by Wally Lamb
The nurse told the police that Verna was alive still, but that she was slipping in and out of consciousness. The infant looked to be a preemie—about six months, she estimated—and the bluish cast of her feet was alarming. She was listless and unresponsive, but when Nurse Wiggins separated her from her mother to pick her up and examine her more closely, the baby “began screaming bloody murder” and her coloring returned with the oxygen she needed to take in to cry.
Nurse Wiggins called downstairs to the desk for help, but the phone just rang and rang. When she shouted into the hallway for someone, anyone, to call for an ambulance, there was no response. She ministered to both the mother and the baby as best she could, listening to what amounted to Verna’s rambling deathbed confession. Verna begged her to write to her mother and tell her she was sorry she’d been such a sinful daughter. And to please take care of her baby. According to the report, the nurse said Verna had made no mention of a husband or the baby’s father in anything she said.
After the desk clerk finally answered the house phone and called for help, the rescue workers and the police got to the scene simultaneously. But thirty crucial minutes had elapsed and by then Verna had died from hemorrhaging and blood loss. Frances, who was unnamed at that point, was rushed to the hospital. The authorities managed to track down Verna’s family somewhere in the South. But the baby’s grandmother refused to take her because she was “a child of Satan”—the fruit of her daughter’s failure to resist the temptations of the flesh. There were initial concerns about the child’s survival, but she responded well to treatment and was released five days later.
“Somebody at the hotel who knew Iggy called him to tell him what had happened,” Ma said. “And then he called your father, which was what he always did when he was in a jam. For Sal and me, there was hardly any discussion. We knew Ignazio couldn’t care for her, even with his mother’s help. Your Nonna Funicello was too old and none too happy that this baby had come about because of your uncle’s hanky-panky. None of us wanted her to go into foster care, or to that orphanage over there on Division Street. We felt we had to step in, take the baby and raise her.
“By the time she was ready to be discharged, your father, your uncle, and I had already gone to the probate judge and signed what we needed to. They didn’t make it so complicated back then the way they do now. And we’d gotten everything ready at home. You were in your ‘big-girl bed’ by the time your sister came along, Simone. Poppy went up to the attic and got your crib back down, and your bassinette. I’d saved all your baby clothes, so I washed them and got them ready. You were still in diapers and rubber pants, but I’d been using your smaller-sized ones for dust rags, so I sent Sal out with a list: infant diapers, pins, nipples, baby bottles, formula, baby powder. When the hospital was ready to discharge her, Poppy and I went to the hospital with all the right papers, so they released her to us and we drove off.
“But we didn’t go right home. ‘Sal,’ I said. ‘Drive us over to the rectory. We gotta go see Father Fiondella.’ And your father says, ‘Right now?’ and I said, ‘No, a year from next Christmas. Come on.’ I’m telling you kids, if there was ever a baby who needed to be made a child of God as quick as possible, it was your poor sister. Born premature, out of wedlock, and fished out of a toilet bowl, for cripe’s sake. She wasn’t even five pounds yet, and it was still touch-and-go as far as I was concerned. I was damned if I was gonna let that poor little thing die and have to go to Limbo.
“So we get to the rectory and Father Fiondella answers the door in his bathrobe and pajamas. He was sick, see? Had the flu or something. But when I said it was an emergency, he let us in. Brought us into the kitchen and baptized her with tap water from the sink. Under the circumstances, he said, we could function as both the baby’s parents and her godparents. Then, when we go into his office so he can fill out her baptismal certificate, he asks us what her name is. Sal looks at me and I look at him, and I said ‘Margaret’ at the same time he says ‘Frances.’ We hadn’t discussed what we were going to call her; in the court papers, she was just Baby Girl Funicello. I assumed Poppy wanted to name her after that cuckoo movie star he liked, Frances Farmer, but he said no, it was for Francis of Assisi, the saint he always prayed to for special intentions. So I said okay and we went with Frances. Frances Anne, which sounded better than Frances Margaret. You know who Saint Anne was, don’t you? Mary’s mother. Jesus’ grandmother. But anyway, after we’d gotten her baptized, we took her home.
