by Kim Savage
“You said you’re always available to talk, Nick.” Francesca said his name like it was a swear, and it felt right. The director of the soup kitchen, a heavy-bottomed woman with a severe bob, walked past and looked them up and down.
Mr. Falso slipped his hands out of the plastic gloves, stuffed them in his apron pocket, and snapped off his hairnet. “Come with me,” he said, leading her to the closet that housed brooms, mops, buckets, and trash barrels, along with bottles of disinfectants and cleaners meant to tidy after the perpetually unclean. Francesca breathed in the antiseptic smell. She thought of Saint Veronica Giuliani, whose confessor ordered her to clean the walls and floor of her prison cell with her tongue, swallowing the spiders and their webs. She thought of Angela of Foligno, who drank water contaminated by the putrefying flesh of a leper.
It helped her refocus.
“I wanted to thank you for bringing me here. It means so much to me to be able to toil for people who need it most.”
Mr. Falso raised his eyebrows. “It’s one of the most special parts of youth ministry, the experience of being in service to others.”
“I want to devote my whole entire life to making restitution for the sins of others. By performing works of charity. Like this.”
“The sins of others?”
“That’s right.”
“I see. Like Jesus, then?”
“Exactly.”
“That’s a … that’s a noble undertaking. A big undertaking.” He clapped his hands loudly in front of his waist. “Those plates must be piling up out there! Let’s save this good talk for dinner at the restaurant. After the work is done.”
“You haven’t talked to me since you came to my bedroom that night.”
Mr. Falso’s head snapped to the dish room. He closed the door halfway and leaned in to Francesca. “At your father’s request.”
“My father requested your expert opinion. Now it’s only fair that you share it with me.”
Mr. Falso looked at Francesca sideways. “Only you know what happened.”
“I know that I was filled with light and peace and satisfaction. It was incredible. And when it was done, I was more spent than if I’d run a marathon. Yet I wanted to experience it again and again.”
It felt like what I think sex is supposed to feel like, she thought. With you.
Francesca wondered if she had spoken out loud, as Mr. Falso squeezed the back of his neck with one hand, his eyes sweeping the tiny room. Finally, he faltered, “It’s beyond my scope.”
“I heard you tell my father what you thought it was. I heard you call it an ‘ecstasy.’”
“An ecstasy,” he repeated, clamping his mouth in distaste.
“You can’t tell me you didn’t say it.”
“Your father was looking for answers. I was postulating.”
“You think I’m on the path to becoming a saint. Admit it!”
“I’m not going to ‘admit’ anything.”
“How many sixteen-year-old girls bleed from their hands?”
The bobbed director gave a darting glance as she passed the utility room. Mr. Falso’s face darkened. He popped his head to the side like a boxer.
“There are other things,” she said breathlessly. “There have been for years. When I was five years old, I spoke in tongues. Do you know what that means? Ancient languages. Birds follow me. I’ve woken up every morning with the same birds at my window for sixteen years. You can ask my sister. Like Saint Francis of Assisi. It was documented on numerous occasions how the birds flocked to him, and landed on his arms and shoulders, singing sweetly all the while. This happens to me. I’m freaking Snow White!”
“Honestly, I don’t know what you are,” he huffed.
Francesca weaved slightly. His words echoed in her head, banging against the sides of her skull. She stepped backward, and her cheeks grew cold.
“Oh, Francesca.” He reached out and held her shoulders, restraint flung away. “That didn’t come out right. You are a beautiful girl with a beautiful heart. But I’m just a spiritual director in a church. I have my talents, but not the scholarly background, no expertise. Until you allow us to share what’s happening to you with the true Catholic scholars, we can’t begin to understand. Are you hearing me?”
“I p-prefer to keep it between us.” She stammered, feeling an unraveling.
“I know you do. Let me see your hands.” Francesca let him take them. “May I?” He peeled off one bandage, then the other, to reveal pink marks. “You asked what I think?”
She nodded.
