The Altar Girl: A Prequel

by Orest Stelmach

  I do recall, however, one particular moment of joy. It was a moment of unconditional release and surrender. Fear and anxiety left me. Perhaps the constant trauma magnified its emotional resonance. Maybe that was a common experience for most kids. But to me it was anything but normal.

  I was probably five or six years old and I hadn’t learned to swim yet. My father ordered me to take my inflated swimming ring and follow him into deep water, where he would take it away from me and force me to swim back alone. I was so afraid I would drown, I looked at my mother and begged her to let me stay ashore with her. She scolded my father and told him to leave me alone. Then she picked me up at the ocean’s edge and held me close to her breast. I could still feel her salty kiss on my forehead and the moisture of her bathing suit as she told me I didn’t have to go, that she would take care of me. And as the waves crashed ashore and spilled water onto my legs, I hung onto her and believed that at least one person on Earth loved me and would protect me until the day that I died.

  Now I stood at the door to her corner condominium unit in Rocky Hill, pulse racing, wondering if she would even let me in her house. The thought of her slamming the door in my face made my stomach turn, even more so than the thought of having to talk to her at all. There are few things worse in life than holding hate in one’s heart for a parent, except the knowledge that the feeling is mutual.

  The curtain in the front window moved. I couldn’t see anything through the tinted glass. Then I heard the sound of the chain sliding open and the door swung open.

  She was a shockingly fit woman with striking gray hair, so streamlined from head to toe that she wouldn’t have needed the proverbial broom to take flight. The skin on her face glistened and belied her age. She didn’t say anything. She simply stared at me with her cold, disapproving eyes. Someone needed to say something. I decided I was the visitor, so the obligation fell to me.

  I nodded at the beaten and worn hiking boots standing at attention beside the door.

  “What’s with Marko’s shoes?”

  She frowned as though I were an idiot for having to ask. “When you’re a woman living alone you can’t take any chances. If a burglar sees those shoes, he’ll assume there’s a man inside and he’ll go away. Unless the burglar knows my son and daughter. Then he’ll waltz right in, rob me, and kill me because he’ll know that neither of them stuck around to take care of me.”

  She stepped aside to let me in. My spirits soared. If I was entering her house, there was a chance for reconciliation. This was familial hate as I knew it. Beneath it lay a desperate desire for healing and the inner peace that had evaded me my entire life, which made the heartbreak all the more excruciating.

  I followed her through the house. As we passed the dining room, I glanced at the corner étagère that contained my mother’s prize possession, a jewelry box inlaid with rubies and emeralds. Her grandfather had been a craftsman commissioned by Czar Alexander III to produce such treasures. It was the only masterpiece that had stayed in the family and made it to America.

  We entered the kitchen. The sweet smell of black cherries wafted into my nostrils. A rolling pin and cookie cutter rested on a cutting board covered with flour. Steam billowed from a huge silver pot on her stove. I knew by the smell and the utensils that my mother was making Ukrainian dumplings called varenyky. This particular batch would be stuffed with black cherries and served with melted cane sugar and sour cream. One of my childhood favorites. Mercy.

  A mother never forgets her child’s weakness. I spied her checking out my figure.

  “You hungry?” she said.

  Another mother might have meant it in a caring way. But I knew that cajoling me into leaving a pound heavier would provide her with a sick form of satisfaction. Some mothers try to help their daughters become as beautiful as possible, while others reach a point where they prefer to compete with them.

  Another daughter might have cared, but she would have never tried my mother’s black cherry varenyky. This is one of the benefits of aging. One can humble oneself when necessary to get the best out of life.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’d love a couple. So thoughtful of you to make these for me.” Of course she hadn’t made them for me. Even if she’d known I was visiting, she wouldn’t have cooked for me.

  My mother chuckled. “You’re so lucky I’m your mother. How many girls have such a good sense of humor? Obviously you got it from me. Your father’s idea of a joke was staring at the balance in his savings account. Sit down and let me fatten you up. You’re too thin.”

  Her true motive, as suspected. What a surprise. “I did get my sense of humor from you, didn’t I?”

  I sat down at the square kitchen table. My knees shook. So far so good but how would we get through the visit without one of us offending the other? She spooned four varenyky onto a plate and added sugar and sour cream. Poured two cups of tea and took the seat beside me.

  “I left you a voice mail,” I said. “You didn’t return my phone call.”

  “Why should I? You didn’t talk to me at your godfather’s funeral, or at the reception.”

  “I walked up to you but you turned your back on me.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “Oh, please, Mama.” I wasn’t making it up. She was always trying to pull my chain to make me feel miserable. In her world, guilt inspired remorse. Contrition was measured in dollars.

  She stared ahead. “All those people watching and you didn’t even sit with your mother. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  “We should all be ashamed of ourselves.”

  “So what’s changed to make you call and show up at my house unannounced? Are you making so much money the bottom of your mattress is stuffed full? I have room under mine, you know.”

