Full of Grace (20 page)

I
t was November and the holiday season was heralded in retail outlets across the land. In all the grocery stores, smiling cardboard turkeys sporting Pilgrim hats swung from the ceiling of every aisle. Boxes of Christmas candies and the ingredients for fruitcakes and cookies appeared overnight in beautiful displays. Store employees wore Santa caps and sat at prominently placed tables taking orders for spiral-cut honey-baked hams and other specialty items while chatting with customers about how many people would be around their table that year.

Michael would not be at my family’s house for Thanksgiving, but I would. We didn’t bring it up to each other because what was the point?

We had done some grocery shopping and we were feeling pretty good as we pushed a cart through the throng of holiday shoppers at Lowe’s, intending to buy only a bag of mulch for the survival of our tiny winter garden and to restock our supply of lightbulbs. Needless to say, many other things found their way into our hands.

“Look at this cordless drill,” he said. “It’s like only thirty bucks! Boy, I could use this!”

“Put it back so Santa can surprise you!” I took it from his hands and replaced it on the shelf. “Of course, depending on how good you were this year?”

“Are you kidding?
This year
? This year I was a saint.”

“Yeah, you sort of were,” I said, and smiled at him.

He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “So were you.”

“Don’t give me unrealistic expectations of some fantastic gifts from you, Dr. Big Shot,” I said. “I’m thinking about a big shiny Rolex.”

“Yeah, right. Don’t let me forget to go to Barnes & Noble.”

“With diamonds. What, so you can buy me an Itty Bitty Book Light, you Don Juan, you?”

“No, so I can pick up the load of books on tape for my mom’s nursing home.”

“Oh.”

“And large-print paperbacks. They’re getting rid of a bunch of old stock and it’s cheaper to donate it than it is to return it, I guess.”

“You are so good to do that. Really, Michael.”

“Hey, old people need love, too, right?”

“Like my genius brother says, duh.”

“Besides, it gives me a chance to sit with my mother for a while.”

Sit with his mother and do what? I knew he was getting depressed just thinking about the futility of it all.

We walked down some more aisles looking at bathroom fixtures and new screen doors and came to a forest of artificial trees, decorated and lit. I felt a rush of childish hope and wonder. Even fake Christmas trees always had that effect on me. And I hoped that maybe it would cheer him a little, too. “Michael? Why don’t we put up a Christmas tree now.”

“It’s not Thanksgiving yet. You can’t have a tree until after Thanksgiving.”

“Says who? Let’s make the season last.”

He looked at me and, shaking his head, he said, “You got lights somewhere at home?”

“Are you serious? I’m Italian. I got bubblers, blinkers, multicolored and little white ones.”

He picked up a box that held a six-foot tree and crammed it in our cart. “Then I say let’s go home, turn on the air-conditioning and light a fire.”

“I’ve got some old Perry Como somewhere we can play and I can make us some hot chocolate.”

“Skip the hot chocolate. Let’s have a bowl of pasta and a bottle of something red.”

“Perfecto!”

I could hardly believe it, but Connie and Big Al almost invited Michael to Thanksgiving dinner. I say
almost
because that’s the kind of invitation it was.

Mom said, “So? What’s Michael doing for Thanksgiving?”

“He’s going out to the nursing home to be with his mother.”

“Santa Maria,
Madre Dio
! How is the poor woman?”

“It’s beyond bad. We’re talking bleak here. She can’t swallow, so she can’t eat. It’s ice chips and morphine. She’s bedridden, can’t speak, can’t register anything—I mean, how much worse could it be?”

“Still. It’s gonna break his heart to lose his mother.”

“If you asked Michael, he would tell you that he lost her a long time ago. He says he’s just caring for her body out of respect. But I know Michael’s heart. He’s hoping for just one more glimmer of recognition, something, anything. It’s just very sad.”

“Well, Grace, maybe we can send him a plate of food. Do you think he might like that?”

“I’m sure he would love that, Mom. Thanks.”

I started to laugh to myself. He wasn’t asked to come to the table with the family, but a plate piled high with turkey and stuffing could be wrapped up to go. Would the Little Match Boy out there in the snow like something to eat? It was a step, but a pathetically comical one.

