Requiem for the Devil

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  “If I let you play Bing Crosby, will you shut up?”

  “Uh-huh.” She reached in the back seat and pulled the tape from her overnight bag. “But I meant what I said. I don’t know about your dad, but God definitely—”

  I yanked the tape out of her hand and stuffed it under my seat, out of her reach. “Sorry, you just lost your tape privileges with that comment.”

  “You’re a psychopath, you know that?”

  When we pulled up to Marc’s row home in Fells Point, he was sitting on his semicircular brick porch wearing a Santa hat. Brightly wrapped presents surrounded him on the porch steps. In a forest-green cardigan and a red vest-style windbreaker, Marc looked like a skinny, updated version of the Ghost of Christmas Present.

  He stretched and began to gather up his packages. I got out of the car to help him.

  “Hey, how’s it going?” he said.

  “Fine.”

  He looked at me, then at Gianna, who smiled at him tight-lipped.

  “Hold on a second,” Marc said. “Let me go get my chain saw to cut this tension.”

  “Louis hates Christmas, and he’s making me hate it, too.”

  “Ooh, neat.” Marcus grabbed his suitcase. “Can I join the debate?”

  “No, it’s over,” Gianna said. “We’re practicing being civil.”

  “She’s practicing being civil,” I said. “I’m practicing pretending I like Christmas.”

  “You’d better get real good at it.”

  “Yeeeeeeeee!!! Merry Christmas!!”

  A red-and-white blur that was most likely Gianna’s mother burst out of the house before my car had rolled to a stop. She ran toward the car with her arms spread wide.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Marc said, “she just saw us at Thanksgiving.”

  “Don’t worry,” Gianna said to me. “Just switch into charm mode, and she’ll be putty in your hands.”

  I swallowed the last lump of trepidation and stepped out of the car. Mrs. O’Keefe was already smothering her two children with hugs and kisses. Their arms flailed, useless for defense against the onslaught of affection. Finally, Gianna’s mother stepped back, turned to me, and fluffed her thick black hair.

  “You must be Louis,” she said.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. O’Keefe.” I shook her hand and softened my eyes to gaze at her face. She beamed at me.

  “Oh, please, call me Rosa.” She withdrew her hand reluctantly. “Come on in out of the cold. It’s going to rain any second now.”

  The four of us headed for the porch as the front door opened. A black-and-white shepherd dog streaked across the lawn towards Gianna and Marcus, then slid to a stop as it passed me. The dog turned, looked at me, and raised its hackles. Its face became an explosion of white teeth and blood-pink gums as it snarled and crouched to attack.

  “Bobo, no!” Rosa dropped the package in her hand.

  My eyes met the dog’s as I squatted on the ground and whispered his name. Bobo whined once, then lowered his tail and trotted to me. The others watched, jaws agape, as he licked my chin and pawed my knee.

  “That was bizarre,” Marc said.

  “No kidding.” Rosa stared at me for another moment, then picked up the package she’d dropped. “Okay, kids, let’s get these gifts under the tree where they belong.” She and Marcus stepped onto the porch and into the house.

  I turned to Gianna, who had not moved from the driveway.

  “That’s exactly how Antigone reacted to you.” She joined us and reached down to stroke Bobo’s ears. “You have an odd way with animals, you know?”

  I looked up and down the tree-lined street at Gianna’s neighborhood. Not one of the charming brick colonial houses could have had fewer than five bedrooms.

  “This is where you’re from?” I said.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “With your overdeveloped sense of class consciousness, I figured your family lived in the shadow of an oil refinery or inside a series of refrigerator boxes taped together.”

  “Hey, where does it say that a working-class hero has to be working class?” she said. “Come on, let’s go in.”

  Gianna’s mother was still prancing with excitement in the living room.

  “Yaay, it’s so great to have all my babies here on Christmas Eve. Your dad and Matt and Luke went out to do some last-minute shopping, and Donna and Dara are feeding the shelter critters. Gianna, why don’t you show Louis where to put his stuff so he can relax?”

