Now Is the Hour (33 page)

Then to top it all off, with the sin against the Holy Virgin, and the wedding and the Mom-Sis War, somehow another female got sucked into it.

Billie.

Thank God for promises and good reefer. Without them, Billie and I would never have made it.

My own part in the drama began one evening in the kitchen. Mom at the counter beating away at some batter in a bowl turned her head over her shoulder, and said: What about the girlfriend? It would be nice to finally meet her. What's her name? She's got a boy's name.

Billie, I said.

Why don't you invite the girlfriend to the wedding? Mom said.

That was the moment right there when all the chaos whirling around outside me wasn't outside at all anymore. It was inside.

That night, Billie and I in the Shanghai Café, Billie was acting a little strange, but then everything was a little strange with the wedding and all.

The ashtray on the table was full of cigarette butts and ashes. Billie's last cigarette was stamped out in the ashtray but still smoking. When I looked at Billie, there was something in her eyes. I guessed it was tear duct cancer, or the smoke from the cigarette, but just then a tear busted loose and rolled down her cheek.

Why don't we go to Mount Moriah anymore? Billie said. I miss being close to you.

Right then, there was something awful got inside me. I had no idea what it was. Butts and ashes, smoke from the smashed-out cigarette. As I look back on it now, if you don't ever stop and take a good look at yourself, your fear can wear just about anybody's face.

As I sat there looking into Billie's blue eyes, suddenly Billie Cody, my best friend, turned into something awful.

Billie had ugly red, weepy eyes and cigarette breath and tiny fingernails and stupid hair. She was just another female who wanted to make me do stuff I didn't want to do.

I couldn't put a name on what I was feeling, but right then I wanted to get away from her.

Then I hated myself for feeling that way, so I tried to cover it up.

I reached into the ashtray and crushed the smoky cigarette out.

I'm sorry, I said. It's this wedding, I said. And Sis.

My hand was squeezed around my clear plastic water glass. What I wanted to do with that glass was throw it against the wall.

Instead, I poured water from my water glass into the ashtray. The quick hiss of water on fire.

I haven't told you something, I said. Something important.

A big mess of ashes and floating butts over the side of the ashtray, a puddle onto the table.

Sis is pregnant, I said.

And Mom won't speak to Sis.

Sis doesn't have anybody else but me, I said.

Wet black ash in my nostrils. My paper napkin on the puddle, wet and black soaking up through.

Sis is so alone, I said.

And now Mom wants me to ask you to the wedding, I said.

Billie's hands came across the table. She folded her hands around my hands. I wanted to pull my hands away, but I kept my hands under Billie's.

When I looked back up into Billie's eyes, Billie was the old Billie. There she was again, not ugly or sniveling, but my friend, looking at me, deep inside at me.

Rig, Billie said, I'm so sorry. Of course I'll go to the wedding with you.

The awful scared feeling inside me went away, and I loved God so much right then.

Billie took her hands away and made herself busy lighting a cigarette, inhaling, exhaling.

There's just one thing, Billie said.

I could tell the way Billie said
just one thing
that she was going to say something a whole lot smarter than I was.

Billie's cigarette was the whirlwind by her ear.

Do you want me to come to the wedding, Billie said, because
you
want me to come to the wedding?

Her right arm down to the puddle around the ashtray, the speedometer needle going from eighty to zero. Her index finger knocking off the ash.

Or do you want me to come, Billie said, because your mother wants me to come?

Inside me and outside me, all over everywhere, and Billie was ugly again.

Sirens and horns and alarms going off. Or some deep, low sound, a fart or burp. The fear I'd never looked at wanted to get the fuck out of there.

I pushed a Winston up out of the pack. Put it in my mouth. Lit it.

Inhaling is breathing.

If I waited long enough, some kind of words would come out of my mouth.

Billie Cody and I sitting in a pew together in Saint Joseph's Church was impossible to imagine. Kneeling and praying and genuflecting and sitting and listening to the sermon, impossible. Billie and Mom and Sis all in the church all together during Mass, impossible. Dad ushering Billie and I to a pew, impossible. Going up to receive Communion while Billie sat in the pew, impossible.

