Chapter 2: The Agony and the Ecstasy

A few weeks passed from the day of the meeting and, because of his outburst, the bumbling cardinal had been assigned the task of gathering the facts and then interpreting the signs. It wasn’t easy: The cardinal spent days and nights searching through dusty shelves and file cabinets filled with manila envelopes containing scrolls from years past. Nearly all of the original authors had passed on and so it was left to him to decipher the parchment alone.

His penchant for saying unusual things without reservation combined with his mental vault of secrets gathered through endless questioning left others in the clergy calling him an “out of the closet J. Edgar Hoover” behind his back. But the truth was, he was just an empty-headed fool asking lots of questions because he lacked the cleverness of his fellow men-of-the-cloth. He relied their brilliance to provide him the inspiration to “take it to the house” as was required by his assignment.

As he walked to his chambers he knew that what he really needed was a release to take his mind off the intensity of the investigation and provide inspiration – a guilty pleasure – and it sent a shiver up his spine…

… but then, rounding a corner, his reverie was broken as he nearly collided with a tall, bald figure in a rough-hewn robe. “Perdonatemi! I did not see you coming, Monsignor Memoria,” said the bumbler to the towering figure.

Memoria was a revered figure in the Church, practically a living saint, whose work formed the foundation of much of the pope’s more recent proclamations. Despite his brusque nature, he was well loved by his disciples. A lone wolf, he chose the road less traveled, but in the end his word was unquestioned as the truth, at least by the intellectually honest. 

When Memoria spoke, he did not mince words. “It is good that you have put Vladimir in charge of implementing the reforms,” he said, “but beware the influence of the Dark Pope.” Ah yes, the Dark Pope, thought the bumbler to himself, the Other. Unlike the pope of the kickoff meeting, the Dark Pope was feared rather than loved. It was whispered that puzzling insecurities drove his behavior, like his obsession with his name-brand smartphone. “He cloaks his assholicism under the guise of passion,” continued Memoria, “and retains influence through his debating skills. And he too has balding sycophants that feed him information – recall Friar Tuck of the too-short-cloak and the tightly-cinched-belt – and they possess their own agendas. “

So tall was the vicar that the bumbler normally had a hard time hearing him, but this time he had no trouble hearing the words – it was the content that left him in near-disbelief. However, because it was the revered Memoria, his words about the Dark Pope could not be dismissed. The Dark Pope’s initiatives within the church were innovative and immaculately stated and appeared pure of nature, and yet Memoria’s comments about his passion concerned him with respect to the Dark Pope’s integrity – was His Excellency as pure as he seemed? “Yes, thanks for your sage words, Monsignor. I will take them under consideration,” said the bumbler, and he hoped that Memoria could hear him from his great height. He remained uncertain as the bald vicar turned without a goodbye and was gone.

After a moment of reflection, the bumbler stored these facts away and continued his route down the hallowed hall to his chambers, and his heartbeat began to accelerate as his thoughts returned to the guilty pleasure. As he arrived at his door, he quietly opened it and then closed it behind him, locking it. Then he pulled his laptop from his satchel and stole away to the bathroom at the end of a hallway, far from the door to his apartment, out of earshot from all who might pass by outside. And then, lowering the toilet seat, he sat down and flipped open the laptop, opened a browser window, and, pulling down the bookmarks menu, selected an entry labeled “RHONJ”.

This site, for him, was like a moth to a flame. He’d visited it too many times to count, and yet the thrill never seemed to diminish. This was, of course, the official “Real Housewives of New Jersey” website, and he would leverage it to “open up the playbook”, for there was no need for Hail Marys when you had a secret weapon.

This week’s program was the “reunion” show where the cast members spent time discussing things that had happened during the last season. The host spent considerable time talking about the items they would cover, each more exciting than the last.

The first topic featured a panel discussion that included a heavily made-up Teresa Giudice, her husband Joe, and her brother Joe Gorga. Teresa had come prepared, with a revealing green dress and a healthy application of black eye mascara, almost certainly to reduce the glare of the set lights. Gripping the armrests of her chair and leaning forward, she lit into her brother Joe. “Yo’ breakin’ mommy and daddy’s heart!”

