Angela & Julie Scipioni
IRIS & LILY
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Angela Theresa Scipioni and Julie Scipioni McKown
Any unauthorized reproduction in any form is prohibited by law.
Iris & Lily is also available as a printed book, in a three-volume series.
It has also been published in Italy by Bompiani, a division of RCS Libri.
Acknowledgements
Cover art by Pietro Spica
Used with permission
www.pietrospica.it
Lyrics from “Lift Me Up”, “The Path”, “Halfway Round the Moon”
© Rick McKown
Used with permission
www.RickMcKown.com
Contents
Book One
Email Exchange: Windows and Fairy tales
1. Iris
2. Lily
3. Iris
4. Lily
5. Iris
6. Lily
Email Exchange: Going home
7. Iris
8. Lily
9. Iris
10. Lily
11. Iris
12. Lily
13. Iris
14. Lily
Email Exchange: The Farm
15. Iris
16. Lily
17. Iris
18. Lily
Email Exchange: Summer, Cicadas and Cinderella
19. Iris
20. Lily
21. Iris
22. Lily
23. Iris
Email Exchange: Why didn’t you tell me?
24. Lily
25. Iris
26. Lily
27. Iris
28. Lily
29. Iris
30. Lily
31. Iris
Email Exchange: Before you say anything
32. Lily
33. Iris
34. Lily
35. Iris
36. Lily
Email Exchange: There went the bride
Book Two
Email Exchange: Moving on with our girls
1. Iris
2. Lily
3. Iris
4. Lily
5. Iris
6. Lily
Email Exchange: The last time I saw Dad
7. Iris
8. Lily
9. Iris
10. Lily
11. Iris
Email Exchange: Speechless
12. Lily
13. Iris
14. Lily
15. Iris
16. Lily
Email Exchange: Shocked
17. Iris
18. Lily
Email exchange: Be careful what you wish for
Book Three
Email exchange: There’s no escaping the turkey talk
1. Iris
2. Lily
3. Iris
4. Lily
Email Exchange: Chapters and chapters
5. Iris
6. Lily
7. Iris
8. Lily
9. Iris
Email Exchange: The rest of the story
10. Lily
11. Iris
12. Lily
13. Iris
Email Exchange: Glad that’s over
Closing Letters
About the Authors
Book One
To all our sisters, wherever they may be,
and to the little girls who live on in their memories.
From: Iris Capotosti
To: Lily Capotosti
Sent: Sat, December 12, 2009 at 9:31 AM
Subject: Windows
Hi, Lily!
I hope all is well with you. This time of year is pretty crazy for me with all the reports that have to go out before the holidays, but I’ve been promising myself I’d take a break and get caught up with my emails, so here I am!
It’s hard to believe Christmas is only two weeks away, with no snow (or shopping lists!) to remind me. All I can see from my window is a bright sun in a cloudless blue sky, and a green hillside spattered with olive trees. A far cry from the snowy scenes framed by the winter windows of our childhood, isn’t it? Remember getting up on those freezing cold mornings, and hurrying to scratch our names on the frosty panes before the boys could? And the way those ice crystals glittered like diamonds in the sun?
We did have an olive tree of sorts outside one of those windows, though. Remember that Russian olive Mom planted by the lilac bushes, right in front of the kitchen window? Whenever I tackled a stack of dirty dishes, I would stare out at that tree and daydream as I plopped plate after plate into the tired suds. I didn’t know it wasn’t really an olive tree, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that its branches were full of birds, and its name exotic enough to spark fantasies of faraway places. Mom was always pretty enigmatic, but I like to think that tree was her way of letting us know there was another world out there, beyond the realm of the kitchen sink. Then again, maybe she just liked having a tree to look at when she washed the dishes. And maybe it inspired her daydreams, too.
Sometimes I wish I could look out my window and see that Russian olive again, and just for a moment, find myself standing at that kitchen sink. I’d like to take a look around, and see whether I may have left anything behind. Do you ever get that feeling? Like when you’re all ready to go out, and your hand is on the doorknob, but some vague feeling of having forgotten something prevents you from shutting the door?
I might peek upstairs, too, and steal one more look at that bed we shared for so many years. I’m pretty sure I would be able to hear the hushed voices of two little girls huddled in the dark. Do you remember those fairy stories we used to spin as we drifted off to sleep? All I remember about them is that Iris and Lily were always quite beautiful, and very well-loved. Sometimes I find myself wishing we had written them down.
Listen to me ramble on, would you? I guess that’s just Christmas, making me a little homesick for the old days. Enough about me, though. What are you up to?
Love,
Iris
From: Lily Capotosti
To: Iris Capotosti
Sent: Sat, December 12, 2009 at 11:18 AM
Subject: Re: Windows (and the blizzards that obscure them)
Dear Iris:
All you need to do is say the words “Russian Olive” and I’m there, standing in front of the sink, washing dishes, or soaking a totally frozen hunk of ground beef in hot water, trying to thaw it in time to make meatloaf for dinner. (God help the child who forgets to take the meat out of the freezer before going to school.)
We were a study in incongruence, weren’t we? Little girls playing house for real. Poor, but cultured. Unconsciously beautiful - even though we had holes in our socks and underwear and often washed our hair with dishwashing detergent. I don’t even remember washing my face in the mornings. I only remember sitting over the heating grate, with my knees pulled to my chest, and my nightie pulled all the way over them, down to my feet, creating a little tent of warmth, just for me. And bobbing puffed rice cereal in a bowl of milk with my spoon. They never put any prizes in a bag of puffed rice. It was just cereal, totally utilitarian.
