Snow Globes and Hand Grenades (5 page)

The priest and detective and Miss Kleinschmidt looked at each other.

“So, if everyone was involved,” Detective Kurtz said, “then everyone will face questioning.” His face was even redder than before and he clicked his ballpoint pen like a gunshot.

At that, everyone dropped their hands, and realized they were all in trouble. Mimi was the last to lower her hand.

“We will talk to you one on one,” said Father Ernst. His voice was calm but sorrowful. “I know the Blessed Mother will be watching over our proceedings to ensure we arrive at the truth.” Father Ernst and Detective Kurtz marched out of the room.

Miss Kleinschmidt put her snow globe back on the shelf and the sweat mark from her angry palm evaporated.

SISTER MATHILDA, the last nun at Mary Queen of Our Hearts to wear a black habit, had been forced into retirement and was recovering from cataract surgery. Parish authorities had decided to put her in a nursing home for nuns, as soon as she healed from the surgery. But Sister Mathilda had her own plans for the future, which she had shared with no one. Wearing taped-on black eye patches and a harness attached by a wire to a dog run line in the back yard of the nunnery, she paced and plotted. Her plan was to get her vision back and then drive away in the Cutlass Supreme she had won in the 1966 school raffle.

She walked back and forth smelling the flowers, listening to the birds and the children coming out for recess onto the playground, and thinking about her car which was parked alongside the nunnery, the keys safe inside a waterproof rosary pouch and hidden under a rock by the little kindergarten house. Most of the students ignored her as she walked in the nunnery yard. She was the most forgotten soul in Purgatory to them. Others, mostly young boys, would come by to tease her and throw sticks at her, hoping to make her mad so she would blindly chase them. But the only reaction they got was a blessing and a request to please describe what the spring day looked like. No kid ever did. They just laughed and ran back to the playground.

“Please pray for me,” she would call out.

Patrick and Tony and Mimi and all the class walked out the side doors and down the steps onto the playground. The white stone school, three stories tall, was sunlit against a blue sky. Boys in khaki pants, white shirts, and blue ties, and girls in blue and green plaid skirts, ran the bases playing kickball. The older boys and girls stood talking in the shade along the chain link fence, where an overhanging maple tree dropped helicopter seeds that twirled to the blacktop pavement. Tony chased a falling helicopter seed trying to catch one before it landed. He snagged it in his palm and laughed.

“What are you doing?” Patrick said.

“I was just pretending,” Tony said with a deep breath. “If I can catch this, we won't get in any real trouble from all this crap.”

Patrick took the helicopter seed from his hand and flicked it on the ground. “Why'd you raise your hand?”

“When I saw Mimi do it, I had to.”

They looked down the fence line at Mimi. She was surrounded by the other eighth grade girls, just like the photo in the newspaper of President Nixon surrounded by reporters.

“Did you really do it? When did you do it? How'd you get on the roof?” the girls shouted.

Mimi shrugged. The approval of her classmates meant nothing to her because she had her public high school boyfriend. She had the fake letter in her book bag ready to be dropped in the mail. She had her own future ahead with him at Webster High. She deflected the questions with questions of her own.

“Do you think I did it? How do you think I did it?”

“C'mon, Mimi, tell us. We raised our hands, too.”

The boys gathered around Tony and Patrick, because they were the first guys to raise their hands.

“So, Tony, what kind of shit have you got us into? Did you do it?”

“I'm telling you the truth,” Tony said lying, keeping one eye on Mimi down the way, “I don't know who did it, but I just raised my hand for the hell of it.”

They turned to Patrick and asked him the same question. He glanced at
Tony, and then also lied. “I don't know why I raised my hand. I don't know anything anymore.”

The boys and girls debated amongst themselves, guessing and whispering and asking each other who did it. The general feeling was that either some of the first ones who raised their hands really did do it, or nobody in Miss Kleinschmidt's class did it. Maybe it was a student from long ago who hated her and broke into the school at night. Maybe it was the janitor. Maybe it was Miss Kleinschmidt herself. Maybe she had finally gone crazy and climbed up to the roof just to have one last thing to hold over them all.

They looked up to the window of the teacher's lounge. There was a gap in the venetian blinds and somebody swore that it looked like Miss Kleinschmidt was up there spying on them, trying to figure out who did it.

She was, of course. But she couldn't figure it out. Not yet. Nobody was patted on the back. No one was lifted up on the shoulders of the crowd as the hero. There were no clues. But she knew the guilty one was on the playground right before her eyes. She just couldn't tell yet who it was.

The bell rang and the kids headed back inside. Sister Mathilda paced back and forth with the dog-run line trailing behind her, blind to the world, biding her time.

PRESIDENT NIXON STRUGGLED to concentrate on his work in the Oval Office, but the thought of the approaching Senate hearings on Watergate was too distracting. He rubbed his temples and considered the facts. He knew he was guilty. He had lied and denied any knowledge of the caper. In fact, he knew all about the Watergate break in and he knew about a wave of other crime his operatives had carried out—things that might come out if they could pin him for Watergate. He tossed down his pen and changed into his tennis outfit for a game of ping pong in the White House basement with Chinese ping pong master Feng Lu.

Feng had been on retainer for some time, going back to the days before Nixon's historic visit to China. He spoke no English and at age ninety was stone deaf, so Nixon could curse or sing the Navy song or talk about national security matters with visitors without asking Feng to leave the room. Nixon was sweating profusely, bobbing around the table in his white knee socks, white tennis shoes, and white shorts and shirt. Feng breathed calmly, fielding the ball with deft movements, as he stood at the center of the board wearing his grey one-piece jump suit. Nixon felt he was gaining ground against Feng when Henry Kissinger appeared carrying some important papers.

