Olive Branches Don't Grow on Trees (16 page)

“Well,
I’m not,” he said with complete indifference.

He
was not at all the type of person who cared if she or anyone else thought that
he was a big person or a small person.  In general, he did not care what
people thought of him.  He was born without a trace of self-consciousness.

“Well,
maybe he hasn’t had it so easy either.” Silvia persisted, even though she was
mostly sure that it was too late for Cosmo to forgive Frank.

“Well,
that doesn’t justify having kids just so you can try to fuck them up.”

“I’m
sure his intention in having kids wasn’t so he could fuck them up, Cosmo! 
I’m sure that he was like lots of other parents who never bothered getting
themselves together before they had kids,” she said, and then continued with,
“But what about forgiving him, anyway?  Don’t you get tired of carrying
all that blame and anger around with you?”  Truly, he, like many people,
was carrying much more than he needed to carry, making himself and his life
heavier than it needed to be. 

Her
brother still seemed completely unconvinced by her arguments in favor of
forgiveness, and so she thought that now might be a good time to tell him about
her bonsai tree lesson.  She recalled Frank taking him for violin lessons
when he was a little boy, and although Cosmo never seemed too excited about
having to go to these lessons, Frank’s intent on having his son learn an
instrument could not be construed in any other way than good.

“Do
you remember when Dad used to bring you for violin lessons every Saturday
morning?”  Silvia asked.

Cosmo
looked like he had forgotten about the lessons and was remembering them for
first time in years, “I do,” he said, without giving anything else away.

“Well,
don’t you think that was a kind thing?  I mean, I know that you may have
not been having the time of your life going to them, but the fact that he
wanted you to learn an instrument is such a great thing.”

“I
suppose.”  He was indifferent, but indifference, at this point, was an
improvement over anger and bitterness.

“I
bet remembering him bringing you to those lessons makes you feel a lot better,
as opposed to remembering the times that he put you down.”  She was
careful not to say the word failure to him.

Cosmo
had a look that Silvia never saw before, as if he might have been convinced,
or, at least, mildly convinced.  While he said nothing, seeing the
expression on his face was satisfying enough for Silvia.

“More
tea?” he asked, getting up to refill the kettle.

“Sure,”
she said.  She suspected that he was trying to divert the course of the
conversation in order to avoid telling her that maybe she had a valid point
about Frank.  She also knew that he was attempting to get out of giving
her a definite response about coming to the reunion.  He should know
better.  He should know that she was not the type of person to relent so
easily. 

“So,
you’re going to come to the dinner?” She said this more like a statement than a
question.

“Oh,
so now you’re calling it a dinner?” he said, still unwilling to give her a
definite response.  She said nothing to his pointless question.
 Instead, she just sat there, expressionless, waiting for an answer.

“Alright,
I’ll be there,” he said, reluctance in his voice.

“Thank
you.  It will mean a lot to Vince.”

“Yeah,
right,” he said begrudgingly.

Silvia
took a brief moment without talking to eat a third cookie and just savor its
deliciousness.  Then she was on to the next item on her agenda.

“So,
have you given any more thought to coming to Portland?”

“Jesus
Christ!  What did you come over here for anyway?  
To
ask for favors?”

“That,
and to eat cookies,” she said smiling.

Cosmo
slanted his lips and shook his head back and forth as if this was the very sort
of behavior that he had grown to expect from his sister. “No, I haven’t given
it any more thought.  But it seems like a crazy thing to do.  To
leave my secure, decent paying job and move to a place where I’d probably be
lucky to get a job as a barista in some trendy café.”

He
was right, and she knew it, but she persisted none-the-less, “Why don’t you
just drive out there with me, and see how you like it there?”

“I’ll
think about it.”

“I’ll
pay for your plane ticket back.”  She really was not giving up. 

“Well,
that’s very nice.  But, I still need to think about it.”

“It
could just be like a little vacation for you.  Don’t you want to get
away?”

“Not
really.”

