The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z. (18 page)

“Come on, Nonna.” Dad’s waiting to help her into the backseat.

I get in on the other side and climb over Ruby and Zig so I can sit next to Nonna.

“Hello, Kirby,” Nonna says. She knows Zig, too, even if she’s forgotten he hates to be called by his real name.

“Hi, Nonna. Good to see you.”

“And who’s your new friend?” Nonna asks, nodding at Ruby.

“You know Ruby, Nonna.”

“Ruby? Are you one of the nurses at Dr. Hebert’s office?”

Ruby bites her lip and shakes her head. I stare straight ahead at the raindrops on the windshield and try not to cry.

“Ruby’s my friend from school, Nonna.” And you were the one who convinced me of that, I think. You were the one who dragged me to her grandmother’s funeral. You told me I had to be there for her, and you don’t even remember her now.

“Well, hello, Ruby, the friend from school.”

“It’s nice to meet you.” Ruby reaches across me to shake Nonna’s hand, and water drips from her sleeve into my lap. Nonna makes a
tsk
ing sound with her tongue.

“You’re going to catch your death of cold, Ruby.” She looks at my wet curls and Zig’s dripping hair. “And so are the two of you. What were you thinking, going out without a raincoat in this weather?”

I don’t have an answer for her. Ian leans over from his seat and takes a picture of the four of us, dripping quietly.

Mom gets in. We ride home. No one speaks.

Except Nonna. She looks out the window. “What a gully-washer!”

CHAPTER 21

T
hanks so much. Everything’s just fine now. Bye, Ruby! Take care, sweetheart!”

Mom watches Ruby get into her mom’s car and ride away.

“Do you want to call your mom?” she asks Zig. “I could give you a ride home.”

“No, I’ll walk; the rain stopped.” He turns to me. “Call me if you need help later.”

“Okay. Thanks.” But I can’t imagine thinking about leaves tonight, and suddenly, sectionals seem a whole lot less important.

Mom waves to Zig before she closes the door. We climb the stairs to the kitchen, where Nonna’s waiting.

“You.” Mom points to me. “Go work on your leaf collection.” She points up the stairs to my bedroom. My father stares at us, three generations of dripping women, with question marks in his eyes.

“Mom, how can I—”

“It’s due tomorrow, right?”

I nod.

“Then go.” Mom flicks her wrist up the stairs over and over, like she’s trying to shake off a bee that’s stinging her. “I need to get dinner started.” She sloshes across the kitchen floor and pulls a package of chicken from the refrigerator. Nonna walks in and sits down on the sofa. Her gray curls are plastered to her forehead. She takes off her wet sweater and drapes it carefully over the back of the couch.

“Let’s see,” Mom says to the refrigerator. “Carrots or broccoli? Carrots, I think.”

Dad looks from Mom, standing in her puddle on the linoleum, to Nonna on the couch. His eyes rest on me.

“Go on upstairs, Gianna,” he says quietly. It’s the quiet that makes me explode.

“Is everyone going to keep pretending nothing just happened?” I storm into the living room. My sneakers make dark tracks on the beige carpet, but I don’t care. “She’s sitting on the couch soaking wet, and everyone’s pretending that’s perfectly normal. It’s not! And I’m not going to go up to my room as if I didn’t just spend the whole afternoon out looking for her.” I point to Nonna on the couch, and she cringes as if I’ve hit her. But I keep going. “It’s not okay! None of this is okay!” I collapse on the sofa sobbing and bury my face in Nonna’s soggy shoulder. After what feels like a long time, I feel a gentle hand on my knee.

I don’t want to talk. I keep my head down, but put my hand on top of hers. It feels like birch bark.

“Come on,
bella
.” She used to call me that when I was little. It means “beautiful” in Italian, and somehow, it makes me feel a little better.

But her voice sounds very, very tired. “Let’s both go get into some dry clothes,” she says.

Nonna pads down the hall to her room, leaving soggy footprints all the way, and I go back through the kitchen and upstairs. Mom chops her carrots into smaller and smaller pieces and doesn’t even look up.

I change into wind pants and a sweatshirt and feel a little better. Maybe I can identify some leaves. I guess I might as well.

I can’t find any of my leaves or books, though. Mom probably threw them out again. My chest tightens and I get madder and madder at her until I remember that I handed her my backpack earlier and everything else is in the den from when I worked with Zig before.

When I open the door to the den, Nonna’s sitting at the table in front of my pile of evergreens.

“I found lots of pine trees.” I sit down next to her and pick up a stem with extra pointy needles.

“That’s not from a pine tree.” She takes it from me and holds it to her nose, inhaling deeply. “This one’s from a balsam fir.” She turns it in her hand, and some of the needles fall to the table. Nonna frowns. “A balsam fir that’s been dead for a while. Where did you get this sample?”

“From the Christmas wreath I made in the after-school program last year. The one hanging on my closet door.”

“You still have the Christmas wreath on your door?” Nonna raises her eyebrows.

“Well, I was going to take it down, but I kept forgetting, and since it’s already October . . .”

Nonna smiles and smells the needles again. Aren’t they pricking her nose? She picks up my pencil, scribbles into my notebook, and hands it to me. A poem.

I miss you in the summer,
I miss you in the fall, some,
But specially at Christmas time,
I pine, fir, yew, and balsam.

I groan. “This sounds like one of Ian’s riddles. Or a Dad joke.”

“I heard that.” Dad closes the door behind him and pulls up a chair. “Listen,” he says. “I ordered a pizza.”

“Pizza from a store?
Che porcherie!
” Food for pigs, she says. Nonna gets up and heads for the kitchen. “I’m getting some tea, and then I’ll be back to help you, Gianna. Store pizza . . . ay-yay-ay.”

