The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [23]
Less affronted by these remarks since her marriage—John liked her figure—Gina stared at Bérénice with a mix of tenderness and foreboding before she addressed her daughter: “Maria, if anyone makes fun of you for being too tall, it’s only because they’re jealous.” She turned to her husband. “John, tell her.”
“It’s true, honey.” John nodded. “Someday you might be able to dunk a basketball.”
“I think what your father means,” Gina continued, shifting her glare from Bea to John, “is that it’s what’s inside of you that’s important.”
Completely unconvinced by her mother and secretly abetted by Bérénice, Maria was soon wrapping her feet like a Chinese princess and cramming them into shoes four sizes too small; she slept on the floor of her closet, her head and feet at opposite walls, hoping to compress the millimeters that were being tacked on at night. To her mother’s chagrin, not to mention her teachers’, Maria began to slouch, so that the instant she touched a chair anywhere, she slid down the back of it until her chin was only a few inches above the desk or table in front of her, her knees bent as if she had just been stabbed in the back during her nightly prayers. At school she began to walk like a victim of osteoporosis, which only made everyone hate her more.
Since Maria had no friends, Gina and Bea filled in as best they could. Gina took the secular lead with hopscotch, jacks, mumblety-peg, paper dolls, and cat’s cradle. They buried jars of cut flowers and months later rediscovered them. When the weather was nice, they sold leaves and grass, sometimes at exorbitant prices, to an assortment of blocks and dolls, or to John or Bérénice. Meanwhile, prayer sessions with Bea evolved into more complicated rites of communion and confession, not to mention the sacraments and gruesome reenactments of martyr deaths in the kitchen, which between the knives and forks and ketchup bottle offered all sorts of possibilities.
This was how Maria’s theatrical—and then operatic—skills began to develop; in fourth grade she suggested to her mother that they put on a play in which the characters sang to one another. Using color-coded crayons, Maria was soon writing operettas featuring anywhere from three to ten characters, all of whose vocal lines she invented and committed to memory, along with some written parts, always the easiest, which she reserved for her mother and Bérénice, whom she also directed in the design and construction of sets and costumes. Each week Maria ran a rigorous rehearsal schedule that left her exasperated with the failure of the other actors—again, Gina and Bea—to master even a single note, but then on Saturday afternoons they held performances, with audiences comprising the same blocks and dolls—once again fleeced for tickets, although a few lucky ones were called upon to appear as supernumeraries—and John, who could be counted on to attend as long as curtain times were scheduled between innings of the game. Some of the more memorable productions included “Maria Grows Shorter,” “Maria Adopts a Baby,” “Suzy Polomski Gets Hit by the Bus,” “The Slaughter of the Innocents,” “Bérénice in Purgatory,” “Felix the Procurator and His Wife, Drusilla,” and “Maria Leaves Pittsburgh for a Vacation in St. Louis,” a somewhat controversial show because of last-minute changes imposed by censors alarmed by the original concept, “Maria Leaves Pittsburgh Forever.”
MARIA’S MUSICAL TALENT never attracted attention at St. Anne’s because the subject was taught by a well-intentioned but tone-deaf nun who played the same six records over and over while the children followed along with a book. At home, Maria sang constantly, not just in the musicals but alone to accompany her imaginary wanderings with the saints and martyrs. In her room, the world dropped