On another shelf sit the brochures of the various pilgrimages that Dad wants me to study: Christmas in Bethlehem, The Shrines of Spain, Easter in Italy, The Way of the Cross in Jerusalem, Rome and Assisi, In the Footsteps of Paul, and Lourdes for the Disabled—Dad’s pride and joy. Each year, my father invites some of my older siblings, “who are prepared to work,” to join his Lourdes pilgrimage at no cost. He emphasizes, “This is not a free trip to shop and sightsee. You’re there to serve the sick.”
I have always wondered about the miracle baths. Dad brags about them like a new father: “There have been over sixty miracles in Lourdes that the Vatican has sanctioned.” And Mom, a regular on the pilgrimage, shivers and jiggles every time she describes the ritual of being immersed naked into the fifty-degree water. She’s hooked, returning year after year for the icy baptism and French bread. Margaret turns glassy eyed talking about the nightly candlelight procession where thousands—many on stretchers and in wheelchairs—sing “Ave Maria” and pray the rosary, inching around the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. If it weren’t for the constant prayers and processions, I might like to go to Lourdes. Maybe have a miracle of my own. Dunk away my anxious stomach, cure my remaining flat-footedness on defense, wash off the panic that seems to smother me most when it’s hot and humid and I feel alone.
The four-page brochure informs the reader that since 1954, Dad has been organizing a 747 to carry terminally ill and handicapped Catholics to the small French village at the foot of the Pyrenees where the Virgin Mary appeared eighteen times to a young girl, Bernadette, in 1858: a woman in white called out to the girl, “I am the Immaculate Conception,” and told Bernadette to drink from the stream and wash herself there. By doing the same, ailing people of Lourdes began to be cured, and now, a pilgrimage to Lourdes is considered the last hope for many incurable cases.
I’m not convinced of any of this. As I hold the lightweight pamphlet, I think of those who didn’t get cured. Pilgrimages to Lourdes have produced sixty supposed miracles, out of how many thousands of broken hearts? Worse odds couldn’t be found in Atlantic City. Even the color photos of the Virgin Mary hovering, the glow of the evening procession, and a small floral plate with a single croissant feel heavy. But Dad seems to thrive on heavy. The harder the better. No pain, no gain. I guess we both love a challenge. Every year, he’s determined to charter a plane, fill it with the sick, and hire nurses and doctors to go along, whether he loses money or not—it doesn’t matter to him. He insists it be a nonprofit trip, and you couldn’t tear this heartfelt mission away from him any more than you could a bloody rib eye from a wolf. Life magazine did a profile on him and the pilgrimage in 1958.
“I’ll be back shortly,” Dad shouts, and then the main office door slams. My father always shuts everything as if his hands are packed with anger.
The four large wall clocks in the mailroom have small black letters above them: Washington, D.C.: 8:20 a.m. Rome: 2:20 p.m. Jerusalem: 3:20 p.m. Bangkok: 8:20 p.m.
On an out-of-reach top shelf, there are boxes marked worthington wonderland, with various dates from the fifties, sixties, and seventies. Every year, Mom writes a family Christmas letter and Dad edits it before sending it out to hundreds of their friends around the world. Most years, for a solid week in December many of us sit around the dining room table folding, licking, sealing, and stamping. I have copies of most of the printed letters from after I was born—in the sixties—but I don’t remember ever seeing the Worthington Wonderland letters from the fifties. Opening up a dented folding chair, I climb up and pull down the heavy box labeled 1950s.
