We got a die-cast metal toy car for Jude. In the end Rosie chose a Lincoln Continental because she liked the creamy green color.
It was already lunchtime, so I walked Rosie by the hand to the Mess Hall, where the smell of hamburgers, chocolate shakes, and French fries was almost unbearable. Steam wafted up from the stainless steel containers full of food as customers inched along with their trays. The lines were long. Mother grabbed a high chair for Jude and commandeered a group of tables. We sat waiting while Daddy and Paul went up to the counter and ordered for all of us.
I was so hungry, my mouth was watering and I had to keep swallowing my spit. We sat at the empty table looking at each other. John-the-Blimp couldn’t just sit there, he had to swat Bartholomew on the back of the head and flick Dominic’s ears. All three of them ended up having an arm wrestle (which of course John-the-Blimp won). The twins both kicked out their legs repeatedly under the table to the point that they were kind of moving in unison from the shoulder up. It was all you could see of them, since they were so short. Luke got a pen from Mother’s purse and was drawing on a napkin. Mother quietly asked Madcap to deal with the baby while she went to the restroom.
Me and Jeannie played this game where you take all the stuff on the table, the salt and pepper shaker, the sugar packets, ketchup and silverware and arrange them in the middle, then you sort of push back, all the while looking at what you’ve done, like you’ve just made a painting and you say, “Your move.” Then she moves those things around and says something like, “Gotcha.” And you say, “Oh I didn’t see that! Good move.” And then you change something small and give her the next move. Like that. All the while studying the pieces intently. Pretty soon everyone else is looking at what you’re doing, trying to figure out what the game is all about. But there are no rules, so the joke is on them.
At last Daddy and Paul carried four trays full of burgers, fries, and shakes to the table. We tore off the wrappers and fell silent as we wolfed down our burgers and inhaled our fries. I was breathless afterwards, still hungry even after my shake.
“The cook said, ‘How many burgers?’” Daddy recounted to us proudly, “‘What have you got, a team?’ So I said, ‘My own private mess hall.’ Heh heh heh,” he concluded. Then he looked around. “Where’s your mother?”
“She’s in the restroom,” I said. It had been a while since she had excused herself from the table. We were all finished and her burger was still sitting there. I wanted the fries. Madcap was trying to wipe Jude’s face; he had ketchup and mustard all over, and he hated his face being wiped, so he was shaking his head side to side as she tried to dab with a wet napkin. Daddy said, “Annie, can you go check up on your mother?”
“Sure, Dad.” I was glad he didn’t ask Jeannie. I am older. He pointed to the sign that said, “Restrooms.”
When I pushed open the door, I thought Mom would at least be washing her hands by now, but she wasn’t. I bent over and looked under the doors. Her shoes were there under the last stall.
“Mom? It’s Annie. We’re wondering why you’re taking so long. Daddy sent me in.”
“Annie, can you do me a favor, honey?”
“Sure, Mom.” I heard some fumbling in the stall.
“I’ll get you a quarter. Do you see a box on the wall there?”
“Yeah, Mom. I know what it’s for.”
“Can you get me a sanitary napkin?”
“Sure, Mom.”
“Here’s the quarter.” I saw her hands come out under the stall, holding a quarter. I took it and went to the machine, inserted the quarter, and turned the knob. The machine clinked, dropping two dimes in the square change cubby. At the same time, a plastic package with a thick napkin fell into the rectangular area at the bottom of the machine. I grabbed it.
“Here’s the napkin, Mom.” I handed it to her under the door. Was Mom having her period while she’s pregnant?
“Thanks. I think I’ll need another.” Her hands appeared under the stall once again.
Another one? Wow, she must have heavy periods.
“Are you having your period, Mom?” As soon as I said it I felt ashamed to have dared ask her such a personal question. She didn’t answer. I felt so embarrassed. What an idiot I am! Geeze. Shut up, Annie. Of course she’s having her period.
