Chapter Nine

Maricruz dug through the hallway closet to find the old tequila box tucked behind some rain boots, a coat that had slipped off a hanger, and the boxes of Christmas decorations that she'd stuffed in there until Lyle could haul them over to her parents' house.  She’d always used liquor boxes from the restaurant to store everything from old love letters to household cleaning supplies, and for the first time she wondered if she’d need to finally invest in some plastic containers.  Would seeing an empty rum or gin box be enough to set Lyle off?  She made a mental note to ask Lyle what he thought about it in a few days when all this worrying and wondering would be over.  

As she labored to heave the box onto the small Formica kitchen table that was supposed to look like unstained wood grain but wasn’t fooling anybody, the cylinders of glass inside clinked against one another like the trash bags filled with empty bottles she hauled out from the restaurant to the dumpster in the alley every night.  When she opened the top of the box, a riot of colors within the glass cylinders bombarded her vision: vibrant reds, tropical yellows, spotless whites, vacant blacks, humid oranges, and bottomless blues.  Amid the colors, forlorn and sacred faces gazed back at Maricruz from the glass cylinders, offering her mercy, or maybe asking for it; she couldn’t quite tell.  Maricruz instinctively made the sign of the cross when she saw them.  She and Benny would be keeping company with the communion of saints that night. 

She had never actually taken anything out of this box, only added to it each time she returned home from visiting with her Abuelita, who lived in the back bedroom at her parents’ house.  Abuelita was famous within the family and the parish for her stories of running the alleys and hillsides in Guanajuato as a young girl and for knowing the patron saint for every possible part of life.  Abuelita was especially proud of her candle of Saint Lidwina, the patron saint of ice skaters, which she’d sent for a few years earlier in preparation for the Calgary Winter Olympics.  She’d lit that candle every time Brian Boitano was to skate and it worked.  She was only half-kidding when she claimed to have prayed him to the gold.  

Their parish priest, Father Carl, a man of about fifty years of age who had been exceedingly kind to Maricruz when she’d been pregnant with no man in sight, had given Abuelita a mail-order catalog all the way from Italy, which all the family assumed was to humor her so he could actually get some work done instead of answering her phone calls.  This catalog made it possible for her to supplement the candles she bought at the grocery store by giving her access to all the obscure saints she would never find in the supermarkets in Rocky Ford or La Junta, or even in Pueblo or Colorado Springs.  Whatever Maricruz’s problem might be—from a plantar wart to constipation to an alcoholic boyfriend—Abuelita sent her home with a candle to light for it.  But Maricruz had never lit them, not one.  It just seemed strange to her, like she was buying her prayers at the supermarket along with the Kool-Aid and frozen pizza.  However, tonight she and Benny were going to need their light, and if their intercessions were thrown in too, then they—or really Lyle—could surely use it.

Maricruz carefully took a white candle out of the box and carried it over to the secondhand end-table by the couch.  Benny peeked from behind his book and watched her intently as she placed it there.  He put the book down and moved closer, studying the image on the glass of a young woman, wearing a modest robe, cape, and head covering, and holding a large crucifix.  He asked who she was, and Maricruz told him it was Saint Margaret of Cortona.

“Why’s there a dog sitting at her feet?” he asked.

Maricruz was no theologian and she’d made it to mass more in the previous ninety days than in the year or two before combined, but she knew this story well, as many times as Abuelita had told it to her.  “Because the man she loved went off and didn’t come back, but his dog did,” she answered him.  She paused for a moment when she heard herself say, “the man she loved went off and didn’t come back."  She glanced toward the window, and then continued, “The dog led her to where the man she loved had been killed.  When she saw him she was so sad that she gave herself to God.  It changed her life.  She had a son, too, just like I have you, and she loved him very much.  She’s the patron of single mothers, like me."  She gestured toward the box.  "Do you want to help me put these out?”

As Benny pulled each candle from the box he asked her about the image.  She told him the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe as he placed the canary yellow candle on the kitchen counter.  “She’s the patron of Mexico, where Abuelita and Abuelo (you never knew him) grew up.”  When he asked about the red candle with the picture of a woman in what looked like a nun’s habit sitting on a log while holding a shepherd’s crook in one hand and an open Bible on her lap, she enjoyed telling him of Saint Monica, of how much she loved her wayward son, Augustine, and of how she is the patron of alcoholics. 

“Like Lyle, right?” Benny asked, handing her the candle.

She held it up and skimmed the words on the back, “Dear Saint Monica, troubled wife and mother, many sorrows pierced your heart during your lifetime...”  Maricruz could relate.  She looked at Benny.  “Yes.  Abuelita gave me this one to light for Lyle.”

