Wild Roses (31 page)

I walked down to the ferry docks. The day had
been freezing but bright, too cheerful for what Mom was going through. White
wisps of a foggy evening were beginning to form in the dusk, looking as if they
could be cleared with a puff of my breath. Ian was there already when I arrived.
I saw his dark coat all the way from the ticket window, where Evan Malloney's
dad was working late.

Ian faced me, watched me walk toward him. He
held out his arms and I got in. I let myself sink there and
disappear.

"You saw," I said.

"Yes," Ian said into my hair.

"I heard about you, too, and
Curtis."

"Bunny told me he saw you. There's so much to
say that I don't know where to start."

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"I don't either," I said.

"I knew Dino was . . . difficult. But Cassie,
did he just snap?"

"No, not really. I knew something like this was
coming. My Mom and I both did. There's been so much happening. . . . I was
embarrassed to tell you. There was so much I still couldn't say the words.
Crazy. Mentally ill.

"You should have told me. Look at us. We didn't
tell each other the most important things."

"I was afraid of what you'd think."

"I was afraid of what you would think. God, we
can't be so afraid of losing each other. I won't judge you. I love
you."

I squeezed him under his coat. "But I am going
to lose you."

"You're not going to lose me." "But you're
going away." "Yes."

We stood there, just holding each other. "It's
what you have to do," I said. "Yes."

"I don't want to talk about this anymore," I
said. "I don't even want to talk." "Okay."

"No sound. No music, no talking."

"Quiet as space," he said. "Is space quiet?" I
held my finger up to his lips to tell him to shush. We walked down the dock. We
didn't talk about where we were walking; we just kept going forward, in step
with each other. We walked back toward town, went to the planetarium.
Dave

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was just leaving, let us in and told me to lock
the door behind me when I left. We walked into the dark auditorium, and I kept
the lights off, turned on the projector and lit the ceiling with stars. We sat
in the plush chairs, side by side and holding hands. Ian leaned over and kissed
me, and we stayed there for a while like that. It got uncomfortable, and we lay
down on the floor together for a while. What happened after that is nobody's
business. It's my sweet, good memory. But I will say that I got my wish for
quiet. Quiet except for the sweet, tender notes of Amore Dolce Delia Gioventu
playing in my head, and Ian's breath in my ear.

Alice came over and stayed with Mom when Andrew
Wilkowski went home for a little bit. There was still no news of Dino. Alice
seemed to know a lot about our life. Mom told more about what went on in our
house than I ever did, it seemed. I wonder if my parents' divorce made me get
too good at keeping secrets.

Alice brought tea and scones in a white bag. I
guess she didn't have time to make them herself. A white bakery bag is one of
the reasons life is good, if you ask me, and Alice's calm presence and kind
voice did appear to work magic on Mom. Alice had her laughing, telling a story
about someone else they knew, and I was glad to see that Mom had good people
around her.

So it was Alice, anyway, not Andrew Wilkowski,
who was there with Mom when she got the phone call. The call was from William
Tiero. Mom was so happy and relieved

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to hear from him. Dino may have been right in
his paranoid feeling that Mom and William kept in contact. They were two people
who loved Dino, and they were looking after him. Mom's voice was warm,
grateful.

"They found him. Thank God," she said, after
she hung up. Dino had boarded a plane, flew to Milan. He had checked into the
Principe De Savoia Hotel, was there now. He was alone, in bad shape. She needed
to go immediately.

Mom phoned Dino's doctor and Andrew Wilkowski,
who insisted on coming with her. The kind Alice called for plane reservations as
Mom packed.

I sat on the edge of the bed. "How can I help?"
I asked.

"Can you look in the top dresser drawer for my
passport?"

I hunted around until I found the small blue
book. I opened it up, looked at her picture. It was taken a few years ago, just
before they were married. They had gone to Paris for a week for their honeymoon.
She looked so young in the picture. I couldn't believe how much she'd changed.
"Found it."

"I've never been to Italy," she said. "This
wasn't exactly the way I intended going. This is not something I could have ever
imagined. I cannot even believe what I am doing right now."

"Is he okay?" I thought about the Wild Roses
painting. I thought about what Siang Chibo had told me. About what had happened
with Vincent van Gogh after he'd painted it.

"You know what Dr. Milton said? Have I ever
told you how much I can't stand Dr. Milton? Born with a reptile heart, I
swear."

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"What did he say?"

"He said I should commit Dino when I get to
Milan. If he's alive by the time I get there. That's actually what he said. 'If
he's alive by the time you get there.'"

"I still think he's a liar," my father
said.

"He had reason. It's not that simple," I
said.

"Crazy, then. I don't think anyone will dispute
that anymore. That poor man. His nose is broken. I can't believe he isn't going
to sue. And that violin. Imagine how much that cost."

I hadn't seen a newspaper in a few days, but
Dad had them all. He even had a few from other cities, for God's sake. Nannie
was sitting in the chair with the pop-up footstool. She was doing the crossword
puzzle in the Chicago Tribune. I saw it sitting open on the coffee table later.
For "Elvis hit, 1956" she had written artichoke dip and had left two squares
blank, and for "Hockey legend" she had written puck, leaving three squares
blank. It just goes to show that if it works for you, great.

"Dino's suicidal in some hotel, Dad. I don't
think they're thinking about that aspect of things right now."

"Look at what she chose. And our life together
was so bad?"

I kept my mouth shut. Watched Dog William out
the window, checking out Dad's backyard with a confused excitement. The gray
whales had begun their migration in the sound that stretched out before us. But
no one was thinking about whales, and that seemed sad and wrong.

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"Flower parts, six letters," Nannie shouted.
"What's a flower part, six letters?" "Petals," my dad said.

