The Sinners of Santa Ava

Part One

Palm Springs, 1962

We were there when the bride made her appearance at last. Her bare feet peeked out below the hem of her silk nightgown and robe, toes curled shyly because she had forgotten to pack the matching slippers. The groom, freshly changed into new pajamas creased from the box, scrambled up from the bed and cleared his throat.

“Aw, honey, you look like…” how to say it? An angel from pick-your-wife-heaven, that’s what she looked like. And a figure, not so angelic, that could make a godless man drop to his knees and shout alleluia all the way to Sunday. Frank wasn’t godless, but he knew the difference between the Almighty and an accident of good fortune. A farmer’s dog could tell that he didn’t deserve Helen. Best to toast his luck and hope no one up there discovered the mistake.

It was too late for that. Some mistakes beg to be made, and this was one of them. That is why we were needed.

Helen, hesitating outside the bathroom door, was facing her first disappointment. She brought out a smile for her husband and struggled against the urge to run right out of the room. A roadside motel was so far from what she had imagined it might as well be a tent. Just don’t look, she thought. Don’t look at the homespun art-fair painting hanging crookedly on the paneled wall. Pretend not to notice the thin, dusty curtains and threadbare carpet, the defeated yellow lampshade. But, oh, the bed! Waiting for her in the middle of the room. Helen had to peek, her smile fading as she took in the sagging mattress, the elderly chenille bedspread with its unravelling hem. Was Frank supposed to sweep her up and carry her the three steps to the bed? No etiquette manual she knew of spelled it out. And asking her mother before the wedding had been out of the question.

We couldn’t tell her. None of us present had married when we were alive. We had no wedding night wisdom to share, and even if we had, Helen would not be able to hear us. Saints use a language that doesn’t reach human ears. If by chance you caught a fragment of our speech in a dream, you might hear clicks and whirrs, bells, wind, a sound like waves. But you wouldn’t remember it when you woke up.

You wouldn’t be able to see us, either. We have spiritual, not physical, forms. Think of  bodies made of light and you’ll have some idea. Bodies that feel, see, hear, and move like yours, but without the burden of flesh. And we rarely come down to earth. Only when we receive an assignment and only for a very short time. That time was soon coming to an end.

The three of us had one task left to complete. We would leave the room first, of course, and wait the requisite hour. God willing, less than that. Even a spirit can sag at the end of a long day! Especially when keeping watch over yet another love-drunk couple, an assignment we all get from time to time but that nobody really wants.

Still. It wasn’t for us to question the task we were given: Follow Frank and Helen until they marry. Attend the wedding. And bless their future children, if any are to come. We obeyed. We always do; we’re saints.

Frank had been an impatient suitor. He pushed up the date of the wedding and even, a few weeks ago, asked Helen to run down the road with him and get married in secret by a justice of the peace. He told her he couldn’t wait. Looking through the windshield of the parked car, flicking the ashes from a Lucky Strike out the window, he promised that all the stars in the Milky Way would be hers when she became his wife.

Can’t make a meal out of stars, Bernadette thought. She and Giovanni were on duty that night. Agnes had been on watch the night before.

Be kind now, Giovanni thought. The man’s in love.

Bernadette shrugged, went back to minding the young couple as they sat looking at the sky. Better were the times when they went out to dinner. There was an Italian place Bernadette especially liked to observe. The steaming baskets of buttery garlic bread, plates piled high with perfectly round meatballs, wondrous! On earth, she’d never had a ball made of meat in her life. Meals in her house had been broth, bread, and an occasional wild rabbit shared among her parents and four surviving siblings.

Frank was still talking about the galaxy. He’d do this, he’d do that, he’d throw stars like diamonds at Helen’s feet if she would say yes, now. Helen smiled to herself in the dark. She knew the only diamond he could afford was the size of a dandelion seed. And it was on her finger.

Make him wait, Bernadette thought.

