

I ran to the school bathroom and threw up. I was so scared. We were supposed to be the holiest family in the neighborhood, with the Virgin Mary as our prize.

I had no doubt that if my mom found out about this, she would either return the Mary statue or make me live at the altar reciting Hail Marys until I died.

I got home from school and ran upstairs to put on the thickest sweatshirt I owned, which happened to have Mickey Mouse on it. It was 96 degrees outside with 100 percent humidity. I didn’t care. Cover Girl makeup did nothing to cover my hickeys. My Mickey Mouse sweatshirt was the only solution that worked.

I went downstairs, sat in the kitchen, and tried to act nonchalant as sweat dripped off my nose.

My mom walked in and said, “Jenny, it’s ninety-eight degrees outside with one hundred percent humidity.”

“No, Ma, it’s ninety-six degrees.”

“Get out of that sweatshirt. You must be dying.”

“No, I’m fine.”

JoJo was sitting at the table with me and saw that I had started to panic. “Ma, it’s the new thing in school. Big sweatshirts, even when it’s hot outside.”

“Oh, really?” my mom responded. “Well then, where’s yours?”

JoJo quickly answered, “Oh, I couldn’t find mine.”

“It’s in the closet, inside the box labeled winter clothes,” my mom said.

“Oh, thanks. I’ll go put it on.”

Moments later, JoJo returned to the kitchen wearing a large, thick sweatshirt. Beads of sweat started pouring down her face too. She leaned into me and whispered, “Now I want sixty-forty.”

“No way,” I whispered back. “How about I buy you a Michael Jordan poster?”

“Deal.”

I knew I had JoJo’s lips locked, but my instincts were telling me that Diana Baruch had yet to play her hand.

Ring, ring
.

“Hello,” my mom answered the phone.

My eyes watched every social cue on her face for a change in behavior.

A second later, I didn’t need to watch her face. It all came out in her voice. “What are you talking about? Jenny doesn’t have thirteen hickeys on her neck.”

My whole body started trembling. This was it. My life was about to end.

“Who is this?” my mother yelled.

I wanted to run away, but I had made a total of only two hundred dollars in the rosary business and now I had to give JoJo half of it. My mom slammed the phone down and walked over to me.

I had a sweat mustache and my armpits were squirting water like hoses.

“That was a priest who suggested that I not allow you to go to school tomorrow with hickeys.”

“That’s crazy. There are no priests at our school.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking. It must be some prank caller.” And she walked out of the kitchen.

JoJo and I sat there stunned and soaked, like we were swimming with our clothes on.

“I hope you learned a lesson in all of this,” JoJo said to me.

“Yes. I did. Only get hickeys in the wintertime.”

There was a new priest in town. A hot one. His name was Father … well … let me think of a good alias. His name was Father Andrew.

Imagine one sexy beast of a hot priest turning up on the block of
Desperate Housewives
and rattling the minds and bodies of all those sexually deprived women. Well, my neighborhood turned into that. You could see the abstinence in the eyes of every housewife and the amount of days since they were last humped practically written on their foreheads: 17, 65 … 481.

Father Andrew was about thirty-five and resembled a younger Tom Selleck—mustache and all. He was in amazing shape and had the same spunk and charisma as Zack Morris. He was like one of those characters you see in movies: the hot young teacher who bonds with all the schoolkids and plays dodgeball with them in the parking lot.

All the students thought Father Andrew was cool.

But to all the moms, he was prime meat to salivate over.

It was survival of the most predatory animal in the wild. Women and closeted men alike would go to great lengths vying for Father Andrew’s attention. One mom dropped off a homemade lemon meringue pie she made especially for him and she literally fainted as she walked to the back of his house, exposing a secret corset that cinched her waist and squeezed her torpedo tits together and pushed them up to her chin.

I was only in seventh grade when Father Andrew came into our lives.

I didn’t really understand sexual fantasies yet, so my daydreams of him would be me falling and him picking me up in his arms and carrying me all the way home. I can only imagine what all the moms’ fantasies were, but who wants to think about that? Gross.

Anyway, Father Andrew’s popularity became obvious when his 9:45
A.M.
Sunday Mass would sell out like a Justin Bieber concert. The women would even clap and dab the sweat off their bodies after his homily. I remember looking around at all their faces thinking,
Really?
Women were in a trance, swaying back and forth with their blouses unbuttoned in the hopes of Father Andrew sneaking a peek at their new brassiere.

It was an outrageous spectacle.

When Father Andrew would clock in for confessions, I would always get so pissed off because the line was so long. I was a regular customer, so all these newbies were totally ruining my quick stop just to come and flirt with the priest. They treated confession like an audition for an episode of
Red Shoe Diaries
. With confession, you had a choice of doing it face-to-face or going behind the screen so the priest couldn’t identify you. Needless to say, every mother in line chose the face-to-face seat.