The Weight of Zero (14 page)

By 6:12, the sun has basically set, but even in the murky light, I can easily see a large brown envelope sticking out of our mailbox. Mom pulls into the driveway and I jump out of the car and rush to the front door to pull the envelope out, my gut cramping at the site of unfamiliar blocky writing.
Catherine.
No last name, no address, no return address.
Not again.
It feels weighted. Like there's something more than paper in here. All of today's good stuff—Michael's smile, Kristal waiting for me, Lucky Boy and Lil' Tommy—dissolves.

I am pulled down. Weighted again.

Mom is next to me. “What's that?”

I don't answer her. I need to open it in the privacy of my room, but I can't now that she's seen it.

Mom weighs the heft of it in her hand. “Feels like a phone or something.”

My hand flies to the pocket of my jacket, the place I usually store my phone. It's empty. I see my phone on the sidewalk outside of school as I crouched down to grab the
Girl, Interrupted
note before Michael could see it. I rip open the envelope. It's my phone.

I turn it on to a text from Michael: “You left this at school. Text me when you get this so I know you got it”

I type back immediately, “Thanks so much!!!!!!” I have a lump in my throat from relief. And gratitude for Michael and his kindness. I type, “You are the absolute best!” and add the smiley face with the hearts for eyes.

“Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed,” intones fat Father John. He's at the altar prepping for the Sunday magic trick of transforming the wine and wheat hosts into Jesus. It is always here at Our Blessed Shepherd, with my ass going numb on the hard wooden pew, that I feel the furthest from God.

Mom and I, along with the rest of the flock, robotically follow the routine each Sunday: sing, kneel, sit, stand, shake hands and deposit the check or cash into the collection basket that comes around not once but twice during Mass. Our Blessed Shepherd even accepts credit and debit cards. Welcome to religion in the twenty-first century.

During Father John's homily, Mom starts to nod off. I can't blame her. With his mind-numbing abilities, the man rivals a high dose of NyQuil. Even cranky babies sleep. I spend my time gazing at the back of two perfectly coiffed heads located way in the front. They belong to Riley and her mom, Mrs. Judith Swenson, who are seated in their usual position of honor in the first pew on the left-hand side. It's almost always just the two of them. Mr. Angus Swenson is away on business 99.9 percent of the time.

The Swenson clan basically founded Cranbury. There's a park near the water named after a hallowed ancestor, and I'm pretty sure they funded a huge part of the rectory's remodeling a couple of years ago. In the caste system that comprises Our Blessed Shepherd, the Swensons and other rich and generous benefactors make up the top. Their names are engraved on small, gold plaques that line the pews, raining hosanna in the highest on them and their wallets. Occupying the thankless middle are the families who donate only a shitload of time doing menial labor, like answering the rectory phone, teaching CCD and cleaning the church. Mom and I flounder in the lowest caste—the faithful who donate neither a huge chunk of change nor talent. We come only to pray (or at least, Mom does), and that's not quite good enough for Our Blessed Shepherd.

As usual, Mom insists on staying until the bitter end, after the last choir song and the grand exit by Father John, his cross raised high, trailed by an entourage of lackeys and small altar boys and girls. It's raining this Sunday morning, so he pauses in the foyer while the elite crowd around him, peppering him with invites to brunch at “the club.” The worker ants scatter to clean the pews, count the collections and set up the coffee urns and stale pastries for the post-Mass refreshments in the basement. Mom and I slink out as fast as our legs can carry us.

Which is not very fast—the river of early exiters moves slowly past the priest. The Swenson ladies are on the periphery of the Father John horde, and Mom and I are close enough to see Judith pass a bottle of Purell to Riley. God knows what germs her little angel might have picked up during the sign of peace.

