Authors: Ursula Hegi
“Of course it's yours, Aunt Floria.”
“Mineâ”
and it's the pebble in her palm. Days and months and years thinking of her pebble in Slattery Park, there if she needs it to remind her she wants to stay alive. Or make it possible for the not wanting to live. She knows the shape of the pebble, touches it every day with her thoughts, pictures Malcolm taking her to the park, digging his fingers into a crevice between two large stones, shaking his head, trying another gap, and pulling out her pebble. But one Sunday when she's no longer afraid and asks Malcolm to take her thereâhe leads her to a pebble larger than hers, brighter.
“What did you do with it, Malcolm?”
“You're holding it.”
“No.”
“It is just a stone.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I tossed it. All right? Into some bushes.”
“But where were you those hours?”
“What does it matter?”
“Because I felt safe thinking of you finding a place for the stone. And now
“âit's allâ¦false.”
Malcolm comes running toward her, and her mother is clicking photos, and it's no longer Slattery Park but Central Park, where her mother is making her and Malcolm run toward each other on the snow-covered lawn, click-clicking at the bride and groom running toward each other, one standing still while the other runs, arms extended. “More exuberance,” her mother demands. “Motion.” They have to repeat their run, click-click, repeat their embrace till Floria is stiff. Frozen. Her brother's new girlfriend offers her red cardigan. Leonora, half her size. Tries to button that tight cardigan over Floria's satin breasts. Good luck. The camera click-clicking. Warming herself inside Leonora's tight red cardigan till her mother makes her take it off before she runs toward Malcolm again. Running toward Malcolm, again and once again, till it's only the running
“Julian? Let me help you change her sheets.”
“Thank you.”
and the running is toward Julian, such a long time to get there, to him, but still early enough in her life to test himâsudden heat and silk-sweat blossomsâand Malcolm is fadingâ¦one of his pranks. He can be so childish, Malcolm. Childish and spoiled. Aunt Camilla says he promises clouds and gives you dirt. One trip abroad every year for Aunt Camilla, always farther away than Italy
“Italyâ¦is not farâ¦enough for⦔
“I'll take you to Italy, Mama, once you get better. We'll visit that island where they make lace.”
Lace and weddings.
“Are you the mother of the bride?”
“Are you a guest?”
“Guest⦔
“Yes?”
“Atâ¦my ownâ¦wedding.”
“You were the bride, Floria.” Leonora's voice. “A stunning bride.”
“And you've already had many anniversaries with Mr. Thompson.” That's Bianca.
“Do you thinks she understands what you're saying, Belinda?”
“Frogs⦔
“What about frogs, sweetheart?”
“Julian likesâ¦frogsâ¦my secret.”
The day before their first anniversary, and she's putting the frog tattoo on her butt while he's working at his furniture shop. But it won't stick, the tattoo, because she's forgotten to remove the plastic on the decal. The second frog she does just right: places it on her butt, wets it down, waits thirty seconds before pulling the backing off. And there it isâshe can see it in the mirror, smack on her left buttock. To keep it from rubbing off against her underpants, she walks around bare-assed, cooks bare-assed linguine. Then pulls on a skirt just before Julian comes home.
“I know that smile. You're up to something.”
She shakes her head. Grins. “My secret.”
Five in the morning she's awake, rolls on her right side, fits her back against his belly, burrows herself into the warmth of his half-sleep spooning, sweet spooning, till they begin to make love, and he's waking fully, and she positions herself so he has to see the tattoo.
“My God.” He touches it. “Does it hurt? Why would you do that?” Then the relief in his voice:
“It's on top of your skin.” And they're both laughing. “You're my wild woman,” he says
“Wildâ¦woman.” Floria feels wilder now than when she was a girl.
“Now I remember, sweetheart. That tattoo, right?”
“Catsâ¦the wilderâ¦cat⦔
“What cats, Aunt Floria?”
“Did your mother have a cat, Belinda?”
Wilder. Wilder than she feels at twenty-two and walks tilted back to carry her huge belly. Crocheting silky white thread into her baby's christening gown. White on white. Half transparent. One gown because she doesn't know she's carrying two. That's why one twin has to wear that store-bought christening gown. Bianca. Who doesn't last. Is that why?
“Rememberâ¦the gown?”
“We are all praying for you.” Irish Spring and fried food. So it's the priest standing above her
and she's fretting with Julian about their letter to the Irish-Spring-Priest after their friend Maxine's funeral mass, where the Irish-Spring-Priest only talked about man's relationship with God, man-this and man-that. Is it too rude to tell him so? Julian says their letter is necessary. “How else will he know to do it right at another woman's funeral?”
At my funeral. We just didn't know it would be this soon
“Weâ¦didn't knowâ¦it'llâ¦be this soon.”
Maxine. Radical and conservative, outspoken on both, sending donations to Planned Parenthood and the Vatican. Whenever Maxine gets too militant, Floria stays away from her for a while. Like when their super is gossiping in the lobby about his niece. “Got herself pregnant.”
Maxine fixes her hot gray stare on him. “You mean she held up a sperm bank with a gun?”
He laughs, uneasily.
“The only fair way is to have every boy, by the time he's fourteen, freeze his sperm at a sperm bank and get snipped.”
The super gasps. “Snipped?”
“Snipped.” Maxine nods. “Once he marries, he can withdraw from his sperm account if his wife agrees. The sperm will be released to them if they both sign an agreement that they'll take care of the child resulting from his sperm. Long term it keeps your taxes down.”