She
could not understand his way of life.  She could not imagine him not
wanting to move out of Philadelphia, let alone not take a vacation.  How
could he not be bored out of his mind?  

“Maybe
you don’t think you want to get away, but once you do, you’ll realize how much
you wanted it all along.”

He
just looked back at her as if to say that there was nothing but nonsense coming
out of her mouth.  And although she knew that she sounded kind of
ridiculous, she believed in her words.  She believed that she spoke the
truth.  She also knew that convincing Cosmo of this
truth
was just not happening. 
Not tonight anyway. 

CHAPTER
SIX: LIGHTNING BUGS AT DUSK

As
soon as Silvia got back to Frank’s house, she went to her room to find her
lonely self-portrait screaming out for company.  She had neglected the
painting for just the right amount of time, and now she could return to it with
fresh eyes.  Often times, she would not know what she wanted to paint and
would start painting and let the image come to her.  Now, she found
herself painting her mother’s face and so she decided that this work of art was
destined to be a family portrait.

She
wanted to capture the sparkle that had been in Donna’s face before Frank wore
her down-- the sparkle that was just starting to reemerge.  Silvia wanted
to show the love that her mom had had for her children coming through her
eyes.  She wanted to get the way her skin shone even when she was tired
and the way she always looked so held together and sure of herself, even when
she was not.  She painted her mother on the edge of the canvas, leaving
room between herself and Donna for other family members.  The two of them
needed some space between them.

Vince
would be right beside Donna, as they needed no space.  She wanted to paint
the way that his eyes shone with earnestness and honesty; the way his bleeding
heart bled through his skin; the way he was always going forward, as if
backwards was not even an option; the way he looked, acted, and moved through
life, like a superhero of sorts. Maybe
Thor,
or even
Superman.  

When
she was finished with Vince, she started on Cosmo, who she placed on the right
side of herself, as he was without a doubt, the closest family member to
her.  She was so comfortable with him, in fact, that having him around
sometimes felt like having no one around at all.  He required very little
energy from her.  He did not compete with her like Vince, or cast
disapproval upon her like Angie.  He did not fight with her like Frank, or
stay distant from her like Donna.  He did challenge her at times, but a
part of her must have appreciated these challenges at some level, or she would
not keep going back for them.

She
painted him looking kind of like a palm tree, tall and lanky with hair going in
all directions.  She wanted to paint his cold scientific rationality
trying to squeeze through his goofy misfit self.  She wanted to paint his
eyes that hid nothing and that always seemed to know what was right.  More
than anything, she wanted to paint his hands, with his long, skinny fingers,
with veins bulging out.  His hands were so big that they could hold the
sky.
 

There
was just the right amount of room to the right of Cosmo for two more
people.  She absolutely did not want to put him near Frank because she
knew how bad Frank was for him.  She knew that he would not want to be
near Angie, but since she had only Angie or Frank left, she chose Angie.
 While they did not like one another, they would just have to deal with
being next to each other for this painting, and that was all that there was to
it!

She
painted Angie like the Snow White look-alike she was, groomed to perfection.
  But she also wanted to paint the sadness hidden behind her beauty.
 She wanted to paint the way she was always looking out, as if she had
ordered happiness on a menu in some fine restaurant, and was waiting at a table
for a waiter to bring it to her on a silver platter.

She
left enough space on the right of her sister for one more person, who
undoubtedly would be Frank. As it was four in the morning, she could not
possibly start Frank.  The very early sunlight trickled in through her
window making bright white spots scatter throughout the floor and walls of her
room.  She closed the curtains to make her room almost as dark as Cosmo’s
apartment, collapsed on her bed, and fell instantly asleep. 

********** 

When
Silvia came home later that night, she was relieved to find that Frank seemed
to be in a descent mood, for tonight she had planned on getting him to commit
to the reunion dinner.  She went into the kitchen where he was busily
cooking, sat down at the table, and tried to think of something to say in an
effort to make conversation.  She was treading new ground by attempting to
make conversation with her father.  She could not remember ever having a
conversation with Frank.  Her words always seemed to bounce off of him
when she talked to him, and when he talked to her or anyone else, he spoke in
monologues and left no space for interaction.

