“I guess they don’t expect anyone to do research during the Winter Formal,” I said with a laugh, trying to conceal how nervous I felt, stalling near the dim light above the staircase as if I were afraid to move farther into the shadowy stacks, as if I didn’t already know this place so well that I could get us where we were going blindfolded.
“I doubt it,” Michael answered. His voice trailed off, both of us leaving unsaid what we knew about the real use for the library after dark by our classmates.
“Maybe we shouldn’t be up here, then.” Maybe we should turn back now, I thought. My earlier resolve was wavering now that we were here. Alone. In the dark.
“You can go back, but I plan on looking around,” Michael said, taking a step forward, peering around the corner of one of the tall stacks packed all the way to the ceiling with old, musty books. “I’ve been offered a rare window into the secret life of Antonia Lucia Labella and I’m not leaving until I’ve seen through it.”
Come on, Antonia, I cheered myself on silently. This would normally be the moment I’d start praying to some saint, any saint I could think of, but not tonight.
“Come on,” I said finally, heading left toward the aisle, my aisle, the one dedicated on both sides to everything I’d ever wanted to know about sainthood. I motioned for Michael to follow me. “I never really said anything about telling you secrets, by the way. You’re making that part up.”
“I’m still hopeful,” he said.
We crept past row after row, the floorboards creaking with every step. I thought about how just minutes ago we were pressed together, dancing, his arms around me holding me tight. Since the music stopped we’d barely touched, not even by accident, as if our bodies were suddenly repelled, like two magnets flipped so they pushed apart. As if we were suddenly afraid to touch each other at all.
By the time we reached the farthest aisle my eyes had adjusted to the darkness. I could see the familiar outlines of the books I’d read and loved and read again. When I dared a glance back at Michael, I could make out every feature on his face, the gleam in his eyes, the curve of his lips, and I could see enough to know there was wonder in his expression, anticipation maybe, curiosity even, about how we had suddenly gotten here to this moment. That I was the one who had led us to this place.
“Come over here,” I said, walking halfway down the aisle and turning to face him. He waited at the end of the row, watching me. I gathered my skirt and sat as delicately as I could manage to on the floor, crossing my legs underneath the petticoat, fixing the delicate silk taffeta around me.
“So tell me, then . . . what’s so special about this place? Why did you bring me here?” Michael sat down across from me, his knees pressing into the folds of my dress. He began scanning the spines of the books packed together on the bottom shelf, running his fingers along the bindings.
“Well,” I began, distracted by his nearness, “what’s special about this place is what’s here. You know, all of these books. Not just any books, I mean, but these in particular.”
Michael perused the titles, glancing up at the shelves reaching all the way to the ceiling, most of them too far away to read in the dim light. “We are in the saint section, I take it?”
“Yes,” I said, pulling one of the thicker green volumes from the shelf, titled A Biography of the Saints. I opened it in my lap and tried my best to explain. “See, all of these on this bottom shelf are biographies of the saints, like this one—well, hagiographies really—since they are a bit embellished.”
“Hagiographies?”
“Most saints have a hagiography of some sort. It’s a story about their life that makes them seem kind of like, well, a superhero, but, you know, a religious one. It tells of all their miraculous deeds. That kind of thing.”
Michael leaned forward to get a closer look. His knees pressed into mine and I felt a shiver throughout my body, beginning in my middle and flashing outward to the tips of my fingers and toes and running up my spine.
“You’ve read all of these?” He looked at me with his eyes raised.
“I have.”
“Why?”
“Well . . .” I paused, thinking, deciding it was now or never, that maybe it was okay to tell Michael my oddball aspiration so far known only to Maria and Gram, and, well, maybe the Vatican. “You said you wanted a window into the secret life of Antonia Lucia Labella. Well, this is it.” I ran my fingers along the spines of the books to my right, looking at the titles, then turned back to face Michael. “The key to me is all around us. Right here.”
