Sacred Time (28 page)

Franklin touched my breasts.

“Black-and-white wings. Now you're going to find wings on me, too?”

He nuzzled me, lightly, flicked his tongue, eyes half closed.

“I called it Cuddles. Except you couldn't.”

“Couldn't what?”

“Cuddle it. It would nip at your fingers if you held it. We had to let it out of its cage twice a day and let it fly, get some exercise. Mama sewed a cover from wedding satin, and we tossed that across the cage at night so Cuddles would sleep. But one morning he didn't wake up. Aunt Leonora buried him. The next day she took me to the five and dime, and we came home with two white boxes, the kind they use for chow mein. One box had birdseed inside and pictures of birds on the outside. The other had a bird inside, a parakeet with a blue breast. Guess what we named that one?”

“Cuddles?”

“He was the Cuddles who didn't last long.” My voice went light, and I found myself laughing, the way I often did just before I got to something sad. “He crashed into the mirror.”

Franklin looked stunned. “Why are you laughing?”

“It wasn't that bad.”

“Maybe that's what you need to tell yourself.”

“What's this? Confession 101?”

“Right. How to postpone sorrow. Anyhow, I'm sorry Cuddles flew into the mirror.”

“There were other birds. The third Cuddles came from the pet shop. Uncle Victor bought it for me and said parakeets from the pet shop were supposed to be better than from the five and dime. It was green and had a bad disposition, bit Mama when she changed its water, came after me and got its wings into my hair…made me feel like Medusa. We were all glad to see that Cuddles go.”

“Do I dare ask what happened to that one?”

“Papa took it to our milkman in New Jersey. He liked pets and always took ours when they got too big or too messy to live in an apartment. I believe that all my pets had a better life in New Jersey. Listen to me. If that doesn't sound Catholic—some weird notion of heaven, New Jersey.”

“A personal notion of heaven. We all have that.”

“Not the Santa Claus God on the clouds for you?”

He shook his head. “How many more Cuddles?”

“One more. The fourth Cuddles. From the pet shop.”

“I hope that one lived for a long time.”

“It did.”

“I'm relieved. I don't think I could handle another dead parakeet.”

At HoJo's, Anthony ordered Dr Pepper and a BLT, “heavy on the B.” I got coffee and onion rings. Like his mother, Anthony was short and skinny; but where she got by as petite, he was scrappy. A runt. He made up for it with green eyes and drop-dead eyelashes and a mouth the size of Pelham Bay Park. That was,
if
he decided to talk. And with Anthony, you never knew.

“Listen, Belinda,” he started off, “when your father got you that job for Frankly, he—”

“Franklin,” I corrected Anthony, who obviously was in the mood for outrageousness. Good. “My husband's name is Franklin. And don't tell me Papa got that job for me. Because I surely don't want it.”

“Well, he did it for you. Out of gratitude.”

“Gratitude for what?” I scowled to warn Anthony I knew him inside out.

“For not having to sit through another Sunday dinner with Jonathan.”

Ever since Papa met Jonathan, he'd teased him by offering him only the most pungent food. He'd make chipmunk faces behind Jonathan's back, twitchy nose and buck teeth. Curl his fingers close to his mouth—fussy little paws. Mama would tell him, “Don't be so childish, Malcolm.”
Childish.
From early on, Papa was my concept of what childish meant: not being able to count on someone to buy you school supplies, to teach you an entire song, to be there when you die. Childish meant that promises were no more than teases.

“Okay, then,” I told Anthony, “I ditched Jonathan entirely for Papa's sake. Now that we've established that—what's this with Franklin and those goddamn church roofs?”

“Your father gave Frankly the choice of working in the office.”

“Then why didn't Franklin tell me?”

“Because, quite frankly, Frankly—”

“Will you stop calling him that?”

“—wants to be on the roof and does not want to tell you everything. Why is it so difficult to understand that he likes working for your father? Or that I like working for your father?”

“You wanted to be a cook.”

“And your husband wanted to be a priest. But then the priest wanted to be a husband. And now the husband wants to be on the roof.”

I had to laugh.

“So—let me decide what I like. Let Franklin decide. And maybe assume that your father is good at what he does. Why do you think Franklin didn't tell you that your father offered him an office job? Because you would make him take that office job.”

“You're damn right I would. Because I don't want him stuck on some church roof.”

“I don't see why they're different from other roofs.”

“Because Franklin used to be a priest.”

“You really want your father to turn down jobs because you snatch priests from altars?”

“I snatched him from the confessional. If you care to be accurate.”

