I shook my head, no, feeling embarrassed. At that age, I felt inferior because I didn’t get menstrual cramps, which kept Angie and my classmates popping blue Midols in French class. Real women got cramps.
“Well,” she said, “you’re a lucky girl.”
I had never thought of it that way. Suddenly, I felt a violent squeeze around my lower abdomen, then another. I bit my lip, closing my eyes to the luminous cyclops in the ceiling. The pain came again and again, bringing tears to my eyes. I held on to Adelaide, and she to me, saying, “Just a couple more minutes. Hold on to my hand, honey.”
Then it stopped. No more pain, no more cramping. Adelaide explained about the curette while the doctor scraped the baby off the insides of my uterus. I felt nothing.
It was over when the scraping was done. The doctor left the room, saying a quick good-bye. Adelaide stood over me, smoothing my hair back from my face like my own mother would have. She looked so happy and relieved I felt like I had graduated from something.
“Adelaide, I have to tell you something. My name—”
“Hush, baby,” she said, smiling down at me. “You think I don’t watch television?”
She helped me to a recovery room. I had to leave her and was led to a chair near eight other patients. Some of them were having cookies and juice, others were resting in their seats. I stayed there awhile, leaning my head back into the cushions, feeling a mixture of relief and sadness. In time, another counselor came by and roused me. She had an intense medical-student look about her, and she told me in a technical fashion about the pads and the bleeding and the follow-up and the product of the pregnancy.
When I got home, I mumbled something about the flu and crawled into bed with my stuffed Snoopy. I felt raw inside, achy. I stayed in bed through dinner, fake-sleeping when Angie came in at night. I just lay there, bleeding secretly into a pad attached to a strappy sanitary belt. Thinking about how I went in full and came out empty.
The product of the pregnancy.
I knew it was a baby; I didn’t kid myself about that. But for me, that wasn’t the end of the question. We killed in war; we killed in self-defense. Sometimes killing was murder and sometimes it wasn’t. I was confused. I felt that what I did was right, even though I felt just as certainly that it was wrong. My church, being a lot smarter than I, exhibited no such ambivalence. It had all the answers from the get-go, so I knew my family’s prayers for me were lost for good. They would disappear on the way to heaven like the smoky trail of an altar candle.
I look up at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, searching in vain for her eyes. If anyone could understand, Mary could. She had also sacrificed her child. She had no choice either.
“Are you all right, miss?” asks a voice.
I look up, with a shock. An old man is peering into my face, not ten inches from my nose. He looks worried, and I realize, to my surprise, that I’ve been crying. I wipe my cheek with a hand.
“Here you go,” he says. He tucks a broom under his arm and offers me a folded red bandanna from the pocket of his baggy pants. “Take it.”
“No, thanks. I’m fine.”
“Here.” Before I can stop him, he puts the bandanna up to my nose. It smells like fabric softener. “Give ’er a blow. A good hard blow.”
“Are you serious?”
“Go for it.”
So for a minute I forget that I’m over ten years old, a lawyer and a sinner to boot, and let the church janitor blow my nose.
“Good for you!” He folds up the bandanna and tucks it back into his pocket. He’s cute, with a wizened face and sparse tufts of white Bozo hair at each temple. His nose is small and blunted at its tip, as if by a common spade. A safety pin holds his bifocals together, but his blue eyes are sharp behind the glasses. “You got troubles?”
“I’m okay.”
He eases himself onto the bench, leaning on the wiggly broom for support. “That why you’re cryin’? ’Cause you’re okay?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know why I came here.”
“For help. That’s why people come, for help.”
“You think the church can help?”
“Sure. It’s helped me all my life — God has. He’s guided me.” The old man leans back and smiles. His teeth are too perfect. Dentures, like my father.
“You believe.”
“Of course.” He looks at the statue, his back making a tiny hunch. “When was your last confession?” It sounds odd, coming from him.
“Are you a janitor?”
“Are you?”
“I’m a lawyer.”
“I’m a priest! Ha!” He cackles happily, banging his broom on the ground. “Gotcha, didn’t I?”
