The Patron Saint of Ugly

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

Contents

The Legend of Saint Garnet del Vulcano

To the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Archbishop Gormley in particular:

Before we begin, Archie, I want to reiterate that the only reason I've granted this intrusion is that the sooner you dispel this sainted nonsense the sooner I can reclaim my life, or perhaps claim it for the first time. Then you and the boys can direct your energies to more urgent matters: rescuing victims of the Banqiao Dam breach, for example, or polishing the papal jewels.

Wait. There's Nonna at the door.

(Tank-a him for the vis.)

Archie, Nonna wants me to thank you for the visit; a preemptive nicety, since I can hear her spitting even from here with the ptt-pttptt and tocca ferro, touching iron, jangling the five pounds of skeleton keys she routinely hauls around — as do I. She's using them to ward off the evil-eye germs she's certain you left in the upholstery. According to Nonna, anyone with eyes as dark as yours surely harbors the malocchio, as they call it in Italy, or the maloicky, as they say in Baaston, your holy turf. Nonna wondered about that, sending a Black Irish potato eater instead of a paesano to do the pope's bidding.

(I never said-a that.)

(Most certainly did.)

I apologize for her ethnic fussiness, but she's mistrustful of murky eyes even if they're ordained, since everyone knows Pius IX was a bad-karma-flinging jettatura, even if it was inadvertent. Tell that to the poor schmucks who fell out of windows or tumbled off scaffolding in his papal wake. After you left, Nonna was a whirling dervish of incantations and phallic hand gestures — manus obscenus: mano fica, mano cornuta — though I insisted she stop at sprinkling urine, that holiest of all holy waters, particularly mine, which is why I lock the bathroom door behind me even after I flush.

If it will speed your inquiry I will confess that there is magic here, and I don't mean just the practical jokes playing out on my body. Someone or something is responsible for the mysteries I've witnessed in Sweetwater, but it's not me. In addition to environmental factors, in my opinion, the true source is Nonna —

(It's-a no true! You are the descendant of Saint Garnet! You!)

— It was Nonna who packed anti-malocchio talismans in her valise when she sailed to America, along with her belief in folk magic — the Old Religion — a faith system, however irrational, that I have been unable to banish from my psyche the way I have the Vatican-sanctioned one.

Admittedly, if it is Nonna, her powers are spotty, so perhaps there's a third alternative neither of us has considered. Hopefully your investigation will discover who the real conjurer is and thus pull the limelight away from me.

(Garney, you play for the Padre.)

(What? Why did you bring my saw in here?)

(Why you face-a so mad? He will like-a you playing. She plays-a the most beautiful saw, Padre! It make-a you weep!)

(Give me that. This isn't a talent show. And besides, that's private. Private!)

(Okay, okay. Don't getta so flust'. Here, have a cannoli.)

Nonna just made two hundred cannolis for the Saint Brigid bake sale. She's still recovering from carting tray after tray up from the basement kitchen, though at her age she shouldn't be baking for anyone, not even me. Apparently hiring a chef is out of the question. Such a waste, she says. And besides, no one can match her culinary skills.

(That's-a true.)

Still, her poor knees — creaking as I speak. I've tried valiantly to get her to use the main-floor kitchen, but all those whirring, grinding, icemaking contraptions confound her, especially the Radarange — a complete bafflement. If you really want to unlock a mystery, figure out how that thing works. The added truth is she doesn't want to muss anything up.

A santa no live in a-squal, she always says.

(No, I don't.)

(Yes, you do.)

What about Mother Teresa? I always rebut.

That's a-diff. She's from Macedonia. You are Sicilian.

Impossible to argue with that, and I certainly no live in a-squal. At times I still can't believe I'm ensconced up here in our town's founding father's estate, but even you had to force yourself through the throng pressed against my fence. I'm a prisoner behind these walls, afraid to ripple the drapes in case I start a maelstrom of seizures. The power of suggestion, I suppose. Or the power of hope. All those appeals speared onto the tips of my fence, taped to my gate. Saint Garnet: Heal my daughter's bunion. My son's cauliflower ear. Grandma's varicose veins. Auntie's white forelock. Charms of arms and legs, ears and eyes, strung on ribbons and tossed into my yard — which makes for dangerous mowing, those medallions flying up like shrapnel. Laughable stuff if I weren't afraid the pilgrims' desperation will have them catapulting over my fence to pluck my eyelashes or yank out my fingernails. They know the power of holy relics, but how I long for the day when they realize that my hair is just hair.

I want to thank you for not grimacing when you first saw me, Padre. I apologize for not being as restrained, but that's one impressive mole on your cheek. The size of a MoonPie and the color of squid ink. Sun Myung Moon could create a whole new religion around you.

(Garney! Clamp-a you lips.)

Sorry. One might think I would be more sensitive about dermatological oddities. Is that why the Vatican sent you? Were they hoping for some mole-zapping proof of my abilities? Or did you volunteer for the gig because it hits close to home?

(No forget-a the gifties.)

