A Kiss Under the Christmas Lights

by Peggy Jaeger

  Which, I kept asking myself, was worse? His initiation of the kiss or my response to it?

  We were both culpable for our actions, so I couldn’t find a satisfying answer to the question.

  I don’t have any memory of finishing up the exam. I could have failed and gone down in accounting flames, or sailed through it with a perfect score, for all I knew.

  Somehow I made it back home after the testing finished for the day and—thank you, Jesus—the house was empty. Daddy, I knew, was at work, and since this was Monday, Mama and Nonna were at the nursing home visiting Uncle Vito, Nonna’s older brother.

  I had the house to myself for at least another hour. There was no way I would have held up to Mama’s scrutiny or Nonna’s sixth sense had they been home when I arrived. They would have descended on me like hungry lions on prey—mercilessly—sucking my bones dry of any and all information, because they would have known something out of the ordinary had happened to me. Something monumental and soul changing. Something I didn’t want to share. With anyone. Ever.

  I should have felt unclean, dirty, hellbound.

  Why I didn’t was unsettling, to say the least.

  When Tim Santini’s mouth had claimed mine, I’d responded like I’d never done before to any other kiss. I’d quite simply lost my mind of all sensible function when our lips met and mated.

  Of course, I’d been kissed before. Even an overprotected twenty-four-year-old Italian girl and baby of the family who still lived at home with her parents, had found occasions to be kissed.

  I’d been kissed well, and not so well.

  I’d been kissed by teenaged boys who were nervous, unsure, and sloppy.

  I’d been kissed by grown men who were experienced, cocky, and rehearsed.

  But never—never—had I been kissed like Tim kissed me. In his arms I’d felt wanted, cherished, desired. The sense that I knew the taste of him as well as I knew the taste of Mama’s cooking was overwhelming.

  Our mouths and our bodies seemed to be forged for one another, two halves making a whole. Like red sauce and pasta. Cannoli shells and ricotta cheese.

  It was a good thing we were out in the open with scores of people shuffling past us, because if we’d been alone, I can’t really say with any certainty we wouldn’t have been buck naked and having mind-blowing sex.

  Being held by him was perfection, felt meant to be, mysterious and familiar all at the same time.

  But it couldn’t be familiar. I hadn’t known he existed until two days ago. And much more importantly, we were banned from being together.

  Unlike Eve, I knew what awaited me if I succumbed to my desires. I knew what to expect by giving into the temptation of the proverbial apple, and I didn’t want to wind up in hell for all eternity.

  So however much Tim Santini’s kiss seemed right to me, it was wrong in an incalculable number of ways, and there was only one way a good little Italian girl who’d sinned could right a wrong.

  I needed to confess.

  It was the only way I knew my conscience could be absolved.

  ****

  The trek twenty blocks away and across town from my house to a church not my own was slow moving due to the holiday crunch of people out on the streets and the rush-hour time frame. But I had to make it. There was no way I could go to St. Rita’s and confess. Fr. Mario knew my voice since he’d known me from birth. The man had baptized me, for goodness’ sake. Other than my family, he was the most recognizable, most consistent person in my life.

  And what could I say to him?

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been one week since my last confession, and today I played tonsil hockey with the guy who was sent to replace you.”

  Yeah, like that was ever gonna happen.

  No, my only option was to go to another church where I wasn’t known.

  The interior of the Church of the Immaculate Conception was almost identical to St. Rita’s since it hailed from the same era. The difference was in the size and scope. St. Rita’s is more of a neighborhood parish, where Immaculate Conception is more of a borough church and as such, is three times the size. Like St. Rita’s, the church was decked out for Christmas.

  Confession was listed on the church’s announcement board as every day from 8-8:30 a.m., 4-5:30 p.m., and Saturdays from 2-4 p.m.

  It was almost five thirty now, and I was behind one elderly woman sitting in the waiting pew, knitting. Three parishioners had gone into the confessional booth so far, and with any luck, I would be the last one in and then be on my way back home in time to sit down to dinner.

