Hemingway's Girl (14 page)

Once Lulu was comfortable, Mariella tiptoed back to her bed. She left on her nightshirt
and lay brooding over her mother, and finally decided she wouldn’t be able to sleep.
She reached under her pillow, pulled out the book she’d picked up at the library,
and went out to the living room to finish it.

A Farewell to Arms
.

She’d read the part where the priest came to visit Frederic Henry and spoke with him
about God and love. The priest told Henry that he would love someday, and that love
would make Henry want to make sacrifices.

Mariella knew she’d never been in love. She felt something in her belly more and more
each time she was around Hemingway, but that couldn’t be love, could it? It must be
that other thing. Then she thought of Gavin and how good it felt in his arms when
they danced. She didn’t know him well enough to love him, and she thought she’d probably
never see him again—especially after the way she’d run off.

Her thoughts returned to Lulu, Estelle, and her parents, and her spirits sank. She
tried to pray but thought that she was a little afraid of God, like Frederic Henry,
and was also unconvinced that she would ever truly love.

Mariella felt as if she was being watched.

She opened one eye and Lulu was in her face.

“Sister Theresa says it’s a mortal sin not to go to church.”

Mariella groaned and rolled over, covering her head with a pillow. She’d stayed up
way too late reading.

“You don’t want to go to hell, do you?” said Lulu.

Mariella groaned again, feeling as though she were the five-year-old child with the
adult standing over her.

“Don’t you want to see Daddy when you die?”

Mariella removed the pillow from her face and looked at Lulu, troubled that such words
came out of a child’s mouth. Mariella didn’t know whether she believed them, but it
didn’t feel right for her sister to speak that way.

“Did Mama send you to wake me up?” asked Mariella.

“Yes,” said Lulu. “She said you wouldn’t say no if I asked.”

No, Eva wasn’t stupid at all. Mariella smiled and gently pushed Lulu off the bed.

“All right, all right. Give me a little privacy while I get dressed, would ya?”

Lulu ran out the door, telling Eva that Mariella was getting ready.

Church was the one place Eva ventured all week. She even
made a halfhearted attempt to dress up for mass. Since Hal’s death, Mariella had mixed
feelings about the whole thing. The only place that felt really holy to her was the
sea. If there was a God, Mariella felt that he or she or it must be out there.

Mariella forced herself out of bed, washed her face, combed her hair, and put on a
little makeup, but when she pulled her only church dress out of the closet and tried
to put it on, it got stuck on her hips and barely zipped over her chest. She walked
to the kitchen to show Eva.

“I can’t go,” said Mariella, pointing to her dress.

Eva ran her eyes over her, widened them, then said, “No, that dress isn’t going to
work.”

“Say a prayer for me,” said Mariella, as she turned back to her room.

“You can borrow one from me,” said Eva. Mariella stopped and turned back, surprised
by the suggestion. Her mother didn’t usually think of ways to solve problems lately,
especially when they had to do with other people. Mariella nodded and went to her
mother’s room.

In the closet, there were a few shirts and a pair of slacks that had belonged to her
father. His only pair of dress shoes stood with the toes pointing out under the pants.
The rest of the closet was filled with Eva’s dresses. It was hard to believe that
just months ago Eva had dressed and made herself up every day for Hal. Now the only
things she ever wore were a dingy, stained housedress that looked like prison-issue,
and her black, shapeless church frock.

Mariella knew which dress she wanted—the one from the picture of Eva and Hal on the
dresser as newlyweds, staring at each other with open longing. In the picture, Eva
had her hand on Hal’s chest. It was so intimate that it embarrassed Mariella to look
at it and made her wonder who had taken it. The dress was white with large red flowers
and had a low neckline. It was a dress that wanted to be danced in.

Mariella slipped it out of the closet, closed the door to the room, and peeled off
the dress she was wearing, careful not to rip it so her sisters could wear it when
they got older. Her mother’s dress slid on easily. The white and red were a perfect
contrast to Mariella’s dark skin and hair. She checked her reflection in the mirror
in her parents’ room and went back to the kitchen, unsure why her heart was pounding.

The girls stopped what they were doing and stared at Mariella.

“You’re pretty,” Lulu said.

Estelle’s face turned red, and she looked down. Mariella knew Estelle remembered the
dress and probably feared her mother’s response. Eva looked over Mariella from head
to toe, but didn’t tell her to take it off. Mariella didn’t know whether her mother’s
frown was over the dress being worn to church or the memories it must have stirred
up about Hal, and she suddenly wished she’d chosen something different.

“I can pick another one,” said Mariella.

“No,” said Eva. “It’s too late.
Vámonos
.”

As Mariella entered the church, she saw the crucifix behind the altar and bowed her
head. If she was being honest with herself, her avoidance of church lately had to
do with the rush of her weekly misdeeds hitting her in the face when she stepped through
the door. She thought of the gambling, the stealing, the back talk to her mother,
and now lusting after a married man. She wondered whether she should get communion
in the state that she was in, but determined that it would be a scandal not to do
so. She felt the presence of the Blessed Mother and dared to look up at the massive,
stained-glass rendering of her. Mary’s face was so gentle that Mariella relaxed.

