Authors: Sandra Novack
He opened his eyes and waited for God to level His wrath, but ten minutes passed and Morty yawned, waiting. The alarm sounded, and he decided that, on that note, it was time to get out of bed.
“T
HE GIG IS CANCELED,”
Morty’s father announced when, with cereal in hand, Morty sat down at the kitchen table. Morty Sr. was a big, hulking man, a man who because of his height tended toward a lumbering, awkward appearance even on those rare occasions when he wore a suit. Today he was dressed in jeans and a long-worn and faded flannel, which were his more typical attire. At the table, he brooded over his coffee
cup as if it demanded considerable contemplation. He glanced up briefly. “I’m glad the gig is off,” he said. “Aren’t you? They’re saying we’re in for a blizzard.”
“Heck, yes, I’m glad,” Morty said. “Test today. Never a better time for the gig to be called off.”
Morty Sr. nodded and sipped his coffee.
The gig
was a leftover phrase from when his father drove eighteen-wheelers across country, in those days when his father wore a perpetual smug grin for being the driver with the most miles under his belt. That was before Morty and his mother were in the car accident last winter, before his mother was killed, and before Morty stopped speaking for a month. After all that occurred, Morty Sr. quit his job so that he could work closer to home. “In case you need me,” he had told Morty. Increasingly, neither spoke of Morty’s mother and often the boy had difficulty remembering the simplest things: his mother’s face when she told a story, or the sound of her voice at night when she’d crack open the door and ask Morty if he’d said his prayers. Memories reduced to fragments; even Morty sensed it. And it was the things you took for granted that often became the things you missed most.
These days both Morty and his father were under the auspices and good graces of the nuns at Our Lady of Perpetual Misery and of Father Bastian, especially, who had seen fit to give Morty’s father a job at school and also waive Morty’s tuition for a time. Both developments left Morty embarrassed beyond words, a humiliation that only intensified when his father was actually
seen
in the halls, sweeping or emptying trash, or when—on the two occasions his father was persuaded to receive penance, even though he had refused since the funeral to step foot in church—Father Bastian walked over to school and
crammed himself into the janitorial closet, both men sitting on overturned buckets, Morty Sr.’s crying heard from behind the closed door.
Now he and his father sat in silence while Morty ate his cereal. It was the boy who finally spoke again.
“Yep,” he said, and he drummed his fingers on the table. “A test.”
Morty Sr. took another swig of coffee. “So what test didn’t you study for, anyway?”
Morty shrugged. “Just religion.”
“How do you test
that
?”
“The usual. You know, like the choirs of angels—seraphim and cherubim and thrones and stuff like that. If it’s in the Bible, it’s fair game. That’s what Sister Deuteronomy says, ‘Fact, not fiction, my little chickens.’ ”
His father rolled his eyes. “Great,” he said. “A flipping fundamentalist.” He looked at Morty for a moment too long, and Morty wondered what his father was thinking about. Still, Morty sensed that the conversation, such as it was, was over, even though generally speaking, the lucid hours of morning were the best time to talk to his father at all. Lately, trying to have any conversation with his father proved as difficult as trying to talk to heaven: full of impossible silences. He missed the days when his father would crack jokes about priests and rabbis and monks screwing in lightbulbs and his mother would slap him playfully and tell him to
stop
, or days when his mother would cook a large breakfast and they’d eat so much that she’d hold her belly. “Well,” she’d say when she finally got up from the table. “I guess I’ll try and stand for Jesus.” And Morty’s father would joke that she’d stand or fall, for sure. “All depends on what you believe,” he’d say.
