“You looking for my Angela?”
“Huh?”
My confusion must be ricocheting all over the place, because right away she says, “Oh, sorry. I thought maybe you were in the club.”
She speaks with a Spanish accent. I can see that she isn’t from around here; her outfit is too bright for Jupiter, too many stripes, and her slacks don’t match her top.
“No,” I told her. “I’m not in any club.”
“Oh.”
“But wait,” I practically shout as she heads back to where she was just standing. I can’t go back empty-handed to Mr. Schulman. I have to tell him something. The woman signals for me to shhh. She gestures toward the tree and then takes a step back, inviting me to come closer and look at what she and her friends are staring at. Just then, another woman in the group takes out a handkerchief from her purse, spreads it on the ground in front of her, and kneels down. She clasps rosary beads to her breast and gazes up at the tree like it’s a television that’s broadcasting her favorite show. I can see her just barely moving her lips, murmuring something, praying.
“Okay,” I say under my breath. “This is getting weird.”
I take a deep gulp of pine-scented air and inch myself forward. The black-haired woman touches my arm and guides me around to the other side of the grove. I see the thing that is fascinating them; it’s the tree.
I look over at the woman, and she makes a happy face. There are gold fillings gleaming at me.
“Huh?” I say again.
She looks disappointed, because clearly I can’t see what she’s seeing. She makes a point of staring at the tree and indicating that I ought to keep looking. Look harder, she tells me. I do, and that’s when I notice that some of the bark has peeled off the trunk, revealing a wound about two feet wide and four feet high; it’s positioned on the tree so that a person of average height has to gaze up at a forty-five-degree angle. I’m no tree expert, but to me it doesn’t look that exceptional.
“What’s going on?” Mr. Schulman shouts from the other side of the fairway. He and Mr. Loomis have moved themselves into the shady sidelines, and I can see that Mr. Loomis had taken his hat off and he’s mopping his bald spot with his monogrammed sweat towel.
I wave at them, hoping to offer some kind of reassurance but at the same time signaling for more time.
“So,” I say to the woman, “are you guys finishing up here, or are you going to be a while?”
She gives me a hard look, and I can tell that I’m a disappointment to her. She steps closer to me, places her hand on my arm again, and whispers, “Look. It’s Mary. Can you not see her?”
“Mary?”
“Yes. The Mother of Our Lord. The Blessed Mother. Right there. On the tree. She’s here for you.”
The woman’s words send a chill up my spine. She’s here for you.
The Blessed Mother is here for me?
Jesus, I’m thinking. How am I going to explain this to Mr. Schulman?
Down to Earth
Under normal circumstances, I would’ve run home, gone straight to my room, and Googled the Blessed Virgin Mary. I could’ve learned all kinds of interesting facts—like what she was up to and why she’d chosen a tree on a golf course in Jupiter as the site of her latest appearance. But that’s not the way it happens.
“What d’ya want my laptop for?” Doug asks as he pulls his whole head back and squints down his nose at me. I’m feeling like a menu with no featured special.
I don’t mention the tree or the women or the golfers. I’m also not going to discuss the threats and ultimatums that Prendergast made in an effort to get the women to vacate the premises. I figure something like the Blessed Virgin Mary showing up at the golf course on a Tuesday afternoon is a situation too complicated for Doug to understand coming off his workday. There’s a moment when I think maybe he might appreciate a description of the police car bumping and careening across the fairway with its lights flashing and sirens wailing. We were all pretty impressed at the time. But then I realize that it’s more of a you-had-to-be-there situation, so I just shut up. I also don’t mention how the cops had treated the women as though they were a bunch of armed jihadists with a plan to blow up Jupiter. And I leave out the part of the story where the women were physically escorted off the course while being told by Jack Felder, the owner of the club, not to set foot on his property again or he’d be forced to take legal action against every last one of them. In the end, I tell Doug that I’m doing a report on the Virgin Mary for extra credit for my world religion class.
