“Wouldn’t we all?” I say wistfully.
“There’s nothing wrong with your spread,” Rufus says.
“B was smart,” Christina says. “He bought that house when no one was living over by water. And now look.”
“No, don’t get me wrong, I love my house. But I do feel a little tug of regret when I see Eydie get into her town car and head back to Manhattan for a bar crawl and all-night dancing.”
“I’d move into the city, but it would kill my mother.” Capri lights a cigarette, then passes the pack around.
“Then you shouldn’t do it,” Pedro says solemnly.
“The stress of upsetting her always outweighed my desire for personal freedom. But not anymore. I have to move on. At least to West Long Branch. Right, B?”
“One stick of furniture at a time. By 1980 you should be moved out completely.”
“I met your priest,” Rufus says, smiling.
“What did you think?”
“He’s a cleric.” Rufus shrugs.
“What the hell does that mean?” The way I ask this question makes everyone laugh.
“It means he toes the company line. He asked what my role was in the renovation. And I told him I just met you and I hadn’t seen the church yet. He looked at me and said, ‘Don’t touch the choir loft.’ ”
“You see what I have to deal with? Small minds!” I throw my hands in the air.
“I was hoping I’d get to see the church. If you tell us where it is, Pedro and I can swing by and see the exterior tonight.”
“I have a key. Let’s go.”
I feel like a high school kid again as I sneak Rufus, Christina, and Capri through the side door of Our Lady of Fatima and lock it behind us.
I turn on the lights. Rufus begins to look around. Pedro walks up the side aisle and genuflects before going behind the altar to look at the fresco. I forgot that Mexico is 90 percent Catholic. The girls and I join him. “What do you think?” I ask Pedro.
“It’s very nice,” he says quietly.
“There’s a lot of potential here,” Rufus says from behind us. “I like the height, the arcades, and the rib vaulting. Very nice.”
“How about the mural?” I point.
“It was painted by my great-uncle by marriage, Michael Menecola,” Christina tells Rufus.
“He painted all the signs in the town. And he painted company logos on trucks and things.” I don’t want to give Rufus the impression that we think Michael Menecola was Michelangelo. He was a painter who could copy from other pictures, not a true artist. Rufus touches the wall. Pedro joins him.
“It doesn’t tell the whole story,” Pedro says, flicking a bit of the paint with his fingernail. “The story of Fatima is so much more than this.” He points to the Blessed Mother floating overhead and the three children looking up at her.
“But what happened, exactly? I remember the kids had visions.” Rufus looks at Pedro.
“Well, Fatima was actually a Muslim princess who lived in Portugal when it was occupied by her people. She died young, but after she converted to Catholicism.”
“I didn’t know that,” I say. “Twelve years of nuns browbeating me with useless information, and I never learned that. Go on.”
“In 1917, during the First World War, three little children, Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta, were tending sheep, and they saw what they called ‘the Angel of Peace’ in the sky. They returned to the field many times, and sometimes the angel would appear to them. Months later, they saw an apparition they called ‘the Lady of the Rosary.’ She gave them Communion. So the kids told everyone they knew about what they saw and what she had done. The word spread, and on the day the Lady promised to appear again, thousands of people gathered to see her.”
“And,” Christina continues, “that’s when the miracle of the sun happened. The people were praying, and then the sun turned black and seemed to spin out of the sky like a top. People were screaming, and then it started to pour rain. The field, according to reports, turned to mud, and they couldn’t move. Then suddenly the sun returned overhead, bright as ever, and she appeared again, the Lady of the Rosary. And the people were dry instantly, and the earth was dry. No one could believe it. And then she spoke to them.”
“This is giving me the creeps,” Capri says, tightening the belt of her coat. “Remember, folks, I’m half Jewish. We don’t do miracles.” Capri sits on Father’s chair. “If you’re gonna tell scary stories, I need a drink. Rumor has it there’s wine around here somewhere.”
“The Blessed Mother had three secrets,” Pedro continues.
“I’m warning you all,” Capri whines. “I’m getting chills.”
