The Full Cleveland (16 page)

Lucy's eyes slid to the side. “Well … that's true.”

Even though she was watching a boxing match, I couldn't help but notice how pretty she looked. She was wearing a very nice dress, one of those little fall plaid ones, with a white pique collar and a wide black sash. She had gotten all dressed up to sit ringside. “You look really nice,” I told her.

“So do you.” She was looking at my feet though. She really admired them, you could tell.

She was adorable. She had long, chestnut brown, blunt-cut hair, which today was pulled up in a ponytail poised high on the back of her head. And she had those big green eyes, like Mother's. I hopped into the room, the red-tile floor freezing my feet. “I bet even Dad wouldn't want you watching a boxing match.”

She looked around to check the coast was clear, then whispered, “Did you know Matt taught me?”

“To box?”

“Uh-huh. He says I'm good.”

“He would know.” Matt had won the Golden Gloves before Mother made him stop. I wondered if that's what they were supposedly fighting about now. Matt's boxing. Come to think of it, all they had ever really fought about was fighting. Of course Mother had no idea that Luke, I, and now apparently Lucy, were quite accomplished boxers too. “But isn't Matt a little big to be boxing with you?”

“He's desperate.”

I was impressed she knew the word, not to mention when to use it. She was incredibly smart.

“I want to win Golden Gloves.”

I didn't want to tell her, you know, she couldn't, she was a girl. You never want to tell a girl that, no matter what she thinks she can do. So instead I just nodded at the four TVs. “Which title is this for?”

“Middleweight. WBA.”

“Oh, okay.” So I sat down to watch the match with her.

There was plenty of blood flying around. I didn't think it was a great thing for her to be watching, but you can't tell a kid what to watch. They'll just watch more of it. “So nobody has any idea you're watching this, right? You just came down here on your own?”

“Uh, Clarine kind of saw me go by.”

“Well sure. Clarine.” Clarine would never tell you what not to watch. And she would never tell you not to box. In fact, it was Clarine who had set up the secret house rules. The girls could belt the boys, but all the boys could do was bob and weave. “You're not scared of the basement? You're sitting smack in the middle of the house subconscious, you know. I mean, you're well aware of that, right?”

She nodded. “I'm not afraid of the subconscious. But I have to watch the boxers, to make sure they don't get hurt.”

“Oh. Then you're sort of like a referee.”

“Sort of.”

“I see.” I mean,
maybe
it worked. Pure logical thinking and so forth.

•   •   •

I mean, it was a weird way to watch a boxing match. But I didn't say so. She had her own way of watching. Besides, it made it more interesting, thinking Lucy was some kind of extra, cosmic referee. The volume was too loud, but I let it go, because I didn't want to search for four remotes.

There was a guy in white trunks and a guy in black trunks and the guy in white already had a cut above his eye, even though it was only the third round. His own blood was blinding him, and he was wasting a lot of energy just flailing at air. That kind of cut, though not a serious injury in itself, would wear him down from blindness and he would lose. “See that, Lucy? The eye is the fighter's Achilles'heel.”

She nodded. She knew.

“He'll never make it now.”

“I think he still will.”

“Then is that who you're for?”

“No. I'm for both.”

It was pretty interesting, watching with her.

In the middle of the fifth round, I remembered Mother and the
New York Times.
I asked Lucy if there were any particular saint that the Catholics in the household were working on these days.

“Saintjude,” she said monosyllabically, watching the guy in white backpedal after taking a mean right to the chin.

“Which one's he again?”

She glanced at me with disbelieving big green eyes. “Saint Jude. He's famous.”

“Yeah, but I forget. He's the patron saint of what? Is it lost causes?”

“Um,” she said, watching the guy in black land a totally uncharitable left-right combination. “He's the patron saint of hopeless cases.” With that, the guy in white went down.

“There's a hopeless case right there.”

“I bet he beats the count, though.”

He did, and we both breathed easier. “What else is special about Saint Jude?”

The guy in black was body punching like a madman, and it was awful but fascinating to watch, but I had a mission, so I turned Lucy's head gently by the chin. “Luce. This is important.”

She asked sweetly, “What else would you like me to tell you then?”

“More about what's in the pamphlet for Saint Jude.”

“You lost your
pamphlet?”

“Uh, yeah. About six years ago.”

“Oh my.”

She jerked her head toward the TVs, as if slipping a punch. We both watched the guy in black feint left and land a brutal haymaker right, which sent the guy in white straight to queer street, staggering around the ring until the guy in black caught up with him and did it all over again. “I'm sorry, Luce, that guy in white. I mean, talk about glass chins.”

Lucy giggled. “He's a palooka.”

“He's a bum.”

“He's a ham-and-egger.”

“He's a chump.”

“He's a tomato can.”

Well. We sure had done Matt's homework.

The referee broke the clinch, then the guy in white was saved by both the grace of God and the bell. They went to commercial. It was for a blue Buick, believe it or not. We watched it like zombies together.

After it, Lucy turned to me. “I thought you didn't like the Catholic Church anymore. I can't tell you about people like Saint Jude if you're only going to make fun of him.”

“You mean Saint Dude?”

She scowled. “See?”

