The Possibilities of Sainthood (18 page)

“In the storeroom, up against the wall,” I said. “At first I was all, you know, breathless and excited and everything.”

“Well,
yeah
. Who wouldn't be? I remember the first time John was about to kiss me—”

“Can we please focus?”

“Yes. Sorry,” she said, wiping away the dreamy look she always got about John. “I'm listening. Undivided.”

“So there I am, pinned against the wall, in my
pajamas
, feeling grateful I made the commitment to wear a bra even while sleeping—”

“You
what
?”

“I decided like a month ago that I'd start a twenty-four-hour-a-day bra-wearing campaign in my effort to become more saintly. That part isn't important, though. The main thing is, THANK AGATHA, Patron Saint of All Things Boob-Related, that I was wearing something underneath my tank top so Andy couldn't, you know,
see
or
touch
anything he wasn't supposed to.”

“I thought you said saint specializations having to do with boobs were off-limits.”

“Only if they have to do with boob enhancement, not boob concealment or boob disorders.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Can I get on with my story, please?”

“So you're wearing a bra under your pajamas and Andy has you pinned against the wall . . .”

“And there's this box of something behind me—I think it was instant polenta—digging into the back of my legs, so I'm not exactly comfortable. But at the time, I am trying not to care, of course.”

“Absolutely.”

“So I can feel his breath against my face, he's so close, and I'm thinking this is it! Andy Rotellini is FINALLY GOING TO KISS ME, so I close my eyes, getting ready for the kiss, even though, you know, it's not at all how I expected our first kiss to happen, at six-thirty in the morning and all, when I'm covered in flour and have a wicked case of bed-head. But anyway, he has one of his hands touching the skin on my arm and my neck, which at first feels really
sexy and good and which I
presume
means we are headed somewhere romantic, like, you know, he's going to brush the side of my cheek, like in the movies.”

“But . . .”

“But suddenly I realize his hand is not headed anywhere romantic or sweet like my face and neither are his lips!
Suddenly
one hand is sliding the strap of my tank top off my shoulder while the other is moving YOU KNOW WHERE up under my shirt and his mouth is, like, heading across my chest with absolutely no respect for the presence of my bra, if you know what I mean,” I said, getting upset all over again. “I can't even say it out loud.”

“Wow. That's, um, a bit forward of him.”

“And then he's all pressed up against me!”

“Against the wall?”

“Yes! Good thing I shoved him before he reached any of his ultimate destinations.”

“You shoved him?”

“Yeah. Hard. Right into the boxed capellini. He knocked it right over.”

“Go, Antonia. He so deserved to be shoved. I'm proud of you for standing up to him like that. What a total and shocking disappointment, though.”

“My LIPS, Maria! He was supposed to kiss my lips, not my boobs! I mean, who wants her first kiss to be a boob-kiss? I swear to I don't know
what saint
, since I'm through with petitioning them for help in this area, it is seriously impossible for me to get kissed.”

“Obviously Andy just wasn't the right guy, Antonia,”
Maria said. “But there will be somebody who
is
right. I promise you. As your best friend in the entire world, I swear it will happen and it will be wonderful when it does.”

“I thought it would feel different, Maria. Having a chance with Andy,” I said with a sigh.

“I know,” she said with sympathy. “This is hugely unfortunate.”

“I finally get to the moment I've been waiting for,” I continued, picking at the pizza crust, “you know, with Andy standing there looking like he wants me. But he doesn't really want
me
, he only wants the body parts of me.” It made me shudder to even think about the whole fiasco. “I obviously didn't get the saint-kissing-request thing right. First, I pray to celibate Jude, who basically ignores me. Then I petition the horniest known saint in history. I should have known better than to pray to a saint who could barely keep his pants on for something as innocent as a kiss. Of course St. Augustine botched it up.”

“Hey, lower your voice,” Maria whispered. “Your favorite person just sat down two tables away.”

