Princess of Passyunk (37 page)

He stopped and gave Ganny a sharp look. “You sure you want to marry into this family?”

“Yes, sir.”

The butcher shook his head. “
A glik ahf dir
. You'll need all the luck you can get.”

“But, Mr. Joe, I don't understand: if your sister-in-law can turn someone into a cockroach, couldn't she charm Lana out of the convent?”

“Hey, even Beyle's got her limits. She don't dabble in the affairs of the Church.”

Ganady shook his head, wondering if he were in fact still lying on the cot in the jail cell, dreaming. He wished desperately that his Baba were here, or Mr. Ouspensky.

“Which convent?”

The butcher shrugged eloquently. “I should know from convents?”

“You don't know?”

“Of course not. That's why I came to get you when the police called.
You
gotta find her, Ganady. Like you did the first time.”

“But the first time I had The Baseball—the miracle Baseball. I don't have it anymore.”

“D'you know where it is?”

“Well, yeah...”

“Well, then.” Again the eloquent shrug. Mr. Joe opened the door of his car. “You want me to drop you someplace?”

Ganady looked up the street toward his house. His home. A place he wasn't even sure he would ever see the inside of again.

“No. I need to do some thinking.”

The butcher patted his arm. “I knew you would help.
Dos hartz hot mir gezogt
.” He slid behind the wheel, closed the door, and started the engine.

Ganady stepped back from the curb and watched him drive away.

Dos hartz hot mir gezogt
.

My heart told me.

Svetlana had said that to him once. The night he'd admitted to her that he'd met her Da. He wondered if he should let the words give him hope.

He turned and started up the street toward his house. There was nowhere else to go, for The Baseball was there and he needed The Baseball to find Lana again. He must get into his room somehow. Get to The Baseball somehow.

Without being caught.

Blocks later, as he stepped up onto the curbing at the intersection of Seventh and Dickenson, he saw two men approaching from up the street. They were walking quickly with their heads down, not speaking to each other, and as they passed beneath a street lamp, he recognized them.

Da and Nikolai.

Without thinking, he turned and trotted down a short flight of steps into a basement doorway and waited there until they had passed by.

Quivering, he emerged again, glancing after them. They were across the intersection now and he doubted they would recognize his back. He turned back up the
zibete,
walking as fast as his legs would carry him. His heart felt lighter; perhaps with his Da and brother gone, he might be able get The Baseball without trouble. Surely neither Marija nor Baba Irina would rat him out, as they said in the gangster movies.

With hope lifting him, Ganady continued up the street until he stood before his front door. The house was completely dark. No lights were on upstairs or down. As his bedroom was the only one that overlooked the street, there was no hope of rousing Baba or Marija from this side. He decided he must go around to the alley and get into their small back yard.

He hastened back toward Dickenson Street; two houses down there was a tiny access that fed into the alley. It was this he made for, slipping into the dark slit and sidling as quickly as he could along it to the alley beyond.

Moments later he stood outside his garden gate. It was latched. He didn't let than deter him, but launched himself up and over the fence, which was only inches taller than his head. In a matter of seconds he was looking up at the rear of the house from the center of the little garden. The windows were dark here as well, from the kitchen to the bedrooms above. He tried the back door, but found it locked, which was peculiar. He hadn't even known the kitchen door
could
lock.

He looked about for pebbles to throw, but there were none in the neat garden. Finally, he stumbled into Mama's potting table, where he found an empty flower pot. He broke it, smashing it into small fragments, which he stuffed into his pockets.

Marija's window was upstairs to the left of the kitchen door. His parents' window was to the right, but as much as he craved seeing his Mama, he couldn't be sure she wouldn't call the hospital the moment she saw him. So, he tossed shards of the broken flower pot at his little sister's bedroom window until he exhausted his supply.

He was looking about for another pot to break, when he heard a soft skittering sound from the direction of Baba's bench. He glanced down and saw, rolling toward him in the waning moonlight, a whitish, spherical blur. It bumped across the paving stones to his feet, coming to rest against the toe of his right sneaker.

He reached down and picked it up.

In complete darkness he would have known it—The Baseball. He squatted on the garden paving stones and marveled at it. How had it come to be here?

He looked toward the bench again and saw the stones before it ripple strangely in the pale silver light. His first instinct was to run, but curiosity won out. He stood stock-still as the ripple resolved into about a dozen gleaming cockroaches of various sizes. As one, they rose up on their hindmost legs and waggled at him.

“Thank you,” he whispered, then looked up toward the dark heavens and the shimmering moon and said “Thank you” to God as well.

The words had no sooner left his lips when a light went on inside the house. He could see it as a faint golden glow through the kitchen windows and heard his Da's voice shouting for Mama: “Ravke! Ravke! Wake up! Ganny...”

The voice trailed off and Ganny thought Da must have gone upstairs. He pocketed The Baseball and turned to go. He'd barely uprooted his feet when his shadow sprang up before him, looming long across the suddenly bright pavers.

The kitchen light! He spun back toward the house and saw that Nick had come into the kitchen. He was at the sink pouring himself a glass of water.

Ganady was stuck in the beam of light like a fly in butter, unable to move even when Nick's eyes met his through the glass. His brother's mouth opened in a soundless O, and then he turned his head and shouted, “Da!”

