How I Saved My Father's Life (and Ruined Everything Else) (7 page)

One day in spring, with everything draped in purple for Lent and somber white lilies up on the altar, I found myself sitting next to Antoinetta Calabro. The first thing I noticed about her was that she was alone, too, like me. Most kids our age were squeezed into pews with their parents and little sisters and brothers. The next thing I noticed was how different she looked from anyone else I knew.

Antoinetta had long dark hair that fell in about a million curls all around her head. Her nose had a bump on the bridge, smack in the middle, and her eyebrows were dark and heavy. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Much more beautiful than the pale blond Sophie from next door, or Eliza Harrison with her short bob and perky smile. Antoinetta had an air of tragedy around her, like she had already suffered a great deal. Like she was a martyr.

During the Lamb of God part, Antoinetta finally noticed me looking at her and she frowned. Another good thing:
She took church seriously. I watched her solemnly walk up to get her communion. If only I were Catholic, I could go up there, too, walking as slow and steady as this girl, head bowed, my mind preparing to receive the body of Christ.

When the mass ended, Antoinetta slid out of the pew so quickly that I had to run to catch her.

“Hey!” I said at the front. “I'm Madeline. Do you want to go get a hot chocolate or something?”

“I'm Antoinetta Calabro,” she said, shaking her head. “My father's out in the car waiting. He doesn't come in anymore.”

“He just sits in the car?”

“Ever since my mother died he says he doesn't believe in church anymore. After he went to San Giovanni Rotundo and made an offering for her to get better and she died, anyway, he says he doesn't believe in anything anymore.” She sighed. “He will, though. He just needs time. That's what faith is, right?”

She started to walk out again but I grabbed the sleeve of her beautifully ugly purple coat and stopped her.

“Please,” I said. “Maybe I could come home with you or something. I need to talk to you.”

“To me?” She looked completely surprised, as if no one ever needed to talk to her. I wasn't letting go, so she shrugged. “Okay,” she said.

Out in front in a big Oldsmobile, Antoinetta's father was waiting. He had a droopy, sad face, a dead wife, a car that smelled of stale smoke, and a Christmas-tree air freshener. I thought this must be exactly what heaven was like.

I closed the back door firmly and settled in the backseat alone, so happy I practically started humming the Ave Maria, my all-time favorite hymn. Also the only one I knew. When I glanced up, he was staring at me in the rearview mirror, puzzled.

“I'm Madeline Vandermeer,” I said. “Pleased to meet you.”

“What are you? Dutch?” he said. His voice was gruff and gravelly.

“A little,” I said. That was one of the oddest questions I'd ever been asked. “Also Scotch, Irish, and German.”

He laughed. “A Heinz 57!”

What a weirdo
,
I thought. Then I remembered the dead wife and forgave him.

Neither Antoinetta nor her father wore seat belts. I considered unbuckling mine, too, but I couldn't bring myself to
do it. These people were definitely martyrs, I thought. I was practically giddy. From where I sat I had a perfect view of the father's head. He was mostly bald on top, with just a few strands of black hair. Still, it looked like he had put on some kind of hair cream to keep that little bit in place, and to make it shiny. He reminded me of Sonny Bono, the same hangdog face. Sonny Bono and his wife, Cher, were famous in the 60s, a husband-and-wife singing team who ended up also getting divorced. Then Sonny Bono skied into a tree and died, but by then Cher had married a bunch of other people and Sonny had a wife and a new kid. My parents had all of Sonny and Cher's albums. On car trips, they used to sing “I Got You, Babe,” my mother singing Cher's parts and my father singing Sonny's. My mother got the albums in the divorce, but she doesn't play them anymore.

“Wasn't that sad when Sonny Bono died?” I said, because he reminded me of him and also because no one else was saying anything.

“You go to school with Antoinetta?”

“Uh,” I said. “No.”

“I know her from church,” Antoinetta said.

I watched as we passed the State House, which everyone always got so excited about.

“Third largest unsupported dome in the world,” I said, showing off.

“What's that supposed to mean?” Mr. Calabro said suspiciously.

