“What prayer do I say?
“You can say the Hail Mary. I’ll help you.”
A priest walked silently across the stone floor. Elaine watched him from the corner of one eye. He paused to look at them and then disappeared into the dark closet of the confessionals.
On the way out, Elaine pointed to the statue of Saint Stephen. A long robe fell to his ankles and in on one palm he held a pile of rocks. He looked too young to be a saint.
“That’s who Mama named you after.” No sense in telling Stephen his namesake had been stoned to death.
Stephen considered the statue. “Lainey, I’d rather he wasn’t wearing a dress.”
Chapter Eleven
MCDONALD’S
SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA—JUNE 1955
Molly
I heard Uncle Stephen as he came up the walk. His whistle could imitate a bird; it could slide up and down the scale like a piccolo. It always made me feel better. I pushed my face out into the rain, letting the fine mist bead on my eyelashes. Today he was whistling “Yankee Doodle” something fierce. He wore a long tan raincoat, but his head was bare, and rain had plastered his wild gray-and-red hair to his scalp, making his ears stick out even farther than usual. There was something about his long, angular frame that always reminded me of a crane—not that I had ever seen a crane in person.
“Molly, he has no bags!” Angus complained.
And he was right. Every Tuesday and Sunday, Uncle Stephen carried bags of groceries into our kitchen and then set them ceremoniously on the kitchen counter. Today his arms were empty, hands stuck in his pockets.
Angus beat me to the front door, where Mom already waited.
“And how’s my favorite nephew?” He scooped Angus up into the air. “And the two prettiest girls in the Santa Clara Valley?” Then he shook his head like a wet dog, and Angus giggled as the drops splashed on our faces.
“Look what I have here!” He pulled a slightly damp newspaper from his raincoat pocket. I could hear Mom come into the room behind me, almost feel her smile. “In two weeks, The Lady and the Tramp opens.”
Angus let out a whoop.
“Ah, but that’s not all. This”—and still in his wet raincoat, he spread the paper across the coffee table—“this is the piece de resistance! Disneyland!”
Spread across two pages was an artist’s rendition and photographs of the Magic Kingdom. We had been hearing about it on the television for months now. It had been built in our state, near Los Angeles. Maybe one day—I didn’t want to let my thoughts wander any farther than that. I didn’t do too well with disappointment. I looked at the picture of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle and tried to imagine walking in through the gates.
“Are we going?” Angus’s eyes were round with hope.
“Now see what you’ve started, Stephen!” But I could tell Mom wasn’t angry. Uncle Stephen was the only person who could draw her out. “Take off your coat and dry your hair.” She handed him one of the pink towels from the bathroom.
“Why should I, when we’re going out for dinner?”
That was why there weren’t any grocery bags. “Where are we going?” I asked.
“McDonald’s!” He bowed with a flourish while Angus whooped and hollered.
I wanted to go. Everyone at school had been talking about it, but I hadn’t planned on going with my family. I’d already imagined being at a table with Ari and a crowd of kids from high school. Jesse would walk in. He’d notice us across the room and saunter over to the table. It was really me he was coming to see. He’d lift a french fry from my plate and stick it between his lips like a cigarette. We’d both laugh. Then he’d ask me if I wanted a ride home. Ari would catch my eye and smile. Before Jesse and I drove off into the night, we’d turn the music up loud and roll all the windows down.
Mom’s voice cut in. “Are you sure we can afford this? You’re spoiling them.”
“Elaine, it is my treat. After all, San Jose’s first McDonald’s is nothing to sneeze at. Milkshakes and burgers for everyone! Besides”—and here his eyes twinkled—“burgers are only fifteen cents!”
I ran to get my raincoat. The cigar box and my journal were on the floor by my bed. I’d have to be more careful now that I had a real secret to hide. I grabbed them both and stuffed them in the back of my closet.
