by Pat Conroy
My mother suddenly stuck her head out the curtain and stared at me. “Are you playing a trick on me?”
“Took you a while,” I said.
“For penance, this priest gave me five Our Fathers, five Hail Marys, and said I had to bake him a dozen chocolate chip cookies.”
“These modern priests,” I said. “They’re going too far.”
“Jordan loved my cookies,” she said, then turned back to the confessional.
“This is a church, madam,” I heard Jordan say. “I find your behavior appalling.”
Both came out of the confessional at the same time and I watched as my mother jumped up into Jordan’s arms and he held her, rocking her, with her feet dangling off the ground.
“This means, Jordan, that some prayers are truly answered,” she said.
“For me too,” he said.
“Since the day you disappeared, I’ve prayed that you were alive and well,” Lucy said.
“Your prayers helped. I felt them,” Jordan said, putting her down on the marble floor.
“Please. I just had lunch,” I said.
“Ignore him,” said Lucy.
“I always have,” Jordan laughed.
“Are you a real priest?”
“That’s what they tell me,” he said. “I just made your soul shiny for God. You’re all set for Midnight Mass at St. Peter’s.”
“Does Jack go to confession?”
“Never,” Jordan said. “He’s incorrigible.”
“Make him,” my mother said.
“Unfortunately, Jack has free will just like the rest of us,” he said.
“You look wonderful. Just like a priest.”
“You’re still one of the prettiest women on earth, Lucy,” Jordan said.
“Your order needs to spend more money on optometrists,” she said. “But thanks.”
“See you at the Vatican,” Jordan said. “Bye, Lucy. Bye, Jack.”
That night the three of us took great care in dressing for a Christmas party before we went off to Mass at St. Peter’s. I took my time putting on my tuxedo and Leah came in to insert my cuff links and admire me. Leah wore a long white dress with a scooped neckline that showed off both her fragility and comeliness. Taking a string of pearls from Shyla’s jewel box, I placed them around Leah’s neck as we both stared in pleasure into the antique mirror.
“Daddy, I’d like to get my ears pierced,” Leah said to me, the girl in the mirror speaking in the same precise voice as the child below me.
“Aren’t you too young for that?” I asked her.
“Three girls in my class have their ears pierced,” Leah said. “I’d like to wear Mama’s earrings. They’re so pretty.”
“We’ll see,” I said, looking at Leah. Her eyes were palace brown, like Rome.
“May I wear lipstick tonight?” Leah asked.
“Yes. If you’d like.”
“I would very much.”
“Do you know how to put it on?” I asked. “I don’t.”
“Of course,” Leah said. “I practice whenever I spend the night at Natasha’s house.”
Leah unfastened an evening purse that had belonged to Shyla and took out a tube of lipstick. She pursed her lips and expertly applied the lipstick to her curving pretty bottom lip. Then she mated her lips together and moved them back and forth until the top lip had reddened congruently with the lower one. This gesture of Leah’s, this application of lipstick in all its simplicity and innocence, I realized, was one of the first of those unrecallable milestones passed by every child in her inexorable passage out of her parents’ lives. Her body was a timepiece and Leah, not I, was its contented owner.
Lucy walked straight into this rite of passage and said loudly, “Oh no you don’t, young lady.”
She marched over to the mirror and took the lipstick out of Leah’s hand.
“You’re far too young for lipstick, Leah. And you can march right to your bedroom and take off those pearls too. It’s vulgar to put pearls on a little girl. Now, run along and wash your face off good.”
Leah looked up at me in astonishment and I realized that she had never been treated like this in her life. I had never been anything but quietly insistent when we discussed some issue of importance between us. Leah knew very little about the natural humiliation of being a child and how grown people regularly trample on the feelings of the little people so helpless under their care.
“Go to the living room, Leah,” I said. “You look perfectly wonderful.”
Leah avoided meeting her grandmother’s eyes as, furious, she exited the room. Yes, she’s a McCall, I thought as I watched her proud retreat.
“You hurt Leah’s feelings,” I said. “Don’t ever do it again.”
