Full of Grace (21 page)

“That’s pretty archaic, don’t you think?”

“No, why?”

“Because modern medicine can give families children.”

Father John had a good chuckle. The coffee arrived with a plate of Pepperidge Farm Milanos.

The coffee looked murderous, so I said, “A little milk, please? Thanks,” I said to his housekeeper, who poured for both of us and then left the room.

“Grace, this is a complicated matter and the answer you would get today would very much depend on whom you asked and what the details were of the case. Each couple has their own unique set of complicated issues. I guess my question to you is this. Of all the many things you could ask a priest, why ask this particular question?”

“Good question, and I guess you have me on the ropes, a little bit anyway.” I saw that the words I spoke seemed to be more thoughtful when I was in Father John’s company. I didn’t want to play
gotcha!
with this man. I wanted to have an intelligent discussion about the ethics of living and the Church’s position on the mix of faith and science. Besides, I had a sneaking suspicion that he could beat me at
gotcha!
any day of the week.

“Well?” he said, and took a cookie.

“How much time do you have?” I asked, and smiled at him.

“Until seven-thirty tonight and then the rest of my life.”

“Well, here it is, then.”

I told him about my family and how I had grown up in an Italian Catholic parish in Bloomfield, New Jersey. We talked about Nonna and how she claimed to see Nonno all the time, how they drove me crazy and decorated my room from Catholic.com.

He laughed. “She really might see her dead husband. Who knows?”

“Well, she does manage to make extremely reliable predictions after one of his visitations. And she says she inherited this ability from her mother, and that when she dies, my mother will get the curse, and when she goes, guess who’s next?”

He cleared his throat with no small amount of skepticism. “Then, Grace, it is conceivable that during my lifetime you will inherit this blessing or curse of second sight.”

“Maybe, but I think it’s a bunch of bull.”

“You’ll let me know?”

“Yeah, we’ll stay in touch. Anyway, then there’s my father…”

We talked about Big Al and the way he discounted my mother’s opinions and made her feel like a servant and how I had always suspected that he ran around on her because he was such a horrible flirt. That was one reason why I wasn’t so excited about marriage. Then I told him that my parents didn’t even want to know Michael.

“Why not?”

“Because he’s Irish?”

He threw his cupped hands up and fanned them toward his shoulders as if to say,
Come on, we both know there’s more
.

“Okay, but if I come clean with you, I don’t want any judgmental, you know, attitude from your side of the cookie dish, okay?” That was about as delicately as I had ever said anything to anyone and I was rather proud of myself. I took two cookies as a reward and he smiled as if he already knew my thoughts.

“We live together.”

His elbows were on the arms of the chairs, his fingers looped together, he was leaning slightly forward, and he was waiting for the rest.

“He’s not exactly a practicing Catholic and
in his career he does embryonic stem-cell research
.” The second part of that revelation sped out at about eighty miles an hour.

Father John burst out laughing and clapped his hands, which was pretty much the same reaction I’d had from my brother Frank.

“Whoo-hoo!” he said. “You’re a pip, Grace!”

“A pip. Thanks. Thanks a lot.” I laughed, too.

“More?”

“Yeah, one last thing…” I told him about the frozen sperm and his face became more solemn.

“Listen, Grace, here’s the thing. At the end of life on this earth, we are all accountable to God. In many situations, we have to make decisions based on our conscience and don’t have the opportunity or even the thought to run haywire and consult a member of the clergy before we act. A clear conscience is of utmost importance. The trick is not to rationalize your decisions knowing they displease God.”

“I agree with that. And I think our ability to rationalize anything is pretty scary.”

“Exactly!” he said, and pointed a knowing finger at me. “Let’s tackle just a couple of these issues. Stem-cell research? Science will find a way to make stem cells without cloning. I follow this field because I have a great interest in it.”

“Me, too. Well, sort of. Michael’s mother is in the final stages of Alzheimer’s and I think Michael would’ve given everything he has to be a part of a team that could’ve cured it or got closer to a cure. Or even just, I don’t know, improved the quality of the last days of her life.”

