She moved in with her mother to insure that Mariela Montez would not spend her last years alone. For her part, Mariela did not want to leave the house, even when her daughters Irene and Patricia offered to take her in. It was as if her mother drew some kind of strength and inspiration from her surroundings. Long accustomed to her life in the house, with her little cositas—her things—she seemed to take solace in her late husband’s belongings; his clothes still hung in the closets and she liked to keep his pipe around, sometimes sniffing its scent. Set in her ways and content in the peaceful contemplation of her past, the writing of her verse, and the occasional company of her children and grandchildren, Mariela did not like to go out, except for an infrequent trip into Cobbleton or to New York to see her daughters there.
When she went to town to shop with Margarita, she’d walk regally along the streets with a slow but assured gait—for, while many things in the town had changed, she would always proudly remain the same. People did not stare at her now, as they used to years ago when she would come walking along with a pack of her children following behind her. And though she still did not enjoy speaking English, she now used it in the serenity of autocratic old age, to order shop clerks around.
Margarita would laugh, thinking about these things. A few years before, when their mother was eighty-one, they made a trip into New York City to hear Maria, Olga, and Jacqueline in recital at Carnegie Hall, the concert taking place on St. Patrick’s Day, and on the morning of the parade, Margarita, Maria, and their mother, overdressed in fur hats and fur-muffed coats and boots, stood along Fifth Avenue to watch the procession of marchers with their Irish banners and shamrock-decaled drums and floats representing the Sons of Erin and the Emerald Society, and flank after flank of police officers, and brave fire companies wearing green-tasseled caps and cummerbunds, and musicians in kilts and grenadier hats, playing bagpipes and snare drums—beauty queens, too, and high-school boys and girls marching, green-dyed carnations pinned to their lapels—a grand Irish pride everywhere, and a slight chill in the air.
The daughters, half Irish, felt a surge of excitement, while their mother, perhaps thinking about her husband, watched the line in silence and then sighed.
Afterward they’d gone over to Bloomingdale’s, to a sale of European blouses. Mariela tottered along the racks, inhaling the perfume mists in the air, and evaluating the silk, rayon, and cotton designs. (“Now, I know how to sew. The person who made this didn’t,” she would mutter in Spanish.) And Margarita would remember how one of the salesladies, a Puerto Rican of considerable beauty, overheard Mariela carrying on about the high prices of the blouses and walked over, asking in Spanish how she might help. That started their mother on how the two “chicks” in her company—Margarita, sixty-three, and Maria, fifty-nine—were but two of her fourteen daughters. And she went on, asking the saleslady, “And did you know that my son is Montgomery O’Brien, the movie actor?” And although the salesgirl had never heard of him, she nodded and listened to Mariela go on and on about the boy, her movie-star son, “the image of his father.” Then she related the solitude of her widowhood, eventually working around to the premise that a widow’s life, even given a wonderful family, was lonely and difficult and that, at the very least, Bloomingdale’s should give her a special widow’s discount, and the salesgirl as a Puerto Rican should appreciate the trials of her generation of Spanish-speaking immigrants and think about what her own life would be like in old age. Such was her persistence, her conviction, and the you-should-have-a-special-respect-for-your-elders charm that the salesgirl finally asked her, “Which blouses do you want?” and then proceeded to mark down the already discounted prices, later saying to Margarita, “That’s some mother you’ve got there.”
***
But lately it was more difficult for Mariela to get around—long journeys in an automobile often made her carsick, and just sitting in a car wreaked havoc with her aging, arthritic bones—so difficult that Margarita counted it among the happier miracles of life that she and her mother and Gloria back in 1964 had made a most special and (for her mother) epic trip.