Inside are stacks of legal-size family letters printed on both sides in red with the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre logo above Worthington Wonderland—also in red ink. I read 1959, stopping on a paragraph at the bottom of the front page: “Speaking of Holy Pilgrimages, the boss man has done his share of travel this year . . . he went around the world in 19 days, made 21 stops, and the approximate number of miles covered in 1959 was about 500,000.” What work can you accomplish moving that fast around the globe? Flipping through the pile, the next year down, 1958, begins as they all do: “Dear Friends in Christ.” A few paragraphs in, something catches my eye: “The latter part of November, Sir John went to Russia and found Moscow a very interesting city. The early part of the year, a new country that hadn’t been visited before was also included—Yugoslavia in May. Much can be written of both countries but space and time just do not permit more at this time.” That’s weird; those are communist countries. I know for certain from Miss Lange’s drilling me about the Cold War that no American could set foot in the USSR in the fifties. Why was Dad there? He sure wasn’t selling Catholic pilgrimages to the Kremlin. I tuck 1958 and 1959 into my back pocket, quickly searching for others. I grab ’57 and decide I’d better seal up the box before Mom walks in.
In the main room of the office, four uninhabited metal desks await the accountant, our two sales agents, and Dale, the latest office manager, who Dad described as “a towhead with an eye for color.” Calendars of shrines are thumbtacked over each of their neatly organized work areas. The month of June features Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. I look at the double doors to my father’s private office. I can hear Mom chuckling on the phone, and with a light foot, I head for Dad’s door and enter, twisting the brass lock behind me. The overhead fluorescent lights emit a faint buzzing. With no time to waste, and no idea what I’m looking for, I move around his desk, checking on “the heart and soul of his organization”: the fax machine. There is no sign of the paper that sent him out the door. I open the file he handed me earlier, just stapled pages of lists: monsignors, archbishops, and their contact information.
On the corner of his desk, I scan through neatly placed manila folders labeled holy land, lourdes, alitalia airlines in Dad’s crisp handwriting—the slant of a lefty. A harsh ring of the phone startles me.
My heart races, realizing Mom isn’t answering. Should I? Rushing to get out, I elbow Dad’s silver pen, which clatters to the floor. I crouch down to retrieve it and pause. Under his desk, pushed far back, is his brown briefcase. The one I swear he took with him. Pulling it toward me, I notice another identical briefcase behind that one. I test the metal locks: neither of them budge.
I wipe my eyes. Feeling suddenly shaky and light-headed, I need something stable to hold on to, but Dad’s rolling wooden chair is no help. I hear faint voices rise from the other room and, not able to take a breath, I quickly slide the briefcases back to what I pray is the exact position in which I found them.
8
Love
It’s still dark when I jog across the dewy lawn in my baby blue tracksuit—a Christmas gift from Nic—for a run. Even before the sun rises, the August morning is warm enough that shorts and a T-shirt would have been plenty of cover, but I need to sweat out my weekend. I’m desperate to get my wind back. Sobering images of coming face-to-face with some of the best players in the country in a month cause my bloated belly to flutter. I imagine my teammates exhausting themselves on the mean streets of Newark and Philly, the cracked asphalt public courts of Oakland and Detroit, getting their already rock-solid bodies into shape for next season. I want to punch myself for being soft.
As I jog up the sidewalk, the cramp in my foot is proof that I’ve been spending too much time in high heels and too little in high-tops. My throat singes before I even reach the top of my street. On Brookville Road, there’s no sign of life. The dense treetops hang over the two-lane road—the drive of choice when the wealthy want to avoid traffic on Connecticut Avenue.
This was my route anytime I went over to Miss Lange’s house. In our three-year love affair—from sixth grade until I graduated eighth—I rarely walked to 36 Magnolia Street; instead I’d sprint to be with her any chance I got. Miss Lange’s thick arms were warm and soft, and I didn’t have to share them with twelve others. They were mine. Her huge breasts, too. Even though we could have chosen any of the four bedrooms on her second floor, we usually m
ade love in what had been her parents’ bedroom before they got too old to walk up the flights of steps and moved into the den. Flo, the housekeeper, kept things spotless, and the pink bathroom had matching monogrammed towels as fluffy as cotton candy—Miss Lange loved her initials on things. We would lie around for hours after sex, my lanky limbs wrapped up in her thickness, my mind on cloud nine as my head rested against her chest.
