Snow Globes and Hand Grenades (3 page)

There were some letters at first, mostly from her, but then he dropped out of touch, and Miss Kleinschmidt let her hair turn gray. The snow globe had been sitting on the shelf for decades, a reminder of her bitter disappointment and a stark warning to never again embrace such foolishness. She dusted it off from time to time and shook it to make the snow swirl. Then with a death-like gurgle, she would hack up some phlegm from the back of her throat, only to swallow it back down, and put the snow globe back on the shelf.

The day Patrick stole the snow globe began like any other. It was Monday, May 7, just a few weeks before graduation. Miss Kleinschmidt stood at the front of the class.

“Today in history,” she began, munching on a soda cracker like she did every morning. It was her custom to eat soda crackers while talking about all the grim things that had happened on that particular day, thereby instilling in her students a respect of ruin and calamity. She would stand behind her desk wearing one of her gray, tan, or harvest gold pants suits and launch into some tragedy of the past—battles, deaths and plagues seemed to be her favorites.

“On May 7, 1840 a tornado hit Natchez, Mississippi, killing three hundred and seventeen people. What do you think of that?” She looked out the window at what was a sunny day in St. Louis. “I guess we'll be all right today,” she shrugged, sounding a little disappointed. “Oh well, time to turn in your papers on
The Scarlet Letter
.”

Now in her seventies, she reached out a skeletal arm to take each student's paper. Her gray hair, highlighted by the fluorescent ceiling lights, looked like a giant Brillo Pad floating above the crowd in the Macy's Day Parade. Fingerprints and makeup particles smudged her round wire-frame glasses, obviously not cleaned for days. A greasy silver chain drooped from her glasses frame and looped around her neck, swinging as she walked. But as she stalked the rows of desks, it was her breath that signaled her presence—a dry-mouthed paste of cigarettes, crackers, and the piping hot black coffee she gulped in the teacher's lounge. She couldn't catch anyone unawares.

Patrick watched her stop at Tony's desk. He knew Tony didn't have the paper to turn in because they had talked about it on the way to school.

“I had a bad weekend,” Tony said as they climbed the church lawn under the gold statute of Mary. Tony's brand new—and only—girlfriend since fifth grade had broken up with him. And she didn't even tell him herself. It was a remote control breakup, the worst kind. Another girl who was friends with her gave him the bad news.

The phone call had come on Sunday afternoon as Tony watched his dad carry Brando, the family beagle, out to the car and place him in the back seat. “She just doesn't like you,” the friend had said as Tony's dad pulled out of the
driveway and headed to the veterinarian to have Brando put to sleep. Brando was old, nearly crippled with arthritis, and had lost most of his teeth and all his bladder control. Tony loved that dog. He hung up the phone and spent the rest of the afternoon watching a Clint Eastwood western while eating a quart of Bryer's peach ice cream right out of the paper box. All the shooting and horse galloping seemed to comfort him, some. He fell asleep hugging a pillow that smelled of Brando and never even started
The Scarlet Letter
.

“Mr. Vivamano, where is your paper?” said Miss Kleinschmidt.

Everyone in class looked up to hear his answer. Tony whispered something about his dog.

“What's that? Speak up!”

“My dog died,” Tony said in a voice that cracked with puberty and sorrow.

“Do you honestly expect me to believe that your dog's ill health stretched out over the entire four weeks you had to read this book and prepare a two-page report?”

Tony hung his head and mumbled something about how the dog had been feeling poorly for several weeks.

Something about Tony's answer triggered the eruption. Miss Kleinschmidt drew in a deep breath and then exhaled slowly, a noxious fume filling the air around Tony's head. “Look at all these papers. The other students managed to find the time.” She rolled up the other papers she'd collected and whacked her open palm.

“Look at me. They all answered my assignment. They cared enough. Don't you care? Do you think you can get through life with your thick black hair, and your muscles, and your winning smile?”

“No, ma'am,” Tony said, keeping his head buried in his arms on his desk.

“That's right!” she thundered. “It's not too late for your grades to collapse and for me to send a letter to that fancy high school you've been accepted to. They can still change their minds.” With that, she shot a glance at Patrick and a few other known coasters.

“That goes for all of you!” She smacked the roll of papers on Tony's desk. “Now get up and go to the boy's room and wash the shame off your face. Maybe when you come out, you can act like a man.”

Tony's nostrils flared like someone in a Clint Eastwood movie planning to blow up a bank. He pushed his chair back and stood, wiping hot tears from his red face as he headed for the hallway. Everyone else handed in their
papers, and Miss Kleinschmidt shuffled through them at her desk, clearing phlegm from her throat now and then to show disapproval.

When the final bell rang, she went to the teacher's lounge to have a cigarette. All the students were gone—all except Patrick. That's when he stole the snow globe for Tony. At least, that's how it had started. Mrs. Kleinschmidt had been cruel to his friend, and now he was going to pay her back. But as Patrick reached out to pick it up, he thought of all the trouble stealing the snow globe could cause. He remembered the Gang of Five and how they got in trouble, so much trouble that they ran away. He picked up the snow globe and saw the white flakes swirl around the tiny romantic village. Maybe stealing it could get him—and Tony—in so much trouble they'd have to run away. He could picture them watching the countryside roll by from inside a boxcar. So, he grabbed it and ran down the hallway and outside the school. There he saw Tony's bike by the church steps. He pulled the heavy door open and crept into the cool dark. Inside, he found Tony sitting in the shadows of a back pew.

