“Serves that good-for-nothing buffoon right,” Mom snapped as we walked back home. “I hope he gets the message and leaves town for good.”
“Do you think Pastor Mike could have wrestled Runyon down with one arm like that?”
Mom smiled and hugged me real tight up against her. I squirmed away before too many people could see us. Mrs. Marcella spotted us though and gave out a big smile, but at least she didn't come over and tell Mom how cute I was.
“I'm sure that Pastor Mike was prepared to do whatever was necessary.”
“How come he didn't jump right in there with Father Tom and help him out then?”
“Oh, he probably wanted Father Tom to get the credit. It was a Catholic ceremony, after all.”
After I kept pestering her about what she and Pastor Mike had been talking about for so long, she reached down and started tickling me in the belly. I got to laughing so hard that I felt like I was about to break into little pieces. She only quit when I promised not to bug her any more about Pastor Mike. I knew I could always back out of it, because Mom hardly ever held me to my promises for more than a day or two.
When I got home from Mary's blessing ceremony I was so starved I had Mom fry me up five strips of bacon, three fluffy scrambled eggs and a couple scoops of greasy hash browns. Mom seemed to like cooking me big meals when she wasn't in such a rush to get to work or go grocery shopping or run errands or something.
Mom must have really wanted to get skinny fast, because all she ate was half a cantaloupe and half a slice of whole wheat toast with no butter on it. She just drank a little water too instead of the glass or two of red wine she'd been having every day pretty regular ever since Dad dumped us. I figured she was giving up on the wine because it made her fat. But I didn't ask her about it, because Mom got all worked up whenever I said something about her drinking. After lunch I was all set to go back down to Main Street and see what was going on with Mary. That was why I got this sick feeling when I saw Mom standing by the front door with her arms crossed giving me this know-it-all sort of grin. It usually meant that she had something for me to do that she knew I wouldn't like doing. She was off from the hospital all day, and I was worried she wanted me to help her clean out the garage or rake leaves from the garden or do something stupid like that. But it was even worse.
“Let's drive up to Erie and see your Great Uncle Carl and Aunt Helen. We haven't visited with them in months.”
I started whining and griping right away, and it wasn't because I hated Uncle Carl and Aunt Helen either. I actually kind of liked them since they were always giving me presents and candy and cookies and stuff. It was just that Mary was so new to town, and I wanted so bad to see what she was up to next. I liked being near her too, like I belonged there with her somehow. And with the town still planning on bulldozing her, I didn't know how much time we had left.
“You'll have plenty of opportunities to nose around. I doubt that big slab of concrete is going anywhere anytime soon, not with Father Tom and Carlos making such a fuss over it.”
“Do you think their petition will do any good?”
Mom shrugged, and then her cheeks turned a little red, like she was mad about something. Of course, Mom was always getting mad about something.
“Who knows? Father Tom has a lot of clout around here.”
Since it didn't look like Mom was budging any, I decided to try sulking and pouting a little.
“I miss Mary already. You're always saying how I should make new friends.”
Mom's cheeks got even redder, and her eyes flared up a little so that they almost looked red too.
“Don't be silly, Nathan. If you get carried away with this Mary business, I won't let you go down there at all.” Then all at once her eyes got milky and soft again, and her voice kind of evened out. “Anyway, your Uncle Carl hasn't been feeling too well lately. I thought we could cheer him up.”
“What's wrong with him?”
“He's just getting old, and when you get old your body starts to give out a little.”
“Is he gonna die?”
She shook her head real fast.
“No, he's not going to die. And quit your moping. Your dad was always pulling that stunt whenever something didn't go his way.”
In a few minutes we were sitting in Mom's dinged-up green 2002 Chevy Cavalier that she'd bought used over the Internet for fifteen hundred bucks after Dad took off with our pickup truck. We were about to back out of the driveway when a cop car pulled up and parked right in front of our mailbox. Two cops climbed out and started walking toward us. One had a big belly and a shaved head, and if he'd just been a few inches shorter he would have been perfectly round. The other guy was so slumped over in the shoulders, and so skinny around the middle, and so milky and spotty in the face, that he reminded me of a sliver of crescent moon, which I had just learned about in Mr. O'Connor's science class.
