We saw so many churches the next day that their names blurred. There was the big one where San Gennaro’s blood liquefied every September; the one with the beautiful chipped tiles everywhere, leading out of the neglected garden; the modern-looking one where people went to get healed. And then there was the one in the old section of the city, across the crooked cobblestone street where the nativity figures were made.
Mom decided we should buy an elaborate nativity scene, with a big straw-covered manger and all the carved figures. She spent forever choosing the right Joseph and Mary, the perfect-sized archangels and wise men. Cody picked out funny figures to add: a winemaker, a butcher, a pizza man, a clown. The shop smelled bad, like cats, so after I picked out a fat baby Jesus, I stood in the doorway to get fresh air. But I watched Mom carefully. Ever since what happened in Pompeii, she looked different to me. Maybe because I knew I had hurt her in some deep, horrible way. I tried thinking mean thoughts, like The truth hurts and things like that, but it didn’t make me feel better. Mom was hurt and I didn’t know how to make it better.
The man who ran the shop flirted with her. He was younger than her, and he had a big blue birthmark on his cheek that I stared at. He caught me looking, and his fingers caressed the spot tenderly, as if to erase my gaze. I wondered how it would feel to live with something like that. And then I thought about divorce and how, in a strange way, it was like having something big, blue, and ugly. Divorce made you feel different than most people with real families. It made you uncomfortable.
“Can we take a taxi back?” Cody asked when we left. “I want to get back to the hotel and unwrap all the people we bought and play with them.”
“I want to go in that church,” I said, pointing at a gorgeous, old building.
I knew nothing about it. But I noticed it while I was standing in the doorway of the shop and even though we had been to enough churches already, I felt pulled toward this one.
“No!” Cody said. “I am so tired of churches!”
My mother looked at me tenderly. “I think we can stand one more, can’t we, buddy?”
I ran across the piazza, feeling as if the church might hold some secrets. Inside, it was small and dark and empty.
My mother paid some euros for a guidebook and she and Cody walked around, trying to find what was described in it. Every church had some piece of famous art, a relic from a saint, an interesting apse or altar piece or ceiling.
But I went straight to the front, to the altar, and knelt. My whole body filled with the faint smell of incense and candle wax. I wanted another miracle. I wanted to be Saint Madeline of Providence. I prayed so hard that I didn’t realize someone had come to kneel beside me.
It was a nun. A young, beautiful nun like Maria in The Sound of Music, and she had on a hat that looked like a paper airplane.
“Americana?” the nun said, not even bothering to whisper. When she spoke, I smelled roses, and I remembered that was one of the saintly qualities like bilocation that Antoinetta had told me about.
I nodded. I didn’t like how everyone immediately recognized me as an American. Everywhere we went people knew.
“You pray hard, no?”
“Yes,” I said.
I glanced around to be sure I could see my mother and Cody. They were staring into someone’s tomb.
“You sad?”
I shrugged.
“You don’t know?”
“No. I mean, yes, I do know.”
“Ah,” the nun said.
The nun began to pray, moving her lips silently.
I leaned in close to her to smell her rose smell. “I made a miracle,” I whispered.
“Yes? That’s very good,” the nun said, unimpressed.
“If I make another one I’ll become a saint. Saint Madeline of Providence.”
“Ah.” The nun shook her head. “No. First, to be a saint, you must be morte. Dead. Then you must wait a long time until someone remembers how good you were. Then they get together and talk about you and if you have a good miracle, maybe they beatify you. Then, after that, if you make another miracle, you be saint. Basta.” The nun slapped her hands together like she was wiping something off them.
“But I saved my father’s life,” I said. I whispered the story to the nun, about the snow and the man’s voice and the church. About the avalanche that changed our lives.
“Avalanche?” the nun said. “I don’t know this word.”
“It’s when snow comes at you so fast that it ruins anything in its path. You don’t know what hit you,” I explained.
“Ah. I know it, yes. Avalanche.” She touched my hand. “So now you try for a doubleheader, ha?” She laughed and it was like she was showering me with rose petals. “I like American baseball.”
“I think if I pray hard enough I can make something happen. I’m just not sure what. Like last night, I was thinking that maybe my parents could get back together. But that’s impossible.”