The Light of Hidden Flowers

by Jennifer Handford

  At the most inconvenient times, I remembered my father with a keenness that nearly buckled my knees. Dad, Dad, Dad, I murmured, reaching for the charm of St. Brigid that hung around my neck. I closed my eyes and let the pain of missing him prick pins on my skin.

  Healing was proving to be a sneaky, power-hungry control freak who could have made my life easier all at once, but instead doled out my therapy like a close-fisted welfare worker in charge of the food stamps. Here’s just enough to get you by, she’d say, handing me my first voucher: Anger. And when I was finished with Anger, I sold it for a loss and bought high on Love—a poor strategy for a seasoned stock picker like me, except for the fact that I knew sometimes you had to sell your losers and buy high to join the winners. I would profit from having Dad and his love on my side.

  There were five steps to boarding the plane, my counselor, Susan McGillis, had told me. Count them, cross them off, reward yourself for making it to the next step. “Tell me the steps,” she’d said at my last session.

  “My first step is to choose a destination and to buy an airline ticket.” Check.

  “My second step is to pack my suitcase,” I said. Check. I reported to her how I’d taken more than two weeks to pack it expertly, to fold my travel clothes—researched and purchased at REI—into perfect little squares; how my waterproof, bug-proof UV blouses and sweatshirts were arranged by outfit; how all colors coordinated with each other, so as to promote a mix-and-mingle attitude. How my quick-drying, microbe-material shirts could easily be washed in a sink, if need be. I told her how I’d packed my toiletries, my first aid kit, my electricity converters, and Tide stain sticks.

  “My third step is to get to the airport,” I now told myself.

  I thought of Lucas, my known quantity, a good man who had been patient with me.

  “Two weeks,” I told him, in my most comforting voice. “Two weeks and then I’ll be back to work and back to you.”

  “Get it out of your system,” Lucas said supportively, as though I were trying to detoxify the sugar from my blood.

  I had texted Susan when I got inside the terminal. She had texted back her unwavering Check!

  My fourth step was to check in and to process through security. There was a part of me that secretly hoped I’d measured my three-ounce liquids incorrectly, that my pocketknife had jumped from my suitcase to my shoulder bag, that a security tag sewn into my pants would alarm TSA so that I’d need to be searched, and in the process, miss my plane. But security was a breeze—I was x-rayed and cleared and at the gate, lickety-split.

  My fifth step was to board the plane. At the thought of this my heart seized, like a forearm in a blood pressure cuff, constricted to the point of panic. In just a few moments, they would call for boarding.

  The alarm on my phone buzzed, reminding me that it was time to take my prescription medication, a sedative so strong it made my old Xanax seem like a baby aspirin by comparison. Susan and I had done a trial run with this medication and within an hour of taking it, I was knocked out in a dopey daze. I worried that taking the pill too early would put me in peril, should the plane run into a delay, such as a weather setback or runway change. I had no choice, though. I wasn’t capable of boarding the plane unmedicated, and I knew it. I took the gamble, and swallowed the pill.

  Minutes later, the flight attendant activated her microphone and announced to the waiting passengers that boarding would begin. In a cottony daze, I walked with the herd toward the flight attendant and through the turnstile and into the long tunnel that led to the plane. While the airport had been as chilly as a walk-in refrigerator, the tunnel was jungle muggy. I closed my eyes and practiced the techniques that Susan had taught me: Inhale through the nose 2-3-4, exhale through the mouth 5-6-7-8. Inhale 2-3-4, exhale 5-6-7-8.

  When the passageway came to an end and the airplane was in front of me, I halted and stared down through the crack to the tarmac. My last glimmer of solid ground. I recited the statistics I knew by heart: (1) flying was twenty-two times safer than traveling by car; (2) approximately twenty-one thousand people died on the road in the United States in a six-month period—approximately the same number of all commercial air-travel fatalities worldwide in forty years; (3) more than three million people flew every day; and (4) a Boeing aircraft took off or landed every two seconds somewhere in the world—all day, every day.

  But I also knew that my fear of flying couldn’t be overcome with data.