“What is it about the saints, Antonia? Why do they fascinate you so much?” His voice was soft, almost a whisper. He leaned closer. “The statue in your room. That binder filled with pages and pages, each dedicated to a saint, and those other binders up on that shelf, seven of them, I think. I counted that day I was in your bedroom.”
“The thing is,” I said, taking a deep breath, closing my eyes. “The thing is, I want to be one someday.” The words escaped my mouth like the relief of a long-held breath under the ocean waves, a confession I’d been waiting so long to make but just needed to find the right person to hear it.
“You want to be one?”
“Yes. I know that must sound crazy, but I’ve just always wanted to be a saint. The first living saint in Catholic history, to be specific.” I said this as if I’d practiced it, as if I went around all the time telling everyone my religious career goals.
“The first living saint?”
“Well, I definitely don’t want to be a dead one.”
“I don’t want that either,” he said, laughing. “Who else knows?”
“Just Gram and Maria. And now you,” I said. “So those books you’re so curious about—the ones in my room—you know, with the saint pictures in them? Those are my Saint Diaries: the chronicles of all my dealings with the saints, petitions, letters to the Vatican, stuff like that . . .” My voice trailed off, worried he might think I was totally mad.
But Michael took what I’d just handed him—the words expressing my deepest, most secret desire—without sarcasm or disbelief. He didn’t laugh or say it was weird or break the enchantment in the air all around us, encircling us, so that everything—the dance, our friends, school, life, the market—simply disappeared and there was only him and me. He took it all in, this thing that was so much of who I am, and let it sit there between us, like something delicate that with a single breath might disappear or fly away, and I knew, I knew in that moment, what I’d been waiting for all this time.
“Why do you want to be a saint, Antonia?”
“That’s a long story. Almost eight years long, if you want to count.”
“I’m listening. How about the short version? Please? We can save the long one for later . . .”
“The short version . . . well . . . it’s just that I experience the world as a miraculous place. I see them, I see them everywhere. You know. Miracles.”
“And?”
“And I want to be a bringer of miracles.”
“What kinds of miracles?”
“Oh, if you only knew,” I said, laughing, wondering what Michael would say if he knew I’d lately proposed a Patron Saint of the First Kiss and Kissing.
“Tell me.”
“I’ve already confessed enough for one evening.”
“Well, maybe you already do.”
“I already do what?”
“Bring miracles into the world.”
“That’s a sweet thing to say . . . but . . . no,” I said, pausing, thinking about what he’d just said. “Though, if I do become a saint, someday I will have to have some miracles on my résumé, of course. Two, to be exact.”
“Like I said, maybe you already do, Antonia.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe,” he said, his voice low.
“Ask me the question again, Michael,” I said, hoping for courage, leaning toward him ever so slightly.
“What question?” His eyes were bright pools ligh
ting up the dark.
“The question,” I said, giving him a meaningful look.
“The question?”
“Yes.”
“That one?” His voice filled with disbelief.
“Yes, that one. You know the one I’m talking about.”
“I do,” he half stated, half posed as a question.
“Ask me.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“So, Antonia Lucia Labella, aspiring saint, girl whose window I haunt.” He stopped. I could feel his breath just barely against my skin.
“Yes?”
“When am I going to get my kiss?”
“Now,” I whispered as he raised one hand, brushing his palm along the side of my face, his other intertwining in the curls at the nape of my neck, guiding me forward until our lips were just barely touching. We stayed like that for just a moment, feeling each other’s breath, the anticipation of a kiss held between us in all its mystery and thrill, when Michael finally, slowly, pressed his lips onto mine. How surprised I was to feel that they were soft and the hand making its way deeper into my curls pulled me closer and his lips were gently pushing mine open, open, open, until our mouths were both wide, until I knew for the first time in my life what it was like to be kissed, really kissed, movie-star-kissed, the tickling, sensuous feeling of his tongue on my lips, in my mouth, then our tongues intertwined, and suddenly I was sighing out loud because it all felt so wonderful and I just. Couldn’t. Help it.