“I think last Thursday night I saw an overwrought girl faced with enormous pressures over the last few weeks. I think what I saw was those pressures coming to a head. I think—correction, I hope—that this strange, fluky, magical chapter in your life is coming to a close. And soon, you’ll be able to get back to living life like a normal teenage girl. With much to look forward to.”
Francesca turned to the side as if he’d smacked her across the jaw. “What do I need to do to prove to you I’m special?” she whispered.
Connie peeked around the half-open door. “We’re getting super backed up. Are you coming soon? Oh, hey, cuz! What are you two talking about?”
Mr. Falso cupped Francesca on the shoulder. It was the same move she’d seen him do to a hundred guys. “We’re chatting about developments in her life. Good developments.” He dipped past Connie and disappeared through the door.
Connie shrugged and gave a dopey grin. “Hope I wasn’t interrupting anything.”
At that moment, Francesca hated Connie. More than her father when, as a child, she’d heard him call her schizophrenic when it was proven by a Biblical scholar that she spoke languages used during the time of Christ: Aramaic, Greek, Hebrew, and Latin. She hated Connie more than the neighborhood leeches, who treated her like an alien creature to ogle and wonder at. More than her mother, who left her too young and clueless as to how to deal with her gifts. Pain wormed through her chest, looking for a way out, but it was trapped there, nesting.
Francesca blasted from the utility closet and headed for the front door. A line of hungry people waited to get inside. Their stark differences made no sense to her: the mumbling man wrapped in a filthy blanket; the tidy family of four who could have lived in Francesca’s neighborhood; the skinny girl in the bleached jean jacket licking her teeth. She felt their confusion that she was dressed to serve, yet leaving. Their eyes wandered all over her, not in a dirty way, but to wonder what could be so bad that she would leave a warm, dry place with food. She spun in circles, untying her apron and dashing it to the ground.
“You want to be fed?” she screamed. “He can feed you. I’m done!”
Francesca felt a papery hand on her arm and froze. She looked down at Donata. She had never seen the woman leave the tiny alcove where she folded napkins. It scared Francesca to see Donata mobile. And that she had come for her.
Donata’s mouth moved, a web of spittle wavering. Francesca stooped to hear. The woman opened and closed her hand in front of Francesca’s face.
“You fix,” Donata said, a gleam in her frosted eyes.
PART 5
Lips
OCTOBER 2016
The day after the climb with Mr. Falso, Ben found Kyle at the quarry, sitting on the lip of the ledge, smiling dully. Every so often, a gust moved the wings of his hair, or he shifted, vertebral nubs snaking up and down his back.
Taking over the Cillos’ ledge was a symbolic move. It came from a primeval place, something laced into the boys’ DNA that made staking out the altar seem a noble thing. The stories had filtered beyond Bismuth, and kids from other towns started coming to the quarry even though it was off-season now, to check out the spot where the girls had jumped. When a pack of boys, maybe twelve or thirteen years old, came out of the clearing laughing, Piggy stood wordless and slapped his palm with the baseball bat he’d packed for the occasion. The encroachers looked at one another and moved away, to a lower, lamer ledge that barely fit them,
and sulked.
Louis whispered to Ben. “Did Kulik get stoned while we weren’t looking?”
Ben sat cross-legged on his towel. He had the jitters, a nervousness that had started the moment they chained their bikes behind Johnny’s Foodmaster and begun the mostly silent hike. Besides Eddie, Ben hadn’t seen any of them since the day he knocked Piggy unconscious. Their fight had become mythic: Piggy didn’t remember, and no one was about to remind him that Ben Lattanzi, with his rack-of-bones chest and bulbous Adam’s apple, had taken him down. The quarry did mind-erasing stuff like that, so you were never sure if something had actually happened or it was just one more quarry story.
But that wasn’t the reason for his nerves. Ben had to make his case, and the guys weren’t making it easy. Piggy, hungover and rank with beer, kept trying to nap, and now Louis was climbing down two ledges to talk to some younger girls he knew, only one of whom was a shade over plain.
Worst of all, Eddie had joined them at the last minute.
