The Possibilities of Sainthood

by Donna Freitas

“I apologize again, Amalia Lucia,” she said, shaking her head in what I hoped was false solidarity with my mother. “I didn’t realize that Antonia wasn’t allowed to go to the dance. And I’ll be having a chat with Maria. Thank you for bringing them home,” she added, closing the door, leaving my mother and me outside on the steps. “Maria! Come down here now!” Even through the door I could hear Mrs. Romano yelling.

  “Good thing I was able to let Cara know her daughter is headed down a road of carnal sin!” My mother spat the word sin as if it were a pestilence as we walked back to the car.

  I finally heard my mother’s footsteps padding down the hall, and she finally emerged into the living room. She gave me a look of death as she settled in to give me a good dose of serious Italian mother-love.

  “So, how long am I grounded, Ma? For real. Please tell me,” I begged.

  “I told you,” she growled from the antique chair where she sat like a queen presiding over one of her rebellious subjects, i.e., me. “Until you go to college.”

  “Amalia Lucia?” Gram’s voice called from the kitchen. “Might I have a word?”

  “What do you need, Ma? Antonia and I are having an important conversation.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about actually.”

  “Well, don’t do it from the kitchen.”

  “Are you sure? I just thought . . .”

  “Ma, just come in here. Say what you have to say.”

  “Okay,” she said, shuffling in wearing her fuzzy blue slippers and robe, her hair in curlers. “I thought you might want me to say this to you privately, but since you insist”—Gram paused to take a deep breath—“I wanted to remind you that when you and Gino started going out on dates you were fifteen, just like Antonia.”

  Insert my mother’s reddened, angry face here and my eternal gratitude to Gram here. Score one for Gram. She may have not remembered what happened last week, but she sure remembered every detail from twenty-five years ago.

  “And I know it’s difficult to see her all grown up so quickly, what with Gino gone and you raising her all alone. And then she’s turned out so beautiful, especially in that gown—you’ll have to tell me where you got that later, Antonia—which must make you think about how maybe someday soon she will meet her Gino.” Gram was on a roll. “And then your baby will be off before you know it and you’ll wonder where all the time went and you’ll miss her so much you won’t even know what to do with yourself.”

  Was that a tear rolling down my mother’s face? And one rolling down Gram’s too?

  “I know you must be so angry at her for lying to you tonight, which was wrong,” she said, giving me a stern look, “but I think it’s time, sweetheart, that you started to trust Antonia Lucia. She’s a good girl. A smart young woman. I remember how hard it was for me to let you go out with Gino, but I knew you would make good decisions. And I know deep down you believe the same about Antonia Lucia.”

  I stood frozen now, my attention bouncing back and forth between Gram’s speech and my mother’s anger dissolving into teary affection, for who—me or Gram or both—I wasn’t yet sure.

  “I’m so sorry, Mom,” I said once I was sure Gram was finished. “I just really wanted to go to the dance—I swear it was my first one—and I’ll never go behind your back again—”

  “I remember what it was like to be young, too, you know,” my mother said with a deep sigh, her voice wistful. “And worrying that your grandmother wouldn’t let me go out with your father because he was older and I was still so young.”

  “You do?” Now I was tearing up.

  “And I know your grandmother is right, that I’ve been too strict with you.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m going to have a spinach pie,” my mother said, since they were on the coffee table still sitting in the bag with the cookies, and since when Italians are in distress we eat. “Do you girls want one, too? They’re so fresh. Just out of the oven. I was making them while you were at the dance, Antonia,” she added, giving me a wry smile.

  “I’ll be right back,” Gram said, waddling off to the kitchen and returning with a stack of plates and napkins, at which point we tearily proceeded to devour the entirety of the bag’s contents.

  “Be careful not to drip oil on that dress,” my mother said in between bites. “You do look lovely.”

  “You think?” I smiled wide and then hoped that I didn’t have spinach stuck in my teeth.

  “Next time you need to get dressed up, though, your grandmother and I will find you something really special,” she said, with some haughtiness.

