Snow Globes and Hand Grenades (23 page)

“I'm hungry,” Tony said.

So, Tony and Patrick went to Tony's house to eat the biggest after school snack ever.

Tony put on an apron and made two meatball sandwiches with extra sauce and melted cheese. He forgot to put the tray in the toaster oven and cheese dripped down on the heating element smoking up the kitchen. The smoke alarm went off and he and Patrick laughed so hard they almost cried, and then they opened the kitchen door to air out the room. They drank Vess lemon lime soda in big glasses, and put handfuls of Old Vienna potato chips on their plates. Then Tony sliced two pieces of leftover chocolate cake with ice cream on the side and they took the whole feast into the TV room to watch a full afternoon of reruns.

“We should call up Mimi to see how she's doing,” Tony said.

So, Tony dialed the number and cleared his throat while it was ringing and fixed his hair a little.

“There's no answer,” he said after about fifteen rings. He hung up and they went back into the TV room to watch the
Twilight Zone
. It was the episode in which a man and woman find themselves in a strange town with no other people, and in the end they find out they're in a girl's play village on another planet. They had been taken in the night while driving home.

“Do you think she'll go to the graduation?” Tony asked.

“I don't know. I hope so.”

They both wanted to hear everything about Mimi's final interrogation and what she said to make the authorities give up. Sometimes girls would tease the boys by saying girls were smarter than boys. And now Patrick and Tony were convinced. Mimi was the very embodiment of that saying, and they both wanted to let her know she had done a great job with the investigation.

Tony's older brother came home from his last day of freshman year at St. Aloysius. He plopped down a big pile of books he was planning to read over the summer and had a light snack to send essential nutrients straight to his brain cells.

“What are you shitheads doing?” he asked, looking at their mess of plates and their lazy bodies rolled out on the couch and floor before the TV.

“Gimmie a break, it's summer,” Tony said.

Tony's brother drank his protein drink and went upstairs to lift weights. He had a whole plan for the summer to make money and get ready for the fall.

“What are we gonna do this summer?” Tony asked.

“Is it really summer? Did we really just leave grade school forever?”

“Hell, yeah.”

They got out the BB gun and shot some soda cans in the backyard and had a cigarette behind the garage and enjoyed the afternoon with nothing on their agenda except the graduation ceremony Saturday night.

ON SATURDAY MORNING, Sister Mathilda hoisted her suitcase from her bed and walked out of her room at the nunnery. It was time to depart for the retirement home. A line of nuns along the walkway outside hugged and kissed her in the sunlight. She was the last nun still wearing the black habit at Mary Queen of Our Hearts, and on this day she had put on a fresh, clean habit for the trip. The nuns gave her a card and a box of candy and thanked her for all she had done.

“Thirty-two years,” she told them. “It went fast.” Then she swallowed back a sigh looking over at the school, knowing she would never go inside to teach again. Her students from all those years, thousands of them, were now grown adults, working in offices and raising families. None came to thank her or bid her farewell. Her exit was like a private burial with immediate family only.

“Here come the boys,” the principal said.

Father Maligan's car drove up the playground from the priests' house. He parked it and Monsignor O'Day got out on crutches.

“What's this all about? Are you running away?” Monsignor said.

Sister Mathilda nodded at the joke, the last joke she would ever hear from Monsignor O'Day. He limped over on his crutches, while Father Maligan hung back to pick his nose succinctly.

“No foolin', we're gonna miss you,” Monsignor O'Day said. He gave her
a hug and looked her in the eyes. She had no tears. Her eyes were calm and ready to go. “Something for you to remember us by,” Monsignor said. He turned to Father Maligan who was walking up with a gift in his hand. It was a portrait-sized picture wrapped in funny papers from that morning.

“What is this, a picture of you?” she joked.

“Even better. Something to remember us by,” Monsignor O'Day said.

This was one of his favorite possessions, which he had taken from his own bedroom wall and wrapped in the morning funny papers for her. She opened it. It was a photograph of the school and church taken from a helicopter, showing the playground as a muddy field with construction equipment. On a flatbed truck was the gold statue of Mary next to a crane ready to lift her to the roof.

Sister Mathilda held it to her chest. “Thank you, Monsignor. I will take good care of it, and now I can see it. I can see everything now.”

Father Maligan ambled up. “One more thing, you bird.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a folded up piece of paper. She opened it up. It was the program from the night Father Maligan had taken her to the racetrack. “Just so you don't forget me and all the fun we had.”

Some of the younger nuns looked over and saw the picture of a racehorse on the front. Sister Mathilda thanked him and gave him a hug.

“Well, be sure to write and let us know how the food is,” Monsignor O'Day said. “It can't be any worse than here.”

A new nun in modern clothes took her suitcase and put it in the trunk of the principal's car. Sister Helen got behind the wheel and Sister Mathilda got in the passenger side. Everyone lined up to wave and watch her pull away, and then she was gone.

“Some day, that'll be us,” Monsignor O'Day said to Father Maligan.

Father Maligan grunted in agreement.

Sister Mathilda boarded a passenger train at the Kirkwood station after one more hug from Sister Helen. “You'll never be forgotten,” the principal said.

“Yes I will. We all will. There'll be new kids, new teachers, even a new principal someday. We'll all be forgotten. And that's okay.”

The train pulled away and Sister Mathilda sat by a window watching the suburbs turn to farmland. Barns and cows, rivers and fields. She looked around the train car at the other passengers—a boy with a comic book, a man
with a stock page, a couple on their honeymoon just getting started. She got out the picture of the school and looked at it, then looked out the window some more at the clouds and laid her head back on the seat cushion and took a nap.

