Karen stormed out of my room and ran down the stairs past Nonna who was preparing dinner. I didn’t try to chase her or return her forgotten magazine. I was hurt and angry, and I turned to the picture of John Stamos staring up at me.
“What are you looking at?” I snarled.
Downstairs Nonna continued her dinner preparations. Her special lemon chicken was already baking as she folded a rolled pastry into the pie tin. Her hands knew the cadence. Nonna then turned her attention to the berries in the sink. She sifted through the filled bowl, picking out the bad fruit, adding a little sugar, flour, and lemon rind to the rest. She let out a small sigh as she poured the berries into the unbaked crust. The scene with the girls was not new to her, though she had not experienced this particular drama for twenty-five years.
I came down the stairs as casually as I could. I snatched a berry from the pie. She gently slapped my hand away. Outside a lawn mower stopped its humming, and the quiet startled me. I wanted to kiss Nonna’s cheek, but that would be an admission of my guilt. Like my mother before me, I was hoping to shield Nonna from the unpleasantness, but also like my mother, I failed.
Nonna knew the nature of people. Even without the prejudices, she had witnessed enough war to know that humanity had an ugly countenance. But this face wasn’t the whole of human temperament. She held on to other knowledge and other truths, among them: friendships between teenaged girls are surprising—both in their fragility and their strength. They are more elastic, more forgiving than most brotherhoods. But I had yet to learn that lesson. When Karen walked out of my room that day, she took all the air with her. I had done something terrible, something that, had she done it to me, would have been as irreparable as a busted balloon. I didn’t understand my worth as a friend, and I underestimated Karen’s.
♦ 26 ♦
2000
WITH DAD VISITING, the three of us spent Sunday in church rather than at the lake where Sam wanted to be. Sam wore a frown that exposed me in front of my father. His expression was a billboard that proclaimed how lax we’d become in our church attendance. As an adult, I was entitled to shape my own religious experience, and by default, that of my son’s. My father would see it differently, however. My lapse in church attendance was something much bigger in my father’s eyes. He would come to his own conclusions, mainly that I, a Catholic—gone solo—had not asked God to help me fend off the temptations in my marriage. And if Bryce and I divorced, which was more inevitable every day that passed, my dad would never accept the outcome as a fact of life, but instead he would view it as negligence on my part.
Sam was crestfallen about this deviance from our schedule.
“Can’t Grandpa go to church by himself?”
Travis reassured Sam. “I am not taking the boat out anyway. I need to make some adjustments on the engine.”
With this lie, I was able to nudge my sullen son into the pew between my father and me. The church building was new, unlike my girlhood church, Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, which rose solemn and majestic across from the fountain in Monroe Park on Richmond’s north side. Its style alone, Italian Renaissance revival, was enough to summon the awesome power of God to a young girl’s mind.
This new building had none of that. I had never been inside of it or any other Catholic church in this town. The narthex smelled of new carpet and fresh paint. Inside the sanctuary, the artwork stuck out from its white walls—more art gallery than church. Perhaps the secular mood of the building should have comforted me, but it didn’t. The stained-glass windows were shockingly modern, and the statues of Mary and the crucifix looked almost temporary, as if they were on loan from a nouveau riche West Coast art collector. Against the monotone of the rear of the church, the green exit lights repeated their eerie visual incantation.
As a young girl, I had urged my parents to sit close to the statue of Mary at our church. It was a glorious depiction of the Virgin, carved out of warm marble. That Mary, the color of honeyed milk, pressed her hands together and looked to the heavens. She towered on her own altar, atop tabernacle doors that depicted her sacred heart. I couldn’t take my eyes off that statue. Once, when the older kids were taking their first communion, I had been gazing up at Mary when—I fainted for a few seconds. My mother had rushed me outside past the procession of girls in white lace, boys in suits, and into the spring air.
“Barbara Jean, do you feel sick? Are you going to throw up?”
“No, Mommy.”
“You feel a little warm. What happened to you in there?”
