The Confessions of Frances Godwin

by Robert Hellenga

  “Think of that, Paul. Lois was the last person to wipe your ass. Lois the grief counselor. Now she’s dating Jack Banks. Dating! Think of it. And all of a sudden she’s an expert on death: ‘I’ll take care of everything.’

  “‘Then I want you to call Steckley and Son,’ I told her.”

  “‘Steckley and Son?’ she said. ‘I’ve already called Jack. As soon as they get the death certificate they’ll do the removal.’ ‘The ‘removal,’ I said. ‘That’s what they call it,’ she said. ‘Call them back,’ I said. ‘Tell them Steckley and Son are going to handle the arrangements.’

  “I wish you could have seen the expression on her face: ‘But why?’ she kept asking. ‘I already told Jack—Mr. Banks—’ You’d think she was working on commission.”

  I could almost feel Paul’s presence, palpable in the bedroom. I lay down beside him and started to run my hands over him, over what was left of him. He was like a spring that has lost its resilience.

  The real grief came later. That night. After the removal. Camilla had barked furiously at Frank Steckley and his assistant, and I’d had to put her leash on and keep her in the living room while they wrapped up the body and carried it down to the van. I told them they could use the elevator, but they wrapped Paul up in some kind of contraption and slid him down the stairs. I followed the van to the funeral home. After making the arrangements for cremation; after buying a burial plot in Hope Cemetery, one that was big enough to hold two urns; after gathering some material for the obituary—all in one afternoon—I walked through the apartment touching things: Paul’s toothbrush, his books, a copy of the National Endowment for the Humanities application that was still on his desk.

  In the evening Father Viglietti from Saint Clement’s came over and sat with me for a while. He didn’t come at me with promises and assurances about God’s plan. He wasn’t that kind of priest. He just let me cry. He brought a bottle of good wine, which we drank as we ate the cold chicken and salad that Lois had brought over earlier.

  My friendship with Father Viglietti was based on Latin, and on our work together, and on the shared conviction that, appearances to the contrary, life was not meaningless, though his conviction took a more highly articulated shape than mine, one shaped by the church year and by something more mysterious. He was a religious priest and answered to the provincial of the Clementine order, not to the arch-conservative Bishop of Peoria, and while this created a certain amount of friction, it also gave him a certain amount of freedom.

  We usually spoke Latin to each other, but that night we spoke English.

  “Tell me about Paul’s death,” he said. I told him about Lois, and he laughed.

  “I think you could call it a good death.”

  “Not good for me,” I said.

  “It’s Faulkner’s birthday today,” he said.

  “So?” I said. “Faulkner? It was Paul who loved Faulkner. I loved Hemingway.”

  “How’s the Catullus coming?”

  I’d been working, off and on for years, on a translation of Catullus. I shrugged. “Slowly.”

  ‘You should get back to it,” he said.

  “Something to do now that I’m a widow? I gave them ‘Passer, deliciae’ this morning,” I said. “Now it seems like it was weeks ago. And Jason Steckley asked if she was letting the bird nibble on her clitoris.”

  “That must have livened things up.”

  “It stopped everybody cold.”

  “Frances, I’m going to take your classes for the rest of the week.”

  “You can do that?”

  “It’s a done deal.”

  “I mean take time off.”

  “I can do whatever I want.”

  “You don’t have to ask the bishop?”

  “I answer to the provincial, not the bishop.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Are you up for the Battle of Cannae in Roman Civ.? Second Punic War. Not the decisive battle, but the most interesting, the one where Hannibal ties brush to the horns of the oxen, sets the brush on fire, and stampedes the oxen through the Roman camp?”

  “We’ll get through it,” he said.

  I opened my Oxford Catullus. Well worn. Number five. “‘Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus.’ Let us live, Lesbia, and love. The students are supposed to translate the whole thing for tomorrow. Make them conjugate vivamus and amemus out loud,” I said. “And they probably won’t recognize assis as the genitive.”

  “The ‘genitive of price or value,’” he said.