“What were they?” Rufus asks as he checks the supports to the vaulted ceiling.
“World War I would end, but if people didn’t repent, there would be a worse war on the way,” Christina says.
“Well, that certainly turned out to be true,” I say.
“And the second secret was that believers needed to pray to convert Russia away from communism. And then there’s a third secret that was supposed to be revealed in the last decade, but the Pope decided to wait until the year 2000.” Pedro quietly finishes the story.
A shiver runs through me. Father Porp has always been cheap with the heat. We stand in silence looking at the mural. The face of the Blessed Lady, which I have prayed to without fail all of my life, suddenly seems bored by the whole scene. I used to believe that expression was one of quiet intelligence, but now it seems like she’s saying, “Oh, get on with it.” We hear footsteps. We look at one another and freeze.
“Someone’s here,” Christina whispers to me.
The sounds are coming from the sacristy. Father Porporino emerges from the door. “What’s going on here?”
“Father! Whew. I thought it was a ghost.”
“Or the Lady of Fatima making a Jersey appearance,” Capri says wryly. Father does not find this funny.
From my place closest to the door, I see a shadowy figure slip out of the sacristy, through the door that leads to a hallway, then to the cemetery. Father doesn’t notice that I saw anything. He casually closes the sacristy door behind him and joins us.
“I wanted Mr. McSherry and Mr. Alarcon to see the church while they’re here.” I chirp just like I did when I was a boy caught making figurines with the candle wax after Mass.
“Oh.” Father Porporino seems nervous.
“I’m finished with my plans for the renovation, and I wanted to toss around some ideas with Mr. McSherry.”
“It’s a beautiful church.” Rufus’s compliment seems to go a long way with Father Porp.
“Thank you.” Father smiles. “Let me show you around.” Capri looks at me as though she’d rather gnaw on a pipe than get another tour, but I shoot her a “keep quiet” look.
“Any idea about that third secret of Fatima, Father?” I ask as he walks us to the side door after the tour.
“There are a lot of rumors, but no one knows for sure.”
“Nobody can keep secrets like the Catholic Church,” Capri mumbles.
We bid Father Porporino good night, and once we’re outside, we laugh like a pack of teenagers caught with a six-pack and a Playboy after school. Capri and Christina say good night and get into my car. I walk Rufus and Pedro to theirs.
“So, what do you think?” I ask Rufus, pointing to the church.
“What do you have in mind?” he says as he lights a cigarette.
“I want to blow it wide open. New fresco, stained-glass windows, grotto, and floor plan.”
“Let’s figure out a time when you can show me the plans.”
“Absolutely. So can I count you in?” I ask him hopefully.
“Count me in,” he says and smiles.
As they drive away, I can’t help but look up at the night sky and holler, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” The Bernini of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, is on board, so anything is possible.
The last bit of wisdom my professor Maeve Schl
ondorf imparted to me prior to my graduation from Parsons was “Never, never, never give anything away for free. Not advice, not a throw pillow, and not an ashtray. Nothing! We must train the public to hire interior decorators.” I should have listened. Instead, I find myself driving to Manasquan to install a wall mural for Toot’s college roommate, Booboo Miglio (one of the gregarious bobby-soxers from the all-girl St. Elizabeth’s College, Convent Station, New Jersey, Class of 1940), for free.
I park in front of her Victorian on Hammer Avenue (Victorians, as a general rule, don’t have driveways or garages, which is the first reason not to live in one). Booboo’s yard is loaded with Christmas claptrap, life-sized plastic choir boys, and enormous candy canes, stuck in the ground like striped stakes. On the roof, Santa and his sled pulled by the reindeer are anchored on the gutter. Christmas in Squan is always decorative. I pull the mural out of my trunk, along with a tub of wallpaper paste and my tools. She greets me on the porch.
“Bartolomeo, hun-nee!” Booboo is still a girl, despite five children in quick succession and a husband who drinks. She has kept the ready-kilowatt smile and trim figure of her youth. An adorable brunette with a cap of curls and sparkling brown eyes, she likes beautiful things but cannot afford them, which I find endearing. People who like nice things should have them. Booboo holds the door open as I wedge past.
