A Theory of Expanded Love

by Hicks, Caitlin;

  We didn’t say much. It was quiet, like we were all the servants in the household of a king, silently asking How is the King feeling about all of this? What shall we tell the King? and What happens when the King finds out? When we arrived, the King was standing at the door. He had his tie on, and his suit, ready to go to Mass, holding the screen open for us. His face was stern and his eyes were fixed on the Queen Mother the whole time.

  We had to pass through the gauntlet of peasants at the castle of the King. The crowds were cheering. All the kids, except for John-the-Blimp, who was already at the church, were dressed in their Sunday best, ready to go. They were waiting for the new royal baby. Madcap wore a short black dress with tights as if she were a beatnik and everyone else was dressed like a normal person; the twins and Jude looking very Prep School in their short ties and little suits.

  Princess Clara went in first, with Emma in her arms. The peasants (little kids) strained up to see the baby’s face. Mother and I brought up the rear with Clara’s suitcase and armfuls of baby stuff. As Clara approached the door, the King and Queen said a message to each other with some kind of look. The Queen seemed determined, and there was a deep layer of sadness in her eyes. But there was also joy. She looked at the King and smiled a big smile. The King just saw the face of the woman he remembered, the one he loved. Then he stood aside as he held the door for the Princess and her new baby, The Duchess of Shea. The peasants filed in behind.

  The first thing Clara did was put the Duchess in the middle of our parents’ huge bed, covered with the nubby, off-white and slightly-worn bedspread. Then she stood back. Her face was filled with such pride. All us happy subjects gathered around the King’s bed and thanked God quietly for bringing another healthy baby into the kingdom. I held the hand of Princess Clara, and she squeezed it and she smiled at me. Emma was so tiny, surrounded by all that bed. She made a little sag in the mattress, and her hands opened and closed randomly.

  “What kind of a saint’s name is Emma?” the King asked, annoyed.

  “You’re right, Daddy. I don’t know of a Saint Emma,” I countered, feeling recklessly bold in challenging His Majesty. “On the other hand, maybe she will be the first.”

  “And why not put the baby in the center of your own bed, Clara?” he added, gearing up for a lecture.

  So much for the Duchess fantasy.

  “Let it go, Martin,” Mother said, firmly. “This is our granddaughter.”

  It was Sunday. The last Mass of the day, the 12:15 noon Mass was about to start at St. Andrew’s Church, and Daddy was one of the collectors. Because Clara was still recovering from the birth, she was excused from her obligation so she could stay home with the baby. Mother had the Volkswagen bus, so everybody had to pile in with her.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Daddy.

  “You’re going with me,” he said with a Commander sound in his voice.

  Uh, oh, I thought. Here it comes.

  In the car, Daddy vented. It pains me to think about what he said. I’ve heard it so many times I could spell it, word for word. Sometimes I wonder why grown-ups repeat things so much. When you’re a kid, all the time of your life is taken up in the same room with them; you get to see every little detail about them, close up. A hair on the back of their hand, a mole by their lips, the way their hair is parted. Like how Daddy always gets food on his mouth when he’s eating, and I spend most of the meal trying to decide if I’m going to get him mad by telling him, or maybe this time he wants me to let him know. And then the bit of food falls off his chin and I can finally enjoy my supper. The point is, you get to see them microscopically and hear every thought that comes out of their mouths. Pretty soon, you can predict what they are going to say.

  But it was better than being spanked in front of the whole family, so I shut up and waited. Number one, he said, I had again disobeyed the law of the house by going to Ventura without asking permission or telling Mother. It was only slightly better that I had taken the bus—“slightly less stupid” was his phrase—at least I didn’t get into a car with an evil stranger.

  Number two, I was risking my soul for all eternity. How far away could hell be if I was only twelve and couldn’t even get past the second commandment, Honor thy Father and thy Mother?

  “I’m almost thirteen, Daddy,” I inserted.

