Olive Branches Don't Grow on Trees (12 page)

While
Silvia knew that she would soon droop back into a gloomy state, she did not
expect her slump so soon after they got home.

“I
feel so tired,” she said, as if she barely had energy to talk. “Would you mind
watching Isabella while I sleep for a little?”

“I’d
love to,” said Silvia. “Oh, and I brought her some candy.”

At
this, Angie turned around sharply and said, “Don’t give her any until after
dinner.  And then, she can only have one or two pieces.  She gets too
hyper.”

**********

She
was very hyper already.  She ran from one side of her room to the other,
moving items from one place to another, resembling a toddler version of Frank
running around in the kitchen.  Her room was big, bright, and full of all
sorts of toys.  She did not play with her toys in the same way that Silvia
remembered playing with her toys as a child.  She seemed much more
interested in rearranging them than actually playing with them, and also liked
showing off this skill to her aunt.  She had a big smile on her face as
she did her rearranging, and if she could talk, she might say, “Look what I can
do!  Isn’t it great?” 

She
was a very happy toddler, indeed, and why shouldn’t she be?  She was
extremely fortunate and privileged, belonging to a very wealthy family, being
in perfect health, and having seemingly inherited Doug’s cheerful disposition
and Angie’s looks.  But it was something more than these things that made
her happy, as she did not have any concept of her wealth or looks or
health.  Her mind was pure and empty, not overcrowded with information and
polluted with fears and regrets.  She, unlike her mother, was free.
 She seemed content just to be, and Silvia felt a strong desire to be a
part of the universe of simplicity and freedom that her niece inhabited.

Silvia
could also see how very malleable this little person was, and she had a desire
to help shape her.  She wanted to fill her with good things.  She
wanted to show her how to draw, paint, and maybe even sculpt when she was a
little bit older.  But for the time being, it would be enough to show her
how to make something simple, like a drawing of a cartoon-like sun, a tree, or
a house.  She looked around the room for a drawing pad, but found none.
 So she found a small box that contained a toy and took the lid off,
revealing its plain cardboard underside.  This would have to
due
as a surface.  She always carried a pencil with
her, which she took it out of her back pocket, and began drawing a picture of
Isabella on the box.  Even with a simple pencil and a piece of cardboard,
Silvia’s drawing was superb.

After
about one minute, Isabella grew interested in her aunt’s pursuit, and sat down
next to her with the most curious eyes Silvia had ever seen. So she put the
pencil in her niece's little hand, very gently held her hand around the pencil,
and guided it along to make a simple drawing of a face consisting of a circle
for a head, two almonds for eyes, a triangle for a nose, and a half circle for
lips.  They then made curls on the head of the person.  When the
drawing was complete, Isabella was overjoyed and ran to her bedroom door saying
“Mama!
Mama!”
 Her excitement was too much to
contain and her shrill little screams woke her mother, who came into the room
to see the drawing she had made.

“Oh,
that’s really nice Isabella!” Angie said looking down at her daughter.
 She then looked graciously at her sister, and told her that she would get
her some real paper for them to draw on.  Isabella and Silvia spent what
was left of the afternoon drawing, while Angie lay on the floor next to them,
half watching them and half sleeping.  Around six, Angie asked Silvia what
she wanted for dinner.

“Don’t
we have to wait for Doug to come home for dinner?” asked Silvia.

“He
works really late.  
And goes in to work really early.
 Sometimes, he even sleeps over at his office.  In fact, you probably
won’t even see him this visit.  I only really spend time with him on the
weekends.”  She said all of this like she was perfectly fine with being
married to someone who was rarely around.

Silvia
went back to thinking what she might want for dinner and recalled the time that
Angie used American cheese to make eggplant Parmesan.  So she told Angie
to just make something simple, secretly hoping that her sister would suggest
that they order out, but Angie insisted on cooking and proceeded to ask Silvia
about her dietary requirements.

“I’m
still vegetarian,” said Silvia.

“So
you still don’t eat meat?” asked Angie.

“Or
fowl or fish or eggs,” said Silvia, hoping that her vegetarian diet might
dissuade her sister from wanting to cook.

“Jesus,
what do you eat?”

Silvia
laughed and told her sister, “It used to be worse. I was vegan for a year, and
I had no dairy at all.”

“That’s
crazy.”

“Don’t
go through any fuss for me.  Really, I can just have some bread and butter
or something.”