“Merry Christmas! Get rid of that screen door,” I chide her. “It’s winter.”
“I know. By the time I get around to it, it’s spring, so I just leave it.”
“Remember what Aristotle said: ‘Good style must be clear, it must be appropriate.’ A screen door on a house in winter is like a sled in the swimming pool in summer.”
Per my instruction, Booboo decorated her house in soft yellow and white. The furniture is covered in a sturdy, tufted cotton check—simple, clean, and cheery. When there’s a gang of kids in a house, everything should be washable, so she used a clear lacquer sheen over the paint on her walls so she can wash them down like the family dog.
Booboo has cleared the wall in her living room and prepped it as I asked, so all I need to do is hang the mural. I spread the wallpaper paste evenly over a quarter of the wall. She helps me unroll the first of four panels and place it on the paste. “This is going to be stunning!” she squeals, clapping her hands. “You know, I need a little Italy in my life. A Venetian carnival. A seaside holiday. A little Rome, a little rococo.”
“What you’re getting is the harbor at Portofino.” She doesn’t need to know that they had a showroom final sale at D&D and I picked it up for a song.
“I love it already. I’ll have a destination on my wall, and I don’t have to actually go there.”
“That’s the idea.” I step back after smoothing down the panel and see a few boats bobbing in bright blue water at the foot of the stone cliffs on the glittering Mediterranean.
“It will brighten up the whole house,” Booboo says. “Did you know your sister is sleeping with her ex-husband?”
“What?”
“Toot is sleeping with Lonnie. They got together the Tuesday after your party. That strapless she wore drove him nuts. So they made a date. They went to Voltaco’s in Ocean City for hoagies and then grabbed a hotel room.”
“I don’t need to know this.”
“Somebody has to talk to her. She’ll listen to you.”
“I’m her brother. I don’t want to know this stuff. Besides, she’s dating Sal Concarni.”
“He’s impotent.”
“Dear God. She told you that?”
“Your sister got tired of Sal’s excuses—all to avoid . . . you know. Plus, he refuses to go to a doctor. What do men think, anyhow? That a lump goes away on its own? That a peter rises to every occasion without medical intervention? Anyhow, Toot has needs and Sal wasn’t meeting them. He said he was tired all the time. He also drinks.” Booboo motions toward the kitchen.
“Is your husband home?”
“No, he’s at work. I just point to the kitchen because that’s where the beer is kept.”
“Oh.”
“At a certain point, when a man drinks, it affects the apparatus.” Booboo makes a sweeping gesture toward her thighs.
“Say no more.”
“I have the same problem over here, but the difference is, I don’t want to have sex with my husband. If it never happens again in my natural lifetime, that will be absolutely fine with me.”
“Booboo, really. This is none of my business.”
“I’m telling you, a man hits, let’s say fifty-seven or so, my Vinnie is fifty-eight, and it goes away.”
“I don’t want to hear this.”
“It’s difficult for a man. You know, all your equipment is outside, and it has to work to be effective. Women can pretend to enjoy it or really enjoy it or not, it’s all the same to your partner. But a man has to perform. It must feel like a burden. It can’t be easy.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“It’s also the age. I mean, in a perfect world, I’d like to have a younger man. I didn’t count on winding up with Grandpa over here. But what’s a girl supposed to do?”
I feel myself getting claustrophobic, so I make fast work of the final panel, which features a couple in a rowboat reading to each other at the base of the mural.
“Oh look, young love.” Booboo sighs. “You know what I tell my children?”
“What?” In all honesty, I am afraid to find out.
“Make love while you’re young, while you’re brisk and supple and interested in it. Because someday it will leave you just as it came—in an instant.” She snaps her fingers.
I look her right in the eye. “Did anything the nuns at Convent Station drilled into you girls stick? My sister is gallivanting around in fleabag motels with a man from whom she was bitterly divorced. And you are instructing your children to enroll in Free Love Camp. Tell me, is this what the Holy Roman Church had in mind when they inculcated us with their dogma? What the hell is going on?”
