Moses & Mac Read online

  Moses & Mac

  Franca Pelaccia

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  Publisher’s Note:

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events are the work of the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance to real persons, places, or events is coincidental.

  Solstice Publishing - www.solsticepublishing.com

  Copyright 2018 – Franca Pelaccia

  To Paul, Anthony & Christina

  Chapter One

  A birthday no one remembered was outright unforgivable. A birthday that would change all those to follow was downright insane.

  It was a changing of the guard birthday. The one when everything went thicker—face moisturizers, waistlines and mindsets, and the absence of a credible man in my life was tossed around me, over me, behind me, and in front of me by all my loved ones. But, instead of a “Happy Birthday, Mackenzie” call from a mother who was never supposed to forget. Or a “You thought your old man forgot, didn’t you, Mackie?” from a father who pretended to forget. Or some form of birthday sympathy from any of my three older sisters, I got a call from ancient Father Somerville.

  Father Somerville saw through my god-forsaken soul, or made me believe it, even now in my supposedly all-powerful thirtieth year of life. In his sixty-year-old seasoned pulpit voice, he declared I had received a package from my Aunt Sara. A package from her would have been great on a birthday no one remembered, if Aunt Sara hadn’t vacated her office and neglected her duties as lecturer of biblical archaeology over thirty years before and been declared dead twenty years ago.

  Aunt Sara was my father’s youngest sister. She was also my godmother. Along with my Uncle Tony, she had held my tiny head over the baptismal font thirty years before. She had posed for pictures with every relative on the Irish side of the family and wisely followed that up with everyone on the Italian side. She enjoyed the seven-course meal at my Uncle Gianni’s restaurant, left to catch a plane to Cairo and was never heard from again. Unless there was delivery from heaven or as both rosary-touting grandmothers would say, from that other place that can’t be named, the package had to be a joke from one nasty person.

  But, heck, it was my big 3-0 birthday. Maybe this was some ploy, although on the dark side, to get me to a big birthday bash.

  With my iPhone in hand like every young woman on campus, I left my office at University College, renowned by students for its Hogwarts’s appeal. I strode along King’s College Circle and crossed busy Queen’s Park Crescent as I had been doing for over ten years, since I also had been an awe-struck first year student. My destination was Saint Augustine’s Seminary in the University of Saint Michael’s College, which in my Aunt Sara’s day was the School of Theology.

  I crossed Queen’s Park Crescent and cut through the park several times a day. I knew every jogger, walker, baby stroller and mom, including her choice of coffee size at 9:00 and 2:00. But it was 10:00 now and FROSH, the week before classes started and first year students were initiated into the glories of university social life. Queen’s Park was a mass of students, wearing the T-shirts of their colleges or faculties, rushing to get to some rite of passage, singing their colleges’ songs, taunting others with them, or, lost and confused, in search of direction.

  A homeless man weighed down with scruffy winter clothes approached me, probably since I stood out among the uninitiated in a respectable pant suit. I kept loose change and coupons for free coffee, fries and hamburgers in my pockets for these approaches. Putting on my seasoned Good Samaritan smile I gave the man a coupon for free fries at Burger King.

  “Bless you, missus, bless you.” He smiled and for a homeless man he had the best set of teeth I had ever seen.

  I did the nice-person nod-thing, not wanting to be drawn into a discussion about God or graciousness or trans-fat. As I waited to cross the street, a female student with her parents in tow approached me, map in hand. Mom and Dad were impeccably dressed and polished while the daughter glittered in the latest designer duds. Their skin was a creamy brown, their hair sleek and black. My bet was Middle Eastern international student.

  “Lost?” I asked, ready to send them off to any corner of the sprawling University of Toronto. I knew all the corners more than I did those of my kitchen—my mother’s words and she wasn’t off the mark.

  “Most assuredly,” Daddy said. “We’re in search of Brennan Hall.”

  Iran, Iraq or Egypt with an impeccable British accent. Daddy had been educated in England. I gave them directions to the building across the street and even indicated it. His chuckle was charming, his wife’s gracious, and, of course, the daughter’s unresponsive. We waited for an opening in the traffic and strode across toward our destinations.

  But they walked right past the building and continued following me.

  “You’ve just passed Brennan Hall.” Time for the Good Samaritan again. “I’ll take you.”

  Dad chuckled again. “That won’t be necessary, Madam. I see the building now. We weren’t paying attention.” He took his wife and daughter by the arms and led them toward Brennan Hall.

  Madam? I didn’t look thirty and matronly, did I? Okay, so I wore conservative clothes, kept my hair its natural chestnut color and didn’t overdo it on the makeup. It was my professorial look, honed not to look like a tutorial assistant. I did compensate for all that neutrality by keeping everything up-to-date and adding a hint of jewelry, a colorful scarf, or a smidgen of lipstick.

  Madam. Shit. I didn’t like the sound of that at all. I needed to rethink my wardrobe.

  Trying not to dwell on that offensive word, I continued along Saint Joseph’s Street toward Saint Augustine’s Seminary. I noticed that the family had veered off course again and were walking parallel to me. Well, I had done my good deed and they hadn’t listened. I had my own business to attend to…or possibly my birthday party.