— With the Italian Saints —
That year, for Mariela’s eightieth birthday, the family had chipped in to send their mother to the European country of her choice, so that she could see something more of the world. They thought she would naturally choose Spain, the land of her ancestors—and Margarita urged it—but Mariela Montez, expressing a rare political opinion, had no desire to set foot in Franco’s Spain and instead chose the country of Italy and its grand and illustrious capital, Rome. (She wanted to go for Holy Week, but only if she could see the Pope.)
(Happy then, their mother began to speak about a book she had once owned as a child, En la ciudad de Dios, a copy of which was still sitting in the drawer of a dresser that belonged to her mother and father in the house on Victoriana de Avila Street, where Isabel still remained with her husband.)
Arranging air fare to Rome and lodgings in that city through a travel agency, and getting their mother a new passport, they prevailed on Violeta’s husband, the good Reverend Farrell, to seek out the Catholic Archbishop of Baltimore, with whom he was friendly, to arrange a special papal audience. And with all this accomplished, Mariela, with Margarita and Gloria, who had never been anywhere except to California, bid farewell to their sisters who were seeing them off at the airport and made their way to Rome and a little pensione in Trastevere called Il Paradiso. Its tiled halls were covered with late-nineteenth-century renderings of scenes out of Dante’s poem, the ladies, gleeful but a little exhausted, sharing a large room that looked out onto a central courtyard.
Although they were enchanted by the city, it was hard for their mother to walk too long, for they were correct in their assessment that she was quite nearly beyond the age of travel, as she got tired easily and sometimes suffered from an arthritic condition in her joints. Still, Mariela reveled in the place. Wearing a bright flowery dress and a large hat—the very hat that Margarita bought her during her travels in Spain—she admired the marketplaces, as they reminded her of Cuba, and revered the beauty and cheerful spirit of the people. And, my God, the food and the cheap prices simply astounded her, the lady stuffing herself with bread, pasta, fish, and veal, as if she had not eaten a meal in years, and pronouncing again and again, “¡Caramba! This is better than anything I’ve ever tasted, even in New York.”
And drinking wine, too! She adored the sweet and serene beauty of sitting at a table in the Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere, watching the children playing soccer by the fountain, the bells clanging and sparrows flitting through the air, the sweet scent of springtime wisteria growing stronger and more compelling to Mariela with each sip, until, hearing some music out of a bar doorway, she would begin to sway in her chair and sing along, eyes wide, declaring, “The muse is coming to me.” And soon she would take out a pencil and paper from her purse and scribble down one of her verses.
They’d walk back in the early afternoon, and while their mother contentedly napped, Gloria and Margarita would step out to get a coffee and more or less pass the time as they would in New York. Or when they spoke on the telephone, their conversations in those days centering on Gloria’s growing disenchantment with her beau Arnold from Macy’s, who not only still lived with his demanding mother but had begun to act more and more like a child in her presence, so that the nature of their bedtime romps, usually on weekend afternoons when Maria, Olga, and Jacqueline were out of the apartment, had lost much of its appeal for her. She wanted a man, and not a child, in bed. And while they were “intimate,” as she told Margarita countless times, the great excitement of being overwhelmed by the pure physicality of a real man so diminished that she bedded him now primarily out of a sense of duty.
“And for another thing,” she said to Margarita, “he is so afraid of his mother that not once in ten years has he brought me to his home in Canarsie. It confuses me, because I feel grateful to him—you know he’s always been good to me—but som
e days when we meet for lunch I want to tell him it’s all over, because soon I’ll be too old to find myself another man.”
“Then get rid of him. You’re still pretty.”
“Yes, I suppose I should.”
But no matter how often they discussed it, she continued with Arnold.
As they walked along the streets of the Eternal City, the sight of a man necking with his woman would make Gloria sigh, but Margarita could not tell if it was because she wanted love or because she was feeling nostalgic for Arnold. He had wanted to join them on the trip, promising Gloria to tell his mother finally that he would take a vacation without her. Every year, whenever Gloria and Arnold made plans to go off to some romantic place for vacation, like most lovers, the plans always fell through and Arnold would spend two weeks with his mother at a resort hotel in Atlantic City. This so angered Gloria that she refused to bring him along. Besides, a little naughty, she entertained the idea of having a romance with one of those elegant Italian men who seemed to be everywhere.