“I could feel the heartbeat,” I had said, not knowing how else to explain the warm rhythms that had come over me, the gentle hum in my ear, and the utter stillness I felt standing amidst all those around me. And I had seen it, too. Mary’s heart reaching, as if drawn to me by my little-girl wishes.
“Your heartbeat? Was it going really fast?”
“No, Mary’s heartbeat. First it was in the box—the one that she was standing on. Then it was inside of me. I could feel it, Mommy, I could.”
My mother had touched my chest and my lips, not daring to guess whether I was a prophet or a blasphemer. She was always at a loss in this church, not knowing whether the Holy Spirit overlooked her because she was not worthy or if she couldn’t recognize something she had never been exposed to as a child. Not having grown up in the church, my mother held her silent doubts to be so sacred that they often took a higher seat to creeds we recited at each mass. For fear of drawing attention to her family or exposing her sacrilege, my mother had never repeated the story to anyone. Though repeated narrations did not reinforce the memory, I had remembered.
The last time I had seen that statue had been at my mother’s funeral in January. I wasn’t supposed to worship the statuary, seek solace in graven images, but as an artist, I couldn’t stop my impulse to give meaning to objects. Or remove meaning. This new church didn’t have a heartbeat; it had only a belly. New carpet incense, green exit mantras, and a garish Madonna all in the belly of the domed St. Stephen.
As I sat with my father, I repeated the familiar liturgy. I didn’t need to consult the missal. The words cascaded from my mouth in a rockslide, persuaded so cunningly by the force of gravity that the flow seemed like free choice. I could handle this part of church, the rote catechism, the simple poetry and cadence. The congregation speaking as one, pulling together, surging to forget. The act of saying “Lord, have mercy” and “Hear our prayer” and “I believe in …” Even if the words weren’t accurate, the communal speaking of them was tangible. I relished the mechanical chant, because it seemed to require so little of me. But once the sermon began, with ludicrous coincidence, on the subject of forgiveness, my mind awoke with a permission to wander. I wished once again for the liturgical freefall, but at the word transgressor, the priest afforded me the certain freedom to think about Bryce.
Oh Bryce, what have you done to me? Nothing could be so simple as irreconcilable differences or the latest catchphrase of Hollywood publicists, “an amicable split.” His girlfriend, his baby. They were nothing to me, but soon would be the reality of the man who defined my adulthood—and the reality of my son who would spend future summers with his father’s family. The woman? She would be there, too. Her image would grace my son’s photo albums. But at present, she was nameless and faceless before me—utterly at the mercy of my imagination. I could conjure any features I wanted for this other woman. Squinty-eyed or long-legged or tagged with a grim sophistication that made her unapproachable. She was more beautiful than I was; she had to be. To coexist with all of my understanding, she needed to be stunning, and I needed to be shrewd. That’s how I would gain my sovereignty over this situation. I was smart enough to get out, and she was not.
I closed my eyes to flee from this woman, the ultimate transgressor. I pressed my mind to take me back to the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart. Anything to conjure a real God into this artificial space, but all I could picture was the Mary statue with her colorless, sculpted face: a screen on
which to project the very features I imagined my husband’s lover to have. And this new icon was both the seductress and the saint. Eve/Mary. Every. Everywoman. Here at last, in my mind, was someone I could burden with real prayers made up of my own words. I watered the dry Sunday and the dry sermon with my prayers for a better life, my hopes for my sullen son, for peace with Bryce—may he find what he is looking for—and comfort for my widowed father. I circled these prayers again in a dizzy attempt to fortify them. But by the time the sermon was over, I didn’t feel that God had heard me at all. My prayers were a vanity, and I felt vacant and robbed of my own thoughts.
Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty. Reluctantly, I opened my mouth for the wafer. The body of Christ, given for you. The blood of Christ, shed for you. The port wine stung my tongue with its sweetness. I turned to see Sam. He sat alone on the pew, outside of the circle of communion. I rose and followed Dad. My father genuflected before the temporary statue of Mary, mother of God, but I didn’t even bow my head.