When Mother finally emerged from the stall, the color had drained out of her face. As she washed her hands, I had to stare at her. Something about the way she looked made me feel strange. She seemed sad and vulnerable, and I don’t remember ever noticing that about her. Looking at her, I felt afraid.
“I’ll be okay, sweetheart,” she said, as if reading my mind. But she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at herself in the mirror. She held onto the side of the sink with both hands, bent her knees, and sat down on the floor. Her feet were in front of her and her knees bent so I kind of saw under her dress before she had the chance to drop her knees in front of her.
“Can you get your father, Annie? Just go get him, please.” I pushed the door open and ran out to him as fast as I could.
“Daddy, Daddy!” I yelled from across the large cafeteria. I waved my arm in a “C’mere” gesture. “Hurry!” Daddy dropped his burger and we ran together, dodging the tables and chairs back to the hallway. I stood at the door to the ladies’ room and pushed it open for him. He went right in.
He took his keys out of his pocket and handed them to me. Then he lifted Mother off the floor and held her in his arms.
“Go up to the cashier at the cafeteria and ask for a nurse,” he commanded me. “Tell her it’s an emergency. Give the keys to Paul. He knows where the car is parked.”
Later, we didn’t go back to the store like we had originally planned. Things had changed. We waited around in the commissary while Mother and Daddy were at the infirmary.
Then Daddy drove the Volkswagen with Mother in the front seat, and Paul took the Rambler home instead of Daddy. There was no explanation as to the change of plans. It was quiet in the car. Creepy quiet, like we were all jammed in a dark closet where the only light was through a crack at the bottom of the door. Spiders were silently weaving their webs around us. Hungry rats waited in the corners for all of us to fall asleep so they could start eating our toes. We tried to keep as still as possible so nothing worse would happen.
No one else knew what I saw. What I kept seeing. The dread I was feeling. As if a black widow had just climbed up on my knee and was ready to sting me with her poison. I kept remembering the blood on the floor. I have never seen Mother cry before, but I know she was crying because her cheeks were wet. Sometimes Daddy reached his arm across to her and touched her face. She didn’t say one single thing the whole ride back.
Then, instead of driving home, Daddy stopped at Huntington Memorial Hospital. He got out of the car and went into the hospital with Mother still in the front seat. Some guys in white outfits came out with a wheelchair and Mother got down off the front seat and sat in the wheelchair. She tried to hide the blood, but the back of her dress was stained with it.
Daddy went in and we sat in the bus outside the hospital.
“What’s wrong with Mom?” John asked when Daddy got into the driver’s seat of the Volkswagen.
“She’s not feeling well.”
“Will she be alright?” Madcap spoke for all of us.
“The doctors are going to have a look and see. I’m sure she’ll be fine now.”
“When is she coming home?” Jude was sucking his thumb, sitting on Jeannie’s lap.
“Let’s say a prayer, for your Mother,” he said.
“Hail Mary, full of grace,” we all began in unison.
I might have known this for a while, but when Daddy said “I’m sure she’ll be fine now,” it was the first time I consciously realized that truth could be told in fractions. That’s why they make you promise “to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth” when you swear on the Bible. People are probably going around telling part truths all the time.
“There’s nothing to worry about, Annie. They’ll never drop the bomb. It will be a long time before anyone destroys our way of life,” he said confidently, like he had some inside knowledge. He had survived Pearl Harbor, so maybe he knew about these things that happen on ships out at sea. For example, when they’re all out there, deciding whether or not to send the bombs—maybe there’s a button on all the ships that’s purposefully stuck, so the button doesn’t work when you press it. Maybe the sailors think they’re following orders, but when they push the button and it doesn’t work, the bomb doesn’t go off. Maybe Daddy knows better.
Maybe things are going to be okay.
Chapter 28
limbo
December 4 – Dear Blessed Mother. Thank you for keeping our Mother alive. She has so much love in her heart for everything. She brought all of us into the world. If you look at a Cardinal and think about what he did with his life, and then you look at our Mother? No comparison, even if he is a Cardinal. By the way, did her baby go to Limbo?