“Alzheimer’s is a cruel customer,” he said. “But back to alternative ways of conceiving children…I think the Church’s major area of concern has always been that children are
begotten not made
. Is it right to
make
children in a laboratory setting just because we can? Well, all the great thinkers of the Church have examined this question and have sanctioned two procedures. But the methods of those therapies are so close to the ones you asked about that I think it almost becomes moral and ethical nitpicking to say that one is fine and the other is not. Does this make sense to you?”

This time I was the one on the edge of my seat. “You have no idea how much sense you make. I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I agree with every word you said. Listen, are you available for Thanksgiving?”

“Oh, thank you, but I—”

“No! Of course you have plans! But I was just thinking how much I would love to have this conversation at my parents’ table with you at my side.”

“Don’t you think your parents would be a little shocked if you brought home a priest?”

“Yeah, just a little. Ha!” I stood to go. “Thank you for the chat, the cookies and the coffee. And the tape. I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving, Father.”

He walked me to the door. “Happy Thanksgiving to you and Michael, Grace, and to your family also. I’ll say a prayer for Michael’s mother, too.”

“Thanks, Father. Prayer can’t hurt and it might do some good. Who knows?”

“I have the feeling that
you will,
Grace. You will.”

Oh, whatever, I thought, and in the next instant had second thoughts about my cynicism. I shouldn’t discount Father John’s prayers. I had been pleasantly surprised to hear that the Church had grappled with the issues. I always thought they just said no to everything. But the current conclusion on conception wasn’t the only point. The weighing of the morality and ethics was just as important. Father John only barely represented the Church I had grown up in. The Church I had known was the one that
Nonna
had known. Who died and made her the pope? Maybe I didn’t know the Church at all. Maybe Michael didn’t either.

I walked home in the late-afternoon drizzle, stopping at Harris Teeter for a turkey breast and the other things I needed to make our small Thanksgiving-eve dinner. The dark side of me had a fleeting thought that Michael was being a martyr to insist on spending the day with his mother. But just that morning Michael said he thought he had worn me out from all his illness and he wanted me to go enjoy the holiday with my family. I had not seen them in some time.

“Seriously, Grace. I think a couple of days with them would do you a lot of good. I’m just going to go out to Summerville and see what I can do for my mother.”

“But I really don’t mind telling my family I can’t come for Thursday. I can drive over on Saturday and spend the night.”

“That’s not right. Look, your brother and his whole family are coming, and if they can, so can you. What do you think I would give to have some other relatives around here? A lot. Go! You’ll enjoy it!”

I said, “
Enjoy
being with that whole crazy crew?”

“Sorry,” he said with a sly smile.

“I’m not sure anyone ever really enjoys family holidays.”

“Sorry,” he said again, and chuckled.

“Sure, you laugh. Go ahead. Look,
you
tolerate the crazies—Nonna.
You
try to keep the egomaniacs on the other side of the room—that would be Nicky and Marianne. You seek out the ones you really want to talk to—and that’s Frank and Regina. But
enjoy
?”

“No, huh?”

“Are you serious? At Connie and Big Al’s table? It’s kind of like climbing Mount Everest. You’re glad you survived it, but you would never recommend it to a friend.”

“I’m sure. By the way,” Michael said, “Larry volunteered to shuttle me back and forth to Summerville so we don’t have to worry about me driving alone.”

“Good, sweetheart, but you know Papenburg said that there’s no real medical reason you can’t drive.”

“I’ll start driving again, Grace,” he said. “I just want to feel ready and I’m not ready yet.”

“Well then, don’t. I don’t think anybody should drive who doesn’t feel comfortable behind the wheel. Don’t worry about it.”

I was going to Hilton Head to please Michael and making this early Thanksgiving dinner to please myself.

That afternoon, when Michael arrived at home, the turkey was in the oven and almost done. Between the gravy and the roasting meat, the creamy corn pudding I had made and the lingering aroma of onions
and celery, the house smelled wonderful. One whiff and he was immediately in a good mood.