  Absolved.

  Even though I didn’t know anyone associated with this parish, I’d donned a sort of disguise before I left the house. I’d taken one of Nonna’s endless supply of black widow’s shawls and draped it over my head, covering my hair and wrapping it snugly around my neck. How she wore these things mystified me. The material was coarse and stiff and unbearably hot. I was sweating just sitting and waiting in the pew. I’d put on an old, knee-length coat I found in the back of the hall closet. I couldn’t remember who it belonged to, but it didn’t matter, because it offered me a cloak of unrecognizability.

  The confessional opened, and an elderly, wizened, tiny bald man shuffled out. He was wearing an old horsehair coat, fashionable when Nonna was a young bride, and held a fedora with a cut-to-size peacock feather stuck in the brim, in his hands.

  The knitter stood when he came out and met up with him at the end of the pew. With her arm linked through his, they tottered down the center aisle and to the back of church, each leaning on the other for support.

  My little Italian-girl romantic heart sighed as I went into the now-empty confessional booth.

  The privacy screen slid open, and the priest said, “Good evening.”

  There was something slightly recognizable in the deep, hushed voice, but I couldn’t place it.

  “Good evening, Father.”

  A beat of heavy silence echoed in the small cubicle.

  “Do you have something to confess, my child?”

  “Uh, yes, Father, I do.”

  “Go ahead, please.”

  Again, a little note of familiarity shot through me.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been a week since my last confession.”

  I stopped. While I knew I had to confess what I’d done, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to say it delicately. I hadn’t gotten this far in my thinking while I’d been waiting. How do you confess carnal thoughts and actions about a priest to a brother priest?

  “Um,” I said, trying to stall for time. “I, uh, took the Lord’s name in vain twice in anger. I had disrespectful thoughts about my grandmother.”

  I stopped and chewed on my bottom lip.

  “Go on, Gia,” the voice said. “I’m listening.”

  Holy macaroni.

  “Father Mario?” I screeched, finally putting a person to the voice.

  “Lower your voice, child,” he said in the same modulated, nap-inducing tone he uses at mass.

  “What are you doing here?” I whisper-shrieked, my stomach muscles shaking like a pair of maracas.

  “Fr. Duncan is out with a broken leg. I’m assisting his parish for a few weeks.”

  “Oh.” So much for my attempt at remaining incognito.

  Gesu.

  “Child, why are you here at confession instead of St. Rita’s?” he asked in the next breath, suspicion dripping from his subdued voice.

  I was saved by God’s intervention: my cell phone blasted an instrumental version of “Mama Said.” Guess whose ring tone?

  “Oops, forgive me, Father. I’ve got to take this.”

  I bolted from the confessional with the sound of Fr. Mario’s voice chastising me at my back and straight into the arms of a fully cassocked Fr. Santini.

  Could this day get any worse?

  Braced between his outstretched hands, I gaped at him, utterly astounded and feeling like the universe was p
lotting against me for some heinous wrong I’d committed against humanity.

  His hands were firm, and his grip strong around my arms, but I was filled with indignation and pent-up humiliation, so when I shoved them off me with my free hand, he let them fall to his sides.

  He stood, rooted, in front of me, a quizzical squint in his gorgeous eyes, his full lips pointing downward at the corners.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. His voice was quiet and low, his tone reverential since he was in the house of the Lord.

  My phone knew no such veneration for the location and continued its loud blaring ring, now echoing up to the rafters in the empty church. I hit the play icon and then whispered, “Hold on, Mama.” My gaze never broke from his.

  Santini waited, his hands folded in front of him, shoulders relaxed, an air of quiet internal reflection so in contrast to the tsunami of emotions rolling through me that I wanted to hit him.

  Hard.

  I didn’t, though. Couldn’t.

  He repeated his question, while Mama’s voice cackled from the speaker.

  “Gia? Gia? What’s going on?”