“I thought Mom was making that chicken.” I pick up my pencil and start doodling Christmas trees around Nonna’s poem.

“Mom needed a little time alone.”

“She’s crying, isn’t she?” The only other time I’ve ever seen Mom cry was when her best friend from high school died of breast cancer three years ago. We did the calling hours here. Mom zipped around the house with cold-cut platters and cookie trays all day long and scoured the kitchen counter until it gleamed when everyone left. Then she put the sponge down and cried for half an hour.

“She’s worn out.” Dad picks up the balsam fir, and the rest of the needles fall. He twirls the twig between his fingers. I take it away and put it down.

“Maybe she wouldn’t have to cry if she’d talk about what’s wrong once in a while.”

“Your mom’s doing her best with this, Gee, she really is. Mom likes answers. And right now, everything about Nonna is just a great big question.”

“So she takes it out on me.” I break the twig in half.

“She doesn’t mean to.” Dad sighs. “She’ll come around. She just needs time to deal with this in her own way. Then she’ll be able to help you through it too.”

The doorbell rings. “Pizza must be here.” He pulls his wallet from his pocket and stands. “Be patient with her, Gee. She’ll be back.” He leaves to pay for the pizza.

Nonna shuffles back in with her tea, sets it down, and picks up another evergreen sample.

“Now this one,” she says, holding up its lacy design. “This one is from a cedar tree. My grandmother—that’s your great-great-grandmother—told me she made cedar tea when her mother had cholera back in the 1850s. They had tried all kinds of remedies, but it was the cedar tea that finally cured her.”

Magic leaves. I would have been interested in this leaf collection a whole lot earlier if I’d known about the magic ones.

I wonder what would happen if I slipped some cedar into Nonna’s tea.

“Dinner!” Dad calls from the kitchen. Nonna picks up her cup and leaves before I can find out.

CHAPTER 22

D
inner is quiet. Only Ian talks. He just got a new Geo-Genius electronic map.

“Gianna, know what the state fish of Hawaii is called?” I shake my head.

“It’s the huma huma nuku nuku apua.” He emphasizes every syllable, especially the last one. “Hooma-Hooma-Nooka-Nooka-Wah-Pa-Wah-
AH
!”

Normally, we’d all make jokes and ask Ian to spell that name. Tonight, all he gets is a little chuckle from Nonna.

“Which state is called the Show Me State?”

“Pennsylvania?” Mom guesses. Her eyes are still red, but she’s eating her pizza.

“Nope. Missouri.” Ian grins like he’s just won the world geography bee championship.

We take turns guessing the state bird of Idaho, the state motto of Kentucky, and the state tree of Vermont. We guess everything wrong. I suppose some days are like that.

Finally, I finish my pizza and get up to clear my plate. “I’m going to bed.”

“Gianna, you—,” my mother begins, but my father cuts her off.

“Good night.”

“Good night,
bella.
” Nonna holds out her hand, and I take it to lean in and kiss her on the cheek before heading upstairs.

I’m just pulling my oversized Monet
Water Lilies
T-shirt over my head when Mom comes in and plops down on the big chair next to my bed. She moves a few stuffed animals to make room, and I squeeze in beside her.

“I guess you know Nonna’s condition is serious.” She picks up my stuffed kangaroo, Mabel, and pulls her baby out of her pouch.

“I knew before you did.” I take Mabel from her and stuff the joey back in Mabel’s pocket where it belongs.

“I knew, Gianna. I’ve known for months.”

“Months?”

She nods. “I just didn’t want to deal with it until we found out for sure. I guess I kept telling myself that if we just went about our business, things would get better.”

“They didn’t.”

“I know. And I see that now.” She picks up Betty, my stuffed Orca whale, and starts playing with her dorsal fin. Finally, she looks up at me. “You realize that if Nonna does have Alzheimer’s—”

“She thinks she does.”

“I know. And if she’s right, it means . . .” She picks up Mabel again, in her other hand. It’s a two-animal discussion. Mom takes a deep breath. “She’s going to keep slipping away from us, Gee. The writer Elie Wiesel says Alzheimer’s disease is like taking a book and ripping out the pages one at a time until all that’s left is a cover.” She arranges Mabel and Betty on the arm of the chair and looks up at me. “It hurts to think about it.”

I nod. “I know. I’m scared she’s going to drift off and not come back.”

Mom’s eyes are wet. “Someday, she will.” She takes my hand. “But for now, we’re going to do what we can to keep her here with us and keep her safe. Dad’s going to the hardware store tomorrow to get an automatic shutoff switch for the stove so it will turn itself off after a couple of hours if it’s left on. And we’re going to get an alarm for the doors so we know if Nonna’s going out.”

“You’re going to keep her locked inside? That’ll kill her, Mom.”

“No, no, no . . . But we’ll know when she’s going and where she’s going, so we can help her get home if she needs help.”

“She’s going to need a lot of help, isn’t she?” I ask. Mom stands up and kisses me on the head.

“She has the best helper anyone’s ever known. You two are kindred spirits. I know you’ll be there for her. And we’ll be here for you. Now get into bed.”

“I can’t—I’ve still got homework and I have to—”

“Into bed. It’s after eleven.”

“But Mom—”

“Gianna, you’re already exhausted. Go to bed.”

I hate it, but she’s right. There’s no way I can finish identifying those leaves tonight anyway. I’m too tired even to argue.

She scoops up a stack of notebooks that spilled across the floor when I tripped over them on my way in.

“It looks like a tornado hit this room.”

“Do you know what state has the most tornadoes, on average, per year?”

“No, but I know someone who does. . . . Want me to call him up here?” She grins at me.