  The street was clear of students on this side of the campus. Saint Mike’s students started FROSH week with a mass before the sinning began. At the steps, leading into the seminary, several men wearing hardhats and the orange bibs of construction workers were sitting, drinking Timmy’s coffee and eating some breakfast sandwich. Condos were going up everywhere in the area and constructions workers were often as numerous as students. Except for the hillbilly beards, these guys looked clean for construction workers. There wasn’t even a speck of dirt on their hard hats. Their shift probably hadn’t started yet.

  The man sitting in the middle moved aside to let me pass. He wrinkled up his paper and motioned everyone out.

  Sneakers, too. Not one wore safety boots. Newbies or office workers.

  “Hey, Auntie Mac!”

  I was about to open the door when I saw my niece Kaitlyn rushing toward me. I didn’t recognize her at first in a white golf shirt, navy pants and black Oxfords. It was her first day in grade nine at the Catholic high school both my sisters and I had attended.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” But if she had come to wish me a happy birthday—or to attend that surprise bash possibly waiting for me—then I was ready to forgive and forget.

  “It’s only the first day.”

  She ran up the steps, her thick hair, inherited from the Italian gene pool of the family, wagging behind her in a ponytail, her backpack slumping over one shoulder. Any minute now I knew she would throw her arms around me and wish me a big happy birthday. I waited. Come on, Kaitlyn. She of all people had to remember. I was her confirmation
sponsor and her ally in all other things related to academia.

  She gave me a peck on the cheek. “First day is just a lot of orientation and rules and regulations.”

  Was she kidding? “It’s also the day you meet your teachers and get a jump start on expectations.”

  “Exactly. Nothing happens.”

  How the heck had she translated that? It would tip the scales of justice for me. More to the point, how the heck had she forgotten what today was? “The school is going to call your mother.”

  “They have your number.”

  The scales tipped to the bottom. “Kaitlyn!”

  She laughed. “Don’t sweat it. I’ll give them the right number tomorrow.”

  Don’t sweat it? Easy for her to say. I had never skipped school. Maybe that was why no one remembered my birthday. I was too damn boring and God-and-everything else-fearing to be remembered.

  She opened the door to the seminary and peered in. “I need a whiff of genius before I get stuck with the same boring people for the next four years.”

  “You have to learn to work with all kinds of people.” Just like I had to while I was growing up with her mother, my oldest sister Gabriella, my second oldest sister, Adriana, and my third oldest sister, Nicoletta. I was the unexpected fourth child with the non “a” ending name. That was courtesy of my great-grandfather, whose birthday I shared (happy 110th birthday great granddad—wherever God has sent you). That non “a” ending name became the story of my life at home and beyond. No one knew what to do with me except keep feeding me books and gnocchi. “I’m bringing you back and directly to Sister Emma once I pick up a package.”

  “Sister Emma’s not there.”

  “Sister Dictator is always there. No other reason you came to see me?” I waited and hoped. When her eyes didn’t light up with sparks of remembering, I went inside.

  While Kaitlyn rhymed off all the reasons why she shouldn’t be returned to Sister Emma, and I peered into offices for signs of family, friends and happy 30th birthday balloons, we headed to the main office. Father Somerville sat like a statue of impoverished Saint Francis behind a desk that had a hundred years on him. He didn’t crack a smile even though he knew who I was. Or sometimes knew who I was. Smile or no smile, he was pre-Vatican II and on-par with Sister Emma. He always wore a rosary around his wrist and had become known as Father Holy.

  “Good morning, Father Somerville,” I said in a sweet undergraduate voice. “I’m Professor Braden. You called me about a package.”

  Father Somerville stared through to my sinner’s pockmarked soul. “It’s in Father O’Hearn’s office. He’s praying for us all now, even Sister Emma’s ward behind you.” He dangled a key as though it were poisonous. “He said to tell you something.”

  Perhaps, happy birthday? Father O’Hearn had known me all my life.

  He shook his hand, dangling the rosary around his wrist. “Now, off with you.”

  Well, whatever it was he had said, it was lost.

  I took the key and made my way down the hall past closed doors to Father O’Hearn’s office. He was better known to everyone by his first name, Father Logan and sometimes Padre O. Kaitlyn followed me, looking like a hungry puppy in a home she wanted to be. She was probably smart enough to be in university but her biological age forbade it, as it had me during my high school years.

  I unlocked Father Logan’s office and pushed the door open. I was hoping people would jump out with shouts of happy birthday, but no one, absolutely no one.

  Pushing my dejection aside, I walked in, my gaze landing on the package on his desk, no bigger than a hardcover novel. There was a post-it note on it. “Don’t leave,” it screamed in big black capital letters and underlined three times. “Need to speak to you. Be back after mass.”

  “Wow.” Kaitlyn was turning circles. “This is Father Logan’s mind.”

  Father Logan’s office was the manifestation of his mind, deep and profound with multiple and opposing points of views. He was a Basilian Father and devoted to teaching, but his zeal for the random, the outrageous, and the incredulous points of view made him a hit with the students, who referred to his office as a monk’s cave.