The table was set with little pumpkins and gourds and fall-colored candles. The cloth was deep red, the napkins were rust, and the plates were gold. A little trip to Williams-Sonoma and I had a molded glass turkey to hold my cranberry sauce and seasoned focaccia croutons for the stuffing. The house, the table—it looked terrific and smelled like heaven, even if I said so myself.

“Hey! My woman!” Michael said. “Look what I brought us.”

He gave me a sloppy, noisy kiss, a grope here and there and handed me a shopping bag.

“Somebody’s in a good mood. Thanks! What’s this?” I unwrapped two hand-carved painted wooden Pilgrims and a little turkey. “Michael! They’re precious!” I put them on the table and suddenly it was Thanksgiving.

“And look what else I got,” he said, and held up another bag.

“Dom Pérignon? Wow! What are we celebrating? Did you win the lottery?”

“Wise guy. I’ll tell you in a minute,” he said, and took the bottle to the sink to pop the cork. I handed him two champagne glasses; he filled them and handed one to me. He raised his and said, “To us, Grace! I was thinking today. You do so much to make my life happier and better in every single way. I just wanted to say thank you. And that I love you. And—and this is
the
big
and
—this is the last holiday we are spending apart from each other. Oh, and one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Happy Thanksgiving, I’m alive.”

“Happy Thanksgiving, sweetheart. I agree! Big Al and Connie will just have to deal.”

I filled a plate for Michael and he devoured it. I could see him eyeballing the turkey and everything else on the stove.

“A little more?”

“Sure. Just a little. So tell me some more about this priest you met.”

“Well, it’s just that he’s a very cool guy. He isn’t a priest like the ones
I knew growing up—the ones who truly started the Goth movement. I mean, maybe they were cool, too, but they didn’t seem like it to me. Anything’s possible. You want gravy?”

“Drown me with it. A cool priest? So this guy is getting excommunicated when?”

“Very funny. Listen, between us, I made the fatal mistake of mentioning to my mom that we froze sperm in case of an emergency and she went a little off-the-wall, as expected, because—”

“Oh, great.”

“No, listen to me. This priest, Father John, had no problem with it.”

“Yeah, as long as they stay in the freezer.”

“Not so.”

“Look, Grace, we’ve talked about children and marriage before, but I think I should tell you that I’m still not ready for that kind of commitment.”

A million thoughts ran through my head.

“Who’s asking for a commitment?”

“I love you and you know that.”

“And I love you, too. Anyway, Father John says he’s not against stem-cell research because he says he thinks that scientists will figure out how to make stem cells without making anything that could ever become an embryo. Did I say that right?”

“Yeah, oddly enough.” Michael smirked and shook his head. “How does he know about that?”

“I told you. He’s a smart man.”

“Well, he reads the paper anyway. Actually, there’s a whole deal in Boston going on right now where they remove the genes from an adult cell, then add the altered cell to an egg. That can’t grow into an embryo, but it can grow stem cells.”

“Aha! Whatever that means that you said.”

“No cloned embryo, no ethical problem? Getting the eggs is the problem at this point. But they’ll figure that out pretty soon.”

“The sooner the better.”

“You can say that again.”

Naturally I was thinking that I would love to see them figure it out before Michael’s cancer decided to come back and try again to kill him.

“Well, why don’t you go pack and take a shower and I’ll do the dishes,” he said.

“You are the perfect man,” I said. “Is there any more champagne?”

“You can have mine,” he said.

“Thanks. I’ll just take a sip.” I got up to clear our plates and he grabbed my skirt.

“What’s on your mind, Mr. Wonderful?”

“Dessert.”

“I bought a pumpkin pie?”

“Hate pumpkin.”

So he didn’t do the dishes right away. Anyone have a problem with that? No.

I
left a lemon tea cake and a loaf of pumpkin bread on the counter for you to take to the nurses at the nursing home,” I said. “I’ll call you later.”

From the hinterland of our sheets and blankets came this response: “Okay. Thanks. Love you. Be careful.”