I laugh. “That’s not fair, Father.”
“No, it isn’t, is it? I’m undercover, like in Miami Vice.” His eyes smile with delight.
I turn away from his bright eyes, confounded by his ruse and his warmth. I don’t remember priests being like this when I was little. They were distant, and disapproving.
“I’m Father Cassiotti. I’m too old to do the masses, Father Napole does that. I assist him. I help however I can. I hear confessions. I tend the Virgin.”
I don’t say anything. I’m not sure what to say. I look at my navy blue pumps planted in the grass.
“See my Darwin tulips? They’re doing just fine. The hyacinths should be up any day now. They’re always slow in coming. They need some coaxing, but I don’t push it. They come up when they’re ready. I just wait.”
I stare at my shoes.
“I’m good at waiting.”
I can almost hear the smile in his voice. My heart wells up. He’s a good man, a kind man.
He’s the best of the church, of what’s right about the church. I take a deep breath. “Where were you when I was a teenager?”
Into my ear, he whispers, “Waukegan.”
I burst into laughter.
“Exiled,” he says, without rancor. “And where were you when you were a teenager?”
“Here.”
“You went to school at OLPH? So, a long time ago, you were a good Catholic. Tell me, are we gonna get you back?”
“I don’t think you want me back, Father.”
“Of course we do! God loves us all. He forgives us all.”
“Not me. Not this.” I look up at the Virgin, but she won’t look at me.
He slaps his knee. “Let’s make a reconciliation! Right now.”
“Confession? Here?”
“Why not?”
“There’s no confessional. I can see you.”
“Silly! Why do we have to sit in a telephone booth! In Waukegan, I performed many confessions face-to-face, although I’ll admit I’ve never done one outdoors.” He chuckles. “You don’t need a booth for a confession, my dear. All you need is to examine your conscience. If you resolve not to sin in the future, confess, and accept your penance, you’ve reconciled yourself with God.”
I search the eyes behind the bifocals. He makes it sound so easy, but I know it isn’t. There are bodies on my back, big ones and little ones, and despite the kindness in his eyes, I understand that they’re mine to bear. I can’t confess, not to his blue eyes, not in the yellow sunshine, not before the white Virgin on the green grass. The colors are too dense here, like a child’s box of crayons, and too painfully pretty. “God won’t forgive me, Father.”
“I’m sure that God already has, my dear. But I don’t think you have forgiven yourself.”
Suddenly, we’re interrupted by a flock of apoplectic mammarellas in flowered housedresses. “Father Cassiotti! Father Cassiotti! Thank God we found you! The church door is locked, and the mass is in fifteen minutes! We can’t get in!”
Their agitation rattles him. His hands shake as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a jingling ring of keys. “My goodness, I’m sorry, ladies.” He looks at me worriedly. “I have to go open the church. Will you excuse me?”
“I should be going anyway.” I rise to my feet, unce
rtainly.
“No, please. Stay here. Please.”
“Father, your flowers look so good!” chirps one of the women, grabbing Father Cassiotti by the elbow. “Look at them, Conchetta. So pretty!”
“It’s a sin!” adds a second, taking his other arm.
They surge forward like a rugby team, pound for pound outweighing the little priest, and engulf him in their enthusiasm. They sweep him to the church like a winning coach, and all I can see of him is his bony hand in the air, bearing its janitor’s key ring. I shout good-bye, and the key ring jingles back.
I decide to walk back to the office. It’ll clear my head, and it would be impossible to find a cab down here anyway. I realize that Father Cassiotti is right: I have to forgive myself. But I don’t know how, even so many years later. I head north toward the center of the city, leaving behind the blocks that measure my girlhood.
Once out of the neighborhood, I feel nervous again. The sun is white-hot, unseasonably so, and leaves me exposed on the bare sidewalks. My walk picks up to a run, and before I know it I’m hustling through the city blocks. I glance around for the dark sedan but keep moving, jogging past babies in strollers and teenagers hanging out on the corner.
