It was the perfect time to indoctrinate them about Cardinal Stefanucci. I reminded them how Daddy met Stefanucci at Pearl Harbor, with the ships blowing up and bullets from the Japs whizzing by.
“Bombs over Tokyo!” Dominic yelled triumphantly.
The next morning, we all dressed up as Cardinals. I attached towels to their shoulders with diaper pins. Then I explained that the congregation outside in St. Peter’s square waited for our decision, and they were all praying for the Will of God.
“What’s the Will of God?” Markie asked.
“It’s what God wants.”
“Doesn’t God want everything?”
“I do! I do!” Said Jude.
“Okay,” I said, “Now is the moment of truth. You are the Cardinals who are deciding the fate of the Holy Catholic Church.” I handed out tiny slips of paper to them and gave them each a crayon.
We bowed our heads and I said, “Okay. The person to vote for is Cardinal Stefanucci. Do you want him to be Pope?”
“Yeaay!” they all yelled.
Alrighty, then. Mark an “S” on your ballot.” I drew a big S on the paper. “Like a snake.” All heads bent down, hands furiously scribbling.
“Nucci!” baby Jude blurted. “I do! I do!”
So it was done. “Habemus Papam! I said after counting the folded paper ballots. “Habemus Papam!”
“What’s that mean,” asked Dominic?
“It means, ‘We have a Pope!’”
“Popem! Popem!” Jude exclaimed, bending his knees and bouncing up and down.
So of course we had to make the smoke come out of the chimney so the people in St. Peter’s square would know. We didn’t have a chimney, but we had a magnifying glass under the silverware drawer in the kitchen, where every little rubber band, miscellaneous cork, pencil, and breadcrumb was stored.
Outside on the brick walk I magnified the sun’s rays onto the voting papers. Pretty soon it got so hot the paper burned, smoking black smoke. That got me worrying—maybe we’ve jinxed it with the black smoke. And it’s not a good example to play with matches in front of the little kids, either. But I couldn’t stop myself from burning all the papers with that magical band of sunlight, pushing away all the little hands who wanted to try it too.
We all piled over to the vacant lot, saying “Habemus Papam!” I carried Jude, sucking his thumb. The vacant lot was our favorite hang out, with a small cave covered in rose bushes and bumpy land, bricks here and there, stunted bushes sticking out of the dusty earth and dirt-filled cement rectangles. This wasteland stretched for an entire block. It was where we spent hours on sweaty weekends, adventuring as Swamp Fox.
Now we threw branches into a pile and picked up a stick in each of our hands and ran around this pile. At first we called out “Habemus Papem! Habemus Papem!” Then, because I couldn’t resist, I screamed. So then we were all screaming at the top of our lungs. Big screams. Let-it-all-out screams.
I led them around the pile, “Pretend you’re in a horror film! Scream like they’re just about to get you!” There we were, screaming and screaming! It felt so good to vent. We sounded like Bloody Murder.
But Dominic wasn’t screaming. He huddled over the magnifying glass, trying to start a fire. It was hot and smoggy, and pretty soon a strand of smoke curled up in a wisp above the leaves. It flickered and then immediately expanded into a bigger cloud of grey smoke. I ran over to the fire to stomp it out, but he had grown it on a pile of dry oak leaves and it was already multiplying. I looked around for help, feeling like I was in the dream of a biblical wave on the horizon and how impossible it was, because of my leaden arms and legs, to run away. It was the middle of the day. At the Conway’s house, where I babysat all the time, the lights were out, no car in the driveway.
“Dominic! Help me! Stomp!” We stomped amidst all the screaming, but the dust was being kicked up and the fire was growing.
Then there were sirens everywhere. Mother came running down the block in her apron, making the sign of the cross. Her hands were coated with flour. She could hear us screaming. She could see the smoke. She could hear the fire trucks.
Chapter 12
habemus papam
June 21 – Dear Jesus, I just have a little something to say. I never learn anything when I am spanked into it. And I’m getting too big to be spanked, even if there was a fire. Everybody had their panties in a bunch over the screaming, but that’s what saved us. Someone called the fire department when we first started screaming. When am I going to improve in others’ eyes? Mother says I’m bossy; Clara says I’m selfish; Daddy says I act too much. Please help me to be perfect and pleasing to you, as well as to others. We were just trying to announce that it’s almost Pope time!