  “So there will be a next time?” I asked. She ignored this question, however.

  “You know your grandmother used to be an incredible seamstress. She used to make Italian lace. I’m sure she still could.”

  “I know I could,” Gram said. “That’s the kind of thing you never forget how to do. Like riding a bike.” Of course, Gram had never ridden a bike, but still, she made her point.

  “Next time”—my mother was getting excited now—“we’ll have to make you a dress, won’t we, Ma?”

  “A beautiful one for my beautiful granddaughter,” Gram agreed.

  “We’d have to find a way to fix your lack of cleavage, though,” she said. “The family bosoms seem to have skipped a generation.”

  “I could just sew in some inserts . . .”

  “Could we please get off the bosoms subject?” I pleaded. “But I’d love it if you and Gram made me a dress, especially if you’d also let me wear it out somewhere, like the prom,” I dropped hopefully, since I figured that at this point, what did I have to lose? Our conversation had taken the last turn I’d expected, thanks to Gram.

  “Well, I’m going to bed,” Gram said, yawning suddenly. Then she gave me a big smile and disappeared from the room as quickly as she’d entered. “Good night, my two sweethearts,” she called back to us.

  “Good night, Ma,” my mother responded.

  “I love you, Mom,” I said finally, looking into my mother’s tired eyes. It was late and time for us to go to sleep.

  “I love you, too, Antonia Lucia, bella mia,” she said. “But you’re still grounded for lying to me and sneaking around.” She mustered a stern tone in her voice again.

  “Until college?”

  “Maybe not college,” she said, a little smile on her face. “O Madonna, I need this day to be over. The drama!”

  “Me, too,” I said, giving her a kiss on the cheek. “Good night, Ma.” I watched as she headed off to her room, still teary-eyed. For the first time since I was little I thought there might be good things to come between my mother and me. And I couldn’t wait to see what they were. Especially if they included hand-sewn dresses of beautiful Italian lace that I could wear somewhere with Michael!

  Underneath all the fighting, the screaming, the guilt, the melodrama, and, of course, all of the endless eating, I thought, as a yawn escaped me, there really was love after all.

  27

  I LEARN SURPRISING NEWS ABOUT MY REPUTATION AND I HOPE THAT THE SECOND, THIRD, FOURTH, AND MAYBE EVEN THE FIFTH TIME IS THE CHARM

  Michael and I sat across from each other on my bed. Between us lay my Saint Diary, open to the section where I kept my proposals to the Vatican. Petitions, some long, some only a single line on a strip of paper, were strewn across my quilt, mixed among photographs of me from when I was eight, twelve, and from just last month. A white candle sat on a metal tray with a book of matches next to it.

  “The Patron Saint of the First Kiss and Kissing,” he said, surprise in his voice. This particular letter more than all the others fascinated him. He held it in both hands as if it were fragile, as if it were me or even my heart laid bare. He read the words, my words, taking his time, while I waited for him to finish and say something. Anything.

  Michael was his typical, disheveled self again, even though he still wore the same clothes from the dance. His jacket was draped over the vanity chair. His tie was loosened.
His shirt had a gray smear of dust from climbing through my window and standing in the shadows of my bedroom, waiting, waiting, until I came in to sleep, scaring me to death when I walked into the room, shushing me so he wouldn’t have to face the wrath of my mother if she found out tonight, of all nights, on top of everything else, that I now had a boy in my bedroom.

  “I couldn’t just let the night end there, Antonia,” he’d said to me eventually.

  I’d agreed.

  The skirt of my dress spilled over one side of the bed in waves of taffeta, iridescent in the soft glow of the candlelight near St. Anthony. After finally confessing everything, the whole story of my aspirations for sainthood, and showing Michael my collection of Saint Diaries and all my years of proposals to the Vatican—I’d even shown him my formal ritual for petitioning saints—as he sorted through my saint paraphernalia he was supposed to think about who he wanted to pray to himself.