  I lifted my right foot and bridged the chasm between the tunnel and the plane, leaned into my now planted foot, and entered the aircraft.

  “Welcome aboard!” the flight attendant chimed.

  In my milky stupor, I said, “Same to you!”

  I found my seat, an aisle seat, as recommended by Susan—more air, she said. I texted her and she texted back, and then I pulled out my on-board checklist.

  1. Buckle up.

  2. Earbuds in, iPod activated, soothing music playing.

  3. Fluffy pillow across the chest.

  4. Water bottle by side.

  5. Eye mask on.

  6. Commence breathing exercises.

  I was on my third breathing sequence when I heard the flight attendant announce our journey. “Welcome aboard Flight 823 en route to Florence’s Firenze airport. The flight will be approximately eight hours.”

  In the dark, cloudy world under my eye mask and the medication, I flinched when I heard my cell phone trill, alerting me to the fact that (1) I had an e-mail, and (2) I had forgotten to power down my phone. I lifted my eye mask and blinked frenziedly to clear my vision. I slid my thumb across the screen and opened my in-box.

  A Facebook message from Joe.

  I stared at his name. J-O-E. In my opaque blur, I considered the entirety of his name: J plus two vowels? I blinked more, and tried to tap on Joe’s name. The message: “Missy, how exciting that you’re off to Italy. Send me some messages and post some photos. I would love to see where you are.”

  He would love to see where I are . . . am! A happy, goofy grin swept over my face.

  “I’ve been to Italy a number of times. Beautiful country, but you never get beyond seeing the Carabinieri and their machine guns right in a Roman square.”

  Carabinieri . . . machine guns . . . carabinieri—carbonara. Guns, pasta, eggs, bacon.

  “Safe travels!! And PS—What exciting news that you are engaged.”

  Oh yeah . . . Lucas. Gonna marry Lucas.

  “I’m so happy for you. In case I haven’t mentioned it, I’m about to leave ‘Club Marriage.’”

  What? My eyes spread wide, but the weight of the lids dragged them down, little monsters tugging on the shades.

  “After fourteen years, my wife has left me.”

  What? With my right hand, I slapped my cheek, forced my lids to comply.

  “She has taken a job that requires a ton of travel, so we haven’t seen her much for the last year or so.”

  What? Joe alone, a single dad with three kids?

  “The kids and I are coping, but of course it’s difficult.”

  What? What do you eat for dinner? Let me cook for you and your three beautiful children. I’ll make you a delicious cioppino with a giant crusty loaf of bread. And what about the kids, what do they like? Chicken fingers, grilled cheese, Mickey Mouse–shaped pancakes?

  “There’s plenty of blame to go around. Life has thrown me some curveballs, and she’s gotten hurt because of it.”

  What? What sort of curveballs?

  “She decided she had had enough of being a marine wife. She wanted to try it alone.”

  What? Why would anyone want to go through life without you? Let me get this straight: She left you?

  “Sorry I hadn’t mentioned it. Up until now, we were just separated.”

  All these months we had been talking, Joe had been separated.

>   “Our divorce will be finalized in a matter of weeks. I hope this news doesn’t depress you. I just wanted to let you know.”

  Those were the last words I read before I succumbed to my self-medicated sleep.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  I awoke to gray darkness, daylight obscured, only the low glow of book lights and backlit Kindles. Quiet, except for the heavy, ceaseless thunder of the jet pushing through the air. In the galley, the flight attendants chatted soundlessly with each other, flipped through magazines. I breathed carefully and quietly, as though I were hiding from an intruder in the bedroom closet. For a few minutes I just stared into the leaden air and processed what I knew: I had successfully boarded a plane to Italy. I had taken my pill and drunk my water and listened to my music and slept. So far, so good. At this hour, we were halfway there. We had been in the air for a good four hours.

  Joe! It came to me like an ice cube down my back. The last message I read was from Joe and, perhaps it was just my imagination, but I was pretty sure he said he was getting divorced. Joe, divorced. Me, engaged. My pulse quickened, bile rose in my throat.