The first thing I noticed about McDonald’s was the two thin golden arches spanning the building. The second was the long line winding out the door and a few yards down Meridian Avenue. Angus kept jumping up to see over the heads of the people in front of him and asking annoying questions, like if we would see famous people because it was the grand opening, or trying to make us guess what flavor milkshake he was thinking of. I spotted a few kids from school in letterman jackets ahead of us in line. I kept my eyes on the red-striped tiles, hoping no one would notice me.
As soon as we were inside the front doors, Uncle Stephen slipped off his raincoat and sniffed the air like a cocker spaniel. “Boy, do I smell french fries! When is the last time you kids had fries?”
Angus screwed up his face to think, but I knew right away. “At the boardwalk in Santa Cruz. You wouldn’t remember, Angus, because you were still in a stroller.” The smell of the ocean and french fries, the image of us as a family of four, Dad pushing the stroller, came rolling back so strongly, my eyes stung.
“I’d forgotten all about that time, Molly. I’m surprised you even remember it; you were only five or six.” Mom scooted us forward in line, but her eyes were on their own journey, somewhere far from here.
“Can’t have french fries without a milkshake, Lainey. What flavor are you going to have? I’m partial to chocolate.” Uncle Stephen’s voice called her back, refused to let her brood.
For a minute I was afraid she was going to refuse or, worse yet, say that milkshakes weren’t healthy. Instead, she smiled even though her navy blue eyes still hadn’t reached us. “I think I’ll have a strawberry one.”
McDonald’s was mostly a take-out place, and I would have preferred that. But Uncle Stephen found a table with four seats, and declared it was his lucky day. I scrunched into the orange plastic chair.
It was the shade of orange that reminded me of a headache, the kind that throbs in the front of your head above your eye.
There were no plates, so we spread our hamburgers on napkins like it was a picnic. Angus and I shared a packet of fries. I had a chocolate shake like Uncle Stephen and Angus had a vanilla one. Immediately, he peeled the paper half down his straw and blew. The paper shot off his straw and landed on the lap of a women at the next table over.
Mom glared. She leaned over to the family. “I’m so sorry. You know how children are.”
But I was sure I saw Uncle Stephen’s lips twitch.
“I read Beowulf to my students last week. Not all of it, but we made a good start. You know, not a single one of them had even heard of it before,” Uncle Stephen said.
“There’re only high school boys, Stephen, not scholars.” Mom swirled her straw around in the thick pink. “I don’t think I read that until I was twenty-five.”
“Kids are smarter now. They learn things earlier.” He took a big bite of his double cheeseburger.
“What’s Beowulf?” Angus asked.
I could see the pickle all mixed up with catsup and a little meat in Angus’s mouth when he talked, and my stomach did a flip-flop.
“It’s a romance.”
Angus pretended to gag.
“Not that kind. Romance means high adventure. It’s the story of a hero from Sweden named Beowulf who travels to Denmark to kill a monster named Grendel. It’s full of battles, honor, and courage. In the end, he must defeat Grendel’s mother as well, and when he’s an old man he slays a dragon.”
“And what are they supposed to learn from that?” Mom raised her dark-penciled eyebrows a fraction of an inch. I could tell she was teasing Stephen, but he answered seriously, talking to her but looking at me.
“Well, we all have monsters in our
lives, but good stories aren’t written to teach lessons. I tell the boys they’re incarnations. They give life to characters and send them to walk around in our hearts and minds. If we learn anything from a story at all, it’s through identification. That’s why politicians and priests tell stories. Even Jesus told stories. There’s something in the human heart that needs a story. Beowulf’s a good one.”
Mom sniffed and took a very tiny bite of a french fry. “Perhaps Jesus should have done more miracles and less storytelling.” There was danger in her voice. My stomach drew in tight like the cinch on a horse. I looked around to see if anyone had noticed.
I knew it was time to change the subject. Nothing gets Mom more riled up than religious talk. I don’t think she has ever forgiven Uncle Stephen for teaching at a Catholic school. She says that she and God parted company a long time ago.
Mom directed her glare at me. I’d been caught in those headlights before. “Stories are entertainment. Don’t let your uncle confuse you.”