EveryMary could have my father, my mother. She could have my husband, his mistress, and his bastard child; but if she wanted me, she would have to follow the green exit sign to a place where Sundays were damp with perspiration and lake water and light beer. With the taste of the Last Supper growing stale in my mouth, I renounced Catholicism and welcomed a different kind of quest.
♦ 27 ♦
1983
THE MORNING OF Macy Killian’s wedding, Karen drifted back to me like a noblewoman in a marriage of convenience. It didn’t matter how we felt about each other; we needed to put on a good show for society.
Karen was not at all interested in helping with the cake and the photographs. She forgot her station at this event, but I was treading carefully around her since our blowup, so I said nothing.
My ultimate salvation came in the form of Macy’s younger brother, Bill Killian. Pimple-faced and tuxedoed, he sought out Karen at the reception, since the bridesmaid he was escorting was too pregnant to dance. She sat at the head table, fanning herself while she unceremoniously readjusted her maternity pantyhose.
I told Grandma Lena to get a picture of Karen and Bill dancing together, a move that put me back in the friendship.
Next to them, the bride and groom danced in celebration of their union. Macy played the bride role well, just another evening-gown competition. She was keeping her last name, which seemed an easy decision because the groom’s surname was Kometacalski. Even at age thirteen, I knew that my endorsement of feminism was superficial. If my future husband had a better sounding last name than Foley, I was going to take it.
Hyphenation remained a possibility, but I recalled one of my first weddings with Grandma Lena. The bride was Alicia Varey, and the groom was Jonathan Groce with the resulting hyphenation being Varey-Groce. She had since divorced and married a man named Ken Valentine. I think she took his last name. I know I would have. BJ Foley-Valentine. No. Bobbi Valentine.
Photographing this reception was a harder job than most. The outdoor venue meant we had to cover more ground. Grandma Lena was more physically fit than Nonna, to be sure, but she still had difficulty running from one side of the farm to the other. I did most of the leg work. I got us pulled pork sandwiches from the chuck wagon and notified the DJ when we were in place for the cake cutting.
With our constant relay, Grandma Lena and I neglected Karen. What harm could come to her here? But I was wrong. Bill had been sneaking her drinks from the four champagne fountains near the bar. He was underage, too, by at least five years, but his tuxedo gave him license to ignore state law. Karen had been dancing in the hot sun, not daring to eat anything she might drip on her linen outfit. By five p.m. when we were fulfilling Macy’s dream to be photographed with her husband next to a black and white cow, Karen was throwing up next to the dance floor.
We apologized repeatedly to the backbeat of Karen’s moans. We had taken as many photographs as we could without embarrassing the growing number of drunken guests, so Karen slumped into the back of the station wagon, and Lena drove us home.
At the house Nonna brewed up a wicked concoction to ease Karen’s symptoms. I called Mrs. Sewicky to ask her if Karen could stay overnight. It was a mistake to think I could get off the phone that fast. Joyce wanted to hear all the details of the wedding, which I supplied for her sans her daughter’s introduction to champagne. She asked to talk to Karen, but I lied and said that Karen was in the darkroom with Lena.
“Lena got a shot of her dancing with a cute usher, and I think she is really anxious to see it.”
“Okay then, have fun. I’ll see the picture tomorrow?”
“Of course.”
Karen draped me with drunken apologies and oaths of undying friendship for the rest of the evening.
“BJ, you are my best friend. Even better than Beth and Tina,” she slurred. “I’m sorry I said those things about your grandmas. They are the coolest lesbians I know. I am sure that God will forgive them like he forgives the Jewish people. You don’t think Bill is Jewish, do you?”
I comforted her by reminding her that Bill was not wearing a yarmulke, and then I directed her to bunk in my mother’s old bed. A mile away, Scott Baio and Rick Springfield pictures hung unkissed. I grabbed a Harlequin Romance from under the bed and went to the porch to read by the light of the bug zapper. The diamond clad clown hovered over the cover art. I opened to the first page of the story, then flipped back to the tantalizing blurb that preceded it.