“Someone needs to look out for the best interests of that child,” Lucy said. “You’ve dressed her up like a whore.”
“Mama,” I said, trying to be patient, but feeling my own darkness rising within me. “Paris and Linda Shaw are throwing a party for you. He’s a wonderful novelist and she’s an elegant hostess and they live in a beautiful apartment. All of our friends in Rome will be there. They want to show me and Leah that they love us. They want to show you that they’re very happy you’re alive and that you’ve come to visit and that I’m getting back together with my family after years of separation. But I knew you’d find some way to ruin this evening. All during my life, you always worked hard to mess up a happy occasion. Happiness seems to enrage you. Celebration pisses you off.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lucy said, backing away. “I’ve always loved parties.”
“You do. And you’ll have a good time at the one tonight. But you’re an engineer of discord,” I said. “What you just did was ruin the party for Leah, and because Leah’s going to be unhappy, you just ruined it for me.”
“It’s not my fault if you don’t understand what’s appropriate for a little girl and what’s not.”
“I’m going into the living room, Mama,” I said and I heard the coldness in my voice. “And I’m going to tell Leah that she looks lovely and what she’s wearing is fine. You just gave me a small glimpse of why I hate America and why I always felt ugly as a child.”
“Your childhood was pure happiness,” Lucy sneered. “You don’t even know what a bad childhood looks like. And you’re raising Leah to think she’s the Queen of Sheba or something.”
“Get control of yourself, Mother,” I said. “I’m going to talk to Leah.”
“You’d better back me up, Jack,” Lucy whispered hotly. “Otherwise that child’ll have no respect for me at all.”
I found Leah on the terrace, shivering in the cold and crying hard. I led her into the living room where we sat on the couch and she, heartbroken, cried. When her sobbing began to slow down, I chose my words with great care.
“Lucy was completely and totally and undeniably wrong in saying what she did, Leah,” I said, hugging her to me.
“Then why did she say it?” Leah asked, wiping her tears with her hand.
“Because she’s nervous about the party,” I said. “There’s no one my mother’s ever met that she didn’t feel inferior to. It’s easier to be mean to you and me than to face the fact that she’s terrified to meet our friends in Rome.”
“I thought I looked pretty,” Leah said.
I kissed her and said, “No one’s ever looked better. Since the beginning of time. At least to me.”
Leah’s composure was returning slowly. “Should I put Mama’s pearls back in her box?”
“You look perfect with them. Except now your eyes are swollen and red.”
“I couldn’t help crying, Daddy,” Leah said. “I’ve never had anyone talk to me like that.”
“She’s jealous of you and all the things you have,” I said. “My mother always told us that her childhood had been bad, but she wouldn’t say how. I now think that it was more than bad, that it was truly terrible.”
“If she had a bad childhood, Daddy, why
would she want to hurt me?” Leah asked.
“Because when you have been hurt you lose your trust in the world,” I said. “If the world’s mean to you when you’re a child, you spend the rest of your life being mean back.”
“I don’t think I like your mother, Daddy,” Leah said.
I laughed. “You don’t have to. You can choose to like any human being you feel like liking. That’s your decision and in that, Leah, you’re a sovereign nation unto yourself. But what you don’t know about my mother is coming up for your inspection.”
“What do you mean, Daddy?” Leah asked.
“My mother is a great undiscovered actress,” I said as we heard Lucy’s high heels clicking rapidly down the marble hall.
She made a grand entrance with a loud rattling of gold chains and bracelets. She looked at Leah and exclaimed, “You look absolutely heavenly, darling. Just ravishing. A rare statement of impeccable taste. Are those Shyla’s pearls? They look as beautiful on you as they did on her. Here, let me wash your lips with this cloth. I want you to wear some of my own lipstick. It’s far more chic and grownup than the kind you’re wearing. I bought you a tube of your own just today.”
As Lucy very carefully removed the lipstick from Leah’s mouth and began applying her own, she noticed that Leah had been crying.