“But it’s summer,” Doug reminds me.
“I’m getting a jumpstart,” I tell him. “It’s part of my new plan.”
“Yeah, right,” Doug scoffs before moving on to the next thing, which is a beer.
His back is turned toward me, and as he pops the cap of the beer bottle, I notice that there’s a clod of dirt stuck to his neck. I don’t say anything about that, either. Why bother.
Doug didn’t always work in the dirt. Back in New York, his place of employment was an editing bay; he sat for long hours in an airtight studio, staring at a video monitor, pressing buttons, and making the lives of various brides and grooms add up to something. His job was to record the goings-on of longtime friends and family who’d come to celebrate the love of a brand-new Mr. and Mrs. He’d edit out the embarrassing bits, add snazzy graphics, and generally make everyone look a lot better than they looked in real life. He delivered the edited memories to the bride and groom in the form of a single mastered DVD, all for a set fee. In those days Doug was always in demand. Someone was always getting married and as a result, I didn’t see much of him.
When we moved to Florida, everything changed. Doug and I are now practically joined at the hip. He insists that we eat dinner together Monday through Friday; it’s become a ritual. Dinner is never fancy. This evening, for instance, Doug picked up burritos on his way home from work. Because the burritos come with a salad and a garnish and cost twice as much as drive-through, they’re considered “gourmet.” Doug says he can taste the difference. I’m listening to him as he compares the contents of the fancy burritos to the crap we normally eat. I arrange my face as if I’m actually paying attention, but really I’m thinking about the Blessed Mother.
She’s here for you.
I should probably mention that I’m not a religious person. As a kid, I never set foot inside a church or a synagogue or a mosque or a temple, unless it was part of some outing designed by my mother to expand my frame of reference. In New York City, it’s possible to come in contact with representatives of just about every religion under the sun, sometimes all gathered together under the same roof for an ecumenical something. They were all nice enough people as far as I could tell, but none of them ever convinced me to sign up and become a member of their church or to follow them to India.
As far as God Himself is concerned, I have nothing against the guy, but I don’t think He’s spent enough time in New York City or in Jupiter, Florida, because I’ve never once seen Him. Or maybe I have seen Him, and I didn’t recognize Him. In any case, God and I have adopted a policy of laissez-faire, which means that as long as I don’t bother Him, I expect Him not to mess with me.
Of course, I’ve heard Bible stories about Jesus and the Blessed Mother and even the Apostles. They’re like famous baseball players—I know their names and what team they play for, but anything more than that slips my mind because I don’t follow the sport. I have nothing against religion, you understand. It’s just not my thing. So I’m thinking, when the woman at the golf course said, “She’s here for you,” she must have meant you in a general sense, and not me in particular.
After dinner I’m scraping the leftover food into the garbage disposal and loading the dishwasher when Doug comes waltzing into the kitchen. He’s freshly showered and smells like a scented trash bag. He hoists himself up onto the countertop. I decide not to tell him that he’s just plopped his ass smack on a patch of apricot jam left over fro
m my morning toast. He looks happy, and he’s ever so slightly stoned.
“So …”
He’s holding up a piece of paper in front of his face as though it’s a mini Magna Carta, and now he’s reading aloud as if to a crowd of invisible dignitaries.
“Says here, a person can sell their real estate by burying a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary on their front lawn, upside down and facing the house. What d’ya make-a that?”
I can’t bear to look at Doug when his face is cleanly shaven and he has a buzz on. He’s just too open or something, and I see too plainly the face of the guy he once was shining through the face of the guy he’s lately become. It’s not that either of those faces is hard to take. No. It’s the distance between the two that kills me.
Don’t get me wrong. Doug has always been a decent-enough-looking guy. His hair is black and shaggy, and though it’s salting around the edges, there’s still plenty of it. His eyes are a shade of blue that match a color-enhanced snapshot of the ocean. He has that tall, dark, Irish American thing going for him; and being outdoors all day makes him look like a tennis bum with a trust fund, a look that women seem to find appealing.
