The Light of Hidden Flowers (19 page)

CHAPTER FORTY

I awoke to gray darkness, daylight obscured, only the low glow of book lights and backlit Kindles. Quiet, except for the heavy, ceaseless thunder of the jet pushing through the air. In the galley, the flight attendants chatted soundlessly with each other, flipped through magazines. I breathed carefully and quietly, as though I were hiding from an intruder in the bedroom closet. For a few minutes I just stared into the leaden air and processed what I knew: I had successfully boarded a plane to Italy. I had taken my pill and drunk my water and listened to my music and slept. So far, so good. At this hour, we were halfway there. We had been in the air for a good four hours.

Joe!
It came to me like an ice cube down my back. The last message I read was from Joe and, perhaps it was just my imagination, but I was pretty sure he said he was getting divorced. Joe, divorced. Me, engaged. My pulse quickened, bile rose in my throat.

Could that be right?
I reached for my phone. It was powered down. Was I allowed to turn it on in airplane mode? I wasn’t sure. My heart pushed on the accelerator; my stomach rushed to catch up.

I counted the beats of my pulse for ten seconds. My breathing was a little fast, but nothing too worrisome. I eyed my neighbor, but she was fast asleep, as was the man in the window seat.

As much as I wanted to hover in the sticky middle ground of nighttime and post-medication, as greatly as I wished to think about Joe and his jaw-dropping news, as desperately as I craved to fit all the pieces of my strange life together, I knew I had to do as Susan instructed me to do: take another pill. “Even if you’re feeling calm, take the pill.”

I took the pill, chugged some water. I thought of Joe, his divorce, our homecoming dance, my Jessica McClintock pink dress, the itchy wrist corsage, Joe in his tux. I pondered Lucas, his spreadsheets and joint tax return, his unsalted food, his exceptionally shiny dress shoes. I remembered Dad, his vibrant expressions, giant dentures, and slaps on the back. “A beautiful mind, you have, a beautiful mind.” In no time, I was back in the murky black forest.

When I awoke for the second time, the plane had just touched down, I guessed, as the passengers were agitated to the point of near hysteria. I opened my water bottle and guzzled half of it. I listened as some passengers yelled at the flight attendants, shaking their arms in the air. All around me, passengers were punching wildly into their cell phones, making calls, texting.

I rubbed at my eyes. “Hi,” I said to my neighbor, an intense girl of maybe twenty-five, pounding away on her BlackBerry. A beautiful girl with flawless skin, turquoise eyes, and a thick ponytail of golden hair. She wore dark skinny jeans and a filmy coral blouse. Michael Kors flats hung from her toes. “Are we here?”

“If by ‘here,’ you mean Catania.”

My stomach churned. A wave of nausea rose in me. “What? We’re not in Florence—the Firenze airport?”

“Our plane was having a fuel problem. The pilot wanted to land to have the mechanics check it out.”

I looked around wildly, out the small window. “So we landed . . . where?”

“Catania airport. Sicily.”

My mind floated to my globe, my atlas. “We’re down south?”

“Just a waterway across from Libya.”

“How do you know?”

“How do I know where we are?” she asked, though her eyes were smiling. “Or how do I know that we’re a waterway across from Libya?”

I chugged at my water bottle. “Either,” I said.

“I travel 250 days of the year. I’ve spent time in this region.”

My chest began to ache like a piece of hard candy was lodged in my throat. “What’s going to happen? Do we just stay put on the plane? Will we be back in the air in no time?”

She smiled again. While the anxiety was arranging his meaty fists around my neck, my neighbor was as calm as could be. “Most likely.”

A while later, the flight attendant made some announcements.

“The plane is fine—technically—but the mechanics want to replace a part, a part that won’t be in until late tonight. The bad news is that we won’t be able to take off again until tomorrow.” En masse, the passengers moaned. “The good news is that the airline is willing to compensate you for being patient. That’s the key word,” she said, pointing her finger at each of us as if we were unruly schoolchildren. “We need you to be patient and flexible and just consider this as a little detour in your grand adventure. We’re putting you up for the night at Novotel hotel. We’re giving you money for dinner. Tomorrow, you’ll wake, have breakfast, and by the time you’re fat and happy, we’ll have texted each of you to instruct you as to the time of our takeoff.
Capisce?
”

Another chorus of moans, no one willing to lead the way in the patient and flexible department.

My hands trembled and my breathing sputtered like a car engine ready to stall—in, out, in, out. Deviating from the schedule was my kryptonite. On top of that, an unexpected layover meant boarding another plane. I was considering the possibility of bus travel when my neighbor said, “Want to get a drink?”

“Me?” I asked. She nodded. “Yeah, okay. That’d be great.”
Exhale 5-6-7-8.

Her name was Reina Shephard, and she was twenty-eight years old. She graduated with her MBA from Harvard Business School, which she referred to exclusively as HBS, and now worked for UNICEF. The title on her business card read
VP INTERNATIONAL LIAISON PUBLIC RELATIONS
. Reina ordered a bottle of Bianco della Valdinievole, a typical white wine from the region, she told me, and a plate of
antipasti del mare
, appetizers from the sea, including anchovies, octopus, and mussels. I snapped a photo with my phone and jotted down the name of the wine. While my phone was open, I read the message again from Joe. It said what I thought it said: Joe Santelli was going through a divorce.

