The Patron Saint of Ugly (23 page)

“E’ molto bella.”

“Grazie.”
Diamante leaned into the room and whispered, “You really married to God? You really celibate?”

Angelo looked at her with sadness and held up his rosary beads as proof.
“Sì.”

Diamante nodded and walked away mournfully.

Dominick got his brother a job working for Le Baron, so every morning Diamante waved bye-bye to the men, often running after them with Dominick’s forgotten lunch bucket or Angelo’s four-tooth chisel, which Angelo prized but frequently misplaced. Dominick’s younger brother soon distinguished himself: he was a better bricklayer than his older brother, plus he was an exceptional sculptor. In his spare time, Angelo began carving grotesque waterspouts shaped like dragons and lions and Chimeras, which the Italians bought and attached to their bungalows. When the ever-watchful Baron saw the extravagance, he commissioned Angelo to create not only dozens of waterspouts for his grand chateau but two gargoyles to overlook the front door. Le Baron was so pleased with the craftsmanship that he gave Angelo permission to design and lay out the bricks for Via Dolorosa.

Angelo sketched for a week before he settled on his pattern. He made the bricks himself, and he pulled them still warm from the oven and laid them immediately, while they were still pliable, for a snugger fit, leaving the impression of three of his fingers on every single brick, a deliberate feature. He worked nonstop, beginning at Appian Way and moving toward the house of his brother, or, more accurately, toward his brother’s wife. Because Angelo had indeed taken a vow of celibacy, but every day he spent under the same roof with Diamante chiseled away at his oath. Whenever they wedged past each other in the hall in their nightclothes or when Diamante brought a glass of water to Angelo working bare-chested in the street, something sparked between them.

Angelo also came home for lunch and helped Diamante set and clear the table and even wash up the dishes, their hands swimming like fish beneath the sudsy water as they felt for soupspoons and butter knives, fingers occasionally grazing, perhaps even clasping as their hearts thudded and their godly resolve slipped down the drain.

Having been commissioned by Le Baron to do another project and given carte blanche in its design, Angelo began work on a statue in his brother’s garage. Every night he hammered and four-tooth-chiseled and smoothed. He ordered special fountain parts from Sicilia, which arrived in a crate accompanied by clippings of a Sicilian grape that made a smoother wine than Grandpa’s Gaglioppo.

On the afternoon of the unveiling, Angelo called together all the Italians in the neighborhood; they skipped down their newly bricked street, the children marching heel-toe along the serpentine inlay as if it were a game. They gathered around as he revealed the fountain modeled after Botticelli’s
Birth of Venus
, though of course this Venus was a Nereid standing on her giant seashell. Scallop shells discreetly covered her nipples; another jutted from her hair like a Victorian comb. She was also holding out seashells like patens. Father Kavanagh raised his hands just as a red-winged raptor swooped overhead screeching like a girl being murdered. The falcon released its bowels, splattering not only the beautiful nymph but Angelo and Diamante. The old women cheered, since everyone knows that being shat on by birds brings good fortune. Father Kavanagh interpreted it differently. He stared up at the receding falcon and proclaimed his divine augury: “Sometimes shit just brings shit.” He mumbled a swift prayer, and when he gave the command, Angelo turned on the spigot beneath the base, which set off a spray of water from the Nereid’s lips, much to the crowd’s delight. All this attention on Angelo started a fire in Dominick’s belly, especially when he noticed the townspeople begin to look from the Nereid’s face to Diamante’s in wonder.

Several weeks later, one day around noon, Dominick had a case of the trots. Because he was close to home, he rushed there and barely peeled off his union suit in time. When he came out, Diamante was dashing from her bedroom trailing a familiar fragrance, and he heard the back door slam.

“Who’s that?” he said.

“Who’s what?”

“The back door.”

“Nobody. You hearing a-things.”

“Hmmm.” Dominick loped to his room to change. That’s when he saw it: a four-toothed chisel on his bedside table sitting next to the bottle of red Pergusa water, a spilled puddle staining the doily beneath the lamp.

Dominick scooped up the chisel and ran downstairs to Diamante, who was in the kitchen.

Dominick’s shoulders shook and his voice wobbled. “Haven’t I given you a good-a life? What have I done-a wrong?”

Diamante’s head hung as she whispered the truth. “You’re not Angelo.”

