The Patron Saint of Ugly

by Marie Manilla

  I always watched Nonna’s face when her son related these vulgar stories. She just swiped out espresso cups as if in her mind she was on a beach in Messina, combing her hair, watching a figure emerge from the surf, but this time when she caught sight of the kelp-covered ogre, she scampered the hell away. I wanted to tell her: Run like the wind, Nonna! Fly like the wind!

  Shortly before my twelfth birthday I approached Nonna’s threshold with more trepidation than usual. Two weeks prior, I had gone to bed flat-chested, but during the night a new mountain range had formed, straining my pajama top. I had bypassed the gradual swelling of breast buds, the uprising so intense the Soviet Union on my left breast stretched beyond endurance and broke into more than a dozen separate entities. I hugged a pillow to my chest and went in search of Mom. I found her clipping coupons alone at the kitchen table, so I let the pillow drop.

  “Oh my God!” She stood to take a closer look until memories of her own pubescent self-consciousness surfaced. “Well. It looks as if we’ll be going to buy your first bra.”

  Mom must have had a preemptive talk with Dad and Nicky, because that night at supper they barely looked up from their fish sticks, and when I asked for the salt, Dad handed it over while studying New Zealand on my temple, avoiding all terrain below my chin.

  The next First Friday, when we spilled out of the car for our monthly dose of Caruso, the grand exhibition was held. When Betty spotted me, she leaped from Nonna’s couch and squeezed me so tight I couldn’t breathe, our bazoombas mashing together like grapes in a winepress.

  “The daughter I never had,” Betty cried. I never felt closer to her in my life.

  Thankfully, like Dad, Uncle Dom couldn’t look at me for long. I imagine he was thinking, Such a waste.

  We wended our way to the kitchen, where Grandpa held court. Nonna brushed my cheek with her hand but said nothing about the new developments. Grandpa Ferrari kept his rheumy peepers to himself. He had more important matters to deal with. After the obligatory greetings, Grandpa stared at his younger son, then looked him up and down, especially scrutinizing his empty, giftless hands.

  Grandpa finally growled, “Did you bring those tomato stakes like I told-a you, Angelo?”

  It was as if someone had taken a sledgehammer and knocked Dad in the forehead. “No,” he confessed, a schoolboy in front of the principal. “I left them in the garage.”

  “You stupid son-ama-beetch!” Grandpa threw a half-eaten plum on the floor. “I was going to stake them right after supper. Now those tomatoes will rot all because of a-you.”

  Nonna stood by the gas stove. “What’s another day?” she said; valiantly, I thought. “Angelo can bring-a them in the morning.”

  “Shut up, woman.” Grandpa’s forearm flew up as if he would like to strike her, and by the way she flinched, I wondered if she had to anoint more than her hair with Pergusa water.

  “Go get them,” Grandpa said. “Now.”

  “But the coffee is ready.” Mom rarely spoke at these affairs, but clearly she was listening.

  Grandpa’s eyes pressed into slits. “Angelo! I tole you to go getta those goddamn stakes!”

  Mom stood up to her full height, a sinewy Corinthian column. “Let the man drink his coffee.”

  Grandpa stood so fast his chair tipped over, and he might have lunged across the floor to choke my mother if Dad hadn’t intervened.

  “I’ll go!” Dad said.

  “You bet-a you will.” Grandpa readjusted his number-two newsie cap, righted his tipped-over chair, and sat back down, a smug look on his face. I wanted to sock him, and by the look on Mom’s face, so did she. Her expression changed when Dad edged past her to do his father’s bidding. It became a look, not of pity, but of shrink-wrapped disgust. I wondered what Annette Funicello would have done at that moment—probably run after her substitute husband to offer syrupy words of consolation.

  The fam-i-ly migrated to the living room and Uncle Dom boomed, “Ray-Ray! Get your ass in here now!”

  Cousin Ray-Ray. Yikes. I wondered how many magazines I could hold up to protect my new topography.

  Ray-Ray slunk up from the basement, where he’d likely been fiddling with Grandpa’s winemaking paraphernalia and girlie pictures. Thankfully he didn’t look at me, just sat in a chair dragged in from the kitchen and picked scabs from his elbows.

