Chapter 31
The next day Ron was sent out of class and told to report to the principal’s office. This was never a good sign but Ron was pretty sure that he hadn’t done anything wrong. Sister Wilma Delores smiled broadly when she saw him.
“Ronald, Father Joyce is waiting to see you over at the rectory. Don’t be nervous and just tell him what you told Sister Mary Salvatore.”
Ron rang the bell and waited outside of the rectory. It was a long wait and he was unsure if the bell had rung or if he should ring it again. If he rang it again they might think that he was pushy and lacked patience. If he didn’t ring it again, he might just be standing here while the priest was inside waiting for him to appear. He rang it again. He could see motion through the small window in the center of the door.
Father Richard Joyce was disappointed by Ron’s age and size. Ron was almost as tall as he was and the priest did not get that powerful rush that he felt when he looked down at smaller, younger boys. A convert was a convert though.
“It’s my understanding that you have an interest in Catholicism,” said Father Joyce.
“Yes, I do Father,”
“And how did this interest arise?”
“I attend the grammar school.”
“What is your current religion?”
“I’m Protestant.”
“Which denomination?”
“Well I was Presbyterian, but my church closed and so I attended a Reformed Lutheran church for a while because it was the only one that I could get to.”
“Your parents didn’t attend with you?”
“No, Father.”
“And why was that?”
“My parents are divorced, Father.” Ron hated the endless repetition of this litany. He hated the way that people looked at him with baleful eyes after he said it. Joyce’s eyes and face showed no expression, except for a hint of disapproval.
“And how did you come to attend Our Lady of the Forlorn’s grammar school?” Joyce of course knew the answer to this question but he wanted to make the boy describe it.
“My mother got me admitted,” said Ron. He didn’t want to go through it again and was taking the chance that it was just one of the questions on the list and that Joyce really didn’t care about his answers.
“Why did your mother, a non-practicing Protestant, want you in a religious school?”
Anger flashed through Ron. He’s going to make me say it, he thought.
“I got into some trouble, Father and the police thought that it would be best if I didn’t attend Broadway Junior High.”
“Were you arrested?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t know?”
“No one said that I was under arrest.”
“What had you done?”
“I brought a knife to school.”
“Did you hurt anyone?”
“No Father.”
“Well, everyone makes mistakes Ronald.”
That was the first really kind thing that he’d said to him. Maybe the worst was over.
“Thank you, Father.”
“A boy your age would have already been confirmed and would have studied his religion extensively.”
“I have studied religion a lot.”
“The Catholic faith, Ronald.”
For a moment Ron’s pride was stung. Part of him wanted to say, go ahead ask me things. That wouldn’t be a good idea. Ron didn’t answer.
“You’ve read the bible haven’t you, Ronald?”
“Yes.”
“Knowing scripture isn’t a bad thing, but it really has very little to do with being a good Catholic.”
“First of all you have to convince me that you are sincere. Then we can do the study together.”
“How do I convince you of that?”
“First of all by being patient.”
“Yes Father.”
“Secondly you will come here this Saturday and each Saturday after that until I feel that you are ready to be baptized.”
“What time?”
Chapter 32
Ron left Celeste’s house early that evening. He didn’t rush his departure, but there was something he needed to do. He parked the car in front of his mother’s house. Again, for maybe the one thousandth time, he wished that his Aunt Dottie was still alive.
You only get so many guardian angels. She had been his. They had blood between them and there was an acceptance and a soul to their connection.
Ron opened the door with his key. Dandy barked. Marjorie and George were in the living room watching TV. His entrance startled her.
George was half in the bag.
“Ronald, I didn’t expect you.”
“Would another time be better?”
“She got up and said, “Come into the kitchen.”
The settled in their customary chairs. The gazed into each other’s eyes and there was that love, that honey sweet flow of love that a mother and child share, if only sometimes.
Ron spoke softly. “I want you to know that this thing with Celeste is serious. She’s going to become my wife. She’s the woman that I’ve chosen.”
“What about Robin?”
Ron was shocked that she said her name. “It didn’t work. We tried. She tried more than you know.”
“What about the mouse?”
Ron could not help a grin. She refused to stop calling Zoe that. “Too crazy,” said Ron. He thought a moment. “Maybe she just scared me.”
“Sometimes it’s right to be scared.”
“I’m not scared of Celeste or Angel.”
“You should be.”
“I’m going to do this. Please don’t make me fight you for it tooth and nail.”
“What about Julie?”
Ron said, “Why did you do that?”
“She’s a nice girl.”
“I know.”
“She loves you.”