  “Are you ready?” I asked when he put down the letter.

  It was time for Michael to petition a saint, as he’d agreed to do. In my demonstration I’d thanked St. Anthony for helping me find my senses about Michael (he smiled when he heard what I’d said). I waited for him to flip to one of the pages in my Saint Diary—maybe St. Anne to ask for some further grandmotherly intervention to convince my mother that dating at fifteen was acceptable; or St. Barbara, the Patron Saint of Grave Diggers, so that he wouldn’t be going to his grave anytime soon even though he risked life and limb by being in my room; or even St. John to express thanks that we were no longer “just friends.”

  But when Michael lit the candle between us and closed his eyes, my diary lay there, untouched. Had he chosen a saint that I didn’t already know? One that wasn’t in my diary? He sat there, eyes closed, unmoving, for what felt like an eternity. Why wasn’t he making his petition out loud like I had? I’d spent all night confessing my deepest secrets and now he was going to hold back this one little prayer?

  “You look angry, Antonia,” Michael teased. “What did I do wrong between the time I closed my eyes and opened them again?”

  “Well, first of all,” I said in a whisper, “you didn’t choose a saint representation to pray to like I showed you. And second, you decided to keep whatever you asked for to yourself and that’s not fair. Petitions aren’t birthday wishes, you know.”

  “But you’re wrong,” he said, grinning.

  “No, I’m not. It doesn’t matter if other people know what you pray for, whereas with birthday wishes . . .”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said.

  “Okay. So, then . . . enlighten me, please.”

  “You’re irresistible when you’re angry.”

  “Now is not the time, Michael.”

  “All right, sorry. I’ll stay on task,” he said, laughing, taking my hand in his. “I did choose a saint representation and I had every intention of telling you about my petition . . . it’s just that I needed to do some explaining before you’d understand.”

  “I’m listening,” I said, as he ran his fingers across my palm and the back of my hand.

  “So there’s this rumor going around the neighborhood.”

  “Oh, no,” I said feeling dread.

  “Let me finish. This is important.” Michael put a finger to my lips, silencing me gently. “Rumor has it that Federal Hill has its very own saint-in-the-making. That a local girl—still only a teenager, according to some—has shown herself to have a miraculous effect on those she touches . . .” he said, pausing, my curiosity rising. “Or, rather, kisses.”

  “What?” I was confused. “Who?”

  “Don’t you know, Antonia? Can’t you feel it? The effect you have on everyone around you? I wasn’t just giving you a line back in the library about how maybe you were already making miracles happen. I meant it. And according to neighborhood sources, your miracle count is somewhere around ten, with one major miracle among them: Mrs. Bevalaqua.”

  “You mean me? Me? Are you crazy?” Had my whole neighborhood—if Michael was telling the truth—gone pazzo (that’s Italian for “crazy”)? I thought back to the strange incidents over the last couple of months—from Mrs. B walking again to the little cuts and bruises of kids like Billy Bruno and Maria’s little sister, Bennie, healing almost instantly. People thought I might be a saint? Other people? Could it be true? Was that why children had been following me around the neighborhood, whispering?

  “Yes, you, Antonia Lucia Labella. It’s almost uncanny—that letter about being the saint for kissing you wrote to the Vatican—as if you somehow knew . . . and if I did my homework right, between the miraculous events and your growing local fame, I think you’re practically the Patron Saint of the First Kiss and Kissing already.”

  “But I was talking about a whole different type of kissing in that letter.”

  “I don’t think it has to be one or the other,” he said, leaning so close now that I felt the world disappear, like it had earlier in the library, when we’d been about to kiss. I smiled with anticipation. “I hope it doesn’t. Don’t you agree?”

  “Yes,” I said. He could have convinced me of anything just then.

  “Good.”

  “So if you really believe this . . . why don’t you ask me the question again, Michael,” I said, grinning.

  “That question?” he asked.

  “That one. Yes.”