We had a Papam, alright, but it wasn’t the Papam we wanted. It was a disaster, a complete, unmitigated disaster, for me and for the Shea family, formerly the church darlings. It went like this: it was a Friday morning, June 21st, and the church was full to brimming. Everyone was there to pray for the election of our pet Cardinal, Francesco Stefanucci. The conclave had been voting for two days, and they already had six ballots.
Monsignor Boyle said Mass. His sermon was predictable: if it’s God’s will, then Cardinal Stefanucci will become Pope. Otherwise, we have to look in our hearts and continue with the work of the Lord. Now that it was down to the wire, I could see both scenarios. The winning: we’d have continued super-star status in the parish, the Pope would be the first Pope to visit Pasadena, and we’d be in all the Catholic newspapers and magazines. We could milk it for years.
But if he lost? Shame to the bones. Humiliating beyond the beyonds. We’d be shunted off to the corners again. The Feeneys would still reign as Best Catholic Family, and Martin Feeney would win the Christmas stamps contest, like he had the past four years. We would still live in the same tumbledown house, which was unbearably messy all the time. Sure, our dad had retired and he didn’t wear Navy uniforms around anymore, but we’d still be forbidden to do all sorts of normal things and I’d have to keep cleaning both bathrooms every Saturday, whether I liked it or not. On top of it all, there would always be the enduring memory of our family’s failed attempt at stardom lurking in the back of everybody’s minds. Whenever they saw any one of us on the playground, or at Mass, the thought would be there. Who did we think we were to dare such glory?
When I thought that Monsignor couldn’t possibly drag out his sermon any more, Father Pierre genuflected onto the altar and climbed up the steps into the sermon booth. Monsignor Boyle turned around to face him. A buzzing rose up from the congregation. I started to blush, even though nothing had happened. Monsignor Boyle held his hand over the microphone until it squeaked and we had to hold our ears. When he turned back to us, he was nodding. As Father Pierre descended the pulpit, Monsignor Boyle spoke, his voice booming through the microphone.
The magnificent expanse of the Roman marble columns stretching the length of the church on either side framed the hopeful faces of the congregation. The dome above our heads seemed to stretch to the heavens, contributing to the picture of our insignificance.
“Habemus Papam!” he said, but no one exhaled. All faces hung onto the silence. I heard Daddy clearing his throat. My eyes fastened on the marble star on the floor in between the pews.
“God’s will be done,” said the familiar Irish brogue of Monsignor Boyle. I looked up as he paused again, his eyes lighting here and there as he made eye contact with the parishioners. He locked his gaze onto Daddy. I could almost make out a staring path in the air between them.
“Giovanni Battista Montini,” he said slowly and clearly, as if we needed to hear it spelled out, “the Archbishop of Milan, is the new Pope of the Roman Catholic Church. He is to be known as Pope Paul the VI.” There was a loud, collective, “Aaaaahhh!” from the congregation and an immediate buzz of voices all whispering together. I felt dizzy. My chest heaved up and down as I gasped for air. My ears were ringing. And then someone right behind me started clapping. Wha
t? Clapping? Everyone in the church followed, all the parishioners and nuns and altar boys, who took the time to come to church that day. A huge ovation. I couldn’t help myself; I started to cry. Real tears came down my cheeks as fast as I wiped them from my face.
“Too bad,” someone whispered a little too loudly, “it wasn’t meant to be.” The voice had a twinge of self-righteousness in it and was coming from just behind me in the pew. I looked over my shoulder. Teresa Feeney! She must have been hoping and praying against Father Stefanucci just as hard as we had been praying for him. Teresa Feeney’s prayers worked!
I had to sit through the rest of the Mass in the front row with Teresa’s gaze boring into my skull—the most humiliating twenty minutes of my life. I thought about the black smoke from the burning ballots, maybe God noticed that. Then there were the lies I told to the class, to Monsignor Boyle, and to the rest of my girlfriends. I wish I could take it all back and clear off my soul once and for all, but to confess it would double my shame. God knew I didn’t really want to become a nun. Maybe He wanted to teach me a lesson.