  “You’re getting too independent, thinking you can make up your own mind about things. The church has come up with some simple rules, like the Ten Commandments, and when you disobey your parents, you are sinning,” he lectured.

  I looked at my hand. It wasn’t shaking yet because, what could he do to me in this car? But he had that scary tone in his voice that put me on edge. And what he was saying was like a lot of other things that didn’t make any sense. Only this time, it was making me cranky.

  Hmmmm. So being a parent allows you to do anything, whether it is right or not, and if you’re the child, you have to go along? Or you’re going to hell? A sin is a sin is a sin whether or not you’re a “Father and Mother.” How could it be right that he and Mother had abandoned their own daughter—just to save face in the parish? How could that be something I had to go along with just because I’m a child?

  By the time we got to Number three, Daddy was yelling. It was just him and me inside that car, but it was so loud, the car seemed smaller. I cringed against the door.

  “You had no business interfering with Clara’s situation! It was an adult matter. Do you understand me? It had nothing to do with you. You willful child! Going up to Ventura on your own, thinking you were saving the bastards of the world from adoption. Who do you think you are?”

  I couldn’t answer. The bastards of the world?

  “The last time you tried this stunt didn’t I leave enough of an impression on you?” he barked, changing gears and heading into an intersection. “You deliberately disobeyed me! Defying your parents’ wishes is another example of your willful disregard for the Second Commandment.”

  “Let’s call a spade a spade,” I heard myself say.

  “Don’t you dare sass me,” he yelled across the car, even though I was only inches from him. “You know nothing about what we’ve done for you kids. How many people do you know have thirteen children? Do you have any idea how much we sacrifice for you?”

  All my life, whenever he used this line of reasoning, I felt guilty about being born and causing all his suffering. He didn’t have a fancy car because he had to provide for all the children. The home was always a mess because of us. He didn’t get promoted in the Navy because of Mother and a new baby every year. I’m not sure of the other things he did without, but he was aware of them all the time, and he reminded us how much of a stone we were around his neck.

  “You act like it’s my fault for being born,” I said. “Why do you and Mother have so many children, anyway?” This thought was like a door opening. And once that door opened, it didn’t want to close.

  “Don’t you talk to me this way!” he screamed, as he turned left in the middle of the intersection. Now we were on the same street as the church. I wasn’t afraid of him. My face felt red and a hot feeling shot through my veins. My thoughts were lightning fast: he couldn’t even see me; all he saw was the lot of us. I was just another mouth to be fed, a disobedient child with a backside to be belted.

  “So you’re saying that before we were all born, we decided to be born to cause trouble for you and Mother?” I couldn’t believe these questions actually occurred to me and that I was daring to ask them. But now I wanted to know about the very obvious thing that had been staring us in the face our whole lives. Why did they have so many children?

  Daddy pulled the car over to the side of the road. I thought he was going to jump out and take off his belt, he was so spitting mad. The problem was, I was mad, too.

  “You are still a child!” he bellowed at me in the confines of the car. “You have no right to talk to me like this! You had no right to interfere with Clara and her baby! She has brought shame on our e
ntire family in the parish by bringing that baby home, and you are responsible for that! Who do you think you are?”

  I screamed back at him. “I’m almost a teenager!”

  “Father Stefanucci is turning over in his grave right now! With that child, born out of wedlock! The example we’re giving to all the other families in the parish!”

  I thought of the Feeneys and how they would get canonized in comparison, even though Christopher Feeney was just as guilty as Clara for “sins of the flesh.”

  “Jesus was born out of wedlock,” I said calmly. This was the ultimate blasphemy, and I knew it would get him, but I said it anyway. Instantly, he smacked the back of his hand against my cheek; my head throbbed. I grabbed my cheek as I glanced at him.

  “Don’t you dare blaspheme the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!” he spat. “It’s a good thing we’re in this car!”

