The Passion of Mary-Margaret (12 page)

I was much better behaved during the school year.

“I've missed you, Mary-Margaret,” Jude said that day.

“Likewise.”

I love Baltimore. And I remember walking from the mother­house all the way to Highlandtown on Jude's arm. Up Eastern Avenue we sort of sidled, looking, I have to admit, quite the couple. Near Patterson Park, he reached in his pocket and pulled out a piece of candy.

I did not let him put it on my tongue this time.

He got a kick out of that. “So you're completely serious about this nun thing, aren't you?”

“Well, technically—”

“Yes, you'll be a religious sister. It's just easier to say nun, Mary-Margaret, and less confusing. Sister could mean two things and most people take it to mean something biological. Nun means a Catholic lady who foregoes marriage—”

“Gets married to Jesus.”

“Semantics. And then goes on to hit kids on the backs of their hands with a ruler.”

I howled with laughter. And he joined in.

Jude knew me. And he knew Sister Thaddeus and some of the others at my school.

Sure, there were people like Sister Antiochus, who we called Antiochus Ephiphanes after that lovely Roman ruler who destroyed the temple and liked a good massacre. She was just plain mean. Judgmental, austere, and prone to think if you weren't always in a posture of mourning, begging for God's mercy on your knees, you weren't being realistic about the state of your soul. None of us dared to mention we knew she snuck cigarettes around the back side of the garden shed. But people like the Ephiph were everywhere in life, always pointing fingers, looking around the beams in their eyes to stare at your splinter with dripping disapproval, so it stood to reason they'd enter religious orders too.

Jude knew he was overgeneralizing and he winked at me to let me know. “So what's happening after this phase of the nun business?”

Years later I finally learned to stopped correcting him.

“I'm heading to Georgia after I'm finished with my novitiate here.”

“Gerald told me.”

I stopped in front of the Patterson Theater. “You've contacted him?”

“Don't look so shocked.”

“But don't you hate Gerald?”

“Not hate, Mary-Margaret. He annoys the heck outta me, the goody two-shoes.”

We ordered hot turkey sandwiches at The White Coffee Pot. Here's an old matchbook cover from the place.

The white bread stuck to the roofs of our mouths and we laughed as, more than once, we actually had to dislodge the bread from behind our teeth with our fingertips. Schmidt's Bakery wasn't far away. I still buy Schmidt's Blue Ribbon Bread every once in a while, and when nobody's looking, I'll walk down Main Street to the small grocery store where Jude and I used to buy gum, and purchase two thick slices of Esskay Bologna (a Maryland favorite) and a slice of American cheese. I'll arrange that on a slice of bread and put some mayo smack on another slice of bread. Clap it together and you're ten again. Aunt Elfi taught me by example the proper way to eat a bologna sandwich. You simply have to smash the bread with your fingertips until it's one-quarter as thick and gets a little gummy.

Magnificent.

Jude ate them the same way.

The waitress at The White Coffee pot refilled our cups of coffee long into the evening, and soon he began to open up over slices of apple pie. I excused myself and called the mother-house from the pay phone near the women's restroom, getting Angie to explain the situation for me. Like so many times on the island, she covered for me.

Apparently, Jude was already a widower, a father, and a man who had lost his child.

Jude went away from the light both literally and figuratively. It's hard to believe someone as smart and good-looking as he could have fallen down so utterly. As we sat in The White Coffee Pot, he told the tale. To be honest, when the story meandered farther down the path, I longed to take my hand from his, knowing where that hand had been. Several times I comforted myself with the remembrance that Jude, even as a boy, was a clean freak who washed his hands many times a day. Oh, not in the obsessive-compulsive way, but more in a mindful of germs manner, which made it even harder to believe he'd do such things with so many people. I assumed he took a lot of showers.

Jude arrived in Baltimore and proceeded to find a room down near the docks off Fort Avenue. The day job at Domino Sugar would have never been enough for Jude. And who could imagine him living the life I did? Coming home to a good book, a cup of tea, and Jesus Christ? Hardly.

He inevitably found himself accompanying some workmates down to The Block, Baltimore's red-light district. You'll rarely find a person in Baltimore that hasn't at least driven down the main strip of debauchery on Baltimore Street to get a look-see at the bouncers, the prostitutes, the destitute, and those who feed the beast with their money. I was no exception. But to understand what really goes on there, you have to inhabit such a place. Jude inhabited every aspect.

“It started out just selling some opium I'd get from one of the guys at the docks, Mary-Margaret. And I liked the money and started delving into prostitution.”

I tried to pull my hand away, but he held on tight.

“Were you the pimp?” I asked, the word, not something you hear at the motherhouse every day, surprising me.

“No. Someone propositioned me and paid good money. Real good money.”

If his skin had been peeled off his face, his expression couldn't have been any more naked.

“Are you a homosexual, Jude?”

He shook his head. “No. You know better than that, MaryMargaret.”

“So, who did you sleep with—rich, lonely ladies?”

He howled out a laugh. “On the Block? H--- no!”

“Men then?”

“Yes. And some women. Mostly men.”

The wind went out of me. Pictures of Jude sitting on the step whistling up our skirts flew out with my breath. Who are you? I wanted to say, but I knew this was Jude. This had always been Jude. And my presence in his life was the odd bit.

“I had hoped . . .” I didn't know what else to add.

“That I'd come up here and end up a banker or a lawyer or something?” He laughed again, the sound brittle enough to blow away as powder. “I grew up on Locust Island. I never went to college like you did.”

“You could have.”

“With what money?”