Today, my motivation is as lacking as my pace, as I crawl past Kirk Street, looking at the grand houses owned by the Washington elite—a congressman, a newscaster—and the place where Miss Lange started everything between us. I guess I was asking for something: attention. I was hungry, starving maybe, to feel special at home, because no matter how hard my mother tried to dote on all of her kids equally, she only had two arms and one heart. All my acting out at school never led to much, though once, when I rearranged the school’s card catalog for kicks, Mrs. Donovan, Blessed Sacrament’s librarian, took me into the hallway and whispered through gritted teeth, “I hope your brother Simon and his wife take you aside one day and beat the hell out of you.” When I was in sixth grade, I went to Miss Lange’s classroom one day after school and tried a different tactic. At that point, she was just my tutor. One of the nuns had asked her to help me because I was causing all kinds of trouble and getting bad grades. I told Miss Lange that I had a problem. I didn’t. It was a game I made up to spend time with her. She offered to drive me home, but we drove all around Rock Creek Park as she tried to get me to say what the problem was. Finally, we parked on Kirk Street as it got dark, and she quizzed me about my fake dilemma in her idling silver Opel. I failed her test, brilliantly extending our alone time. Finally exhausted from her strikeouts and my sullen silences, she threw a pitch I wasn’t expecting: “Is it that you want to kiss me?”
Out of my league, I swung anyway at her knuckleball. “Yes,” I stammered.
And that was that. Soon, we were lovers, and I could barely think of anything but her every second of every day.
The giant oak trees throughout Chevy Chase provide a lot of cover, but still, I wonder how we were able to spend so much time together without anyone finding out. I guess we both must have been desperate for each other and expert liars.
Chugging along the empty road, I pass Lenox Street, where the Zapruders live—their patriarch filmed JFK’s assassination. Miss Lange always avoided parking on their street. Maybe she was worried someone with a camera might capture us together. As I run faster, my body cries with sweat, soaking my clothes. The faint smell of alcohol lingers on my skin. I’m ready to collapse, but Coach Norris’s criticism that I’m too slow won’t let me stop. I weave my way across the double yellow line to the other side of Brookville Road, arriving at the Langes’ grand corner lot. After three years spent inside the palatial home filled with priceless antiques, becoming a straight-A student and learning how to give Miss Lange pleasure, I was crushed when she decided she needed to spend time with people her own age. But I didn’t let on. I don’t know why I didn’t kick and scream, but I don’t recall begging her to stay. Actually, I don’t remember saying anything; I think I just pretended to be fine in front of her and everyone else.
Her selfless-sounding breakup confused me. “Now that you’re going to high school, you’re going to want to see other people.”
Maybe she was speaking for herself. I saw how much time she was spending with her new friend Dawn, the feminist divorcée and mother of one of her students. She was pulling away before I graduated. And so I did what my mom seemed to do: I pretended it wasn’t happening, while feeling like my life raft was slowly being pulled out from under me. Inch by deflating inch, I began to sink.
There was no one to tell, so I’d hold all my tears until bedtime, when I would release everything into my pillow surrounded by all the stuff Miss Lange had given me—a collection of frogs, a découpage trash can, stuffed animals, O. Henry’s short stories, and my favorite baby blue corduroys. I remember faking a cold to explain away my stuffiness. I must have still been in love with her my freshman year in high school—even though it was only a friendship after she broke off our love affair—because that year for her birthday I saved up for months to buy her a $350 bracelet with my babysitting money. I wanted to give her something special, since she was turning thirty. Once I went to high school, I would still visit her classroom, longing for her attention.
Although I haven’t seen her in over a year—since we caught up over dinner at Hunan Noodle House—as I jump the hedges surrounding her gray three-story, I half hope to see her standing with her garden clippers, as her parents shuffle off the wraparound porch toward their Cadillac—off on their long Saturday outing for crab cakes along the Chesapeake Bay. Miss Lange would watch them drive off, chuckling: “Luella and Finch are straight out of a Tennessee Williams play.” From what I could see, I guessed she meant the all-day bourbon. In their heavily shuttered first-floor living space, her parents spoke to me at first as one of her students, but then as one of the family. I’m sure they never suspected, when they sobered up enough to hit the road on Saturdays, that their twenty-seven-year-old daughter and her twelve-year-old student were getting high on multiple orgasms in their former bedroom.