It’s easy to love a baby, so I don’t know why it surprised me that Mother was so sad when she lost her fourteenth. She still had all of us. It wasn’t even born yet, and the baby didn’t have a name. None of us knew what sex it was, until Mother came home after the weekend. Then we found out it was a girl, although Mother never said anything. We just found out. I don’t know if I overheard Madcap telling Jeannie, or if it just seemed so perfect that it was a girl and then everyone agreed that it had been a girl. Daddy said it was a miscarriage. The fetus was about the size of a newborn kitten and it weighed as much as a bowl of Cocoa Puffs in milk. Newborn kittens are pretty cute, but they sure are small. A lot of women have miscarriages. A lot of babies never get born. Daddy says, “It’s a baby who wasn’t meant to live.” So why was Mother so sad about this one?
Something had tilted in the universe, because when we got home from the hospital, we learned how fantastically awry things had become. Daddy got an urgent call from the rectory. Cardinal Stefanucci had a heart attack on Thursday night after Thanksgiving dinner at our house. And while we were shopping at the base, he died. Just like that. It felt like the whole world was splitting at the seams; children were being sucked into manhole covers; pigeons were exploding; people inside photographs began to move.
The only thing we knew how to do in response to all this was say Hail Marys. The sound of our voices chanting the same thing over and over became a relief with its familiar, hill-and-vale sound. If we prayed, we could feel boredom in the face of frightening circumstances. It was a way of being normal. And of course we poured our thoughts and fears into the prayers. For Cardinal Stefanucci’s soul to enter the gates of heaven (I think he was pretty much a shoe-in). We prayed for the soul of Mother’s lost baby, although it had done absolutely nothing wrong. We prayed for Mother. I prayed for Clara—her baby was still alive, as far as I knew.
I had two urgent questions for God. Number one: Why did He let Father Stefanucci die? If someone had been in the room when he had that second heart attack, the Cardinal would be alive today. Instead the nurse was probably on the telephone, or doing her nails, and didn’t notice that he had stopped breathing. Just a little detail like that. God is so good at those details. He wasn’t paying attention!
And number two, after all the kids Mother brought into the world, why did God let that baby die even before it was born? Every time I thought about it, I started to feel mad. At God. It was probably a dangerous way to think, but I couldn’t help it.
Then I wondered what happened to it. Did it just get flushed down the toilet with all that bleeding? Or what? Where was that teeny baby whose kick I felt while watching President Kennedy’s funeral? I felt so sorry for Mother. Why didn’t they baptize the baby and give it a name and have a proper funeral? That way it wouldn’t be in Limbo while the rest of us were across the way, waving from heaven.
The least that God could do now would be to let Father Stefanucci intervene and get that baby out of Limbo. It’s so unfair! You’re hardly even a person, and you’ll never be able to really be in heaven. And it’s not your fault. It’s God’s fault.
Once Mother came home from the hospital on Monday there was an expectation that things would go back to normal, but she stayed in her room with the shades drawn. Daddy asked Mrs. Hopkins, a kind, thick-hipped woman with squishy-sounding nurse shoes to help us with dinner and laundry. Everyday he went from Shea Family Motors, back home, then to the rectory so he could hear the latest details on the rosary and the funeral. By that time Daddy had regular employees, including Paul, on regular shifts to make sure the drivers could get their gas.
When the day of his rosary arrived, the entire parish came to pay their respects. The Mayor of Pasadena, the Mayor of Los Angeles and a few Cardinals were going to be there. When Daddy drove Stefanucci to our house for Thanksgiving in his Rambler, I didn’t know this, but Cardinals have big black Cadillacs with chauffeurs. And today, a few Cadillacs pulled up in front of St. Andrew’s tower. All the boys wore their suits with the ties. It was the first time Jude had a tie on, and he kept pulling it off.