  “But I already did,” he said, our lips so close they almost touched. “When I closed my eyes I made a special petition to Antonia Lucia Labella, the Patron Saint of the First Kiss and Kissing, who is not only stunning in that red dress but is also sitting before me. I wondered if she wouldn’t mind terribly, and if it was still within her area of specialty, that I might have the honor of a second kiss, and maybe a third and fourth and so on.” His voice was a whisper. “So, St. Antonia . . . when am I going to get that next kiss?”

  “Now,” I sighed, just before our lips met for the second time that night, eager to find out whether second kisses, and thirds and fourths, were even more divine than first ones, thinking that I might not be an official saint yet, but feeling confident I was on the right path. Especially since I was sure it was going to require many hours of kissing practice before I’d officially be ready for the job.

  I was going to love being a saint.

  Vatican Committee on Sainthood

  Vatican City

  Rome, Italy

  December 25

  To Whom It May Concern (ideally the new Pope if he’s available):

  First of all, I hope you are enjoying your first days as our new Holy Father. We are all excited to see what changes you will bring.

  And I also thought, on this special holiday, that it might be appropriate to tell you about a Christmas miracle, really the best miracle a fifteen-year-old girl who is also aspiring to be the first ever living saint in Catholic history—the Patron Saint of the First Kiss and Kissing, to be specific—could ever hope for. (That girl in question would be me, Antonia Lucia Labella, of Labella’s Market in Federal Hill, home to the most famous homemade pasta in all of Rhode Island.)

  I got my first kiss!

  And let me just say that it was truly divine. (Imagine me sighing happily here. Don’t worry, I’m still as innocent as I ever was. Well, almost.)

  I don’t know if this means anything significant for my possible sainthood, but, truth be told, I’m not sure I need it to. (Feel free, if you are confused about what I’m talking about here, to check the more than eight years of documentation about my quest for sainthood—you should have it all in my file.) My family, my crazy wonderful neighbors, my new boyfriend (!!), they all sort of make me feel like a saint already.

  It isn’t exactly how I imagined sainthood. But it feels right. For all I know, we’ve all got a little saintliness somewhere deep inside our souls. The possibilities are endless. Why should I be any different, then?

  So I’ve made an executive decision: No more proposals. No more e-mails. No more pestering. You have a lot o
n your shoulders right now, what with learning how to be the new Pope and Fathering the Fold and all. And if sainthood is truly in the cards for me, I’m content to wait and see what happens (even though patience has never been my strongest virtue).

  And don’t worry, this doesn’t mean I’ll stop petitioning the saints we already do have. That would never happen. After all, I’ve got a lifetime of faith in all those women and men who’ve gone to the great palace in the sky. I couldn’t imagine the world without their miracles.

  Anyway, that’s all for now. Oh, and have a Merry Christmas!

  Blessings,

  Antonia Lucia Labella

  Labella’s Market of Federal Hill

  33 Atwells Avenue

  Providence, RI USA

  saint2b@live.com

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A special thanks to Beth Wright, the first person I told about Antonia’s story and who never let me forget about it until it was done, and to Pooja Makhijani for reading and rereading drafts. My gratitude goes out to many others, especially Tanya Lee Stone, Emily Franklin, Stephen Prothero, Lauren Winner, Beth Adams, Chris Tebbetts, and everyone associated with the writers’ retreat Kindling Words, at which I received the encouragement and energy to believe in my ability to write this novel. To Frances Foster, who I told everyone was my dream editor, who somehow then became my real-life editor—thank you for your incredible editorial guidance, support, sense of humor, faith in this story, and the “possibility of me” as a novelist, and for really being a dream of an editor. To Miriam Altshuler, my agent, who believed long ago and well before I did that I was really a novelist, who loved this story from the beginning, and whose support for me as a writer is unbounded. To everyone at FSG, in particular Janine O’Malley and Robbin Gourley, for making this a wonderful experience. And finally, I have to mention my mom, whose childhood stories and life with the saints inspired this story, and Josh Dodes and my dad for being there through it all.