“I always care to be accurate. Listen, your father and I have trained Franklin for a job he had zero training for. I mean, we get very few confessions on the roof, and so far we haven't had requests for him to bless water. As for last rites—”

“You'll be needing those for yourself if you don't keep him off church roofs.”

“We've all gotten stuck on roofs. Just a few weeks ago, I was cleaning gutters on a three-story in Queens when the hose looped around the ladder and pulled it down, so that—”

“I'm so fucking sick of that story.”

“I've never fucking told you
that
story.”

“I've heard it. Believe me. Countless versions of the same fucking story.”

“Well, this one's a different fucking story about a different fucking roof.”

“Watch your mouth.”

“You talk filth like that around your priest.”

“Sure.”

“And you still pee standing up?”

“Eventually I figured it wasn't worth it.”

“Good. Because otherwise—” Anthony grinned his smutty-little-boy grin.

I could guess where he was heading with that one, and I quickly took it from him. “Because otherwise I would have grown balls.”

“You got balls.”

“Takes balls to grow balls.”

“So that's how it works. Balls to go with that make-believe pecker. Which leads to make-believe-pecker envy.”

“The only time I get pecker envy is when it comes to peeing outdoors.”

“I hope you're not corrupting your priest with any of this.”

“You
would blush.”

“Church isn't what it used to be.”

“Thank heavens and the parakeet for that.”

Though Anthony and I no longer threw rabbit droppings at each other or elbowed each other in the backseat of his father's car, we still liked to go at each other with words as we did when he called my sinus problem “ugly boogers,” and I convinced him he would turn into a cocker spaniel because the liver-tasting spread on his sandwich was Alpo. While he kept spitting and crying, Bianca and I danced around him, told him if you ate dog food you turned into a dog.

“A cocker spaniel.”

“All cocker spaniels are really children who ate Alpo.”

“That's why they look so sad.”

We could barely hear each other over Anthony's howls.

How easily he cried. Bianca and I tormented him, fought over whom he liked best, fought each other while we fought over him. We negotiated a schedule for when each of us could play alone with Anthony, and we got jealous if one of us was friendly to him during the other's time. Secretly, I knew I was his favorite. Even when I broke his belt buckle. Even when I scratched his leg. Whenever I wished I had a brother, I'd imagine him like Anthony, and then he'd be around anyhow and I wouldn't need a brother of my own.

Anthony grabbed one of my onion rings. “So I was waiting on that roof in Queens, hoping for someone to hear me. But no one did.”

I resigned myself to listening. As I'd listened when Papa had come home with his stuck-on-the-roof tales.

“It was an uncommonly steep roof, Belinda.”

“Amazing how the roof gets steeper and higher whenever one of you tells that story.”

“It was steep.”

“A big steep treacherous roof.”

“You got it. And all along, the owners' dog was watching me—a Dalmatian mutt.”

“Not a Great Dane?”

“Different roof. Anyhow, I finally managed to lasso that hose around the ladder and pull it up. I had to miss dinner.”

“You and Papa—” All at once I was furious. “Missing dinner. Missing—”

“Your father wasn't even with me.”

“Missing dinner. Missing a school concert. Arriving weeks later, breathing apologies…lies.”

Anthony raised both palms toward me. “Hey—”

“You know how many versions of that roof story I've heard?” I could barely swallow. “The breed of dog changes. The pitch of the roof. The size of the ladder. What remains the same are the lost hours…days. And then he'd try and charm me by letting me win at dominoes.”

“Eat your onion rings,” Anthony said gently.

I slid my plate toward him.

“Dominoes…” He sighed. “Games…I don't see you often enough to stay in practice.” He slopped ketchup all over my onion rings. “If you weren't my favorite relative…” He shook his head, suddenly serious. “What have I done to you?”

I felt that old question between us, giving me power, too much power.
What if it had been me by the window?
I'd come close to asking him before. But not this close. “Anthony—”

He looked at me, startled.

My heart was tilting. The question felt too dangerous, because knowing could be worse than what I imagined, could change what I was accustomed to seeing:
Anthony by the open window, keening the way wind will trap itself in rain gutters. While Mama leans out and screams, “BiancaBiancaBianca—” While Uncle Victor races down flights of stairs as if he believed he'd catch my twin before she'd hit the sidewalk. While Aunt Leonora grips Anthony by the shoulders, her eyes wild, but what she sees in his face she hides from everyone—from herself—by yanking him against her bathrobe, moaning, rocking with him as if, together, they were the kind of rocking toy that's weighted on the bottom and will eventually right itself.

“What is it?” Anthony leaned back, away from me.

So many ways of falling
…I gripped his hands.