It is still early in the day as Teresa winds her way back up the bluff to the Manor House. Her two canvas grocery bags are full of fresh supplies from Sainsbury’s. At the top of the rocky cliff, she stops again to look out at the sea. Even though the day is fair, the waves are still fierce, splashing white and high on the jagged, dark rocks just yards away from the beach. She stands, mesmerized, hearing the crash and swoosh clearly even from this distance.
Teresa’s thoughts return to Father Michael. He must be about the same age as she, sixty-ish, and he is in hearty good health. Moreover, he’s a decent-looking, vigorous man with a quick mind and cheerful demeanor. Although she has chosen to be single for many years, Teresa admits that there are still pleasures to be had in male company, pleasures she realizes she has missed.
After Giancarlo, Teresa was absorbed in her family’s concerns, and then, when Marco was born, all her energy focused on him. The doctors watched and waited until Marco was three years old. Then they began a series of operations and hormone treatments to make it possible for Marco to walk. The first surgery went well. During the second operation, Marco stopped breathing and was resuscitated. But in the recovery room, his leg threw a blood clot and her little boy quietly died while she slept by his hospital bed. All the wires and monitoring machines failed to alert the nurses’ station. There was an investigation, but it came to naught. No one was to blame. They had done their best.
With no child to care for and fill her days, Teresa went to work at Random House, in the Young Books division. The work was interesting and challenging enough to be satisfying. She met Aaron at a book-launching party, two years after Marco’s death. Aaron was a lawyer at Random House. All was well until Aaron decided he wanted to marry her and have children. That was territory Teresa refused to enter again. Unable to find a way to compromise, they split up. Teresa was thirty-one years old and single once again.
“And now I’m sixty-three and I’m fantasizing about a priest. Pathetic.” Teresa says this aloud. She slides back into the car. In less than a quarter of an hour, she is settled in front of her computer.
Teresa watches the sunrise through her bedroom window. The storm strewed leaves and twigs all over the garden. The greens of leaf and grass are so clean and intensely bright that they hurt her eyes. High cirrus clouds sail in a smashing blue sky. The day calls for an outing. But first she needs to see the church records once more.
Mrs. Allston is not happy to see Teresa in her office again. “Father Michael is visiting a sick parishioner,” she says. Her expression is one of slight disgust, as if she detects a foul odor.
“When will he return?” Teresa asks. She knows it is futile to ask Mrs. Allston to let her see the records without Father Michael’s permission.
“Don’t know,” Mrs. Allston says, turning away.
Teresa is incensed. “Look, Mrs. Allston. I may not have a letter of introduction, but I am a legitimate, published writer doing legitimate research for a book already under contract.” That last part stretches the truth a bit, but Teresa doesn’t care.
Mrs. Allston clears her throat and looks down at her notepad. Then she glares at Teresa. Teresa can almost hear the woman’s thoughts. “These American women! They are all the same, pushy and loud. This one thinks she can have her way, but she can’t. Not with me.”
Father Michael bustles in the door beaming and interrupts their staring contest. “Ah, Miss Salerno! What a pleasure! What can we do for you?” he says. “That was quite a storm last night, wasn’t it, ladies?”
Mrs. Allston taps her notepad of messages. “Father, you have two calls.”
“Yes, thank you, Mrs. Allston. I’ll take care of that shortly.” The priest has caught the icy silence between the two women.
“Come into my office,” he says to Teresa. When the door is closed, he whispers, “Do forgive Mrs. Allston. She’s a bit of a bulldog, I know, but she means well.” He sits in his creaky chair. “Now tell me. How is your research coming along? Did the records help?”
“Immensely,” Teresa says. “Father Michael, I’m Catholic and I don’t know much about Anglican priests. If I tell you something private, are you bound to hold it in confidence?”
“Yes, of course,” he says, his face solemn. “Unless you intend harm to yourself or another. Then I am required to contact the proper authorities.”
“Do you know Eddie Thomson?”
“Yes, I do. Has the old fellow been misbehaving?”