Mille grazie for the package that arrived yesterday, especially the forty-two-pack of tapes to use with the recorder, but I'll hurl my self into Aceldama if it takes that many tapes to work through your questionnaire. Nonna loves the rosary, which she'll treasure because it has Pope Paul VI's blessing, though she's still pining after Pius XII, her holy heartthrob.

(That's-a no true!)

(It positively is!)

I also appreciate the box of Italian candies. Nonna tittered over the Golia Nera, Rossana, Galatine, Pastiglie Leone. You should know that I have an aversion to penny candy; makes me gag whenever I see it, and with good reason. I am, however, intrigued by The Newly Revised and Illustrated Encyclopedia of Saints. When I was a child, before the fish scales fell from my eyes, I used to fawn over the much older Lives of the Saints Nonna kept on her bedside table with the red Pergusa blossom pressed inside. Her book was in Italian, so mostly I shivered over the four-color paintings of Saint Bernadette shrouded in hair and of Saint Lucy holding that tray of eyeballs. Often I imagined what my painting would look like when it finally graced those pages: a benevolent prodigy holding a palm full of shriveled skin tags and warts.

When I'm finished with your book I'll catalog it in the library with Nicky's reference sets. Perhaps you noticed my brother's original collection, his passion that I adopted and expanded.

You want the legend of Saint Garnet del Vulcano — my supposed predecessor — so I'll oblige. I was weaned on that baloney even before my umbilical nub withered, and for many years I believed it. In all my phone calls and letters to Catholic saint societies and Sicilian-lore collectors, no one has been able to verify or disprove Saint Garnet's existence. I would think one of your Roman padres could hobble down the boot, pole-vault over to Sicily, and find out once and for all. Though yesterday I got a letter from a lady in Palermo who claims to be a descendant of the original Garnet and thus a long-lost cousin of mine. She wanted five thousand bucks for a down payment on a Rolls-Royce. I did not oblige.

So this is the story Nonna first shared and that my mother told me every night of my childhood. The legend evolved and expanded over the years, the details more explicit depending on my age and how much Marsala Nonna had been drinking.

(I no drink-a too much.)

I don't begrudge Nonna her Marsala. (I don't, Nonna.) I would overimbibe too if I had to sleep with Grandpa Ferrari — riposi in pace, as Nonna would say, and is mumbling even now, though I don't know why he deserves restful peace, or her loyalty, the mean-fisted tyrant.

Last summer I wrote the fable down with a calligraphy pen, even illuminated it using the Book of Kildare as my guide. It's quite beautiful, Archie — those elaborate Os and gilded Gs. I'll send it to you along with this tape as exhibit A.

Now, picture me sitting in that leather chair by the back window in the library, the one you sat in, with the worn armrests and dragon-claw feet. A regular Alistair Cooke ready to introduce Masterpiece Theatre.

Once upon a time there was a village named Sugher tucked in a high crag in the Nebrodi Mountains on the eastern side of Sicily. On June twenty-fourth, 1550, at three thirty-eight P.M., a red-haired girl was born to goat-herding peasants. (Coincidentally, that's my birthday and birth time — exactly four hundred years later. The added weirdness is that Nonna was born on June twenty-fourth too.) The mother christened her daughter Garnet because of her hair. With pale skin and blue eyes, Garnet was the sprung seed planted centuries earlier by a Viking who swept across the island wearing his antlered helmet and furry leggings. Garnet was an only child, as it turned out, who not only helped her mother make goat cheese but harvested chestnuts and sheared cork bark with her father.

Garnet's mother fed her daughter enough figs for ten sons — the exact number she dreamed of birthing, when she dreamed of such things. The girl budded into a maiden so alluring that morally deficient boys hid behind bushes hoping to rob her of her virtue. Fortunately, Mother never let her daughter out of her sight, and she kept her apron pocket filled with obsidian shards to fling at the rogues.

The noble village boys were smitten too, but they tried to impress Garnet with feats of strength and endurance.

"I can stand on one leg for three days."

"That's nothing. I can ride a hewn log down the mountain and into the sea."

"Yeah? Well, I can throw rocks into Mount Etna from here."

They would all gaze at the volcano in the distance belching a gray plume and wonder when it would erupt again and clog their fountains with ash, spew lava balls onto their roofs and goats.

But Garnet was not interested in boys. She was in love with God. Every morning when the church bells pealed, Garnet raced to the church, scooted into the front pew, and knelt with her head bent as she hummed an E note that accompanied her prayers. Garnet claimed she was only mimicking the hum she perpetually heard, but though dozens of villagers tipped their ears, no one else could hear it.

When Garnet was thirteen, the family sauntered down the mountain to the shore of the Strait of Messina to trade goods with the Calabrian merchants who had made the three-kilometer voyage.

Mother and Father spread out a blanket to exhibit their wares. Garnet meandered from merchant to merchant eyeing baskets of lemons and olives, sheepskins and coiled rope, and exotic spices: juniper berries, coriander, and sea salt, a tightly controlled government commodity that Calabrian women secretly harvested from salt flats and smuggled out under their skirts to sell to bootleggers.

