One Thing Stolen (3 page)

But the boy is gone. I hurry down the aisle, through the door, to the piazza. I search for a sign of the disturbance. It’s only Dad out here by the wide rail with his empty book, a startled look on his face.

Nadia? he says.

I answer with nothing.

You all right? Dad asks again.

He presses his hand against my forehead. He tests for a temperature, the one thing he has always thought to do, no matter what, no matter where we are or how old I am, but this is the thing: Fever is not the name of my disease.

Someone was—running, I say at last.

You, Dad says. You were.

No, I say. I mean—Someone else.

Dad smooths his caterpillar eyebrows. He gives me a long look and I give him a long look back and all I see in his two green eyes is a narrow girl: me. She has black hair and her mother’s bones and a big fringe of lashes and behind her the Vespa is gone, the pink duffel bag, the boy, the monk, the song. The rose hello.

I saw nothing. Nadia. No one.

In the city the sun is higher than it was. The towers and the squares and the roofs and the facades are browns and yellows,
whites and greens. Birds are cutting the sky—swooping low and high. Florence is down there, and so is Dad’s river, and so are Mom and Jack and the person I’m supposed to be. The boy must be down there, too, and that Vespa and that streak of pink, and now petals are flicking off with the breeze—petals like butterfly wings, like snow.

Red rose petals.

Nadia? Dad says.

But I’m already gone; he cannot stop me. I’m down the steps, along the curve, hurrying. The first dropped petal feels like nothing in my hand. The next is silk. The third petal fits, like all the others fit, into my palm. Petal. Petal. Petal. Soft red sweet. My hands grow fat with the color of red, which does not weigh a thing.

I pass the cats; I pass the tourists. I pass the stones and the bugs and the trees. I leave the altitude inch by inch, make my way into the city. Far away, Dad calls to me—tells me to wait, to stop, what are you doing, Nadia? But the steps draw me down, the streets draw me in, the red and the promise of pink. I go into the alleys, past the shopkeepers, turn back. If there was a boy (and didn’t you see the boy?), he’s altogether vanished. It’s only my father on the hill behind me, his journal in one hand, his eyebrows rearranged by the breeze.

Like somebody had you on a string, Dad says when he finally catches up to me, when he can breathe. Down all those stairs, he’s
come. Into the alleys. Through the streets. The breeze in his hair. My old, lopsided father.

He glances out across his city. Shakes his head, very slow. Loops his arm through mine, like an anchor. Studies me hard.

You look a little . . . He searches for the word. Mesmerized. Is there something . . . Are you . . . ? You sure you’re all right?

There are two of me in Dad’s eyes. There’s a line of worry in his brow. He locks his arm tighter into mine and waits for me to explain, but I already have, best as I can.
Someone was running
. Dad waits for more. There is nothing more.

I’m doing the best I can. See?

How about we not mention this to Mom, Dad says finally, and I nod. How about we—? he starts, then stops, and now we walk—over the bridge, past the crowds, around the corner, beneath the statue of Dante, across the piazza, all the way to Verrazzano—his arm hooked in my arm, his heart too heavy on one side. We walk to the borrowed flat on the borrowed street, past the stink of old air and motor oil.

Up the stairs.

All right, I think. All right. All right.

Tell me I’m not crazy.

Spiceologist at work, Mom says when we open the door to the flat.

She goes tiptoe in her bare feet to kiss Dad on the cheek. Touches her hand to the tornado of his hair. Points at Jack like he’s a game-show prize.

Behind Mom Jack lifts one hand in a hello salute without looking up from the kitchen table, where he’s got his spice jars out, his tablespoons, his whisks and bowls, like some medieval experiment. His hair spikes through his Skullcandy headphones. There’s a dark dot of fuzz on his chin. He wears the plastic apron the Vitale family left behind—the one with pictures of the Duomo stacked up in columns and rows, versions of purple and yellow.

Zuppa di cozze con fagioli borlotti
, he says. Hot mussel soup.

It’s the Day, Mom says, of the Chili Pepper.

Dad touches his hand, briefly, to Mom’s waist. He looks at me. Smiles at her. Stands there lopsided, his empty book in his pocket.

Jack slides a headphone off one ear, gives us a mealtime update. He puts the music back on and waves his hand above the page
in the Marcella cookbook that he’s been working from. Marcella Hazan, the queen of Italian cooking, is Jack’s idol. This is Almost Independent Study 101—the recipes Jack’s been cooking through to get his science credits for Friends High. Mom got the school to approve the scheme. Jack calls it his fair trade, since everything he loves is back there in Philly and only his own fine cooking ranks as a sufficient consolation prize. He’s rinsing the mussels now. He’s soaked the cranberry beans. Plum tomatoes sit in a bowl, drowning in their juice.