Mass had started just before they arrived, and the church was
full. She couldn’t find a space in the row with Eva and the girls, so Mariella sat
on the end of the row behind them. She knelt, crossed herself, and put down her head
to pray.

Please, God, forgive me, for I have sinned. I’m sorry to make this confession to you
this way, but I don’t want to tell a priest. I’ve been lusting after and coveting
Mr. Hemingway. I’ve also been gambling, swearing a lot, and stealing cigarettes from
Mark and limes from the fruit stand. Please forgive me and help me to be a better
person. Please bless my mother, and Lulu, and Estelle, and the Hemingways, and Nicolas
and his family, and Mark Bishop, and the man who died at the dock, and Gavin, and
most of all, my father’s poor dead soul. Mother Mary, please help me to be a good
daughter and sister and woman, like you. In Jesus’ name I pray.

“Amen.”

She made the sign of the cross and stood to sing the opening hymn. Mariella was reaching
for a hymnal when she felt the heat of someone at her side. She looked to her right
and saw that there was barely any room in the pew, but that there was plenty of space
behind where she sat. She summoned the most annoyed look she could and turned to face
the man squeezing into the pew.

It was Gavin.

Her annoyance quickly turned to a smile.

“There’s plenty of room in the row behind us, Murray,” she whispered.

He leaned close to her ear. “I know.” She could feel his breath on the side of her
neck, and it made her light-headed.

Gavin and Mariella stole glances and smiles at each other throughout the opening song,
and when it came time to sit, he put himself right next to her with his arm touching
hers. She leaned back and saw that though he had a bit of room on his other side he
stayed pushed up against her. She narrowed her eyes at him and nodded for him to scoot
over, and he smiled back and shook his head slightly.

The mass was a blur. She tried to concentrate, but she could only see his tattoo jutting
out from under his rolled-up sleeve, feel the heat from the side of his body on hers,
and smell the sweet tobacco smell that hung around him. When it was time to kneel
he pressed his leg against hers. She felt his hand against her dress and nearly fainted;
then she realized he had put something in her pocket. When mass ended, Gavin smiled
at her and slipped away before they could talk. She pulled the crumpled paper out
of her pocket and read it.

Mallory Square, sunset.

Mariella put the paper back in her dress, wondering whether she’d go. She needed to
concentrate on making money for her business. She also knew part of her reluctance
had to do with a man she was drawn to who wasn’t hers. Hemingway and Gavin got her
pulse racing in the same way. The difference, she thought, was how she felt afterward.
Guilt after flirtations with one, warmth after the other.

Yes, she’d meet Gavin.

Eva went to light candles for Hal, but Lulu was getting restless. Mariella picked
up her little sister and moved outside, where she found a new reason to blush. Standing
under the statue of the Virgin in the window of the church’s facade was Hemingway,
smiling his Cheshire cat smile. His boys ran in circles around him. Pauline saw Mariella
and called her name.

“Good to see you,” said Pauline, her face alight with approval. “Do you usually attend
mass here?”

“It’s been a while,” said Mariella. “I should come more.”

“I wish
he
would come more, too,” said Pauline, nodding at Papa.

“Did you ever hear how I became a Catholic?” he asked.

Pauline smacked him on the arm. He laughed his loud, wicked
laugh, looked Mariella up and down, and walked down the street. Mariella watched after
him, her emotions a whirlpool that threatened to drown her.

Storms rolled in through the afternoon, keeping Mariella indoors with the girls, reading
and drawing. Unlike Estelle, Lulu cared nothing for the product and only for the process
of shading and blending the pastels Mariella had bought for them with her recent pay.
Many color-smudged papers littered the floor around her, and Lulu’s dimpled hands
were a mess of rainbow dust when they’d finished. Estelle spent the entire time on
one picture, meticulous in her depiction of Hal’s boat on the water at sunset. It
made Mariella pause, and when she noticed all five of the family members on the boat,
she felt like she’d cry. The family had rarely gone out together, and when they did,
Estelle and Lulu were much younger. Mariella swallowed the lump in her throat and
spoke.

“This is beautiful,” she said.

Estelle stared at the paper, but didn’t say a word.

“This is my wish, too,” said Mariella.

Estelle stayed quiet, so Mariella just squeezed her hand and hung the girls’ drawings
around the kitchen with penny nails.

When they finished, she glanced at the wall clock for the millionth time and hoped
the rain would clear so she could meet Gavin. Her joyful anticipation of seeing him
grew throughout the afternoon. It occurred to her that he was a good distraction from
all the things that made her feel guilty, like Hemingway, her mother, gambling. He
felt like an answer to a prayer she hadn’t realized she made.