TONY TOOK A HOT SHOWER and shaved. It was graduation night. He splashed on some of his big brother's Old Spice aftershave, and put on a clean shirt with stiff wide collars. This was a night for tight jeans and the horse head belt buckle. A night for dancing. He turned on the radio and thought of Mimi as Stevie Wonder sang “You are the Sunshine of My Life.” Tony looked in the mirror and combed his thick black hair as he sang along.

His parents drove him to the gym. They sat in the metal folding chairs with the other parents. Sister Helen gave a speech about how proud she was of them and how they should do something important with their futures. Then they got their diplomas, one at a time, each student shaking hands with her and Monsignor O'Day, who sat in a chair with his leg in a cast. Afterwards, Monsignor had every kid in the graduating class sign his cast—except Mimi. She didn't show up.

“If she's sick, she's sick,” Patrick said. “You'll see her over the summer.”

Tony looked around at the girls. “It's been a bad year for love.”

When the party started, the parents went home and the students cleared away the folding chairs and slid them on racks under the stage. It was time to eat pizza and drink soda and dance to the music. A stereo record player with 45s played the hits.

Tony unbuttoned his shirt's top two buttons to show his chest and got out on the dance floor. He put a lot of leg and shoulder muscles into his
dancing. At first, he danced by himself, with his eyes closed, pretending Mimi was with him. But his moves were so heartfelt, that all the girls began to dance around him. Or maybe it was the aftershave.

“Hey, Tony, you wanna dance?”

It was Sara Jibbs, a girl who never did anything wrong.

“Sure.” Tony danced with her, then he danced with Molly Lane, Ann Bennett, Janet Fowler, Susan McGregor, Elaine Moore and all through the class roster. He got around to a slow dance with Charlotte Hester to the song “My Love.” Tony was doing all right.

Patrick went outside on the gym steps and sat at the bottom to have a cigarette. He tapped the end of the fresh pack of Camel non-filters that Tony had given him as a graduation present.

So this was it, he thought. Like Dillinger, the last night around the old rock pile. The night air was warm and the trees danced with the breeze. It would have been a good night to hop a train going somewhere with Tony. But that whole plan had lost its glow. He knew now he was never going to get away like that. His parents were just too immature and wouldn't be able to take it. They had gone to his graduation and hugged him and said they were proud of him. He was stuck living with them to make them happy, because they had loved him too much for him to get out of their clutches without feeling guilty. It also would have wrecked things for his brothers and sisters, because they'd be worrying all the time that he was dead, and he couldn't have proper fun on the road if he knew they were back home on their knees praying for him before they went to bed. The whole dream was stupid anyway, maybe. Maybe he only wanted to run away to rattle Miss Kleinschmidt and outshine the Gang of Five. Now that he was done with grade school, he felt lazy about the project. Besides, his bedroom had air conditioning and clean sheets.

He pulled the red strip on the pack of Camels to take off the cellophane wrapper when he heard a bike bell. He looked up and saw Mimi ride into view on her green Schwinn with the white basket. She rode up in jeans, and a fresh white t-shirt. Her hair was in a ponytail under a red Cardinals ball cap. She was chewing a big wad of bubble gum.

“Hey, you bird,” she said imitating Father Maligan's voice. She wanted to get off the bike and hug him, but she stayed on the seat.

“Hey,” Patrick said standing up. He wanted to hug her, but he knew Tony loved her.

Tony was inside the gym slow dancing with Charlotte Hester wishing she were Mimi.

“I heard you're real sick. You got the strep throat?” Patrick asked.

Mimi faked a cough and nodded. “I'm getting a little better.” She blew a bubble and then a bubble within a bubble to avoid having to talk. It popped in her face and she peeled it off with a laugh.

“Hey, what happened with the investigation?” Patrick asked.

“Oh, they had me beat.”

“Really?”

She took an honest breath. “Yeah, they figured it all out. At least that cop did, what's his name.”

“Kurtz.”

“Yeah, Detective Kurtz. He had me cornered and guessed pretty much the whole thing, but then I got sick and next thing I knew I woke up in the hospital.”

Patrick patted her on the back. “Well, you did great! Me and Tony really wanted to tell you. We owe you.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey, wait here, I'll go get Tony.”

“No, wait,” she said.

Patrick looked at her. She gripped the handlebars and twisted her hands on them over and over again. “I have to go.”

“What, are you not feeling well?”

“No, I just don't want to cry.” Her voice cracked on the word “cry,” so she chewed her gum a lot to cover for it.

“That's OK, we'll see you over the summer at the pool and places.”

She nodded her head, as if that were true, and pulled her ball cap brim down tight on her head. Then she decided to tell him the truth. “I have to go away.”

“Go away?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“I got accepted to a private school.” So, not the whole truth, but still as much as her parents said she could tell.

“I thought you were going to Holy Footsteps.”

“No, this is even better. It's run by nuns, but it's in the country where it's quiet and you can go on long walks and have time to think about everything.”

Patrick scrunched up his face. “What the hell are talking about? Think about what?”

She looked around at the dumpster and the empty playground and the gleaming statue of Mary. “Oh, I don't know. Just think about, you know, the things of the Lord.”

“Holy shit, Mimi, you aren't thinking about becoming—”

“A nun? No, no,” she said whipping off her baseball cap and putting it back on tighter, “But this is just like a finishing school where they help you to get to know God better.”

“Bullshit, Mimi, are you kidding me?” Patrick started laughing. “I thought you were serious for a minute.” He kept on laughing, but noticed she wasn't laughing, so he stopped. “You're serious?”