“Did your father say something to hurt your feelings?” Lucy said, turning a furious eye on me. “Men! They’re not much good for anything except breaking your heart and letting out the hogs.”
“Letting out the hogs?” Leah asked.
“Just an expression, honey,” Lucy said happily. “Growing up in the South, I learned lots of country expressions. You be nice to Leah, Jack. You don’t understand what a treasure you have here. And enjoy this girl while you can. You won’t have her forever.”
Within a few minutes we left for the party in Trastevere, in order to arrive exactly an hour after the invitation said the party would start. Time is an elusive and foreign concept in Rome and no Roman worth his salt or his lineage would feel anything other than keen embarrassment over arriving at a party at the suggested hour. When I first came to the city, I had arrived at eight o’clock for dinner parties, only to find hostess after hostess in the shower. It takes a while for Americans, noted by the Romans for their hilarious punctuality, to adjust, but adjust I did.
I stood by the door, introducing Lucy to my Roman friends. Lucy looked lovely, and was her most charming and gracious self.
“Who’s this?” she whispered as a handsome man with a lionesque head stormed through the front door.
“Mother, I’d like you to meet Gore Vidal,” I said. “Gore, this is my mother, the predatory Lucy McCall Pitts.”
“Go on,” Lucy said. “You’re not Gore Vidal.”
“I beg your pardon, madam,” Gore said, arching his eyebrows like a misplaced king.
“Mom, don’t play Eliza Doolittle with me,” I said, nervous because I knew of Gore’s massive contempt for his native unwashed.
“You’re the writer Gore Vidal,” she said. “I’ve read all your books.”
“I rather doubt it, madam,” Gore said. “I’ve written far too many. I’ve had trouble calling them all to mind myself.”
“No,” Lucy insisted. “At the library in Waterford, I’ve won the award for the citizen who reads the most books more times than anyone in the history of the town.”
“Jack. This is a play and I’m being set up as a fool. Such egregious provincialism makes me long for an insulin shot.”
“It’s just my mother being herself.” I shrugged.
“It’s nice that you can visit your son, Miss Lucy,” Gore said. “My mother was a perfect monster.”
“I’m sure she just didn’t have much to work with, Gore,” Lucy said and Gore bellowed with laughter and swept on into the party.
My mother moved among my Roman friends for the next two hours and she made her brand of Southern charm seem contagious. She moved from group to group and I could hear her accent all night, followed by the laughter and appreciation of my friends.
As Leah and I made our way through the ranks of the partygoers, it seemed only minutes before the bells of Rome were warming up in a dozen belfries near us and the soft hands of clocks were inching their way toward the midnight hour. Thanking Linda and Paris for the party my mother paused to bid farewell to Gore Vidal, whom she had taken a shine to.
“Gore,” my mother said, “come visit us in South Carolina.”
“Lucy, darling,” he answered, “why on earth would I do that to myself?” and both of them laughed as he kissed my mother’s hand, then Leah’s.
Gore said, as he studied Leah’s curtsey to him, “This child is lovely. She looks as though she were born in pearls.”
“The pearls were my idea,” Lucy said, walking out into the Roman night as Leah and I shared a look.
A cab let us off near the Tiber and we joined that great, splendidly dressed crowd that made its way between the two encircling colonnades that led to St. Peter’s. It was a slow-moving, reflective congregation, like some grazing flock of herbivores who fed on prayer and incense and unleavened bread. Being so near a church again reminded Lucy that she had cancer and she said a rosary as we waited in the prodigious lines that formed around every entryway. In all of its exuberant excess, St. Peter’s had always prompted me to remember that the simplicity of the Protestants had sprung quite naturally from the exorbitance of churches like this. Baptist friends from the South had to fight off a gag reflex when I brought them face to face with the Roman Church’s inflation of taste. But I liked the excess of it all, the sumptuousness, and I tried to explain to visitors that this is what the artists of the Middle Ages thought that heaven might look like. The incense recalled my boyhood days as an altar boy, the smell of prayer put to the torch.
When we got to our places and kneeled, Leah whispered to me and said, “Grandma doesn’t like it that I’m Jewish.”