It's impossible, I blurted out. I don't want to be in that church with you.

Billie's cigarette a windshield wiper back and forth, back and forth.

Maybe, Billie said, you should ask a girl more suited to the festivities.

Billie's eyes were blue and clear. I'd never seen her angry before.

I was in some kind of quagmire I didn't know.

More breath, I inhaled cigarette smoke.

On the exhale: It isn't
you,
Billie, I said. I just can't imagine doing all that Catholic shit in front of you. I'd feel like a big fucking phony.

And then a little light came inside my darkness.

It's hard enough to put that act on for myself, I said. Every Sunday. But to do it in front of you, I couldn't do it.

Billie looked a lot like Mom sitting there, something tight in her, Billie's face somewhere behind the smoke she was exhaling.

The Shanghai got even brighter. I don't know how that is possible, but the place got even brighter. Billie smoked. I smoked. We just sat there like we weren't ourselves anymore, like we were Mom and Dad and Sis and Gene Kelso at the dinner table that day.

Absurd. Theater of the absurd.

The fear inside me was that I had lost Billie and at the same time the fear was that I'd never lose her.

When Billie spoke, she was Simone Signoret.

You say you love to dance, Billie said. We've never danced.

Billie's eyes were blue and not red, and she wasn't ugly.

What do you say? Billie said, I meet you at the reception dance at the Green Triangle. That way I don't have to go to Mass, you and I get to dance, and I can meet your mother.

A genius.

Billie Cody was back to being my best friend and a genius.

Later on that night, when I walked Billie up her windy front steps, past the lamp with the ivy growing on it, I kissed Billie open-mouthed and hard, lots of tongue.

I didn't really want to kiss her like that. I just wanted to kiss my friend and hold her. A boy was supposed to kiss a girl hard after what Billie and I had just been through.

Billie looked up into my eyes. Her blue eyes were looking into my eyes trying to find something.

I opened the aluminum screen door.

The
C'
s not for
Cody,
I said.

No, Billie said. It's for
cunt,
she said. And you'd better not forget it.

Sis just barely fit into her size ten wedding gown. I should know, I was the one who had to zip up the placket in the back. Sis had stood in front of her mirror in her bedroom all morning, crying and crying. Totally freaked out. About everything. Getting married, being pregnant. Gene Kelso and his white socks. All the people coming to the wedding, you name it. But mostly what freaked Sis out was that the baby showed. The truth is, though, what was really bothering Sis was Mom.

The morning of the wedding the Mom-Sis War was no differnt. Mom wasn't with her daughter. Mom was knelt down in her bedroom praying the rosary.

I told Sis. Sis, I said, don't worry. I said, It don't show that much. Hardly at all. It's fine, I said. Don't worry, nobody can tell.

The church was crowded with aunts and uncles and cousins and members of the congregation. A solemn high nuptial Mass. One of those Masses that goes on forever. Organ music and the choir.

The theme of the wedding pretty much was daisies. White daisies with a yellow center. Mom's hat was a swooping bonnet with white daisies, and her dress was yellow, and so was Francie Lutz's, Sis's
maid of honor. Francie wore a swooping bonnet with white daisies too, and she carried a bouquet of white daisies. Sis's bouquet was white daisies and yellow roses. Two big bouquets of white daisies on the altar.

Gene Kelso looked really hung over. His duck's ass was dragging. He wore a black suit, but not like Dad's. Gene's was shiny, and he wore a skinny, shiny black tie. He didn't wear Levi's, but when he knelt down everybody could see his white socks.

Gene's best man was a guy named Chuck diPietro. He was as hung over as Gene. Chuck had a cherried-out '57 Chevy pickup and was friends with Joe Scardino. Chuck was a big guy, big arms and chest, curly dark hair. One time in grade school, he threw a snowball at me and hit me right in the eye. Another Italian. He worked at the Sinclair station on Fifth Street, but back in high school, he played quarterback on Highland's football team. He had a white daisy boutonniere too.

Remember this guy, Chuck diPietro. Believe me, we're going to come back to Chuck diPietro.

The Wedding March. The one that in your head you always sing:
Here comes the bride, all fat and wide. Here comes the groom, skinny as a broom.