“Did you say you made a lot selling drugs?”

“Yes. But I spent it all. We always spend it all. Cautious people don't sell drugs in the first place, Mary-Margaret.”

“You're right. So you've got fine clothing. I assume you've upped the status of your clientele?”

“You could say that.”

I wanted to ask him how many clients he'd had, but I knew he'd lost count. At least, in a way, I hoped so, because when you lose count of something, you stop holding on to each individual occurrence.

“You mentioned a wife.” I held up my coffee cup to the waitress for a refill.

Jude did too. She left the table with a shake of her head. “I'll leave you a big tip, sweetheart,” Jude said. And he would. Though obviously one of dubious morality, Jude was, and remained, a truthful man throughout his life. Figure that one out if you can.

Jude rarely exhibited a loss for words, but that night, as we sat in the diner, everything seemed to close in around us as I waited. He lifted his cup to his lips—the ceiling descended a few inches. He straightened his tie—the walls moved toward us. He cleared his throat—the waitresses grew large. Everything took on a close importance. “Remember us,” the vinyl booths and the large plate glass window mouthed.

So I sat in silence, waiting for his story to emerge and I blinked my eyes, taking pictures with each shutter of my eyelids. The streetlight outside backlit little fingerprints at the bottom of the front window. The chrome coating on the push bar of the front door was worn to the left where folks laid their hands and gained entrance. The floor, green and white linoleum tile, was laid in a large checkerboard pattern, four squares of green, then four squares of white, and so on. And a middle-aged, blond man wearing navy blue coveralls ate a piece of lemon meringue pie at the counter that lined the left side of the room and drank his cup of coffee, holding the mug without using the handle. I remember thinking that he was carrying a great deal of heaviness, as if his coveralls weighed a thousand pounds, and when he got up to leave, he left all the spare change he had.

Finally Jude spoke at the same time as he looked into my face.

“I was bouncing at one of the clubs for a while, just taking a break from the other things.”

“I imagine that chips at your soul.”

“I have no soul.”

You do, I thought. But theology had to take a back seat.

“I started seeing one of the dancers. She reminded me a little of you, Mary-Margaret.”

Indeed?!

“Just in the way she was kind to me. She was hardened like a lot of the others, but there was something left untouched underneath.”

“What was her name?”

“Bonnie.”

“That's nice. Did she have a stage name?”

“Of course, but I won't say it in front of you.”

The older he got, the fewer lines he would cross with me, the less he sought to shock me. Good thing, that. I would have grown tired of the comments had he kept it up. There's only so many ways a person can mutter lewdness before it just seems like a little boy making flatulence noises with his hand tucked under his armpit.

“Bonnie and I entered into a relationship. Of course most of the girls would have sex with a man for extra money, and she was no exception. She did have a taste for the finer things, so I stopped bouncing and went back to my old job so she wouldn't have to subject herself to prostitution.”

“Job?” I laughed.

He shrugged. “I'm trying to say this all as delicately as I can, Mary-Margaret.”

“Thank you.”

“Don't mention it.”

My heart felt pummeled, bruised, and more fists landed on the bruises until, like Jesus's face upon the cross, it became unrecognizable. The bit of pity I always felt for Jude due to his home life turned into something almost maternal.

“I'm going to make a long story short.” He thrust his hands in his jacket pockets and slumped down in the booth. When he looked up at the ceiling, the heat rose to his neck. “She took sick. I moved in to help her. She got pregnant. I continued to bring in money; she continued to ask for more and more and more. It turned ugly, but she was carrying my kid. The pregnancy took it all out of her. She wouldn't go to the doctor no matter how much I tried to convince her.”

“What do you think it was?”

“Cancer, maybe. I talked to one of my clients, a doctor, describing the symptoms and he said it was most likely colon cancer. The baby, a little boy, was stillborn eight months into the pregnancy and Bonnie died a few hours later.”

“You said you were a widower.”

“I married her when she was six months along.”

“Despite the life you were living? Forced to turn tricks for her?”

“Nobody forces me to do anything, Mary-Margaret. She was pregnant with my child. That was that. By the time we got married, we weren't even sleeping together.”

Such were the times, my sisters.

“This is terrible.”

“Yeah.”

“Does your father know anything about it?”

He shook his head. “I haven't seen him in years. Hardly anybody else knows.”

“Not even Gerald or Hattie?”

“Hattie does.”

“That makes sense. And she'll take it to her grave.”

The waitress, scratching her scalp with the sharpened end of her pencil, approached with our tab. “We're about to close.”

Jude paid for our food and we turned back out onto the avenue. We walked toward the center of town, passing by Pacey's Bridal and Formal. I stopped and, standing in front of the shop, squeezed his arm.

“Did you ever once in your life wish for this?” I cast a sweeping arm beside the display windows showing off white cupcake bridal gowns and foamy, pale pink bridesmaids' dresses.

“Honestly? Nope. This sort of thing has never entered my mind. At least not in this traditional way. What about you?”

I nodded. “I have to be honest with you, Jude. I do.” I could hardly believe I was admitting it to myself. “But not for the wedding or the marriage even. You know I've never been one that needed male company.”

He laughed. “An understatement.”

“But I'd like to have a little baby. There's something inside of me that so desires a baby of my own.”

“You were orphaned. It only makes sense to want someone all your own, someone you're related to, someone you have to put up with because they're family.”

“You don't do that.”

“But you would. That's the point.” He touched the glass window. “I don't know what I want, Mary-Margaret. I may have a brother and parents, but there's where you're ahead of me.”