I thought of Jennifer Jones in the movie The Song of Bernadette. I had seen it in New York, and then I’d made my father rent it on video about a hundred times. “She was so beautiful, too,” I said.
Antoinetta’s father snorted again. She leaned forward and tickled the back of his neck with her fingertips. He swatted her hand away, but he was smiling. I could see him really clear in the mirror. I thought of my own father, who was so handsome and young. He had so many things Mr. Calabro didn’t. Hair, for one. Nice teeth, for another. I would hate to have a father like Mr. Calabro, someone who always sat in his car and almost never talked.
Antoinetta leaned close to me. “He’s been talking about your mother,” she whispered.
“What?” I said, shocked and maybe even disgusted a little.
Antoinetta nodded. “He thought she was a knockout.”
“What are you whispering about back there?” Mr. Calabro said.
“After the dinner,” Antoinetta said, “we’re going to Saint Teresa’s shrine, right, Pop? You promised. I was just telling Madeline.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Mr. Calabro said.
“We always go after Wright’s Chicken Farm,” Antoinetta said, winking at me.
Wright’s Chicken Farm was big and noisy. Out front in a cage were chickens, as if to prove that their chickens were that fresh. All the food came in big platters. Salad and ziti with red sauce and then the chicken and French fries. I could hardly eat it all, but Antoinetta’s relatives kept asking for the platters to be refilled.
“You eat like a bird,” Aunt Fanny said to me, without even looking up from the chicken leg she was eating right down to the bone.
Finally, they were finished. The aunts went shopping in the gift store attached to the restaurant and the uncles took the little kids to see the chickens in the cages out front.
“Is Al Forno this good?” Antoinetta asked. But I knew it was just another rhetorical question.
As soon as we were done eating, Antoinetta asked her dad to take us to Saint Teresa’s shrine. It was right down the street from the restaurant. Mr. Calabro led us to the car and we drove in silence.
“Go ahead,” he said, turning off the engine. “Don’t take all day.”
“Doesn’t he get bored in there?” I asked Antoinetta as we made our way across the gravel parking lot.
She shrugged. “Sometimes he keeps the car running and listens to talk radio.”
I followed Antoinetta up a small hill where the statue of Saint Teresa stood.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” Antoinetta said in a hushed voice.
She clasped her hands and fell to her knees before I could answer. My admiration of Antoinetta’s reverence was endless. I dropped to my knees beside her, and stared up into the white stone face of The Little Flower.
“What did she do?” I said, making sure to keep my voice low. “You know, to become a saint?”
“Miracles,” Antoinetta said. “Thousands. Maybe even millions. They say that in France, in Lisieux, there are offerings from around the world, Brazil and Alaska and China.”
I studied Antoinetta’s face. Even with the rouge and blue eyeshadow, she was so open, so pure, I couldn’t help myself. I had to tell her. “I performed a miracle.”
Immediately Antoinetta’s face clouded.
But I didn’t give her time to doubt me. I grabbed her arm and held it tight. “I’ve never told anyone before but I know you’ll understand. It was when my mother and father were still married and we were all happy. My father went off on an assignment, to Idaho, and he was in an avalanche. Except none of us knew that. But the morning it happened, a voice called to me and told me he was in danger and I went alone to church and prayed all day.” I had begun slow and hesitant but now a torrent, a waterfall of words, spilled out of my mouth. “And when I got back he was saved. A miracle. Right? A bona fide miracle.”
I waited. I didn’t know what I had expected. Questions, definitely. A demand for details. Or a rush of emotion. But not this nothingness. Antoinetta did not move. She hardly seemed to blink or breathe. In the distance, a horn sounded, a long blare.
“My father,” Antoinetta said, though she did not get up.
“Before that,” I added, feeling desperate, “I made a glass of water slide across our kitchen table just by concentrating.”
“When your father got back, he left your mother, right?”
I nodded.
“So why the miracle, then? You saved him and he ruined your life. Everyone’s life.”
“No, no,” I said. “He didn’t. My mother did. She’s awful with her stupid column and her boring clothes and the way she carried on, crying and hysterical. Maybe he would have come back if she’d only been different.”
“Did you pray for that?” Antoinetta asked me. “Did you pray for him to come back?”
“At first. But not in the same…”—I searched for the right word, all the new vocabulary pushing through my brain—“fervent way that I did that day of the avalanche.”
Again, the horn blared, longer this time.
“Do you know what I pray to Saint Teresa for?” Antoinetta asked.
I shrugged.
“A mother,” Antoinetta said.