“Thank you. So you think they’re good?”
“It was built in 1899. This is the first renovation. Of course, there’s annual maintenance. Painting, new roof, that sort of thing. So it’s unlikely that there will be another renovation for a hundred years or so.”
“Right, right,” I say impatiently.
“The reason I’m asking, what do you envision the church to be a hundred years from now?”
Two’s words ring in my ears, and suddenly he morphs from my favorite nephew to the giant Rufus McSherry, both of whom now have criticized my design.
“Unc, you’re designing a house of salvation,” Two says quietly. “What should a person feel like when they enter such a place? That’s all I’m asking.”
I pace around the study, then grab my jacket, hat, and gloves and head for the front door.
“Sorry!” Two calls after me.
“I’ll be back later,” I snap at him without looking back.
I slam the door behind me and cross the yard to the beach. My feet crunch on the sand, which is covered in patches of ice and frost, as I stride angrily to the water’s edge. The ocean in winter is an endless gray blur, a giant well of sadness and despair. There is no sun today, just a cold final day of the year 1970. How promising this year began, and how sick I am that it is ending on such a sour note.
I don’t like being this way, yet I believe an artist must protect his vision. But, God forbid, what if the naysayers are right? How many more people are going to tell me that I haven’t delivered? Maybe I am just an egotistical small-town decorator who thinks he knows everything about everything. But I love what I do, and if I didn’t think I knew best, I would step aside and let someone else do it. No one has the love affair with paint, fabric, and paper that I do. But somehow, the church has me thrown. I have never been in this situation before. I’m used to clients kneeling before me in gratitude. Did I overreach with this job?
“Unc?” Two calls out softly, so as not to scare me. I wave to him, and he joins me.
“I’m having a little snit,” I admit, and, somehow, that makes me feel better.
“I know. I have snits myself.” Two laughs.
“I’m a walking ego. Two legs and a temper. That’s me.”
“You just want what’s best.”
“No, I want things my way, and I want to be right, and I want everybody to know it. That makes me loaded with pride. Now, I grant you, that’s better than being full of cancer, but I’m learning it’s almost as dangerous.”
Two buries his hands in his pockets. “I understand how you feel. But you shouldn’t give up. You know what you’re doing. I said I took a year off because I didn’t fit in, but the truth is, I really came home because I wanted to work with you. You’re the only artist in our family. And that’s what I want to be. Who better than you to show me how?”
I feel myself tear up. “Really?”
“Yes. You’ve brought elegance and style into our lives. Mom would still have plaid café curtains on those spring rods from Sears if it wasn’t for you. And at church, the altar would look like a wrinkled junk pile on Sundays if you didn’t dress it; and our cousins would only see chandeliers in books if you didn’t insist they buy them for their homes. You’re the touch of class in the di Crespi family.”
I take a deep breath and look out to the sea, feeling small and yet suddenly significant. “I am, aren’t I?”
“Without you, we’d be a bunch of gavones. You lead us. We need you.”
“All I want to do is make things nice.”
“You do.”
“Why, then, is there so much acrimony around this church project? I’m begging you, tell me what I’m doing wrong.”
“That’s easy. Church means something different to everyone. When you decorate a home, you can see how people live and do a version of them in wallpaper and paint. But a church is different. It represents the souls of people, whatever that means. For some, it’s a private place to confess their sins. For others, it’s a choir loft filled with light and music. For children, it has incense and men in dresses, so it’s a little scary. What is it to you?”
I think about my church. It has kept me in line, and provided a framework for my beliefs, which I desperately need. It gives me boundaries and rules and perimeters. I believe in the afterlife, and I want a place there; I want to be told exactly how to get to heaven, and my church does that for me. I revere it, but I also try to live by the rules. I don’t think my young nephew will understand that. Nowadays, the kids believe that everyone should have their own church. I like that thousands of souls came before me, reciting the same prayers in the same way. “My church is a place where I feel rebirth. I go, I pray, I confess, and I leave with a clean slate and start over again.”
“Hmmm.” Two thinks about this.
