The Patron Saint of Ugly (17 page)

“Oh my God.” Nicky pushed past us to run down the steps. Across the street, drapes ruffled as neighbors looked outside to gawk at this Christmas miracle. For a brief instant I thought this might be the one jewel that could earn Nicky the respect of the hill boys.

“Oh, Zelda,” Mom said, and not merrily either. “You know we can’t keep it.”

“But why?” She looked at my father for support.

“We can’t keep it,” Dad grumbled, but he, too, was captivated and joined his son for the inspection.

I should tell you that at the time my family did not own a car. Every Monday through Friday Dad trudged down the hill carrying his lunch pail to the Plant. It was cause for ridicule from Grandpa and Uncle Dom, whose cars Dad had to grudgingly borrow on occasion. The price was to endure the ribbing “D’ya bring your groceries up the hill one lima bean at a time?”

Nicky was already behind the wheel as Mom, Zelda, and I made our way down.

“I had it custom painted,” Zelda said. “It’s not something I can return.”

“The car has two seats, Mother.”

I hadn’t considered that as I scanned the cramped space that held two narrow seats, a substantial gearshift between them.

“But it’s perfect for you and Nicky!” Zelda said.

Mom might have slugged her if those neighbors weren’t watching.

Nicky twisted knobs as Dad lifted the hood. “That’s some engine.”

The deliveryman sidled up to him. “She can go one hundred miles per hour.”

“Let’s go for a ride!” Nicky yelled. “Can we go for a ride?”

Dad looked at Mom and I saw a hint of the gooey eyes that might have appealed to her when they first met.

“Just one ride,” Mom conceded. “Then it has to go back.”

Dad slammed the hood down as Mom opened the envelope and handed him the keys. He raced to the car door. “Scoot over, son.” Nicky hopped awkwardly over the gearshift as Dad started the car. They might have screeched off if Mom hadn’t insisted, “Take Garnet too!”

Dad and Nicky eyeballed me, then the available space in the car.

Mom read their minds. “Squeeze her in, for God’s sake.”

They did, though I had to wedge between them, the gearshift ramming my thigh. Dad’s shifting was rough since he drove so seldom, but he managed to back out, tailpipe scraping the ground, Mom yelling, “Button your coats! And don’t drive too fast!”

It was frigid, the wind stinging our eyes, but we didn’t care as we barreled down Dagowop Hill, Dad honking to draw attention to the absurd display of a top-down joy ride in glacial weather. We spiraled around and around, Dad driving too fast, but he was going to make the most of this. I loved watching his feet work the pedals, his hand on the stick shift, my shoulder bumping into his in a rare moment of closeness.

On the third circle down, we hit No-Brakes Bend, the icy patch in front of Mr. Dagostino’s where that natural spring crossed the road. It was a perpetual hazard in winter, for automobiles and foot traffic alike. More than one car had slid over the curb and bumped down the hill into the hedge Mr. Dagostino had planted as a buffer to protect his garage. Those experienced drivers all had sense enough to at least slow down to avoid serious damage. Not my father, however, and when the front of the car started sliding, I held on to the dashboard and gritted my teeth. But Dad smoothly corrected—elevating his driving skills in my estimation—and we were safely on our way, zipping through Sweetwater Village. All the stores were closed, but lights were on in apartments above the pharmacy and grocery and tavern as Irish shopkeepers prepared fourteen different types of Christmas potatoes.

“Where are we going?” I whispered to Nicky as Dad passed Saint Brigid’s and Via Doloroso.

I felt my brother’s shrug, and when I recognized the stone entrance to Grover Estates, the ball of joy in my gut exploded. Nonna and Grandpa were spending the day with Dom and Betty listening to Caruso on the new console Dom had been bragging about. Though I wanted my Christmas presents from Nonna and Betty, I did not want to spoil this glorious ride by suffering through Grandpa, Uncle Dom, and Ray-Ray.

Dad started honking before we approached Dom’s split-level rancher with a two-car garage. He stopped in the middle of the street and let the horn wail.

Ray-Ray appeared at the window, his mouth flapping, and I imagined him saying:
Uncle Angelo is out there in a convertible!

Dom angled beside him, hands on his hips as he surveyed the improbable spectacle of his little brother in a better car than his.

Betty burst through the door in her maxi-skirt and leopard top, chest bouncing as she rushed to us. “It’s beautiful! It’s gorgeous!”

