The Full Cleveland (5 page)

I didn't know they had their own saint. I picked up my favorite pamphlet. “I like this saint the best.”

“Really, dear? Why?”

“She's the prettiest.”

“Well, yes, she was very beautiful. That's Saint Theresa of the Little Flower. She was so modest and loving and pure, like a lovely little flower, they nicknamed her ‘The Little Flower.'”

She was very, very pretty. Even in the brown nun's habit she wore. “She married Jesus.”

“Oh. But, no. She really didn't.”

But it said so inside. I'd read it three times. I held it out, so Mother could see.

“‘By becoming a sister.' See? Saint Theresa's marriage to Jesus was a ‘pure' marriage, dear. When a sister becomes a sister, it's called marrying God. But there's just a tiny little difference between that kind of marriage and the one your father and I have. You'll learn all about it when you grow up.”

I already knew enough about the tiny little difference not to talk to her about it. I pored over my pamphlet.

Saint Theresa was shown hovering a few feet above the world. She had the brown nun's habit, which wasn't at all attractive, far worse than black, but she had graceful arms, which she held extended, and from her hands fell hundreds of red roses.

Mother sat on the edge of my bed. “Saint Theresa died at a very young age. All her life, she loved flowers. Before she died, she promised to send what she called ‘a shower of roses' from heaven to earth. So if you pray to Saint Theresa, and she talks to God about it, and He decides to grant your prayer, Saint Theresa will let you know by sending you a single red rose. That is her sign.”

I looked up. “Her what?”

“Sign. It means she'll let you know if your prayer will be answered. Someone on earth will hand you a single red rose.”

“Really?” This was maybe the best thing I had heard in my life. For the first time, you could pray, and actually know if you would get what you wanted, or were just totally wasting your time.

Mother winked. “Really.”

Really? Suddenly I didn't feel like waiting for Friday anymore. I opened the pamphlet. “O holy Saint Theresa of the Little Flower …”

Mother put her hand on my arm. “But what are you praying for, dear?”

“To be as pretty as
she
is.”

Mother smiled and shook her head sort of sadly. “It's not enough to be as pretty. You must also pray to be as modest, as loving, and as pure.”

That didn't sound like it looked very good.

“Just put ‘pretty' last. Pretty isn't so important.”

Easy for her to say. She looked like Saint Theresa. “Do I have to?” Naturally, I was worried that if I put pretty last, Saint Theresa would mistakenly think it was the least important. And if she decided to answer just some of my prayers, and hold something back to teach me a lesson or something dreadful like that, you just know what would go. “Are you going to make me?”

“Yes, yes. These are called ‘priorities.' You must always be very careful about the order of your priorities. Pretty goes last.”

Damn. But what could I do. So before Mother turned off the lights, we recited all the prayers in Saint Theresa's novena pamphlet, asking, when the request what you want here part came up, that I become modest, loving, pure, and
Pretty.
Which I have to admit, I yelled pretty loud.

“Listen up, angels.”

It was Friday, Dad was safely down the driveway, so we got straight down to business. But it simply took time. We had to go all around the table, hearing every last lame suggestion for what to pray for as a family. Matt whined about boxing gloves again, and I lobbied for poor people. A few other things mentioned included household pets, helicopters, and Luke's special request—his own box seats to the Cleveland Browns so he could take all his friends. To that, Matt grumbled, “Get a problem.” We ended again without finding anything. “Sorry angels, meeting adjourned.”

I'm not going to mention every last Breakfast Meeting. But we were losing heart. Mother didn't think anything was good enough to pray for as a family. But finally, one Friday, it happened. It was the week Luke stopped asking if we could all pray to God that he get his own box seats to the Cleveland Browns and blurted, “Okay, I lied. I don't want box seats. I don't want to
go
there. I want to
play
there. I want to
be
a Cleveland Brown.”

We all looked at Mother. Surprisingly, she didn't say no. She nodded and said, “Cabot?”

Catching on rather quickly, I have to admit, Cabot said, “Uh, I want to be an artist who makes big statues to sit outside major museums?”

We all looked at Mother. She didn't say no. She nodded and said, “Boyce?”

So, jumping on the old bandwagon, I said, “I wouldn't mind winning three gold medals in the Olympics for figure skating.”

When we all looked at Mother, once again, she didn't say no. She nodded thoughtfully and said, “Matt?”

Blinking as if he'd just been crowned king for a day, Matt sat up ramrod straight. “Heavyweight Champion of the World!”

Mother narrowed her eyes so not only he'd know, but so he'd remember for life. “Matt, I don't want you boxing. Never. Ever. Not ever at all.”

So maybe in due time, Luke would have become a Cleveland Brown, Cabot a famous artist, and me an Olympic champion, if Matt hadn't recovered lost ground immediately by sullenly changing his request from Heavyweight Champion of the World to, “Okay, then just president of the United States of America.”

We all looked at Mother. Oh,
no.

So, extremely grudgingly, and I mean grudgingly in the extreme, we all agreed to pray Matt into the United States presidency. Except Mother said make it class president for starters, and Matt had a deal.

I had no intention of making Matt president if God wasn't going to do something about making me pretty, and of course poor people too. So I started saying double and triple prayers to Saint Theresa on the side. If Mother stopped by at bedtime, she found me praying. And she'd kneel down to join me. It became our little secret.

I began to hope for The Sign of the single red rose the way most people hope for The Sign of winning the lottery. And at times the chance of receiving one single red rose seemed just as what's called “mathematically improbable.” Because it didn't count if someone handed you a dozen red roses or a single yellow rose or any roses buried in a box from the florist. The way Saint Theresa had set The Sign up with God, someone had to
hand
you a
single, red
rose. Those three things, in that order, or else.