“You know, the roof,” I said. “The dome.”

He squinted at me in the rearview mirror and I squirmed. I decided not to tell him the other two, which were the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., and, my favorite, Saint Peter's Cathedral in Rome.

We were going past the Castle Cinema, the second-run movie theater on Chalkstone Boulevard. I didn't know anyone who lived in this part of Providence. It was almost like being in another country. We stopped in front of a three-story blue house. Right there, on the front lawn, a statue of the Virgin Mary was standing in what appeared to be an open oyster shell. A shrine! I was elated.

“I love your house,” I said, and meant it.

Antoinetta's father looked at me like I was crazy again. Then he went inside.

“So,” Antoinetta said. Then she just stood there in that purple coat. It had big black buttons and every one looked like it was about to fall off.

Even though it was almost Easter, there were still some patches of snow in the front yard and when I talked, puffs of air came out. There was a candle lit in the shrine and some artificial flowers in an empty Fresca bottle.

“What happened to your mother?” I asked her.

“Female trouble,” Antoinetta said.

That sounded really saintly. “Did she have hospice?”

“Nah. The doctor wanted her to but my father kept saying she was going to get better. Because of the miracle, you know? San Giovanni Rotundo.”

I could only nod. Something much larger than me, something divine, had led me to this girl, this house.

“Want to go inside?”

“Yes,” I said so eagerly that Antonietta shook her head.

We walked up three steps into the house, entering a hallway that had lots of boots and coats and umbrellas, two closed doors, and a stairway leading to the second floor.

“We live up there, but it's Sunday so we go to my grandmother's,” Antoinetta said. She put her hand on
the doorknob, then turned to me. “Are you staying for lunch?”

“Great!” I said. “Thanks.” I couldn't believe my good fortune. I thought of all the other things I might have been doing today—being forced to read the funnies to Cody or going to the mall with Eliza Harrison, watching her try on clothes at the Gap. But I was here instead. I made a very quick sign of the cross, a thank-you of sorts. I always did them fast because I wasn't sure I knew the right way.

Antoinetta opened the door onto the most beautiful room I had ever seen. I had seen all kinds of houses that everyone thought were beautiful: the restored Victorians like Sophie's with their stained glass windows and polished hardwood floors; the modern ones like Eliza Harrison's with wall-to-wall carpeting and an all-white kitchen; the large Colonials like Nana Vandermeer lived in, all polished silver and heavy antique furniture. But never had I seen anything like this. My powers of observation told me I would never see anything like it again.

We were in the living room and all of the furniture was covered with plastic. Under the plastic, the sofa was maroon; on top of the plastic were round pillows in crocheted covers of gold and white, purple and red, an array of
dizzying colors. There were lamps with goddesses dancing around their base and plastic covering the lampshades. Every table had ashtrays, big elaborate orange ones filled with ashes and cigarette butts. The drapes were gold and heavy. In the corner was another saint. I knew it was Saint Francis of Assisi because he was surrounded by animals.

Even though this seemed to be the biggest room downstairs, everyone was jammed into the kitchen, where smells like the ones at Francesco's Restaurant in New York floated out. There wasn't one book in sight, I realized, as I followed Antoinetta to the kitchen. Just a
TV Guide
sitting on top of the television beside a line of pictures: a wedding photograph, a man in a World War II uniform, and a close-up of a woman who looked like a movie star from the forties, all black-and-white. The soldier's picture had crystal rosary beads wrapped around it, the silver cross dangling over his right shoulder.

“That's my uncle Curly,” she whispered. “He died in the war.”

She took me by the elbow and led me into the kitchen. More dazzling sights: an old woman with bobby pins all over her thinning hair, frying sausage at the stove. Small children
eating meatballs without any sauce on them, fat babies in rickety high chairs drinking orange juice from sippy cups. Women, all with Antoinetta's luxuriant black hair and full figures, dressed in stockings and high heels and snug dresses, all with gold crosses around their necks, all talking while they cut spinach pie into slabs, pulled pigs in a blanket from the oven, put slices of homemade pizza on a platter. The men sat around the table, which was covered with heavy yellow plastic, smoking and drinking something clear out of small glasses, not talking, but eating as the food appeared on the table.