The super is shaking his head. “And how is that?” “Because part of that agreement is that he pays child support if there's a divorce.”
Floria and Julian like Maxine's feistiness, and that's why they have to write that letter to the Irish-Spring-Priest, who's washing Floria's legs with a sponge that's almost dry. Priests and doctors. Spoiled men, all of them, expecting your instant respect and obedience while, already, they're rushing away from you. Floria's doctor calls her “Kiddo” though she's old enough to be his grandmother. It amuses and annoys her. When she has her eye infection, he tells her to soak her eye in front of the television, as if that's all women do. When her fingernails keep breaking, Dr. Kiddo prescribes prenatal vitamins. She's not about to take them, and when the pharmacist agrees and suggests gelatin capsules instead, Floria starts to ignore much of Doctor Kiddo's advice, even makes fun of him when she comes home to Julian. But Doctor Kiddo gets even. Finds her cancer
Against her thighs, the sponge makes harsh whispers.
She doesn't want the hands of the Irish-Spring-Priest there
“Don't.” She tries to raise herself on her elbows.
But it's the girl from Hospice, dipping the sponge into a basin of tepid water, wringing it out more than Floria likes.
Whispersâ¦people knock at her door. Smother their steps on the rug. Neighbors murmur their I'm-so-sorries
“What can we do to help?”
“She's much too thin.”
Neighborsâ¦each with one nose and one mouth and two eyes and two ears, but the arrangement so different
nose mouth eyes ears watching faces in stores and subways, in crowds, always amazed how unique each of them looks, given how many people there are in the world and that each has the same four ingredients. Nose mouth eyes earsâ¦
“How is she doing, Julian?”
“My father-in-law's aunt had the same thing.”
“Sleet. That's what they're forecasting.”
“Chocolate, a two-for-one special, but only till Friday.”
Floria likes Barricini's better than Loft's. “Notâ¦Loft's⦔
“We don't think of Al Gore as being handsome, but he is not a bad looking fellow.”
“Too well-behaved. He should have fought for the votes that belonged to him.”
A thief will steal more if he isn't stopped. If the law didn't stop Malcolm, he'd move her into The White House. Instead he tried to move her to Co-op City, built on swampland, on failed Freedomland. Half of the Concourse moved to Co-op City, changing the neighborhood. Mustache Sheila liked it at first, then kvetched about structural problems
“Not forâ¦me.”
Floria knows what it's like to be the wife of a thief. Making nice though you're ashamed of his bragging and grabbing and coaxing. But Malcolm likes newness, likes moving on. “It's in the country beyond Pelham Bay Park,” he said. “And it's affordable. At least take a look.” But looking confirmed what Floria knewâthat Co-op City was ugly, and that she didn't want to live in tall skinny boxes so near the clouds, that you couldn't see your children playing in the grass. In Mustache Sheila's apartment, a gap opened as the building spread while settling, and it got filled in with concrete
Franklinâ¦praying over her. Franklin who is Belinda's priest and became a history teacher when Malcolm died and his roofing business caved into itself, only held up by Malcolm's schemes. Franklin prays two hours every night, and Belinda is jealous. Jealous of her husband's God. Jealous of Bianca.
Floria closes her eyes so she can hear their voices more clearly and tune out the breath of snow that presses against the windowpanes, snow
on the day she meets Julian but marries Malcolm. White on white
“You're so brave, Julian.”
“Problem with my daughter is that she's set on having this one be a girl.”
Floria likes Franklin better than the Irish-Spring-Priest. Better than the television bishop
“Believe the incredible, and you can do the impossible.” But two men carry the television from her apartment. Repossessed
“No televisionâ¦bishop⦔
“That show was the ultimate Catholic kitsch.” Leonora. Of course.
“It may not be kitsch to someone else.”
Leonora. At it again, she and Franklin, about religion
Leonora. At it, she and one of the nuns at Anthony's first communion. “With all that Catholic prudishness, there's the myth of Immaculate Conception, justifying a woman giving birth to a child that is not her husband's.”
“It's not a myth. It's a miracle. Because of Jesus.”
Leonora's neck grows longer, straighter.
“Jesus always helps when I feel nervous,” the nun says. “All I need to do is pray: âOh Jesus, Jesus help me.'”
“I believe in an openness to other beliefsâ¦to other possibilities.”
“But Jesus teaches us that his is the one true religion.”
“All religions give us symbols, things that help us to imagine something beyond ourselves.”
The nun gets all flustered. “But Jesusâ”
“It's too literal. Catholics want it all spelled out, right down to the buttons on the robes of the angels. And then they claim their images are better than the images of others. That's how the Catholic church controls us. Even sin is controlled by the church.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because sexual thoughts and feelings are labeled impure. Children are made to feel unclean for enjoying the nature of their bodies and touchingâ”
“Tell me, Sisterâ” Floria's father interrupts Leonora and steps forward to block her view of the nun. “I have always wondered about the meaning of holy water.”
The nun blinks.
“How did it originate, Sister?” he asks, listening attentively as she explains about baptism and Jesus and other sacraments and some more Jesusâ¦.
Floria hasn't seen him like this before, her gentle father, who doesn't like to interrupt others, but here he is, taking the conversation away from Leonora, keeping Leonora away from the nun. And it comes to Floria how, with his mildness, he holds the power in the family.
Afterwards, Leonora tells him, “Thanks for saving my ass.”
“Is that what I was doing?”
“You know you were.”
He laughs.
“I guess this was not the occasion to discuss religious tolerance.”
“If you fight for too many things,” he says to her, softly, “you won't have anything.”