“That's all I need right now.” I sighed, glancing left. “Veronica learning about my Andy disaster.
And
on the day of the party.”

“She's jealous of you, Antonia.”

“Jealous of what?”

“More like jealous of
who
,” Maria said.

“Michael?”

“Yeah, Michael. He follows you around like an adoring
puppy and Veronica is totally in love with him.” She paused, taking a sip from her Coke. “Hey. Do you think this could have been some sort of revenge on Veronica's part? You know, like, she told Andy to do all that? Or told him you
wanted
things to happen like that?”

“Nope. I am confident this was Augustine's fault. Who I am currently on the outs with. I may even have to remove his page from my Saint Diary.”

“At least you tried, Antonia.”

“I guess. This is also exactly why it was worth the small fortune it cost me to overnight my new proposal for sainthood. I can't even believe I hadn't thought of it before. Since”—I paused for dramatic effect—“a Patron Saint of the First Kiss and Kissing is in dire demand.”

“You waited all this time to spill this crucial new information?”

“Well, the post-office excursion with Gram took
forever
, which is why I was late this morning. She drives, like, five miles an hour because she can't really see that well over the dashboard. My original plan was to tell you everything in the parking lot before school.”

“I can't believe your mother hasn't taken the keys away yet.”

“Once we finally got to the post office I found out it cost almost seventy dollars to send a package overnight to Italy and I only had fifty. I knew it would be expensive, but not
that bad
.” Recalling the painful hit to my savings account made me wince. “Gram offered to cover the difference, but of course she couldn't find her wallet.”

“Because she buried it in the yard with the fig trees last weekend?”

Maria's comment made me laugh for the first time since the beginning of lunch. I took another bite of my pizza—nowhere near as good as my mother's. “So anyway, we detour to the bank, and Gram doesn't have a bank card because she's convinced people will steal her money through the machine, so we have to wait until eight-thirty when the bank opens so she can withdraw money from the teller. Good thing they know her, since she didn't have her ID. Meanwhile, I am practically hyperventilating because I am traumatized, dying to talk to you, but knowing I'm going to be late for school, and having an anxiety attack that we are never going to get this overnight delivery in the mail.”

“Well, you
did
send it, and it's over, with Andy, I mean, and now we need to think about you moving on.”

“Moving on to what?”

“A new love of your life! The best way to get over one person is to get interested in somebody else,” Maria said as if she was an expert on these matters.

“Well . . .” I began, but then stopped. Thoughts of Michael entered my mind—his recent nighttime visits, and Maria's insistence that he respected me, something I may have undervalued in the past. But I pushed them away, reminding myself that we were just friends, and that, besides, he and Veronica had
something
going on between them. Veronica was the last person I needed to cross right now.

“I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that maybe
what happened this morning is a sign, Antonia—which, as you know, is something I almost never do since I'm not at all superstitious and saint-oriented like you are.”

“A sign of what?”

“That you are meant to be with somebody else. Maybe St. Augustine even intended that things would go badly with Andy. Because maybe . . .” she said, intrigued, “maybe
Michael
was really who you were supposed to kiss all along. Maybe the entire community of saints has been conspiring to give you both another chance.”

“You are being irrational, Maria,” I said, with only halfhearted conviction I didn't really feel. Maybe Maria knew my true feelings better than I did. “I'm barely hours away from having two years of dreams dashed to smithereens and you suddenly think Andy was never the love of my life—Michael is?”

“Look who's having trouble taking leaps of faith now.” Maria reached over and took a bite out of my crust. “What about Michael? Seriously.”

“No. He's involved with Veronica.”

“Even if he does have something going on with Veronica—which
he doesn't
, it's all her gossip, no substance—he'd drop her like a calzone just out of the oven if he thought he had a chance with you.”

“Stop it, Maria.”

“You never know,” Maria continued, undeterred by my resistance. “You're the one who's always telling me that.”