That day the islanders were edgy because they were expecting a visit from the local duke, or prince, or marquis (the title changing depending on the extent of Nonna's slur; as it increased, so did her propensity to scramble history).

(I no drink-a too much!)

(I really don't care, Nonna.)

Whatever his title, Marquis demanded the villagers' obedience plus their choicest harvest of fruit, grain, and women.

A trumpet sounded as Marquis approached, the village women wiping their children's noses and then stuffing kerchiefs into their décolletage. Suddenly, the rumbling of horse hooves, and there he was: an arthritic, liver-spotted old man astride a fiendish black horse. Marquis didn't bother to dismount. He steered his horse through the merchants' blankets and stalls, knocking over stacks of brooms and barrels of wine as he collected his monthly tithes. The horse deposited his own stinking loads wherever he wished.

Suddenly Marquis was struck by a spectacle that warmed his flintchiseled heart: a budding maiden sitting on the ground humming, a litter of kittens in her lap, climbing up her shoulder, and even nesting in her tousled hair.

Marquis pulled the steed to a stop in front of Garnet and dismounted, no easy feat given his brittle bones.

"Who have we here? I thought I knew all the beautiful girls in Sughero. My spies have been neglectful."

Garnet knelt before nobility, the kittens tumbling off her and mewling displeasure.

"Are you married?" Garnet looked at Marquis's feet. "I am married to God."

"To God?" The old man gripped Garnet's chin in his hand. "Such a waste. And you know it's a sin to be wasteful." He turned Garnet's face this way and that. "I shall remedy this."

He mounted his horse and galloped away, shouting over his shoulder, "Oh yes! I shall remedy this indeed!"

Two days later, the family back in their hill cottage, there came a messenger from the marquis requesting Garnet's hand in marriage. Her parents would be moved into a stone house with valuable pastureland and given a larger herd of goats and two peons to help with the work.

Father and Mother held their breath.

"I am married to God," Garnet said, and her parents exhaled in relief.

The next day the offering was a larger house with double the servants and a treasury of gold so the family would never again have to labor.

"I am married to God," Garnet said.

The third day it was a villa with even more gold, plus a vineyard and a resident artist (sometimes Michelangelo, sometimes Caravaggio — the wrong century entirely, but hey, it's Nonna's fantasy).

(It's-a no fantasia!)

(Anyway.)

Garnet's response was the same. "Umm, God."

The fourth day there came not a messenger, but a sheriff, who dragged Father away and confiscated the herd of goats.

God, the girl chose, even in the face of her mother's streaming tears.

The fifth day the house was set ablaze, and as Garnet's mother was lugged off in shackles, she gazed beseechingly at her daughter. "He isn't so ugly, dear."

The sixth day the sheriff heaved Garnet up from her bed of leaves and took her to Marquis's estate, where a priest was waiting to not only annul Marquis's current marriage but also pronounce Garnet and the fiend man and wife.

"No-no-no-no-no! I am married to God!" she said to the priest, who was supposed to be married to God too. But the squirmy toad's neck was bent under the weight of a leather pouch bulging with coins that would buy his service and silence.

"No-no-no-no-no!" Garnet wailed for so long that the priest kept losing his place even as Marquis prodded him to hurry up, visions of his wedding bed engorging his lust.

"Mary, Mother of God, save me!" Garnet cried.

Finally the priest slammed his prayer book closed. (Apparently even palm-greased Church officials have souls. No offense.) "I can't do it unless she is willing."

"You want her willing? I'll make her willing." Just then Marquis looked out a window and saw Mount Etna bubbling. His astronomers had predicted that the volcano would erupt that night, and his black soul devised a black plan.

"Minions!" he shouted.

Within seconds, he was surrounded by a band of knee-bending sycophants.

"Take her to Mount Etna and climb up as high as the heat will allow. Tie her to a stake and let her face the ash and lava. Soon enough she will agree to marry me."

"Yes, my lord," they said, drooling.

"No!" Garnet howled as they bullied her out and tied her to a mule. They climbed up first through green forest, but soon the soil hardened with pumice stones and dried lava. The volcano belched sulfurous ash and air that singed their eyelashes.

"Close enough," one of the minions said.

They pounded a stake into the scarp and bound Garnet to it. Etna emitted another belch, which sent the minions scrabbling down to safety.

"Mother of God, save me!" Garnet prayed as the volcano gurgled. Its rumbling resembled the howl of demons; its fiery glow the very furnace of Hell.

When Etna finally erupted, Garnet closed her eyes. She could feel her body being pelted by lava balls that burned her clothes but, oddly, not her flesh. She prayed to Mary for strength and mercy, even as magma gushed by on both sides.

And then our heroine fainted and dreamed of twenty-four fat-bellied cherubs fluttering around her, each holding a ladle and a bucket filled with cool spring water, which they doused her with over and over.