Olive Branches Don't Grow on Trees (2 page)

What
if she took her clothes out of the orange crates and put them in the
bureaus?  Doing so would mean surrendering to the fact that she might be
living with Frank indefinitely.  Such a scenario was too painful to
imagine.  How could she have allowed herself to move back to this place
for any period of time?  She thought of what she should have done
differently to avoid ending up here.  She went through all of her mistakes
in reverse chronological order that led to this point.  First, she should
have never been fired from her job.  She wished that she had quit before
she got fired.  Better yet, she should have never taken the job in the
first place.  It had nothing more to offer her than free hummus and
proximity to where she used to live.  She would not have taken the job, or
even applied for it, had she not lived so nearby.  She would not have
lived so nearby, if she had not moved in with her ex-boyfriend, and that was a
huge mistake.  Shortly after they had moved in together, she found him
alphabetizing cans of Campbell’s soup in one of their kitchen cabinets.
 She should have not had him as a boyfriend, but there was scanty choice
of men in Philadelphia.  This lack of selection brought her to her next
regret, which was moving to Philadelphia.  It was the third time that she
had moved to this city.  She did not like it the first time she had lived
there, and she liked it less and less with each move back.

She
took a break from regretting to send an email to her friend Emily, who had just
moved to Portland, Oregon, and who was encouraging Silvia to come join her.
 Silvia did not need a lot of coaxing to move anywhere, let alone
Portland, a place she already had her eye on.  This would definitely be
her next place.  She had not even visited the city, but she was somehow
sure that it was the place for her.  Imagining herself in her new place
gave her a much needed break from the dark, whirlwind of regrets that swirled
around her.  Yet, she was unable to stay in this fantasy world too long
before the regret of leaving Tucson, the place she had lived before moving back
to Philadelphia, hit her over the head.  Moving from Tucson straight to
Portland would have been so much easier than moving to Portland from New
Jersey.  She dreaded the long cross country trip she would probably be
doing alone.  She was ready to regret back even further to Chicago,
Brooklyn, and eventually art school, when Vince appeared in the doorway of her
room to ask if she wanted to get a slice of pizza.

“Pizza,
huh?” she said, looking at her clock.  “It’s a little early for pizza, but
I guess I can go for a slice.”  It dawned on her that he should be at
school, but she did not have the energy or concern to ask why he was not there.
 She barely had the energy to get up from her bed, but she thought that
food might put some life back into her weakened body and knew there was no
chance of getting a morsel of anything from Frank’s kitchen, as long as he was
anywhere in the house.  

The
two of them sneaked out of the house.  If Frank noticed them leaving, he
would ask them where they were going.  They could not tell him that they
were going to get something to eat, as he did not tolerate anyone spending
money on food outside of the house when there was perfectly good food at home.
 Even worse than leaving the house for food, was leaving Frank in the
house alone.  They both knew that he hated being left alone in the house.
 His reasoning was that he was an extrovert and enjoyed having people
around him at all times.  In fact, he strongly preferred the company of
people with whom he was fighting than to being alone.   

***********

As
they exited the front door escaping Frank, the two of them synchronously sighed
with relief.  They walked into the lazy late spring air, where the trees
drooped with heaviness and the smell of hyacinths lingered.  Silvia’s
shabby clothes may have fit her mood perfectly, but they did not match the sun
shiny day.  Despite her depressed mood and shabby clothes, she still
brightened the space surrounding her.  She moved through the world like a
Peanut’s character dancing.  Vince moved in a straight line with
precision, his head coming forward every few steps, making his shoulder length
light brown hair come loose from behind his ears.  He was not tall and was
not short but was somewhere in between, and his eyes shone with purpose and
determination.  His left eyebrow curved upward like a Vulcan, making him
look like he was hiding something.  But he hid nothing.  He was an
open book in large print.

They
walked to Nina’s Pizzeria only a few blocks from their house in a small strip
mall. It did not look like much from the outside or from the orange plastic
inside, but it had the best pizza in town.  Silvia ordered a piece of
mushroom pizza and Vince got a slice of plain Sicilian.  They were both
vegetarian.  Silvia had even been vegan for a while before discovering the
horror of soy cheese.

“Hey
Vince,” said Silvia, while blotting the excess oil from her pizza with a
napkin. “Why aren’t you at school today?”

“Because
I haven’t missed one day of school all year, so I figured I was entitled to
it.  Besides, there’s not much going on these last few days.”

Silvia
knew that he was telling the truth about only missing one school day all year.
 He was extremely conscientious and he never got sick.  And, unlike
the other
Grecos
, he never lied.

“You
must be excited about going away to college,” Silvia said, switching the
subject.

“Kind
of,” Vince said as he chewed his pizza.  He ate fast and nervous, like
somebody might take his food away at any second.

“So
you’re set on Berkeley?”

“They
have the best sociology program in the country, so
yeah,
I’m set on going there. But not so excited about going so far away.”

“I
thought you’d want to get away from here,” Silvia said, with a complete lack of
understanding for why Vince or anyone would not want to go far away from
Frank’s house.

“Well,
I’ve never been so far away, and Dad’s not crazy about the idea of me going to
school on the other side of the country.  He keeps saying that he’ll help,
then
he gets mad at me over nothing, and says that he
won’t help.  I applied for all the loans I could and I told him I’d get
residency right away so the tuition would be cheaper after the first year.”

 
“Lucky that he even offered to help you at all.
 He barely helped me.  If I didn’t get a scholarship to the Art
Institute, I couldn’t have gone.  Guess I can’t blame him, though, for not
giving much help.  He thought that an art degree would be completely
useless.  I’m starting to think he may have had something.” 