(This did not happen, although on more than one occasion they’d experienced the mixed pleasure of feeling a man’s hand taking hold of their still shapely bottoms.)
With their mother in tow, they made like happy tourists, visiting the Roman Forum (“Ay, if only your father was here to see this place,” Mariela would cry), the catacombs on the Via Appia Antica, many churches, with one trip out to Tivoli and the fountains of the Villa d’Este. And during Holy Week, they heard Mass on Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and on Easter Sunday celebrated by the Supreme Pontiff himself, Pope Paul VI. Twice their mother nearly fainted. As they waited among the worshippers in the Church of St. John the Lateran, the Pope, resplendent in white vestments and papal hat and followed by an entourage of cardinals, strode quickly into the nave, giving his blessings to all, not two yards from where Mariela and her daughters were standing. And they stood close enough to touch him during the Stations of the Cross, by the Colosseum.
The day after the Easter Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square, they returned for Mariela’s audience with the Pope in the Pauline Chapel, joining a group of about twenty other devout Catholics who through generous donations or connections could have this meeting arranged. There Mariela had waited, trembling, intoxicated by the scent of incense and candle wax and the prospect of having a few words with the Pope himself, for the attending Monsignor to lead her and the sisters into his most sacred presence. When it was their turn and they were being escorted toward His Eminence seated regally on a throne, Mariela, in the dark formal dress that she bought especially for the occasion, grasped the golden crucifix on a chain around her neck with one hand, her elbows crooked into the arms of her daughters, as she repeated, “Ay, ay, ay,” and “Estoy temblando, I’m trembling”—so often that Margarita had whispered, “Mama, tranquila, tranquila, Calm yourself.”
Kneeling before Paul VI, whose harsh and stern birdlike appearance startled Margarita, each kissed his papal ring and received his blessing. And then, directing himself to Mariela, he said in Spanish—for the Pope is advised on these occasions as to which language the pilgrims speak: “Welcome to the church of St. Peter.” And: “How may I assist in your spiritual quest? Are you here for a special blessing?”
“Yes, Father, I am,” she responded in a quivering voice.
“And for whom are these blessings?”
“For the soul of my dead husband,” she answered.
“And the souls of my mother and father.”
He nodded.
“And I have a troubled son, Your Holiness.”
“And the nature of his troubles?”
“It is his heart. He suffers so in this life.”
Nodding and taking a breath, he then asked, “And your names?”
“Mariela Montez O’Brien, Your Excellency.”
“Margarita.”
“Gloria.”
Then he made the sign of the cross over them and said, “I bless you, Mariela, Margarita, and Gloria, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And I will remember your wishes in my morning Mass. Now go in peace.”
And when Mariela struggled, getting up, the Pontiff extended his hand and gave her a little tug, and though her back was aching and she cried “Ay, ay, ay,” she felt as if she was going to ascend at that very moment toward the marble, cloud-ridden palaces of heaven.
***
Their mother had gotten to make that one journey, at least, and she experienced much pleasure from it, but upon her return she’d pronounced that she was happy to be back home. For weeks, all she could talk about was the Pope and his blessings, the good food, and how wonderful she thought the Italians were. She was most impressed, Margarita remembered, not by their beauty, but by the way they treated their children, with great love. As they were leaving the Rome airport, bags packed with newly purchased silk scarves, a few ceramic plates, and endless ashtrays, fans, and paperweights that they’d bought at the Vatican as presents for the family, they saw an impeccably dressed Italian man strolling toward a gate with a homely little girl who was eating a drippy ice-cream cone. Holding her by the hand, he would stop every so often and, kneeling down before her, remove from his jacket pocket a handkerchief to wipe her chin, and then he would tousle her bangs, which fell over her brow, and pull her close, giving her a sweet hug. He’d say, “Mia preziosa, mia bella bambina,” and “Tesoro,” exuding such a total love that it would one day most certainly transform her homeliness into beauty. Speaking of this, Mariela had concluded that “ellos, los italianos, son santos—those Italians are saints.”