It had stunned me to learn that Grandpa once had tender feelings for Nonna, but that was the end of them. It was at that precise moment, under Diamante’s brutal admission, that his heart compressed into a hunk of coal.

“Puttana!”
he howled. “I’m gonna kill that no good son-ama-beetch!”

Dominick bolted outside and ran, holding the chisel like the Olympic torch, to the site where the Saint Brigid School was being built and where his brother was working. Diamante chased after him. “No! No!”

Angelo was stacking a pallet of bricks when his brother charged at him.
“Testa di cazzo!
Bastardo! Figlio di puttano!
Individuo spregevole!”

Angelo spun around just as Dominick grabbed him by the throat. “You get outta my house! My city! My country! And go back to Sicilia where you belong!”

Angelo stared at his sea nymph and opened his mouth, but Dominick socked him in the jaw so hard that my great-uncle fell backward into the stack of bricks, toppling them over. Dominick threw the chisel at him, splitting his lip; the dripping blood was the exact color of the Pergusa water. Dominick heaved Angelo up by the front of his collar, spun him around, and booted his ass all the way down Appian Way to the train station. Diamante scooped up the chisel and followed in time to see Dominick hurl Angelo into a boxcar just as the two-thirty-five train pulled away, the shrill whistle blowing so loud it nearly drowned out Diamante’s proclamation: “We will be reunited some-a day! I have-a the
profezia
!”

Dominick looked at his wife and balled up his fist. “You! Get back-a home or I’m gonna clock you for sure!”

Diamante went back to a house emptier than it had ever been, curled up on the army cot in baby number two’s bedroom, and squeezed Angelo’s chisel in her palm as she cried herself to sleep. That was the night a six-inch segment of the Nereid’s braid went missing and water stopped pouring from her mouth.

Seven months later Diamante gave birth to her second son in the same hospital where that son’s children would be delivered fewer than three decades later. Dominick went to Scourged Savior only to fill in a not-really name on the birth certificate:
Non Miniera
, “Not Mine.” It didn’t matter that Diamante kept assuring him, “He’s-a yours, Dominick! He’s-a yours,” which was a distinct, if slight, possibility.

But before Dominick got the chance to assign the infant such a
bastardo
name, Diamante shuffled to the nurses’ station to fill in her choice: Angelo, her second and favorite son, who was born with a tiny birthmark on his left shoulder blade in the shape of a four-tooth chisel.

When Betty finished her tale, Mom and I stared at the statue, stunned. Betty swore us to secrecy as we proceeded down Via Dolorosa, where Great-Uncle Angelo had left his fingerprints on every brick, a permanent reminder to Grandpa of everything else his brother had touched.

We turned onto Appian Way, passing Aventine Laundry and Del Pizzo’s Florist adjacent to Saint Brigid’s. Uncle Dom and Dad were just leaving the church as we crossed the street and marched up the steps. They all grunted at one another, but when Dad raced off to keep up with his brother, Mom stared at him with newfound interest. Perhaps as she watched his receding back, she pictured the tiny birthmark she had traced her finger over countless times during their honeymoon years.

Then Uncle Dom socked Dad in the arm, and Mom muttered, “No offense, Betty, but I will never understand Angelo’s devotion to Dom.”

“He never told you?” Betty said.

“Told me what?”

“When they were boys, whenever their father went after Angelo with his fists, Dommy jumped in to take the beating for him.”

Mom looked as perplexed as I felt. “Why did he do that?”

Betty shrugged. “He always said that was the big brother’s duty.”

I wondered who had instructed Dom about his fraternal obligation. Could it have been Grandpa, who’d had his own little brother to protect? The prospect was mind-boggling.

In the narthex, Betty pulled mantillas from her purse for Mom and her to drape over their heads and took out a doily for me. As I pinned it to my hair I tried not to think of a blue pillowcase tucked in my underwear drawer. Inside the sanctuary Nicky was kneeling in a pew, head bowed, eyes shut. Ray-Ray sat behind him drawing anatomically correct stick figures in a hymnal. Mom slid into the last pew to read some novel, her crisp page-turning the only other noise in that hallowed nave besides the penitents clicking rosary beads.