As
she watched him move from one side to another side of the room, she realized
for the first time in her life, just how closely he had resembled his mother.
 She used to shuffle around in the same restless, wasteful manner.
 Silvia usually thought of genetics as something that only influences a
person’s physical traits.  She rarely thought of it as influencing
something like the way a person moves through the world.  She wondered if
he had been this way as a boy, but she could not imagine a young boy scrambling
about in this manner.  She remembered she once heard about people becoming
like their parents as they age.  She then wondered if she would become
more like Frank as she grew older.  She hoped that she might become a hard
worker or able to wake up early without an alarm clock like Frank.  But
she hoped that she would not shuffle about the kitchen like he did.  Then
she saw an image of herself as a little old lady doing just that.  She had
the good sense to quickly jerk herself out of the nightmarish fantasy by
sitting up straight and forcing herself to ask Frank about what he was
cooking. 

“Sausage
and peppers,” he replied skeptically, probably because he was wondering why his
daughter had a sudden interest his cooking.  Silvia looked over to the
side of the stove to see some stale looking rolls sitting in a plastic bag that
looked like it might have been re-used several times already.   

“Where
did you buy the rolls, Dad?” 

He
looked at her with squinted confused eyes and said, “Why do you care?”

“I’m
just making conversation,” she said, going over to look at the rolls like she
was actually interested in them.

Frank
looked back at her like he seemed to appreciate her attempt at conversing with
him, as most people stayed away, and he said, “I got them at
Scaffidi’s
,” with a slightly less suspicious tone in his
voice.

“Oh,
isn’t that near the Central Cafe?”

“Yeah,”
said Frank, suspiciousness coming back into his voice.

“That’s
a really nice little place, huh?”

“I
suppose.”

“I
was thinking we could have a nice dinner there after Vince’s graduation.” 
She was ever so vigilant about her wording and her manner of speaking.

“Oh
jeez, are you still on that?”  He took a second away from his cooking to
wave his arm in the air.

“Yeah,
I’m still on that.”  She was careful not to be defensive, even though she
felt a strong urge to be.

“Well,
you should stop wasting your time worrying about Vince.  He’s not worrying
about you.”

Silvia
decided to ignore her father’s attempt to cultivate bad feelings between her
and Vince and persisted on with the one argument that was bound to compel
Frank.

“It
would mean a lot to Mom, you know.”

“How
do you know?”  He turned completely away from his cooking and looked
directly at his daughter. 

“She
suggested it to me.”  Silvia wanted him to know that it was Donna who
suggested the party, but of course, she would never conceal the fact that,
although her mother suggested it, she had recently become resistant to having
any kind of occasion that involved her being in the same room as Frank. 
The look on his face turned from one of indifference to one of curiosity, and
just as he was looking like he might be willing to reason with Silvia, the
smell of burning meat came from the frying pan, and he was forced to turn his
attention back to the sausages.  He turned down the flame and diligently
began turning the sausages over in the pan.  Silvia was untouched by his
sense of alarm of possibly burning his food and she waited patiently until he
was finished doing what he was doing to continue.

“Like
I was saying, Mom was the person who suggested it to me.  She wanted to do
something for Vince’s graduation and thought that having all the
family gather
for a nice dinner would be a really great way
to commemorate the occasion.” 

Another
thought popped into her head, as she saw the look of interest coming through
her father’s eyes.  Maybe he suspected that Donna wanted to get back
together with him and that her suggesting a gathering, where the two of them
would be present, was her way of trying to achieve this goal.  As the
egotist he was, Frank might believe that Donna’s desire for the gathering had
nothing to do with doing something nice for her son, but that her intentions
were to get reunited with the wonderful man she had so hastily and
thoughtlessly left.

