The Patron Saint of Ugly

by Marie Manilla

  Opal nodded to an intercom speaker on the highest shelf. Then I knew: Grandma was snooping on me and probably had snooped on Grandpa and Mom for years.

  From then on I spent as much time outside as possible. Grandma couldn’t wire the trees or the air; at least, I didn’t think so. My excursions led me to another penance that I stumbled upon accidentally.

  One Friday while Cedrick was out ferrying Grandma around so she could buy more Fabergé eggs, or whatever it was she did, and Muddy was sweet-talking his garden, I went to the carriage house and found a horse buggy, a Bailey Electric car, an evolution of Cadillacs, and an aquamarine and pink Cabriolet Mercedes. I was sitting in the convertible punching pedals, recalling my first joy ride with Dad, when I spied a tableau that at first froze me solid: two sawhorses set up in the corner with a two-by-four balanced across them. Then my legs were no longer under my control as they made their way over. I slid my hands across the wood, pretending that Dad had placed it there. All I needed was the saw and I raced to my room and dug under the bed. I ran back to the garage and gripped the saw handle in both hands. The blade wobbled and I rested it about two inches from the end of the board and began my flimsy back-and-forth motion, the blade stuttering, board sliding and slipping.

  I needed to master this critical skill, so I hoisted the saw over my shoulder, figuring that if I brought it down hard enough I’d gouge a furrow where my blade could grab hold. Then I could make enough noise to echo throughout the property and rouse my mother. But when I brought the saw down, my force was too strong. I didn’t know to hold the board in place with one hand, since that was another thing my father never taught me. The board cartwheeled over, landing with a loud crack. The front sawhorse collapsed onto its side and lay there like a petrified animal.

  Immediately my eyes teared up for my father, who no one else in that house seemed to miss, for not offering to him three holy words.

  I would have started blubbering if I hadn’t caught sight of Muddy standing with a shovel in one hand as he assessed my distress.

  “You’ve got to treat the wood like a friend, missy.”

  Then that sweet man who smelled of manure and rosemary came over and wrapped my hand around Dad’s curlicues, rested the other firmly on the righted board. He placed his hand atop mine and guided the initial timid strokes until I gathered momentum. “That’s right. You’ve got it now.”

  Muddy did not ask why I was dotting the wood with tears, or what I was building, or why, from then on, I needed a stockpile of lumber. I loved him for that, and I loved him even more when I heard his reply to Grandma after she cornered him one afternoon and asked, “Has she lost her mind?”

  “By no means, ma’am,” he said. “It’s for mulching the rhododendrons. They like a good bite of acidy pulp.”

  I sawed an hour a day, as if I were lopping off the end of my penance that stretched from the earth to the sun. With each stroke I muttered an endearment my father would never hear.

  On the Fourth of July, Opal’s daughter and grandchildren came for a visit, a yearly extravagance Grandma, astoundingly, permitted. I planned to camp beside Mom and nibble my way through a box of scones Muddy had mail-ordered from London. He gave everyone a sampler to show there were no hard feelings about that American War of Independence business. My reverie was interrupted by the sounds of children whooping outside. I looked into the backyard at a puzzling sight.

  Just three weeks before, I had helped Muddy put water in Grandma’s in-ground pool and line its perimeter with potted plants. Grandma lounged beneath a beach umbrella calling the shots. “The hibiscus should be spaced three feet apart. Three!”

  It was inviting, all that cerulean water, but when Muddy urged me to change into my bathing suit for an inaugural swim, I discreetly nodded toward Grandma and declined. My new wardrobe intentionally did not include swimwear.

  What I saw on that July Fourth were three spindly black kids splish-splashing not in Grandma’s grand pool but in a round, three-foot-deep, ten-foot-wide plastic pool set up beside it. I mean, directly beside it. If those kids minded, they didn’t let on as the two girls squirted water pistols and the boy snorkeled in that limited expanse. Opal and her daughter, another rotund woman, lounged beneath umbrellas in flowery muumuus. It delighted me to see Opal with her feet up at last, her feet up at last; thank God Almighty, she had her feet up at last. Muddy cooked hamburgers on the grill. Cookie appeared in her maid uniform, crisscrossing the patio to place dish after dish on the picnic table set up beneath a shady tree. I wondered why she didn’t have her feet propped up too.