I had convinced myself that something had changed for the better between my mother and me, and then I wasn’t sure for a while. But when she almost invited Michael to dinner, I was positive of it. I wasn’t her peer, but I was no longer just her daughter. Or maybe she simply respected the fact that I had stayed close to Michael during his illness.

It was extremely unfortunate timing that during the weeks of Michael’s recovery, his mother began a terrible downhill slide. I thought his mother’s illness was too much for him. He needed optimum conditions to fight his own disease, and his mother’s decline was dangerous to his own health. All that stress and the accompanying anger and frustration of not being able to change a single thing. I mean, I didn’t want to
sound cynical, but she wasn’t my mother and Michael was my everything.

I said I would stay with him for dinner but he said no, it didn’t matter, that his mother was in such poor shape. He was determined to spend the day at her side, just talking to her. I thought it wasn’t such a great idea because I didn’t think he needed to get hit in the head—no pun intended—with the fact that his mother was on the way to the next world, assuming there was one, which Nonna assured us there was as she continued her dialogue with Nonno, who was encouraging her from beyond the veil to keep playing canasta with George Zabrowski.

Mr. Zabrowski was coming to dinner, too. The world was coming to dinner—Frank, Regina and the kids, Nicky, Marianne and her mother, me, Mom, Dad, Nonna—we would be a baker’s dozen and an indoor traffic jam. And I had decided on my own without any consultation from my live-in doctor that I was going to make him a little Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday night.

What was the holiday update from Hilton Head? Maybe because Nonna had stopped cooking and maybe because they all thought there was more room in the yard than in the house—which was true by a long shot—Big Al had a sudden interest in cooking a turkey on a spit on the grill. And he wanted oysters. Lots of them. He didn’t just want oysters on the half shell, he wanted them steamed and in chowder and in the turkey’s stuffing, and did my dad need a little boost? Ew. Nasty! Mom didn’t ask. She simply ordered a bushel of oysters from Bluffton, which were the world’s most perfect examples of the juicy little bivalves.

The Thanksgiving plans were well under way and we all wondered if this was the day Nicky would cough up the diamond Marianne was expecting—like Garfield and a giant hairball. Well, the others wondered—I dreaded the thought. I could see it all now.

We would gather around the Thanksgiving table, and before the antipasto, the zuppa ’scarole, the manigot, the inevitable oohs and ahhs over Big Al’s bird from the grill, there would be flashes of blinding light from her big-ass tacky diamond with the oval one-carat baguettes raised high in the platinum princess setting, resulting in permanent cornea damage for the whole family except for Nicky and Marianne, who would
wear sunglasses to the table. And a manicure—Marianne would have had tips applied and Frenched…

The thought of Marianne coming into my family depressed me, but not as much as having to be in her company for extended periods of time. As soon as she got pregnant, Nicky would run around on her with a cocktail waitress from the strip joints out at the border, running his cheap honey over to the Squat ’n Gobble in Bluffton for fried chicken and sweet tea only to be discovered in a teary screaming scene. Then Nicky would start fooling around with the newly crowned Miss Striped Bass, whom he would fall for in Manning during the weeklong festival. They would soon be spotted at the Chat ’n Chew in Turbeville, having pancakes and coffee discussing why there was a ban on alcohol in the town. There would be no end to Marianne’s histrionics and no end to Nicky’s deceit, and in ten years they would have five daughters, all of whom would be clones of Marianne. The rest of my life would be filled with Mariannes in various stages of hormonal development at every family gathering, whining, bickering and all of them speaking in a baby voice. Nonna would be crocheting them baby blankets and then blankets for their Barbies, Mom would be teaching them to bake cakes, and Big Al would put a thousand miles on his Cadillac taking Nicky out for a moment of peace over a beer in the original titty bars out at the state border that started the problem in the first place.

The future that Marianne wanted so desperately to realize was the one that always gave me a panic attack. But not as much as it used to. As you know, just to be sure,
just in case
Michael and I were wrong about marriage and families, zillions of hearty little swimmers were waiting in the deep freeze for us to have a change of heart. Needless to say, I never discussed this with my mother again. I didn’t feel like having another argument with my catechism-beating mother over artificial insemination while the rest of the family drooled over Marianne and her ring.