  Gianna led me upstairs and out of her mother’s hovering range.

  “And I thought you were effusive,” I said. “Compared to your mom, you’re a wallflower.”

  “Compared to my mom, Joan Rivers is a wallflower. Wait until you meet my grandmother.” She opened a door near the top of the stairs. “Here’s your room.”

  I rested our bags on the twin bed.

  “I know it’s probably a little small for you,” she said. “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s doubly small for us.”

  “No, this is your room. I’m sleeping down the hall, in my own room.”

  “You mean, we’re not . . .” I gestured to the bed.

  “Sleeping together? No way. My folks are too old-fashioned for that.”

  “You’re not exactly a teenager anymore, Gianna. Has anyone told your parents?”

  “Sorry. I know it’s absurd, but—”

  “Do they think that we don’t sleep together? Do they think you’re still a virgin?”

  “Shhh. No, it’s just that they don’t want my sex life shoved in their faces, you know?”

  I slid my arm around her waist. “Can you come visit me, then?”

  “Maybe tomorrow night. But not tonight. I like to spend Christmas Eve night alone, contemplate the mystery and all. It’s a time of peace I guard very jealously.”

  “I’m the one who’s jealous.”

  “Lou, it’s important to me. Don’t mock, all right?”

  “All right.” I brushed back the edge of her bangs from her temple. “I’m sorry I’ve been so mean about Christmas. I promise I’ll be good for your family.”

  “I know the holiday touches off something bitter in you, probably about your past. Ugly memories?”

  I kissed her forehead and said nothing.

  “Of course you won’t tell me,” she said. “You’ll go far away inside your head and just smile at me.”

  I smiled at her. She laughed and took my hand. “Come on, let’s go relax with Mom and Marc before you have to meet everyone else. It’s best to wade into this family gradually.”

  As we reached the bottom of the stairs, two sets of clones, male and female, burst through the door, weighed down with shopping bags, followed by a tall, boisterous redheaded man. Gianna turned to me.

  “So much for wading. Hope your swan dive is in perfect form.”

  Soon I was immersed in a flood of garrulous people, huge plates of snacks, and overflowing bowls of eggnog and wassail. By the time I had become acquainted with Gianna’s other brothers, Matthew and Luke, their wives Donna and Dara (which man was married to which woman never became clear to me), and her father Walter, the house was barraged with cousins, aunts, uncles, neighbors, and friends. Each group would enter with a chorus of hollers and hugs, make mad revelry for about twenty minutes, then sweep out again, to be replaced with another gaggle of well-wishers. In the background blared a strangely pleasant blend of Irish Christmas carols, most of which sounded like ribald drinking songs, as long as I didn’t pay close attention to the words.

  Once Gianna saw that I was socially adept enough to be left unchaperoned, I saw little of her for the next two hours. At one point I joined Walter and his sons gathered around the Christmas tree.

  “See, that’s what I mean.” Walter pointed to one of the ornaments, emblazoned with the Coca-Cola symbol. “Proof that Christmas is getting too goddamned commercial.”

  “Dad,” Matthew said, “that ornament is—

  “—at least thirty ye
ars old,” Luke finished.

  “And that’s about how many times we’ve heard this diatribe, guys,” Marc said to his brothers. “And again, I’ll say, Dad, commercialism is part of what makes Christmas so great.”

  “Don’t you dare, ya little heretic.” A smile crept about Walter’s lips as he issued this warning.

  “It’s the trappings that society has laid on top of Christmas that choke me up the most,” Marc said.

  “For you, Dad,” Luke said, “Christmas begins with the first Sunday in Advent. For us, it begins with—”

  “—Santa Claus riding a Norelco razor across our TV screens,” Matt concluded.

  “Are you saying,” I asked, “that you could strip Christmas of its religious significance, and it would still move you just as much?”