  Opal saw me and waved her jiggly arm for me to join them. I shook my head, but she put her hands on her extraordinary hips and mouthed, Get your butt down here.

  I kissed Mom on the cheek, said, “I love you, please wake up,” and raced downstairs in pedal pushers and a blouse. Grandma had allowed no shorts in my wardrobe.

  The kitchen was empty, but “Heat Wave” blared from Cookie’s radio. She rushed in and saw me, or, more precisely, saw my extra pair of hands. “Thank you, Jesus. Garnet, put those gherkins in that bowl and grab the ketchup and mustard from the fridge.” Even with one hand in a rubber glove, she could deal sliced olives onto deviled eggs like a blackjack dealer.

  Opal hollered, “Cookie, I asked you to bring us more tea!”

  “Only got two hands,” Cookie muttered.

  Cookie loaded me down and we carted our offerings outside.

  Opal called, “Did you bring me my tea?”

  Cookie went over with a pitcher, groaning, and I understood why. Charlottesville was suffering its own heat wave.

  “Garnet,” Opal called. “This is my daughter, Darlinda.”

  Darlinda’s head snapped back when she saw my skin, but she managed a smile, revealing a quarter-inch gap between her two front teeth.

  “And those are my grandbabies, Snooky, Lester, and Daisy.” I eyeballed the kids in the pool as they eyeballed me, elbowing one another in the ribs. Daisy jumped from the pool, eyes tearing, and rushed to her mother’s arms. “Mama, what’s wrong with—”

  “You’ve got better manners than that,” Opal growled at them. “Say hello.”

  “Hello.” They scanned my birthmarks that pulsed even redder in the heat.

  “Hello,” I echoed, before joining Muddy at the grill.

  “How do you like your burger?”

  “Burned,” I said. “The blacker the better.”

  Opal again called for Cookie, telling her to fetch a fly swatter.

  “The woman is busy, Mama. I can get it,” Darlinda said, hauling herself out of her chaise.

  Opal held out her arm. “Cookie doesn’t mind. Do you?”

  “Not at all, Miss Darlinda.” I tried to decode the look on Cookie’s face, but her expression was as impenetrable as the paper scraps in Grandpa’s study.

  When dinner was ready, Opal’s family sat at the table, Muddy too, who cracked self-deprecating jokes: “How many Brits does it take to untie a knot garden?” He patted an empty seat beside him, which I accepted. Cookie stood behind us and filled her own plate, reaching between us with her gloved hand, the three brats nudging one another at the sight. Cookie just hummed her balm song, then slipped away to sit on a settee under a crape myrtle.

  “There goes six-shooter,” Snooky said.

  “Butt-face,” Lester added. “She really cracks me up.” He laughed at his own joke.

  “I heard she’s contagious,” Daisy said, round eyes looking as if she believed it. All three kids studied the sides of their hands, no doubt imagining an extra digit pushing through. Opal and Darlinda did likewise, their faces puckered.

  I rose, took my plate, and sat beside Cookie, who kept dabbing sweat from her chin.

  I noted the stains under her arms. “Why are you wearing your uniform?”

  Cookie nodded at Opal in the same way Opal had once nodded at an intercom speaker. I didn’t understand what power Opal had over her, and I guess Cookie sensed that.

&nb
sp; “She got me this job when nobody would hire me.”

  “But you’re a great cook.”

  Cookie held out her gloved hand and the secret inside. “Some folks are funny about who they want handling their food.”

  I looked at my own stained hands, then up at the west wing, where I assumed Grandma was passed out, and marveled that she would hire Cookie. But I saw the curtain was drawn back, the sun glinting off the martini glass in Grandma’s hand.

  The kids finished eating and skipped back to their pool while Opal and Darlinda played shuffleboard. Muddy traipsed off, leaving Cookie and me to haul plates and platters inside. Opal continued baying requests. “Cookie! Go get my sun hat! And bring down my word-search book!”

  I washed dishes in the kitchen, bouncing to Cookie’s transistor music. Every time she brushed by she’d say, “You shouldn’t be in here scrubbing pans.”