“I’d had my friend Stella Kubat watching you, Simone, and when we got back with the baby, you were down for your afternoon nap. After you woke up, I saw you peeking around the corner. I was in the rocking chair by the window, holding the baby, giving her a bottle. So I said to you, ‘Come here. Come and meet your new baby sister.’ Of course, you wouldn’t remember any of that. But when you came closer to get a look, you bent toward her and gave her a little kiss on the forehead without me asking. And growing up, you were the best big sister a little girl could hope for.” Ma looked over at me. “And a little boy could hope for, too. Right?”
I smiled at Simone and said, “Yeah, she was okay, I guess.” Simone smiled back and gave me a good-natured poke.
I asked Ma how Uncle Iggy had taken all this.
“The big jamoke was scared skinny when he found out, I’ll tell you that much. When the detectives figured out he was the father and questioned him, he thought he’d be in hot water because he’d arranged for that abortion. But there’d been no abortion, see? She’d taken the money but hadn’t gone through with it. And then that chooch of a brother-in-law of mine breaks it off with her right after he thinks the problem’s solved. Gets himself a new girl—a secretary down at Electric Boat. Dolly Charlton, her name was. Kind of a flibbertigibbet, and if that blond shingle of hers didn’t come out of a bottle, then I’m a monkey’s uncle.”
“Aunt,” I said.
“What?”
“You wouldn’t be a monkey’s uncle. You’d be a monkey’s aunt.”
“Hey listen, smart guy. You want me to tell you this stuff or do you want me to stop so that you can make your wisecracks?”
“Yeah, shut up, Felix,” Simone said. “Go on, Ma.”
My mother gave me a warning look and continued. “Okay, where was I? Oh, Dolly Charlton. Iggy took her home to meet your grandmother one Sunday dinner and Dolly wasn’t exactly the kind of girl you took home to Mama. Your Nonna Funicello had a conniption when she found out Dolly was a divorcée! And she didn’t even know yet that he’d gotten the other poor girl pregnant. Neither did Dolly. When it all came out and she thought there’d be a child she’d have to raise, she dropped Iggy like a hot potato. You know, Nonna Funicello hadn’t exactly welcomed me with open arms when Sal first brought me around. To tell you the truth, there was never any love lost between the two of us.”
“God, you’d have thought she’d be thrilled to have you for a daughter-in-law. A nice girl from a good family—an Italian family, no less,” Simone said.
“And I was a nice girl, too,” Ma asserted.
“Meaning you were a virgin?” I asked.
She shot me “the look” again but answered my question anyway. “You bet your bippy I was! Your father wasn’t getting the goods from me until he’d carried me over the threshold. That’s the trouble with you young people these days. Nobody waits anymore.” She turned toward Simone. “Present company excepted.” Looking at my sister, I covered my smile with my hand.
A sadness crept over my mother’s face; she seemed to have gone to some other place in her mind. “The poor little thing needed a home and a family,” she said. “Parents who would keep her safe and love her like she was our own. And sure, it was a mistake to raise her to think she was ours. I get that now. But we just wanted to protect her from that awful business—the hard way she’d come into the world. We tried as hard as we could with her, no matter how she got later on. How were we supposed to predict that she’d do that to herself? Resent us like she did—m
e, especially.”
“You couldn’t have predicted it,” Simone said. She reached across the table and took Ma’s hand.
“I don’t know. Maybe I could have. She was always out of sorts when she was little. Hardly ever smiled. You two were a piece of cake next to your sister.”
To shift the subject, I patted the envelope. There was still something in there. “So what else you got in here besides those notes you took?” I said.
Ma took the envelope and upended it. A small book with a ragged red cover fell out, and some newspaper clippings—what turned out to be two or three stories she’d clipped and saved about Verna’s death and Frances’s birth and the investigation that had followed. Simone and I picked them up, read a little of what they said. “What’s this little book?” I asked.