Nonna followed, wiping her hands on her apron, grinning.
“Guarda la macchina!”

“Holy smokes.” Ray-Ray loped forward and circled the car before stopping on Nicky’s side. He leaned close to Nicky’s ear and whispered something I could only partially hear: “The inside’s as pink as . . .” followed by an image apparently so foul my brother’s body went rigid as he clasped his knees.

Ray-Ray slogged off, cutting between houses instead of going back inside.

“What’d he say?” I asked my brother.

“Anacondas constrict their prey to death before swallowing them whole.” The joy ride had been ruined for him.

“Merry Christmas!” Dad yelled to the fam-i-ly, his chin lifted.

Uncle Dom and Grandpa ambled forward, both smirking, loading ammunition into their clabber-jaws to ruin it for Dad.

But Dad jammed in the clutch and revved the engine. “It sure as hell didn’t fall off a truck!” He punched the gas and peeled out. I hated leaving Nonna and Betty in our gritty wake, but I loved the streak of rubber Dad laid down that Dom complained about for months.

I hope it was worth it, that fifteen-minute ride and two minutes of gloating, because how was he going to explain himself to the fam-i-ly once the car was gone? I could already hear Dom:
It
did
fall off a truck
, or,
You could manage only one payment, bucko?

As soon as the three of us were back up the hill, Mom and Zelda rushed outside, Mom with her hand out to take the keys. “I could hear you honking all the way down in the village!”

Dad said, “You should have heard me in Grover Estates!”

“You didn’t.” A devilish light flared in her eyes that added an inch to Dad’s height. Still, she knew what had to be done. When Nicky got out of the car she put her hand on his shoulder to steady him while she delivered the bad news. “Nicky, we can’t keep it. It’s too expensive and utterly impractical.”

Mom, Dad, and I all held our breath, but Nicky just said, “That’s okay.”

It was like waiting for that cherry bomb that turned out to be a dud. Whatever Ray-Ray had whispered to Nicky apparently tainted the entire car.

We were about to head inside when Zelda said, “If this one is impractical, how about that one?” She pointed across the street at a line of cars more numerous than usual because of holiday company.

“What?” Mom said.

“The station wagon,” Zelda forced out, as if the words were an affront to her luxury-car sensibility. She pointed to a white Dodge Polara, shiny as porcelain, which had been there all day as far as I could remember.

The prissy deliveryman again appeared with another envelope, the prize behind curtain number two if Mom was willing.

“Are you kidding?” Mom said.

“Darling, it’s inconceivable that you and Angelo don’t have a car. What if one of the children has an emergency and needs to get to the hospital?”

Mom looked at Dad, who amazingly did not look as if his manhood was in question. In fact, he was scratching his chin and walking toward the station wagon, the perfectly reasonable family car, no doubt mapping out his drive to and from work. It would also make things easier with the fam-i-ly when he had to explain the absence of car number one.
It was impractical, Pops. Only two seats. Not to mention the color
.

I looked at Nicky, who tapped his foot and mouthed,
Say yes!

“It’s not even top-of-the-line, dear,” Zelda said, her wealthy-to-poor conversion kicking in. “And it holds an awful lot of groceries.”

Mom looked at Dad. Dad looked at Mom. Something transpired telepathically between them because Mom said, “Okay.”

“Wonderful!” Zelda said. “Let’s have a drink!”

Mom walked over to inspect our first car. Dad took her hand as they squinted through the windows and opened the front door. They scooted inside like a couple of teens borrowing the old man’s car for a night of necking, which I think might have done them both good.

Zelda handed the deliveryman the keys to the Mercedes, which he would be driving back to Charlottesville that night. “Don’t go above the speed limit, Cedrick. And be sure to wash and wax it before you put it in the third bay.”

As Zelda sauntered up the steps, Cedrick pulled up the Mercedes’s leather top, fastened it in place, and squeezed inside for the cramped ride home.

That night I lay on the sofa listening to Mom and Zelda in the kitchen dissecting the people from Mom’s former life. They had cartoon names like Bunny and Bowler, Chompers and Skiff. They yachted and golfed. They sipped champagne in exotic locales.

Barbie’s dream house was now beside the Christmas tree where a crèche should have been, Barbie lying in her bed in a shorty nightgown, eyes wide open. In my dream state, I saw a human-size Barbie sitting stiffly in the kitchen as Zelda programmed her life.
Next year I’ll bring Ken, darling. We’ll have a legitimate wedding with your beautiful gown and a three-foot cake topped with real flowers. I’ll buy you a split-level rancher and a car large enough for you and Ken and baby Nicky too!

