One Thing Stolen (7 page)

I wake up in the dark part of the living room. To Mom’s quilt up to my shoulders, another blanket thrown across my feet. The talk is Jack. The talk is a girl. The talk is Mom saying, Shhhhh. Your sister’s sleeping.

But I’m awake now, and there’s my brother beneath the halo of the Vitale chandelier, bent over the kitchen table, slicing. I see little trees of rosemary and fists of garlic and fat tomatoes and a girl Jack calls Perdita.

She wears cabled leggings and a red mini, work boots and a lace shirt with snaps on the cuffs of the sleeves, a navy-blue cami. She wears her hair geometric—soft to one side, shaved on the other, a dozen gold studs punched into the lobe of that ear. She has fluorescent nails and a bold gold chunk of a necklace, green feathers hanging like a pendant.

Bright green neon feathers.

She’s washing scallops in the sink, patting them dry with a towel. She’s jabbing a knife into the scallops’ skin and washing again, patting them drier. Shows them to Jack, who looks up, says something, in Italian or English, it doesn’t matter. Like they know each other well. Like Mom’s lost the job of prep cook to this girl with geometric hair.

Dad’s gone. The bits and pieces of his flood are gone. The rain is a quiet slick against the panes, and Mom is sitting in the chair across from me, dressed for the day and reading a book with her half-glasses on. She takes the glasses off, puts them up in her hair, puts them down on her nose, looks at Jack and the girl, reads, but not really. There’s a huge umbrella in the hallway, little pools of water where Jack and this girl came in, and it’s still dark outside, and wet, but the storm is over, and now here’s Dad, opening the door, a bottle of olive oil in his hands. His umbrella is half bent, half folded. His wind hair is wrecked. His shoes squeak on the floor.

At your service, he says. To Jack. And I wonder how long I’ve been lying here remembering. How long she’s been here. How well they know her—Perdita.

Beneath the blanket I slip the Band-Aids off, push them into a pocket. I watch Jack light up the skillet, uncork the oil and pour it, split the garlic into cloves and toss them. He leans over the Book of Marcella, scratches his head. He hands Perdita the rosemary
trees, stands close to her, says, Like this. With his knife. With the rosemary. Not a spice, but an herb.

I feel Mom’s hand against my forehead.

You slept a long time, she says.

Who—? I say.

That would be Perdita, Mom says.

She works the stall at the central market in San Lorenzo—spices. She is here. Real. No wonder Jack’s acing his Almost Independent Study 101. No wonder he gets up each day and hurries to the market, to the spices, to her. Rosemary is an herb Aphrodite wore. Rosemary is Virgin Mary famous. Jack has a girl.

Blood and flesh. Sitting, not running. Real, and nobody’s secret.

Around the Vitale table we cram. The leftover rosemary is in a coffee mug and Jack’s masterwork steams from a center bowl with a spoon. Dig in, Jack says, and Mom sits beside Dad, who is holding her hand, like it’s the most solid thing in the world, like she can’t believe her son has this friend and has brought her home and then she looks at me and her smile dims.

Dad runs his fingers through his hair. Mom turns the wedding band around on Dad’s finger. Jack serves the scallops, three by three, pours his sweet and garlic sauce, and he sits back, and there’s talk, bits of English and Italian and something in between
that I can’t follow because I am thinking of the dahlia nest and its broken place and the chain Perdita is wearing. I’m thinking how happy Jack is with the girl right here, and how the boy is out there, waiting.

Someone was running
.

Perdita’s father owns the spice shop. Perdita’s grandfather owned it first. They sell
senape bruna
, three euros for fifty grams;
pily-pily
, four euros for fifty grams;
pepe misto
, five euros for fifty grams;
peperoncino de cayenne
, four euros for fifty grams. The best spice shop in all of Florence. The family business, and Perdita works the mornings and goes to school in the afternoons, but mostly she goes to the school of spices, and she’s talking about leaves and roots and gums and herbs and seeds, cassia and ginger, Marco Polo, and Jack raises one finger: Impressions?

Sweet, Mom says.

Jack nods, writes it down.

Dad?

Woodsy.

Woodsy?

Dad nods. Jack writes it down.

Nads? Jack says. Impressions? His voice all don’t-fail-me, don’t-embarrass-me, be a normal sister, please, and I take a good long look before I try to speak. Jack’s hair is puffy from all the scallop steam. There’s a bruise on his neck, a streak on his cheek,
and he’s a tall dude with this girl beside him, the sticks of her legs crisscrossed and her boots so big for her bones and her hair crooked and striped.
Don’t fail me
. I look at Mom and Dad holding hands and the sticks of rosemary bouqueting in the coffee mug and I need a word. I need a Scrabble double double. One word for my brother.

Per—, I say. The start of it.

Jack leans toward me, the dot of the beard on his chin round and hopeful.

Per, what, Nads?

Perfect—ion.

