Free Begin Again: Short stories from the heart by Mary Campisi Page B

grease and rooms with crucifixes dangling from the walls.
    “I… I have to go,” Mary Alice said, her dark eyes staring at her slippers. They were the same style as her mother’s, two shades cleaner.
    “Here,” I said, wedging open the door enough to shove the cannoli into her hands. “These are for you.” I turned and ran down the street toward my house wishing my mother hadn’t decided to be hospitable. Then I wouldn’t have been standing on the other side of the Olivetti’s screen door, wouldn’t have smelled the garlic and burned grease. Wouldn’t have heard Mrs. Olivetti’s shrill voice saying my name as though it were evil. I wouldn’t have noticed anything.
    But I did.
    The next day I saw Mary Alice leaving school. “Hey, Mary Alice. Wait up,” I said, hurrying to catch up with her.
    She slowed but didn’t look at me. “ Vivi . Hi.”
    I knew what I wanted to say, I just didn’t quite know how to say it—a first for me. We headed down the hill, past the smokers puffing on their afternoon fixes, past the line of evergreens, stiff and secretive, toward the railroad tracks and the shortcut home. “About yesterday,” I started, stopped.
    “Thanks for the cannoli.” She kept her gaze fixed straight ahead.
    “You’re welcome.” I didn’t look at her either.
    “They’re my favorite.”
    “Oh. Good.” I paused. “Good.”
    “We used to make them but it’s been a long time.”
    I kicked the gravel on my side of the tracks. A spray of tiny stones flew in the air, scattered on the ground. “They’re a lot of work.”
    “I know.” She let out a small sigh, “Thank you.”
    “Mary Alice, what was your mother saying about me yesterday?”
    She stumbled, regained her step and shifted the stack of books she carried to her other arm. “Nothing.”
    “She said my name three times.” I didn’t add ‘like I was the devil’ but I thought it. “What was she saying?”
    “Nothing. Really.”
    I stopped and waited until she looked at me. “ You planning on going to confession Saturday?” I asked. “Because I know you just lied.”
    She shook her head, stared at me with those dark eyes. “ Vivi , my mother’s from the old school. She expects things to be a certain way.”
    “So? What’s that have to do with me?”
    “Well, she expects people to be a certain way, too, the way they act, the way they talk, the way they dress—”
    “Mary Alice,” I cut her off, “What did she say about me ?”
    “She said you’re bold.”
    “Oh.” I took that as a compliment.
    “Outspoken.”
    True.
    Mary Alice looked away. “And your clothes weren’t,” she hesitated, sucked in a breath, “proper.”
    Jean shorts and a T-shirt? “Is that all?” The old bag was insane.
    “Your name.”
    “My name?” Vivian? “What’s wrong with my name?”
    “She said it wasn’t…” she stopped, cleared her throat. “She said it wasn’t a real saint’s name.”
    That did it. “You go tell that psycho mother of yours that Vivian is too a saint’s name. Saint Vivian, otherwise known as St. Bibiana , was born in Italy, which your mother should know and she’s the patron saint of working women, torture victims, epileptics, those suffering from hangovers, and insanity . You tell your mother that.”
    “ Vivi .”
    “Is that it?”
    Mary Alice looked away, said nothing.
    “Is that it?” I said again, wishing the old witch were here right now so I could tell her about Saint Vivian, especially about the insanity part.
    “It’s not about you, Vivi ,” she said. “It’s about me.”
    “What?” Her mother was going to make her wear two rosary beads around her neck instead of one? Add a little extra elastic to her pants? Another dab of holy water on her wrists? What?
    Mary Alice turned to me, her eyes bright. “She said I can’t see you anymore.”
    That, I did not expect. It was almost funny to hear the most unpopular girl in high school tell the class president that she wasn’t allowed to