“This is my friend Madeline…” Antoinetta paused and looked at me. “Van Mars,” she said finally, and I didn't even care that she got my name wrong. “We're going to go upstairs until lunch is ready.”

No!
I wanted to tell her.
I want to stay here!

“Want to take a piece of pizza?” Antoinetta said, putting two on a pink plastic plate without waiting for an answer. She put some spinach pie on it, too. “Come on.”

Antoinetta and her father and sister's apartment upstairs was dark and quiet. It smelled stale, like the windows hadn't been opened in about a hundred years. The quiet up there felt like it had started a long time ago; it made me whisper.

“Want to see a picture of my mother?” Antoinetta said in a normal voice, chewing her pizza.

“Sure,” I whispered.

I had never known anyone whose mother was actually dead. At my old school, there was a girl whose mother had died a long time ago but she had a stepmother and didn't seem very tragic. But Antoinetta was different, I could tell. We walked through the living room—more plastic-covered furniture and another saint statue—I didn't recognize this one but I could see it had been broken and glued back together. There were thin lines all over it, like veins.

In her bedroom, Antoinetta handed me a picture from her bureau. The woman had curly hair like Antoinetta's, and full lips with red lipstick. She was sexy and pretty and full of life. I shivered.

“Wow,” I said, still whispering.

Antoinetta took back the picture, but instead of putting it down she studied it, too. “She was sick forever. Practically my whole life she was sick. I don't remember her doing very much. My sister does.”

She put the picture down and added, “She's older.”

“I'm going to Italy,” I said.

“To San Giovanni Rotundo?”

“I don't know. Maybe. My mother's planning the trip.” Immediately, I felt bad for saying that. How thoughtless to mention an alive mother to Antoinetta. “She's divorced,” I said, hoping that made up for the other remark.

Antoinetta was frowning. “Aren't you Catholic?”

“Sort of. I mean, I am but she's not.”

“The Pope doesn't let people get divorced,” Antoinetta said, still frowning. “It's a sin.”

“She's Unitarian,” I said.

“What's that? Protestant?”

“Not exactly,” I said. I was afraid if I said the wrong thing Antoinetta wouldn't be my friend. “It's kind of its own thing.”

“So who's sick?”

“Huh?”

“You go to San Giovanni Rotundo for a miracle. Don't you know?”

I shook my head.

Antoinetta sighed, frustrated. “Padre Pio was this priest who could heal people. In Italy. Like if your mother or somebody was sick right here he could come to her bedside even
though he was saying a mass in Italy at the very same time. He could be in two places at once. If you go there, there's a whole chapel with the crutches and braces and things from people he healed. And letters from people. I don't know why he couldn't heal my mother.”

“Did you meet him?”

Antoinetta laughed. “He's dead, silly. You pray for him to intercede on your behalf. You know, ask God for the favor. My grandmother said that God wanted my mother with him. So he refused Padre Pio's request.”

I considered this possibility.

Then Antoinetta spoke in a low voice. “They called us up and told us to come to the hospital. It was only four o'clock in the morning and my father took us in our pajamas and we got there in time to hear the priest give her the Sacrament of the Sick and then just sat there waiting for the miracle to happen, you know? That whole time she would only take a breath every minute or so. I was holding my breath until she took her next one. And then, she just didn't take another one. It was 5:03. I looked at the clock. Everybody started screaming and my father cursed the Virgin Mary and Padre
Pio and the doctors. Because we'd gone all that way. For a miracle, you know?”

I nodded, remembering my own miracle, how I saved my father from the avalanche. This wasn't the time to tell Antoinetta. But I would. Antoinetta was the one person who could understand.

“My mother's patron saint was Saint Clare. She was named for her. When we got home from the hospital, my father picked up my mother's statue of Saint Clare, the one the bishop blessed, and he threw it against the wall. My uncle Joe glued it back together.”

“Saint Clare,” I said. “She's the patron saint of television.”