All the way to Hilton Head I thought about Michael and how relieved I was that his treatments were in our past and not our future. Maybe he really was well. The chemotherapy had worn him to a frazzle, but he was rapidly becoming himself again. The color of his complexion was better, his appetite was normal, and his general, um, stamina was in check. Maybe they really had been able to remove the whole tumor and kill off any leftover cancer cells. God, I hoped so. More than anything.

If it were possible to heal a terminally ill person based on the strength of sheer will, between my stubbornness and Michael’s submission to the hell days of science and medicine that he had been through, he would never even suffer a hangnail for the rest of his days.

I was on the outskirts of the island before I knew it, but then I had been doing a lot of daydreaming. It was so funny to be in an almost tropical environment for Thanksgiving. There were palmettos galore on either side of the highway, and as soon as I crossed the bridge onto the
island, egrets and great blue herons were everywhere. The marsh grass was turning brown, and if I hadn’t known better, I would have said it was a field of mink. It was beautiful but still foreign. But it was home now because my parents and grandmother were there and it was where we all got together. It would never feel as familiar as Bloomfield, but that said something about the power of childhood to leave its imprint on you forever.

I remembered Thanksgivings in New Jersey when the weather was cold and I was so little I couldn’t fill my own plate. Nicky and I had existed in our own world of turkeys made from tracings of the outlines of our hands, colored in with crayons and taped on Mom’s walls, and after dinner we fought over the wishbone. At Christmas we covered her living-room windows with angels, reindeer and Santas created with artificial snow, sprayed through stencils. We made paper chains for the tree and potholders for gifts and stole bits of fruitcake soaked in rum and pretended to be drunk. But then I hit puberty, Nicky became a jerk, Frank went to college, and those days were gone forever. And now here we were, years later, still trying to breathe life back into our childhood by getting together and practicing our family’s rituals.

Those thoughts led me to Father John. He had not been judgmental in the least about my life and he had not tried to convert me. No matter how I tried to poke holes in the things he said—not aggressively, out loud, of course, but politely in my mind—I could find no fault with his words.

The Catholic Church of my youth had been one of guilt and self-denial, but perhaps that was because Nonna, who lived across the street, had so heavily nuanced every Sunday and every religious event with old-world customs and the ancient beliefs of her own childhood. I was very little, but I could remember Nonna and Nonno telling my mother and then me and my brothers what to do.

“Did you get your ashes? It’s Ash Wednesday, you know.”

“Ashes? Seriously?” my mother would say, horrifying her parents.

“Some example you set! Come on, take your kids, get in the car, and I’ll take you down to the church.”

“I don’t want ashes on my forehead. I just washed my hair,” I would complain.

“Come on, Grace,” my mother would say.

“I’ll take you to Holstens for ice cream after,” Nonno would say. “That’s a good girl.”

Well, for a trip to Holstens Brookdale Confections, you could smear ashes all over my face.

And my mother? She objected but in the end did what she was told. They said get in the car, she got in the car. My mother would never have objected to Nonna’s insistence that our whole family observe every saint’s feast day in Christendom.

During Lent, we attended daily Mass and fasted in between meals. The adults refrained from drinking alcohol and the children gave up candy. We kept Christ in Christmas with an Advent wreath, had a molded plastic crèche with about fifty pieces or so, and we never put the baby Jesus in the manger until Christmas morning. Naturally there was always a fight about who got to do it. And Nicky, a natural-born pain in the neck, always put the sheep on the roof and just generally vandalized the Nativity’s sacred mysteries.

We sang our hearts out in the church’s children’s choir and participated in the Christmas pageant. One year when Nicky was about eight, he was a wise man and that caused no end of snickering and rib-poking while he walked up the aisle in a fake beard and long robes. He carried an empty tissue box wrapped in gold foil with colored glass gems glued all over it. Help me. Frank and I died laughing, and seeing us with tears running down our faces, Nicky began to giggle.

That’s just how it was. Nonna and Nonno had dinner with us almost every night. We said grace before every meal and Nonna always heard our prayers at night, correcting us if we made mistakes or left out a dead relative or a saint she thought deserved mention.

