Regi Carpenter - Where Theres Smoke, Theres Dinner: Stories of a Seared Childhood

Praise for Wheres There Smoke, Theres Dinner

I laughed, gasped, weptsometimes all in the same paragraphwhen reading Where Theres Smoke, Theres Dinner: Stories of a Seared Childhood by Regi Carpenter. Growing up as the youngest of the exuberant, notorious, and often destitute Carpenter kids of Clayton, NY, Regi is resourceful against all the odds. This is a candid story of desperate measures, explosive humor, and, ultimately, the sanity behind seeming madness. It teaches a new understanding of family love. Brilliant writing!

Jo Radner, reviewer for the National Storytelling Networks magazine

Giver of story, giver of light: Regi Carpenter takes lived experience and imagined choices and shapes them into what listenersand now readersneed in their deepest hunger. To hear her tell is to live a way of seeing existencebecoming existencein a world where its okay to ask questions about why we exist at all. To be in her presence is to know golden genius. And now this book can carry her spirit into minds and hearts allowing her in: welcome, readers seeking treasure, to this trove of tales that glow.

Katharyn Howd Machan, author of Redwing: Voices from 1888 and Wild Grapes: Poems of Fox

I am a believer that the Lord works in wondrous ways and especially through the stories of Regi Carpenter in Where Theres Smoke, Theres Dinner: Stories of a Seared Childhood as I laughed and cried with the brilliant writer Carpenter! Do yourself a favor and go get Where Theres Smoke, Theres Dinner at once! Youll be in for a literary treat if you do!

Nancy Slonim Aronie, founder of The Chilmark Writing Workshop and former Harvard University professor

Regi Carpenters stories celebrate the glorious and gut wrenching life of the youngest Carpenter clan growing up on a small town on a big river with an undercurrent.

Loren Niemi, Produce of Two Chairs Telling, Minneapoils, Minnesota

Copyright 2016 by Regi Carpenter

All rights reserved.

Published by Familius LLC, www.familius.com

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Reproduction of this book in any manner, in whole or in part, without written permission of the publisher is prohibited.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

2016947414

Print ISBN 9781942934400

Ebook ISBN 9781944822231

Hardcover ISBN 9781944822248

Printed in the United States of America

Edited by Kelsey Cummings

Cover design by David Miles

Book design by Maggie Wickes

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition

For Tim, the pinball wizard,

and

Will and Samnow you know where you come from.

Introduction: The Lucky Caul

Regina Coeli, O Queen of Heaven, rejoice: alleluia;

For the child whom you so nobly bore: alleluia;

Rose from the dead, as he foretold: alleluia;

Pray for us now, we ask of you: alleluia.

I am the fifth and last child of Carl Henry Carpenter and Josephine Agnes Kneipthe tail end of a succession that begins with David Richard, Timothy John, Cynthia Jean, and Mary Agnes. On the day of my birth, August 15the day Catholics assume Mary, Queen of the Heavens, rose to live at the right hand of the Father and her Holy Son, Jesusmy parents name me Regina Marie, which means Queen Mary. Alleluia .

It starts when were living the low life in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. My father is traveling door to door trying to sell life insurance while my mother is in our run-down three-bedroom apartment thats too close to the tracks. Shes in the hallway when the childbirth pains come upon her. As she reaches down with a curious hand, her fingers come up wet, sticky, and the color of a cardinal.

I could feel the umbilical cord protruding between my legs. I had had four children, so I knew that wasnt right. I stood up all the way in the taxi.

Why didnt Dad come with you?

Her look tells me I have a horn growing out of my head.

Well, who would have stayed with the children?

I am a dead baby wearing a caul. A caul is a sheath of skin so thin its like a veil, or a shroud, or a parchment with a promise written on it from one world to another. Mine says Happy Birthday, Thursdays child. You have far to go.

A caul is a talisman sought after to prevent drowning.

I breathe air instead of water, and they whisk me away to an incubator. My mother goes to a hospital bed in a room she shares with another fallen virgin with a lazy bladder who flips the light switch in the middle of the night and sees my mother bleeding out in the hospital bed for a baby she barely knows. She is resurrected on blood transfusions but too weak to go home for months. Its a miracle. Alleluia .

Now my father has the poor working mans dilemma. With no wife at home, should he work or take care of the kids? Workkeep apartment, no one to take care of the kids. Not worklose apartment, take care of the kids. What to do? Work.

Reg, I called everybody up to come help us, but no one could come. I even called Edna.

Do you mean crazy squirrel lady Edna?

She was my last choice.

Dave, Tim, Cindi (did we ever call her Cynthia?), and Mary go into temporary but separate foster care. My father drops them off one by one in the gray Buick. The tires squeal as he tears out of the driveways.

My mother lays alone for three days in the hospital bed.

Where is my baby, nurse? Is it a boy or a girl? Is the baby alright? This was the 1950s, Regi. The nurses wouldnt tell me a thing. They thought it would be easier that way. They were trying to be nice.

She lays there alone for three days wondering, Do I have a child?

I lay there alone for three days wondering, Do I have a mother?

Those two questions would be spirited between my mother and me for over forty years.

Regina Coeli, O Queen of Heaven, rejoice: alleluia;

For the child whom you so nobly bore: alleluia;

Rose from the dead, as he foretold: alleluia;

Pray for us now, we ask of you: alleluia.

How I Became a Carpenter

I grew up in Clayton, a small town in northern New York where Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River open their mouths to give each other a big, wet kiss. Carpenters have been living in Clayton for five generations. In the 1600s, when our name was Charpentier, we fled Quebec and murderous Canadian Protestantism with other French-speaking Roman Catholic fugitives. Arriving at the rapids of the St. Lawrence River, we climbed into a flimsy boat, said a Hail Mary, and rode until we landed at a place that was mild and manageable: Clayton. Along the open-channel side of town, Catholics established themselves as boat builders, guides, trappers, blacksmiths, lumberjacks, and fishermen. Large families lived in one-room shacks on the rivers edge. We mined the rock quarries on the thousand and more islands and built the majestic St. Marys Church and, behind it, a shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

I was wandering around Clayton one recent day when I found myself on Union Street staring at the empty plot where my Grandma Carpenters house stood before a fire burned it down. The foundation was still there, and her hollyhocks were in bloom. I remembered my mother flicking her eyelashes on my cheek as we lay in the grassy mound at the corner of Union and Theresa Streets. Butterfly kisses, she called them. I laughed when I got to the top of the hill on Alexandria Street where my brothers Tim and Dave taught Cindi how to ride a bike by pushing her down the hill and straight into the St. Lawrence River. Finally, I meandered over to Strawberry Lane to check on the horseradish patch Dad and Uncle Rip planted over fifty years ago. As I strolled through the uneven streets of Clayton, I swear every blade of grass was calling my name.