  “Yeah, almost as much,” Marc said. His brothers nodded.

  “Why would you want to strip it of its religious significance?” Walter asked. “Then it becomes just another spiritually devoid heathen holiday, like Thanksgiving.”

  “So let the heathens take part in our holiday, Dad,” Matt said. “What’s the harm? It’ll still mean the same to you. Nothing can take that away.”

  “If anything,” I said, “it’s a great public relations campaign for Christianity.”

  “I suppose it could use one these days.” Walter sipped his wassail. “Gianna tells me you’re Episcopalian.”

  “Hey, look, there’s Sandra in the kitchen!” Marc pulled my arm. “She was my piano teacher. You really should meet her.” He dragged me away from his father.

  “Thanks for the rescue,” I said to Marc, “but I was looking forward to faking it.”

  “It’s hard to fool Dad. He sees right through me, though he doesn’t let on. That’s one conversation I’m dreading.”

  “Which one, when you discuss the fact that you’re gay, or the fact that you’re no longer Catholic?”

  “Okay, two conversations,” he said. “How’d you know?”

  “Because of the way you look at me.”

  “No, I mean, how did you know I’m no longer Catholic?”

  “Like I said . . .”

  Marc squinted at me. “You baffle me, Louis. I like that in a man—in a guy, I mean.” He winked and punched me in the arm, then glanced behind me and suddenly put on an indignant look. “No, Louis, I will not kiss you! Oh, hi, Gianna.”

  “Hi, dipshit,” she said. “Are you enjoying yourself?” she asked me.

  “This is quite a party,” I said. She and Marcus laughed.

  “Party?” she said. “This is just a gathering. Wait ’til later.”

  “What’s later?”

  “Over to my aunt’s house for the vigilia.”

  “What’s a vigilia?” I asked her. “It sounds religious.”

  “No, it’s Italian. My mom’s side of the family has one every year. Basically, we eat and drink more. Seven dishes, seven fishes. You’ve never had calamari like my aunt Loretta’s calamari.”

  “I think I’m beginning to like this holiday.”

  As far as I could tell, the vigilia was nothing more than another Christmas Eve party, with a bit more emphasis on eating over drinking than the O’Keefe “gathering.” I felt at ease and chastised myself for being so nervous about the holiday celebration.

  My equanimity began to falter, however, when Gianna’s uncle Pasquale, a retired opera singer, got up to sing “Gesu Bambino.” I tried to retreat to the kitchen, but Gianna stopped me.

  “Lou, you’ve got to hear this.” She dragged me back to the living room. “It’s so beautiful, you’ll want to run out and get baptized tomorrow morning.”

  “I seriously doubt that.” I stood behind Gianna with my arm around her waist.

  Of course it was beautiful. On an aesthetic level, I rejoiced. On a physical level, I was suffocating. A fierce itch tormented my nose. When I started to sniffle, Gianna squeezed my hand, mistaking my allergic reaction for sentimentality.

  “So that was pretty moving, huh?” she said after it ended, about five minutes later than I would have liked.

  “Yeah, I never knew that song had so many verses,” I said.

  “Gianna,” her mother called, “we’d better leave now if we’re going to get a seat at Midnight Mass.”

  “Okay, Mom, we’re coming.” She turned to me. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. We can drop you off at the house on the way.”

  I considered my options. The holy carol had produced only a slight histamine reaction, but one song in a South Philadelphia living room was nothing compared to the waves of holiness I’d receive packed into a cathedral with several hundred ecstatic worshipers. All bets were off as to what shape my head would be in by the end of the service, assuming it even managed to stay on my shoulders.

  “I’ll go with you to Mass,” I heard myself say.

  “Oh, thank you, Louis.” She wrapped her arms around me. “That means so much to me.”

  “Yes, I thought it might.”

  “Will there be incense?” I asked Gianna when we had squeezed ourselves into the pew.

  “Yes, why?”