  When Dad returned with the stakes, Nonna looked at the mantel clock. “You better hurry or you miss-a confess.”

  We all stood, except Grandpa, who almost never went. Even Nonna begged off. “What I have to confess-a now?” I could think of a few homicidal sins I would like to commit on her behalf.

  Even Mom went, just to avoid Grandpa’s stare. The men and boys stampeded outside, around the corner, and across the street to Saint Brigid’s. Betty and Mom lagged behind, me even farther back since I didn’t look forward to presenting my new embellishments to the parishioners.

  Via Dolorosa was a dead-end street with a circular turnaround at the end. At the center of the grassy turnaround stood a marble fountain of a Nereid who spit water from her mouth, or so we had always been told. The fountain no longer worked, and wild grapes, or at least not Grandpa’s beloved Gaglioppo, had taken root at the fountain’s base and twined themselves tightly around the statue, obscuring her figure. A few years before that First Friday, Nicky and I were digging for marbles by the fountain, me popping out pumice stones, and I made a startling discovery. The grape coloring and clusters surrounding the Nereid were the same kind as the ones sprouting from the arbor behind our house. When I went inside to ask Nonna about it, her knitting needles quaked and Grandpa belted, “Those bastardo grapes are Orgoglio della Sicilia. Nothing good ever come from-a Sicilia, not even a grape!”

  Grandpa’s bungalow was built on the center lot of the cul-de-sac, facing the fountain and Via Dolorosa, which stretched out before him like a carpet runner. The brickwork in the street was the prettiest in town, with an inlaid pattern of ocher and black stones woven down the center like the skin of a diamondback snake.

  That First Friday as I walked to church behind Mom and Aunt Betty I noticed that the cursed Sicilian grapevine that once twined around the fountain had been cleared, revealing the mythic sea nymph. I paused to inspect the craftsmanship, the grape-stained marble looking astonishingly like my stained skin, and saw the face, the familiar face. “That looks like Nonna.”

  “It is,” said Aunt Betty.

  Mom and I both stopped. “What?”

  We all stared at the marble features: the plump lips and subtle nose, ample breasts, fish-scaled hips, and ethereal tail. The most striking feature was the braid curving all the way down her back carved in such high relief it sprang free in places. Someone had broken off a six-inch chunk at the end, leaving only a meringue-like hair flip on the base. As we stood there, Betty divulged a tale she had learned from Celeste Xaviero, that lock-picker of family secrets, about a pair of rival brothers; not Uncle Dominick and my father, Angelo, but Grandpa Dominick and his younger brother, Angelo, whom I had never even heard of until then.

  When my grandparents first moved to America, they spent a few years crowded together with other immigrants in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Jobs were scarce, so when Grandpa learned about the opportunities on the Gulf Coast, he and his wife boarded a train for Louisiana that would take weeks to reach its destination since it stopped at every Podunk along the way. A few days into the journey Nonna disembarked at an outpost where the mountainous terrain reminded her of the land of her birth. As the scenery washed over her, Nonna’s ears picked up a faint hum that she hadn’t heard since she’d left Sicilia. She tried to match the tone, her vocal cords rusty, until Grandpa called from his window seat, “Diamante! Come on or you miss-a the train!” The locomotive whistled, drowning out the hum, but when Nonna put her boot on the step to climb aboard, she inhaled an aroma she hadn’t smelled since her courting days in Sughero: roasted almonds and nutmeg. Nonna backed away from the train just as it lurched forward.
r />   Grandpa bellowed, “Diamante! Come on! What are you doing?”

  Nonna paced up and down the platform sniffing for the source of her nostalgia, and then she spotted red Pergusa wildflowers growing beneath the sign that announced the name of the town that had already grabbed her heart: Sweetwater, West Virginia.

  “Diamante! Hurry up!” Grandpa called from the chuffing train.

  “No!” Diamante said. “This is where I build a new life with-a my husband. I have the profezia. I see it!”

  Grandpa disappeared from his window, but soon he jumped from the train, carrying his valise and Nonna’s, and trudged down the platform to her. “I see it,” she whispered, and remarkably, Grandpa couldn’t argue with that.