In Morty’s house, a well-kept two-story duplex on the east side of town, there had often been, over the years, dissenting opinions regarding issues of faith and fate. His mother had come from a long line of God-fearing souls, those who attended mass not only every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation but also the occasional Wednesday, hump-day, service. If his mother would have had her way, had it not caused the first fight of her and Morty Sr.’s marriage so long ago, she would have wanted her boy to be named Matthew or John, men who were in God’s grace and names that ensured, in her Irish way of thinking, that young Morty would not only be blessed but also lucky. Morty’s father, however, believed a person made his own fate. He’d descended from a long line of miners, those who worked the bowels of the earth and who were born with nothing and died with nothing. Morty Sr. often said he’d eluded
that
particular sentence by choosing to drive across the country. It was a job that, for him, was proof a man made his own fortune. Anyway, such disparate views collided in the birth of young Morty, to the point where the boy remained nameless for three days and even the nurses had privately waged bets on the outcome. Morty was finally given a name that was seen as a compromise by his parents, but one that proved to be a curse of grade school, ensuring that he’d spend years being dubbed
Morty the Morbid; Morty the Mortician; Hey, Morty, El Morto;
and for those with a less developed sense of word play, just
Mort-y
, said with a face. It was Aggie Tuft who first started the name-calling years before on the playground—smart-ass Aggie, whom Morty did not have a crush on and whom he only once imagined naked. It was a brief fantasy that triggered a sneezing fit during fourth-period algebra class.
L
ATER, THEY SHOVELED
the steps and front walk and Morty watched as his father, red-faced, dug into the ice-crusted snow. When he stopped to rest, his father squinted blindly up at the sky and cursed under his breath. “Snow, Morty,” he said. “Unlike your religion, you can test snow, test the roads, the tread on tires. I don’t know what your mother was thinking taking you out that day.”
“I know,” Morty answered. He wiped his brow. He scraped the last of the snow from the bottom porch step, but a moment later it was dusted again. His jeans were soaked. The wind bit into him, and he pulled his skullcap over his ears.
His father waved him off. “I got the rest,” he said. “No worries.”
Morty nodded to his father before climbing the drifts in the yard. With every step his feet sunk deep into the snow. He walked unsteadily to the back of the house and retrieved his sled from the shed. He dragged it past the duplexes where dogs had already yellowed the snow around the shrubs and trees, past the brick houses that sprung up a few bocks later, and past the tree-lined streets that led to Main, where the large houses each had antique lamplights and wreaths hung on the doors. A plow drove by, scraping snow and ice and spewing salt out its back end. Morty smelled exhaust. Beyond that, the streets were still empty, the sidewalks slick in places, despite being salted.
“Morty, El Morto!”
He turned. Of course it was Aggie Tuft. She sprinted down the front steps of her house. Her plastic sled bounced behind her. Her checkered coat flipped open, and, under a red beret, her dark hair fluttered about. Before this moment, Morty was concentrating on the snow, how the cold hurt his lungs when he
breathed, how the snow filled the sky, and how, each time he looked up, everything was so white it blinded him. Before this moment, he was trying to remember what his mother had worn the day of the accident; he was trying to remember what errand they had to run that seemed so pressing. But now as Aggie neared him, she blinked back snowflakes, and he thought only of how dark her lashes were, and how they made her blue irises more pronounced. Morty suddenly felt underdressed without Our Lady of Perpetual Misery’s standard slacks and shirt. He pushed a piece of polyester fill back into the tear at his elbow and hoped Aggie wouldn’t notice.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“What do you think?”
She didn’t answer. She ran from him instead. Her boots scrunched the snow, her own grip on the ground noticeably shaky. “Can’t catch me, El Morto,” she taunted, glancing back.
“Smartass!” But despite himself, Morty ran after her. He pulled his sled harder, ran faster. Sweat formed under his coat. The wind stung his face. When, a half-block later, he finally passed Aggie, he tapped her shoulder and grinned feverishly, revealing the gap between his teeth. He stopped at the intersection, even though the sign read
WALK
.
“Loser,” he said, when, breathless, Aggie caught up to him. He looked away, determined to ignore her.
“I never said it was a race,
El Morto.
”
“It never is when you lose it.” He turned toward her then and noticed how her cheeks, which were pale even in the springtime, had bloomed berry splotches. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He tried to think of something to say, but what? “No religion test,” he declared finally, though he seldom studied and still did well. “No Sister Agatha today, either.”
“God, I wish she’d just
die
,” Aggie moaned. “
‘A Knyght ther was, and that a worthy man …’
She’s like an assault on my
brain.
”
Morty didn’t believe Aggie’s Middle English sounded any better than Sister Agatha’s, really, but he let the point slide. When the light turned, they walked.
“That’s just about the oldest wooden sled I’ve ever seen. In. My. Life,” Aggie said. She brushed a strand of wet hair from her cheek. “My sled is brand new, ‘state-of-the-art engineering,’ my dad says. The circular shape decreases drag and makes it go faster, the plastic keeps it light and aerodynamic. My dad would know, of course, because
he’s
an engineer.”