I was KISSING Michael McGinnis and there was nothing else in the world that I wanted more in this moment than Michael’s mouth on mine and mine on his and our tongues and OHMIGOSH I was finally getting my first kiss and it was PERFECT because it was with the PERFECT BOY and for the first time now I reached forward to put my arm around his neck, pulling him closer because all I wanted was CLOSER when a spark like static crackled between us, making me feel faint, startled. And suddenly I heard footsteps clanging up the metal staircase and we quickly pulled back from each other.
What just happened? I wondered. Did all kisses feel like that? Like lightning?
“Antonia? Antonia!” A voice pierced the silence. It was Maria. I could hear her panting hard just a few aisles away.
“Um, Maria?” I called out, grabbing my skirt and starting to get up, still out of sorts about being interrupted.
“Yes, it’s Maria. Antonia, ohmigosh, I’m so glad I found you.” Her words came out in a rush.
Michael got up. Our moment was over. I’d made a mess of his hair, and I immediately reached out to fix it when really what I needed was to keep touching him, I never wanted to stop touching him again.
“Are you alone or with someone?” Maria called, still at the stairwell.
Michael grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the end of the aisle until we were both in full view. The smile on my face must have looked dreamy and dazed.
“Oooohh! Michael! Hello. I see you two have been . . .” Maria was staring from Michael to me when I realized there was lipstick—the red lipstick that I’d put on so carefully just a few hours ago—smeared all around Michael’s mouth, and, I imagined, mine as well. Michael and I stood there holding hands, presenting ourselves as a couple to my best friend for the first time, as if we were waiting for congratulations. I must have had FIRST KISS written all over my face.
I wondered if Michael could tell. If he’d known.
Maria raced toward us, still breathing hard, shuffling through her purse and pulling a tissue from somewhere deep inside, pressing it into my hand. “Wipe your face, Antonia, and make sure you get that spot by your ear.”
“What is it, Maria? What’s wrong?” Panic rose inside me, replacing the euphoria I’d felt just seconds ago from kissing Michael. “Did something happen with John?”
“Don’t freak out, Antonia,” Maria said, pronouncing each syllable carefully, as though if she went any faster I wouldn’t be able to understand, “but your mother’s downstairs in the gym looking all over for you. It was Veronica. She went to your house or something. I don’t know exactly what happened but I had a feeling you might be up here . . .”
“My MOTHER?” I shouted, dropping Michael’s hand as if it were on fire, dragging the tissue across my face, trying to remove any trace of lipstick, of KISSING, that might remain. As if it would somehow help. “Veronica?”
“Yes, your mother, and yes, Veronica,” Maria confirmed, grabbing my hand, yanking me toward the stairs and away from Michael. He stayed behind, his expression confused, disappointed, watching me as I and my beautiful red dress disappeared back down the rickety stairs onward to what was surely my doom, and away from the moment, that perfect moment, when my lips and his finally, finally met in a single, long, delicious kiss.
26
MY MOTHER AND I PERSONALLY EXPERIENCE ALL OF THE TOP FIVE WAYS ITALIANS EXPRESS LOVE IN ONE SITTING
I hated Veronica.
I paced in front of the old wood stove in our living room, too upset to sit, still in my dress. I was waiting for my mother to come out of her bedroom, where she was “thinking” about my fate. The wait was excruciating. All the lights were on, the lamps on the side tables and the old chandelier overhead, as if my mother wanted to ensure that when she was ready to talk, she wouldn’t miss even a single, telling flinch of my body, or suspicious flicker of my eye.
I was so grounded. So. Grounded.
