The Patron Saint of Ugly (39 page)

Yvette shook her head. “She never asked.” Another child banished from her mother’s world.

Maybe Yvette longed to make a home with her mother, but for a brief spell, she staked a claim on me. She even made it official one night when she pulled a tiny American flag from her robe pocket, stuck its toothpick pole into a wad of chewing gum, and planted it on my solar plexus. “One small step for womankind,” she said, but it was a giant leap for me. Those were blissful days. Made even sweeter because we knew full well that when the semester ended, Yvette would snatch her diploma and disappear from my life just as quickly as she’d entered it.

And that is exactly what happened.

On December twenty-third, I watched Yvette bind her feet for the last time and apply the Kabuki makeup that she could once again wear publicly. I helped her carry her suitcase and folded Chinese screen to the train station, though the walk was excruciatingly slow, given her lotus gait. We arrived just in time for her to catch the train that would rumble her to San Francisco, where antiestablishment vibes lured her. Like the final scene in
Cabaret
, as Yvette hobbled down the platform in her Sally Bowles haircut, she raised her hand and wiggled her fingers as a final ta-ta.

It was the loneliest Christmas of my life. Now that I was human again, and earthbound, I was forced to confront weighty matters, not only my longing for family, but the issue of where I would settle when I graduated in the spring.

When the new semester began, I perused maps lining the geography department. I would close my eyes and jab my finger, hitting at various possibilities: Saskatchewan, Natchitoches, the Bermuda Triangle. As January bled into February, I finally admitted that the bump of ground I longed for was Sweetwater. But after years of no contact, I didn’t know if I could still consider it home or if the people there would consider me fam-i-ly.

And then fate intervened.

February fourteenth, on what would have been Nicky’s twenty-fourth birthday, while lovebirds crossed campus holding volumes of Keats, I was summoned to the dean of students’ office, where a bevy of suited men with briefcases were waiting. The dean was overly solicitous, offering me a breath mint, a bottle of Tab, both of which I declined.

The six suited men took seats in the dean’s office on two couches that faced each other. The three men on the right were smiling; the three on the left were not. All six simultaneously set their briefcases on their laps and flipped them open as if they’d choreographed that move.

The man with Brezhnev eyebrows cleared his throat. “Miss Ferrari, Mr. Billheimer has a remarkable story to tell you, so I think you’d better sit down.” He waved his hand at a chair pulled up just for me. I sat, wondering if Grandma Iris was trying to program my post-college life. This time I was prepared for a fight.

Mr. Billheimer was the senior-most member of the smiling group. “Miss Ferrari, I’m afraid we have both good news and bad.”

Behold:

Two Saturdays before that Valentine’s Day, back in Sweetwater, Radisson had clanked open the gate and then steered the Packard downhill, La Strega in the back encased in fur, since it was an especially frigid morning. Witnesses claimed that Radisson and La Strega were fighting, she leaning over the seat swatting him with a cane, he parrying her blows with his chauffeur’s cap, all while the Packard gained speed as it spiraled around and around the hill until it hit ice-coated No-Brakes Bend. The Packard flew over the curb and through the brick wall Mr. Dagostino had had built there ten years before, after our station wagon had flown over the curb in a similar manner. The Packard toppled the brick wall and then it, too, plunged through the garage.

La Strega was killed on impact. Unconscious Radisson was rushed to Scourged Savior, where he died fifty-two minutes later.

La Strega had left no children, so her three nephews, born to Le Baron’s sister, flew in for the funeral and, more important, the reading of the will. Though the nephews were indeed listed as heirs, they were contingent beneficiaries. The primary inheritor was the person who had known La Strega more intimately than anyone on the planet during her widow years: Radisson.

Can you friggin’ believe that? The old bat had a soul after all.

Because La Strega died first, her complete fortune was passed onto Radisson for exactly fifty-two minutes. I can only imagine what kind of hilltop monarch he might have been, but I bet his reign would have involved Ferris wheels and dodge-’em cars for the local children.

When Radisson died, his will superseded La Strega’s. He had bequeathed all his worldly possessions, which now included his fifty-two-minute fortune, to the only person who had ever been kind to him in his life: a mottled girl who’d once filled his pockets with Bazooka bubblegum and who had actually called him by name.