“I wouldn’t have a clue what to make of it,” I say as I carefully place a two-in-one Action Pac into the dishwasher, close the door, and press NORMAL. Almost immediately the machine starts breathing out the toxic fumes of Citrus Breeze. Because the hum of wash and rinse is threatening to trump our conversation, I up my volume. “I’m grounded and denied access to the Internet. Remember?”
“I remember. And for a good reason, too.” He’s trying to affect his dad voice, but because he’s high, he just sounds like he’s imitating someone on TV. “Here y’go, buddy.”
Buddy?
He hands me two sheets of paper—one has some 1-2-3 steps about how you can bury a statue on the front lawn as a way to get your house sold, and the other is a list of results from a Google search of “the Virgin Mary.”
I give him a cold stare and do my best to dim his ridiculous grin by adopting an expression that says, And what am I supposed to do with this?
“Didn’t think I was paying attention, did ya?”
“Whatev.” I turned back to the pots and pans from last night’s dinner.
“Look. I did your homework for you. You could at least show a little appreciation.”
He hops down from his perch and makes a big show of leaving the room as though he’s the most underappreciated single parental unit in all of Jupiter, but when I don’t take the bait, he turns back to me and says, “You think everything sucks, right? You do. I know, because I was the same when I was your age. I thought the whole world sucked big-time. And it did. But y’know what really sucked? Me. I sucked. I had a bad attitude, and pretty soon everything around me just reflected back my suckiness.”
“So what’re you saying?”
“What I’m saying is that, if you want to get somewhere in this world, you have to at least make an effort.”
“Wait. So are you telling me that you’ve gotten somewhere in this world, or are you saying that you don’t suck anymore?”
“Nice.” His voice sounds flat and sulky. And then he’s gone.
I finish up the pots, sponge down the counter, and put everything away so that the kitchen looks pretty much the way my grandmother always kept it when she lived here.
From the next room Doug announces that he’s going out, and then in a concession to his own guilt for leaving me at home alone, he says I can use his computer to check my e-mail. But, he’s quick to warn me, he’ll be checking on me when he gets home to make sure I haven’t been up to any shenanigans.
Shenanigans?
I have no idea where he goes when he leaves the house in the evening, though he always makes sure to tell me that if anything happens I can call him on his cell and he’ll come right home. I always remind him that nothing has happened since we moved to Florida nine years ago.
I should mention that moving to Florida wasn’t my idea. I never would’ve come here. Doug said that Florida was going to be a great new beginning for us, which of course meant that life would suck just like before only in a new setting. To be fair, Doug kind of had to move here because of my grandmother, Marie. She developed the early stages of Alzheimer’s about five years ago, and she was getting worse and worse. Doug felt that it wasn’t safe for her to live alone anymore in her done-up, four-bedroom hacienda on a cheery cul-de-sac. Right after Marie drove her car into the window of the dry cleaner, we moved in with her. Then Doug had her moved into an assisted-living situation, and here we are, still living in her house.
All my e-mail turns out to be junk. Nothing from Corey. I check out a few Blessed Virgin Mary sites and discover that her first public appearance was in 1531 when she showed up on a Mexican mountainside and startled a local shepherd named Juan. During the last century, she was very busy—Lourdes in France, Knock in Ireland, Fatima in Portugal, and Medjugorje in the former Yugoslavia. I also read up on how an Internet casino recently paid out $28,000, via eBay, so they could purchase an image of the Virgin Mary that had been toasted into a cheese sandwich. And there are hundreds of personal testimonies from people who claim that they’ve seen her on various inanimate objects such as water tanks, car bumpers, billboards, a cinnamon bun, oil slicks, subway platforms, an office building, hillsides, and moldy wallboards.
