The Full Cleveland by Terry Reed Read Free Book Online Page A

punch. Then he gave me the title of “probably the best female flyweight girl-boxer in the world.”
    But even though I was proud of my title and all, I still thought the whole thing slightly suspicious from a theological standpoint. It seemed that if you asked God to make you president, what He did was make you, not to mention your sister, boxers instead.

    After Matt’s crime, we really buckled down at our Breakfast Meetings. Having blamed Matt’s failure to become a likely candidate for president, and his unlikely success at becoming a boxer, on the fact that she hadn’t taught us to pray hard enough, Mother began to mastermind nine-day novenas to three, four, as many as six saints at once. To keep track of it all, Mother decided to appoint a “secretary,” really just a glorified scorekeeper. Still, I was thrilled when she offered me my very first job.
    Our Breakfast Meetings became more purposeful, more organized, more businesslike. Once Dad was safely down the driveway, once Clarine barged out the swinging dining room door, the table came to order.
    â€œBoyce, dear, what novena days are we on?”
    â€œI’ve got the minutes here, Mother.” My brothers and sisters waited while I unfolded my notes, which I’d hidden under my thigh until Dad and Clarine, the Protestants, were gone. “Four for Saint Anthony. Two for The Little Flower. Ninth day on Saint Anne. We finished Saint Francis yesterday, and we begin today on Little Claire.” And all the while, I was also praying to Saint Theresa to be pretty, and to make poor people unpoor.
    The funny thing is, not long after Matt’s boxing equipment arrived, I realized Mother was also praying to Saint Theresa on the side. See, for weeks after the first big fight, she had been in a mood. I’d overheard complaints confided to Clarine. She’d say, “It’s not really a sport, you know.”
    And Clarine would say, “Well, but it’ll teach him to stick up for himself.”
    And Mother would look at Clarine as if to say, “When will he ever need to, in the Ivy League?”

    Dad picked up on Mother’s mood quite fast. He brought candy, he brought flowers. But the one thing he wouldn’t bring was the one thing she probably was praying for: the boxing equipment back to Big Al’s Sporting Goods Store.
    I was sitting in the sunroom with Mother the evening Dad brought roses home. He had already tried the more exotic bouquets and New Age—looking arrangements, flowers that looked as if they’d led a wild, avant-garde sort of life on some chic, cold other planet. So now he was giving good old long-stemmed roses a whirl. When he brought them, they weren’t even in a box. They were in a bunch, in his hand.
    â€œDarling,” Mother said, fairly convincingly, though not exactly jumping out of her chair. “Yellow roses!”
    She sent me to the kitchen to get a vase from Clarine. I rushed back with it, splashing water over the rugs in my haste. We then arranged the flowers the way Mother had learned to in her flower-arranging class. “The man, the earth, and the sky,” she said, clipping the last three yellow roses. “You cut some short, and that’s the earth. You cut some medium, and that’s the man. You cut some tall, and that’s the sky.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œJust universality,” she said, first shrugging, then stopping to stare into space. “Just grace.”

    When the flowers were all done and duly admired, Mother suggested a stroll with Dad in the garden.
    I walked between them. It was something that was sometimes done, go with them to the garden before dinner, and the way they did it, they walked up to a particular bed of flowers, said things to each other about its progress, and then they just moved along. But tonight, after they did the red roses, Mother didn’t move along. Instead she grabbed Dad’s hand, sort of spun him