I’m slowed by the busy lunchtime crowd at Pat’s, a popular cheese-steak stand across from a playground. I thread my way through the crowd; a couple of the men in line look at me curiously. My armholes are wet underneath my blazer and blotches itch on my chest. I’m about to cross the street, still going north, when I see the figures.
About fifty feet away, at the edge of the basketball court, two big men are arguing. A crowd of basketball players and truants collects around the pair. Even at this distance, something about the men looks familiar.
I freeze when I recognize them.
It’s Detective Lombardo. And Berkowitz.
23
I duck behind a minivan parked on Federal Street and watch them through its sooty windows. The argument escalates as Berkowitz gestures wildly, almost out of control. Suddenly, he drives his fist into Lombardo’s cheek. Blood pours from the detective’s nose. He cups it in pain, staggering backward.
Berkowitz eyes the crowd uneasily, then stalks off the court. The onlookers applaud as he climbs into his black Mercedes sedan, parked illegally at the curb, and drives away. Lombardo shuffles off in the opposite direction, cradling his nose. The crowd boos loudly. “Pussy!” they shout. “Hit ’em back, you dumb fuck!”
I draw a breath. It feels like the first one in five minutes. What the hell is going on? What are they doing, having a fight in the middle of South Philly? I remember what Lombardo said after the memorial service — that Berkowitz was very interested in the investigation. Is the investigation what they were fighting about? What else could it be, if not something having to do with Brent’s death? And maybe even Mike’s?
I’m scared, and Father Cassiotti’s no help now. Apparently, neither are the police. I consider busting into Lombardo’s office and demanding an explanation, or busting into Berkowitz’s office and demanding an explanation, but who am I kidding? I’m not a gunslinger; I’m in way over my head. My first thought is to run, to get the hell out of Dodge, but where can I go? The only person I know who lives out of the city is Angie.
Angie!
In the convent, near Baltimore. The idea appeals to me immediately. I’ll bang on the convent doors, pound them until they let me in. I’ll say it’s a family emergency, which it is, and they’ll open the doors. They have to, they’re a convent. What could be safer than a convent?
I look around for a phone and spot one back at Pat’s. I walk over to it, trying not to break into a dead run in front of the noisy crowd of office workers and construction jocks. Almost as soon as I pick up the greasy receiver, a rangy black basketball player gets in line behind me to use it. Behind him comes a mailman. I reach Judy and tell her what I saw, shouting into the receiver over the crowd noise.
“He punched him?” Judy says. “What are they doing down there anyway? What are you doing down there?”
The basketball player makes a pleading face for the phone, and I give him a one-minute sign.
“I’m leaving the city, Judy. For the night, anyway.”
“Where are you going?”
I can barely hear her. I put a finger in my free ear. “I was going to get the notes from Ned after lunch, but I can’t. Will you call him and get them?”
“Ned has the notes? I was wondering where they were!”
“Keep them someplace safe, okay?”
The basketball player folds his hands in mock prayer.
“Judy, I have to go, somebody wants to use the phone. He’s begging already.”
“But where are you going to stay tonight? You can stay with me, you know that.”
An old man in a mesh cap that says OLD FART gets in line for the phone behind the mailman.
“Thanks, but I got a better idea. Call you tomorrow.” I hang up.
“Thanks a lot,” the ballplayer says, tucking the basketball under his arm. “I got to call my girl. We had a fight, you know what I’m sayin’?”
“I think so.”
I push through the crowd, looking for a cab. One should be around soon; Pat’s is like a magnet. My blotches announce themselves with a vengeance. I worry about running into Lombardo, Berkowitz, or whoever’s following me. My head is spinning. I spot a yellow cab and jump in, slumping down all the way in the seat. Partly from exhaustion, partly from fear.
The cab driver is a streetwise manchild in a backwards Phillies cap. He eyes me warily over his shoulder. “Look, lady, I don’t want no trouble in my cab.”
“There won’t be. Please, I have to go to a garage at Twenty-second and Pine. My car’s there. Can we just go?”
He shakes his head. “You don’t look like the type to be running from the cops, but you’re sure runnin’ from somethin’.”