This time a few heads swiveled in our direction, so I kept my mouth shut and stared into my empty milkshake cup. I really wasn’t sure what Uncle Stephen meant when he said stories were incarnations, but I liked the sound of it. It made me feel like a story could be more than words on paper, a living thing that might change in unpredictable ways.
The tension ebbed as Mom finished her milkshake and Angus told a stupid knock-knock joke. An older woman began wiping down the table next to us. She shot a few “this is supposed to be fast food” glances in our direction, but we took our time. A few of the people working the counter were teenagers. I wondered exactly how old they were. All spring, I’d lobbied Mom for a job. She told me I’d have the rest of my life to work and that fourteen was way too young to start. But I pictured the summer stretching ahead of me like an unbroken expanse of concrete—hot, barren, and deadening in its sameness.
“Maybe I’ll get a job here when I grow up.” Angus sucked the last of his shake from inside his straw. Sometimes he can read my mind like that.
Thinking about jobs reminded me of the one plan I did have, to search for clues for Mom’s biography box.
“What was your first job, Mom?”
She was curiously still, as if she hadn’t heard me, and I noticed a faint flush to her cheeks.
“Go ahead and tell them, Lainey,” Uncle Stephen said.
Still she said nothing.
“It was at Wallabout Market. She supported the whole family,” Uncle Stephen supplied when she still failed to talk.
“How old were you?” I tried to picture her somewhere in New York, selling apples at a market, but I couldn’t picture her anywhere without her desk and typewriter. As soon as we got home, I’d add the name Wallabout Market to the cigar box.
Angus leaned forward and poked her with his straw. “Go on, tell about it.”
“It was a long time ago.” And then she stopped. “It wasn’t a real job at the market.”
“How old were you?” I asked again.
Uncle Stephen stretched out his long crane’s legs. “She was fourteen.”
And she told me I was too young to get a job this summer! How did this new piece of information fit into the jigsaw of her life? Uncle Stephen had to be joking about a fourteen-year-old supporting the whole family.
“Okay, then when was your first real job?” I asked.
“It was later that same summer,” she said, “reading to an old man.”
But before I could pursue this line of inquiry any further, she began to gather up our hamburger wrappers and cups as if she was ready to leave.
Uncle Stephen cleared his throat. “Before we go, I have some news to share. I’m going to New York.”
“What?” As a fledgling writer I dreamed of going to New York. It was where famous writers got their first break. No one famous got their start in San Jose.
“I want to go with you.”
“Not this time, Molly.”
Angus frowned. “Why are you going?”
“I’ve become involved in a miracle.”
Chapter Twelve
INVESTIGATION
SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA—JUNE 1955
Molly
“Involved how?” Mom asked
At the same time Angus said, “Did you do a miracle?” in a voice loud enough to stop the conversations around us.
Heads turned.
The family with the toddler leaned in. A girl from my school whispered behind her hand to her friend. I sank down. Any hopes I had of going unnoticed or at least pretending to be a normal family vanished.
“I don’t know, Angus. I certainly wasn’t planning to. That’s what this investigation is all about.”
“Enough!” Mom shot up from her chair like a jack-in-the-box. She leaned forward, pressing her fingertips on the table so hard they turned white. “We’ll talk about this at home.”
Her word was final. As she jerked her arms into her yellow raincoat, we stood as one and followed her stiff back out of McDonald’s. I stared straight ahead, consumed by my dread of being a spectacle.
Before we got to the car, Uncle Stephen began whistling “You are My Sunshine,” and Angus joined in. My mind whirred like a hamster on its wheel. I kept sneaking glances at Uncle Stephen’s face, looking for hints of the miraculous. You couldn’t do something big like a miracle without it leaving a mark. But his face was still familiar in the way a true miracle worker’s could never be.