My eyes follow Riley as she squeezes her way toward fellow youth group members. They are the chosen ones—hand-selected to do the readings in their Sunday finest, their high, breathy voices amplified by the lectern's microphone as they spout “A reading from the First Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians” or some variation. They never miss the retreats with the breakout sessions on “Jesus in Your Life” and “Living a Life with Grace.” Behold, parishioners, here are Blessed Shepherd's Varsity Christians, who wouldn't know mercy if it hit them in the face.

It's the hypocrisy that makes me want to hurl. The Riley Swensons who'll feed the homeless but only while wearing gloves. The ones who'll read the Gospels on Sunday and write nasty notes on Monday. And unlike Jesus, these are the ones who shun Cranbury High's lepers. Like me.

Mom drifts next to Judith Swenson and calls a cheerful, “Hi, Judith. Good to see you.”

Judith, clearly uncomfortable but trapped by a wall of devotees, gives Mom a rushed, “Oh hello, Jody. Forgive me, but I really need to speak to Father John about the mission trip to Appalachia,” before turning her back to Mom and me. Typical. Another good Catholic more comfortable with a handpicked charity-at-a-distance, the type where you do your good deed quickly and get out. Scheduled at your own convenience. No pesky emotional commitment.

Mom flushes at the snub but says nothing to me. Not a fucking word. Inside the Accord, the silence is broken only by the swish of the windshield wipers. Usually this double-edged injury—the snub and then Mom's silent acceptance of it, her penance for having me—would bother me. The Swenson/Blessed Shepherd Affair would normally lodge deep in my chest and fester for days, piled on top of the
Girl, Interrupted
note and other assaults. But instead of turning onto our street, Mom guns the car toward Route 1.

“I need about three double-chocolate doughnuts this morning,” she says, her knuckles white as she squeezes the crap out of the steering wheel. These doughnuts are my mother's Lamictal. “How about you?”

Dunkin' Donuts chocolate-cake doughnuts dipped in glaze and then thickly topped with chocolate icing are the only things that Mom and I will never, ever fight about. Aunt Darlene owns the DD closest to our house and if she knows we're coming, she'll add extra frosting to the batch.

Mom glances over at me and I smile back at her. “Roger that,” I say.

The Accord's tires squeal as she turns into the parking lot.

“Okay, I'll be back at five. Text me if anything changes,” Mom says.

We're parked in front of the New Haven Museum of History, a large redbrick building nestled on Chapel Street alongside quirky clothing stores and an artsy-fartsy bookstore necessitated by its immediate proximity to artsy-fartsy Yale. I look at the entrance, and little spasms in my stomach tumble the digested remains of three and a half, yes, three and a half double-chocolate doughnuts. Kristal texted me that she'd be waiting outside the front doors but no one's there.

Maybe she changed her mind? Maybe she got wind of my social pariah status? Maybe her mother doesn't want
her
daughter hanging out with a St. Anne's IOP girl? I should tell Mom to just drive us home.

Suddenly the front door is opening. It's Kristal waving excitedly at me. I recognize the relief in her eyes; it must match my own. My stomach cramps vanish as I exit the Accord. Kristal flashes that grin and pulls me inside to the grand foyer with its black-and-white-checked floor and graceful, white-banistered spiral staircase. Museum hipsters scurry back and forth carrying wires and boxes and tools, urgently speaking into their phones and darting into the large room on the other side of the foyer.

Kristal has on skinny jeans, Converse high-tops and a long black sweater that's unbuttoned to reveal a vintage T-shirt. And a very cool scarf that's arranged perfectly, of course, around her neck. She fits right in here. I think I'm okay in my jeans and black H&M sweater.

“It's always like this on the day an exhibit opens,” Kristal says softly to me. “It's like everything gets done in the hour before the doors open to the public.”

“I've never been here before. It's really cool,” I spout nervously.
Well, gee whiz, I'm just a little Cranbury country girl in the big city.
But I do like the dark, musty feel of the building, the rooms just beyond my view packed with things that each tell a story.

“My mother has worked here forever. I basically grew up here. Come see the New Haven gallery,” Kristal says.