“I
thought she never wanted to see me again,” he said raising one of his eyebrows
as though he was cracking a murder mystery. “Now all of a sudden she wants to
see me?”

“Maybe
she’s having a change of heart,” said Silvia, with all the deception and
manipulation she could muster up in one sentence.

“Yeah,
maybe she is,” he said in a self-congratulatory tone of voice.  He put
some sausages and peppers into a roll and grabbed a can of beer from the
refrigerator.

Silvia
let her father take a moment to enjoy his imagined achievement before getting
back to her cause. “Well, I was thinking that the Central Cafe would be perfect
for the occasion, Dad,” she said with a hopeful smile. “What do you
think?”  She knew how much he loved it when anyone, especially his
children, requested his advice or opinion, as they did so very infrequently.

“I
suppose,” he said, shoving some of a sandwich in his mouth.  As he opened
his can of beer and took a sip equivalent to about half of the can, she thought
of saying something to stop him from drinking the beer.  It would lead to
another, followed by another, followed by another, and so on and so on, until
he was throwing his guts up in the bathroom, passing out on the den floor or
fighting with her and Vince.  She wanted to say something to stop this
cycle, but she could not risk annoying him, given her current agenda, so she
kept her mouth shut.  Still, he must have felt her disapproval because he
walked into the den with his beer and sandwich, and in doing so, broke his own
rule of eating outside of the kitchen.

She
did not intend to seem disapproving of him.  In fact, she had grown less
judgmental of him recently, replacing her judging feelings for those of
sympathy.  She remembered the dream that she had last week of a baby boy
crying out in the night for his mother, who, for some mysterious dream reason,
could not be there for him.  It did not take her long after waking to
figure out that the little boy was her father.  Most of her dreams were
forgotten by the time she got out of her bed, but this one stayed with her all
day, with the image playing over and over in her mind.  She wanted to feel
angry with her Grandma Greco for being such a lousy mother to her father and
most likely the primary impetus for his drinking, which in turn, made him be a
lousy father.  She wanted someone to blame.  But then she thought of
how she had just talked to Cosmo about how he should stop blaming Frank for his
problems.  She had to practice what she preached or she would be a
hypocrite. 

She
walked into the room in which her father was sitting in front of the
television, switching channels while he ate the rest of his dinner.  The
volume was turned up too high, as it always was when he watched TV, and Silvia
felt challenged by having to talk over it, but she had no choice.  She
really needed to get a commitment for the reunion dinner from him tonight as
Vince was graduating in less than one week.

“So,
should I make the reservations, then?” she asked.

“Huh?”
he said like he was completely unaware of anything she had said during the past
half hour.

“Should
I make reservations at The Central Café for dinner for all of us for Saturday
night?” 

This
time he pretended that he did not hear her and just continued eating and
switching channels.  So then she used something that she had been saving
for just such an occasion: The fact that his favorite child, Angie, would come
to the gathering with Doug, who Frank had been uncomfortable around since he
had made the
drunk
toast at their wedding.  If he
were able to make a nice presentation at the restaurant and get through the
dinner without making a drunken fool out of himself, it would be a great
opportunity for him to redeem himself in his son-in-laws eyes.

“I
can call now to make the reservations for the seven of us and one baby,” she
said so tactfully.

“Seven?”
he put the remote down, and looked at his daughter. “What do you mean seven
plus a baby?  Angie’s coming?”  He got a glimmer of light in his
face.

“Yeah,”
Silvia said, feeling a great sense of accomplishment for getting his undivided
attention. “She’s really looking forward to it.
too
.” 
Frank did not know Angie well enough to know that she could not possibly be
looking forward to this event.  He was not even aware of the conflict
between Angie and Cosmo that had been going on since they were children. 
He would probably be happy to know of the existence of this conflict.  He
might even pat himself on the back for being partially responsible for them not
liking each other.  It was easy for anyone to conclude that he had played
a crucial part in the separation of his two children by making her his favorite
and him the black sheep.