  Love had been conditional in our house. Growing up it was based on scholastic achievement. Ever since I got a job, it was based on money.

  “Really?” I said. “I would have guessed it would be stuffed by now with gifts from your many suitors.”

  My mother was the black widow in the Uke community. Every widower and lifelong bachelor wanted to taste her cooking. I knew she’d made the varenyky for one of them. Easter Sunday was in two days. No self-respecting Ukrainian woman made varenyky during Lent, which meant the man in question had to be rich.

  “There’s money and there’s New York money,” she said. “You’d think if my daughter had left me for a fancy job she would have bought me a Lexus by now. Especially given she’s driving a Porsche.”

  It was a twelve-year-old car I’d bought six years ago with my first bonus. Other than my rapidly depleting savings and my paltry retirement account, it was the only hard asset I owned. A salary and bonus of a hundred thousand dollars doesn’t amount to much in New York City, where the marginal tax rate is north of fifty percent and rents are stratospheric. But there was no telling my mother any of that. The fact I’d given her the down payment on her condo didn’t matter, either. Her philosophy revolved around a single question: What have you done for me lately?

  “As soon as I can afford to buy you a car, Mama, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “I won’t hold my breath.”

  I dug into the varenyky and momentarily forgot my agenda. Black cherries spilled open in my mouth. The juice blended with sugar while the tender dough melted with sour cream. The flavors exploded on my tongue. A moan escaped my lips. I brought my hand up quickly to cover it, but I was too late. When I glanced at my mother, I noted a curl of satisfaction on her lips. Whether she was happy I was consuming calories or deriving a cook’s pleasure, I wasn’t sure.

  “Tell me why you’re here,” my mother said. “Something’s happened. You need something from me. I only hear from my children when something terrible has happened. What is it?”

  I explained my suspicions about my godfather’s death and my visit to his house with Roxy. I had no choic
e. The minute I asked her for help with the initials, she would ask why. I decided I was better off being up-front and honest. I didn’t mention my incident with Donnie Angel at all. If I had, she would have spent the next ten minutes screaming at me for being a fool and blamed my kidnapping on my carelessness.

  Her expression changed from one of surprise to disgust as I told her my story.

  “Did you just make all this garbage up to irritate me,” she said, “or are you serious?”

  I felt the heat rise to my face. “I’m serious. Of course I’m serious. When have you known me not to be serious?”

  “Who do you think you are? Angie Dickinson?”

  “Who?”

  “Angie Dickinson. The actress. She was Police Woman. Did you go to police school or did you go to business school?”

  “Neither, actually—”

  “Don’t get wise with me, child. This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. My daughter, a financial executive in New York City, wasting her vacation time solving a crime that doesn’t even exist.”

  “You think he fell down the stairs?”

  “You are doing this on your vacation, right?”

  “Of course. Answer my question.”

  “The police said he fell down the stairs. What could you possibly know that they don’t know?”

  “The same thing you do. That my godfather had a fear of stairs and never, ever would have gone down to the basement on a rainy night.”

  “Let me tell you something about men, child. You give a man enough wine and he’ll climb the roof of his house and dance naked under the antennas during a thunderstorm. Especially that homemade wine your godfather used to make. Why are you doing this? Do you still feel guilty about your husband’s death? Are you trying to punish yourself for some reason?”

  In fact, she should have felt guilty about his death. She was the one who’d called me in Manhattan the day of his death sounding frantic. One of her suitors had gotten drunk and was about to rape her. Help me, she pleaded. Don’t call the police, I don’t want to be fodder for community gossip. And I don’t want to get this man in real trouble, she said. My former husband had just finished giving a lecture at Trinity College in Hartford. By then we were practically living separate lives, but he still had a sliver of decency about him so he took off to Rocky Hill right away at my request. He probably never saw the SUV that hit him head-on because its headlights weren’t working. Nor did he live long enough to find out my mother’s alleged assailant had left by then. The truth was that I was never convinced she was even in trouble that night. In my heart, I was certain she simply wanted to cause a commotion. As always, she just wanted attention.

  “Why would I feel guilty about my husband’s death? I’m not the one who cried for help.”

  My mother appeared incredulous. “I wouldn’t have had to call him if you were living near me, like a caring daughter should, would I? Obviously you must blame yourself. Obviously he’s dead today because of you.”

  I wanted to strangle her. I wanted to go to her garage, get a shovel, come back in the house, and tell her I was ready to bury her if she would just please die. I couldn’t have imagined revealing the depth of my rage to anyone, and the mere thought of it inspired a new level of self-loathing. But that was the truth.

  Instead of confronting her and pursuing what would undoubtedly turn out to be an illogical argument, however, I impressed myself. I stayed on point.

  “Do you know anyone in the community with the initials DP?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  I explained the entry in my godfather’s calendar. At first her frown deepened with disapproval. I got the sense she thought there was something wrong with me if I was looking up entries in my deceased godfather’s address book. But she’d always liked crossword puzzles, and her expression gradually morphed into one of deep concentration.