“I'm through with boys and attempts at getting
kissed—whether it's Michael or anybody else—at least for now.”

“Yeah, right. Tonight at the party you'll be complaining to me about how you're dying to find someone new to set your sights on.”

“Ohmigosh. The festival of St. Lucia is tonight! And Andy will be there. I can't see him!” I was filled with dread. “It will be too embarrassing!”

“Antonia, if Andy dares show his face tonight, he'll be so sorry he ever laid eyes on you. I'll make sure of it. Trust me.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“It's bad enough I need to parade around as a fire hazard in front of the entire neighborhood and half of HA and Bishop Francis,” I said, grimacing at the thought of the public display I'd have to face after such a traumatic beginning to my day, not to mention enduring Veronica falling all over Michael in our living room.

“Come on, Antonia. It will be fun. It always is.”

“Easy for you to say. You won't be the one with a ring of lit candles on her head.”

“At least you get to wear a nice dress.”

“Yeah. I can thank Gram for that one.” Gram had taken me to the mall yesterday, rescuing me from the hell of my mother's horrible fashion taste. “I'll be the virginal girl in white, despite Andy's attempts to change that about me.”

The bell rang, signaling the end of lunch. As we cleared our plates and cups, heading to our next class, I secretly hoped that Maria was right, that tonight would be about moving on, whatever that meant, to a new chapter in the life of Antonia Lucia Labella. A good one. We walked in step with each other, Maria giving my arm an I'm-here-for-you squeeze. With every passing moment my latest letter to the Vatican was closer to its destination and a spark of hope took root in my heart. It helped push away the morning's drama, making me believe that, somehow, good things were still on the horizon. Maybe even kissing.

Maria was right—she knew me too well. I was already back on the topic of kissing. The future Patron Saint of the First Kiss and Kissing had better get her act together. It would be a disgrace if the Vatican called on me and I was in antikissing mode.

If only I knew
who
to kiss.

“Stand still, Antonia.”

“I am,” I told Maria. But I couldn't stop shivering.

Cold December air gusted up the stairs and through the front door as it was opened and closed, opened and closed. The temperature inside must have dropped at least ten degrees since all of Federal Hill began squeezing into our tiny apartment, arriving family by family, to celebrate Saint Lucia's Feast Day.

And it had started to snow, the first snow of the season.

We stood in the doorway of the bathroom, trying to catch a glimpse of the guests as they arrived. Maria was pinning the crown of candles in place on my head. Then she would light them. With matches. “Well, death by fire would certainly fast-track me on the road to sainthood,” I said, thinking of all the saints who were burned at the stake—St. Afra, who died of smoke inhalation while her feet were on fire, and Joan of Arc, of course.

“We've already established you are not going to sacrifice your life in order to become a saint, so hold still.”

“Amalia!” Aunt Silvia's nasal voice announced her arrival, ringing throughout the house. Her largeness was notable and she was even louder than her wonder triplets, my cousins, who'd arrived earlier. Most likely to get first dibs on all the food.

“
Ciao
, Silvia!” My mother forced a cheery greeting, her voice a mixture of excitement and stress. She wore a plain long black sleeveless dress that fit her beautifully, setting off the olive tone of her skin. Maybe she had a change of heart about dating, I'd thought earlier that evening, when she emerged from her room, glowing and bejeweled in her finest. Mr. D'Agostino had been hovering around her ever since he'd arrived.

“Hello, Vinny, good to see you,” I heard my mother say.

Vinny was Francesca's fiancé.

The Romanos were here, the Montaquilas, the Mansolillos, the Sartoros, and countless other families. Mr. Romanelli—the elderly man whose groceries I delivered weekly—had even made it for the celebration. Mr. and Mrs. Rotellini appeared, but there'd been no sign of Andy, thanks be to whatever saint was offering me protection. I remembered Maria's promise and knew I wasn't alone, saints or no saints.