“No, not at all,” Teresa replies. “But last night he told me a family secret. At least he said it was a secret.” Teresa recounts an abbreviated version of Eddie’s tale to the priest. “I’d like to go back to the records to see if I can find Jonah Thomson.”
“Fascinating.” Father Michael stands up. “Let’s go.”
Moments later, the two of them are leaning over the records, squinting at the fine, spidery writing of the entries. Teresa can smell the priest’s aftershave. He is so close that she can feel the warmth of his arm next to hers. Her concentration is slipping away into forbidden realms. Honestly, Teresa, she says to herself, he’s a priest, for God’s sake. But it has been a long time, a very long time, since Teresa was close to a friendly, kind, attentive man. She lets herself enjoy it.
They come away triumphant, having traced Jonah Thomson’s line of descendants from Jonah’s marriage entry to Eddie Thomson’s name and birthdate in 1938.
“I’m curious, Father Michael,” Teresa says as they return to his office. “Would Eddie have any legal claim to the Manor House property?”
“I don’t know the intricacies of the law, but I suspect that George Braithewaite’s offspring would have an equal claim.”
“That’s what I thought,” Teresa says. “Thank you so much, Father Michael. Do you priests shake hands?” She offers hers.
He smiles and takes it, covering her hand with his own warm palm.
“You’re most welcome, Miss Salerno. Do come around and tell me of any more discoveries.”
The legal system dragged its way toward Alberto’s trial. By the time Cousin Alberto’s case finally made it to court, I was three months pregnant. I still felt tired, but I was no longer subject to morning sickness. Through some connections at Columbia, I found part-time work as an editor at a small publishing house. Angelina continued her blithely positive attitude toward all things regarding the baby. She was convinced it was a boy. He would be beautiful; we’d find a nanny for him so I could keep working in the mornings. She advised me not to tell Father about the pregnancy. I wore loose-fitting blouses and dresses, but it didn’t matter. Father was so absorbed in his own misery that he barely noticed me at all.
Gradually Father sank deeper into a dark sea of worry, shame, and depression. Angelina arranged a trip to Italy for him, thinking it would give him a fresh perspective and some comforting scenery. He came home early, having been shunned by most of the relatives except for Uncle Gio and Gio’s immediate family.
Early one afternoon I arrived home from work and found Father unconscious, lolling sideways in his recliner. An empty pill bottle sat on the coffee table next to what was left of a bottle of gin. After the paramedics wheeled him away to the ambulance, Angelina and I combed through the house, removing pills and hard liquor, anything we thought could abet suicide. When he came home from the hospital four days later, Father hardly spoke. He wouldn’t go to the office, no matter how Angelina badgered him. He refused to see a counselor or a psychiatrist.
Late at night, a few weeks after Father came home from the hospital, I woke up freezing. A chill breeze swirled around my room. I got up to check the thermostat in the foyer. The night was alive with sound, as it always is in New York City. I heard shouts and sirens and vaguely realized that the ruckus came from nearby. In the living room, the big window was wide open. Snow speckled the carpet. The drapes billowed like red damask sails. I knew then that Father had found a way out of his pain. I screamed for Angelina, and then I passed out.
When I came back to consciousness, there was a stethoscope on my chest and a gentle hand was pushing up my right eyelid. From where I lay prone on the sofa, I could see Angelina sitting in a chair across the room. I kept hearing a strange, moaning sound and finally I realized it was coming from Angelina. Another paramedic was giving her an injection.
The medic who was checking me sat back on her heels. “How are you feeling? Any pain?”
“My side hurts,” I said.
“May I look?” She lifted my pajama shirt and pulled my pants down below my waist. “That’s quite a bruise you have there. Why don’t you let us take you to the hospital? How far along are you? Twelve weeks?”
“Fourteen,” I said. “But please, can I wait until this afternoon, or even tomorrow? I need to stay with Angelina.”
When at last I did see my own obstetrician, he said everything looked fine, except for the multihued bruise above my hip. I’ll never know if it would have made a difference had I agreed to go to the hospital that night. The doctors and specialists could not agree on what caused the damage to Marco’s legs. He was born as perfect as any cherub from his hips to his head, but his legs never formed properly. The physicians tried to fix his poor little legs, and that is what caused his death.