Her brother Joe, while intellectually honest, was clearly overmatched. He wanted to do the right thing, but first he needed clarification and asked, “What did you just say?” and then attempted to go on the offensive with “Please, don’t start that shit with me because that’s the worst fuckin’ thing you could do to me…”

A wicked gleam entered Teresa’s eye as a nasty smile crept across her blood-red mouth. She tipped her head back and tapped her index finger to her lips; she’d spotted an inconsistency and, mimicking him, sprung a logical trap: “That’s the worst thing you can do?” Then after a couple of beats, she opened the floodgates, turning to her husband and shouting, “Joe, can you tell him?”

Teresa’s husband Joe Giudice had appeared to be dozing and didn’t seem to have heard her, so she shrieked, “Joe, can you tell him?”, snapping Joe out of his reverie as he shook his head to gather his wits. Whipped, he managed “How are you blamin’ that on her?”

Under this relentless pressure, brother Joe punted and went on defense and, squinting into the bright lights, sold out: “Shut the fuck up!” but now husband Joe was fully alert. He may not have known much about mascara, but this was language he could understand. His shirt was unbuttoned halfway down his chest, and he gripped the heavy gold chains hanging around his neck (as well as a clump of chest hair) to keep them from swinging and, leaning forward and pointing at brother Joe, chose his words carefully: “No, you shut the fuck up! You fuckin’ shithead! Look at you and look at this. What do you know about this, stoopid?”

The drama was incredible, and the arguments sublime – particularly Teresa’s. It felt like Shakespeare bulked up on steroids combined with Perry Mason at his most convincing. At times like this, the cardinal imagined what might have transpired in the cast’s formative years to make a masterpiece like this possible. In particular, Teresa’s verbal gifts and penchant for inciting controversy via ridicule intrigued him – something about it seemed so familiar… He imagined that she had perhaps grown up a military brat and had been humbled in so many catfights that it had left her terribly insecure, and that to compensate she had gone on to acquire advanced degrees in cosmetology and had taken debate courses online from the University of Phoenix.

This exchange was followed by a lengthy unintelligible period of shouting, which led in turn to a rhetorical discussion about the merits of revealing clothing and plastic surgery. By this time, another of the ‘Wives had come off the bench: Caroline Manzo. She was a veteran of the show, older than Teresa, and much more solidly built. She’d spent years in the trenches and Teresa didn’t scare her. She leaned back in her chair with her arms crossed, thrust out her lower lip, and slowly shook her head in condescension.

Finally, after a long pause, Caroline spoke in a voice dripping with contempt: “You in yo’ Christmas pageant dress, sit back and shut the fuck up.” Unfortunately for Caroline, Teresa cast a gimlet eye on the logic of this argument and was ready with a counteroffensive, and, almost shyly, she turned her head slightly to the left and with raised eyebrows softly observed, “You have three rolls: blubbah, blubbah, and blubbah.”

This incontrovertible observation was unexpected, and for a fleeting moment Caroline’s eyes grew wide, but then they narrowed with determination and she growled in a low voice, “You know what? I fuckin’ wear ‘em proud.” and she leaned back and jiggled her wattle.

The apparent shyness on Teresa’s face vanished and was replaced with a look of cunning, revealing that she’d been playing rope-a-dope with Caroline all along, triumphantly proclaiming, “With a tummy tuck – you were hunched over fo’ fo’ months!”

Now Teresa had Caroline on her heels, and Caroline was left trying to keep the score respectable in garbage time. Raising her head high, and thereby stretching her wattle, in an attempt to preserve a shred of her dignity by way of contrast with Teresa, she said “I have no Botox, I have no fillers, I nevah had a facelift!” But Teresa was having none of this and, like Perry Mason at the end of the show, went in for the kill, dismissing this as hearsay by applying impeccable logic: “You should get some.”

The cardinal couldn’t believe the quality of the presumed University of Phoenix debate courses – is this what an argument between Supreme Court justices sounded like? And Teresa continued to dominate the conversation even as she took the witness stand. She’d been accused by Melissa Gorga of a terrible crime and, raising her hand as if taking an oath, she plead innocent, saying “I sweah on my dad, I nevah said you were a strippah!”