Thus, like so many orphans and spinster-governesses in all those great books of British lit-ra-toor lining La Strega’s library, I was rescued by an inheritance I never even knew I was in line for.

The three smiling lawyers who represented Radisson’s wishes were grinning, since their hourly rate was
huge
.

The nephews’ lawyers, all frowning despite their fat hourly rate, were contesting Radisson’s will and the fifty-two-minute gap that to them was far worse than Nixon’s eighteen-and-a-half-minute one.

Radisson’s attorneys advised me to take possession of the mansion immediately; they had a limousine waiting, as well as a moving van. I raced to my room and grabbed the only thing I wanted: my father’s saw.

It was my turn to wiggle my fingers in a farewell ta-ta to the little patch of earth that had been my home for nearly half my life. I also left behind an unfinished education, since I was sixteen credits shy of my dual degrees. I do not regret that decision.

Twelve hours later, under the radiance of a full moon, me sitting shotgun beside Benny the limo driver, we crossed into West Virginia. I heard a faint hum that grew more pronounced the closer we got to Sweetwater: a blessed E note that hadn’t played in my head for ten years. We crossed the railroad tracks and turned onto Appian Way, and I growled as we passed the entrance to Grover Estates, the
G
on the sign crooked, both
T
s missing. We drove down snake-bricked Via Dolorosa and circled a Nereid statue not spitting water and stopped in front of Nonna’s house, where the windows were dark. The note in my head rung loud and clear and soon a lamp went on in Nonna’s bedroom. I was stunned to see her porch light illuminated too, with an actual bulb. I wanted to race up and pound on the door, but it would likely be Grandpa Ferrari answering in his underwear; the image made the bulb flicker, and I thought,
Shit
. My weird circuitry still existed, at least in Sweetwater. I urged Benny onward and we coasted by Saint Brigid’s and through the village, where most of the businesses were boarded up. Thankfully, the neon Sweetwater Cinema sign still blinked, as did the one for Dino’s Lounge. The Plant where my father had labored, however, was now defunct, with broken windows and graffiti spray-painted on its shell.

As we began our ascent up the hill, all my
portafortuna
-opening deeds resurrected themselves. I closed my eyes when we passed the silhouette of a toppled-over brick wall because I didn’t have the courage to face it, or our old house either.

We arrived at the pinnacle and that massive gate, where Benny stopped the car. A spindly figure loped from behind the brick column. For an instant I thought it was Radisson coming to hand me a begonia, but it was Mr. Billheimer, who also closed the gate behind us. He opened my car door and handed me a ring of skeleton keys, which I rattled without thinking to clear out La Strega’s ghost.

“Welcome home,” he said, adding a caution: “Lie low for a while, and though it may be tempting, don’t do anything rash.”

For two weeks I didn’t venture beyond my gates. Initially I slept in Radisson’s apartment above the garage, though I tried not to look at the mangled Packard that had been towed inside and that I have since had restored. Upstairs I found a welcoming armchair by the fireplace and a twin bed beside a window that overlooked a mulberry tree. My benefactor apparently spent his off-hours reading Barbara Cartland romances and crafting model World War I biplanes, which he had strung from the ceiling with fishing line, so it was as if I were falling asleep beneath dogfights every night.

Mr. Billheimer visited daily. We sat in La Strega’s parlor, where he divulged the extent of my holdings, which unfurled from his mouth like adding-machine paper. He also had me sign stacks of documents so he could transfer stocks and bank accounts, the house title, and sundry other properties and businesses to my name.

My proximity to our old house made me long for my mother. When I dialed Grandma Iris’s number, an automated operator still droned: “The number you dialed has been disconnected.” If I’d known which sanitarium Mom had been sequestered in, I would have sent my own hatchet man to rescue her. I started dialing the rotary dozens of times to call Nonna or Betty, but I couldn’t complete the calls. I didn’t yet have any words to utter if they did answer, especially if the topic shifted to Ray-Ray.