  I grabbed a hold of the door handle and pushed. My feet landed on the sidewalk. I slammed the door and ran down the street towards the church. I wasn’t afraid of anyone seeing me. I ran and ran. I was never going to go back to being his daughter. I’ll be a nun, first, I threatened inwardly. Even being a stupid nun looked better than being anywhere near him. I’ll spend my life praying for your soul! I didn’t care. I could hear the car coming after me and crossed the street. His car passed me.

  When I got to the school and the church, I saw the Rambler parked with all the other cars along the road. It was early, but parishioners had begun arriving to fulfill their weekly duty at Sunday Mass. I went in the side door, sweaty from running. The dark vestibule was cool as the marble columns. I pushed open the inner door to the inside of the church.

  Daddy was at the back talking to Father Pierre who had been standing in the center of the church, greeting the faithful. I didn’t realize he had come back to the parish again from his mission in Africa, but there he was. I was caught off guard by the vision of him. I wondered if he remembered me from before.

  I genuflected and chose a pew to the side with no one in it. My chest was still heaving up and down and I didn’t want to be anywhere near either of them. My cheek felt hot and swollen from Daddy’s blow. I sensed somebody breathing down my neck.

  “You are going to go to confession and ask God forgiveness for your sins.” I turned away from Daddy’s voice. “Father Pierre will hear your confession,” he said, the sound of anger still in his voice.

  I sat back in the wooden pew and let it sink in. Father Pierre was standing at the doorway to the confessional. He nodded his head, inviting me in.

  Like I was going to tell him I was sorry for what I did! Every cell in my body pounded around inside me, revolting at this idea.

  It was the worst possible moment for me to tell some man, whom I hardly even knew, that I had sinned. Especially Father Pierre, who was still as handsome and blonde and movie star as ever. But now even he seemed like a traitor; he probably agreed with Daddy that I had sinned by interfering with Clara’s “situation.” My entire being recoiled from the expectation. I sat in the pew, ignoring the both of them.

  “Get in there!” Daddy hissed at me. I leaned away from him, towards the wall. Right in front of me, Teresa Feeney and her family filed in and took up two rows at the front. Teresa wore a turquoise dress, light and airy and graceful, as usual. Christopher brought up the rear, holding the hands of two of his younger brothers. He seemed so comfortable and easy in his skin, as if he had forgotten about the whole episode of my visit before Emma was born.

  I couldn’t bear to look at them.

  Then I saw John up at the front, lighting the candles on the altar, his black cassock swishing around his feet. The vision of him mixed with Daddy’s humid breath so close made me nauseous. Another twisted bit of thinking banged around inside my head: don’t tempt the boys with short skirts, go to hell for impure thoughts, but ignore The Hands. Better than that, put The Hands up on the altar and look at him approvingly for showing up on time without bubblegum on his shoes.

  Daddy exhaled over my shoulder. I could smell eggs on his breath. Okay, I’ll go, I thought, just to get Daddy off my back. I stood up in the aisle and genuflected, crossing myself. I turned towards the back of the church and the confessional.

  Father Pierre was already sitting in there. Through the grate that divided the confessor from the sinner, I could see his hands on his lap, folded on his brown cassock with his rosary entwined. It didn’t feel like Jesus or the Blessed Mother were anywhere in the vicinity. Even my guardian angel had abandoned me. I knelt down, practically choking on the condescension of the situation.

  I crossed myself, like I have a thousand times, in preparation for the confession.

  “Bless me, Father,” I said. I paused. I couldn’t bring myself to say another word.

  “Yes, my child?” Father Pierre asked me.

  Normally I would I have said, “For I have sinned.” It’s the easiest part. It’s the rote thing they get you to say to ease your way into telling a complete stranger your weakest moments. Normally I would never leave him there in the dark after asking me that question.