— In the House, 1967–71 —
Since that time, Mariela’s trips away from the house had been few. Mainly they’d go to town to see the doctor if she was not feeling well, or to a dentist if a tooth ached (though past eighty, she still had every one of her teeth). And they’d visit with the families of Irene and Patricia at their homes in nearby towns. Of course, they would go to church every Sunday and to confession on Wednesdays, Margarita sitting in a back pew, pleased that the journey to Rome had in some ways energized the old woman, who now appeared in town wearing not only her large gold crucifix on a chain with several other religious medals (of St. Anthony and St. Francis and St. Teresa of Avila) but also a pendant of carved ivory bearing the image of the Pope, and an Italian silk scarf around her neck.
Her mother would spend a long time in the confessional, confessing heaven knows what—for, if she sinned at all, they were venial sins, though she was a little vain, sometimes staring at herself in the mirror for half an hour at a time and, deciding that she was still beautiful, would joke on their way to town, “Maybe I’ll find some old man to fall in love with me, what do you think?”
And sometimes she became irritable with the family. Often on the telephone in the evenings, she’d go on in exhaustive detail about the more or less ordinary events of her day, recounting, for example, what she and Margarita and Irene had had for lunch at a place like the Hunter’s Lodge (Comimos muy bien. Yo me comí un bistek con papas y una salsa muy sabrocita, y Margarita un pedacito de pollo con arroz y…”), or conveying, scene by scene, a movie she had watched earlier on television, like Doctor Zhivago with Omar Sharif. One evening she told the whole movie to Maria, going on for an hour and twenty minutes, until even the ever-patient Maria cut her off, saying, “It’s a beautiful story, but I have so many things to do. Now, Mama, I have to say goodbye. I will speak to you soon. Okay?”
Afterward Mariela decided that she had been insulted, and that Maria had changed, and that became a subject for her speculations. Sitting in the very chair where her father used to spend his evenings, and preparing her lessons for the next day, Margarita sighed.
“You know why Maria’s changed?” Mariela said. “It’s because she’s never had her own family to look after, and that’s made her selfish.”
“Mama, you know that Maria is one of the most unselfish people in the world. When has she ever turned you down for anything?”
�
�Well, she shouldn’t hang up on me.”
“Yes, Mama, but you were going on and on about Omar Sharif.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that I’m her mother.”
“Mama, don’t think that way. Maria was probably a little tired. You know that she and Olga and Jacqueline are always busy teaching and working.”
“Yes, tired, mi vida. If she’s tired now, then she should wait until she is my age. I’m never too tired to let my children know that I love them.”
“Yes, Mama.”
She nursed other peeves, too, especially toward Helen, who sometimes acted as if she was ashamed of her. For some months before, when she had made the difficult journey to New York to attend Helen’s fifty-seventh birthday party in her Park Avenue apartment, Helen seemed quite disturbed that Mariela had shown up wearing her crucifix and medals and the Pope’s pendant, and her first words to Mariela were “Oh, Mother, did you have to wear all that? These are very refined people here.”
And although Helen had later apologized to her mother—for Margarita pulled her aside to correct her—Mariela passed the evening feeling slighted and still, months later, could not help talking about it.
“But, Mama, didn’t Helen make up with you and take you around to meet all the famous people there?”
“Yes, but only because you made her.”
“No, Mama, I didn’t say anything else to her. Don’t you remember, I was sitting most of the time with her son Dennis and with Gloria. And when Maria and the others came in, we were all by the piano, where the composer Cy Coleman was playing.”
The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien Page 44