Piggy pointed his chin toward Eddie at the tip of the ledge getting ready to leap for the nth time. “And that one. That one’s like a robot, jumping and climbing, jumping and climbing. He’s making me tired just watching him.”
Eddie leaped over and over. He had fixed a plastic bag over his hand with rubber bands and duct tape at the wrist, the bag blooming with condensation. Ben understood why Eddie punished his body: it was no different from Ben revisiting the places he had touched Mira. Their answers would be found in pain, and they welcomed it.
Piggy yawned. “This is boring. There’s nothing to look at.”
From the ledge below, the girls giggled at Louis.
“Anything worth looking at is dead,” Piggy added.
Ben hooked his thumb toward where Eddie would momentarily rise. “You might tone it down a little.”
“It’s true. My eyes are actually bored. That’s what Kyle’s thinking. Right, Kyle?” Piggy said.
Kyle stared out over the water. The warm fall was finally turning, and so no one else dove but Eddie. The water was smoked glass. Rumors about hordes of gawkers hadn’t proved exactly true: there were about half of the usual number of kids from whom to protect the altar rock from desecration, but that was a lot, given the season. Even they were subdued, their dull murmur broken by the periodic plunge of a sad boy.
“So, Benny, you got us here. Talk,” Piggy said.
Louis reappeared from below wearing a guilty grin. Ben wouldn’t have minded if Louis hadn’t come, but there he was, along with Eddie, whom Ben would have to work around. Louis flashed a look toward Kyle before joining the rest. “Somebody decide to smoke and not share?”
“He’s been spacey like that the whole time,” Piggy explained, not bothering to hush on account of Kyle’s bad ear. “Swear to God, between him and Michael Phelps over there, and then this one calling emergency meetings? I think the whole town’s gone freaking nuts.”
Louis shoved Piggy off his blanket and, after a scuffle, Piggy gave him a scrap to sit on. They fell silent as Eddie climbed up, positioned himself, and dove again.
Piggy lifted his watch, an old-man steel Timex wrapped around the meat of his hand. “I’ve been timing him. It takes one-point-six minutes to execute the dive, and eleven minutes to climb back up here. He’ll start tiring soon, and with that bad hand, we can assume fifteen.”
“You got fifteen minutes, Benvenuto,” Louis said. “Make your case.”
“I’m saying that something obviously drove the Cillo girls to become the way they became. Because it was sudden. Like, in a matter of months, they went from being sheltered but wanting a normal life to sheltering themselves and becoming shut-ins. That doesn’t happen for no reason.”
“I can tell you the day Francesca switched to granny panties,” said Piggy.
“How would you know that?” asked Ben.
Piggy fell back on his towel and smiled behind his sunglasses. “I’m a detail man.”
“He sat behind her in every class. Don’t give him too much credit,” said Louis.
Ben made a face, then looked at Piggy’s watch. “How well do you guys know Frank Cillo?”
“As in Eddie’s uncle? Jesus, Benny,” Piggy said.
“There were no other guys in that house. No other guys to protect them. Eddie himself said his uncle was ready to lose it, with those girls hitting puberty at the same time.” Ben’s words didn’t sound like he imagined, like some revelatory statement that everyone would be wowed by. They sounded seedy, and sick. Like they came from a diseased mind. He could hardly believe they were coming from his mouth. Then again, neither could he believe that he’d spent two hours excising a glued-down six-by-six-inch square of his bedroom carpet and the pad underneath before tucking Mira’s notes inside and patching it up again.
“You think he smacked them around?” Piggy said.
“I’m asking what you guys think,” Ben said.
“You’re the one who was the closest to them. The only one who got anywhere close to—” Piggy said.
“Okay, okay,” Ben interrupted.
“You if anyone should know,” Piggy said.
“She shut me out, all right?” Ben realized he was yelling, but he didn’t care. “She shut me out like she shut out every single one of you. She stopped talking to me at school, she stopped sneaking out and seeing me. She cut me off dry after Connie’s wake, but you know something? Piggy was right: something happened in January that changed those girls, and I’m gonna find out what it was.”