“So
zeese
is where you are,” Kissinger said sounding annoyed as he ducked to avoid bumping his head on a ceiling pipe.

“Henry!” Nixon said, slicing his paddle through the air to give the ball some spin, “I've decided everything's going to be fine.”

“Oh?” Kissinger said as Feng returned the ball with a gentle under thrust that caused it to land on the far right corner of the table.

Nixon dove for the ball, smacking it with all the anger he felt toward the journalists, Democrats, and anti-war demonstrators who had fomented this season of upheaval. Feng held his paddle by his side and waited as the ball rocketed out of bounds and into an adjacent laundry room, where the President's black socks were oscillating. Nixon tripped over the ping pong table leg, and toppled to the floor.

“Meester President,” Kissinger sighed as he helped Nixon up, “You must consider how this situation could affect your future … even your presidency.”

“Horsefeathers!” Nixon said with a renewed determination. “I'm the only one in charge of my future. You'll see. They'll all see.” He pointed at his opponent with his paddle. “Right, Feng Lu?”

Feng nodded in deaf agreement and got out another ball to serve.

“You just keep our allies on board and the world will see that old Dick Nixon can still play ball,” the President said. “But if you're really that concerned, drop by after dinner and we'll discuss it. Pat's making lemon pie.”

“I'm sorry, Mr. President. I have another commitment this evening.”

“What, another date?”

Kissinger looked at the floor. “Yes, Mr. President.”

Nixon shook his head. “Henry, you're a smart man. Tell me, why are you always falling in love?”

“I don't know. I can't understand it myself, sir.”

Nixon motioned for Kissinger to leave the papers on a side table and went back to his game. Feng could see Nixon was tiring, so he eased up and let him win.

TONY AND PATRICK washed Chips Ahoy cookies down with cold root beer and watched a rerun of
Gilligan's Island
. They agreed it was a stupid show, but liked having it on for the sake of Ginger and Mary Ann. Tony had invited Patrick over after school to help him fake out a report on
The Scarlet Letter
, but Patrick wasn't much help. He had based his report on the back cover and on the article in the World Book Encyclopedia. “You're not supposed to use the encyclopedia for reports,” Tony said, “They can tell.”

“Not if you use synonyms,” Patrick said.

“How's that work?”

“You know, if the encyclopedia says Hester was ‘depressed', you just say Hester was … ‘suicidal'.”

“Was she?”

“I don't know, but that's what I put down.”

The front door opened and Tony's older brother Vince came in from high school. He was a sophomore at St. Aloysius, the all boys Jesuit prep school where Tony and Patrick had been accepted. Vince had thick, black wavy hair like Tony, and muscles. He carried a heavy book bag full of homework like it was nothing.

“Hey, Vince,” Tony called out from the TV room.

Vince didn't say anything but walked to the edge of the TV room,
glancing at the Chips Ahoy bag, the root beers, and the
Gilligan's Island
rerun. “What, no homework?”

“Oh, we're working on it right now,” Tony said reaching for a piece of loose-leaf paper with the first paragraph of his report. The paper had been on the couch earlier, but had fallen to the floor unnoticed. He picked it up. “Yeah, we're working on a book report. Nothing big.”

Vince cast an indicting look at Patrick.

“We've got it all outlined in our heads,” Patrick said.

Vince put down his book bag on the chair, then got out all his fat textbooks to show the boys the homework he had as a sophomore at St. Aloysius. It was about two hours worth of work before dinner, he said, and then more reading after dinner, and a paper to write before bed. “I don't think you guys realize what's expected of you,” he said. “If you want to make it, you can't be watching
Gilligan's Island
.”

Tony and Patrick looked at each other, then at the TV. The Skipper was hitting Gilligan on his head with his cap because Gilligan had ruined another chance to get off the island.

“Is it really that hard?” Patrick asked.

“It's like lifting weights.” Vince made a muscle with his arm, which was quite well developed, because on top of all his homework, he lifted bar bells. He was a straight “A” student with dates on the weekend and plans for the future.

“I got muscles, too,” Tony said, rolling off the couch onto the floor to do push ups. Patrick and Vince watched him do about ten and then he farted and collapsed to the floor laughing.

“Go ahead and laugh,” Vince said. “But it won't be funny, if you don't exercise your mind. Your mind is like a muscle and it can go flabby.” Vince went into the kitchen to eat some grapes and a banana, and drink a glass of milk to power up his mind for homework.

Tony rolled over on his back to see the TV better, and Patrick leaned back on the couch to consider the future. A fresh rerun of
Petticoat Junction
was starting. The boys didn't say anything as the soothing theme song invited them to spend the next half-hour with Bobbie Jo, Billie Jo, and Betty Jo. They made sure to pay special attention to the part where the three sisters were in the water tank taking a bath.

“What are we gonna do about Mimi?” Tony sighed.

“I don't know,” Patrick said.

“Maybe you should call her and tell her I raised my hand first. Tell her I raised my hand first after her.”

“What good'll that do?”

“I don't know. Girls like to be rescued. Don't they?”

“I don't know.”

Tony was watching
Petticoat Junction
, thinking. “Just call her tonight, okay?”

“You should call her. She's your girlfriend.”

“I can't bear another breakup.”

MIMI BIT HER LIP and flopped face down on her bed so no one could hear her cry. Downstairs, a houseful of adults were laughing and talking at her Dad's promotion party, while upstairs she gripped the princess phone like a vise, her thumb pressed down hard on the hang-up button. She couldn't believe it. Her boyfriend wanted to break up. After all this time of being in love! This time she had called him to tell him to meet her on the golf course right away. She wanted him to know the truth—that other boys liked her, and that one of them had just called her. It was only Patrick who'd called, but still.