Betty and I padded up the side aisle toward the confessional booths, three cell-like chambers, each with its own door. The larger, middle one belonged to Father Luigi. Red lights glowed above the two smaller doors, indicating that some poor schmuck was spilling his guts in one and another schmuck was waiting his turn. Finally, the left door opened and out came the sinner, eyes to the floor. Aunt Betty went in and I wondered, as always, what sinful thoughts she harbored. Lusting after muscle cars. Loving her dead husband more than this new one. Infanticide. I could easily imagine Uncle Dom’s offenses crusting his soul, though taking beatings for my father absolved him somewhat. I had also keenly studied Ray-Ray’s face whenever he exited the booth: he was always wearing a vacant ax-murderer scowl.

When it was my turn I entered and knelt, and eventually Father Luigi slid open the screen that separated us. I studied Father’s shadowy profile (and Abe Lincoln’s) as he made the sign of the cross. I began: “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned . . .” then admitted my failings: Fighting with Nicky. Not doing my homework. Before doling out his penance, Father uttered his usual prayer. “May the person
truly
responsible for this child’s affliction repent of her sins.” I suffered his dig at Mom and tiptoed out of the booth to begin my prescribed prayers, though I thought that suffering through Father Luigi and Caruso was expiation enough. My other penance was to loiter in the narthex and allow all the First Friday nonnas to brush my cheek or touch my hair, letting them have some tangible element that they would run home to smear on their ailing kin. I had learned that it was useless to deny them.

Afterward, Mom and Aunt Betty walked home arm in arm. Nicky ambled somberly behind them with his hands in his pockets, as if he were still in the confessional booth or wishing he were because he’d left out one important thing. He’d been walking around like that a lot lately, especially after Dom and Betty’s last poker party at our house. Nicky and Ray-Ray had once again disappeared after supper, and not only did Nicky not come out of his room the next day for poker change, he didn’t even come out for Alka-Seltzer.

That postconfession day, even Ray-Ray must have sensed that Nicky was not to be harangued. I lagged behind my brother as we crossed Appian Way and stepped onto the sidewalk. Ray-Ray zigzagged around me, kicking a stone, racing to kick it again. Mom and Aunt Betty paused to check for traffic before crossing the alley between Aventine’s and Del Pizzo’s. Nicky looked neither right nor left, as if it would have been okay with him if he was flattened by a delivery truck.

I, however, had an aversion to being hit by fast-traveling steel bumpers. I looked left into the alley before stepping off the curb. Thus it was a complete shock to be rammed from the right, not by a vehicle, but by Ray-Ray, who pushed me into the alley with a shove so hard it slammed me down, grinding my right hip into gravel. It knocked the wind out of me too, and I couldn’t even scream when Ray-Ray dived on top of me, yanked up my shirt, and ground my new breasts and bra in his gritty hands. “When the hell’d you get these honkers?” He eyed the landmasses on my torso he’d never seen. “God, you’re a freak,” he said, jumping up and racing away. It happened so fast that for a few moments I lay there, stunned, shirt still bunched up around my neck, head in a pile of putrid-smelling carnations tossed out from the flower shop. The neon sign in the window sputtered until both
Z
s in
Del Pizzo
burned out.

Minutes later I stomped down the center of that snake street toward Grandpa’s house angrier than I had ever been in my life. My hands were balled into fists, and I was ready to punch Ray-Ray in the nose, gut, crotch—anywhere that would draw blood or induce vomiting.

I kicked open the door and found everyone in the living room, Ray-Ray standing behind his father. I pointed at him and shouted,
“Vaffanculo!,”
a word I’d heard seethe from Grandpa’s lips a thousand times.

I was about to leap over the coffee table and rip off Ray-Ray’s ears when Grandpa said, “What did you say?” He looked at my father. “What the hell did she say?”

Mom rose and clamped both hands on my shoulders to hold me in place.

Grandpa repeated, “Angelo. What did your daughter just say?”

I wasn’t looking at Dad. I was glaring at Ray-Ray, sparks shooting from my eyes as I tried to impart nonverbally that as soon as Mom released me I would be kicking his balls up to his tonsils. Ray-Ray just stood there smirking, and when no one was looking, he lifted his hands, fingers splayed, and flexed those filthy digits just as he had moments before when he was mashing my breasts.

“Goddamn, son-ama-beetch, asshole!” I broke free from Mom and dove at Ray-Ray, who ducked into the dining room. I dodged Nonna’s knitting basket and raced after him but was yanked back by Grandpa, who grabbed my wrist, making my already sore hip bang into his chair arm.