Mom got a scared look in her eyes and took a couple quick breaths before the round cop leaned against the window and told her that they wanted to ask me a few questions. Then I got a little scared too and started thinking about what I'd done wrong lately.
“What's the matter, Officer?”
“Nothing, ma'am,” the round cop said. “Just a few routine questions for your son.”
“About what? He's not in any trouble, is he?”
“It won't take long, ma'am,” the skinny cop said, peering in at me from the other window, like they were ganging up on us or something.
For as much trouble as Mom generally caused me, when other people were after me she mostly took my side. At least she didn't tear into me right away until she found out what was really going on. We went back inside the house with Mom hugging me the whole way. Because those cops were dogging us so close, I didn't try to squirm out of it either. Then the cops plopped their rear ends on our couch and started grilling me about Mary and whether I'd seen anybody paint her face on the concrete and stuff like that. They kept saying that some folks believed Mary was just a hoax. But I stuck to my story and told them what I'd told that snarly little newspaper reporter.
“So you have no idea how the image got there,” the round cop said.
“Mary put it there herself,” I said. “It's her face, after all. She can stick it wherever she feels like.”
Then Mom decided to jump in, like she had a few times when that doctor was asking me questions about Chewy.
“Nathan has an active imagination, Officer.”
“So I've heard,” the round cop said, and jotted something down on his little notepad.
“I don't make things up,” I said. “And if she isn't really Mary, how come so many people are always showing up from all over the world to pray to her?”
“Did you put her face on?” the skinny cop asked, leaning over and squinting at me. His squirmy little mouth sort of reminded me of the dried-up apricots Mom sometimes left out on the kitchen counter when she got tired of eating them. “Maybe your friend Carlos put you up to it, and then you made up that crazy story about the little drunk and his cut being healed to get some attention for yourself.”
My heart exploded up into my throat so hard and fast that I couldn't say a word. I figured that they'd found the little drunk, and he was calling me a liar for taking the credit for discovering Mary. After Mom watched me for a little while sitting there all frozen up, she decided to jump in again.
“This is ridiculous. He's just a little boy.”
“Answer the question, son,” the round cop said, squinting at me now too, although he had so much flab hanging down from his face that it didn't change his look much.
Finally I got my breath, maybe because I knew that, this time at least, I was telling the truth.
“I didn't talk to Carlos about her until after she'd already shown up. That little drunk was bleeding real bad too right before Mary healed him. If he's telling you any different, he's lying.”
The cops didn't say anything more about the little drunk, and it wasn't long before they figured out that I was sticking to my story and that they might as well leave. Mom and me stood at the window and watched their car pull away. Then she bent over me and gave me a big hug with plenty of kisses, which she hadn't done since I'd sprained my ankle a couple months before chasing through the woods after Chewy. I tried to fight her off, but she wasn't budging. When she was finally through, I asked her if Mary had done something wrong to cause the cops to check up on her.
“They probably just want to know if vandals put her face there. You told the policemen the truth, didn't you?”
I nodded real hard a few times.
“You didn't hold back anything.”
“I told them everything,” I said, and crossed my arms hard over my chest, probably a little too hard because Mom squinted at me for a second like she knew I was lying. But I didn't really see why it was so horrible that I got the credit for having discovered Mary instead of that nasty little drunk. If he didn't like it, he ought to step up and complain.
We climbed back in our car and headed north on the Interstate out toward the country. I liked driving past all the old beat-up black barns with the big Mail Pouch signs painted in grimy white letters on the outside. And I liked watching the cows grazing in the tall grass and every once in a while some horses and sheep nibbling away too. Uncle Carl and Aunt Helen lived in a big white wooden house about two hours away up near Lake Erie. The house was surrounded by an apple orchard, and Uncle Carl grew corn and tomatoes in his backyard too. He had a ponytail and used to wear a little gold earring until Aunt Helen made him pull it out.
They had a dog named Rocky, a black lab with a little hound dog in him. He wasn't near as nice as Chewy, but they seemed to hit it off pretty well. Even being invisible, Chewy still liked to run through the rows between the apple trees with the tall weeds smacking against her nose, which I guess meant that being invisible wasn't as big a deal as you might think at first. We turned off the interstate and onto this squiggly country road that cut through the woods and past some run-down barns. Mom had been quiet for about fifty miles, so when she spoke up it jolted me a little.