Yo, he says. Yo, yeah. He high-fives Perdita. He high-fives Mom and Dad, and his smile is a bridge that runs from one ear to the other. Perfection, he writes in his book. Big and bold and underlined. Perfection: Jack’s scallops according to Nadia. He looks at me like I’m the sister he’s been hoping for, the kind who gives out props when the girlfriend comes home, and I stand up; that’s it. Perfection is all I need.

I slip out the door in the clatter of cleanup; nobody sees. I walk where the buildings are the colors of skin, and the arches and shutters are the color of old rain. Toward the shop windows and the bank windows and the restaurant windows I walk, then walk on, until I am lost and far away and the only thing that can compass me back is the Duomo, its cap a lighthouse lanterning the way.

Birds are up high—thin black streaks. Kids are on the streets on bikes, and there’s the tourist crowd, and there are bobbling balloons and rubber-ducky boots splashing in the rain that fell all morning. I walk alleys, bridges, riverways, circles, until I find myself at the Santa Croce piazza, where the puddles are catching the sun and the birds have come to rest on the head of Dante. Some skateboarders are throwing tricks off smooth boards they’ve laid down across the stones. They’re riding and smashing and backing, their music coming from a tin box. One of the boys hits a ramp and whoops the sky and stops clean. One of the girls takes too
much air and she flies, flies, flies, and I want wings, I want to crush the fear, the millions of things that make me afraid, the millions of things I can think but not say.

What do they mean: mesmerized?

What do
you
mean, when you say it?

What is the worst thing you’ve ever lost, and how in the world did you find it?

A shout from the east.

A bright, raw streak of pink.

In the piazza, on the fringe of the skateboard crowd, I see him. In the shadows of the outdoor cafes, in the margin places, the secret places—too fast, too quick, a zip of speed. It’s him, hitting the piazza’s south edge and running free. It’s him with a clutch of sunflowers in one hand—too fast for the men on the chase, too fast for anyone; he is blooms and fire.

Hey, I say.

And he turns.

Wait, I say.

And he stops.

Drops a flower, bright and singed. Raises an eyebrow and winks. Runs.

Nothing will stop me. This is him, this is what I see: the thief, the giver of flowers. I cut through the crowds, go where he went.
Follow him toward the Arno. Through the shadows of the cathedral, into the narrow parts of the street. Past the gates and gelato shops, past the round stones of the
biblioteca
, past the coffee shops, toward the Lungarno. There is the whacking tail of a dog and the wheels of a wagon and a man in plaid, and the boy could be anywhere, but he’s gone.

On the bridge the tourists are posing in the sun. At the top of the hill, San Miniato shines. Up and down the Lungarno the artists are putting up their stalls, putting out their tins, brooming the gypsies from the stone walk, and now in the other direction, between boots and sandals and flip-flops, I see a second flower, dropped to the ground. Its face pointing toward the backstreets of Santa Croce.

In the streets behind the cathedral, I am lost in a place I’ve never been. Some of the doors are as thin as chimneys. Some of the windows are bricked in. Some of the edges of some of the streets are lined with smooth old stones and my thin shoes slip, like I am running on a bed of feathers.

In the gutter of a roof a silver cat sleeps. In a window box a garden grows, the heads of the flowers catching the rain from the sheets that hang from a rope. Above the shoulders of some houses I see the gold domes of Florence and the fake
David
, and the cutout face of San Miniato, a toy city. Through the iron rails of a park gate children play, and it is late in the afternoon and now, in one of the windows, I see a girl with her two-flower bouquet. Me.

I hear someone laughing.

I turn.

His eyes are like river water. His hair is light. He wears one gold ring in his nose and a dark blue chip in his ear, and the sunflowers in his pink duffel bag have huge and curious heads.

It’s you, I say.

I hold the flowers out to him—bruised and bent and breathless. I say, These are yours, or You dropped these, or maybe I say nothing, maybe I don’t have the words, but he does.

An American girl, he says. His words right and his accent heavy. He crosses his arms, leans back. He studies me and I wonder what he sees. Dark hair. Pale hands. Two flowers. A girl who says nothing or maybe said something. A girl so far from home. He reaches across me, toward the flowers in my arms. He dials their faces toward the sky and leans back and smiles.

You should take care, he says.
Città di ladri
.

City of thieves.

Two lines in the wink of each eye. The start of a beard on his chin. He is taller than me, taller than Jack, a blond Italian.

You’re always where I am, I say.

I’ve been watching, he says.

You—dropped these, I say. Lifting the flowers.

Left them, he says.
Per te
.

He smiles. Unzips the bag strapped across his chest. Sorts through the flowers he has stolen, one by one by one, choosing the
fattest and dealing it to me, like this is a game of cards, or Hansel and Gretel, like this is what I followed him for—to take what he has taken.

Yours now,
si?

A touch on my shoulder. A hand on my hand.
Real
. The zipper of his bag pulled shut again, careful, like someone protecting new eggs. He pushes off from the wall and a man on a bike with a basket goes by, three dogs in the basket, two yellow lemons. The bike creaks creaks creaks, and the boy stands there, his bootlaces loose on the stones.

You’re an interesting girl, he says.

I’ve been watching, he says.