How could I have believed with all my heart that my fervent wishes would reach the heavens? And be granted? How could we have thought that our unruly and socially inept family deserved any kind of special treatment in this world? Even if Father Stefanucci had been elected Pope, we would never learn to get to church on time, our shoes would always be scuffed, our lunch bags would still be stocked with one peanut butter and jelly sandwich wrapped in wax paper everyday, maybe an apple, and very rarely, two Oreo cookies. We sucked back our food in 30 seconds after we all said grace at supper like a barnyard of turkeys, because if we weren’t fast enough, someone else would get there first. John-the-Blimp would always be the undisputed King of Burps, cassock or no cassock. The twins would move through our lives as The Darlings, the decoys, the two who always attracted the focus, no matter what else was going on. There was no reining us in or teaching us manners or getting us to clean up after ourselves. Maybe it was just too much of a reach, even for God. Maybe we really were unworthy. We were descendants of Adam and Eve, born with original sin. Why should I be surprised? We were stained, damaged goods from the get-go. What was the point of it all?
How could Teresa Feeney look so cool, be so neat, know what to say? How could she be from a family as big as ours and so smart in school but without the mandatory nerd personality to go with it? Our Paul, supposedly brilliant in math and science, wore white shirts that were almost transparent (you could see his right nipple), short sleeves that showed off his bony elbows, white plastic pen holders in his breast pocket with blue ballpoint ink stains everywhere. He smeared his giant boogers on the hallway wall like he was proud of them. Worse than that was, they stayed there for a whole week—nobody noticed them, or if they noticed them, weren’t significantly disgusted to do anything about them. I finally had to clean them off. How could our whole family be so oblivious to common decency?
The very moment Monsignor Boyle said, Habemus Papam, our destiny shifted. We had to finally face it, own up to our origins. Accept ourselves as individuals in the family to which we were born and make the best of it. As parishioners, the seas no longer parted for us as we trailed into Sunday Mass, tardy again. We went back to being an annoying aberration of a Catholic family, distastefully big, living the letter of the law, tolerated but not loved—perhaps an entertaining spectacle (like a circus act) but not an envied one. Monsignor Boyle stretched out our humiliation by giving sermons on every aspect of the new Pope for the next month at Sunday Mass but even the importance of this began to fade.
We had been dazzled by the promise of being chosen and elevated to the heavens, but with Cardinal Stefanucci’s defeat, our wings melted and our eyes opened to the sprawling and unbearable fullness of our own lives.
That moment was an end of something about all of us, even though we didn’t really understand what exactly had happened. Sitting there in the church we couldn’t have understood how Clara’s disastrous story would unfold, a story there was no turning back from, a story that would affect each and every one of us. We couldn’t have foretold that we were indeed mortal; that even famous people of the highest glory in the land could be taken down in a few seconds under the sun that shone on us all, riding in the back of an open car in Dallas.
Our whole world was about to change.
Part 2
july–december, 1963
Chapter 13
bitty
July 1 – Holy Mary Mother of God, I can see nipples on our cat and her stomach sticks out on both sides, really big. She’s waddling now and I’m pretty sure she’s going to have kittens soon. I want to ask you a very childish thing. When is it going to happen? Will you let me be the first one to know?? Please don’t tell Jeannie first.
Clearly my strategy had failed, appealing directly to God. Well, as long as I was breathing in and out, I wasn’t going to continue this losing streak. I had learned my painful lesson. Number one, no more lies. And number two, I had to switch my attention to the Blessed Mother. It was a crossroads moment; I could feel the pivotal change stirring around me. I had to pledge my allegiance to the holy Mother of God and implore her for favors, except when emergency matters required executive decisions from the very top. Jesus probably wouldn’t even notice me on my knees over there in front of her statue; I’d be just one less person tugging at his robes. He’s got enough to do. But the Blessed Mother? To begin with, there are probably way less people clamoring after her. I could feel the instant improvement of my chances with this simple brainstorm. I felt the surge of hope, a residual rush of future glory.