“The air's so fresh and clean in the country, and there's plenty of space to run around. If we lived up here, you could get another dog and play out in the fields together.”
I felt like telling her that Chewy could run around all she wanted in the woods back home, but I thought of something better to say instead.
“I bet Father Tom believes that Mary has special powers, or else he wouldn't have blessed her. And being a priest and all, he must be pretty smart.”
“Why don't you ask Pastor Mike in church tomorrow what he thinks about it?”
For once Mom was right. Pastor Mike would know for sure, and I could trust him too because he wasn't Catholic and didn't have anything to lose one way or the other. After a few minutes, I spotted Uncle Carl's old wooden barn and gave a secret hand signal to Chewy that we were almost there. Chewy looked out the window, and Rocky must have been able to see her too because he started scampering around in the driveway barking and carrying on.
Aunt Helen had roasted a turkey even though it wasn't even a holiday, and it sat tender and juicy in the middle of the dining room table with the sunlight sparkling off it from the big windows all around. Before we started eating we all held hands like usual, and then Uncle Carl said grace the way he always said it, short and sweet, not like those long-winded prayers at our church that I sometimes dozed off in halfway through. “Thank you, Lord, for this meal and bless us all,” or something like that. While we were praying I cracked open one eye to see if I could tell what was wrong with Uncle Carl, but he looked fine to me.
Aunt Helen started passing around the plate stacked so high with corn that some of the ears broke loose and started rolling down the sides.
“Now, what's all this about you two moving up here?”
Right away Mom shot her eyes toward me and sort of frowned, like I wasn't supposed to be hearing any of this. But Aunt Helen was the only person I knew who didn't let Mom push her around.
“I just thought that a rural lifestyle might suit us better.”
I was busy spooning mashed potatoes onto my plate before Uncle Carl got to them. “I don't want to move, not with Mary showing up.”
“Quit talking with your mouth full,” Mom growled, even though my mouth was pretty much empty.
Aunt Helen winked at me and then passed me the plate full of hot buttery rolls. I grabbed three before passing the plate on to Uncle Carl, who snapped up the rest. “It's funny that the town puts up with this Mary business,” Aunt Helen said, winking at me again, like I was supposed to be agreeing with her or something. “In this day and age too.”
By then Uncle Carl was busy wolfing down the corn, and some of the kernels were already spilling out the corners of his mouth.
“People need something to believe in besides crooked politicians and greedy corporations. I don't see any real harm in it.”
Aunt Helen told him to quit stuffing so much food in all at once, or else he'd get heartburn again.
“Of course, you're welcome to stay with us until you find a place. How are you getting along with that young single friend of yours? The nice minister you were telling us about.”
My ears sure perked up then.
“I'm really not his type,” Mom said. Her cheeks turned all bright red as she flicked her eyes over at me again. “The younger women are always mobbing him at church.”
“He's not all that much younger than you,” Aunt Helen broke in. “Ten years maybe.”
“Seven,” Mom said real fast.
Aunt Helen smiled kind of weak.
“That's not very much these days. Some women are marrying men half their age and younger.”
“They tend to be rich women,” Mom said kind of slow and gloomy.
Uncle Carl was still chewing on his corn. It must have taken him a little longer to get it all down on account of his new false teeth that he claimed didn't fit him very snug. Finally he got to where he could talk so that you could mostly understand him.
“The fact that you're divorced, you don't think that's a problem for him, being as religious as he is, do you?”
Mom scooped some more mashed potatoes onto my plate like they were about to run out. But I'd had my fill of mashed potatoes and wanted to work on the corn, so I pushed them off a little to the side when nobody was looking.
“I don't really know. But he's such a nice man, and very smart and accomplished too. I'm sure one day he'll head up a huge church somewhere.”
“Then he might be a good catch,” Uncle Carl said. “You've still got your looks, Jodie. You ought to go after him and quit sulking and feeling sorry for yourself.”
Aunt Helen yelled at Uncle Carl for being rude, but Aunt Helen wasn't like Mom and never stayed mad for long. Then they talked about pretty much nothing as far as I could tell. That was fine by me, since I was free to eat all the corn and tomatoes I wanted without having to slow down to say something.