Helen kept the wedding date. It was only proper. But all the lace and flowers and elaborate rituals! Agnes was no fan. Beheaded at age thirteen for refusing to marry the Roman prefect’s spoiled son, she was unsentimental about nuptials. The bride should have agreed to elope, she muttered for the third time as wedding guests poured onto the street after the cake and dancing and wine-fueled toasts. Outside, streamers flew. Tin cans ribboned to the bumper clanked against the pavement; women in chiffon dresses waved and sobbed. On the car’s back window drunken letters announced, in the best man’s shaving cream script, another April wedding to the world.

There we stood as Helen, daughter of a small-town doctor, leaned out of the car window, waving and blowing kisses. Specks of rice dotted her hair. At twenty, she looked frothy and innocent as milk. Frank, son of a third-generation butcher, could barely believe she was real. In his family, the women were plain and brisk, less likely to laugh at a joke than to scold you for wasting the time to tell it. Cut it out, Frankie, or I’ll stripe your hiney! You’ve got chores to do.

Helen giggled at all Frank’s jokes. He was devilish and daring, poking little holes in the lace-curtain manners she grew up with. He could make her helpless with laughter. And he was a true grownup—nearly thirty!—a man of the world who knew his own mind. His proposal had rescued Helen from the life her widowed mother had neatly arranged for her only child. After finishing her studies, Helen would move home, give piano and voice lessons, and perform in the occasional recital. Above all, she would wait for Robert Fletcher, Jr. to take over Robert Fletcher, Sr.’s life insurance company. Then marriage and eventually two little Fletchers, who, like their father and grandfather, were likely to have slightly crossed eyes and an avid interest in rare stamp collecting, an activity that would consume hours of rapt attention most evenings. Just hearing Helen talk about one of these evenings with Robert sent Frank into a fit of laughter that nearly toppled him off his barstool. Giovanni, watching that night, laughed, too, so loudly the rest of us heard it from miles away.

Two months later stamps, insurance, and poor dull Robert were blissfully forgotten.

We followed the newlyweds’ car as it roared off, cans clanking, and continued southeast down the highway that would lead to the honeymoon hotel. Which hotel? Bernadette wanted to know. But the groom had made no reservations. They would drive out to Palm Springs, he figured, and pick a place, any place, what did it matter which one? They had each other.

Helen wasn’t worried. Frank would take care of everything. She watched the date trees rush by the window and felt pleased to see how they bowed, as if recognizing her newly married grace. I’m Mrs. Hoffman now! she thought. A day ago she had been Miss Kent.

We stayed with the couple as the car stopped at the first motel, then the second, then so many more we stopped counting. The 41^st annual Date Fair was in full desert swing, and every place with a bed and sink from Palm Springs to Indio was stuffed with tourists. Roadside stands selling date shakes and date bread had sprung up on every corner. The traffic was sluggish and heavy. It was starting to get late. Frank was anxious, his bride sagging on the seat with a pinkish headache from too much champagne.

The time had come to step in. We did our best with what we were given, which wasn’t much, and that’s how the dead sign of the Three Palms Motel spurted into neon life as Frank rolled by. Flickering palm fronds caught the corner of Helen’s eye, and she tugged at her husband’s sleeve.

“Frank, slow down, what’s that?”

“What’s what, what do you see?” Frank squinted in the dark.

“Down that side street, there, is that a place?”

They checked in just before a busload of visitors from Nevada arrived and learned about a slight change in their reservation. One of the rooms was no longer available, so sorry, cots could be arranged. The Nevadans were late and the manager swayed by the fold of cash Frank slipped across the counter. We looked the other way and Giovanni grinned. Frank reminded him of the students he taught centuries ago, the canny young ruffians who had thieved on the streets of Turin. That is, before Giovanni rescued them, fed them, and tutored them in his school.

Helen took a long time in the tiny bathroom. She had hoped for a bath but settled for the closet-like shower stall, shivering under gusts of icy water. Bernadette, simple soul, had prayed for the water to flow. But she’d forgotten to ask for it warm. No matter. Helen rubbed herself dry with the thin motel towel, then slipped on the gown and robe she had packed for this night. The filmy fabric was soothing against her skin. She dabbed perfume behind her ears, a little fresh lipstick on her dry mouth. Bernadette’s prayers helped guide the bride’s hand, which was trembling so violently it nearly smeared the lipstick across her teeth.