Then one morning, after 6:30 Mass, Daddy took me to Glendale to drop off the ownership papers for a used car he had sold.
The man who answered the door had paint drips all over his pants, overflowing onto his sandals. On the walls of this big room where he worked hung enormous paintings of the insides of flowers, as if he was close enough to be a bee. The paintings were huge, filling up an entire wall, and the colors were magnificent! I could easily imagine myself to be the bee, buzzing over these luscious reds, oranges, yellows, and greens! And also the artist made big decorations out of found things, like ropes and rusted cans that were flattened. He called them “sculptures.” Against an entire wall, car doors that had been smashed up in accidents leaned side by side. He had begun a painting of one of the doors, and it was dusty with a deep purple color; strangely the smashed parts were the most interesting to look at.
I wanted to touch everything I saw. The place was splattered with all the colors of his paintings, with brushes in stained jars, piles of magazines and scraps of metal and torn images from these magazines stuck on the wall here and there. It was a mess, but I didn’t get the instant feeling that I wanted to put everything away. Instead, I had to keep staring at it all. Inside me, electrical impulses were bouncing around, and yet I felt so comfortable here, almost like I could live here. I felt thirsty for what I was feeling, but the thirst had snuck up on me and there I was, standing in the middle of the ocean, parched for more.
All the way back in the car, I chattered about the beautiful paintings. I wanted to do that all day—paint pictures with bright colors and make things.
“Well, Annie,” Daddy interrupted me, “people are attracted to art because it can be beautiful, and the soul craves beauty, but it’s important to remember what’s really important in life. It’s not the physical beauty of a piece of art, which is temporal, it’s the beauty of your soul, which is eternal.”
“I know Daddy, I know! But art can be your work when you’re alive, can’t it?!” I expected him to tell me about the temptations that painting and creating interesting shapes would offer and why it would be bad for my salvation. I couldn’t think of any famous artists, but the artists of the Renaissance made religious paintings that were turned into holy cards by the Catholic Church. Maybe the church needs more of those. If I learned how to make portraits of saints, there would be no temptation danger.
Not like in Hollywood, where unsavory sinners and tempters lurked around every turn. I was willing to give up any ideas I had about being an actor on the spot, if I could just do that.
“It’s difficult to make a living as an artist, Annie,” Daddy said. “People don’t need art. They need food and transportation and schooling. But art is not essential for survival.” I hadn’t thought of this. It was so disappointing what he was saying. “When the economy is on a downturn, you can’t sell your work. People only buy what they really need.”
I felt like screaming. How could something so instantly dazzling be unimportant? This feeling was jumping around everywhere in my body; I was practically trembling with it. It felt more real and essential than the saints themselves. Even the idea of my guardian angel, who followed me around like my shadow pal all my life, receded in my imagination. I was meant to feel like this, wasn’t I? If God hadn’t meant for me to want this, He wouldn’t have made me feel this way.
“I wouldn’t recommend it for you,” Daddy summarized. “Why not think about becoming a secretary? Secretaries can make a good living.”
I thought about the Russian female astronaut who last month became the first woman in space. Aside from wondering why they’re sending people up in spaceships and making such a fuss about it, I was proud of that woman. Because she wanted to go tearing into space in a rocket. That was her idea of a great life, and she stuck with it. At least she got a chance.
We don’t call ourselves House of Bacon for nothing. That Saturday, as I inhaled the smell of bacon fat sizzling on the flat griddle, I heard this high-pitched screechy “meow, meow, meow,” a small, short sound coming from the back porch. It sounded like someone was choking Bitty. I ran out. She was clinging to the screen door, hanging on for dear life by her paws, with a little mouse in her mouth, and out of the mouth of the mouse came this urgent tiny sound that somehow pierced the morning, “Meow, meow, meow!” I pushed open the door, and Bitty put the thing down at my feet. I reached down to pick it up off the cement. Of course I was a Muscle Head for thinking it was a rodent—it was a kitten. The creature was wet and its eyes were sewn shut. Bitty had staggered around the corner so I followed her with this tiny warm lump in my hand.
A Theory of Expanded Love Page 10