  An hour later the kitchen was clean, but Cookie and I were sopping messes. Grandma’s pool lured me to it like I was a spotted koi. The kids stopped splashing as I plopped on my bum at the side of the pool, shucked off my shoes and anklets, and slipped my feet into Grandma’s cool, cool water.

  I kicked and splashed, I oohed and aahed to show them I could have my own fun in a pool that was clearly better than theirs.

  Opal called Cookie over, yet again, to send her on some needless errand, a coaster, a nail file. The perspiration stains under Cookie’s arms had broadened substantially. When the errand was complete and she walked by me, I held out my arm as a gate.

  “Put your feet in the water. It feels really good.”

  Cookie looked at my feet swirling figure eights beneath the surface and I knew she wanted to dive in, maid dress, rubber glove, and all.

  “That does sound nice.” She looked from Grandma’s pool to the kiddy one. “It is the Fourth of July.” She glanced over at Opal, engrossed in her word search, then up at the west-wing window, where Grandma no longer stood. Cookie hauled a lawn chair beside the wading pool.

  “This pool.” I patted the concrete lip beside me. “Sit here.”

  “Oh no, honey. No.” Cookie again eyed the west wing. “I couldn’t do that.”

  I was about to ask why, but she sat in her chair beside the plastic pool. Opal’s grandkids scooted to the opposite side, cupping their five-fingered hands together for protection as they anticipated what was about to happen. Cookie slipped off her shoes and discreetly unhooked her hose from her garters. She rolled the nylons down into discs that reminded me of capocollo to expose legs that were as shapely as Mom’s. That’s when we all learned that in addition to her extra pinkie, Cookie had an extra little toe on her right foot, which made perfect symmetrical sense to me. All eleven toenails were painted bright red and it lightened my heart to imagine Cookie sitting on the edge of her bed, cotton balls between her toes, as she ministered to a part of her that most people would never see.

  “Eww,” screamed the grandkids.

  Rather than cowering, Cookie peeled off her rubber glove to expose the extra pinkie, doubling their horror. Even I could hear them gasp.

  Just as Cookie was about to dip in her foot, Opal sat up in her chair and yowled, “Cookie! Go get my—my—eye drops, now!”

  Cookie froze, her big toe hanging in midair. If a toe could express yearning, that one certainly did, bowing toward the water like a dousing rod. The toe hovered there and then suddenly dove in, dragging the whole foot with it, including that purportedly contagious anomaly.

  Darlinda stood and screamed at her children: “Get out of the water! Get out of the water!”

  Cookie yanked her foot out, but it was too late; the grandkids jumped out of the pool. Each hopped on one leg and cupped his or her right foot, all of them wailing like hired mourners in biblical times.

  “I’m sorry.” Cookie scooped up her capocollo hose and shoes. “Let the kids come back in now.”

  The kids sneered at her when she wasn’t looking, which pissed me right off. As Cookie skulked by me, I grabbed her arm and yanked her down beside me.

  “Put your feet in the water.” Only this time, I pointed at Grandma’s forbidden pool.

  Cookie looked at me as if I’d lost my wits. “I can’t put my feet in there.”

  “I live here now, so this is my house, my swimming pool, and you are my guest.”

  “She’s no guest.” Opal rushed toward us. “Don’t you do it, Cookie.”

  “Hush up!” I said to Opal in a voice that sounded too much like Grandma’s, but I didn’t care. I was doing this not only for Cookie, but for me. We needed these healing waters, each for different reasons.

  I said more softly, “Put your feet in the water.”

  Amazingly, Cookie slid in first the right foot, then the left, all eleven toes wiggling with delight as Opal and the gang yowled, “No! No!” I don’t know what alarmed them more: the fact that Cookie was putting her feet into a white pool or the thought that I might contaminate her.

  I started kicking my legs to shut them up, and so did Cookie—she had probably wanted to shut them up for years. We churned the water, sloughing off our sweat and stains and extra digits; at least, that’s what I was praying for. You heard me: praying. For a scant second I forgot about my shrinking faith in God as I begged Him to fulfill our deepest longings. I tugged the Saint Garnet necklace from beneath my collar, clutched it in my hand, squeezed my eyes shut, and began reciting my spell from so many years before: “Sancta Maria, Mater Dei. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei.” I added internally: This is it, God. Your last chance.