  “Very good, Father,” I said. “It’s too sad, isn’t it. Soles occidere. The sun sets every evening and comes up again in the morning, but once our sun sets, it’ll never rise again. Paul’s sun won’t be coming up in the morning.”

  “I want you to remember something, Frances. If your life isn’t meaningful right now, it’s not going to become meaningful by being prolonged forever.”

  “Then what’s the point of heaven?” I said.

  “I said ‘if your life isn’t meaningful right now,’” he said.

  “Nothing means anything right now,” I said.

  “If nothing means anything,” he said, “you wouldn’t be grieving. Do you remember the would-be disciple who wants to follow Christ, but he wants to bury his father first?”

  “Let the dead bury the dead,” I said.

  “Right. But why such a harsh rejoinder?”

  “I’m sure it’s a metaphor for getting your affairs in order.”

  “Of course it is,” he said, “but getting your affairs in order and burying your father are two different orders of magnitude.”

  “Maybe Our Lord just wanted to make himself disagreeable. That’s not surprising.”

  Father Viglietti laughed. “‘Our Lord,’” he agreed, “could be very disagreeable. But in this case I think he recognized that the man was at a crucial point and wanted to shock him. The man was at the threshold of a new and abundant life. We all reach this point. We have to go forward or go back.”

  “Do you think I’ve reached that point, Father?”

  “Frances, I do.”

  “It doesn’t feel like it. I mean it doesn’t feel like I’m at the threshold of a new and abundant life.”

  “Of course not,” he said. “It never does.”

  That night I took Camilla out, but instead of walking her along the tracks down to Berrien Street and then over to Prairie, I stopped in the little park by the depot and let her off the leash—for the first time. I didn’t know if she’d run away or not, but I was going to find out. If she wanted to run off, I thought, I’d let her go. If she wanted to stay, she’d come back. She ran off toward the depot, stuck her nose in a garbage can, headed for the tracks, then turned around and ran like the wind, ran as if she hadn’t run in ages, and she hadn’t. She ran to the edge of the park, Seminary Street, then back to the depot, then in a circle along the parking lot, down to the Girl Scout garden on the edge of Mulberry, past the car rental place, then completed the circle and repeated it three or four times—I lost count—before coming back to me and flopping herself down. I was crying without knowing it. I buried my face in her neck, dried my tears, and we walked home off leash. “Cammy,” I said, “you’re a good dog. You know that? You’re a very good dog, canis optima.”

  And she was a good dog. She sat with me while I sorted Paul’s clothes out and put them in banker’s boxes for the Salvation Army. I wasn’t going to be one of those widows who kept sniffing their husbands’ clothes for a year or two. The only thing I couldn’t part with was Paul’s “Italian” suit, which as far as I know is still hanging in the very back of our closet, though it’s become invisible. Paul, I believe, was cremated in his pajamas. That doesn’t seem quite right, but I can’t really remember. It all happened off stage. And she sat with me while I sorted through Paul’s papers, which also went into banker’s boxes. And she stood next to me at the semiprivate commitment ceremony in Hope Cemetery, while two of Paul’s colleagues read, as per Paul’s request, Browning’s “Th
e Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church,” and Yeats’s “Long-Legged Fly.” And at the apartment afterward, where everyone came for drinks, she was a good hostess. Greeting everyone. Mingling with the guests. Making everyone comfortable.

  Stella was not at the service. How much can you forgive? How many times? And the worst thing was: No one asked about her. Men and women who’d known her since she was a baby. Not a word. And I understood this. There’s enough grief, they were thinking, without mentioning Stella’s absence. But it was embarrassing.

  6

  Milwaukee (February–March 1997)

  Stella called at the beginning of February. I hadn’t had any contact with her since she’d driven off in Jimmy’s truck in June. I hadn’t been able to reach her to tell her that her father had died, had been reduced to ashes, which had been buried in Hope Cemetery. And I could hardly contain my anger. It was the only feeling I could grab onto to steady myself. “Your father died and you couldn’t give me a call? You couldn’t pick up the phone?”

  “Ma,” she said, “I’m sorry. It’s just . . .”