“Life.”
I present my final plans for the church renovation on December 13 at the last scheduled parish council meeting of the year, with Rufus and Pedro in attendance. Father Porporino is very curious, as is the council, whose members have called me individually at home. We gather in the church basement, surrounded by the unfurled flags of the Knights of Columbus, which are displayed on poles around the room like an indoor United Nations Plaza.
Rufus and Pedro are good sports. They drove out to meet everyone and hear my ideas. The council members sit at a long bingo table with their notes in front of them. Rufus and Pedro sit at the head of the table with me. I’ve laid out fresh doughnuts and a pot of coffee, and Zetta made a plate of fudge, which she passes around the room.
The entire leadership of our church is in attendance. Sister Mary Michael, principal of our parish-operated grade school; Zetta Montagna, president of the sodality; Aurelia Mandelbaum, chair of the Ways and Means Committee; Zeke Nero, Exterior Grounds and Fountains; Tulio Savastanno, Cemetery Maintenance; Father Porp, RC Incorporated. And recently elected to four-year terms on the council: Artie Rego, Gus Lascola, Finola Franco, and Palmie Barrone. Christina takes notes. Perky Marie Cascario, recording secretary, takes the minutes.
Father Porp calls the meeting to order and turns the meeting over to me.
“Thank you, Father. I’ve dreamed all my life of renovating our church. I’m not going to kid you, it needs it. Besides the aesthetics, we have some structural issues. Our engineer, Norman Thresher, came in and surveyed the building.” I hand a stack of mimeographed reports to Christina, who gets up and distributes them around the table. “There is work to be done on the foundation, the stonework needs repointing, and there are issues with the roof.”
“Slow down, B, I’m getting a corn on my middle finger,” Marie complains.
“Don’t press so hard on your pencil,” advises Sister Mary Michael, who taught everybody in OLOF under the age of fifty to write.
For the li
fe of me, I have never understood why the slowest woman in the parish is the recording secretary. I continue, upbeat yet speaking slowly and deliberately so poor Marie can keep up. “And then, once the building is secure, we will begin our renovation. My plans will go to the architect Severino Carosso, who will turn them around for the engineer. We will need to close the church at least until next summer.”
“Where will we have Mass?” Finola asks.
“The gym at OLOF High,” Father answers.
“You can’t hear a thing in there,” Finola complains. “You might as well have Mass on the turnpike.”
“What’s the budget for this thing?” Palmie asks as he dumps a carload of sugar into his black coffee. Never mind that he’s a diabetic.
“Aurelia Mandelbaum has graciously financed the renovation. A working budget can be found on page three of your report. Please note that not a penny of the church coffers will be used. Beyond that, I don’t like to talk money.”
“I don’t either,” Aurelia seconds me. “It takes the starch out of giving, my Sy used to say.”
“What’s the church gonna look like when you’re done with it?” Tulio asks.
“It will be majestic and inspirational. You can see some of my sketches on pages eight through twelve of the report. These are not set in stone. I’ll be consulting with Rufus McSherry before we make any final decisions.” I cut Tulio off because he is a malcontent who never has anything good to say about any project we undertake. He waited so long to make a decision about fixing the gutters in the church plaza that we had a flood on Easter Sunday 1969 that required half the congregation to skip the Mass of the Resurrection because they could not navigate the rushing water. Then I drive my point home. “I would like to introduce Rufus McSherry, the artist who will implement the design, paint the fresco, and, with the help of Pedro Alarcon, his talented apprentice, refurbish the stained-glass windows. Rufus and Pedro stand to a round of applause, then sit. “Any questions?”
“We gotta top St. Catharine’s in Spring Lake,” Finola says, pulling a hot-pink emery board out of her purse and commencing to file her thumbnail. “It’s a replica of Santa Maria del Popolo in Vatican City.” She points her file at me. “Three of my cousins were married there. I don’t think we can beat its majestic grandeur, if you know what I mean.”