Angie
stared back at her sister as if her suggestion was completely absurd.  She
then said that she knew just what to make, and went downstairs to the kitchen
carrying Isabella and signaling for her sister to follow.  Silvia fed
Isabella baby food from a jar, while Angie cooked, and in less than an hour the
two girls were eating pasta
fazool
that, to Silvia’s
surprise, was really good.  It was even delicious.  She was hesitant
to ruin her wonderful eating experience by bringing up Cosmo’s presence at the
family gathering, but she knew she had to, at least, attempt to smooth things
out between them before they saw each other.  Not sure how to bring it up,
she blurted out, “You know I bet Cosmo’s nervous about seeing you.” 

“Well,
he should be.  I asked him to be the godfather of my daughter and he
turned it down.  And then he said some bullshit about being an atheist or
something.”  She looked down at her spoonful of soup as if she was mad at
it.

“Agnostic.”

“What?”

“He’s
agnostic, not atheist.”

“I
don’t know or care what the difference is.  
Him
saying ‘no’ to accepting that
honor
had
nothing to do with his beliefs.”

“Well
then, why do you think he said no?”

“Because
he never liked me.
 That’s why!”

“Angie,
he loves you.  You’re his sister.”  Silvia stared so strongly into
her sister’s eyes that Angie had to look away.

“You
can love someone and not like them,” Angie said, still looking away from her
sister.

“He’s
never given me any indication that he doesn’t like you,” Silvia lied. “And I
believe he really did not want to be Isabella’s godfather because of his
beliefs.  And who knows?  Maybe he thought that she would be better
off with a godfather who would remember her birthday every year, and get her
nice gifts, and you know, someone who could be there for her.”

“Well
then, he should have told me that.”

“Yeah,
but you know that’s not his style,” said Silvia, scooping the last bit of soup
up from her bowl.

“Then
he should have apologized to me.”

“I
thought he emailed you, and you never emailed him back.”

“Well,
he didn’t apologize in any of those emails,” she said indignantly.

“Again,
that’s just not his style.  I’ve never gotten an apology from him for any
of the times he was a jerk to me. You know most people don’t even know how to
say sorry.  It’s tough to say sorry.”

Both
girls stayed silent for close to a minute, allowing Silvia’s last words to
weigh heavily in the air and resonate with Angie, whose facial expression
turned from one of indignation to one with a slight bit of understanding.
 Silvia said all that she could say in Cosmo’s defense, and did not
mention him for rest of the night.  The rest was up to Angie.

**********

The
next morning, Angie woke Silvia at eight o’clock.  After showering and
having a simple breakfast of oat bran flakes and blueberries, she said
goodbye.  When she began to walk away from them and towards her car,
Isabella began crying and reaching out.  Silvia came back to her little
niece to console her and to promise her that she would see her very soon.
 And indeed it would be soon.  Vince’s graduation was in a couple of
weeks.   

CHAPTER FOUR: TO KNOW PEACE

Silvia
was disappointed, but not surprised when Frank did not come home on the night
she had planned for them to attend a meeting.  She had given him several
reminders of the meeting throughout the week. She told him in the mornings
before she left for work, she left him notes taped to his bedroom door and
sticky notes on the refrigerator, and left a voicemail on his phone.  She
thought that he most likely had remembered and purposefully avoided coming home
so that he would not have to go.  When Vince came home, he found his
sister sitting, staring at the door with a blank face, like she was asleep and
awake at the same time.

“Hey
Silvia,” he greeted his sister like he was trying to jar her out of her trance.

“Dad
and I were supposed to go to an AA meeting tonight,” she told him, her face as
glum as a bankrupt merchant.  Vince looked back at her with a combination
of astonishment and cynicism and said, “Yeah right, you were going to get Dad
to go to an AA meeting?”

She
did not tell him about the plan for his graduation party, which was the impetus
for getting Frank to a meeting, nor that she hoped that, if their father could
stop drinking, their family could finally be at peace.  Instead she said,
“I just thought it might be a good idea.”

“And
it is,” agreed Vince wholeheartedly.
“A great idea, in fact.
 
Just not sure of the feasibility of it.”

Vince’s
response did not seem to match his young and idealistic character.  She
wondered if her younger brother was suddenly becoming a realist.  But
rather than asking him about this apparent transformation, rather than trying
to convince her brother of the possible feasibility of her cause, and rather
than telling him of her success last week in getting Frank to attend a meeting,
she just responded, “I thought it would be worth a try.” 

Vince
patted his sister on the shoulder, as if to say that it was a good try, and
then he suggested that they take advantage of their father not being home and
make use the kitchen that Frank always monopolized.