  I nodded to the man I’d almost had public sex with only hours before, and without another look at him, bolted out the back door of the church.

  Once out on Seventh Avenue, I took a huge breath and said into my phone, “Sorry. I couldn’t talk.”

  “Gia baby, where are you?” Mama asked, her voice filled with tears.

  Chloe was a master deflector growing up and had taught me some very worthwhile tricks for dealing with our parents when they asked questions we didn’t want to answer. I used one of them now.

  “Why? Where are you? What’s wrong?” I asked, not answering her question.

  “Oh, baby, I’m at the home. Uncle Vito”—sob, sob—“he’s not too long for this world.”

  She sniffled again, and Nonna’s voice echoed in the background. “Fermati, Francesca. Stop crying.”

  “Mama.” Even though Uncle Vito was basically brain-fried from lack of oxygen during his heart attack and had an annoying habit of flashing his naked and shriveled old-man private parts at everyone who came into his room, he was still family.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.” I put my hand up to hail a cab. “I’m getting a taxi right now.”

  “Okay, baby,” she said with a huge sob following. “Can you call Chloe?” Sniff, sniff.

  I told her I would.

  Twenty minutes later, the cab dropped me off at St. Michael the Archangel Long-Term Nursing Facility for the Sick and Dying, or as my family simply called it, the home.

  I signed the visitor book in the lobby, nodded at the fully habited nun who served as the front-desk guard dog, and took the elevator to the third floor where Uncle Vito had spent the last five of his ninety-six years, after he’d succumbed to a massive coronary at the race track, where, paradoxically, he’d been the trifecta winner of the day.

  The one hundred and forty-seven thousand dollars he’d won had paid for one night’s stay in the coronary care unit after he was admitted.

  Medicare took care of the rest.

  Even if I hadn’t known which room was my great-uncle’s, I would have found it the moment I exited the elevator. The sound of wailing and keening instinctively drew me like a moth to a lit candle. There was literally a throng of people, young and old, standing outside his room. Some were crying openly, others whimpering. Most had their heads bowed, whether in prayer or something else, and all clasped rosary beads in their hands. I spotted Mama in the center of the crowd, and she shoved her way over to me.

  “Gia baby.” She wound her arms around my waist and planted her head on my shoulder. “It’s almost time.”

  “Mama, what happened? I thought Uncle Vito was stable.”

  “The doctor thinks he had a stroke. A big one. He’s not gonna come out of this, baby.” She dabbed at her dripping nose with an Italian lace handkerchief I recognized as Nonna’s.

  I patted her back, feeling useless, as she sobbed against me. I held her and glanced around, realizing how long it had been since I’d visited my great-uncle. The last time I was in this building, the staff had decorated the walls with autumn leaves and paper pumpkins. Today, cut-out snowflakes and cardboard jingle bells filled the walls.

  Mama, who’d had her hands clasped around my waist, suddenly pulled back, her gaze drifting over my torso.

  “Why are you wearing my old coat?” She lifted her gaze to where I’d wrapped Nonna’s headscarf around my neck. With her index finger and thumb, she pinched the material and rubbed it. “And this is Nonna’s. Why do you have it?”

  This was penance for trying to disguise myself. I hadn’t even thought about what I was wearing when I’d hailed the cab to get to the home.

  “Gia?” Mama’s pencil-thin eyebrows pulled into a flat line, meeting in the center of her forehead.

  God smiles on fools and idiots, though, because I was saved from having to respond when my Great-Uncle Alberto, Nonna’s youngest brother, announced, “The padre is here.”

  As a unit, every head turned toward the elevator where—God help me—Fr. Mario alighted, ecumenically garbed in his supreme unction cassock, complete with a crucifix dropped around his neck and a purple stole across his shoulders draped down over his torso like a scarf, signifying to every Catholic in the know he was visiting a sick parishioner.

  Again, I swear if I didn’t have bad luck, I’d have no luck, because the first person his eyes focused on was me.

  Like the lyrics in an old 1950s song, I had nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide.