“I feel connected there,” I say simply.
“Well, that’s not what your sketches say. Those sketches show a place that’s been redecorated with a nice floor and good paint and some gold leafing. It might as well be a fancy hotel. It doesn’t show renewal.”
“I don’t know how to do that.” I have never said those words in my life.
“Then your job”—Two looks at me—“is to find someone who does.”
I feel my feet sink into the sand, and I realize that the water has rushed to the ankles of my Wellies. If I stand here much longer, I’ll be washed away like the top half of an old clamshell. How do I find a way to dramatize rebirth against the backdrop of eternity for the people of Our Lady of Fatima Church? Is there a way? The sun makes a tear in the lining of this grim day, and while I should feel a little hope, what I really feel is sadness. Maybe I’m not the right man for the job.
“It’s a masterpiece!” Toot whispers as she helps me lift Monica Vitti’s chandelier from the packing crate. The entire staff at the OLOF post office tingled when the man-sized wooden crate arrived stamped BY AUTHORITY OF THE QUEEN. Maybe they thought I had shipped home a guard from Buckingham Palace.
This has to be my favorite purchase of all time. I like mementoes from trips. I have shipped home a ceramic birdbath on a pedestal from Deruta, Italy (a kitschy touch in my powder room), a statue from Málaga, Spain (it’s in the garden), and a TV table from Provence (perfect in my study), and I have been thrilled with all of them. But nothing can compare to Monica Vitti’s chandelier.
“What are you going to do with it?” Toot asks.
“I don’t know. For now it’s getting hung in my attic so the bobeches can breathe. It’s not good to keep a chandelier in storage.”
“Are you going to clean it?”
“Later. With a damp sponge of hot water and ammonia, crystal by crystal. Never use water on the wires, you know; it will weaken them, and then you’ve got problems.” Toot helps me up the stairs to the second floor, the chandelier in tow.
“Imagine Monica Vitti and her paramours clinking champagne glasses and pitching woo under this.”
This gives me the opening I’ve been waiting for. “When were you going to tell me that you’re sleeping with Lonnie?”
Toot takes a deep breath. “It’s not a big deal,” she squeaks.
“You’re dating your ex-husband behind his wife’s back! May I remind you you’re committing adultery?”
Toot mulls this over as we guide the chandelier up the attic steps. When we reach the top, I hang it on a hook usually reserved for the Christmas garlands currently festooning my garage doors. I leave everything up through the Feast of the Epiphany.
“Doris won’t sleep with him. She’s too uptight.”
“Maybe she wants a faithful husband!”
“She doesn’t know about us.”
“Well, it won’t be long. She’ll see your cars parked outside the Asbury Park Motor Lodge one night, and that will be it.”
“We’re careful.”
“What is it with you?”
“I can’t help it. I’m just like Daddy. I have a secret life.”
“Toot! P
lease don’t use our parents as an excuse for your bad behavior. Take responsibility for yourself!”
“If you want to know the truth, thirteen years of celibacy made me realize how much I missed sex. That’s right, B. I missed making love. And now I’m in this shit age bracket where I can’t go younger—’cause they’re married or have some infinity—”
“Infirmity,” I correct her.
“Infirmity that prevents them from delivering satisfactory performance. And older men, forget ’em. Sal cured me of the over-sixties. They’re like used cars—they look damn good on the lot, but you get ’em home and the wheels fall off and you’re stranded. With all of Sal’s aches and pains and pills, I figured out something: I can’t stand taking care of a man.”
“But that is the essence of love!”
“To you. Not to me. To me love is supposed to be fun. Fun and sexy and a little dirty. Okay? I like sneaking around. I like motels with the waxy paper strip across the commode and the hermetically sealed plastic cups on the sink and wearing a new bra and lacy little tap pants and slinking around like a kitten on a mattress with more lumps than the mashed potatoes at the Tic-Tock. Call me a tramp, because being a good girl made me miserable. Being a good girl got me a pile of poo, okay? It did nothing for me except make me feel bad about myself. I did everything like I was supposed to, and when it all went south, my perfect moral code only made me more lonely. Being a mistress has been good for me. I’m standing on my own. I’m a lover again. I’m a prize. I’m a tasty morsel. I’ve finally broken the shackles of my bad marriage. I’m free!”