“Her diary,” Ma said. “Frances’s mother’s diary. One day, about three or four months after the investigation was all over, the doorbell rings and who’s at the door but Al Martineau. He handed me her diary and said that, now that the case was closed, he thought her daughter might like to have it someday. You know, after she was grown up.” When Simone asked if Frances had seen the diary, Ma looked down at the table and shook her head. “I didn’t have the heart. She writes about how Ignazio wanted her to have an abortion. Arranged for it to be done. But even after she decided to have the baby, she was planning to give it away. I don’t know if it was right that I kept all that from her. It’s just that . . . it doesn’t paint a pretty picture. Of either one of them. At one time, I even thought about burning it. Letting bygones be bygones. That’s what your father said I should do. But that didn’t feel right either.” When Simone asked her if Pop had ever read it, she shook her head. “He didn’t want to. So he doesn’t know what’s in there either. Just me. It’s kind of like a secret that me and her share—Frances’s two mothers.”
I picked up the diary and thumbed through it. Most of the entries were in pencil. She’d printed rather than written in cursive. The dozens of entries looked like the jottings of maybe a fourth or fifth grader. “Can I read this?” I asked.
She looked at me, but I think her mind went somewhere else. “If anyone should have the chance to do that, it should be Frances. Don’t you think?”
“I’ll tell you what,” Simone said. “Why don’t we put everything back in there and you can let me have the envelope? I’ll take it off your hands and maybe someday I’ll let Frances know I have it and ask her if she wants to see it.”
“You mean someday when I’m six feet under over there at the cemetery?” There was a sly smile on her face when she said it. “Okay, let’s do that. To tell you the truth, it will be nice to get it out of here so that I don’t have to have it weighing on me. Yeah, here. Take it.”
My assumption, driving back to Simone and Jeff’s apartment, was that she and I were going to read Frances’s mother’s diary that afternoon. I was wrong. Simone informed me that she would honor the agreement she had just made with our mother. The diary was not mine or hers; it was Frances’s. If, at some point in the future, Fran chose to read her mother’s words and share them with us, then fine. But until then, Verna would remain silent. I tried cajoling Simone, of course. Called her Goody Two-Shoes. Begged a little. I even tried to enlist Jeff’s support in getting her to capitulate and let us crack open that diary, but she stood firm. And so, once again, the truth was being held at a distance from me. It was as if I had been exiled to Dr. Darda’s waiting room once again, the full story withheld but nearly in reach. . . .
I’m not sure how long I’ve been sitting at the edge of this stage, looking out on the empty orchestra seats and pondering my past—the apparitions that have appeared to me, the filmed history I can not only watch but also reenter, and what it all means. Well, my watch says it’s 3:06, and that means I’d better get the hell out of this theater, go home, and grab some dinner before I have to get back here for the Monday night group. I run upstairs and kill the auditorium lights. Come back down, lock up the front entrance, and head for my car. Putting the key in the ignition, it dawns on me that I’ve forgotten to bring the ghost light out from backstage and turn it on. I guess I could skip it; I’ll only be gone for a few hours. But who am I to screw around with theatrical superstitions after what I’ve been experiencing. It’s not like I suspect visitors from the spirit world haunt the Garde; I know they do.
Reentering the building, I hurry into the auditorium, then wait for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. I make my way down the aisle, stumble up the steps to the stage, and feel my way past the curtain. Backstage it’s pitch-dark, but I grope around until my hand touches the wire cage that surrounds the bulb. I’m in luck when I click the switch and the thing lights up. Someone’s left it plugged into an outlet. I gather the cord, grab the lamp pole, and carry it out front to center stage.
Hustling back up the aisle, I’m stopped by a familiar voice behind me.
“Felix? Felix, wait.”
Looking back, I see them up on the stage, to the left of the ghost lamp: Lois Weber and the apparition of a young woman I don’t recognize.
TWELVE
This new ghost is wearing pedal pushers, bobby socks with saddle shoes, and what looks like a maternity top, although she doesn’t appear to be pregnant. Her hair’s in a ponytail. Whereas Lois’s ghost is silvery gray, this new apparition has a sepia tint to her. I’m guessing she might have been a redhead when she was alive.