As I wind around Miss Lange’s favorite tree, a one-hundred-year-old sugar maple, I look up to the second story. I remember endless hours in her arms behind those sealed venetian blinds, the afternoons when I felt safer and more cared for than maybe I ever have.
Although she knew her parents would never come upstairs, she had a strict policy. We could never get naked until their sedan disappeared down Brookville Road. Sometimes it seemed like she was the parent, the way she took care of Finch and Luella, grocery shopping, picking up their medication, and in the summer months, acting as the unofficial groundskeeper, despite her serious allergy to honeysuckle. When it came to yard work, she thanked me for being her “little helper,” even though I was always secretly wishing we would throw down our rakes and go inside.
I pick up speed passing the crisp white porch railing and sprint down their front sidewalk, looping back onto Brookville Road. Her Opel looks small and lonely parked out front—rejected in favor of Amtrak’s sleeping car. She sent me a postcard from Jacksonville, where she’s vacationing with her new same-age girlfriend at the same sleepy beach town she’s been visiting since we were together. Over the years, whenever we see each other for dinner, it’s always at the same Chinese restaurant where she orders the same chow mein. She is a creature of habit, that’s for sure.
I still find myself staring at her breasts whenever we go out to dinner, but I no longer find her attractive. Her looks were beside the point when I was twelve, but now I know the difference. And even though Miss Lange and I have stayed friends, the older I get, the less I like her. Years ago, she often said, “People outgrow each other.” I never thought that possible then, but now I know it to be true.
I get a burst of energy as I run away from her house. Fuck it, if I can fix my broken heart all by myself at thirteen, I can compete with anyone. Even if they are faster and stronger, I’m probably wiser.
* * *
Two weeks later, Dad’s off again for another meeting with Archbishop Magni at the Vatican. I want to ask him what kind of business they’re doing, but I’m afraid. It doesn’t matter how close we’ve become, I’ve still been up close and personal with his temper.
“Love, the car is yours to use whilst I’m away,” Dad tells me as I drop him curbside at Dulles for his flight to Rome.
I smile and kiss him on the lips. “Thanks. I’ll pick you up next week.”
“Alone,” he commands.
I nod, understanding he means business.
“I’ll be arriving early Sunday, so we should plan on heading straight to brunch at the University Club and then on to tea dance.”
“Okay, sure.” I nod, wondering what lie I’m going to tell Mom.
“And you’ll need some money for gas . . . and for the bars, no doubt.” He winks at
me and hands me a white envelope with Holy Pilgrimages’ return address printed in the corner. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, love.”
I like being his “love.” I’m not sure how long all of this will last, but I know I am enjoying his affection. During the last eight weeks of his constant attention I fell for him, too. It happened so fast.
His sharp tongue softens its edges with me. Now, stories of his ex-lovers and extravagant trips with candlelight dinners in the Arabian Desert, and secret rumors about the Vatican, fall easily from his lips to my ears. Even his angry hands soften in my presence: removing my jacket, pulling out my chair, holding open doors, and of course, paying for everything. He wants to be with me, just me. As with any new love affair, our time is best spent alone, without distraction from others. Others who try to make sense of our new, strange relationship.
“Is this the second or third time this week you and your father have been to the University Club?” Mom asked when I told her we were having another dinner to discuss his future plans for Holy Pilgrimages.
I think my bad lie caused her to nearly choke on her hard candy, worrying me to death—as usual—that something bad would happen to her and that it would be my fault. I’m running out of believable lies, but truthfully, I don’t want to give up my newfound connection.
My father gives me his shipping-off-to-sea wave, picks up one of his endless briefcases (who knows which one?), throws his carry-on over his shoulder, and heads inside the international terminal. He turns once more and blows me a kiss the way a movie star tosses one. An adoring fan, I playfully catch it on my cheek, then hop into the driver’s seat, unhook the black metal latches on both sides of the convertible top, and hit “down.”
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