“You
studied something you love,” said Vince, eyes staring right into his sister’s
eyes. “There’s nothing worthless about that.”  Silvia was often amazed at
how her little brother was so advanced for his age.  It seemed unusual, to
the point of being weird, that a high school boy would care about making his
older sister feel better about
herself
.  He was
such a good person, and his goodness came through loud and clear in all of his
actions, like the way he refused to shop at Wal-Mart because of their “bad”
politics, even though it was the only store of its kind in town; the way that
he thanked their mother for cooking dinner every night; the way that he
remained great friends with his ex-girlfriends, even if they were not so great
to him.

It
was sometimes hard for her to believe there was a time they did not get along.
However, had they always gotten along without a period of conflict, they would
have been complete misfits in the Greco family.  Silvia resented Vince as
soon as he was born, for he replaced her position as the youngest child. 
He stole away all the attention she was used to getting for over four years,
and even worse, he did not acknowledge his theft.  And he was by far the
easiest and most pleasant of all the children.  He was not hyper like
Silvia was as a child, nor whiny like Angie, nor rebellious like Cosmo. 
He was the perfect child, the best saved for last, and Donna reminded her other
children of this in her own quiet way. 

Silvia
stopped being resentful of Vince when she was about twelve and he was seven.
 He won her over by sharing half of his Halloween candy with her that year
when she could not go trick or treating due to being sick with the flu.
 Only a seven-year-old child as exceptional as Vince would do such a
thing.  And Silvia felt that she had no choice at that point but to
recognize that she was lucky to have him for a little brother, and any feelings
of resentment or jealousy that were inside of her melted away.

They
lived compatibly for a short while before they started becoming so much like
each other that they grew competitive.  They did not compete about the
usual stuff that siblings were inclined to compete about, like school grades.
 Instead, they competed with each other about who was
more
green
or environmentally conscientious.  They competed ferociously.
 Silvia made absolutely sure to recycle every single receipt she ever got,
but Vince could clean up a spill in the kitchen with only half of a paper
towel.  Silvia took five-minute showers, but Vince would practically never
set foot inside a car or vehicle of any sort.  Silvia carried her own
cloth bag with her so that she would never have to use a plastic bag, but Vince
would not even purchase a product that was wrapped in plastic.  So it was
always a close draw.  Now with Vince going to Berkeley, Silvia threw in
the towel.  She assumed that he was studying sociology because it would be
a good major for his ambition of saving the world, but she thought she would
ask him about it anyway.

“Why
do you want to study sociology anyway?”  Before he had a chance to answer
the question, she added her own thoughts about choosing such a major. 
“It’s one of those useless things to study, like painting.  Not that I
don’t realize the value in studying what you have passion for and all.  
But living in poverty sucks.
 That’s all I can tell
you.” 

“I’m
sure there’s something you can do with your degree.  What kind of job do
you think you might like?”  He cleverly redirected the course of the
conversation so that he would not have to bother responding to her question,
which Silvia knew would be a useless conversation.  Trying to convince him
of the uselessness of studying sociology was futile.  In fact, trying to
sway her brother of anything was virtually impossible.  He was an
extremely decisive and focused type of person.  He was born knowing what
he wanted out of life and knowing exactly how to get it.  Silvia recalled
the time that he was only five years old and the family went out for ice cream,
and Vince knew that he wanted a blackberry flavored ice cream cone.  How
did he even know what blackberry was at the age of five, let alone know that he
wanted ice cream of that particular flavor?

And
now because of his short life-time of focus, determination, and absolute
clarity, he had no need to talk about his own goals in life.  So instead,
he turned his attention to trying to work out his older sister’s life.  He
had not even stepped foot in the world yet and did not understand the whole
career thing, as far as Silvia was concerned, and so his attempt at helping her
with her life made her feel uncomfortable.  But her feelings of
awkwardness at discussing this subject did not stop her from rambling on about
all of the possible paths that she had, at one time or another, contemplated.  She
began with graphic design, a field she quickly dismissed as she would probably
end up having to work in the advertisement industry.  She thought of being
a college professor, but that was way too much of a long and arduous
pursuit.  She very briefly thought of becoming a museum curator or
archivist, but thought that that she would never find a job as one.  And
lastly, she mentioned a billboard painter, which she added only as a joke.

“I
like the college professor idea myself.  You’d be following in Mom’s
footsteps.  She’d like that.”

“Yeah,
but like I said, it’s a long path.  And after that big investment of time
and money and energy, I’d probably be lucky to find a job in Kansas.”

“Well
yeah, but finding a job shouldn’t be the most important thing.”  Now his
youth and inexperience and naiveté were showing through.  Finding a job is
not important when you have no concept of things like rent and health
insurance.  He was young and idealistic, and probably had no concrete
ideas of what he planned on doing with a sociology degree.  In fact, when
Silvia asked him about his choice of study, he said that he was not sure
exactly what he would do with such a degree, but he knew that it would give him
the best foundation for doing something where he could really make a difference
in the world at large.

“I
can't just stand by and watch the world continue to deteriorate the way it is,”
he added like the superhero he was.  His eyes filled with so much
sincerity that it was almost painful to look at him.

Silvia
was not sure of his exact plan for saving the world, and from what she could
tell, either was he.  Part of her wanted to warn him more about trying to
save an irredeemable world and about studying something so impractical and
useless.  But the bigger part of her knew he needed to fall on his own
face.  She only hoped that he would not have to fall as hard as she had.
 In the meantime, why shouldn’t he enjoy the good times?  
The dreaming, the cheering, the trying.
  So instead of
giving him any lectures on the topic of self-preservation, she commended him
for his lofty ambitions.