Amir called again, Mom tells Dad.

And?

Trouble, Mom says. I told him he has to see it through.

She crosses her arms like she does when she talks about her at-risks: the kids who need her wherever she goes, the kids, she says, who keep her young, and she is young, in those blue pants with the wide waistband and the little white T-shirt that she irons. Her dark hair streaks cinnamon. Her arms are yogi-thin. Amir’s her toughest case, the kid she didn’t think she should leave behind, and now Jack looks up and hands Mom a fresh bowl, a sharp knife; Jack always knows what to do. Like Thanksgiving eve, a year ago, when the news about my uncle Mike came in—wrong splurge of blood in his brain.
He had the worst jokes
, Jack kept saying.
He gave us the stupidest gifts
. Which is what we were going to miss most about my mother’s brother—the stupid and the worst of him, his piles of wrong presents, the hiccough in his laugh. Mom kept cooking,
she couldn’t stop, the light coming in yellow and green through the stained glass of the Victorian twin, the roosters gawking, a spill on the white kitchen counter. She was banging and stirring and making. She was stuffing the turkey. She was sugaring cranberries. She was folding and pounding and finally Jack got up from the table and helped her sugar and fold and pound until something eased in her. Until she could cry out loud, with us.

You have a good morning? Mom asks Dad now, her knife working a steady rhythm in the small space beside Jack.

Dad squints like he’s looking for something.

He lies outright for me.

When it’s all done and good, all soaked and steaming, Jack takes the lid off the pot and delivers his lesson of the day: Chile peppers. History? Americas born, Columbus discovered. Medicinal value? Plenty. Influence on the mussel soup? Properly administered, Jack quotes Marcella, chile peppers “add spice with restraint.” He lifts his spoon and takes a sip. He closes his eyes and swallows. A
MasterChef
wannabe. A TV star in the making. A kid without a secret. My tall little brother, Jack.

The spice jars are bouquets on the table. The pots and the pans and the whisk and the bowls and the tablespoons and the suds are stacked in the sink. Dad sits at one end of the table and Mom on the other and Jack and I sit across from each other, our bowls so big and the table so narrow, and they’re talking like the Caras talk. News of home. News of the weather. News of Florence and Philadelphia—sister cities an ocean apart. I think of the boy. I think of the weight of the petals, which is the weight of nothing,
the secret in my pocket. I think of what I saw and what Dad didn’t, and all the tricks my mind plays on me.

Impressions? Jack is saying, I hear him saying, I listen.

Pungent, Dad answers, after a long think.

Jack slips his journal from his apron pocket and writes the word down. Seven letters. Substantial flourish.

An extravagance of basil, Mom says.

Notes of basil, Jack rephrases. Writes it down. The tip of his tongue poking through the O of his lips.

Nads, he says. Impressions? He holds his pen up in the air like a conductor waiting to strike, and I’ve got—nothing. I’ve got a brain like a nest, thoughts in a weave, red in my pocket, questions about the color pink. Jack waits. I take another sip of his mussels, close my eyes, concentrate. Do this, I think. Try. Open your mouth and speak. And suddenly I’m remembering Scrabble games in West Philadelphia. Adjectives, inflections, hooks, the racks of blanks and
S
’s, my famous double doubles, the JQXZ that I could always blitz, and Jack kicks my shin beneath the table. Gives me a look: a big don’t-fail-me stare.

Yo, he says. Earth to Nadia.

Good, I say, at last.

Good? Jack throws himself back against the chair. Good? For Marcella’s mussels? For
chiles
? That’s it? Jack looks at Dad who looks at Mom who looks at me and bites her bottom lip for half a second.

Giving you a pass on impressions, Jack says now.

Mom tucks a strand of hair behind one ear and looks again at Dad. Jack puts his pen and his journal back in his pocket and rubs the dot of hair on his chin. The talk starts again, a quiet circus. I stand up, very quiet now, my bowl shaking in my hands.

Feeling really—tired, I say.

Honey? Mom asks.

Just. Need a little—nap.

It’s early afternoon, Dad says. The day has only half started.

Mom reaches up, touches her hand to my cheek. Dad lifts one hand to his heart.

Really good, I turn and say to Jack. Really—good, Jack. I swear. You’re a—master.

You need anything, sweetie? Dad says. From us?

I shake my head no.

Anything we can get you, anything you want?

No.

Okay, then, Dad says.

But it’s not okay.

The boy, I think. What would he do, if he’s real, if he’s true?

What would he do?

What would you?

Don’t say a word.