  His face was pinched and tight, like he needed to have a good bowel movement sometime soon. He glared at me while making his way over to where I was still holding Mama.

  I said a silent prayer to St. Jude Thaddeus, the patron saint of lost causes, for help. The last thing I needed was for Fr. Mario to question me about my church-confession defection in front of almost my entire living family.

  St. Jude heard my plea and yanked Mama from my arms and toward the good father.

  Thanking him profusely for coming on such short notice, she guided him to the room Uncle Vito had called home, lo these many years.

  I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding and leaned up against a wall.

  The sound of sobbing had almost turned to white noise for me when a sudden loud cry careened through the hallway, followed by copious shouts and wails.

  I took this to mean Uncle Vito had left us for his heavenly reward, verified when a nun wearing a nursing cap in place of her wimple and a white apron over her habit, exited his room, her hands together in prayer, her lips moving silently.

  The thing about Italians is, no matter how much we fight, argue, or don’t speak to one another for decades, when someone leaves this world, we mourn.

  And we mourn big.

  Uncle Vito’s little corner of the world got much smaller in the next few minutes as most of the relatives present packed into his room like a tin of fresh flash-frozen sardines. The family collectively made the sign of the cross with Fr. Mario leading the way.

  After he said a solemn prayer for Vito’s soul—he truly was good at his vocation, despite his perpetual, grumpy demeanor—the women in the room took turns kissing Vito’s cheek.

  There are some traditions common to Catholics and Italians I love. Big weddings, even bigger baptisms, Sunday-after-church family dinners, families all living within walking distance of one another, homemade pasta and red sauce.

  These things fill me with happiness and joy.

  The one tradition and practice I absolutely hate with every ounce of my being is the l’addio bacio, the kiss good-bye. This barbaric ritual of kissing a dead person on the lips or the cheek is just too icky for me and always has been since Nonna made me kiss Nonno when he passed on.

  The doctors said my grandfather died from a failed heart. My daddy swore the man had been browbeaten to death by his wife.

  “Fifty-plus years of
marriage to the vecchia strega (old witch, Chloe translated for me) and he finally gave up and gave in. God rest his soul.”

  Nonno’s was the first family death I can remember, and at D’Pierreli’s Funeral Parlor, Nonna had taken my shaking hand and brought me up to the casket.

  “Kiss him good-bye,” she commanded.

  I remember I stared down at the coffin, at this figure who looked nothing like my old and gray grandfather, and a sudden uncontrollable urge to pee shot through me. This always happened when I got scared as a kid.

  Nonno’s eyes were closed, his cheeks had what looked like his wife’s face powder across them, and his lips were an unnatural deep pink tone, not the blue-tinged, oxygen-depleted color I was used to seeing. From the corners of his mouth, I spied two strings, which I later learned from Chloe were thread to keep his mouth sewn shut.

  “Go on,” Nonna insisted.

  I swear I was going to wet my pants any second, so to get this over with, I leaned into the casket, scrunched my eyes tightly closed, puckered my lips, and kissed him somewhere in the vicinity of his right ear.

  At just that second, the first trickle of warm, sticky urine dropped into my underpants. I made a mad dash to the bathroom, Chloe following behind.

  So when I tell you I hate the l’addio bacio tradition with a passion, you can believe me.

  I was able to avoid kissing Uncle Vito due to the large number of people present in his room. I simply got lost in the crowd and just pretended I’d kissed him when in reality I never even got close to the bed.

  I also managed to avoid getting cornered by Fr. Mario by volunteering to escort Nonna home while my mother and father dealt with the necessary paperwork for the nursing home and the funeral parlor. I grabbed Nonna’s arm and hustled her into the elevator, all the while feeling Fr. Mario’s intense, distrustful stare burning through my back.

  In the cab ride home, Nonna was silent. I sat next to her, her withered, aged hand woven into mine, and noticed how cold it was without her gloves. I tried to rub some warmth into it with my fingers and got a silent squeeze for my efforts.