Reina told me that she’d been to over thirty countries in the last three years. That she’d fallen ill with dysentery from eating lettuce in Turkey, from drinking tap water in France—“Of all places!” she exclaimed. “Only drink from bottles,” she warned, “even in ‘First World’ countries.” For this she made dubious air quotes.

After our drinks and appetizers, Reina led me down the Via Patania
to a quaint bar named Café Ambrosio. More living room than tavern, it was rich with plush sofa chairs dotted with overstuffed pillows, walls lined with bookshelves, and high vaulted ceilings with exposed oak beams. On the end tables were foreign newspapers and books written in various languages. Golden votive candles flickered in glass containers. On the bulletin board were announcements and posters, fanning out like leaves, advertising literary events and music concerts, theater in the street. This detour that had nearly thrown me into a panic had already proved to be the most interesting few hours in my life. The thought that I was in Italy—somewhere in Italy—and not Alexandria, Virginia, astonished me. From this moment in time, I was no longer hemmed in by my parochial life, my triangulated space of home—office—Dad’s. From this moment on, I could add to my vernacular:
When I was in Sicily . . .

Reina ordered us two glasses of chilled white wine. When I took a sip, I detected a note of sweetness. “What’s this?”

“Almond wine,” she said. “It’s a regional specialty.”

We settled into two soft chairs and stared over the candlelight at each other. “What exactly do you do in these countries?” I asked.

Reina danced her head shoulder to shoulder as if to say,
How to explain my job?
“The mission of UNICEF is to improve the lives of children, through nutrition and environmental matters, equality issues for girls, HIV/AIDs treatment and prevention, protecting them from abuse and exploitation.”

“Why are you on your way to Tuscany, then? Italy’s a First World country.”

Reina issued an ironic laugh. “Italy is postcard gorgeous, the food is delectable, the people are vibrant, the culture and scenery awe-inspiring, but believe it or not, Italy has the highest percentage of children living below the poverty line of twenty-five European nations.”

“You’re kidding. I thought Italians loved children.”

“Hundreds of thousands of children go hungry every day. One in two minors in Italy lives in poverty—that means they only eat a ‘decent’ meal once every two days.”

I circled that statistic, trying to grasp it: children in a nation of food-loving people, going hungry. “Why is that? It’s
Italy.
The food!”

Reina shrugged. “It’s mostly a structural issue,” she said flatly, pausing to take a hearty sip of her wine. “The social infrastructure, if you will, is poor. We could make the problem go away, if only it were a priority among the government officials.”

I shook my head again. “I just can’t believe it,” I said. “Italy is Europe’s third-largest economy.” I had just read this in my guidebook.

“Yeah, but Italy only allocates about 1 percent of its GDP to services like public child care—which of course would help parents go to work and feed their kids.”

“Where are these children? In the countryside or in the cities?”

“About a third of them are right here, in Sicily.”

“Then why were you headed to Tuscany?”

“Symposium on hunger,” she said wryly. “A bunch of experts sitting around stuffing themselves while they talk about starving children.”

“I wish there was something we could do.”

“Are you up for a walk?”

“Definitely,” I said. “But can you hold on one sec? I just need to send a message. The Wi-Fi should work here, right?”

Reina nodded while I pulled up Joe’s Facebook message. In my mind, I drafted a response: “Joe, wow, I don’t know what to say . . .” And clearly, I
didn’t
know what to say, not a clue. Joe’s divorce shouldn’t mean much to me, but of course it did because, if I was being honest with myself, I had to admit that his availability was what I had wanted my entire life. But still, I was in Italy, I was engaged to Lucas, I was experimenting for the first time in my life with being brave. This was hardly the moment to time-travel back to high school.

“Jet lag!” I said, “I can barely string together a sentence. I’ll send it later,” and followed Reina out the door.

Reina led me through the streets of Catania. “So Catania is Sicily’s second-largest city,” Reina said, assuming her role as tour guide. “Above it looms the beautiful Mount Etna. Because of the eruptions of Mount Etna, the old city was leveled and built anew with dramatic baroque architecture. The main square—Piazza Duomo—is the perfect example of this, as are structures like San Benedetto, Teatro Massimo Bellini, and Catania Cathedral.”

I looked around, drank it all in—the beauty, the archways. “Gorgeous.”

Reina gave a sad smile. “That’s the good of Sicily. What you also have to know is that Sicilians have been stepped on throughout their entire history. It’s a triangular piece of earth perpetually hanging on by a thread. Stronger nations have always used Sicily as a base for launching expansion efforts. Let’s see, also the birthplace of the Mafia. Sicilians have their own language—a blend of Greek, Latin, Arabic, French—though most speak Italian as well. Visiting Sicily is like visiting a dozen countries at once—very multicultural. But also very ‘Third World.’”