All those things, those rituals and observances, were inextricably woven into our lives. We passed our days always mindful of the Church’s liturgical calendar. It had seemed perfectly normal when we were kids, but later on Frank and I began to choke on the excessiveness of it all.
Nicky, of course, went through all the motions, never allowing a cloud of doubt to mess up his pretty head.

Our obsessive Catholicism had probably driven Frank to study philosophy and me to reject any organized religious faith. Regina had reeled Frank back into the Church’s good graces, but there was no one to do the same for me. The brand of Catholicism my family practiced was so easy to walk away from and twice as difficult to reclaim. It was just too much from either end.

I pulled into my parents’ driveway and Frank’s car was there. I sighed and realized that I sighed with the same resolution as my mother did when there was a challenge ahead and a job to be done. But for all my anxiety about so many different things, I was always slightly giddy with excitement to be home.

I went in through the front door—it was Thanksgiving, remember? No garage entrance for me that day. Even though I had never lived in that house, I honored all the customs.

The living room was blockaded with two long folding tables and every chair we owned. The tables were draped to the floor in big pieces of olive green velvet, and thrown over them were some kind of Indian bedspreads laid on the bias. Mom had bought centerpieces of mums and some kind of berries and had stuffed them in glass pumpkins. There was a beautiful bentwood cornucopia on top of the entertainment center filled with silk flowers. Last year’s Christmas cards with photographs had finally been put away, but the old wedding favors were just pushed to the side. What did I expect?

“Hi!” I said. “Happy Thanksgiving!”

“Oh! Aunt Grace! You’re home! Happy Thanksgiving to you, too!” my niece, Lisa, said. “Hey, you guys! Aunt Grace is home!”

“I’ll be right back.” I went to throw my weekend bag in my room.

Little Lisa’s heavy black eyeliner and colloquial “you guys” marked her as someone from north of suspicion, just as I did when I said “soda.” I giggled because I had never divided the country in those terms until that very second and I realized how ridiculous it was. If she had said “y’all,” it would have seemed equally ridiculous, mangled by a New Jersey accent.

“Grace? Grace?”

It was my mother calling me. I envisioned her winding her way through our eccentric cast of characters just to see my face as though I had been gone for years. She burst into my room, hugged me and then sighed with a vehemence that revealed her obvious exhaustion.

“You’re home safe and now the holiday can begin!”

“Ma! You sound like I’ve been living in Mozambique! And look at you; the sun’s still high and you’re already dragging. You gotta let me help you, okay?”

“Are you kidding? I even bought you your own apron! My feet are throbbing.”

I made the rounds of hellos and inquiries.
Hi, Nonna. How are you feeling? How much weight have you lost?
She actually did look a little thinner. Her boyfriend was to arrive at three, she claimed to have lost twenty-three pounds, and she was finishing a new crocheted cover for Mom’s tissue box.

“Nice, Nonna! An Indian-corn motif!”

“Yeah, I thought it was classier than the Pilgrims from last year.”

“It’s very nice. Really.”

What could one say?

“Nonno told me he liked it last night.”

“And what does he say about your friend George?”

“That he might be cheating in his canasta game—I should watch him very closely.”

“Yeah. Keep a close eye on him!”

I ruffled the hair of my two nephews, who moaned at the interruption of their Xbox game, and in the kitchen I gave Regina a hug.

“Hey, you!” she said, and hugged me back.

“Hey, yourself! You losing weight, too?” She looked thinner.

“Yeah, right. I’m gaining a pound a day. It’s the tunic.”

“Sure. Where are the men?”

“Hurry outside and say hello to your father and your brothers and then get yourself back in here! I’ll tell you it’s a good thing I have that extra oven in the garage!”

“Ma? On Thanksgiving you could use three stoves and ovens,” I
said, taking a huge shrimp from a platter and loading it with cocktail sauce.

“Don’t you dare pick at my food!” Mom slapped my hand. “Go, go!”

Outside, Dad was at the grill drinking beer with Nicky and Frank and basting his turkey. We all hugged and kissed.