  Lucky for Nonna there was not only a smattering of Italians who welcomed the still-barren couple into their enclave but plenty of work for Grandpa. The bulk of Sweetwater was already laid out and those early paesani put their skills to use paving the streets. Grandpa distinguished himself as the most gifted bricklayer, which is why he got that choice piece of real estate at the end of his cul-de-sac. When he and Nonna were picking their lot, she discovered a patch of wild Pergusa in the back and declared that it was a sign of-a something, although she didn’t say a sign of-a what. After the bungalow was constructed the couple had their first child, Dom the Mighty.

  Several years later, Sweetwater saw the appearance of another Calabrian, Uncle Angelo, who showed up on his brother’s doorstep uninvited.

  Angelo had crossed the Atlantic in steerage, then boarded a train that delivered him to the Sweetwater station, where he disembarked with his brother’s address on a piece of paper in his hand. In broken English he asked passersby to point the way, and soon he was tromping down Via Dolorosa, still a muddy, cartwheeled mess. He arrived at Dominick’s house and rapped on the door.

  Nonna came out of the kitchen drying a bowl, five-year-old Dominick Jr. at her heels. When she opened the door and saw who was standing in her doorway, the bowl fell out of her hands and cracked in two, alerting her husband, who sprinted downstairs. “What did you break-a now!”

  “It’s-a you,” Grandpa said when he saw his bushy-haired brother.

  There was no embrace, no cheek kissing or neck hugging, but because Celeste Xaviero was gawking, Dominick said, “I guess-a you better come in.”

  As they made their way to the kitchen, Dominick Jr. kept kicking his new uncle in the shins and lunging for the four-tooth chisel in Angelo’s shirt pocket, his most prized tool.

  The brothers sat at the table while Nonna prepared stambecco brasato, braised goat, which she made only on special occasions. Angelo laid out his plan: he wanted to work in America just long enough to build a nest egg to bankroll some business venture back in Italy. He was hoping to live with his brother so that he could save every penny.

  Dominick glared at his wife, whose back was to him. Then he looked at his brother. “Why you never marry after all these-a years?”

  Angelo fingered the four-tooth chisel in his pocket. “Sono sposato a Dio. I am-a married to God.”

  Diamante craned her neck around as Dominick snorted. “You turn into the omosessuale?”

  “No! I am-a celibate. Celibate. No omosessuale!”

  Dominick again looked at his wife, who had turned her head to the stove, though her shoulders were shaking.

  “Why you cry?” Dominick asked.

  “I no cry. I cut-a the onions.” But she wasn’t cutting onions.

  “You owe me,” Angelo said cryptically to Dominick.

  Dominick adjusted his newsie cap and exhaled. “Okay. But just until you save up-a the nest egg.”

  The men stood, and Grandpa led Angelo upstairs to the army cot in the spare room where baby number two’s empty bassinet sat, although there was no second baby yet—an intolerable embarrassment to Dominick, given the size of most Italian families, a shame he intended to rectify. Diamante endured the coupling only by fantasizing about Angelo. She also hoped his conjured face would ensure that baby number two would have a better disposition than her firstborn.

  That night, when Dominick was in the basement scouring his wine vats, Diamante passed the spare bedroom, where Angelo knelt before his cot in prayer. She was about to tiptoe away when Angelo opened his eyes and sighed. “Diamante, your hair. Your hair.”

  Diamante ran her hand through the red mane that she had just unwhirled from her bun.

  “E’ molto bella.”

  “Grazie.” Diamante leaned into the room and whispered, “You really married to God? You really celibate?”

  Angelo looked at her with sadness and held up his rosary beads as proof. “Sì.”

  Diamante nodded and walked away mournfully.

  Dominick got his brother a job working for Le Baron, so every morning Diamante waved bye-bye to the men, often running after them with Dominick’s forgotten lunch bucket or Angelo’s four-tooth chisel, which Angelo prized but frequently misplaced. Dominick’s younger brother soon distinguished himself: he was a better bricklayer than his older brother, plus he was an exceptional sculptor. In his spare time, Angelo began carving grotesque waterspouts shaped like dragons and lions and Chimeras, which the Italians bought and attached to their bungalows. When the ever-watchful Baron saw the extravagance, he commissioned Angelo to create not only dozens of waterspouts for his grand chateau but two gargoyles to overlook the front door. Le Baron was so pleased with the craftsmanship that he gave Angelo permission to design and lay out the bricks for Via Dolorosa.