  But nothing felt normal. I stood up in the dark confessional. I opened the heavy curtain and stepped into the aisle. I could smell the incense. John-the-Blimp was genuflecting at the bottom of the marble stairs. Mother appeared in the center aisle at the back, the kids trailing behind her, and it struck me that she was like a chicken with her brood following her around the pen, imitating her every move. She was a mother hen, and we were just a bunch of chickens.

  I put my head down and faced the back, walking past Daddy, who was escorting people to their seats. I kept going, beyond all the parishioners filing into Sunday Mass. Past the statues of Jesus and the Blessed Mother. Past the Stations of the Cross and the baptismal font behind the iron gate. I went outside. It was really sunny.

  I squinted against the bright light of the day. I could see everything clearly.

  Epilogue

  dear diary

  New Year’s Eve – Remember me? It’s been a while but I’ve decided to write to you again. Directly. So that I can sort everything out myself. There’s nothing wrong with Jesus and Mary, but it’s pretty hard second-guessing them all the time. I’ve come to the conclusion that we have to work things out ourselves and there’s no point to thinking I have a direct line to God or to the Blessed Mother, any more than anyone else does. I’m just one person in a big family, and it’s no different in the world. It’s an enormous place, with millions of people, everyone clamoring for something or other.

  A lot has happened. Clara had her baby. She’s named it Emma. It turns out that Emma was born on December 7, 1963, the 22nd anniversary of Pearl Harbor. In all the excitement, I forgot about Daddy and Father Stefanucci and how that was their special day of friendship.

  The other thing that happened is that Mother told us about her lost babies. Everyone was kneeling around the statues up on the mantle on Christmas Eve. Daddy started to say the Our Father. And Mother interrupted him. Everyone looked up. Mother doesn’t usually interrupt. In fact, almost never. Just once, this summer, she interrupted him for me. I won’t forget that.

  “Marty,” she began. “I want to tell the children. It’s time,” she said firmly and quietly. Then she told us we have two more siblings who are in Limbo. There was a lot of gasping and ahhing, except for me. I already knew. She’s named the baby girl of the miscarriage. Her name is Ramona, after Saint Ramon, the patron saint of secrets. And she told them about Clifford Mary Anderson Junior. The sunny side of all of this is, maybe if we all pray together, we can bribe God to relent and let them both into heaven, being as it wasn’t anybody’s fault that neither of them were baptized in the first place.

  Right now it’s New Year’s Eve and Madcap and I are working on the Rose Parade Floats, even though my mind keeps getting distracted with the thought of Emma (who is really my niece). Everyday we go into the warehouse in our overalls and braids and flannel shirt and long-johns because it’s cold enough to fre
eze the balls off a brass monkey.

  First job we had, we glued black poppy seeds onto a huge ball. We come in everyday at 7:30 in the morning. Today I balanced on a scaffold fifteen feet above the cement floor, dipping my brush and spreading the glue on the huge ball of the Cal Tech float. I’ve got a box of orange mums, every single one of which must be pasted onto the ball with no spaces in between. We’re in a huge warehouse with high ceilings and six other floats. The doors are open so that people won’t get sick inhaling the fumes. The other volunteers are students at Cal Tech, much older than me, because this is the Cal Tech float. Somehow Madcap and I got added on to the crew. We’ll probably be here ’til midnight. There is this one boy who sits next to me on the scaffold sometimes. He’s kind of shy and lanky, with yellow curls and big lips that look soft under his fuzzy blonde hairs that are trying to grow into whiskers.

  •••

  The queen of the Rose Parade and her princesses came in today in high heels. They were all dressed in lavender pastel suits, straight skirts to the knees, with short jackets and pillbox hats like Jacqueline Kennedy. The queen had a red rose on her lapel. I was looking down on them from my perch on the scaffold. I practiced the Rose Queen wave, in the unlikely case that I would ever become the queen, or even a princess in future years, when I’m old enough to audition—but I still had my brush in my hand, and I accidentally glopped a gob. It hit the bottom of my float and splattered, landing on the back of the high heel of the last princess. She had no idea.