Ganny came unstuck and bolted for the back gate. He flipped up the latch and darted into the alley, where he ducked down below the level of the fence and ran as best he could back to the narrow walkway between the houses. Not trusting himself to the lamplit street, he dove across the
zibete
and into a matching slit of darkness on the other side. He flew through it to the alley beyond, pinballing off the rough, brick walls on either side.

Praying no one had seen him, he slowed and began to walk north toward Wilder. When he reached the mouth of the alley, he felt in his pocket for The Baseball. Praying it still possessed magic or miracle, he tossed it out into the street and hurried after it.

It drew him north. No matter how he threw it or where he threw it, it drew him north toward Fitzwater.

He was standing in the middle of Jefferson Square when it came to him—the great, soul-filling sense that he no longer needed The Baseball to find Svetlana. He picked it up from the cold, wet grass, but did not throw it again. Instead, clutching it in his hand, he crossed the parkland toThird Street and headed north again, his heart pounding in rhythm with his feet.

He ran until he was standing beneath the shimmering façade of Saint Stanislaus, staring up at the spires. He was shaking and breathless by the time he'd climbed the steps to the doors of the sanctuary. They were unlocked. They were always unlocked. Parishioners might need to pray or to confess at any time of day or night.

He pushed the big doors open and stepped into the narthex, drinking in the soft, velvet warmth. He crossed the narthex and stepped out into the soaring vault of the nave, peering down the candlelit rows of pews toward the altar.

A woman knelt there at the very bottom of the aisle in which he stood, her knees on the
prie-dieu
. She wore a simple black dress, her hair covered with the white coif of a novice nun.

He wavered for a moment, wanting to shout, wanting to pray, wanting to sing, wanting to cry. Instead he set The Baseball down in the carpeted aisle and gave it a push. It rolled true and silent until it met the soles of the woman's feet with a gentle bump.

She
kvitched
, then reached a hand around to feel behind her.

Ganny did not breathe as her fingers wrapped around the ball. He did not breathe as she picked it up, turning it as he always did, over and over in her hand. He did not breathe as she stood, pivoted and went into a wind up. She pitched it to him side-arm and he caught it, gasping for air as it stung his palm.

When he looked back at her, Svetlana the Mule-headed was standing demurely before the altar, a woman of flesh and blood. A smile hovered on her lips.

He didn't know how he crossed the distance between them; he only knew that he did. He stood before her and poured out his heart, telling her all the things that had happened to him since he had seen her last—the Singer, the Crone, his break-in at Mr. Joe's and his subsequent trip to jail, the rescued cockroaches, his “fight” with Boris, Mr. Joe's intervention, his escape from his Da and Nikolai.

Coming here to find her.

Lastly, hands clutching The Baseball, he pleaded with her from the bottom of his heart and the depths of his soul, “Please, Lana. Please don't marry the Church. Marry me, instead.”

In answer, Lana threw back her head and laughed. Her laughter soared into the highest arches and shimmered off the stained glass windows and bounced among the pews.

Ganady reveled in the sound, afraid it might be the last time he heard it.

When she had done laughing (at him?), she wrapped her hands around his hands and asked, “And Da's good with this?”

“He gave his blessing. I promise he did. He said, ‘Find her, Ganny, and you can marry her.' He sent Boris away.”

“And how did Boris take that?”

Ganny blushed, remembering the pummeling he took. “Not so good.”

“And how did you find me? Following this?” She squeezed his fingers tighter around The Baseball.

“I started to, but then...” He gazed into her twilight sea-colored eyes. “
Dos hartz hot mir gezogt
. My heart told me.”

She looked at him very solemnly and in a way that made his navigator heart lose its bearings and reel drunkenly in his breast. Still caressing his fingers with one hand, she used the other to pull the coif from her head. Her golden hair, longer now than the last time he had seen her, fell to her shoulders.

“I'm not going to marry the Church, Ganny. I was never going to marry the Church. This isn't even a real habit.”

“But, then...why?”

“I thought it would put a scare into Da. So he'd bless us to marry. I guess it worked. You're here.”

She blessed him with a mulish smile, then dropped the coif to the carpet and stepped into his arms.

She was solid and warm and real, and her hair smelled of nutmeg and cinnamon, which made him think of babka, which made him think of his Mama and Baba and the rest of his family, at least half of which thought him completely mad.

“Can you come meet my family now? Really meet them?”

She laughed again. “Yes. So they will no longer think you're a
meshuggener
.”

“Even if the moon isn't full?”

“Full moon, no moon, day or night.”

“And the curse is off...for good?”

“The curse is off. You broke it, Ganny—you and that Miracle Baseball—just like you broke Da's plate glass window.” She pulled back a bit and gave him a saucy grin. “Home Run.”

Now he knew. Mr. O was right: love was too enough. If it was really love. And God still did miracles, even in South Philly.

Or perhaps He merely allowed human beings to do magic.

Ganady didn't much care. He gripped The Baseball and Svetlana more tightly and raised his eyes to the crucifix that the first congregation of Saint Stan's had brought all the way from Poland. They had fixed it lovingly above the altar, where it seemed to float in the semi-darkness of the apse.

Ganady had no adequate words with which to offer thanks, and figured God knew this better than anyone. He sent up his prayer of gratitude without them.

And it seemed to Ganady as he gazed into the Lord's face, that Jesus winked.

Please visit the
Book View Cafe eBookstore

o0o

What may I do with this file?
What may I not do with this file?
Please visit the
BVC FAQ

o0o

If you received this file from a file-sharing site or from a correspondent, please consider visiting Book View Cafe and buying your own copy, or donating to the author.