  “I called Jimmy’s uncle and asked him to give you the message. Did he tell you? Did he tell you that Pa was dead? He told me to leave a message at TruckStopUSA in Ottawa. I called and talked to the manager. She said she’d give you the message.”

  “Ma,” she said, “I’m sorry.”

  “I found out your schedule, sort of. I drove up to TruckStopUSA on Christmas Day because I thought I could catch you. I ate Christmas dinner with the manager, Ruthy, the one with the long red hair. I didn’t realize she’s your pal. Turkey breast and mashed potatoes and gravy. You know what she told me? She told me Jimmy wants you to get a boob job, she told me he wants you to get stitched up tighter. Down there, you know.”

  “Ma, Jimmy’s none of your business.”

  Stella and Jimmy were hauling produce for Jimmy’s uncle and Stella wanted me to invest in a truck, a White Freightliner Century, she explained, with a small box sleeper, 470 horsepower, dual 150-gallon tanks, all aluminum wheels, engine brake, and more than a million miles on the odometer. Most of this was lost on me, except the million miles on the odometer. A million miles. That was like a light year, beyond comprehension.

  Two weeks later I drove up to Milwaukee, east into bright sunlight, the weather cold, twenty degrees, but clear. Steep hills of dirty snow marked the entrances and exits. I had no intention of “investing” in a truck with a million miles on the odometer, but I wanted to see Stella.

  On the way I listened to a cassette, Paul reading Shakespeare, then switched to Wisconsin Public Radio.

  I hadn’t been to Milwaukee in years. Paul and I had gone up a couple of times, the first time just to have a look-see, the second time when Paul gave a talk at UW Milwaukee. We stayed in the Knickerbocker Hotel, near the lake, and ate at Karl Ratzsch’s. And Mader’s.

  I was wondering if I needed therapy. I was walking into the wind. I had nothing to hang on to. I got off the expressway too early and drove past a big cemetery. The thought that nothing will last was comforting. I looked forward to a time when I’d be past all this. All this what? Stella, and Jimmy too. It was the thought that Stella was unhappy that bent my mind backward. Maybe Paul should have let Jimmy drive the stupid car. It was still sitting in the garage. Lois had helped me get the canvas tarp back in place so I wouldn’t have to look at it every time I came home.

  I found 409 North Broadway—Gagliano Bros. Produce—in the middle of the market. Broad sloping sidewalks were covered by enormous black awnings. The sidewalks were crowded. The market was loud; I recognized some of the languages—Italian, Sicilian maybe, Spanish, Yiddish, Polish—but not all of them. It was hard to hear over the noise of the two-wheelers and the metal wheels of the hand trucks. The market was smelly—garbage lined the high gutters—and vulgar: men in heavy coats shouted curses as they unloaded the trucks backed up to the sidewalk. It was the sort of “real life” that Paul loved. The men were dark, and handsome. Their hair was blue-black, but I was looking for a red-headed Italian. Tommy Gagliano, aka Tommy Gagg. I found him in his office in what looked like an el station up above the warehouse, running from one side to the other.

  He saw me at the same time, opened the door at the top of the stairs and shouted, “You looking for me?”

  “Are you Tommy Gagliano?”

  “Benvenuto,” he said. “Stella dice che parli italiano molto bene,” Then he repeated himself in English, just in case: “Stella says you speak good Italian.”

  “Si.”

  “Vieni.” He waved me up and we continued in Italian for a while. “You’ve never seen a red-headed Italian before?” he said as I climbed the stairs. “Testarossa! Like the car,” he said. “Ferrari Testarossa,” he explained. “Call me Tommy. I think we’re going to be friends.”

  “Is that a car?” I asked. “Testarossa?”

  He laughed. “Is that a car?” he said in English. “You’re kidding me.”

  I shook my head. I was glad I’d had my hair styled. I wasn’t really dressing my age, but I didn’t care. I was wearing faded jeans and a white blouse. Almost no makeup.

  “A lot of southern Italians have red hair,” he said. “From the Normans, the French. In the Middle Ages.”

  “Southern Italian,” I said. Even the chest hairs that spilled out of his open collar were red, or reddish.

  His face was full of freckles and sunshine, his arms, too.