It dawned on me one day that a person could live an entire lifetime and never have this perfect combination happen. That night, I expressed my concerns to my mother. She told me that God helps those. So we decided to help ourselves.

The next morning, we took Lucy for a walk in the garden. None of us were allowed to pick the flowers without permission, and Lucy was growing to understand this as well as any of us. But while we must, in good conscience, teach Lucy the house rules, we could still afford to indulge her natural instincts as a child. So when she toddled up to the tulips and said, “Pretty!” I said, “Yes, Lucy, ‘pretty,' but don't touch.”

And when she sat in front of the irises and said, “Flower!” Mother said, “Yes, sweetie, ‘flower,' but don't pick.”

But when she ran to the rosebush and said,
“Red!”
neither Mother nor I said a damn thing. We looked at the sky. We talked about the weather. We ignored Lucy with our whole hearts and prayed to God she would follow the simple, innocent, childlike impulse to pick a
single red rose
and
hand
it to her sister or mother. But all Lucy would do was stand there yelling
“Red!”

Meanwhile, miraculously, Matt started shaping up as the perfect presidential candidate. He grew more handsome, more personable, and even more eloquent. Unfortunately, in the time-honored political tradition, he also began to lie, cheat, and steal. Dressed as Honest Abe Lincoln, he won a mock presidential debate at school. But then Matt failed to register as a candidate for class president on the day he was supposed to. On that day, he slipped out of school and spent the afternoon at a seedy downtown gym, slugging a heavy bag in a ripped-off pair of boxing gloves.

The fact that Matt was not only not a presidential candidate but also a truant, a boxer, and a thief naturally didn't help matters any. He had to return the boxing gloves he'd “borrowed” from Big Al's Sporting Goods Store, plus he had to pay for them out of his own savings account. In the Catholic Church, this is called doing “penance.”

But Big Al wouldn't take Matt's penance. Cabot and I thought it was pretty strange to go to a store and try to pay for something that you'd already stolen and already slipped back on the shelf. I guess Big Al thought it was pretty strange too, because he wouldn't take Matt's savings. So Dad and Mother and Big Al and Matt all got together and decided to donate the money, plus some, to a boys' correctional institute's sports program, which happened to be very big on boxing.

I'm sure Matt would have gladly furthered his career as a juvenile delinquent just so he could land in that boys' correctional institute with the well-endowed boxing program, but I guess he was saved by the grace of God. Because shortly after the crime, a series of big brown boxes arrived from UPS, addressed to Dad. When he came home from work, Mother said, “George? What's in those big boxes?”

Dad said, “Matt's boxing equipment.”

We all lined up to watch their first big fight, now taking place behind the closed library door.

It was an almost festive atmosphere. Luke went to the kitchen to get home-baked sugar cookies from Clarine, so we even had snacks. We sat and ate them on the front stairs. As self-appointed ringmaster or something, Cabot repeatedly went to the library door and listened, reporting back, “She says she wants him to be class president.” “She says what good will it do him, they don't have boxing in the Ivy League anymore.” The whole time, Matt stood in the corner biting his nails, which didn't make him look very fierce like a boxer at all.

After an hour or so, it quieted down in the library, and Cabot came back with a nervous look on her face, like maybe Dad was in there, knocked out on the floor. But when the library doors opened, Dad said, “Okay, Matt. Let's take these downstairs.”

Punch drunk from his sudden change in fortune, Matt tore through the boxes right there in the hall. He got not just boxing gloves but a speed bag and a heavy bag and a double-end bag too. “Boy oh boy!” he cried at the last box. “Look, you guys! My very own crazy bag!”

Cabot peeked into the box. “Is that what this one's called?”

He looked at her like a maniac. “Yeah!”

“Just checking.”

Then Matt glanced at the ceiling and smiled the serene smile of one who has just learned firsthand that crime, not to mention sin, does in fact pay. Wearing this mug, he glided behind Dad to the basement, where they spent the evening installing the boxing equipment in the sort of gym down there.

A few days later, after school, Matt approached me in the breakfast room. “Hi, Zu,” he said, very friendly.

“Hi.”

“So how's school, little sis?”

Little sis? What was this? I said it was fine.

“That's great.” He did a little one-two punch for emphasis in the air. “That's tremendous.”

I was having a leftover sugar cookie. I held up the plate, but he said he was in training. And he did a little shuffle, and punched at nothing some more. Then he stopped dancing around the room and got serious. “You know, I was thinking, you're only a little girl. You need to learn self-defense.”

Oh. He needed a sparring partner.

I said, “Don't butter me up to box with you, because I don't like the basement.”

He said, “You don't like the
basement?”
As if he'd never heard of it before.

“Remember? The subconscious? Well, I don't like it too much, Matt.” He himself had told us that every house has a subconscious, which is the part below ground, and evil things you can't even imagine happen down there. Don't get me wrong, we all knew he'd said it just so he could have the basement all to himself, but the way he made our subconscious sound, he had it. The rest of us couldn't go down there without clutching the hand of Dad or Clarine.

“The basement is
beautiful.”

“You just need someone to box with.”

“So? Don't be such a girl.”

That made me mad enough to go learn to box, so next time I could defend myself against people like him. He taught me to do things like hook, jab, and slip a punch. Then he gave me the title of “probably the best female flyweight girl-boxer in the world.”

But even though I was proud of my title and all, I still thought the whole thing slightly suspicious from a theological standpoint. It seemed that if you asked God to make you president, what He did was make you, not to mention your sister, boxers instead.