“So he won’t be an alcoholic anymore?”  Benny was already pulling the next candle out of the box.

“Well, that’s not really how it works, kiddo.”  She ran her free hand through Benny’s chocolate tinted hair, a shade lighter than anyone else’s in the family, as was his skin.  “He’ll always be an alcoholic, but our prayer is that he’ll be able to keep from drinking from now on.”  She went on to explain to him more of what that meant.  “When it comes down to it, though, it’s up to Lyle, but we can help him, and so can Lyle’s friend Rick.”

“I really like Rick,” Benny said as he looked at the next candle.

“He really likes you too, Benny.”  Her heart ached for a moment for her son, like St. Margaret and St. Monica for theirs.  “But Lyle loves you.”

“I know, Mom.  I love Lyle too,” Benny said before asking about the next candle.

This went on for another twenty minutes or more.  Among others there was the blue candle of Saint Martha, the patron of waitresses, and the orange candle for Saint Luigi Scrosoppi, the patron of football players that her Abuelita had given to her to light for John Elway to help him lead the Broncos to the playoffs the previous season.  Then they came to a black candle with an image of an armored man on horseback cutting his red cape in half and handing one of the halves to a nearly naked beggar.  “San Martin Caballero,” she told him.  “The patron saint of cowboys.”

Benny smiled.  “He must be Lyle’s favorite!”

After they’d set out nearly twenty candles, there were just two left, a white and a red.  Benny set up the white candle on the coffee table and joked, “Jesus must have had some of grandma’s tamales.  His heart’s on fire!”  Maricruz tried not to laugh but she couldn’t help it.

“That’s the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Benny,” she finally said.  “That’s love.  The fire represents his love for the world.”

“That’d be weird if our hearts really glowed when we loved people.”  Benny had as philosophic a look on his face as an almost nine-year-old can.  “I guess we could wear coats if we wanted to hide it.”

Maricruz touched her hand to his cheek.  “There’s not a thick enough coat in the world that could keep people from seeing how on fire my heart is for you, Abenicio Rodriguez.”  She kissed him on his forehead, and just held her lips there for a moment. 

“What about for Lyle?” he whispered.

“It’s a different kind of fire I have for Lyle.  Something about Lyle is thawing out a part of my heart that’s been frozen for a long time, Son.  He's very special to me.”

“Is he going to make it home?” Benny looked down at his feet.  “I mean... ever?”

She pulled him close to her and held him so he could warm himself on her heart.  “Nothing will stop him. Nothing…  Now come on, Sweetie, we better put the last one out and then get them lit.  The lights are starting to flicker again.”  They both looked up at the ceiling fan globe. 

Benny reached into the bottom of the box and picked up the last candle, a red one with the image of a gray-haired man in a black cassock pointing up into the air with one hand as two young boys beside him read from open books.  “Here’s the last one,” Benny said.  Reading the name on the glass, he asked, “Who is Saint John Baptist de la Salle?”  

“Oh, I’d forgotten about that one.  He started schools in France several hundred years ago.  He’s the patron saint of teachers.” 

“Isn't Rick a teacher?  At that college where you used to go?”

“Yeah, he teaches at the community college in Pueblo.”  

She’d thought about throwing that candle away when Abuelita had given it to her after Maricruz had finally confided in her a couple of years ago.  Abuelita was still the only one who knew---besides Rick, of course.  Not Lyle.  Not even Benny himself.  But Maricruz could not show Abuelita how offended she was by the candle.  She just swallowed the hurt and embarrassment and thanked Abuelita, who had told her, “It doesn’t hurt to pray for him, you know.  If the story you’ve told me is true, then he’s not a bad man.  We’ve all made mistakes, Nieta.  But you’ve been given something most of us aren’t.”  Then Abuelita had picked up her framed photo of Benny on one knee in his green and white soccer uniform.  She then tapped the photo with her long fingernail and said, “Most of our sins bring only misery, but yours and this professor’s mistake turned into something beautiful.  Whether you like it or not, Maricruz, this man is a part of that, and he needs your prayers, just as I hope he is praying for you.”

As Benny set the final candle on the table by the phone, Maricruz was surprised to hear herself say, “We’ll light that one for Rick tonight, Benny.  He’s worried about Lyle too."  

Maricruz moved from one candle to the next, lighting a wick or two, waving out the match before it burned her fingers, and then striking another on the box.  As she finished, the lights finally went out for the night, and she and Benny stood together in the living room, admiring how the warm glow of nearly two dozen of Abuelita’s prayer candles had transformed their little apartment into an old-world shrine.  Maricruz half-expected a group of monks on pilgrimage to knock on the door, but if they had she would have been disappointed.  There was only one knock she prayed to hear on her door that night, and for that all she could do was wait.