Lena was in the darkroom developing the photo I had lied about. She didn’t want the blame of Karen’s antics to fall on her, so she willingly wed herself to the lie under the red light of her studio. In the parlor, Nonna was watching television in the dark. I could see the blue glare of the screen flickering through the window.
Somewhere, Macy Killian, weather girl and beauty queen, was having her wedding night. I had seen the sheer negligee when she showed it off to her bridesmaids.
“Just don’t end up like me,” the pregnant one had said. “Ooh, I got to pee again.” She had run off, urgently lifting the skirt of her behemoth bridesmaid’s gown.
If Macy Killian ever got that big, she’d surely block the weather map, but on her wedding day she had been slender and blond, tanned and glowing. She was the epitome of bridal beauty and my personal image of a romance heroine.
When Dane Miles saw Therese in the doorway, her hair a gilded halo, he thought twice about the bargain he had made with his brother before he died. Standing before him was the woman who had run Carson down on a stormy night last autumn when her car hit his. Dane brushed one golden strand of hair away from Therese’s cheek. How could he avenge his brother’s death, when his adversary was so tantalizing and sweet? Dane lowered his mouth to cover her lips. Then again, he thought, revenge could be sweet as well.
♦ 28 ♦
2000
AFTER CHURCH, DAD AND I worked to finish Sam’s swing set. My use of power tools in the jewelry studio translated into an ability to make constructions of any kind. I used larger muscle groups with this project than with my intricate jewelry, but my skin glowed with the same satisfaction in my craftsmanship. Sometimes from his perch in the playhouse, Dad would smirk at me when he thought I wasn’t watching. I took pride in his smile. I knew my father worried about me even more now that Mom was gone. I hoped our afternoon working together would not only ease his mind but also help to replace any shame he felt as a result of my separation.
In late afternoon, Travis made an appearance. I had not invited him, and his spontaneous arrival, in conjunction with my father’s presence, unnerved me. I didn’t want to be rude to Travis, but I really didn’t want my dad to read anything into his presence.
“Dad, you remember Travis, Lena’s nephew.”
“Good to see you, Richard.” Travis nodded. The two would have shaken hands if Dad hadn’t been holding a cordless drill.
“Travis, this is a surprise. Barbara Jean didn’t tell me we had contact from the MacKenzies. How’s your mothe
r doing?”
“Good, sir. I’ll tell her you asked about her.” Travis pushed on one of the upright supports of the playhouse. He seemed satisfied in the structure.
“You should have called me to help. I love this kind of project.”
I patted his back in an attempt to look casual. “Dad and I needed some quality time together.” I am sure that Travis detected my aloofness, but whether he was confused by it, I couldn’t tell.
My father turned back to his work of sinking the screws below the plane of the wood. I had to believe that Dad hadn’t noticed anything untoward in my greeting of Travis. I sensed tacit and reproving questions in my father’s actions. His silence wasn’t always a good thing. Part of me wanted to tell my father, flat out, that nothing had happened between Travis and me; we were just friends. But an unsolicited denial often confirms rather than refutes a claim. My father wasn’t stupid. The advantage I had in this face-off was the possibility that my father didn’t want to ask a question that could be turned around and asked of him. I had heard whisperings, from friends of the family, that my dad had started seeing someone only months after my mother’s death. Let him squirm.
But supposing Travis was to become part of my life. Was the idea so far-fetched? I considered it for a moment—Travis and I playing house. I had not so much as kissed him, but here he was handing my father the new battery pack for the drill. It added a certain domestic quality to the encounter that I couldn’t help but consider. It was an easy leap for my mind to make. I imagined the lazy mornings of two people who had no bosses to please, no clocks to punch. We would socialize with other couples, maybe Karen and Shelly, inviting them over for alfresco dining in our gardens. And talk. Undoing the mistakes of my first marriage, I would be open to Travis, easily expressing my fears and my needs.
Summers at Blue Lake Page 12