“I know.”
Ron looked deep into her eyes. “You know the feeling that you had with Rocky, before it went bad?”
“Of course I do.”
“Robin was like my Harry Tuck.” Ron smiled. “We should have had a kid but we didn’t want one. We thought that the world was full and that we needed to learn to take care of those who were already here. It still wouldn’t have worked and there would be a child who needed protection and raising.”
“You’re breaking my heart,” said Marjorie.
“This little girl needs protection and care too. The bonus for me is that I’m in love with her mother.”
“She has a family. Why don’t you want a family of your own?”
“The way that I feel about her is very special. I’ve been in love.” Ron tried his best to speak as earnestly as he could. “This feels more real and stronger than anything I have ever felt.”
“You’re making a mistake,” said Marjorie. “Please listen to me. I know that you’re sincere. And I know that you are making a huge mistake.”
“How do you know?”
“I feel it”
“I don’t trust your feelings about this. I’m going to marry her.”
End of Part 1
Chapter 33
The heat baked the asphalt so hot that Ron could feel it radiating up through his sneakers. He walked across the parking lot and into the back door of the school. It was the team entrance and opened into a low slightly darkened narrow hallway. To his left was the door to the boys’ locker room. Ron entered and walked through the empty room that soon enough would carry the sounds and the yearlong smell of perspiration soaked equipment and clothing of teen aged boys.
Steve Ferry was a bull of a man who did not seem to fit in the desk chair. He stood about six feet and three inches. He had a huge back and head that was covered with a baseball cap out of which stuck the ends of greyish white hair. He looked like he could pull a plow.
Laying on the worn couch that many people suspected was his only bed, Artie Harris looked up and opened his eyes at the sound of Ron’s entrance. “Hey Crazy Ron is here. Now things will get lively.”
Ron smiled. “Hiya, Artie. How was your summer?”
It was still the end of August but it was pretty much acknowledged that summer was over when practices began. There wouldn’t be any more quiet mornings. No more endless days that could be filled any way that a person wanted to fill them.
Steve turned from the clipboard that had multiple sheets of paper with templates for designing football plays attached to it. “Ron, it’s good to see you.”
“Good to see you too Steve. How was your summer?”
“They get shorter all the time,” said Steve.
Ron didn’t really understand that and just nodded. “Where are we going to meet?”
Air conditioned rooms were at a premium on this side of the building, but Artie knew where they all were and Ron was pretty sure that he had scouted out a room and turned the air on so that it would be cool.
Artie said, “They put air in the teacher’s room over the summer. That’s a good spot.”
Steve shook his head back and forth. “No chalkboard in there. We’ll need one.”
Artie looked crestfallen. There were no classrooms with air conditioners. Ron said, “We could bring in one or two of the rolling boards.”
“Fine with me,” said Steve, flicking his eyes over at the rotund and now happier Artie and then winking at Ron.
Ron and Steve were classroom teachers. They were not unaccustomed to oppressive heat. It didn’t really bother them as much as it did people like Artie who roamed the halls searching for any place to cool off on a day like this. Classroom teachers had to be models for their students or else the complaining and moaning would never allow them to finish or start the school year. No one was really sure what Artie did. He worked around the school. That was it. He coached Hockey. He got up and waddled out to find the rolling chalkboards and bring them to the magnificently cooled teachers’ lounge.
Larry Voila arrived just as Artie was leaving. They just nodded as they passed one another in the hall. Larry thought that Artie was bad to have around kids. Artie felt the same way about Larry.
Greetings exchanged. Ron was happy not to be working with Larry this year. Larry had gone to Steve complaining that Ron had undermined his authority last year. The truth was that Larry had never played the game and they all knew it. When he denied the freshman team water after a poor showing at a scrimmage, Ron had instinctively blown his whistle and called for a water break. It happened ten minutes after Larry said, “No, they’ve got to get tougher.” Larry had stomped off the field like an angry child who had his toy taken away. He was even more humiliated when Steve moved Ron up to the varsity staff. Steve was always politely condescending to Larry, who never realized it.
When Paul Pamenteri arrived, they were ready to start. It was a meagre staff for the one hundred players that would be in the program. They settled in the teacher’s lounge and drank cans of soda that Artie had pilfered from one of the soda machines for which he had a secret key.
Steve stood and passed out play books. “We need to go through it all,” said Steve. “I made a lot of changes over the summer.” Steve was a physics teacher and a farm boy. To him, football was purely a matter of leverage, angle, strength, speed and desire, but he did like to scheme. They would begin with the offense. This afternoon he would lecture on the defense. Tomorrow he would continue with the same pattern. The next day, his players would arrive and he would begin to see what he actually had.