She ignored him. "Flower!" Nannie said. She
counted the letters. "Yep, that's six."

"I guess if your mother puts up with this,
she'll never leave him," my father said.

I didn't tell him that I'd had the same
thought. Instead, I took his hands across the table where we sat. The Dutch
girls were still paired with the chefs--Dad had at last given up on Nannie's
rearranging, at least with the salt and pepper shakers.

"I love you, Dad," I said. "I just ... I wish
you would let go, you know? Move on."

"I have moved on," he said.

"Dad." I gestured to the newspapers, spread out
all over the living room.

He sighed. "Cassie?" he said. "There's one
thing I know. You can't tell a heart what to do."

"All right," I said.

"Oh give me a home, where these roam. Seven
letters," Nannie said. She was quiet a moment. Dad and I just sat there, our
hands clasped together.

"Monkeys," Nannie said finally.

Mom's voice was there, coming across the ocean
by phone. She sounded so close, she might have been phoning from the grocery
store.

"I've got to get that doctor's home phone
number,"

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she said. "You've got to help me. It's an
emergency."

"I can ask Dad to help me. He's a master
sleuth. What's going on?"

"Just hurry Call me back as soon as you can.
He's gone, Cassie. We got here, and he's gone." "Are you okay?"

"Something's happened to him. I can feel it.
It's like I feel this . . . separation. I feel him gone in my gut."

After writing his Principia, Sir Isaac Newton
collapsed in a nervous breakdown. Abraham Lincoln had several breakdowns, and
was obsessed with thoughts of premature death and of going mad. E Scott
Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, were the dysfunctional couple of the century. He
was wracked by alcoholism, and she died in a fire at a mental hospital. So much
painful living, even for the seemingly most chirpy--Dolly Parton (depression),
Charles Schultz (anxiety), Dick Clark (depression), Donny and Marie Osmond, for
God's sake (anxiety and depression, respectively).

"What if he's dead, Ian?" I said into the
phone. "What does dead even mean?" I couldn't get my mind wrapped around the
thought. I couldn't picture him really gone. Forever gone, gone where? "I wanted
him out of my life, Mom's life. But I never wanted this."

"I know."

"Tell me what dead means," I said.

"I don't know, Cassie. I just don't
know."

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Here is what happened, according to my mother.
Dino took a cab, all the way down to the center of the country. A cab, if you
can believe it, some 130 miles. Through Milan and Bologna. On to Florence, and a
short while farther to San Gimignano, Tuscany. From there, just a few miles
south to the hilltop town of Sabbotino Grappa.

My mother and Andrew Wilkowski took the train.
They paid a man in an old Renault to drive them from the station to Sabbotino
Grappa. The man drove with one hand, and held a cigarette in the other, dangling
it out the open window. They told him they were in a hurry, and he accommodated,
although it seemed that all the cars on the roads drove with the same fury and
absentminded recklessness, Mom said. Lots of veering and honking and driving up
the curb until they were out of the city and the driver calmed down a bit. It
was hot, Mom said, and they had to drive with all of the windows rolled down.
You could see Sabbotino Grappa before you arrived there-- from the highway it
was a tiny town that looked balanced on a pinnacle. The town was built on the
lofty hilltop location in the medieval days, so the townspeople could see who
might be arriving to destroy them. Dino had done a good job in choosing
Sabbotino Grappa, Mom realized. It was too far and too small to be of interest
to tourists, and the trip up the winding road to the top too arduous. The
village shared one phone, and traveling to that place in an attempt to check
facts with the handful of people who lived there and who spoke only Italian
would give anyone incentive to believe first Dino's and then Edward

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Reynolds's version of events. One look at this
place, though, Mom said, and you knew that Edward Reynolds, the author of An
Oral History made a decision about which story he would give to the world.
Because there would be no canals up here. No canals in which to throw a
bicycle.

The man in the Renault told them about all of
the Americans he knew, asked if they lived in New York City. He'd been there
once, and from what he saw of America, he hated it. They wound their way up the
hill, arrived at a town so ancient and quiet, my mother was sure it was
deserted. The man in the Renault let them out, and Andrew paid him. My mother
took a big drink of warm air, looked out over the Tuscan valley, which stretched
beneath them. The man in the Renault waved good-bye, the cigarette still smoking
in his hand, and beeped his horn. As he headed back down the winding road, my
mother worried about letting him go--the town, all yellow stone and small
alleyways, seemed completely empty. It looked like an abandoned film-scene set,
with its narrow passages and stone walls and buildings so old it was hard to
believe anyone that lived there knew what year it was.

In the center of the town was a square,
cobbled, with a church and three small stores, just as Dino had described. Just
as Edward Reynolds had said. It just seemed so deserted, Mom thought; until she
caught the movement of a curtain, saw the bulk of an old woman moving away who'd
been watching them. Then she saw

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the window shade of a store pulled closed, a
pair of shutters yanked shut, an old man hurrying off down an alleyway. They
walked to the church and went inside. The church was freezing. There were three
long rows of lit red candles, and a huge image of Jesus painted right onto the
wall, chipped in an unfortunate place. Andrew Wilkowski called out, and an
ancient priest shuffled into the church. He stank so strongly of wine, my mother
thought she could get drunk just smelling his breath.

The old priest spoke only Italian, and Andrew
Wilkowski made his best attempt to speak to him. The old man just shook his head
No, no, no, until Andrew Wilkowski said Dino's name. When he heard this, he took
Andrew's arms in his hands and nodded, gestured to the open doorway. My mother
said she felt the most profound relief, until the old priest started shaking his
head and mumbling softly, as if it was so sad, so sad.