Before I left for Hilton Head, I had a brief meeting with Father John to pick up all the forms and to answer any questions he might have about our Mexico trip.

His smiling housekeeper let me in and I waited for him in his study. There was a small fire in the fireplace; even though it wasn’t that cold
outside, it had been raining. The warmth of burning wood took the chill out of the room. I stood waiting, looking at the flickers of the red-and-gold flames, and thought how nice it was to be in that room. Father John’s desk stood directly opposite the large doors. As you entered the room, on your right was a well-worn sofa and two chairs with reading lamps. And on your left, the street side, was a large table with eight chairs, probably used for meetings more than dining. It was very old-world and very familiar to me—probably from all those ancient movies with David Niven and Loretta Young.

I wondered for a moment what it must have been like to lead a life that was consecrated to anything, much less God. It must have been a tremendous comfort to have a rule book to follow that led to the pearly gates on your death. That kind of confidence and assurance had eluded me in my life, up to that point anyway. But I didn’t have any illusions or expectations that I ever would have it. I was just glad that Michael appeared to be doing as well as he was.

“You seem deep in thought, Grace,” Father John said.

I almost jumped out of my skin. “I didn’t hear you coming!” I said, and laughed at my own clumsiness as I bumped into a wing-back chair. “How are you, Father John?”

“I’m fine. Fine. I have lots of responses for you. Let’s sit down, shall we?”

“Sure, thanks.” He handed me a folder and I glanced inside.

“A couple of the older people were a little concerned about spicy food and about the water. I assume that they have some gastrointestinal issues or something, but I was thinking that in the restaurant area—”

“Don’t worry, Father. I always make sure every restaurant can provide something very bland, like broiled chicken and rice for the delicate stomachs, and we only drink bottled water. And I travel with a kit of emergency items, like over-the-counter tummy meds.”

“Good, fine! That’s great. One other thing that may be of interest to you…”

“Sure, what’s that?”

“I taped an EWTN special on Our Lady of Guadalupe for you. You know, brush up on the story and all that?”

“Sure, but, I mean, you know religion’s not my thing, really, but sure. Why not?”

“Ah. That’s right. Well, here it is anyway.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure. Now tell me, how is Michael doing?”

“Well, you’d never know to look at him that they said he had incurable brain cancer. He’s doing just great. He just got back an MRI and there’s no sign of regrowth.”

“May I ask what kind of brain cancer?”

“Sure. He had a really nasty one—glioblastoma, stage four.”

I saw Father John’s jaw twitch, which told me he was trying to figure out what to say, knowing this was a deadly situation.

“And what is the next step?”

“He gets another MRI soon and they watch him very carefully for the next two years.”

“And I assume he’s happy with his doctors?”

“Well, Michael is actually a doctor at the medical university, so he knows who to go to, but yes, he’s pleased with them. Very much so. At least, so far!” I chuckled a little. “Gallows humor.”

“Right, good one! Well, let’s hope he stays healthy and lives to be an old man with grandchildren bouncing on his knee.”

That remark gave me pause, and thinking I had nothing to lose, I said, “Father, can I ask you a question?”

“Fire away.”

“What is the Church’s position on in vitro fertilization or artificial insemination?”

“How much time do you have?”

He smiled warmly and it appeared that he might give me some ammunition I could use if I had to take on the Russos and the Vatican over the coming holiday.

“Well, first, there’s the greater issue. Would you like some coffee?”

“Sure, that would be great.”

He rang for his housekeeper and asked her to make a fresh pot and to see if maybe there wasn’t a cookie or two to be found.

“This time of day I always need a little something to keep me going. I have the rosary society tonight and I need my energy!”

I nodded and he continued.

“We’re talking about a married couple that wants a child and their inability, for whatever reason, to conceive a child. Am I correct?”

“Yes. Let’s assume they are Catholic, too.”

“Okay. Well, a child conceived in marriage is a gift from God, not a piece of property like a new car. The Church also teaches that husbands and wives have the right to give themselves to each other, and that in and by that marital act, they may receive the gift of a new life.”