TAPE NINE

La Strega

Archie:

It’s Sunday morning and I’m lying on a pew in the mansion’s chapel, a room I visit more often than you would believe and not to commune with the Man Upstairs. It’s a hexagonal space built in one of the towers with a marble altar in the center flanked by pews. Stained-glass windows ring the room, five of which depict Gethsemane with olive trees and a van Gogh sky. In the last window Jesus kneels in perpetual anguish, poor soul. Sunlight is speckling the ceiling with colors—the real reason I come here—so it feels as if I’m meditating inside a kaleidoscope.

Growing up I never would have believed that Le Baron’s widow, or La Strega, as the Italians called her, had a Christian chapel in her lair. Most of us imagined a dungeon festooned with pentagrams and
cimarute
where she stirred caldrons of the same rue branches, salt, and olive oil that were in Nonna’s evil-eye recipes. With their shared pagan roots, the Old Religion and Italian witchcraft have some crossover, but don’t say that to Nonna. I once made the comparison and she dropped her Marsala, crossed herself thirteen times, and sputtered, “I use-a these things to ward off-a the
malocchio
! La Strega use them to bring-a them on!”

For years La Strega was the primary suspect regarding my pumice stones, electrical short circuits, and mutating geography. She certainly had reason to loathe us land-grabbing trespassers, though I didn’t know why I should be her primary scapegoat. I never thought she was responsible for the healings, however, since her malevolence toward us was well documented. Though we seldom saw her, the neighborhood often
heard
from her in the form of unstamped letters that mysteriously appeared in mailboxes regarding lax snow shoveling, house-paint choices, or loud mufflers. She always knew which brave hooligans had TP’d her hedges and dumped Jell-O into her reflection pond on Halloween. She also topped the list of suspects when neighborhood pets went missing, though I would later deduce who the real culprit was.

Those who lived below the front of La Strega’s house, like my family, felt as if she were cursing their backyard barbecues with ptomaine potato salad. Those who lived on the back of the hill felt as if she were mooning them every minute of their lives.

An electric gate guarded La Strega’s driveway, which led up to the carriage house where her chauffeur, an old man who was also the groundskeeper, lived in the apartment upstairs. Few people bothered to learn his name, and children needled him mercilessly whenever they spotted him running errands in the village or raking La Strega’s leaves. He wasn’t much thicker than the rake he held, all legs and arms, a head shaped like a Brazil nut—or a nigger toe, as Uncle Dom called the nut. He called the chauffeur that too, though he wasn’t a black man. Unfortunately, once the neighbors heard Dom’s offensive slur, the nickname stuck.

The first Saturday of every month, that massive gate clanked opened so Nigger Toe could steer La Strega’s Packard down the hill, the old bat in the back seat prodding him with a cane, hill nonnas lining the curb to rattle keys and clang skillets as she passed.

Cars are rumbling down the hill right now, in fact. Folks are heading to Mass at Saint Brigid’s, newly equipped with fourteen stained-glass windows—one for every Station of the Cross—thanks to Nonna. She pestered me daily for a year to donate the funds to replace the mustard-colored glass that made the congregation look jaundiced.

“It’s-a my dying wish,” Nonna said, stilling her palpitating heart with one hand, hacking
soppressata
phlegm into the other. How could I deny her? Of course she danced the tarantella after I said yes.

Can you hear the tintinnabulation of the bells, bells, bells? It’s Nonna’s favorite song, “Ave Maria,” and the sounds were long in coming, since Saint Brigid’s steeple had sat bell-less for sixty years. It wasn’t until 1961 that Father Luigi decided it was high time his church filled the air with a more melodious sound than the Sabbath belches and snores of its hung-over congregation.

It was a tough sell to the parishioners who barely had a grip on the lowest rung of the lower-middle-class ladder, so Father Luigi equipped every student in Saint Brigid’s with a roll of raffle tickets to be sold at twenty-five cents a pop. The lucky winner would be the proud owner of a two-foot-tall, hand-painted statue of the Virgin Mary of Lourdes (French and thus nonpartisan). She was nestled inside her own plaster grotto that would protect her from the elements. The double lure was an as-yet-to-be-named prize for the kid who sold the most tickets.