Too Close to the Falls (38 page)

“It is far better that they atone for their sins on earth than in hell. It is far better that they realize the gravity of their behaviour now.”

Miranda said in a tone sounding honestly confused, “Sister, I have no idea why you think this liquor thing was us. I mean . . .”

Mother Superior interrupted her, not willing to listen to her explanation for one moment. “I take my directions from the Almighty and He has informed me who committed this sin. Not only have you committed a mortal sin on your own soul, but you have deprived every other well-intentioned Catholic of Sunday mass.”

Miranda asked in a convincingly indignant tone, “Have you any proof?”

Mother Superior wheeled around and faced her. “Miranda, do not blaspheme. You have understood a Godless world very early in your life and I suspect you will do very well in it.” (Mother Agnese was the only one in Lewiston to predict Miranda's success. She became an international headhunter, never married, and lives in a penthouse in Chicago.)

She turned to me, and her hatred bore a hole through my chest. I felt as though I were breathing through a reed. “Catherine, you think you are special. I was once taken in by the myth of strength that you perpetuate. You are no longer worthy of my attention. Strong people build on their strengths, they do not capitalize on other's weaknesses; that is easy. What I once thought was a boundless spirit that could have been offered to God, if that were to be your vocation, is really no more than a weak spirit, one that could not handle the rigours put before it. These rigours were not tests of huge proportions but were the normal self-control expected of a Catholic schoolgirl. Yet you speak of Joan of Arc and believe that
you
should have played her in our pageant? In your weakness you have been swayed by someone who knows no better. To work as Satan's disciple gives illusory moments of pleasure, but they are bought at a dear price.”

No one said a word. Mother Superior stood up, forcing a
shocked Father Flanagan to his feet. She said, “Goodnight, and may the Holy Spirit be with you,” to no one in particular, backed out of the double doors, black veil flying, and was gone. Since there was no point pleading with someone who wasn't there, we all shuffled out silently, passing Mrs. Skelly as she was clumping in with the tea.

I walked on the ribbed rubber runners down the cold rectory corridor to the vestibule, where my boots were thoroughly chilled. I wondered if I really was going to the public school with the other Catholic children whose parents cared so little about their souls they couldn't pay the few dollars a year it cost to send them to Catholic school. They were the children who didn't know any of the prayers for their first communion, who had seemed tough, hard, and so lost. Were we to have no uniforms and trundle back to Catholic school once a week for religious instructions given by the priests and nuns out of charity?

As I staggered from the dark hallway into the darker night, waiting for my silent father to relight his cigar, I pictured the Masaccio painting of Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise. I thought of all of those Renaissance pictures of the expulsion from Eden, of Michelangelo's snake wrapped around a tree and handing Eve the apple. I knew at that moment that my expulsion from Catholicism was complete. I was shocked that God, if He was there, chose to remain silent, as silent as my father, at this time when I last called upon Him.

Shunned from the fold, Miranda and I slunk off to public school. The term “trial by fire” leaps to mind when describing our brief foray into public life. It was the end of the first week of junior high school and I still couldn't find my locker. After getting unceremoniously booted out of Catholic school, I felt like Dr. Manette
in
A Tale of Two Cities
, who had been locked in the Bastille for so many years he was unable to cope with the light when he got out. We were no longer cloistered and the open spaces were giving me the bends. No one took the least bit of interest in our attire, our makeup, or our souls.

Miranda and I picked up our book bags for the pilgrimage back to Hennepin Hall for our weekly religious instruction class. We had to make the trek as the “prodigal daughters” of humiliated parents. Like the other poor souls who were deprived of a full-time spiritual education, we swarmed out of the public school exits like locusts before a storm, ready to devour any salvation in our paths.

To be prepared for such an auspicious occasion of enlightenment, we needed to fortify ourselves with nourishment, so we stopped into Reggie's sub shop. Although we knew that food was forbidden in class, we reasoned that if Christ's disciples needed loaves and fishes we needed the 1950s equivalent: a hoagie, wax lips, and Dubble Bubble.

“
Jesus H. Christ
, it must be ninety-five damn degrees.” (Now that we were in public school we swore like sailors and no one even raised an eyebrow.) “They said on the radio it's the hottest day in forty years.” Since no one was answering me, I continued wondering aloud, “Why did I believe I should wear my back-to-school outfit — just because I was going back to goddamn school?” I was dragging along in my kilt, oxford cloth shirt that hung out the back, slipping knee socks that were giving me a prickly heat rash, and Bass Weejun loafers. We looked like a bedraggled
Brigadoon
road company.

Miranda had a flair as a Father Flanagan mimic, among other
things. She spoke with only a trace of an Irish accent and craned her neck at exactly the angle he used when he wanted to disseminate the word of the Lord: “Saint Valentine wore a hair shirt all year and offered up his suffering for lost souls — can you not offer up your suffering for the souls who languish in purgatory?”

Reggie, who referred to himself as “a submarine architect,” was thoroughly impressed with Miranda's pious imitation because he, too, knew Father Flanagan. He even gave her the hot peppers for free. We always got hot peppers so we wouldn't have to share with others, but took them out of our subs before they burned our lips.

I never understood what caused Miranda to have such an effect on men. I knew she was beautiful, but it was more than that. I looked at her in the window of the sub shop. My father once said she had “alarming beauty with disarming charm.” I remembered that line because I had never heard him say anything like that about any woman before or after — let alone about a fifteen-year-old.