  “You don’t have to be an organized mastermind to be smart.” I thought about my own impeccably organized and nondescript office. God, I was so transparent and boring. I was Professor Braden. Victorian Literature Scholar. No formidable nickname like Sister Dictator. No reputation instilling trepidation in students like Father Holy. No fun office, showing the wonders and wheels of my mind like Father Logan or cute nickname like Padre O. Just plain “Professor Braden” and now madam.

  Kaitlyn moved behind the massive desk to peer out the wall-sized window. “Your sister would lose her hair if she saw this disorganized office.”

  “That’s why we’re going to make sure your mother never comes here to lose that expensively colored hair.” I sat in the antique wooden chair in front of the desk as I had in my student years and examined the package. It was addressed to me but here to Father Logan’s office, which used to be Aunt Sara’s office. The return address was obscure, and the stamps faded as though they had gone through mud, torrential rains, and blizzards. I had no idea where it had been sent from or even from which decade. But who it was from was clear. In big block letters was my supposedly dead aunt’s name. Sara Braden.

  My heart sped up. If Aunt Sara were alive, my Grandmother Doris and Grandfather Seamus would need shots of old country-style whiskey to keep them steady and a defibrillator to bring life back into their octogenarian bodies.

  I opened the package, making sure I didn’t tear anything. There was a faded envelope inside. Again, my name was printed on it along with the address of this office. There was also another package wrapped in old newsprint that looked like the Hebrew alphabet. I barely made out the date. 13 Elul 5750. I made the conversion from Hebrew to Gregorian. Elul corresponded to August or September and 5750 to 1990. The news print was twenty-six years old.

  “Those guys are looking at us,” Kaitlyn said.

  “What guys?”

  “Those construction guys who were outside when we came in. They’re across the street, looking right at us.”

  “Do they look like construction workers to you?” I didn’t have time to worry about some fake construction workers. My mind was on the letter, the newsprint, the package and the family. The talk would be endless at all upcoming weddings, baptisms, and funerals. Even the Italian side wouldn’t be able to stop talking about the return of Aunt Sara—if in fact the package had come from her and she was still alive.

  I put the package on the desk, found a letter opener among the mess of books and papers and slit the envelope open. I slid out a simple sheet of lined paper and unfolded it. It was dated March 8, but it didn’t have any year.

  I felt the way I had before my Ph.D. dissertation defense. Ready to throw up.

  My dearest Mackenzie,

  By the time you receive this letter it will have been more than 30 years since last I saw you, but I have been following your progress carefully, hoping your parents never kicked the bucket so I wouldn’t have to take up my godmother duties and raise you. I wanted to write, come home, and phone but the mania of ambition called, and one day tumbled into another and then another and before I knew it, 30 years had passed. You will find out more about this ambition in due time.

  If you’re reading this then I’m either waiting rather impatiently for Saint Peter to let me in the Pearly Gates or contemplating an escape out of hell or purgatory. I was very happy to learn that you had followed in my ignoble footsteps into higher than high education and not in your mother’s footsteps into wiping kids’ noses or your father’s into global credits and debits. I was thrilled to learn you did your undergraduate in English and History, and your Masters and Ph.D. in English Literature. I read your dissertation on “Religion, Society and Gender Relations in the Novels of Elizabeth Gaskell,” with interest and even reread Gaskell’s books to fully appreciate your th
esis. Brava, Mackenzie. I am very proud of you.

  We have much in common, my dear niece. We’re both dreamers. After I finished my studies in biblical archaeology, I took up residency at the School of Theology, which is now Saint Augustine’s Seminary, where you are probably standing at the moment. But my dreams carried me elsewhere. I followed theories, speculations, and hunches, which drew me to Jerusalem and then Egypt and then various places that have changed names and hands over the decades.

  During my journeys that took very precise routes, and while excavating, tagging, writing, and researching I came across many objects of immense and priceless value. I left my family. I left everyone I loved. You are the closest to me in mind and spirit, Mackenzie, and it is to you that I bequeath my findings.

  I do hope you will accept them and do what is right with them. Their locations will come to you and only to you from various corners of the world and at different intervals in your life. This is the only way to protect my discoveries, the family, and you. You’ll understand what I mean once you begin your journeys and why I chose to hand my life’s work over this way and only to you, my dearest niece.

  She was sending me more packages? I was inheriting her life’s work? I was supposed to go on journeys? It was only me? She had been alive three years ago when I had written my Ph.D. dissertation but was she still?

  I was so hot, I thought I had skipped my thirties and forties and gone straight into my menopausal fifties. What was I supposed to do with all those objects of immense value? Was I supposed to sacrifice my life and go after them, too? She believed me to be like her, but I wasn’t. I was a dreamer, but I wasn’t the adventurous type. I hadn’t followed any theory past a library.

  But, I couldn’t dwell on any of that right now. I needed answers. My family needed answers. I pushed all thoughts aside and continued reading.

  Before I hand everything over I need you to look at your second, but no means, final present from me since the little gold crucifix necklace I gave you on your baptismal day.