The Light of Hidden Flowers (20 page)

“My cooking tour of Tuscany is sounding awfully bourgeois right now.”

“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with seeking out beauty if you can. And God knows Tuscany is beautiful. Nothing wrong with playing it safe and enjoying yourself.”

I’d only known Reina for a few hours and already she had me pegged as a “play it safe” girl.

Reina wended her way down the populated city streets. When she turned down a narrow street, seemingly off the beaten path, I asked her where we were going. “I’ll show you what I do,” she said.

Down the street, left into an alleyway, then right down another street, we reached an area of town with apartments, kids running around, mothers sitting on stoops, men huddled around a fire pit, smoking.

“What’s this?” I asked Reina, though my eyes were trained on a little girl of maybe two years old who was chasing after bigger kids.

“This is what we refer to back home as ‘public housing.’ Not the most desirable place to live, but it’s all these people have. About 50 percent of the population lives in structures resembling these.”

There was a cluster of maybe ten buildings, six stories high. Gray, industrial-looking.

I followed Reina up the three steps and into the first building. She knocked on Apartment #1, but when no one answered, she turned the handle and opened the door, calling “Yoo-hoo. Ciao?” When she saw my worried look, she touched my shoulder. “It’s an office, don’t worry.”

“Giovanni?” Reina called. A dark-haired Italian, maybe forty, came out of the back room. His shirt was open, but while he looked at us, he buttoned up. I wondered if he had been taking a siesta, like I had read about in my guidebook.

Reina held out her hand and said hello to him. They chatted briefly in Italian, then switched to English. “We talked on the phone,” Reina said. “From UNICEF?”

Giovanni brightened as comprehension flooded his face. Of course he remembered.

I stood behind Reina, wondering how many languages she spoke.

Giovanni pointed eagerly to the back room, leading the way. Reina followed him, and I followed her. In the back room were shelves and shelves of UNICEF-stamped boxes.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Eighty boxes of seventy-two freeze-dried meals.”

I did the math. “That’s 5,760 meals.”

“The other boxes hold provisions: medicine, blankets.”

“How does it work?”

Giovanni’s job was to supply a meal to each child under age ten, once per day.

“How has it been going?” Reina asked.

Giovanni pulled out his clipboard. It appeared that he had been keeping track. But upon further inspection, Reina found that an entire shelf of MREs was ready to expire. “These should have been distributed,” she said, showing him the date. He nodded, and said he would double up on the rations so that they didn’t expire. Frustrated, Reina impressed upon him the urgency of dispensing the meals according to the schedule.

When we left, we walked in silence.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah!” Reina said, smiling. “Sorry. Just a little discouraging, seeing meals on the shelf, rather than in the hands of the kids.”

A while later, Reina led me in the direction of stonework and arches, traveling through unassuming side streets and then down a flight of stairs. “The best restaurants are always hidden away,” she whispered.

As I descended the steps, I wondered what the people in my life would think of me now. Dad would be cheering me on:
Look at you, stepping into unfamiliar territory!
Followed by an inspirational quip:
Until you lose sight of the shore, you’ll never discover new oceans!
And Lucas, what would he say?
Surely there is a restaurant in the center of town, one recommended by Zagat, one that submits to regulations for food safety.
And what about Joe? Joe would be about the food:
Let’s try the gnocchi in Gorgonzola sauce. And the fava bean with fennel soup. And what about the pasta with eggplant?
We would eat until we couldn’t breathe.

Reina and I entered a restaurant that from the outside looked like nothing, but from the inside resembled the chambers of a castle. Once we were seated and served a glass of wine, we resumed our conversation.

“Harvard MBA,” I said. “That’s pretty impressive.”

She gave me one of her half smiles I had already grown accustomed to. “I loved it in Boston,” Reina said. “But it was a bit of a stretch for me . . . in terms of ‘pedigree.’”

“What do you mean?”

“I was there on scholarship,” she said, pointing at herself with both index fingers. “Reina from Chattanooga, Tennessee.”

“You must have had some awesome credentials.”

“Straight As . . . and a
ton
of service work. It’s kind of my thing.”

“Still, you made it to Harvard.”

“Very intense,” she said. “We were all vying for the same spots, the same grades. HBS is all about ‘creating leaders’—confident leaders who often have to make decisions in the face of incomplete information.”

“I wouldn’t do too well there,” I admitted. “I’m a ‘gotta have all the facts’ gal before making any decisions.”

“The problem is,” Reina said, “there’s no such thing as knowing all the facts. The times when we think we have complete knowledge, we’re just kidding ourselves.”

I let her profundity settle. “True enough,” I admitted, and thought about my stock research, my charts and graphs. Surely they were complete, weren’t they? But of course they weren’t. There were always variables that I could never know.

“Do you like working for UNICEF?”

She shook her head vigorously. “Love it! I really do. But if I had my druthers, I’d start a project and see it all the way through.”

“It must be frustrating to know that you did your part—sent the care packages—but they’re sitting in a storage room.”

“Yeah, it is,” she agreed. “But . . .”

“But?”

“It’s bad here,” Reina said. “It’s sad. Of course, it’s sad. Anytime kids are disenfranchised, it’s tragic. But there are worse places.” She rolled her eyes. “Trust me, there are worse.”

I nodded. “Asia?”

“Yeah. China, Africa, eastern Europe—there’s plenty of bad to go around. But the worst? India. The girls in India—it breaks my heart.” Reina proceeded to describe the slums of New Delhi. The huts, filth, the water shortage, the sanitation crisis, kids scrounging through garbage for food, little ones orphaned and abandoned, kidnapped and victimized.

“And the ‘lucky’ girls,” she said, shaking her head. “The ones who actually have homes and parents. They’re just marginalized. When a girl is born, it is assumed that she will be sent off to be married, so she’s not really considered the concern of her parents—she’s her husband’s family’s concern, you know?”