Miranda's thick hair was so purely black it looked dyed. My own hair was fine and pale blond, and I always marvelled at how Miranda had only to wrap the rubber band around her ponytail once while I had to twist it three times. She had porcelain-white skin. Her eyes were large and blue and her eyelashes so long that they brushed her sunglass lenses. Her eyes turned up slightly at the corners.

“Don't turn those electric eyes on me,” Reggie said. “There's no free candy here. Remember you're not the star of
Black Beauty
here, Little Miss Elizabeth Taylor.” He scooped extra penny candy into her small brown bag and said she could pick a “bonus item.” She smiled and chose a “Daddy Long Legs” Turkish taffy sucker.

At the breakfast table I told my mother that Reggie said
Miranda looked like Elizabeth Taylor, the infamous
divorced
actress whose picture was splashed on the cover of
Photoplay
. I wondered if it was a compliment. I thought the way that Reggie said it, it was more of an accusation; however, underneath it must have been a compliment because she got extra candy.

My mother looked disgusted. She turned to my father and said, “Filling girls' heads with that kind of nonsense at this age is dangerous.”

My father said,
“Dangerous?”
as though my mother were exaggerating. They very rarely disagreed and my mother never exaggerated; that was my department. My father realized they had “had words” and he went over to her chair, rested his hand on her shoulder, and said, “Well, I think that you look like Grace Kelly and I never told you before because I thought it might be
dangerous
for you to know that.”

They both laughed and my mother said, “I guess I'm lucky that you kept it to yourself.”

As he left for his store, my father said over his shoulder, “I just wanted to tell you before Reggie did.”

I had no idea what that interchange was about, but I was aware it took place in the physical realm, a place I'd never seen or heard either of them visit in the past. As far as I could figure out, there was a big fuss being made over next to nothing.

Our next stop was Woolworth's. We had infinite admiration for the cosmetician, as she insisted on being called. Even when we saw her in church on Sunday we referred to her as the cosmetician. There was something terribly official about her salmon-coloured smock with the Woolworth crest on it. She was the one who said Miranda's eyes were almond-shaped and all her features were so
perfect they only needed “accenting.” She said, while applying “coral reef” lipstick, that my face needed “contrast” and that I looked like a “faded blond.” Who wants to fade before fifteen? On the other hand the cosmetician called me “delicate” and “leggy.”

“She is Western New York's high-jump champion. Delicate, huh?” Miranda said with disdain.

“I guess that's the leggy part,” I added lamely. I had white-blond hair which wasn't bad, but I also had a blond face. The more makeup Miranda applied, the more exotic she would look, and the more I slapped on, the more I looked like a kewpie doll. What was amazing about Miranda was that she woke up one day looking “womanly” without any awkward stages. She had one of those hourglass figures with full breasts which looked great under twin sweater sets. I must have been in the washroom when God was handing those out.

We bought tons of makeup because there were two rules on makeup that I had figured out. First, for everything you bought, you needed its opposite: day cream/night cream; moisturizer/ astringent; lip powder/lip gloss. Second, you needed to carry all makeup with you at all times in a special zipped bag. You never know when you might need an astringent. So off we lumbered on our pilgrimage, loaded down with food and makeup, knowing full well that the only forbidden items in the eyes of Father Flanagan were food and makeup.

Father Flanagan was waiting for us, his red nose beaming a welcome. We flopped down in our chairs, makeup screaming and red-and-white submarine bags signalling our defiance. He had a bemused expression on his face and began in his Irish lilt. “Well, ladies, welcome to religious instruction for our first September
class as we are about to usher in a new decade. We have a few surprises in store for you this year. I'm back by popular demand.” Miranda and I began choking and rolling our eyes. Some of the more religious girls, like Linda Low, scowled at us. Linda's mother ran a beauty parlour off the back of her house and Linda always had perfect hair, with roller marks and one or two hair clips left in to assure symmetry. Linda was still president of the Guardians of Mary Club. I was never quite sure what we were guarding since I thought Mary was guarding us. Although disgustingly boring, Linda did have a real following among those girls who wanted a fast track to the hereafter. Miranda and I had no following whatsoever, but I firmly believed we were silently admired for our rebelliousness. We were also convinced Father Flanagan had finally turned tail after we vociferously spread the news of what we believed to be his ecclesiastical shortcomings. I was later to find out how wrong I had been on both counts and that the real foundation of my delusion was based on these two false assumptions. Christ said to Saint Peter, “On this rock build my church.” I said, “On these foundations, I build my delusion of a Catholic girlhood.”

Father turned to me, smiling, with his hands neatly tucked into the breast pockets of his cassock. “Catherine McClure, our most punctilious, often pugnacious parishioner, has raised several points of interest, as has our bevelled beauty, the insouciant Miranda Doyle. They have suggested, in ever so ‘umble a tone, that I am preparing them for only one thing in life — the holiest of vocations — motherhood.”

“Hear, hear,” Miranda muttered between mouthfuls.

“Since Miranda Doyle is not at her most eloquent when masticating, perhaps we will let Catherine, one of our most
loquacious repentants, express her sentiments.”

As I unpacked my submarine, I said, “Gladly. We objected to the fact — I repeat,
fact
— that the boys learn philosophy and we learn how to build ‘holy tabernacles' — the Catholic home.” I said this with dripping sarcasm and heard a few titters from the rebellious wannabees in the back of the room, which served to boost my oratory. “The magazine
We Willing Workers
should be used to wrap submarines and not to ‘teach girls.' I don't need to travel three miles to find out how to change the flowers on the altar.”