balancing herself carefully in a series of steps that allows her weight to shift in increments. Robin’s never seen her pivot from the waist; in fact he isn’t sure that under her big square frocks she actually has a waist. He thinks of his mother’s joke: “It’s easier to jump over Nana Rena than walk around her.”
“Well I’d like to say good morning,” she says, “but you couldn’t find enough good to kick your boots at today.”
He walks to her open arms and lets himself be clasped into the meat of her, her thick fingers combing through his hair. He smells her predictable smells, the battle between cooking and cleansers, the heaviness of age in her breath. He lets himself stay there against her for a lot longer than usual. Only when his eyelids begin to dampen does he pull back.
“Did you drive all the way down here?”
“Since the crack of dawn,” Nana says, arranging a sandwich and some potato chips on a plate. “I had to fight for a day off, if you can believe. As if those girls couldn’t go a day without me. The world is full of places that need kitchen help and full of bosses who give you a darn day off, and if Smith College won’t let me out when my own grandson is at death’s door—” She cuts herself off suddenly.
“Mom said Jackson’s not going to die,” Robin says.
Nana Rena moves her hand swiftly through the air in front of her face and chest, a blur that Robin recognizes as her abbreviated Sign of the Cross. He knows what the next thing out of her mouth will be—“P.G.,” which means, “Please, God.” She hands him the plate she’s been fixing. He stares at the food and can’t decide if he is very hungry or if it will make him sick. Nana Rena says, “I don’t know what the doctors are telling her today but when I was over there this morning, there wasn’t anyone breaking out the champagne.”
Against his better judgment Robin finds himself looking back over to Ruby, to see what her reaction to these words will be. Her frightened, guilt-stricken face has given way to something more focused and intent, and she opens her mouth to ask a question. “What about a guardian angel?”
“You mean for Jackson?” Robin asks, surprised.
“Well everyone has one. Nana, doesn’t everyone have one?”
Nana Rena nods without a great deal of force and says, “You just say your prayers, young lady, and you’ll get all the guarding you need.”
Ruby looks off into the air, her gaze fixed on nothing in particular. “Can you pray to a guardian angel or does it have to be to God directly?”
Nana puts her hands on her hips and pauses for a moment. “If there’s any doubt, you should go right to the top.”
“What do I do? Just ask God to make him better?”
“What else would you do?” Robin asks, impatient with this discussion. It’s like being in school and one kid keeps asking all the questions, tying up the whole class, and you can’t figure out why the teacher just doesn’t tell him to shut up.
“There are other prayers, you know,” Ruby says. “You know, real prayers like ‘Hail Mary’ and that stuff.”
“Anything will do,” Nana says. “These days, anything will do for the Catholics. We didn’t used to have it so easy; you used to work for your grace. When I think about how many rosaries I’ve said—”
“I think a guardian angel might be more friendly than God,” Ruby says hopefully.
Robin slaps his sandwich to the plate. “We don’t even go to church anymore,” he says to Ruby. “So what makes you think you know so much about it? Since Jackson’s first communion, we never even go.”
“So? I can pray if I want to. It’s a free country.”
Nana speaks up. “Your mother has to live with herself for that. I won’t take the blame. Eighteen years bringing my children to church every Sunday. I did my part.” As she speaks, she repeatedly squirts a mist of blue, all-purpose cleanser from a bottle. She bends into her work, her arm militantly arcing a dishcloth across the countertop. “Of course, things are on the up and up now that we’ve got one of us in the Vatican.” A delighted smile takes hold of her; Nana has treated the recent appointment of the first Polish pope as a kind of modern-day miracle.
Robin bites into his sandwich and stops listening. He likes everything about his grandmother but her unwavering belief. If he prayed to God right now would Jackson get better? If he prays to God and Jackson doesn’t get better what would that prove? Flashes of going to mass: people mumbling lengthy, memorized prayers, standing, sitting, kneeling like robots, the priest trying to convince everyone (even himself?) about the lessons in the Bible. Lessons thousands of years old! What did the Bible have to say about guys like Larry, who bullied and hurt people and got away with it? What did it have to say about high school? Or wet dreams, or Todd Spicer, or thinking about boys the way you’re supposed to think about girls?
He shakes his head to clear his thoughts, hating the fact that one piece of confusion inevitably leads to another: that thought he just had about boys—about liking boys instead of girls—that was a thought he’d never quite made into a sentence before, with a beginning, a middle and an end, even in his head. He concentrates on chewing his sandwich, on the way the slippery meat with the smooth flecks of green olives and pimentos sliced into it wads up into the bread between his teeth. Salt and sweet on his tongue. A lump going down his throat into his belly. A beginning, a middle, and an end. Communion never had any taste at all.
A car is coming up the driveway. Ruby runs to the window and then returns to the kitchen. “It’s Aunt Corinne,” she says. “I think she brought food.”
Nana Rena checks her wig with her hands, rocking the hairpiece from side to side until she judges it just right. “Well, don’t leave them waiting out there, Ruby. Go on. Let them in.”
Ruby remains in place. “She’s with Larry,” she says, her face blanking out again.
The doorbell’s ding-dong-ding chimes around them. “Go on, Ruby,” Nana Rena repeats.
Robin understands that Ruby doesn’t want to see Larry. He stands up dramatically, both hands on the table, hissing an exasperated take-charge sigh. “I’ll get it.”
Corinne’s face is the picture of pity—neck tilting to the side, lips pursed in a frown, eyes glossy and blinking. The softness under her chin is rippled into itself. Her hair is pulled back into a single ponytail, with plastic combs above her ears keeping it all flat and shiny. Robin can detect none of the goofiness he saw Sunday night, when she was dressed up in her World Series outfit.
She holds a Corningware dish covered with its own fitted plastic lid. “I made that one I know you like: green beans and cream of mushroom? Larry’s got the dried onion rings.”
“Thanks. I’ll take it.” Flat heat settles on his palms. Larry is standing behind her, nearly hidden, looking over his shoulder at . . . what? Robin follows his glance for a moment—Corinne’s tan Vega parked halfway up the drive, the row of hedges between his place and the Delatores’, a yellowed copy of the Community News at the curb. He quickly gathers that Larry is probably staring at anything but him.
“Hey,” Robin says to Larry. Their eyes hold for a moment, and Robin imagines that the wide, empty look he sees there could just be another version of what he and Ruby are feeling. But then Larry squints and curls his lip in a way that makes Robin feel as if he’s just been told to shut up.
“Here,” Larry says, dropping a red-and-blue can on top of the casserole. Robin tilts his right hand up to keep the onion rings from rolling off as Larry shoves his way inside.
Nana Rena and Aunt Corinne hug each other. “You’re looking good, Mother. That’s a very nice dress. And how are things at Smith?”
“Except for the Hitler I work for, just fine, just fine. We’ve got a lovely crop of girls in this year’s house. They know how to be ladies at the dinner table. I think the unrest of the past