The Cardinal’s body was laid out in a heavy-looking coffin in the center aisle at the front. The dark and shiny wood glistened with gold fixtures along the side. From a distance, you could see Father Stefanucci lying on his back on a huge white pillow with his hands folded across his belly. He had a white pointy hat and a white cassock with red and black colors for accent.
Mother walked up the center aisle on Daddy’s arm, her head down, a black see-through veil over her face. I was right behind her. When she genuflected, she bumped the pew and spilled her missal, stuffed with holy cards of the martyrs, all over the marble floor right next to the casket. I turned beet red as I gathered up all the holy cards. I handed them back to her when she had a chance to sit down. But when I went to genuflect myself, I noticed another card. It was a faded snapshot of Mother sitting in a wheelchair in front of a window, looking down at a bundle, like a huge bandage, in her arms. The walls were white and shiny and reflected off a flash in the window. I couldn’t make out her expression. It looked like she was wearing a white hospital gown. The picture said Feb1945 on the white jagged edge at the bottom. I looked closer. I could see a very small hand just up out of the blanket, held in the cup of her palm. It was a baby’s hand, but it wasn’t grabbing Mother’s finger, like newborn babies usually do. It loosely rested there, in the palm of her hand. Now I thought of the blue bead bracelet and the lock of baby hair I had discovered with Mother’s wedding pictures, months ago. Here was a picture of the missing baby! And I knew that every time Mother went to Mass, she looked at this photograph, and prayed for this baby, which must have been hers. But right now we were all in the middle of a rosary for a very important man who had died unexpectedly. I couldn’t stop thinking about that hand. I was just dying to know what happened to that baby.
To my left was the casket holding our friend, Cardinal Stefanucci. When I got closer, what I noticed were his hands, which I had held when we were introduced at the entrance to the kitchen on Thanksgiving. They were draped with a rosary. He still had the ring on, and I could see the veins; they made his hands look like the bark of a tree.
I had never seen a dead person before. He was completely drained of anything, although you might be able to imagine that he was asleep, except he didn’t breathe. It was hard to look at him. He was so still. He would never open his eyes again, or talk, or read Green Eggs and Ham
. Already, I couldn’t remember the sound of his voice. Only on Christmas day would we find out who he had picked for Kris Kringle, because that person wouldn’t get a present from him on Christmas morning.
It was standing-room-only in the church. There was a lot of murmuring as everyone filed up to have a look at him. And it’s not like they caught a glimpse and then walked on. Some of them stood around and stared; a few reached out to touch his hand. Were they curious as to what a dead hand felt like? The nuns filed up together in a black swish, looking somber and official, each one crossing herself when she passed him. Jeannie put a small wrapped gift into his coffin; he must have been her PX. It was really sad. He wasn’t even there.
All the guys processed up the aisle in cassocks flowing to their shoes, like they were being canonized. John-the-Blimp and Christopher Feeney held the cross and swung the incense. Daddy was next in line, followed by Monsignor Boyle and a few Cardinals, all dressed to the max in flowing robes.
Mother’s eyes were red and puffy, and I stared at her, wondering what she was really thinking. She reminded me of Jackie Kennedy dressed in black walking behind the coffin. Then I wondered if Mother was thinking about the funeral of her first love. She must have had a service for her soldier husband, and it would have been fancy, incense and honor guards in uniform with shiny shoes, saluting and folding up the American flag and giving it to the widow, just like at President Kennedy’s funeral. But Jackie Kennedy was holding it in for the whole country. Mother was not holding it in. She stared at the floor, tears streaming down her cheeks. I was glad there was a real funeral going on around us, otherwise I would be terrified, because of what was on her face. Her mouth was slack, her eyes dream-world staring. It was as if she wasn’t even there; she was somewhere else, far away. Daddy looked so important and official lighting the candle. Normally I’d be enjoying this privilege of my father up on the altar, but today everything felt creepy and weird.
A Theory of Expanded Love Page 21