“What broken shackles? You’re sleeping with the same man you divorced, which means you’re right back in the same shackles. Don’t you remember when Lonnie left you for that fry cook, but when he dislocated his shoulder you took pity on him and you took him back and bathed him every night? Then he’d go off on a business trip to meet up with some comare on the road and give her the spry, healed Lonnie while you stayed home and wondered how he’d get through the airport with his arm in a sling? Do you just erase the past like a bad dream and paint in a lie?”
“No.”
“Then what are you doing, Toot?”
“I’m not going to marry him again.”
“It doesn’t matter. You sleep with him.”
“Okay, okay. On the surface it seems sick. But, I don’t know, we talk now. He listens. He touches me! He rubs my back, he wants to know what I’m thinking, he kisses me like I’m Ann-Margret and he’s Elvis Presley. Don’t you see . . . he loves me like I matter!” Toot bangs her fists on her thighs. “Our foreplay used to consist of ‘Lower the volume.’ Now the TV isn’t even on. Now he’s watching me! The Toot channel! I promise you, Lonnie has changed. He looks at me like I know something—with respect, not like I’m a dummy dumdum. I don’t know, B. Marriage almost killed us, but an affair has reviled us.”
“Revived. You mean revived.”
“Whatever. All I know is we’re crazy about each other.”
I hold my head in my hands and can actually feel the network of blood vessels in my brain filling with fluid and commence throbbing. “All right. All right. Have your whatever-it-is with Lonnie, but I don’t want to know about it.”
“Fine.”
“Thank you.” I straighten the crystals on the chandelier before turning to go down the stairs.
“I’m finally fulfilled a little, and you don’t want to hear about it. I think you’re jealous.”
“Oh, come on.”
“You don’t want me to be happy.”
“Of course I do. But I would like it to be moral and legal and maybe psychologically healthy. What’s happened to you? How could you do this to yourself? And what about Doris?”
“Oh, Doris, Doris. She’s just a fascist who wants to run Lonnie’s life with rules and regulations. The man has a curfew! She might as well be his nurse or his mother. She puts his juice out in the morning, his Metamucil at night, and in between she sorts the mail. Lonnie misses my passion. He values me. I mean the world to him.”
“You’re talking about Lonnie Falcone like he’s a prince. May I remind you? He’s not. He cheated on you, he hid money when you divorced him, and he tried to take your car away. Have you forgotten all of that?”
“I forgive him.”
“Why?”
Toot raises her voice. “Because that’s love, baby. No matter what he did, or does, or didn’t do, I am able to step outside of the pain and say, ‘Hey, you know what? Maybe you aren’t the man I dreamed of, and maybe we’ve disappointed each other, and maybe we agree on nothing, but by God, we have this thing, this lock on each other, this special clicky bond that rachets a man and a woman together like a screw to a lug nut. We have glue!’ I used to resent that glue. But when I think about him now, wild dogs couldn’t keep me away! Just speaking his name makes me want to jump in my car and go over there and throw him up against the retaining wall of his backyard pool and have my way with him.” Toot fixes the spit curl on her cheek. “You know what I want for you?”
“Toot,” I warn her.
“I want you to taste life like I’m tasting it with Lonnie. I want you to lick the whipped cream right off the sundae and taste what’s underneath.”
“You’ve lost your mind.”
Toot shrugs. “Maybe. Or maybe I’ve finally found what makes me truly happy. And it doesn’t fit in any box, but I don’t care. Mama, may she rest in peace, can kiss my heinie. Papa, who cares? And the Catholic Church can bite my shorts. I’ve lived by the rules and look what it got me. I was a good Catholic girl who hung on to her virginity like a savings bond, and when the marker came due, I found out there was no interest. What was the matter with me? Who was I trying to please? And for what? B, I’m alive again—on my own terms. You’re the one who always wanted that for me, don’t forget. And now I’ve got it, and I’m not going to apologize to you, or the church, or my kids, or anybody. I’ve finally found what works for me. And I’m not turning back.”