  I heard hammering and when I opened my eyes and located the source, it was Grandma pummeling her fists against the window, mouthing, Get out! Get out! Get out!

  Cookie saw her too, but instead of yanking her legs out, she kicked even harder, whirlpooling the water, singing at the top of her lungs, “‘There is a balm in Gilead!’”

  I started bellowing with her, thinking that if my prayer didn’t work, maybe her balm song would. We sang and sang, even as Grandma pounded the glass while Opal and Darlinda hollered, “Get out, Cookie. You’ve got to get out now!”

  Of course, when Cookie finally pulled her feet from the water, she still had a sixth toe. I looked at her hand, and the extra pinkie wiggled there too. She didn’t seem to care. I think something else inside of her was healed because she trotted back into the house with her head held high singing, “‘Our day will come!’”

  Maybe Cookie didn’t care, but I did. My test had failed. I confirmed for myself once and for all that I had no powers, and neither did God.

  I stood, tromped to the edge of the yard, yanked that stupid no-powers relic from my neck, and hurled it to the back of the property, where it landed in a tangle of briars. A startled red-winged raptor darted from the thicket and shot through the sky, screaming like a girl being murdered. In my head I screamed right along with it.

  TAPE SEVENTEEN

  Mommy through the Looking Glass

  Golden McArches:

  I have brazenly escaped my prison and Nonna, Betty, and I are sitting at a table in Sweetwater’s first-ever McDonald’s. Okay, it’s actually in Vandalia, a city fifty-three miles north with a much larger population, more square mileage, and a professional baseball team.

  It’s never easy for me to slip beyond my fence, and this time my disguise is one of Le Baron’s old suits, a driving scarf wound up to my nose, saucer-size sunglasses, and Radisson’s chauffeur’s cap with my hair tucked inside. Betty and Nonna are incognito thanks to mail-order wigs. Nonna chose the Cher model, Betty the gigundo Dolly Parton.

  I pulled out of the driveway, and the pilgrims and newshounds were thankfully more interested in determining who was in the back seat than in looking at the driver. As I chugged forward, one of the more environmentally aware mob members hollered, “Gas guzzler!,” to my shame, but at least we bundled together several errands.

  Down the hill we inched because I refuse to speed around No-Brakes Bend, though I’d paid to have a culvert inserted bene
ath the road so those natural springs would no longer wreak havoc on our lives.

  Appointment number one was with the senior-most partner in Sweetwater’s only law firm. He’s billing me a fortune to fend off Le Baron’s nephews, who are bent on ousting me and the ladies from our chateau.

  Appointment number two was with an architect in Vandalia, where I reviewed the plans for the Nicky Ferrari Library, which will be built over a plot of unholy ground in Snakebite Woods. I had no longer been able to bear looking out my window at that shadowy copse, so I bought the lot, and next spring crews will begin clearing the property of a portafortuna-spilled grave and a decaying box fort that should be shipped straight to hell.

  Appointment number three is at McDonald’s and I’ve just eaten a Big Mac. Betty is sucking on a chocolate milk shake, and Nonna is enjoying fries, wiggling her feet like a toddler, which we are surrounded by. One little girl just skipped over, pointed at my red hair, my mottled face, and asked, “Are you Ronald McDonald?”

  “Indeed I am, little lady. Indeed I am.”

  She yelled over her shoulder to her mother, “It’s him! It’s really him!”

  The mother nodded, but she was more interested in her fried pie.

  The girl hugged me with more strength than I would have thought possible, but such was her delight at meeting a mythical hero come to life. I imagine I hugged my mother with the same exuberance when she finally came back to life in Charlottesville.

  On July fifth, after hibernating for eight months, she simply walked into the kitchen in her nightgown, with her stringy hair and sour breath, where everyone except Grandma sopped up eggs with buttered toast.

  “Is there any more coffee?” Mom asked.

  I raced over and wrapped my arms around her, but I don’t know if I was offering a life preserver or clinging to one.

  Cookie, who had surprisingly not been fired after her previous day’s rebellion, rushed to her. “Hallelujah! Thank you, Jesus!”

  Opal kissed and kissed Mom’s face. “My baby, my beautiful baby girl.”