  Her eyes came alive. She looked at me and shrugged. “It’s obvious, but it’s not what you think.”

  I moved forward in my seat. “It’s not?”

  “No. It’s not the Ukrainian DP. It’s the English DP.”

  “You know someone with those initials? Someone he was close to?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “Dolly Parton.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Mama . . .”

  “He was obsessed with her. And the bigger her boobs got, the more he obsessed over her. Men are babies. Give them a good meal and show them a big tit and they’ll do anything for you.” She arched her back and thrust her cleavage in my direction. “You show me a so-called leg man and I’ll show you a liar. You want seconds?”

  No visions of a shovel in my hand this time. Just the sight of her condo complex in my rearview mirror. I gave my mother a stern look.

  “The only Ukrainian I know with those initials is that blowhard former father-in-law of yours,” she said. “If there were any justice in the world, he would have died at a young age instead of your father.”

  “That’s funny,” I said.

  “What’s funny about that?”

  “Nothing. What’s funny is that he said those initials might not belong to a person.” I paused. My mother’s eyes scrunched together as though the words had struck a chord. “He said they might belong to a ghost or something like that. And that I should ask you about them.”

  “He said that? That you should ask me about it?”

  “What could he have meant?”

  My mother thought about it some more. I could tell by the light in her eyes and the firmness of her posture that she had a notion of what Rus might have meant.

  “You know something,” I said.

  She shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “Would you care to share it, please?”

  “That depends.” My mother leveled her chin at me. “What’s in it for me?”

  Twenty years ago her words would have knocked the wind out of me. My mother, the woman who’d protected me as best as she could, from the depth of the ocean and my father’s rage, demanding payment for answering a simple question? Unimaginable. Today I simply reached for my wallet.

  “All I have on me is forty-eight dollars,” I said.

  “I’ll take a check.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  I offered her two twenties and eight crumpled singles. She snatched them, folded the bills in half and stuffed them into a pocket, all in one motion.

  “I really think he was writing in English,” she said.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “A DP was a Displaced Person. A refugee from Eastern Europe who ended up in Western Europe after World War II. You’ve heard the term.”

  It was true. I’d heard my parents mention it once or twice when I was a girl but it hadn’t stuck in my memory. In truth, I didn’t know much about my parents’ lives before they immigrated to America. They were never keen on sharing the details. I had been consumed with making good enough grades to get out of town, make my own money, and cease being dependent on them.

  “I was a DP,” my mother said. “Your father was a DP. Your godfather was a DP, too. Most of the old-timers in the community were DPs. We lived in DP camps in Germany, France, and Austria before we came to this country. We were scattered all over the place.”

  “So if he had the letters DP in his appointment book—”

  “It could be anyone. Most likely someone he was in camp with. A friend.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Who else would you call DP? Someone who shared the experience with you. And let me tell you, it wasn’t a compliment to be called a DP.”

  “Why not?”

  My mother sighed. Her self-confidence seemed to leave her with her exhalation. Her eyes fell to the table and her voice softened.

  “The world hated us.”


  That was the substance of what I got out of her. I followed up with a few questions about DP camps, but she clammed up and concocted some excuse about needing to do her calisthenics before one of her beaus picked her up for an early lunch. After I told her I was leaving, I loitered around the table for a few seconds to make sure she wasn’t going to offer me a hug. When she took my plate and turned her back on me to head toward the dishwasher, I thanked her for her hospitality and left.

  “Next time bring your checkbook,” she said. “Save the crumpled singles for your brother’s strip joint.”

  I climbed in my car, slammed the door shut, and made the tires squeal. My mother’s condo was located on a road with a blind brow that led to a treacherous “S” turn. As the Porsche slithered through it, I tried not to look at the giant sycamore at the apex of the bend, where bouquets of flowers popped up now and then. People had left flowers for drunk drivers and reckless teenagers, and also a professor from Yale. I crossed myself three times, a habit from my days as an altar girl, and prayed my dead husband had successfully negotiated purgatory and had been welcomed through the pearly gates. Yeah, he was a bastard, but I held grudges against only the living. Praying and contemplating forgiveness also tended to calm me down, and by the time I’d negotiated the side streets I was focused on my mission once again.

  I zipped onto I-91 headed east toward my brother’s house in Willimantic. As I powered onto the entrance ramp, I spied a white compact car following me. A bend in the on-ramp offered me a sideways view of the car. It was low-slung with tinted windows, remarkably similar to the two cars that had been parked around the corner from my godfather’s house last night.

  But the car merged slowly into the right lane as I accelerated into the fast lane and it disappeared behind me. I tried to chalk my concern up to paranoia, but I couldn’t kid myself. Donnie Angel was out there, somewhere. In truth, I was surprised he hadn’t come after me yet. There was information in his absence, as though he wanted me to keep doing what I was doing.