Frank, waiting outside the firmly shut door, pulled a bottle of brandy from his suitcase and set it on the nightstand, alongside two cheap water glasses that he had found wrapped in paper over the sink. Helen took so long he had a couple of drinks before her. He needed them after all that driving and the pressures of the day. The stiff tuxedo and choking bow tie, the interminable Mass, the hand-pumping and bawling at the reception afterward. And the tight mouth of his mother-in-law, who spoke to him just once, briefly, before he jumped into the car with her daughter.

“Take this for your honeymoon and don’t tell Helen.” Mrs. Kent produced a cream-colored envelope from her purse. “She believes you can take care of her. I’m not convinced. But perhaps you’ll prove me wrong about that.”

I’ll prove you wrong six ways to Sunday, Frank thought, and pocketed the envelope. He had big dreams. Dreams he poured out to Helen in the fancy bars he took her to during their courtship. She believed in all of them after two Manhattans, a grownup cocktail that she hoped made her look sophisticated. She melted when Frank swung her around the dance floors, tickling her virgin ears with the tip of his tongue, calling her honey baby, lover gal, sugar pie. Most of the men, or boys, she met at college took her to recitals at the local church. The piano in Helen’s practice room sat untouched as we looked on, the notebooks closed on her desk.

When love made its claim on Helen we prayed for her. This kind of love we’d witnessed over centuries yet it continued to baffle us. We saints—well, most of us—had never known the taste of a lover’s flesh during our time on earth. And those who had rated it less highly than a good bowl of soup. That opinion was voiced most strongly by the female saints alive in Europe during the Midde Ages. That was the period when all things Roman, including plumbing, were rejected as heathen, an act of great stupidity the Roman saints still complained about.

Giovanni gave the signal. The hour was up and the couple asleep. It was safe to return. We formed a small circle at the foot of the bed and clasped our invisible hands.

Let a child come, we prayed.

Let children wait, Agnes thought. Or not come at all. The temptation to stop earthly pain can be strong.

The couple slept on, the bride kicking her feet under the covers. Agnes gave a sigh and we broke the circle. We always know. Within a moment or two, we saw faces forming in the darkness, faint images of the children coming. The first child, a girl, wore a look of alarm. A soft howl began to rise from her unformed lungs.

Not not there not them no no no no….

Before the veil of forgetfulness descends around the age of seven, children remember the stars from which they came. They long to return. They are heard even in the womb, pleading to go back. Or, if they must be born, they beg for perfect parents, rich if possible, a guarantee of comfort and happiness.

Who wouldn’t, Giovanni mused. Everyone wants to be born to a goodhearted queen and king or their equivalent in the modern world. The problem is there are countless humble laborers for parents and only a handful of billionaires, who aren’t nearly as good a deal as you might think. It can be hard to see, but there is a kind of wisdom in the way things work. If she paid close attention growing up, the protesting girl would learn.

We silently welcomed her. And then we saw the dim face of her sister, two years behind her, followed by the face of a little boy, barely visible, grinning with secret plans

They would be named after us. Agnes, patron saint of virgin girls, chastity, and engaged couples. Not married couples, she never failed to remind us. Bernadette, patron saint of shepherds, the poor and ill, and outcasts. And Giovanni “don” Bosco, patron saint of schoolboys, delinquents, and magicians. Each of our namesakes would have a rough journey. And each of us would keep watch along the way.

We would watch over them until death.

Where we live everyone has a job. Saints, of course, and angels and all the other divine beings. Bodhisattvas and wisdom kings, devas and bhagavatas and too many to list. Our paths rarely cross. When they do, we all bow and move on. Everyone is busy. We saints—one for each day of the year, for every occupation from bricklayer to violinist—are in high demand. We listen to prayers, millions a day. We are the humblest and the hardest working, let’s face it. We have to be; we can’t work flashy miracles like some of the archangels around here. When you call for us, and even when you don’t, we pray for you as if praying for our next breath.

We, too, had been human once. We remembered the fires we walked through on earth.

The girl, rushing into blood-ringed eggy life in her mother’s womb, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and sixty-one, would feel the heat any moment.