In the back seat, Angus and I sat in silence. Outside, the rain had washed the sky clean of clouds. Hundreds of stars blinked back at me. Just beyond our neighborhood, cherry and walnut orchards bloomed. Beyond the orchards, the forested hills of the Santa Cruz Mountains sloped down to cliffs, cliffs that stood with their toes in the great Pacific Ocean.
As we pulled onto our street, I noticed the dark sedan parked in front of our house. A man waited on the steps, his silver hair haloed by the porch light.
“Who is—” Mom began.
But Uncle Stephen cut her off. “Monsignor Martin.” He was out of the car and up the walk before my foot hit the curb. We followed them in.
Monsignor Martin was tall and gray, his bushy hair the color of rain clouds. Even his eyes, under curling brows, were the color of steel. I thought of the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. A snicker escaped.
Uncle Stephen sent me a sharp glance. I could feel it on the back of my neck.
“Monsignor Martin, this is my nephew, Angus, and niece, Molly. My sister, Elaine.”
Next to the gray man my mom looked like a sunset, her red hair glowing above the yellow rain slicker. She held out one hand, and in a voice she reserved for door-to-door salesmen and missionaries, said, “Pleased to meet you.”
When the monsignor smiled, his face opened. I don’t know any other way to describe it. It reminded me of a tightly closed bud that fast forwarded into a flower. Suddenly the grayness was beautified.
The Tin Man and my uncle disappeared into a bedroom and closed the door. I snuck into mine and pressed one ear against the wall. But all I heard was the rise and fall of male voices. I’d often thought my own life didn’t have much of interest to write about. Now it appeared that might be changing.
I opened my journal and was finishing a note about Wallabout Market and the fact my mother’s brother might be a miracle worker when I heard the front door close. Mom was already in the living room, and Angus was curled up on the couch. He’d fallen asleep watching Walt Disney’s Disneyland. I paused in the dark end of the hallway, where no one could see me, journal still in my hand. In the living room, Mom and Uncle Stephen were illuminated like actors on a stage. Uncle Stephen walked over and turned off the sound on the TV. He massaged his forehead.
“It appears there will indeed be an investigation.”
“What does that mean?”
“The church has to verify that an actual miracle occurred. I don’t even know the answer to that question.”
“This is crazy, Stephen. Miracles are wishful thinking.
Something happens that seems too good to be true, and people call it a miracle. Remember when Angela Fabrino almost died of cancer? One day the cancer was gone, and people said it was a miracle. It was her cells fighting off the disease. Why can’t we leave it at that?”
Mom spoke in that hissing kind of whisper that meant she was trying not to yell. When he didn’t respond, she continued. “Is this about wanting to be famous, Stephen?”
My uncle flinched and turned away. Her words hovered in the silence between them. I knew the question was a dig about my uncle’s ex-roommate, who had moved to LA two years ago to pursue his dream of being in the movies. Mom had never liked him or his close friendship with Uncle Stephen.
Ignoring her dig, he continued. “The Fabrinos were different people after his wife was healed. Joey Fabrino paid back all that money he owed folks.” He walked into the kitchen. “I’m going to make tea.”
Mom followed. I could still see her, one hip against the kitchen counter, taut as a bowstring. If you touched her, she might shatter. “It’s superstition, Stephen, like rubbing a rabbit’s foot. He thought if he didn’t do all those things, God might make the cancer come back.”
Uncle Stephen was out of view, but I could hear him filling the kettle. “We can’t know what’s in a person’s heart, Lainey. Miracles are about transformation and people always change one way or another.”
“This is my fault. If I hadn’t left, you never would have been brainwashed by the priests. And what about us, Stephen? Where was God when we needed a miracle? Why didn’t he save me?” Her voice was as bitter as the white layer of flesh in a lemon.
Uncle Stephen’s reply was so quiet I almost missed it. “Don’t you think I ask myself that question every day?”
My mother had left her brother, and they had needed saving. From what?
Her voice ran on. “I’ll tell you what I think. If there is a God, he winds the universe up and then stands back and lets it run itself out.”
Chapter Thirteen
HOT DOGS
Between Before and After Page 5