Young men’s bodies changed quickly. A boy could go away for the summer standing five foot seven and come back a few months later at having grown inches and thinned out considerably and be in need of bulking up. You had to actually see them before you truly knew what you had. That kind of change might necessitate the need for changes in the scheme. His team was going to be white and slow. He didn’t expect a good year, but in his thirty-fifth year of coaching, his second after retiring from public school, taking a pension and coming to teach and coach here. It was just what he did. Besides, you could always be surprised.
Chapter 34
Ron knelt at the altar rail, opened his mouth and extended his tongue. His mouth was dry and the Communion wafer was dry. It felt a moment of panic as he walked back to his pew with his hands clasped and his eyes down. The wafer had stuck to the roof of his mouth. What was he supposed to do now? He couldn’t reach in and scrape it off. He wasn’t supposed to let his teeth touch it. He rubbed against it with his tongue and hoped that it would dislodge.
He wanted that magical feeling of having Jesus inside of him. When he had Communion in his former church they drank grape juice. It was made clear that this was a commemoration of what Christ had done. Ron knew about transubstantiation. This was really God that Ron had inside of him. His tongue couldn’t get the wafer to move. His mind said, Oh Fuck. Then he panicked. He had sinned while the host was in his mouth. There might be a special place in hell for people who did that. Maybe he was the only one who had ever done it. Maybe God didn’t realize. Another lightening thought hit him. He had just sinned again! God was supposed to know everything and here he was doubting Jesus who had bled every drop of his precious blood for him.
After Mass, Ron ran across the street to the candy store and bought a bottle of coke. He washed his Savior down with a long relished swallow. What a way to begin! Some first Communion he screamed at himself as he walked home alone.
George was spreading a dirty white rug across the living room floor of their apartment. Marjorie was watching him with a sick look on her face. It covered the hard wood floor that she loved with an ugly combination of white and stain. George contended that it would muffle the sound and that it was important to be considerate of the people downstairs.
Ron and Marjorie just stared at each other when he said it. They had lived in apartments all their lives. This was George’s first experience.
“Where did you get this thing?” said Ron.
“This used to belong to Wobbles,” said George proudly.
“Who’s that?” said Ron.
George smirked at Ron’s ignorance. “He’s a friend of George’s,” said Marjorie glumly trying to be patient.
“He’s probably the most important man in Newark and one of the most important men in the state,” George explained.
“Never heard of him.”
“You wouldn’t,” said George.
Marjorie stayed silent and Ron could see that she hated the thing. He said, “Why is he giving away his dirty rugs?”
“Maybe we can cover some of the stains with furniture,” said Marjorie.
George looked up, exasperated. Each stain felt like a thorn stuck up his ass and these two were going to mention each and every one. “Do you know how expensive this rug was?”
“You bought this thing?” said Ron.
George turned redder. “I mean originally.”
Chapter 35
Ron drove from the school to Celeste’s house. Anna heard his squeaking approach and saw the delight that spread across Angel’s face. Celeste got up and ran downstairs to change like a love sick school girl. What was happening to her house? He came and went like some storm that you could hear approaching and then had to clean up after.
Angel was running towards the picture window to look out. Anna waited in her chair at the kitchen table. She lifted her fly swatter and smacked it down at some imaginary bug. If only she could eliminate him the same way.
Before the doorbell rang Angel was pulling the door open. Ron scooped her up into his arms and kissed her. She squealed with delight.
Anna said, “Can’t you do something about that squeaking?”
“I tried. They told me that old Fords get that way but that there was nothing wrong with the car. It isn’t dangerous,” he tried to reassure her.
Anna didn’t answer. Danger wasn’t the only consideration. It was embarrassing to have the neighbors hear the squeaks and say, “Oh, Ron’s on his way.” She wouldn’t give him that satisfaction of saying that to him, but she had said it to Celeste.
Celeste hadn’t cared. She opened the door to the basement and came into the dining room. She embraced Ron. They kissed softly. Anna scowled. They did that right in front of the baby. Who knew what else they had done in front of her.
“Would you like to go for ice cream and to feed the ducks after dinner,” said Ron.
“Yes!” squealed Angel.
“You shouldn’t tell her that before dinner,” objected Anna. “Now she won’t eat anything.”
“If you want ice cream, you have to be a member of the clean plate club,” said Celeste.
“Ron already said that we could.”
“Well if Ron said,” Anna repeated bitterly staring at Celeste.
“Let’s go into the yard, “said Celeste.