Father’s funeral was well attended. Our family’s notoriety was now complete. We had legions of reporters hounding us wherever we tried to go. Debo and Dolly came home for three days. Both had just started their first year of college. Dolly was at Boston University. She planned to go straight through undergraduate and graduate school to obtain a Masters in Business Administration. As for Debo, after her graduation from New York Military Academy, she decided to become a police officer.
Sometimes I thought that Debo was trying to be another Junior for Father. It had pained me to watch her work so hard for his attention and approval just as I had, and with the same result. For Father, nothing we achieved changed our gender or the fact that Junior, his shining star, was dead.
After the funeral, Angelina arranged a buffet at Father’s favorite Italian restaurant. We all agreed that holding a brunch in the apartment carried a gruesome shadow.
“People will be staring out the window and looking down to see how far he fell,” Dolly said.
In fact, none of us felt comfortable in the living room. Angelina and the twins and I sat in the kitchen for meals and did all our conversing and planning there. At one of these sessions, Angelina said, “Girls, I’ve been thinking about the living room. The furniture gives me the creeps now. I was wondering if you’d mind—” she paused.
“What?” I thought she was going to sell the apartment. Then where would the baby and I live? But that’s not what she said.
“I was wondering if you’d mind having the living room redone,” she finished.
Debo, Dolly, and I burst out laughing.
“When in mourning, redecorate!” said Debo.
“It’s a good idea,” said Dolly. “Get new curtains, too.”
The apartment felt different with Father gone. I hated to admit, even to myself, that the atmosphere was lighter. Angelina plunged right into the renovation project. After the living room was finished, the dark clouds that had filled the rooms with their thick sadness were finally released. Don’t get me wrong. I grieved for my father. But without the heavy brown leather sofa set, the heavy red curtains, and the ever-present odor of cigar smoke, the whole apartment felt clean and fresh.
The night that the living room was completed, and all the paintings and knick-knacks were replaced, Father’s ghost appeared to me for the first time.
Teresa is too agitated to do any writing when she gets into her rooms behind the Manor House. She makes a cup of hot chocolate and some toast. Sitting at the kitchen table, she writes some notes, trying to piece together Eddie’s story with the rest of her information. Then, upstairs, she falls asleep listening to the rain pelting her window. And she dreams.
At first, she is playing with her son, Marco. They are in the apartment in New York City, and she is waltzing with him in his cheerfully decorated yellow bedroom. Then the room around her changes. The walls are whitewashed plaster; there is a cradle in place of the crib. Darkness moves in; she is no longer holding Marco. She can’t find him. She’s out in a storm, flailing against the driving rain. She calls his name, and the wind snatches her voice away. The wind wails and it sounds like her baby crying. It could be her baby. He needs her; she can’t find him. Crying, screaming his name, Teresa wakes herself up. But the name she screams and hears echoing in the room is “Lucas!”
“Oh, my God.” Teresa is shaking, sobbing. The window is open, swinging in the wind. She leaps out of bed to latch it, and hurries back under the covers. The room stays cold and damp. Margaret is there.
The clock blinks a glowing red 1:56. Lightning flashes. Teresa curls into a fetal shape and surrenders to the memory she keeps locked away. Marco, her boy. At one year of age, he had his father’s shiny, black curls. His little teeth were perfect as pearls, and his laugh was such a bubbling gurgle that, no matter how tired she was, Teresa always laughed too. She had him for two more years. And then she lost him. All the medical geniuses couldn’t save him. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Marco together again. Teresa hugs her sides and lets the tears come. It’s been so many years–how many? —over forty—and the pain is just as fresh, just as deep.
A coldness trails across Teresa’s cheek. It makes her shiver. This is the touch of a ghostly hand. Margaret.
“At least your baby lived,” Teresa says. It is after two o’clock and Teresa knows she will get no more sleep tonight. She turns on both lamps and clicks on her laptop. To the chill air around her, Teresa says, “Please go away. I need to work.”
Tangled Magic 