“That's
affection”
I assured her. “I like the saints. They didn't do anything. I like God. He didn't do anything. It's the Church I think is …”

“Is what?”

“Nevermind.”

“What?”

“Goofy.”

She gasped.

“Look, all I need to know is, when you pray to Saint Jude, does he give you some kind of a sign?”

“A sign? Like, a sign? Like a street?”

“Like a single red rose. Like Saint Theresa. Does Saint Jude do something unusual like that? You know. Send you some special sign to let you know your prayer will be answered?”

“Never heard of
that
before.”

Really?

There was a break in the interrogation. I wasn't sure what I was driving at, but I knew I was driving somewhere and I sensed I wasn't that far from home. “Lucy. Say the prayers.”

“What prayers?”

“The prayers in the novena to Saint Jude.”

“Now? During a boxing match?”

“Well,” I glanced guiltily at the four TVs. “I don't see why not. God is everywhere.”

She actually looked around for Him. “It just seems …”

“What? Sacrilegious?”

“No. Goofy.”

“Just. Say the prayers.”

“Are you thinking of being holy again?” She started bouncing up and down on the old couch. I thought she was going to break a spring, the way she was doing it. “Please, Zu, please?”

“Well, maybe.”

She kept jumping, the way kids do when they're way overstating their case, and they know it, and they're deciding to bounce from now on just to torture you, plus the pure joy of it. “Hey, cool it. You're making me dizzy.”

She just jumped higher. “You really are thinking about it, Zu?”

“Kind of.”

“Are you telling me that just so I'll say the prayers?”

“Kind of.”

She stopped jumping and looked angrily back to the boxing match, flipping me her ponytail.

I knew she knew the goddamn prayers. She never heard anything she didn't remember. She could recite the first paragraph of Dickens's
Tale of Two Cities
when she was three years old. Mother used to have her do it for Andrew John Hague, the poet-mailman. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. We had everything before us, we had nothing before us …” all in her tiny, singsong voice. And you never wanted to get suckered into playing Concentration with her, where you had to remember what the cards were when only the bicycles showed. She'd beat the pants off you.

So I cleverly issued a challenge. “You don't remember them. That's why you won't say them.”

“Oh please.”

“Then
please
say them?”

“Well, since you're not a real Catholic, if I say the prayers for you, then maybe you should give me something if I do.”

I stared down at her. This somehow reminded me of my whole problem with the Catholic Church. I felt like telling her the Vatican had the richest art collection in the universe, yet worldwide, half the congregation was living below poverty level. But instead I sighed, “What do you want?”

She hesitated. “Point seven million dollars?”

“I'm glad you're not getting greedy about it. Where did you get
that
figure?”

She shrugged. “It's the size of the purse.”

“Okay. If that's what you think religion is all about. I'll write you an IOU for point seven million dollars. You can have it when you grow up. I'll be rich by then. Of course, I was planning to do something good with the money, like Jesus said, like feed the hungry or shelter the homeless, but if you want it, I'll give it to you instead, and you can buy a gold-hulled yacht or something.”

“No, that's okay.” She sighed. “I just couldn't think of anything else.”

“Well, that should tell you something right there, Lucy, if all you want in life is point seven million dollars. When I was your age, I wanted better things than that.”

“Like what?” She looked pretty interested. Pretty earnest too. Pretty pretty. She was a heartbreaker. “If you tell me one, maybe I'll say the prayers.”

I scowled down at her. She was worse than I was. But I couldn't think of a thing I'd wanted. So I lost her again to the boxing match.

The guy in white was uselessly attempting the rope-a-dope, cowering back against the ropes in a defensive shell, letting the other guy pummel him mercilessly, in the hope of tiring him out. I could barely watch it anymore. “They should stop this stupid fight. I'm surprised they let it get this far, I really am.”

“I think he'll go the distance.”

“The one in white?”

“I believe he will.”

“But …”

The guy in white was stumbling back across the ring with wide, bloody, crazed eyes, trying to simply avoid the guy in black, who was now working up to a victory dance in the middle of the canvas, where he was presently doing the Ali Shuffle. “Hey, Lucy? Has it occurred to you that this fight is like the world?”

“Uh, yes. I think it did.”

“It did occur to you?”

“Yes. Quite a while ago.”

That's funny. It had just occurred to me. “You mean that it's like the world, and there's a man in a white hat and a man in a black hat, and only one will prevail? Like it's the struggle of good against evil?”

“Yup.”

“Man, Lucy. Are you ever smart.”

Her eyelids fluttered. “Well, maybe for my age.”

I jumped up off the couch. “I wanted a single red rose. I really wanted one of those.”

“Really?” she said. “That is better than mine.”

“I never got one either. Never got one single red rose.”

“Oh.” She sighed sadly.

I went over and turned down the volume on each of the sets. “Would you say the prayers for me now?”

“Okay. Would you do that to my toes?”

“Sure. Is that what you want?”

“Yes. Plus one other thing. My own Buick.”

“You're only nine years old!”

“But all I really want is to drive myself around. I'll save it, like Grandfather saved the Dream Machine. You have to swear to buy me a Buick. On a Bible or something.”

“Fine, I'll buy you a Buick. But you've been watching too many commercials.”