We enter the gallery and browse the exhibits on New Haven's claims to fame like Yale, Eli Whitney and the Amistad trial. Kristal gives me a “Kristal Tour” with her own thoughtful tidbits: Cinqué from the
Amistad
was hot and Benedict Arnold cheated on his wife and had an illegitimate child in Nova Scotia. She points out the display of a mannequin wearing a corset and wire hoopskirt thing. It's for a New Haven business that was the first in the country to manufacture corsets in the 1880s.

“Listen to this,” Kristal says, reading the label. “Dr. Scott's
electric
corsets promised to cure
nervousness.
” She grabs my arm, her eyes wide in mock revelation. “Maybe that's all we need? Screw the meds. Let's just squeeze the shit out of our lungs all day.”

All this smiling is giving my facial muscles a workout.
This is fucking fun.
Laughing and joking with a girl my own age, this is what my life used to be.

“C'mon, Cat,” Kristal says. “It's time for the opening. My mom will freak if we're not there when she speaks.”

Kristal's mom is the executive director of the museum and gives a short welcome speech. I zone out on what she's saying; I'm too focused on looking at her. Her hair is cut short like mine, but she wears her bangs down and swept to the side. She's all urban coolness mixed with the Yale art-fart vibe in her black turtleneck and black-and-white houndstooth pencil skirt. She's one of the five people in the U.S. who could wear a beret and pull it off.

But I didn't expect her to be so short and petite. She and Kristal look nothing alike. The rhythm of her speech is slow, measured and strong. She looks supremely comfortable speaking to the crowd in the lobby. I'd feel more intimidated, but thanks to Kristal, I now have the visual of her mom running to the garbage can with Kristal's underwear to counterbalance the cool.

Kristal's mom finishes to a rousing round of applause, and Kristal and I flow with the current of bodies to the other room. A placard over the door reads “Civil Rights and World War II: The Struggle for Freedom at Home.” I wonder if Mr. Oleck is here. I scan the room for a stocky dweeb wearing a bow tie.

“I have to do a project on World War Two,” I tell Kristal as we step inside the room. “A biography of a soldier. I wonder if there's anything on him here.” An urge to text Michael sweeps through me, but I let it pass.

“Well, if he's white, he's not going to be in here,” Kristal says. “This exhibit is only on the shit that was going on during the war.”

I'm afraid to ask what shit she's talking about. I can't look dumb to Chapman senior Kristal. So I nod like I understand and we head to the first display. Immediately, I start reading the label. It only takes one line to clue me in. It's good old American racism right here on the home front. For the first time, I think about the difference in our skin colors. What goes through Kristal's head when she's reading about these horrors?

Huge black-and-white photographs show clusters of Japanese-American citizens locked behind barbed wire fences in internment camps. The camps look like they're made up of small, cheap buildings plopped on dry, dusty ground in the middle of freaking nowhere with mountaintops in the distant background.

Kristal points to the photos. “These were taken by Ansel Adams.”

I freeze. Should I know who Ansel Adams is?

“He's that nature photographer,” Kristal explains, glancing at me with a slight frown. “He did all those black-and-white pictures of places like Yosemite.”

I can only shrug stupidly.

Kristal sighs and shakes her head. “Jesus, I sound like my mother.” She takes my hand and lifts it. “Slap me really hard, Cat.”

Laughing, we turn the corner to the next display. This one's bigger. It's got a TV monitor running a grainy black-and-white video that shows row upon row of women soldiers marching down an almost empty street. The women are wearing uniforms of long, double-breasted winter coats with hats that look like inverted canoes, tilted slightly to the side. Their arms and legs move in synchronized precision, heads held high.

The view changes and now the parade of women passes what looks like an English policeman. This new angle allows for a close-up of the women soldiers. Many of them are African American. My eyes move to the display's title: “The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion.”

“This is my favorite one,” Kristal says, holding up her hands in surrender. “I promise I'm not gonna say anything else except that these ladies truly rocked.”