  “I’m allergic to incense.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It’s not a serious allergy—usually. I just wanted you to be prepared in case I need to run out suddenly.”

  “How do you feel now?” she asked. “I think there’s still some incense in the air from the eight o’clock Mass.”

  “A little stuffy, but not too bad.”

  I sat at the end of a pew in the middle of the church, with Gianna to my right side. The chapel was grand and intimidating. There were enough statues and frescoes and stained-glass windows to keep the most bored child occupied for an entire Mass. The fourteen stations of the cross were carved in plaster on the walls, seven on each side. I examined each one and became lost in distant bittersweet memories.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she said. “The chapel? They just finished renovating it last year. God only knows how many students didn’t get scholarships because of the cost of the renovations, but hey, we’re reaping the benefits now, right?”

  “It’s gorgeous.” In fact, the high level of ornateness, combined with the fact that the thoughts of the humans around me were preoccupied primarily with Christmas presents, kept the atmosphere’s holiness at a subemergency level.

  “The music program should be starting soon,” she said. “That goes on for about half an hour, then the Mass starts.”

  “Swell.”

  “You’ll like the music.”

  A single violin began to sing behind the altar.

  “Oh, cool, it’s ‘Un Flambeau, Jeannette, Isabella,’” Gianna said. “I love that one, and it’s so rare to hear it. I hope they sing it in French.”

  A hammer dulcimer joined the violin. The tune was almost unbearably sweet and pretty. Gianna’s face held a look of purest rapture. I gazed at it, bathed in soft white light, until she glanced at me out of the corner of her eye.

  “Don’t stare at me,” she whispered.

  “I can’t help it. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”

  She turned to me, her eyes doe-soft, and smiled a serene, Mona Lisa smile. “You know what?”

  “What?”

  “This is my favorite moment ever, right now.” She nodded, then turned her attention back to the music.

  As the program continued, the stuffiness in my head worsened a little, then plateaued at a tolerable level. I began to relax again.

  Then the nightmare began.

  The organ roared to life, and everyone in the congregation stood as one. I joined them, then looked up the aisle with dread as the singing began.

  In the steady hands of an altar boy, the cross approached me, triumphant. My lip curled.

  I will not look away, I will not look away. I fixed my eyes on the polished wood beams and held in my heat.

  “Gloooooria . . .”

  Just as the cross passed by, a hand touched my
back. I bit back a shriek before realizing it was Gianna.

  “. . . In excelsis Deo.”

  At last the endless procession of priests and altar boys reached the front of the church, and the music stopped. My head was already reverberating like a gong.

  “Almighty God, you have caused this holy night to shine with the brightness of the true Light: Grant that we, who have known the mystery of that Light on earth . . .”

  “You look a little shaky,” Gianna whispered. “Too much incense?”

  “When do we get to sit down?”

  “Now.”

  A woman with tiny glasses and a green turtleneck dress stepped to the podium and cleared her throat. “A reading from the Book of Isaiah.”

  “You didn’t tell me there would be Bible stuff,” I said to Gianna.

  “Shhh.” She poked me in the leg. “This is just the beginning.”

  “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them light has shined . . .”

  “I sense a theme here,” I mumbled. Gianna poked me again, harder.

  “. . . and his name will be called ‘Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.’ His empire shall be multiplied, and there shall be no end of peace . . .”

  There was more singing, and the pain inside my face began to creep around and behind my eye sockets.

  An interminable psalm followed:

  . . . For who in the skies can be compared to the Lord,

  who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord,

  a God feared in the council of the holy ones,

  great and terrible above all those round about him . . .

  I thought of all the caustic and witty mockery of this ceremony I’d be making if only my sinuses had not compressed my brain to the size of a seedless grape.

  More singing ensued (why did all these fucking carols have four verses?), then the priest stepped in front of the altar carrying an enormous book.

  “The Gospel of the Lord according to Luke.”

  Quick, Lucifer. Think unholy thoughts. Think unholy thoughts.