  Could that be right? I reached for my phone. It was powered down. Was I allowed to turn it on in airplane mode? I wasn’t sure. My heart pushed on the accelerator; my stomach rushed to catch up.

  I counted the beats of my pulse for ten seconds. My breathing was a little fast, but nothing too worrisome. I eyed my neighbor, but she was fast asleep, as was the man in the window seat.

  As much as I wanted to hover in the sticky middle ground of nighttime and post-medication, as greatly as I wished to think about Joe and his jaw-dropping news, as desperately as I craved to fit all the pieces of my strange life together, I knew I had to do as Susan instructed me to do: take another pill. “Even if you’re feeling calm, take the pill.”

  I took the pill, chugged some water. I thought of Joe, his divorce, our homecoming dance, my Jessica McClintock pink dress, the itchy wrist corsage, Joe in his tux. I pondered Lucas, his spreadsheets and joint tax return, his unsalted food, his exceptionally shiny dress shoes. I remembered Dad, his vibrant expressions, giant dentures, and slaps on the back. “A beautiful mind, you have, a beautiful mind.” In no time, I was back in the murky black forest.

  When I awoke for the second time, the plane had just touched down, I guessed, as the passengers were agitated to the point of near hysteria. I opened my water bottle and guzzled half of it. I listened as some passengers yelled at the flight attendants, shaking their arms in the air. All around me, passengers were punching wildly into their cell phones, making calls, texting.

  I rubbed at my eyes. “Hi,” I said to my neighbor, an intense girl of maybe twenty-five, pounding away on her BlackBerry. A beautiful girl with flawless skin, turquoise eyes, and a thick ponytail of golden hair. She wore dark skinny jeans and a filmy coral blouse. Michael Kors flats hung from her toes. “Are we here?”

  “If by ‘here,’ you mean Catania.”

  My stomach churned. A wave of nausea rose in me. “What? We’re not in Florence—the Firenze airport?”

  “Our plane was having a fuel problem. The pilot wanted to land to have the mechanics check it out.”

  I looked around wildly, out the small window. “So we landed . . . where?”

  “Catania airport. Sicily.”

  My mind floated to my globe, my atlas. “We’re down south?”

  “Just a waterway across from Libya.”

  “How do you know?”

  “How do I know where we are?” she asked, though her eyes were smiling. “Or how do I know that we’re a waterway across from Libya?”

  I chugged at my water bottle. “Either,” I said.

  “I travel 250 days of the year. I’ve spent time in this region.”

  My chest began to ache like a piece of hard candy was lodged in my throat. “What’s going to happen? Do we just stay put on the plane? Will we be back in the air in no time?”

  She smiled again. While the anxiety was arranging his meaty fists around my neck, my neighbor was as calm as could be. “Most likely.”

  A while later, the flight attendant made some announcements.

  “The plane is fine—technically—but the mechanics want to replace a part, a part that won’t be in until late tonight. The bad news is that we won’t be able to take off again until tomorrow.” En masse, the passengers moaned. “The good news is that the airline is willing to compensate you for being patient. That’s the key word,” she said, pointing her finger at each of us as if we were unruly schoolchildren. “We need you to be patient and flexible and just consider this as a little detour in your grand adventure. We’re putting you up for the night at Novotel hotel. We’re giving you money for dinner. Tomorrow, you’ll wake, have breakfast, and by the time you’re fat and happy, we’ll have texted each of you to instruct you as to the time of our takeoff. Capisce?”

  Another chorus of moans, no one willing to lead the way in the patient and flexible department.

  My hands trembled and my breathing sputtered like a car engine ready to stall—in, out, in, out. Deviating from the schedule was my kryptonite. On top of that, an unexpected layover meant boarding another plane. I was considering the possibility of bus travel when my neighbor said, “Want to get a drink?”

  “Me?” I asked. She nodded. “Yeah, okay. That’d be great.” Exhale 5-6-7-8.