I should have guessed that the news of Rufus McSherry leaving the church project would burn a trail straight to Father Porp’s door. I pull up in front of the rectory, feeling very much like the thirteen-year-old boy who accidently dropped a lit baptismal candle during Mass and set the priest’s robe on fire. I’m about to be punished.
Marie Cascario offers me a cup of coffee as I wait for Father in his office. It’s like a dentist’s office in here. There are no personal photographs, just a desk, a chair, a phone, and two seats for visitors who need counseling. As I sit and wait, I redo the bland space in my mind with a sofa covered in chocolate-brown tweed, low lamps, mahogany bookshelves, and a mirror on the wall opposite the windows to bring in more light.
“Bartolomeo?” Father Porp breezes past me and takes a seat behind his desk. I stand, as I was trained to do, whenever a priest or nun enters a room. He motions for me to sit down.
“Father, I’d like to explain—”
“Look. I don’t have time for this. I have a shell of a church over there. I’m saying Mass in a gym, and, believe me, the parishioners are complaining already. They let their displeasure be known during the Offertory. The truth is, you are not only costing me time, you’re costing me money. I want to fire you—” My stomach flips, and I clench my fists—“but I can’t. Patton and Persky are not available, so I can’t get them. And Aurelia Mandelbaum told me that she wants you to finish what you started. So I’m stuck.”
“If you’re not firing me, what is this meeting about? You just want to scare me?”
“Yes!”
“Well, Father, it’s too late for that. I am scared. Plenty scared. I am so scared I haven’t had time to pray about it. So here’s what I’m going to say to you. I will get the job done, and if you’re so worried about it, why don’t you pray for me?”
Father sits back in his chair, his eyes widened in surprise. “I’ll do that. But don’t screw around, Bartolomeo. This church is not your playground. And I want the job done.”
>
With the moral fiber of my family collapsed around my ankles like a pair of shorts with the elastic shot, and Father Porp threatening to take the project away from me entirely, I decide a change of scenery might help me think things through.
The D&D Building in Manhattan is practically empty. January is a dead month in decorating circles, probably because the clients with deep pockets head south where it’s warm. I wander silently from showroom to showroom, and except for the ding of the security bell when I enter, it’s like a tomb. I look back over my nineteen-year career as I peruse the stock, a bergere chair here and a refectory table there. It think of the homes I’ve decorated.
I don’t have it in me to stop by and visit Mary Kate Fitzsimmons (she would want a belated Christmas gift from me, and that’s the last thing I’m interested in today), or call Eydie, who is in Paris and hard at work on a Dorothy Draper retrospective at the Sorbonne. I don’t want to bore my industry pals Helen and Norbert—lackluster January sales have them in a funk anyway. I don’t feel like taking the bus to the Village for a manicure and a cocktail. If New York City can’t cheer me up, I might as well go home.
On the drive back to Jersey it begins to snow, those funny, drunken snowflakes that fall in fits and starts and twirl around before hitting the ground. I take it slowly on the turnpike, remembering when my cousin Bongie Vietro drove his Le Mans coupe too fast in a snowstorm and slid under a semi truck and was dragged a mile and a half underneath. He crawled out unscathed when the semi pulled into a rest stop. My aunt said his Saint Christopher medal saved him. Others believe it was the beer buzz he got at the Cotton Bowl party at the American Legion Hall in Allenhurst.
Instead of driving home, I go to Toot’s. The lights are always on and someone is always home, and in my state of mind that’s a priceless gift.
I climb the steps to the back porch. I see Toot in the window, putting saran wrap on a pan of lasagna. If we’re not cooking food, we’re eating it, and if we’re not eating it, we’re freezing it. I rap on the door. Toot turns around and looks surprised to see me. “Come on in,” she says when she opens the door. “I was just freezing some lasagna.”
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