Melissa would not back down and replied, “You are lyin’…”

The surprise of Teresa on the defensive heightened the cardinal’s senses even more and the hair on the back of his neck stood. But this last was just a tease, as suddenly there was a rush of dramatic music and the channel went to a commercial about an upcoming episode that featured the Housewives shopping, and, just as Teresa was saying “Have you seen this new shopping app?”, the cardinal nodded off.

He dreamed of an overweight cardinal who, at one of the papal conclaves, burst into the hallowed chambers and shouted, “I have one question: Is there a reason that the one-big-one-small retinaed cardinal wasn’t invited?” The cardinal of the imbalanced retinae, who was seated in a chair directly in front of the plump cardinal, said “Why, no reason at all!” and the other cardinals concurred as the plump cardinal continued to pontificate on topics like “Having a pope is critical, and I challenge anyone here to suggest otherwise,” “Jesus is part of Catholicism,” and the like, and the cardinal wondered if Batman ever had an adversary called the “Hassler”.

Gradually, the cardinal was woken from his shopping-induced REM sleep and heard Teresa again quarterbacking the discussion:

“… because I didn’t want this to happen…” The dramatic statement brought the cardinal fully awake, and Teresa launched into an eloquent description of how the others being on the show had affected her relationship with her brother. One of the ‘Wives, Jacqueline Laurita, then related how the stress that Teresa faced manifested itself in their discussions.

Jacqueline had not used as much mascara as Teresa, and it made her squint even as she fought back tears. Gathering herself, she looked Teresa straight in the eye and said evenly, “You wanted me to call them out on everything,” but Teresa was deflecting the conversation back to the host, gently twisting Jacqueline’s comments to her advantage, and with a mournful look in her eyes she told the host “… but she would say it to me behind cameras, but then when the cameras were rolling she wouldn’t say it.”

This was too much for Jacqueline – she was injured. She began, “I didn’t say anything!”, and then, with emotion rising in her voice, she continued, “You were telling me what to say, making me uncomfortable, I had other shit going on in my life, but you didn’t give a fuck about that. All you cared about was exposing them. That’s it.”

It seemed that Teresa had been caught unawares.  The whites of her eyes bugged out of the black circles formed by her mascara and her jaw dropped. Collecting herself, she cross-examined her accuser: “Exposing them with what?” but the momentum had shifted as Jacqueline retorted with conviction, “You wanted me to call out that she was a strippah,” and she pointed at Melissa.

It seemed that all the courses in the catalog at the University of Phoenix couldn’t save Teresa now. Aghast, she mumbled, “No I didn’t,” and the juggernaut continued as Jacqueline shouted, “You wanted me to say that she didn’t get a designah badge until she was forty years old, like that meant something!” and even the normally reserved Kathie Walkie piled on supporting Jacqueline’s argument with a vicious, “And then look at their shitty house!”

However, Teresa may have been down, but not out. Setting her jaw, she crossed her arms and denied everything: “I nevah said she was a strippah.” This sent Jacqueline over the edge, gesticulating wildly with her arms and her eyes rolled up in her head, and a stream of unintelligible gibberish flowed openly from her mouth. Eventually the flow became understandable: “I swear on my child! You wanted to call her out. You are a liah! You are sick! You are going to hell!”

By now the cardinal was drenched in sweat and emotionally drained by the drama and the logic. And the scene had become a Mexican Standoff, with Teresa on one side and most of the rest of the Housewives on the other, glaring at each other, daring the other side to speak. He prayed that his battery didn’t run out…

… but his battery held up, and the silence was broken by Melissa, who matter-of-fact-ly declared “And I’m not a strippah. I’m a burlesque performah.”

And then, as a light shone from the heavens through the bathroom window, the angelic voices of a celestial choir were heard as he saw it clearly through the prism of the carefully reasoned arguments of the Real Housewives of New Jersey – the clerics had been arguing about semantics, and the comments from clergy members such as the plump cardinal of his dream and the Dark Pope of his reality had been “off-the-field distractions”, clouding their judgment. But how to convince the others to “wear the eye-black” so that they might see it as clearly as he?