  Her name was Reina Shephard, and she was twenty-eight years old. She graduated with her MBA from Harvard Business School, which she referred to exclusively as HBS, and now worked for UNICEF. The title on her business card read VP INTERNATIONAL LIAISON PUBLIC RELATIONS. Reina ordered a bottle of Bianco della Valdinievole, a typical white wine from the region, she told me, and a plate of antipasti del mare, appetizers from the sea, including anchovies, octopus, and mussels. I snapped a photo with my phone and jotted down the name of the wine. While my phone was open, I read the message again from Joe. It said what I thought it said: Joe Santelli was going through a divorce.

  Reina told me that she’d been to over thirty countries in the last three years. That she’d fallen ill with dysentery from eating lettuce in Turkey, from drinking tap water in France—“Of all places!” she exclaimed. “Only drink from bottles,” she warned, “even in ‘First World’ countries.” For this she made dubious air quotes.

  After our drinks and appetizers, Reina led me down the Via Patania to a quaint bar named Café Ambrosio. More living room than tavern, it was rich with plush sofa chairs dotted with overstuffed pillows, walls lined with bookshelves, and high vaulted ceilings with exposed oak beams. On the end tables were foreign newspapers and books written in various languages. Golden votive candles flickered in glass containers. On the bulletin board were announcements and posters, fanning out like leaves, advertising literary events and music concerts, theater in the street. This detour that had nearly thrown me into a panic had already proved to be the most interesting few hours in my life. The thought that I was in Italy—somewhere in Italy—and not Alexandria, Virginia, astonished me. From this moment in time, I was no longer hemmed in by my parochial life, my triangulated space of home—office—Dad’s. From this moment on, I could add to my vernacular: When I was in Sicily . . .

  Reina ordered us two glasses of chilled white wine. When I took a sip, I detected a note of sweetness. “What’s this?”

  “Almond wine,” she said. “It’s a regional specialty.”

  We settled into two soft chairs and stared over the candlelight at each other. “What exactly do you do in these countries?” I asked.

  Reina danced her head shoulder to shoulder as if to say, How to explain my job? “The mission of UNICEF is to improve the lives of children, through nutrition and environmental matters, equality issues for girls, HIV/AIDs treatment and prevention, protecting them from abuse and exploitation.”

  “Why are you on your way to Tuscany, then? Italy’s a First World coun
try.”

  Reina issued an ironic laugh. “Italy is postcard gorgeous, the food is delectable, the people are vibrant, the culture and scenery awe-inspiring, but believe it or not, Italy has the highest percentage of children living below the poverty line of twenty-five European nations.”

  “You’re kidding. I thought Italians loved children.”

  “Hundreds of thousands of children go hungry every day. One in two minors in Italy lives in poverty—that means they only eat a ‘decent’ meal once every two days.”

  I circled that statistic, trying to grasp it: children in a nation of food-loving people, going hungry. “Why is that? It’s Italy. The food!”

  Reina shrugged. “It’s mostly a structural issue,” she said flatly, pausing to take a hearty sip of her wine. “The social infrastructure, if you will, is poor. We could make the problem go away, if only it were a priority among the government officials.”

  I shook my head again. “I just can’t believe it,” I said. “Italy is Europe’s third-largest economy.” I had just read this in my guidebook.

  “Yeah, but Italy only allocates about 1 percent of its GDP to services like public child care—which of course would help parents go to work and feed their kids.”

  “Where are these children? In the countryside or in the cities?”

  “About a third of them are right here, in Sicily.”

  “Then why were you headed to Tuscany?”

  “Symposium on hunger,” she said wryly. “A bunch of experts sitting around stuffing themselves while they talk about starving children.”

  “I wish there was something we could do.”

  “Are you up for a walk?”

  “Definitely,” I said. “But can you hold on one sec? I just need to send a message. The Wi-Fi should work here, right?”

  Reina nodded while I pulled up Joe’s Facebook message. In my mind, I drafted a response: “Joe, wow, I don’t know what to say . . .” And clearly, I didn’t know what to say, not a clue. Joe’s divorce shouldn’t mean much to me, but of course it did because, if I was being honest with myself, I had to admit that his availability was what I had wanted my entire life. But still, I was in Italy, I was engaged to Lucas, I was experimenting for the first time in my life with being brave. This was hardly the moment to time-travel back to high school.