“Are we at that petting parlor yet?” she asks.
Lois purses her lips. “We’re at the movie theater, yes, if that’s what you mean. But I would prefer—”
“Is that the brother?” she asks, pointing at me. “Hey, brother! Where y’at?”
Moving closer to the stage, I say, “I’m right here.”
She laughs. “I can tell you ain’t from N’Awlins. When we say, ‘Where y’at?’ it means ‘How you doin’?’”
“Oh, well, I’m doing okay. And you?”
“Awright,” she says.
Lois stage-whispers a reprimand that I can hear clearly. “May I remind you that you are here for the singular purpose of telling your story. You do not have clearance to converse with a living. Please remember your status and act accordingly.”
The bobby soxer pokes out her bottom lip. “Yes ma’am.”
“Lois, who is this?” I ask. “Why is she here?”
“Were you not just recalling your frustration about having been denied access to Frances’s birth mother’s diary? Well, I could not produce that, but—”
“Are you saying this is Frances’s . . . ?”
“Verna Hibbard. Yes, dear.”
“This is incredible. And I see the resemblance, especially around the—hey, wait a minute. I didn’t say I was frustrated about the diary. I was just thinking it. Do you mean to tell me you can get inside my head? Read my mind?”
“That’s neither here nor there, Felix. The point is, I have brought Verna here so that you can hear her story, full and true, from the source herself. That which had been withheld from you will no longer be withheld. Unless you prefer the protection of being kept in the dark. You certainly may elect to remain so if you wish.”
“No, no. I just . . . I mean, it’s a lot to take in all at once, you know?” I look back at Verna’s ghost. Look her up and down, from her ponytail to her saddle shoes. She looks so much younger than I’d imagined. She was just a kid. “So she’s just supposed to talk and I’m just supposed to listen. Is that it?”
“That’s correct.”
“But let’s say I want to ask her a question about something she’s just said. Can she answer me?” Lois shakes her head. “Why not?”
She sighs wearily. “Well, Felix, if you must know, in the shaded realm, there are different ranks and classifications. These determine the rights and privileges that are granted. Verna is a lower-level spirit, and lower-levels are not allowed to have verbal exchanges with livings such as yourself.”
“So it’s like a caste system?”
“Her story. But just tell me. Is she a lower-level because she’s waiting in purgatory or something?”
Verna’s ghost laughs out loud. “You’re a Catlick, ain’t you? When you pass over, you’ll see all that purgatory stuff’s just a bunch of hogwash.”
“That will do,” Lois chides her. “If you persist in speaking to him directly, I shall have to take you back. Understand?”
“Yes’m.”
“Then why don’t you begin your testimony?”
“My what?”
“Your story.” Turning to me, she adds, “Without interruption.”
“Now?” Verna asks.
“Now.”
“Where shall I start?”
“Wherever you’d like.”
“Okay then. Here goes nothin’.”
She says she was born Verna Mae Shoop in 1933, but that she was Verna Hibbard when she met my uncle in January of 1950. “I was a seventeen-year-old married lady, and he was almost twice my age, but he was a real gentleman. The first time I laid eyes on him was in the bar at the hotel my hubby stuck me at while he was out to sea.” When Iggy asked her to sit down with him and have a drink, he got up and pulled out her chair. “No man had ever done that before, and it tickled me pink. Looks-wise, he was nothin’ to sneeze at neither. ‘Anyone ever tell you you look like Samson in that movie Samson and Delilah?’ And he said yeah, but he looked even better in a toga than Victor Mature.” That was another thing she liked about him: he was comical. He even had a comical name: Iggy. “T’wudn’t no one in all of Luziana had that for a name. No one I knowed, anyways.”
Verna said the first part of her childhood had been spent in New Orleans where her mother, RuthAnn Gautreaux, was from, and the second part had been spent in Shreveport, where her father, Vernon Shoop, had grown up. Her mother was part Cajun and part Acolapissa Indian, and on her father’s side, all she knew was that he had come from sharecroppers.