“I don’t care,” I said. “Do you?”
“She says it’ll only confuse me spiritually.”
“I was raised Catholic,” I whispered. “I’m totally confused spiritually.”
“Grandma said you don’t know the first thing about raising a Jewish girl,” she said.
“She’s right,” I said. “I’m winging it, kid. Doing the best I can.”
“I told her you were doing a great job.”
“Thanks. You won’t later.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Growing up,” I explained. “In a couple of years, everything I say’ll strike you as silly or ridiculous. Even the sound of my voice’ll irritate you.”
“I don’t think so. Are you certain? Certo?” she asked.
“Certo,” I said. “Part of natural law. I used to think everything my mother said was absolutely wonderful and that she was the smartest person in the world.”
“No,” Leah said.
“Yes,” I said. “Then I became a teenager and realized she was a complete idiot. And so was everyone around me.”
“It must be interesting,” Leah said, eyeing my mother. “This becoming a teenager.”
“One finds it so,” I said as the basilica continued to fill up with the hushed vast throngs.
When I sat back, I felt a tap on my shoulder and I heard Jordan’s voice directly behind me. This surprised me, but then I remembered that it was Jordan who had gotten me tickets for the Midnight Mass.
“Leah’s a doll baby. It’s like watching Shyla,” Jordan said to me. My mother began to teach Leah to use the rosary and both of them were concentrating on the row of white beads Leah held in her hands.
“One of the letters you brought today, Jack. My father wants to come to Rome to meet me after the New Year.”
“I’m glad only if you are,” I said. “Your dad’s never been one of my favorites.” I stood up to let some late arrivals push by me for their seats in the center of the row.
Jordan said, “You’ve always had this silly prejud
ice against sadism. What do you make of it?”
“The science project you did in high school,” I said in a low voice, “the one on coral snakes. They rarely bite anyone, but the ones they do almost never survive. Your dad’s like that.”
“Mom claims it’s a peace mission,” said Jordan. “He wants to extend an olive branch.”
“Or beat you to death with it,” I said.
“He’s coming. Whether I agree or not,” Jordan said. “What shall I do?”
“A transfer to Patagonia.”
“Hush, son,” my mother said in her most commanding voice. “The Pope’s coming up the center aisle.”
“Later,” Jordan said and disappeared into the Christmas night.
A choir of nuns sang birdlike in a distant eyrie as the Pope moved down the main aisle blessing all as he passed. I watched as my mother received the Papal blessing and took it in with the gratitude of an outfielder shagging a long fly ball. The Pope was surrounded by a whole civilization of cardinals and monsignors who escorted him with the same patience I had seen with cowbirds in the low country following the footsteps of a prize bull.
At Communion time I followed my mother up to the rail where we both received the Eucharist from Pope John Paul II. As we lined up with the surging crowds around us, I watched as priests appeared in every side altar and dozens appeared at the main altar to distribute the body and blood of God in a sacrament of mass production. But my mother looked radiant and hopeful as she prayed for a long time on her knees when we returned to our seats. Looking toward the back of the church, I saw uniformed men with machine guns vigilantly appraising the crowd’s behavior. The Pope looked thin and gaunt and I remembered that he had been shot by a young Turkish assassin in the piazza outside. I felt the Mass going through me, but not touching me. I was part of what was wrong with my century.
Later, I would say that it was at this moment in the Vatican that I began the terrible countdown toward the unknown. In the days to come I would try to reassemble all those random thoughts that coalesced when I looked toward the rear of St. Peter’s and watched those men with their silent coverage of the Pope’s flanks. I had an appointment with darkness that I was walking toward with wide-eyed innocence and a placid sense of well-being. Time itself had spotted me in an open field. I had been singled out by hooded, peregrine eyes when all I was feeling was an utter buoyancy and joy that my life was filling itself in, repairing all the cracks and damage. But first I had to endure the terror-haunted void of forgetfulness. I had to wait for my cue, for the lights to shine on me, for my unutterable time to call out my given name as a casting call for evil itself.