I spent the rest of my time snooping into La Strega’s many, many rooms, looking for secret dungeons and cauldrons, books of incantations, a closet full of Garnet voodoo dolls. I found none. What I did find was that my geography, which had been dormant for a decade, began rearranging itself with a vengeance. Every morning I awoke to discover countries split in two, whole islands submerged, borders incrementally shifted, as if ten years’ worth of tricks were playing out in one week, which left me with the deeper mystery: If not La Strega, then who? Or what? Or could it be Sweetwater itself?

Outside, the rose garden had been put to bed for winter, the barbecue pit draped in plastic. I discovered the foundation of the whippet-tipped springhouse that had erupted a decade before. Instead of rebuilding it, La Strega had cemented over the spring. I heard burbling water, and after clearing away dead leaves, I found a pipe jutting from the side of the concrete slab. A right angle sent the pipe into a grate-covered trench that led from the springhouse to the chateau, providing the house’s water supply. There was no supply for the Sweetwater villagers below or for the empty reflection pond, its cement sides crumbling, the scary elements of the heating system corroded.

When I wasn’t snooping I began my penance anew, working through La Strega’s library on Nicky’s behalf but mostly sniffing as I looked at the chair my mother had sat in years before. I also set up a stool in the conservatory because the acoustics made my saw playing sound better than ever. As I coaxed strains from the blade, I imagined them swirling around the room carrying my unspoken proclamation, which I hoped would somehow reach my father beyond the grave.

My other pastime was looking out various windows at my old neighborhood, now quite bedraggled. Eventually local kids appeared at my gate, trios and quartets, perhaps offspring of the children Nicky and I had grown up with, pressing their faces against the iron bars like inmates. These were the homeliest children I had ever seen, covered in rashes and boils, hair falling out in clumps, skin tinged gray instead of a healthy pink. A few of their parents sauntered up. All of them looked unkempt, and I wondered what plague had descended on Sweetwater since I had moved away. Eventually a smattering of hill nonnas, looking older and bent, appeared, but not the four nonnas who had helped make those Saint Garnet necklaces, one of which was tangled at the bottom of a Charlottesville briar patch. The nonnas hovering at my gate made the sign of the cross when I accidentally ruffled the drapes and I thought,
Crap, that sainted bullshit still lingers
.

The Saturday I discovered the whippet room, the buzzer in the pillar by the front gate sounded throughout the house. I looked out and saw a nun standing there, or more likely a novice, judging by her in-training white veil. I was going to ignore her as my predecessor would have, but several of those mangy children ran to her, and at the sweet way she received them, Pharaoh’s heart was softened. I bumbled downstairs, shrugged on one of Radisson’s coats, and went outside.

The children squealed, not
Sister, what’s wrong with
—but “It’s her! It’s Saint Garnet!”

“Yes, it is,” the nun said.

By the time I reached into the little box and pressed open the gate to slip outside, I knew who the nun was: Dee Dee Evangelista.

“Garnet,” she said, eyes moist with nostalgia.

“Hi, Dee Dee.” I looked to see if she was carrying a Betsy Wetsy doll, but she was holding the hand of a little girl who was smiling broadly, her gums as gray as the cloudy-snow sky. I was afraid Dee Dee was going to heft the child and place her in my arms for a healing, but she merely said, “I just wanted to welcome you home.”

“Welcome home!” the children squealed, flocking over to hug my legs and squirm their fingers into my hands. At first, I marveled at the fact that they were not repulsed by my skin, but then, looking at them, I realized my stained flesh was no longer such an anomaly. Three of the old hill nonnas ambled up, their faces covered in sebaceous cysts and warts. “It’s-a her!” They brazenly pushed the children aside, falling on their knees to kiss my hands. I pulled free and yanked the nonnas upright. “Stop that! Stop that right now!”

“Ladies.” Dee Dee nudged them back a few paces and planted herself between them and me. “Don’t crowd her.”

The nonnas were insistent, trying to reach around her to grab my coat, my hair. “But it’s-a Santa della Collina.”

“She return just-a like I knew she would!”

“Help us, Santa Garnet. Please heal-a the bambinos.”

“And us! Please heal-a the old nonnas first!”

Behind them, a black sedan pulled up; the back door popped open and out jumped a priest who wasn’t even wearing a coat. He bolted toward me. “Miss Ferrari! I’m Father Shultz! The new parish priest!”

“What the hell?” I said, overcome by ordination.