Kyle whistled, long and loud. The boys froze.
“That was a keeper, Eddie man,” Kyle called.
Eddie climbed onto the ledge and turned away from them. He was boxy, a straight line from his sloped shoulders to his hips. With his cylindrical torso, he reminded Ben of the Tin Man. Steam coated the plastic bag that encased his hand, and water puddled at the bottom.
“Give the hand a rest, dude,” Louis said.
Eddie flapped his arms at his sides, the bag slapping his hip. He pointed his feet and dove again.
Louis checked his own watch. “Fifteen minutes starting now. And by the looks of that bandage, this might be his last dive. Go!”
Ben began to speak, but Piggy cut him off. “I know the night the drapes closed and never opened again. It was January twenty-first.”
The boys crowded Piggy’s towel.
“I was on the top of the Winnebago with my Bushnells,” Piggy started.
They made disgusted noises.
“Aw listen! It was Thursday night; it was what I did!” Piggy said.
“Fourteen minutes,” Ben said.
“Don’t judge. I have to watch the chicks in my father’s bar ‘dance’ while I bust my butt busing tables. Can’t talk to them, can’t touch them. What else am I supposed to do?” Piggy said.
“I can suggest what else you might do,” Louis said, grinning over his shoulder for Kyle’s approval. A sulfurous crosswind kicked up Kyle’s hair, along with the dying ferns that grew between the cracks.
“Anyways,” Piggy said, rolling his eyes at Ben. “Something big was going down in the bedroom. They’d lit candles, red, yellow, and green ones, the kind with the webbing on the outside that you light on the patio to keep away mosquitos?”
“Who cares what kind of candles they lit?” said Louis.
“Go on,” said Ben.
“Point being, I could see everything. Right inside. The candles were set around the bed, even on the floor,” said Piggy.
“Go on,” said Louis, nudging Piggy’s leg.
“Francesca was lying on the bed in a white nightgown. Nothing hot: long, prairie-like.”
Louis made a scoffing noise.
“Even through the binoculars, I could tell she didn’t look good,” said Piggy.
“Because of the granny jammies?” Louis said.
“Nah, I don’t mean like that. I meant, she didn’t look healthy,” said Piggy.
Ben shifted closer. “You mean, she was pale?”
“Good call,” said Louis.
“Mira kneeled next to the bed, praying,” said Piggy.
“Like an exorcism,” said Louis.
“What was Francesca doing?” said Ben.
“That was the freakiest part. She was tossing her head back forth, and arching her back,” Piggy said.
“It was an exorcism!” said Louis.
“It wasn’t an exorcism, knuckle job. She had a big smile on her face. Whatever was going on”—Piggy paused for effect—“she was liking it.”
Piggy and Louis smirked at each other. Five feet away, Kyle was still but for his hair moving in the breeze.
“Then Mira went to the window and stood there for what felt like hours, but it must have been less than a minute. Scared the crap out of me, if you want the truth. Then just like that, bam! She shuts the shade. Then she goes room to room, flicking off lights, and yanking down more shades and pulling drapes together round the whole house! Swear to God: after that night, they were always shut.”
“He’s right,” Ben said quietly. “By February, the shades were always drawn.”
“What time was it?” Ben said.
“After I got outta work. So late—one in the morning? Maybe one fifteen?” Piggy replied.
“Was Mr. Cillo’s car there?” Ben said.
“’Course it was there. It was the middle of the night. But guess where it was before that?” Piggy grinned.
“His office?” Louis said.
“My dad’s bar,” Piggy said.
Ben stood and paced. “So you get home from the bar and you’re jazzed so you go to peep at the Cillo girls ’cause you got something on your mind. How hard is it to imagine that Mr. Cillo goes to your dad’s bar, gets himself worked up, and goes home to that house? Who knows what happens.”
Louis’s face contorted, chiseled angles wrong. “What are you saying?”
Piggy stood, clenching and unclenching his fists. “Yeah, what are you sayin’?”