  Angelo sketched for a week before he settled on his pattern. He made the bricks himself, and he pulled them still warm from the oven and laid them immediately, while they were still pliable, for a snugger fit, leaving the impression of three of his fingers on every single brick, a deliberate feature. He worked nonstop, beginning at Appian Way and moving toward the house of his brother, or, more accurately, toward his brother’s wife. Because Angelo had indeed taken a vow of celibacy, but every day he spent under the same roof with Diamante chiseled away at his oath. Whenever they wedged past each other in the hall in their nightclothes or when Diamante brought a glass of water to Angelo working bare-chested in the street, something sparked between them.

  Angelo also came home for lunch and helped Diamante set and clear the table and even wash up the dishes, their hands swimming like fish beneath the sudsy water as they felt for soupspoons and butter knives, fingers occasionally grazing, perhaps even clasping as their hearts thudded and their godly resolve slipped down the drain.

  Having been commissioned by Le Baron to do another project and given carte blanche in its design, Angelo began work on a statue in his brother’s garage. Every night he hammered and four-tooth-chiseled and smoothed. He ordered special fountain parts from Sicilia, which arrived in a crate accompanied by clippings of a Sicilian grape that made a smoother wine than Grandpa’s Gaglioppo.

  On the afternoon of the unveiling, Angelo called together all the Italians in the neighborhood; they skipped down their newly bricked street, the children marching heel-toe along the serpentine inlay as if it were a game. They gathered around as he revealed the fountain modeled after Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, though of course this Venus was a Nereid standing on her giant seashell. Scallop shells discreetly covered her nipples; another jutted from her hair like a Victorian comb. She was also holding out seashells like patens. Father Kavanagh raised his hands just as a red-winged raptor swooped overhead screeching like a girl being murdered. The falcon released its bowels, splattering not only the beautiful nymph but Angelo and Diamante. The old women cheered, since everyone knows that being shat on by birds brings good fortune. Father Kavanagh interpreted it differently. He stared up at the receding falcon and proclaimed his divine augury: “Sometimes shit just brings shit.” He mumbled a swift prayer, and when he gave the command, Angelo turned on the spigot beneath the base, which set off a spray of water from the Nereid’s lips, much to the crowd’s delight. All this attention on Angelo started a fire in Dominick’
s belly, especially when he noticed the townspeople begin to look from the Nereid’s face to Diamante’s in wonder.

  Several weeks later, one day around noon, Dominick had a case of the trots. Because he was close to home, he rushed there and barely peeled off his union suit in time. When he came out, Diamante was dashing from her bedroom trailing a familiar fragrance, and he heard the back door slam.

  “Who’s that?” he said.

  “Who’s what?”

  “The back door.”

  “Nobody. You hearing a-things.”

  “Hmmm.” Dominick loped to his room to change. That’s when he saw it: a four-toothed chisel on his bedside table sitting next to the bottle of red Pergusa water, a spilled puddle staining the doily beneath the lamp.

  Dominick scooped up the chisel and ran downstairs to Diamante, who was in the kitchen.

  Dominick’s shoulders shook and his voice wobbled. “Haven’t I given you a good-a life? What have I done-a wrong?”

  Diamante’s head hung as she whispered the truth. “You’re not Angelo.”

  It had stunned me to learn that Grandpa once had tender feelings for Nonna, but that was the end of them. It was at that precise moment, under Diamante’s brutal admission, that his heart compressed into a hunk of coal.

  “Puttana!” he howled. “I’m gonna kill that no good son-ama-beetch!”

  Dominick bolted outside and ran, holding the chisel like the Olympic torch, to the site where the Saint Brigid School was being built and where his brother was working. Diamante chased after him. “No! No!”

  Angelo was stacking a pallet of bricks when his brother charged at him. “Testa di cazzo! Bastardo! Figlio di puttano! Individuo spregevole!”

  Angelo spun around just as Dominick grabbed him by the throat. “You get outta my house! My city! My country! And go back to Sicilia where you belong!”