“I am. I’m running from… my boyfriend. We had a fight.”
He breaks into a knowing grin. “Man trouble.”
I nod. “We have to get out of here. Fast.”
“You got it, gorgeous.” He flips down the flag and guns the motor. He runs two lights as he zips up Twenty-second Street. At the same time, he manages to give me unsolicited advice on my love life, delivered to a rapper’s beat: Gotta make ’em beg for it, gotta make ’em want it, gotta make ’em show respect. We’re at the garage by the time he shifts into, “Gotta shop around.”
“Right. Listen, would you do me a favor, please? Just wait here for two minutes until you see me drive out?”
“Ain’t no way he coulda followed me, lady. I was bookin’.”
I hand him a tip the size of the fare.
“All right!” he says appreciatively.
“It’s a green BMW.”
“A BMW? I like it! Which one, the 325 or the 535?”
“The 2002, from before you were born. It’s lime green, you can’t miss it.” I get out of the cab.
“You gotta pick and choose, remember that now.”
In ten minutes, I’m making my way through the western part of the city to the Schuylkill Expressway. I almost have an accident from driving with one eye on the rearview mirror. No one appears to be following me, and when I pull onto the expressway I begin to breathe easier. The traffic is light, and I switch lanes a couple of times to see if anyone behind me does the same. It takes only a minute for me to realize that everybody else is switching lanes in a similarly haphazard way.
Which looks normal.
I hit warp speed in the car Mike lovingly called the Snotmobile and bust through the city limits like I’m breaking the sound barrier. After a time I satisfy myself that no one’s on my tail, and I feel freer, safer. Like I’m not trapped anymore, by the city and by whoever’s after me there. I roll down the window and snap on the radio. I recognize the husky bass voice as George Michael’s, in the middle of “Father Figure.” I love that song. I turn it louder.
I remember going to visit Angie,
singing along to the radio while Mike drove this car. My parents trailed us in their Oldsmobile, which meant we pulled over every ten minutes for them to catch up. It didn’t bother Mike that my father poked along so. Nothing really fazed him, he was like Judy that way. He loved life, truly. He let it wash over him.
I swing the peppy BMW onto Route 1 heading south, serenaded by Prince. Route 1, the old Baltimore Pike, is more direct to the convent than I-95. If I don’t get lost, I’ll be there by nightfall.
Angie entered the convent just after we graduated from Penn. I majored in English, she in religion. “What kind of job will you get with that major?” I asked when she chose it, but she answered with a shrug. When she finally told us, my parents were delighted, but I was appalled. I screamed at her, told her she was throwing her life away. My mother begged me to stop, my father merely shook. I ran from the house. My last look back was at Angie. She sat there, impassive behind her coffee, dead calm at the vortex of a familial hurricane.
The traffic on Route I moves swiftly, fluidly. I catch barely a light. A woman I don’t recognize sings a ballad. My thoughts turn to the convent.
Angie’s first year as a novitiate was my first year as a law student. She wasn’t allowed visitors, telephone calls, or even mail. It was to be a test of her commitment to a religious life, and we heard nothing from her. I felt an almost unendurable loss, as if she were held hostage by religious fanatics, which was my take on the situation anyway. Outside the cloister, life went on. My mother’s eyes deteriorated, my father gained twenty pounds. I made law review and learned to trust men again. With Mike’s help.
The sad song ends abruptly, in silence.
Which was the worst thing about Angie’s life in the cloister. Her vow of silence. How could they silence Angie, who was so full of talk, of ideas? I remembered the nights we gossiped in our room, the whispered jokes in class, the shouted jeers on the walk home. So much talk, so much language. English and Italian at home, French in school, Latin at mass. No more.
The traffic thins out, the stoplights are fewer. Madonna comes on, thumpa thumpa thumpa, and I turn off the radio with a satisfying click. I hate Madonna; she’s even more confused about Catholicism than I am. I barrel through the rural stretches south of Media, past dairy cows and old barns. The odor of manure wafts through the air. I step on the gas.