It was this facetiousness that made Morty hate Aggie, and why last week, in Sister Biology’s class, he’d thrown a frog at Aggie and then watched as its rubbery body landed directly in her lap, causing her to scream and making the class bubble up with laughter. Did he regret that action? Did he regret her tears, her yelling that it
wasn’t funny?
When he heard her brag like this, he didn’t regret any cruelty inflicted on Aggie Tuft, at all. This was true despite the fact that Sister Biology had chastised him, reminding Morty that every creature, large and small, was a creature of God, and she added that each frog cost the school four dollars and that was four dollars
he
wasn’t paying.
“An engineer. So?” Morty hocked a loogie into the snow. He grinned, happy with both its speed and distance.
“Oh, really juvenile,” Aggie said. “If I spit like that my dad would have an absolute conniption.”
“You couldn’t spit like that if you tried,” Morty said. “And like your dad would care. Isn’t he away all the time? I bet he never talks to you about
velocity
and
aerodynamics
. I bet you don’t understand what any of that actually means.”
Aggie shot him a look that was very similar to the one issued
after the frog incident—indignant, the start of tears visible. Her face grew redder. “My
dad
works for NASA, I’ll have you know. He does very important and highly classified experiments, ones that you and your dad couldn’t even comprehend.”
“Really? Well, you know what they say about engineers, don’t you?”
“No, what do they say about engineers,
Mort-y
?” She made a face.
Morty had absolutely no idea what people said about engineers. He wanted to crack a joke about how they couldn’t even change a lightbulb, but all he could think of was what his mother had said after meeting the Tufts at a school function: That Aggie’s mother seemed like the type of woman who put up with a lot of shenanigans, and Aggie’s father seemed exactly like the type of man who slept around a lot. “A nice man, but all that polish,” she told Morty Sr., speaking not only of Mr. Tuft’s hair but also of his demeanor. “Ssss-lick.”
“I figured you wouldn’t have a comeback,” Aggie said. “You with your half wit.”
“Oh, I do,” Morty assured her. “Engineers are slick.”
“Slick?
Slick?
What does that even mean?”
“Oh, I’d tell you. But I don’t want to make you cry.”
“Right, like your father does,” Aggie said smugly.
Morty resisted the urge to punch her then. He would have tackled her if she were a boy, but he refrained. If she weren’t a lady, he thought. Not that Aggie Tuft was a lady, mind you, by any stretch, but still. He reached down, scooped up snow, and packed it into a ball. He threw it at Aggie but she dodged it.
They crossed the street. At the school Aggie continued: “You know, even if I’d wait a year for you, you wouldn’t have a
good
comeback. So typical of boys, really. If you’d spend more time thinking and less time playing with yourselves, your brains wouldn’t freeze up on you all the time.”
“Right,” Morty said. “You don’t know what you’re even talking about.”
Aggie raised her eyebrows. “Really? Oh, p-lease, like we all can’t hear you. If any of you boys knew how to whisper in gym class it would be a miracle.” They were approaching the church now, with its old stone exterior and wide steps, its large, beveled window that formed the image of the Virgin, etched in pink and blue glass. “A MIRACLE!” Aggie exclaimed. She held both arms up in the air.
“Indeed!” Father Bastian said when he stepped outside from the church’s vestibule. He looked to Morty like an old Irish immigrant bundled up in his black coat, a fur derby hiding most of his thick white hair and bushy eyebrows. “It is beautiful,” Father Bastian agreed. “And it makes me so proud that the students of Our Lady of Perpetual Help like to discuss miracles, even on their day off from school.”
Aggie stopped long enough to
tsk
this. She brushed snow from her coat sleeves. “Not the kind of miracles that Jesus likes, that’s for sure.”
“Is that so?” Father Bastian asked.
“Trust me,” Aggie said. She squinted at Morty and smiled. He shot her a dirty look. “Anyway, we were just saying … we were just talking about …
Morty
was just saying how he wishes school would be canceled tomorrow, too, so we could have a long weekend. I was telling him, Father, that I’d
hate
to miss Sister Agatha’s English class.”