Giovanna's 86 Circles: And Other Stories

Roman Arches

Roman Arches A Lucille Ball fan club with thousands of members still meets every year. There’s a museum and film festival in her native Jamestown, New York and a tour of the I Love Lucy set in Hollywood. My mother hasn’t been to any of these, but she’s the most devoted fan there is: She thinks she’s Lucy Ricardo. My mother’s been Lucy Ricardo off and on for years now, ever since I left the area and moved to Maine. My father died when I was in fifth grade, and the only thing my mother seems to remember now was that she told my dad not to smoke so much because he wouldn’t be able to sing “Babalu” if he got throat cancer. This was typical behavior around the Bernardi household, or should I say Ricardo household. My mother seemed to turn Lucy on and off at will, and I knew it was a matter of time before her second personality became a nuisance. That I missed her sixtieth birthday because I had a gallery opening a couple of weeks ago may have put her back on the Lucy track, so I wasn’t too surprised the day my mother’s parish priest, Father Alfonse, called me and asked if I would come by the rectory as soon as I arrive for my annual Christmas visit. He cited a “family emergency,” and hung up the phone without elaborating. Father Alfonse knows I’m not married. I don’t have children or 126 127 a full-time job. My mother told him I throw pots on a wharf in Maine. Like my mother, I bet he has this image of me hurling a set of Revereware out the window of an old fisherman’s shack and into the water, starting with the frying pan and working my way up to the five-quart steamer. Despite his urgent tone, I’m expecting the usual. My mother probably still hasn’t forgiven me that I missed her birthday, but I offered to pay for her to come to Maine and we’d celebrate there. Plus she could come to my opening and be there for my first solo show and jury award. I realize it’s hard to explain to her and Father Alfonse the satisfaction I get from centering clay with my hands as it spins on a potter’s wheel that I pump with my bare feet. The resistance I encounter from a lump as it rotates out of kilter because it has to be guided into the middle to its symmetrical peace. I wish I could tell my mother that I tried but never could learn how to make pottery until I left home. Before I had always ended up with a lopsided mess. The result of sweat on my brow from the clay’s push and pull, to shape it against its will. It wasn’t art. It was manipulation . I was shaping clay the way priests like Father Alfonse had tried to mold me into a good Catholic girl. I had resisted as much as the clay. As soon as I walk into his office, Father Alfonse offers me a cup of homemade eggnog, without rum, alas. He doesn’t bother with small talk. “Arabella, your mother is possessed by a red-headed devil, and it’ll take a miracle to snap her out of it. As her daughter, I think you should know.” The thought of a red-headed devil makes me snicker but I repress the impulse. “Father, her Lucy Ricardo routine is just an act. It always has been. I know this time of year you take particular offense to the way she decorates her tree, but forgive me for saying that this is not what I’d call an emergency.” Roman Arches “I grant you, It’s bad enough she has figurines of Rock Hudson and Danny Kaye and William Holden in the nativity as the three kings. But this year she . . .” “Let me guess, she took down the North Star on top of the tree and put up one with a picture of John Wayne on it.” “That’s right!” he says in amazement. “As you know from your Catholic upbringing, Arabella, the star symbolizes the way to Bethlehem , not the Hollywood walk of fame.” “I’ll see what I can do. At least...