“What do the girls do all day, then?”

She nodded. “Exactly what you would imagine. Cook, clean, sew. Take care of the littler siblings.”

“And they’re not educated? Ever?”

“Of course some girls are, always have been. The ones from wealthy families, who are taught by the nuns, sure. But that’s not India, by and large. That’s a small class of girls.”

“That’s sad.” What a pitiful understatement. The thought of a continent’s worth of girls being denied something so utterly vital to my own life, to my very sense of self—made my stomach ache.

“Only recently has the idea of educating them begun to even be considered,” Reina said. “But it’s all up to the fathers. The men are in control, and determine what their daughters will do. The schools that have sprung up recently—from global charity efforts—are filled with girls who have their fathers’ blessings, so there’s at least that. Without the fathers on board, there’s no hope.”

By the time we were about to leave the restaurant, it had just started to fill up. “Dinner starts late here, right?” It was past nine.

“Definitely,” Reina said, “and lasts until ‘indefinitely.’ There’s a big culture of lingering with one’s food and company in this part of the world. Rarely will you see someone walking with a to-go coffee cup or eating on the run. It’s all about taking one’s time.”

“I could get used to that!” I said.

“Well then,” Reina said. “Let’s order dessert.”

Upon the arrival of the
dialogo fra il cioccolato e il pistacchio
—a slice of dense chocolate cake topped with a rich layer of cream and a dome of pistachio flan—both Reina and I smiled like kids.

As we sipped espresso, Reina asked, “You’re single?”

I thought of Lucas, my engagement. I thought of Joe, his divorce, his children. None of that should matter, but still. I had loved Joe for my lifetime, and now I had learned that he would soon be divorced. Did that have any bearing on me? Did I factor in at all?

“I didn’t think that was a trick question,” Reina said with a smile when my pause dragged on.

“I’m engaged,” I said. “Engaged, and in love.”

“That’s great.”

“Only not to the same guy!” I said, laughing clumsily, regretting immediately such a stupidly revealing comment. But Reina took it in stride and, though obviously intrigued, let it slide when it became obvious I wasn’t up for explaining it all just then.

That night, I lay in my Italian hotel room, letting settle the notions that were so brand-new to me: (1) that I was in Sicily, Italy, when only a day ago I was in my life in Alexandria, Virginia; (2) that I had made a friend—a good friend—after all of these years of having no friends at all; (3) that I was technically engaged to a great guy; (4) that I was in contact with Joe Santelli, the love of my life; and (5) that I had learned just hours ago that he was in the process of becoming divorced.

I needed to respond to his Facebook message; I needed to say something to address his news. But how could I, when I didn’t know the full story? What did it mean that he was finalizing his divorce? That his wife took a job traveling a lot? That life had thrown him some curveballs? I needed to know more, but how would I ask? I rose from bed and walked to the window, stared out at the indigo sky, and followed one star to the next: star, star, star, void, and then another star. The
void
: the interruption to the pattern. That was my incomplete information. As Reina had just said earlier, we never truly have all the information we need to make a decision, yet decisions need to be made, nonetheless. Was that the first step toward being brave—hopping from star to star without knowing for sure whether you’d fall into space?

So I would write him, but what would I say? What set of words would I string together that would convey my true sorrow for his loss, while at the same time dropping a hint that perhaps he and I might someday reunite? But what about Lucas? And how would any of that make sense to Joe, seeing as how I’d just told him I was engaged? This level of nuance was years beyond my experience. I barely belonged in Relationships 101—heck, I was auditing the class, not even enrolled—and all of this—engagements, divorce, crafty wording of Facebook messages—was the stuff of Relationships 301. Maybe even a graduate-level class. Right now, I could really use the Chi Omegas from the country club, girls who had been honing their tease talents for two decades. If only I could call them:
Whitney, Brittany, Tiffany . . . DEVON! I could really use your help.
I wasn’t made for this: juggling, batting, the set and the spike. How I felt about Joe’s impending divorce lived in my heart—a pounding, thumping ache. Poor Joe. My mind hadn’t a clue how to translate these feelings into words.

I would think about it tomorrow. I would wait until I was settled in Tuscany, and then I would sit down and write Joe. Maybe the perfect words of my perfect truth would magically fall from my fingertips.

The next morning Reina and I met for breakfast in the hotel lobby. We drank strong coffee and spread jam on brioche. We indulged in a twisted, sugared doughnut that was quite possibly the most delicious fried dough variety I’d ever eaten.

“So last night,” I said. “When you asked if I was involved? Maybe you’ll have some advice for me.” I proceeded to give Reina the short version of the eighteen-year-old-me/Joe story and the thirty-five-year-old-me/Lucas plus Joe/divorced saga.

“I don’t think it’s a matter of ‘picking the right guy,’” she said. “It’s a matter of closing unfinished business. As far as I’m concerned, you and Joe are ‘unfinished,’ and until you figure out how that story ends, you’re not going to ever get past him.”

We were on our second cup of coffee when our cell phones beeped in unison. It was the airline, notifying us of our departure. Four hours from now. When Reina noticed the pallor of my face, she asked if I felt ill.

“I have an irrational fear of flying,” I admitted. “The fact that I made it this far is kind of groundbreaking for me. The last time I tried to fly—three years ago—left me hyperventilating.” I laughed a crazy laugh, failing miserably to make light of my phobia.

“That’s too bad,” Reina sympathized. “And now you’ve got to get on another plane.”

“That’s what the medicine is for,” I said. “To knock myself out. Thus the reason we didn’t meet until we landed.”

“Oh yeah! You were totally zonked.”

“Sorry about that,” I said.