There should be a Patron Saint Against Getting Grounded, I thought, tuning out the yelling and cursing in Italian coming from my mother’s bedroom. I consoled myself that if the Vatican didn’t go for the kissing specialty, maybe this could be my next proposal. They loved saints who were against things—against demonic possession (perhaps a saint I should start praying to on behalf of my mother), against wild beasts (mental note for future reference: I wondered if boys like Andy count as wild beasts?), against scurf (no idea what scurf is—perhaps some sort of disease?), against scrupulosity (whatever that is—against having scruples? Aren’t scruples supposed to be good?) And then one of my all-time favorites, the Patron Saint Against Twitching. Should you find yourself with a little twitching problem, St. Cornelius is your man.
Alas, there was currently no Patron Saint Against Getting Grounded, since if there was I would have been praying to him or her fervently from the very moment that Maria led me back down the stairs and out of the library. In between feelings of fear I kept thinking: My first kiss! Finally! For the first time in my entire fifteen years and counting career as a girl, I’d been kissed! And well kissed. Movie-star-kissed. By a boy who really, really liked me. And how? How did I not realize sooner that Michael was The Boy? And when? When? I wondered, would we get to kiss again? My mother was waiting to tell me that I wasn’t leaving the house again for social reasons until I turned eighteen.
Would I really have to wait for my second kiss for more than two years?
I was hoping Ma would cut the sentence back to seventeen.
Have I mentioned yet how much I hated Veronica?
Not only had she told on me, but she was waiting with my mother to witness the scene when Maria and I arrived in the lobby. I wanted to scream when I saw her, arms crossed, a smug look on her big Italian-nosed face.
“There they are, Aunt Amalia,” she exclaimed, pointing at us. “Thank the Lord,” she added dramatically.
“Veronica really has it in for you, Antonia,” Maria muttered as we crossed the lobby.
“That’s the truth,” I whispered back, holding my head up, determined not to cry or look frightened, depriving Veronica of any additional satisfaction to her already obvious and odious triumph at breaking up my tryst with Michael.
“We were so worried, Antonia,” Veronica lied, faking concern. My mother looked ready to explode. “I’d just driven over to your house to suggest that your mom and I could bring some spinach pies and cookies over to the Romanos for your girls’ night with Maria. You know—as a surprise. And she thought it was a great idea so we hopped in my car
and drove off. But then Mrs. Romano told us that you both were at the dance.” She was unable to hide the wicked gleam in her eyes. “So we rushed right over to make sure you were okay. I’ll let your mother fill you in on the rest,” she added, turning to go.
“Thanks so much for the concern, Veronica,” I spat, pretending to lean in to give her a hug goodbye and whispering in her ear, “There’ll be payback for this, Veronica. I swear to you.”
And there would. I meant it. Someday . . .
At this point my mother explained the many reasons why she was beside herself, which included the fact that not only had I (a) snuck out via Maria’s house which to her was unthinkable, (b) gone to an event I was forbidden to go to, and (c) put my idiot cousin in a position to embarrass my mother by knowing more about my whereabouts than she did, but in addition to all of this (d) when she arrived to humiliate me in front of everyone I know and don’t from both HA and Bishop Francis, I was nowhere to be found, and then, finally, (e) in her hunt for me she came upon Maria, who basically had her tongue down John Cronin’s throat and vice versa. So in addition to ruining my life and deciding that both Maria and I were fellow puttanas-in-training, she was making a stop on our way home to inform Mrs. Romano that Maria was all but having public sex on the dance floor.
I tried to talk her out of it. To no avail.
“All these years I’ve thought Maria was a nice friend for my little girl and then I find out she’s having sex with a boy!” This was my mother fuming to Mrs. Romano when she dropped off Maria on her way home to scream at me.
“Mom! They were just kissing,” I protested, giving Mrs. Romano a don’t-listen-to-her-please look.
“That didn’t look like kissing to me!”
“Not like you’d remember,” I muttered under my breath.
“Antonia! What did you say? This is not the time to answer back to your mother!”
Luckily, Mrs. Romano was a little less uptight than psycho-lady.
The Possibilities of Sainthood Page 18