As I’m doing my research, the house begins to settle down. I can hear the hum of the central air, the creak of floorboards relaxing, and the slosh and whoosh of the dishwasher as it does its last round. I leave the computer and walk from room to room, restlessly. I pretend that I’m living in the aftermath of some major global catastrophe, and I’m one of a handful of survivors scattered around North America. This is my place, my safety zone, and it’s going to stay that way as long as I keep it sealed against contaminants and possible invasion by other survivors who aren’t so lucky. I know they are out there, wandering around and looking for a safe zone. Unlike me, they don’t have a choice of rooms. They can’t sit in overstuffed furniture that has been upholstered to match the sand and sea-foam-colored carpets and drapes. They don’t have a state-of-the-art toaster. They don’t know the pleasures of foam mattresses designed by NASA. Of course, as soon as the other survivors find me, they’ll want in; but in order to survive, I’ll have to deny them access. I’ll have to be strong and go it alone. And even though it might be fun to invite one or two of them inside the house, offer them a cool drink, make them microwave popcorn, and watch one of the very last pre-apocalyptic DVDs together, I’ll have to resist. The survival of the whole world depends on my ability to refuse to open that door.
I pick up my guitar and practice a few Bob Dylan songs. I’m forcing myself to learn one of his classics, “Blowin’ in the Wind.” I am, after all, named after the guy, and for the past few months, I’ve been trying to master the tune on my guitar. At the rate I’m going, I should have it down in time for my seventieth birthday. Still, it’s good to have a project.
The phone rings. There’s definitely someone on the other end because I can hear breathing. Not the heavy panting of a perv, just what it takes to stay alive during waking hours. This has been happening for a while. I don’t recognize the number on the caller ID, so I suspect that it’s Marie dialing the only number she remembers—her home number. But by the time she gets me on the phone, she’s forgotten who she is and why she’s calling. That’s my theory anyway. Rather than embarrass her by asking too many questions (Do you know who I am? Why did you call? Who’s the president of the United States?) I pull up a kitchen stool and begin to tell her about the unexpected appearance of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the golf course. It feels good to talk to somebody, even if it’s only my grandmother, a woman who is slowly forgetting everything.
“… and so the lady asked me if I was able to see it. But I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see anything, really. I mean, there was something there, for sure, but I wouldn’t swear that it was the Blessed Mary. Just
looked like rot or a scar or something gone wrong with the tree. I couldn’t say it was a person, even. Then all of a sudden, I saw it. It was like one of those drawings of a bunch of dots, and it looks like a bunch of dots until someone says that it’s supposed to be two people kissing or whatever, and your eyes adjust, and then you see it. Y’ever see those drawings, Gram?”
Marie was always a big talker, but once she started losing her memory, she began to say less and less. Personally, I think she keeps quiet because she doesn’t want anyone to notice that she can’t keep things straight. In any case, I run out of things to tell her, so I say see ya and hang up.
I decide to review the Wedding Archives. The Wedding Archives are Doug’s life’s work, at least his work up until his life changed and we moved to Jupiter.
I call them the Wedding Archives, but they aren’t that organized; they’re just a collection of loose DVDs with the names of a bride and a groom and the date they were hitched scribbled in Doug’s almost illegible handwriting. They’re stored in a shoe box that sits way at the back of Doug’s clothes closet. If I didn’t climb a stepladder and reach into the back of the closet to liberate the box every once in a while, no one else would bother, and the DVDs would just sit there, forgotten, gathering dust. Doug doesn’t care about his past; he’s pretty much turned his back on everything he did in New York. He says that it’s better for us to move on and try to forget. I’m not so sure.
I take the DVDs out of the box, careful not to leave fingerprints on the shiny silver discs. I slip one of them into the computer, click on the appropriate icon, and instantly bring someone’s happiest day gloriously back to life. I usually fast-forward a lot because even though I’ve seen each wedding numerous times, I like to review as many of them as I can in one sitting.
Virgin Territory Page 2