  We sat in the office for a while, trying to find common ground. He’d never been north of Rome and I’d never been south of Rome. And by Rome we meant two different cities. My Rome was the climax of the two great foundational stories of Western civilization—the story of the Roman Empire and the story of Christianity. His Rome was the old produce market on via Ostiense, where he’d gone with his grandfather to peddle bergamot oranges, and the Baths of Caracalla, where he and his sister had seen Aïda performed with elephants. Trastevere we had in common. His mother’s brother had once lived in a lovely apartment on via della Lungaretta, near Santa Maria in Trastevere, where I’d made my last confession, where I’d lived free from sin for more than two weeks. Trastevere was where I’d gotten pregnant with Stella. But these details I kept to myself.

  “Stella already called from the edge of town,” he said, looking at his watch. “Another fifteen minutes. She’s very reliable. Always got the log book up to date. She’s got a good head on her.” He looked at his watch. “We can wait on the street.”

  The “street”—the market—was his life. “It all depends on trust,” he explained. “No time for written contracts. It’s self-regulating. Sort of like the sciences. You have to be able to replicate your results. Or others do. You don’t keep your word, nobody’s going to do business with you anymore. And yet it happens all the time. People lie, cheat. But they always claim there’s a reason, a special exception. No one will ever say, I don’t give a damn what’s right. I’m just going to do what I want. No, everybody appeals to a higher court.

  “We mostly do business with the chain stores. Roundy’s, Red Owl, Trader Joe’s, Safeway, Kroger. But I got a soft spot for mom-and-pop corner groceries. Not many left. I charge them same as I charge the chains. Otherwise how they going to compete? That was my dad’s business—a hamper of beans here and a bushel of cukes, ten baskets of tomatoes . . .

  “Now it’s all changed. Strawberries. They come into O’Hare on the same day they’re picked. Flying Tiger Express. I’m the biggest importer in the Midwest. Bigger than Becker in Detroit; bigger than LaMantia in Chicago.”

  “Good for you,” I said.

  He laughed. “Sorry.”

  “Who eats all the celery?” I asked, pointing at two men unloading crates of celery that were coming down a roller out of the back of a straight truck, covered with ice.

  “Celery?” he said. “Italians consider celery to be primarily an herb, and use it, with carrot and onion, in the battuto, the mixture of chopped herbs. The French call it a mirepoix
.”

  “But there’s so much of it.”

  We continued the conversation over coffee in Nachmann’s Market Bar on the corner. The coffee was brought by Julius Nachmann’s daughter, who had one brown eye and one that was half-brown and half-green.

  “So you want to buy a truck?” Tommy said.

  “Not especially.”

  “Neanch io,” he said. Me neither.

  “What do you know about the truck? Other than it’s got over a million miles on the odometer?”

  “The truck is all right. The truck isn’t the problem.”

  “What is the problem?” It was a delicate subject, and we tiptoed around it while we waited.

  “I’m willing to help Jimmy,” he said, “but I don’t want him living in my house, if you know what I mean. I keep thinking he’ll step up, give me a hand with the business, I was hoping . . . He says that’s what he wants, but I can’t get him to spend more than a day or two in the office. He don’t want to learn. What I’m hoping is that your daughter, your wonderful daughter, can turn things around for him. Maybe it’ll happen, maybe it won’t. Stranger things have happened. She is very reliable. She’s where she says she’s going to be. She calls when the truck is loaded. She calls from the edge of town. I don’t have to wonder. She’s lots of fun.”

  I hardly recognized the woman he was describing. “But it would be strange?” I asked.

  “So I can see setting them up with a truck, maybe. Provided Stella’s part of the package. But that’s as far as I can go for Jimmy. I did the best I could after my brother died. He’s a nice kid, lots of fun, good at games. He even learned to play cricket. You can see the fields—they call them ‘pitches’—three of them, from my apartment, down by the lake. I don’t know how he did it because it’s so complicated and he lacks patience. Can’t wait for anything. Besides, they weren’t his kind of people. He did some shoplifting as a kid, nothing too much, got off with warnings. Not till the assault and battery.