Sis taking a long step, then a short step, alongside of Dad, holding onto Dad's arm. It was quite a sight, Sis in her white gown and veil and white daisies and yellow roses. Sis smiling so big her gums showed. And something else showed too. Sis's breasts were almost as big as Billie's, and down around her stomach — no doubt about it — it was a baby down there all right.

Myself, no way I wanted to be best man, or flower boy, or ring bearer, or whatever the fuck things you can be in a wedding. Sis wanted me to be one of the altar boys, but after that novena to Our Mother of Perpetual Help, I'd sworn off the altar boy shit. Sis threw one of her fits and would have gone crying to Mom, but of course it was the Mom-Sis War, so that was that. My job at the wedding was to sit in a pew. And wear a white daisy in my lapel.

It was better than having a yellow tulip up my ass.

Mom was in the choir, up and far away. Dad was giving away Sis, and when he wasn't doing that, he went back to his old job as usher. I was alone because I wanted to be alone, that is, not with Billie Cody.

Sis was insulted that my girlfriend wasn't going to come to
her
wedding.

It just confirms, Sis said, that your fucking girlfriend is a bitch.

Sis had met Billie just that one time, if you remember, not in the best of circumstances.

She's not a bitch, I said. She's a cunt.

Sis was in her bedroom trying to get her veil on straight.

Oh! Sis said. I hate that
word.
Don't ever say that word.

You said
fuck,
I said.

That's differnt, Sis said.

No it's not, I said.

Yes it is, she said.

No it's not.

Yes, it is.

They're words, I said, just like any other words.

Four-letter words, Sis said.

Like
love
? I said.

That shut her up.

Monsignor Cody said: I now pronounce you man and wife.

Sis lifted the veil and looked up into Gene's eyes. Actually, Sis looked straight across into Gene's eyes because Sis was almost as tall as Gene, and she was wearing low heels.

When they kissed, the organ started in, and all of us heard the organ, and I guess we expected the song to be some Catholic song. But then when our ears finally heard, we heard something we didn't expect to hear.

It was Mom. Mom was singing soprano, and she was singing alone.

Sis looked up at Mom, and so did Gene, and then everybody in the congregation looked up. There was Mom in her yellow shiny dress and her big swooping bonnet with daisies on it, both hands folded into a bouquet of white daisies. Mom was standing alone right up against the choir railing.

For a moment there, I thought she was going to jump.

What she was singing — none of us, not Sis, not Gene, not Dad, not nobody, let alone Monsignor Cody, had any idea Mom was going to sing:

Sis's favorite song. Oh my heavens pretty woman so far. I got to tell you. My mother up there in the silly swooped daisy hat, the shiny yellow dress that made her arms look fat, her penciled-on eyebrows, her
rough, red farm hands, her cut-to-the-quick fingernails, clutching not a black Vatican full-length rosary but a bouquet of fresh white daisies, singing not “'Tis the Month of Our Mother,” not “Tantum Ergo,” not “Sanctus Sanctus Sanctus,” but “Chapel of Love.”

Really, you had to be there.

Bela Lugosi singing “Itsy Bitsy Spider.”

Then Sis.

Sis at the altar, dressed up in a beautiful white wedding dress, her long white veil, finally Sis like in
The Wizard of Oz
when everything went to color, the world smelling of Eiffel Tower in the old dress-up trunk, scintillatingly gorgeous, smiling, smiling, my big sis, finally pretty, walking down the aisle with her husband, Gene Kelso, Mrs. Gene Kelso,
Here she is, Mrs. America.

What a trip.

Then Dad.

At the back of the church, next to the confessional, just under Mom up in the choir loft and to the left, standing at parade rest in his new black suit, Dad saw me look over at him, and he quick looked away.

My father was going to cry if he looked at me, so my father looked away.

It was later, at the reception dance at the Green Triangle, things started heating up. Technically speaking, Mom had ended the war by singing Sis's favorite song, but soon it got pretty clear Mom was going to do more than make a truce. She was going to break an unspoken rule between her and Dad. Mom was going to let loose and get a little drunk.