Becoming
alive at the suggestion, Silvia popped up from her chair and went to the
kitchen cabinet.  She got out a can of garbanzo beans, a box of rigatoni,
olive oil, a garlic bulb and a bunch of broccoli
rabe
,
which she was delighted to find in the refrigerator.  Vince sat quietly at
the table reading a library book, as she proceeded to cook in silence. 

While
they ate, she wanted to have some pleasant dinner conversation-- nothing about
their family, her moving away, or him going to college.  She supposed that
she could talk about gummy bears and blue whales, but that would probably be
really boring for him.  She could ask him about what he learned at school
today, but she assumed that it was not much considering that he was a high
school senior with only about one week of school left.  She then thought
of asking him about the book that he was reading.  He mentioned the title
briefly, and then he went on about some insight he had while at the library getting
the book.

“I
thought about getting a fiction book because I always read nonfiction, so I
started looking through some of the new fiction books, and you know what?
 They were all about the second World War.”

Silvia
knew what was coming.

“You
know what I think?  I think that the government is trying to make us all
think that war is our natural state.  That way we won’t want to speak out
against it.  We’ll just blindly accept it.”

“And
the government is in cahoots with the publishing industry?” said Silvia
sarcastically.

“That’s
right!” said Vince, not noticing her sarcasm.

“Hey,
speaking of war,” she said, putting her hand over her forehead, “I saw
Rafa
the other day, and he was asking about you.”

“Who’s
that?  And
what’s he have
to do with war?” Vince
asked with a big question on his face.

“Somebody
from the protests we used to go to.  You remember, big head of kinky hair,
always smiling,
real
friendly guy?” 

“Oh
yeah
Rafa
.
  He was a nice
guy.  How’s he doing?”  He had such a large fork full of food that
Silvia thought that he would not be able to get it into his mouth.  But he
did.

“He
seemed good.  He’s become a carpenter of sorts, works at a bar by my old
school, goes to Occupy rallies when he can.”  As she said this, she
strategically gathered a couple of beans, some broccoli
rabe
,
and two rigatonis on her fork.

“Yeah,
I should try to make a rally before I go.”

“I’m
sure you’ll have plenty of opportunity for protests and rallies in
Berkeley.”  She did not mean to mention Berkeley.  She was trying to
keep the conversation clean and free of any and all controversy.  It just
slipped out, and she hoped that her brother would not pay too much attention to
it, but that was not the case.  He stopped eating and looked down sullenly
at his food.  Silvia reacted to his sadness by offering advice, by trying
to fix the problem at hand.

“Hey
what about a scholarship, Vince?
  Have you thought
of applying for one?  It would be too late for this year, but there’s always
next year.  Aren’t you like number seven or something in your class? 
You got all A’s in your classes for Christ sake.”

At
this suggestion, he looked even more discouraged.

“There’s
no money left in this country for things like education.  It’s all been
used up for things like killing people, burning oil fields, missiles, and
tanks.  People, like Doug, are busy stealing...”

“C’mon
Vince,” she interrupted him, not wanting to hear one of his tirades against the
country. “Dad will help you.  I’m sure of it.”

“And
why are you so sure of it?” 

This
would have been the perfect opportunity to bring up the family gathering she
was planning for him.  She could tell him how she suspected that this
event might put Frank in a good mood because of him being able to see Donna,
and how his mood elevation could factor into his willingness to help with
Vince’s tuition.  It would have been the perfect time to tell him about
it.  But she did not take advantage of the moment.  She was too
tired.  Tired from planning the reunion, tired from working her new job
and planning for her move, and tired from trying to sober Frank up.

Her
reluctance for bringing up the issue of the dinner party was not only due to
her current state of fatigue.  There was something more.  They were
having such a nice quiet dinner, despite Vince’s mild irritation at her
Berkeley remark and she did not want to ruin the peacefulness.  It was a
rare thing, indeed, to have a meal, an hour, a minute, or even a second, when
there was not an air of drama in this house.  There was always the
presence of a fight in some form.  A fight could be happening, or it could
be brewing, or the remains of a fight could be lingering.  They moved in
stages, like hurricanes, earthquakes, or most any sort of natural catastrophe. 
It felt a relief, but alien to Silvia, to be in her father’s house, without the
presence of drama and chaos.  

She
was slightly nervous that Frank might pop in at any second to ask them why they
were not eating whatever “delicious” thing he had made and stored away in the
refrigerator, or to inspect what Silvia had cooked and make some derogatory
remark about it, like calling it rabbit food.  But he never came home that
night, and though Silvia thoroughly enjoyed having the house free of her father’s
abrasive presence, she could not help but be angry about his absence and
curious about his whereabouts.