“We’ve been out here since eight o’clock this morning! It’s a twenty-eight-pounder,” he said. “I told that guy up at the Piggly Wiggly I wanted the biggest goddamn turkey he could find! This little pip-squeak tries to tell me that I should cook two fourteen-pounders and I says to him, Whaddaya saying? It don’t look right to have two turkeys! There’s people starving out there!”

“You’re absolutely right, Dad,” Nicky said, his nose nearly in the crease of my father’s butt.

“It’s very impressive,” I said. “Reminds me of that movie…what’s that old movie where they cook that kid’s pet turkey? And everybody cries at the table?” They looked at me like I had lost my mind. “Well, I would think that turkeys make lousy pets anyway. I’m going inside.”

I settled into the kitchen with Mom and Regina. The entire house was swollen with sounds and mouthwatering smells as my mom, Regina and I worked on dinner.

“So where are Marianne and her mother?” I said.

“Late,” my mother said.

“Probably stuffing her bra,” Regina said to me under her breath. “Right?”

“What was that? She’s bringing a pecan pie,” Mom said.

“Nothing. I hate pecan pie for Thanksgiving,” I said. “That’s for Christmas. She never heard of pumpkin pie?”

“And she’s only bringing one,” Mom said.

“My
gavones
will eat the whole thing,” Regina said. “Watch. Just watch.”

“You got it!” I said, and continued my nightmare of Annoying Episodes with Marianne. “Watch. Nicky won’t get a slice of her freaking pie because my darling nephews will scarf it and she’ll make a whole scene. Uck. I can’t stand her. Sorry.”

“Well, let’s just try to be nice to her, dear,” Mom said.

“Only for you, Ma. Only for you.”

The doorbell rang. It was George Zabrowski arriving like an aging Uncle Fester. He had a corsage for Nonna, cut flowers for my mother and the biggest box of Russell Stover chocolates I had ever seen. Old George wore a nice tweed sport coat and a tie, his remaining hair was wet-combed, and when he got closer to shake my hand, he smelled like he’d forgotten he had put on cologne the first time.

“So here’s the wonderful and beautiful granddaughter I haven’t seen since the day I met your Nonna,” he said.

Okay, I take back that little dig about him and his cologne.

“Yep! That’s me!” I blushed because don’t you know this old coot took my hand and kissed it? I adored him. Right then and there I fell in love with an old Polish geezer. Well, how do you like that?

I looked over to Regina as he kissed her hand, too. By the time he got to Mom, she was holding this Miss America bouquet of flowers to her bosom and grinning like a young girl as he kissed her hand and then held it, telling her how honored he was to spend such an important day with our family.

I wanted to say,
Wait, you’ll see what a pack of jackals we are,
but before I could make a smart remark, my mother spoke.

“Oh, no, George, the honor is ours to have you! Would you like a shrimp?”

Well, it went on like that, with George eating the forbidden shrimp and flattering everyone until he depleted his repertoire of superlatives to heap on females. Normally I would have gagged, but all I could think was how great it was that Nonna had this sweet old guy who came into her life with a trunk filled with courtly mannerisms. He was perfect for her. Even if he was full of it.

At ten minutes to four, ten minutes before we were to sit down, Marianne and her mother arrived.

Marianne, nearly breathless with her specialness, brought her pie into the kitchen and placed it on the counter like she’d taught Martha Stewart how to bake. “Hey! How y’all doing?” Naturally, the pie was in a ceramic pie container with a fake cherry pie for a cover.

“She’s gonna waste my poor son’s last dime,” Mom whispered, bending down to me as I pulled a casserole out of the oven.

I stood up and had a look at her. Of course she was wearing a tight cotton turtleneck covered in tiny turkeys dressed like Pilgrims. And had a fresh French manicure.

“Hi, Marianne,” I said, wondering if she realized her entire ensemble was a size too small. “Where’s your mom?”

“Oh! I didn’t see you there, Grace! How’s my maid of honor? Happy Thanksgiving, y’all! Mama’s in the living room.”

“Same to you,” Regina said. “Your bad boy is outside hydrating with mine.”

Marianne had no clue what
hydrating
meant. I was sure of it.