“This will teach her!” Patrick said handing Tony the snow globe.

“I don't want it.” Tony had been half thinking, half praying, and wasn't really in the mood for criminal activity.

But Patrick kept pushing it. “Follow me,” he said, and led Tony to the choir loft, through the storage closet, and up through the trap door. When they got up on the church roof, they looked down on the school building, and Patrick started in about how grade school would soon be over, but then how another four-year sentence waited for them in high school. Then college and a job downtown. Marriage. Kids. Gray hair. Death. Patrick looked down at the pavement and imagined the shattered snow globe being discovered after morning Mass. He imagined getting caught, being expelled, going free. He wound up his throwing arm.

“Wait!” Tony said. He took the snow globe from Patrick and climbed up to the peak of the roof alone.

“What are you doing?” Patrick called up, “Don't fall.”

Tony rested the snow globe in Mary's right hand. Her thumb was open, so the glass sphere fit snugly in her grasp as if she had been waiting for it all along. He climbed back down to Patrick's level and caught his breath. Brushing off his hands, he looked up to admire his work.

“What'd you do that for?” Patrick asked.

“Let her deal with it.”

THE HAND GRENADE was displayed on a shelf in the den behind the leather chair where Mimi's father sat in his red plaid underwear lecturing her about the future. The reading lamp beside him threw a corporate shine on his bald head, white legs, and black executive socks, and at the end of each sentence, he pointed at her the way his boss had pointed at him for years.

“Now, you've got to understand,” he said, raising his voice so he could be heard over the Chopin concerto Mimi's high school sister was playing on the upright piano in the living room, “my promotion will mean a level of security this family has never known. I've worked very hard for it, just as your sister has worked hard to get straight A's at Holy Footsteps. Why, listen to her play.”

Mimi listened to a few notes and nodded. Her eyes wandered to the hand grenade. A souvenir from the Korean War, it had a wire twisted tightly around it and through the eye of the pin so no one could ever fool around with it and blow up the house.

“Here you go,” said Mrs. Maloney, breezing into the room wearing an apron with fresh pot roast stains. Three safety pins were pressed between her lips, and she carried her husband's new suit pants over her arm.

“Hey, Mom,” yelled Mimi's sister while she played the concerto, where's my other uniform?”

“I put it in your drawer, dear,” Mrs. Maloney called out.

“No you didn't. It wasn't there.”

“Look again. You'll find it. It couldn't have just walked off on its own.” Mrs. Maloney smiled admiringly at her husband and handed him his new pants.

Mr. Maloney stood and thanked her with an executive nod, then turning to Mimi, he continued his presentation as he shot his legs into the pants to try them on. “This party we're hosting for the boss and some of the office staff is important,” he said. “Everyone must say and do just the right thing. We don't want them to rescind the promotion.”

“Oh, don't say that.” Mrs. Maloney laughed and waved her hand at her husband as if batting away an invisible fly. “They can't rescind something they've already authorized.”

Everyone turned as Mimi's brother burst into the den dribbling a basketball on a patch of hardwood floor between the Persian rugs. He was wearing his CYC select team uniform and gym shoes, rifling the ball between his legs and spinning it on his finger.

“Look at you, only in the fifth grade and already a pro,” Mr. Maloney said. “You'll end up with a basketball scholarship someday.”

“Cool,” Mimi's brother said and spun the ball faster.

“Take that outside,” Mrs. Maloney said. “Your father is getting his uniform fitted for the promotion party.”

“Do you have to wear a uniform for your new job?”

Mr. Maloney laughed. “No, son, I don't have to. I get to. Now, go outside and shoot some baskets. You want to stay sharp.”

“Yes sir,” Mimi's brother said as he took off running through the living room toward some future basket.

Mr. Maloney sucked in his stomach and buttoned the pants. He zipped up and patted his ribs. “After seventeen years with the company,” he said to himself.

“Hold still, dear,” Mrs. Maloney said, crouching at his feet to safety pin his pants legs for alteration.

Mimi looked at the clock. “Can I go now?” she asked. She didn't want to be late for her secret phone call with her boyfriend. “I have homework.”

“Homework?” her father said. “I'm glad to hear you say the word. All right, you can go. And by the way, don't mention your grades at the party.
The boss's daughter is also going to Holy Footsteps next fall, and I hear she's getting straight A's. No reason for you to feel any … less than her. As long as you've been accepted, that's all that counts.”

“What if they change their minds for some reason?” Mimi said. She was thinking of the fake letter that was coming.

“Oh, don't say that,” Mrs. Maloney laughed.

“That's right. You're in,” Mr. Maloney said. “Holy Footsteps, and then college. We can afford that now. You've got a real future all of a sudden.”

Mimi sighed and tried to sound happy. “Thanks, Dad.” She got up to go upstairs when her mother called out, “And don't forget to brush your teeth, and throw your dirty clothes down the clothes chute and straighten up your room and…”

With her mother's voice fading in the crescendo of the Chopin concerto, Mimi reached the top of the stairs at precisely nine o'clock. The antique clock chimed, and she lifted the hallway princess phone off the hook and dialed Time and Temperature. Then she stretched the cord into her room to close the door and sat on her bed with the phone to her ear.