When
he stumbled in at three in the morning, she was awake worrying. Yes, worrying
about her father.  What a strange concept.  She knew that the
situation should have been reversed.  Either she or Vince could have been
out partying and keeping the parent up with worry.  This was an upside
down world.  This was all wrong!
 
And so was the way that she came into the kitchen, with her arms crossed
and her punishing eyes peering down at her drunk of a father, like a mother
peering down at her unruly teenage son.  He was lying face down on the
kitchen floor like he was completely unable to make it any further than through
the back door.  He looked so pathetic lying on the floor.  It was
tough to believe that he had attended a prestigious law school, was a judge, a
father of four, and a husband of a college professor.  He was someone who
was so hyper-vigilant about food waste, but when it came to wasting his own life,
he had no problem.

**********

Not
surprisingly, the image of Frank lying face down on the kitchen floor stayed
with her all through the next day.  She was glad that it was a short day
at work and that
Melesha
would be coming in early.
 As soon as she got out of the mall parking lot, she gassed up her car,
got on the Garden State Parkway, and drove south.  She knew she was
heading to one of the shore towns on the coast, but not sure which one.
 She could have stopped at
Ventor
, but it was
too close to Atlantic City, and she wanted to be nowhere near that frenzied
casino energy.  She could have stopped in Ocean City, one of the last dry
towns left in the country.  It was clean and easy, with a boardwalk that
stretched for miles. 
Or Sea Isle City.
 But
none were far enough.  Not only did she want to be far away from Frank’s
house and the image of him lying on the kitchen floor, there was something
else.

She
felt hungry for the road.  She felt that she wanted to drive and drive and
drive.  She wanted to remember, in her bones, that same feeling she had
during all of her road trips.  During all of these long distance driving
adventures, she felt strong, especially because she had done most of them
alone.  She could change a tire on the side of the highway alone. 
She could set up a campsite alone.  When it was raining or too cold to
sleep outside, she could check into a motel alone.  When she remembered
her times on the road, she felt that strength within herself and really loved
being who she was.

So
she drove until she could not drive any further within the state of New Jersey.
 She went until she reached Cape May, the most southern
point of the state and the only place in New Jersey
where she could see an unobstructed view of the sunset.  As she approached
the town, she caught sight of a white heron with its little beak pointed up to
the sky, its skinny legs dangling in the air, and its delicate angel wings
spread free.  Whenever she saw images that touched her, she would make an
imprint in her brain to carry it with her always.  

She drove over a bridge, entered into the town harbor, and
followed the signs to the beach.  It was a
weekday before
the busy summer season, so the quaint little Victorian house-filled city was
not terribly crowded.  She parked only a couple of blocks from the beach,
and stopped by a pizza stand to grab a slice that she took with her to the
boardwalk.  She sat on a bench and ate, as seagulls gathered around her
waiting for her to throw them a crumb.  One brazen gull came and stood on
the bench right beside her as if threatening to take her food away. It caused
her to eat so quickly that she got indigestion.  She walked the length of
the boardwalk, which was short and quiet, relative to other boardwalks on the
south Jersey coast.  There were few shops, one of which sold chocolate
covered strawberries that Silvia could not resist. 

The shore brought back memories of being with Grandma
Tucci
.  
These memories were
vague and beautiful and looked like an Impressionistic painting in her mind’s
eye, like sitting on the beach with her in late summer and the salty breezes
blowing gently while they ate lemon water ice.  They did not speak or need
words.  They were bound together like fingers crossed or shoe strings
tied. 
Just listening to the music of the waves--
rhythmic, constant, and forever.
Silvia came to know peace through her
grandma and their times together at the beach.  If she had not experienced
this sacred space, she might not crave it so much.  But she did experience
peace.  She knew what it felt like in her bones, in her stomach, and in
her head.   

Because
she knew peace, she knew war.  She could sense when a fight was in the
air, feel the aftermath of a fight, and surely knew when a fight was happening.
 She knew the looks and sounds of a fight only too well.  She knew
the hateful words thoughtlessly thrown into the air, as if they could be taken
back one day.  If only words could go backwards, she thought.  She
recalled all of the times that
Frank called
Cosmo a failure, and how the word “failure” eventually became a part of Cosmo’s
skin.  There was also pain over the absence of words, like the time that
Frank told Vince that he loved
him
and Vince said
nothing back.  The one word that was never heard in the Greco household
was the word “sorry,” because to say sorry would be to admit to being
wrong.  Grandma
Tucci
was only too willing to
admit to being wrong because she knew that admitting to being wrong was how she
could become a better person.