But you know, you’re making me crazy with your talk about bright sun and blue sky. Being stuck here in middle-of-nowhere, Wisconsin - in a blizzard no less - is about as far away as I can be from you and your Mediterranean bliss.
; All I can see is white and barren and people scurrying about, clutching their parka hoods tightly to their collars. Maybe that’s the fundamental difference between us – the mere idea of snow and ice makes me feel desolate, while it inspires you to wax sentimental about our childhood.
I suppose the worst part about the way we grew up was that it created the sense that things – good or bad - just happened randomly, and there was nothing we could do about it. (Or maybe that’s just the worst thing I am brave enough to talk about.)
To this day, one of the most challenging questions anyone can ever ask me is, “What do you want?” Damned if I know. But not this. Not to be stuck on this tundra with a boss who is always overcompensating for his small penis (don’t ask me how I know that) and a colleague who would push me under a bus for a corporate pat on the head. In this snow that just won’t stop.
Funny that you remember the icy window panes and I remember the stifling summer heat, with the sound of the night train crossing Coldwater Road. And “Dream Weaver” playing on the radio. And the rickety old fan we had would sweep the room, blessing each of us with a touch of breeze in turn, and it would hum, and the train would wail, and the radio would play, and your voice would trail off as you drifted to sleep, telling me unfinished stories of fairies who would come and bring magic into my life.
The only thing I remember about those little fairies was that they soothed me enough to help me fall asleep, despite my childhood woes. I wonder how they would fare against the grown up monsters I entertain?
They’ve just finished deicing. Looks like it’s time to board. I’ll scratch your name into the window pane somewhere over Lake Michigan.
Love,
Lily
From: Iris Capotosti
To: Lily Capotosti
Sent: Sun, December 13, 2009 at 9:47 AM
Subject: Fairy tales
Dear Lily,
I hope you had a safe trip home. I couldn’t stop thinking about you after I got your email, and you were still on my mind when I went to bed last night. You really sounded like you could use another one of those fairy stories, and before I knew it, I was whispering to you in the dark, just like when we were small. Except instead of lying in bed next to me, you were sitting in a plane.
I started out by describing the host of sparkling fairies pirouetting joyfully in the swirling snow of Wisconsin, and how with a grand jeté, they soared into the sky alongside you as your plane took off. And how as you flew east, they cradled the plane in their arms to keep you safe, and hushed the wind so your journey would be smooth. A simple gesture of a graceful hand was all it took for them to part the clouds, so that you might admire the infinite blue sky above you, and the storybook countryside below, nestled beneath a glittering blanket of freshly fallen snow.
And throughout the entire trip, one very beautiful, very kind fairy with gossamer wings hovered just outside your window. If you looked closely enough, you might have seen her smile in the ice crystals on your window, and you might have seen her loveliness in your own reflection.
Love,
Iris
From: Lily Capotosti
To: Iris Capotosti
Sent: Monday, December 14, 2009 at 10:48 AM
Subject: Re: Fairy tales
Hi, Iris:
Finally home, thank God.
Your note from the other day got me thinking about the old days, so I’ve been lost in thought, too, but not in a way that could be described as reverie. It’s more like a haunting.
Thanks for the story, although I have to say that the idea of ballet-dancing fairies that used to seem so comforting when we were children now seems ridiculous and even a bit cruel. Back then, I was innocent (or should I say ignorant) enough to believe that it might really happen, that a benevolent magical force might surround me, scoop me up, deliver me from the helplessness I felt during most of my childhood. Though I am no longer a child, I can’t say that I feel that much less helpless. Only now, it’s worse because I’m old enough to know that there’s no such thing as magic.
It might have been better if we hadn’t found a way to escape into our imaginations back then. Seems that all we accomplished was to delay the inevitable: that we would eventually have to face the reality of what our life was. Trying to escape now seems at least as ill advised. It would make more sense to me not to try and slip away from the truth but rather chase it down, subdue it, wrest it until it yields that forgotten something that lingers in the back of our minds (yes, I feel it too). If we could go back there and find that thing, could we put it in our pockets and bring it back here with us? Would it change anything at all?
I suppose the only way to find what you’ve forgotten is to recognize what you’ve remembered. Then, like a jigsaw puzzle, you would at least see the shape and color of the missing pieces so you could begin to look for them in the scattered pile of images, thoughts, and feelings.
What else do you remember, Iris?
Love,
Lily
1. Iris
Dawn broke, streaking the sky over Rugby Road with innocent pinks and optimistic reds, soon to be gobbled up by the prevailing overtones of grey. Iris slid down from her bunk above Lily’s and wriggled out of the flannel nightgown Auntie Rosa had given her the previous Christmas, anxious for the new day to begin. Grabbing the garb she had piled in a neat heap at the foot of her bed, she slipped into her clothes in exactly the opposite order of how she had slipped out of them the night before. Socks were the last to come off and the first to go on, as she hopped between the bed and the chilly linoleum floor; next came the thin cotton undershirt she tucked into the frayed waistband of her panties (those she kept on at night); finally, there were the pants and pullover that had paused upon one growing girl’s body after another before coming to rest temporarily on her own.
Iris was never as happy to climb into bed as she was to rise to a new day. The night was dark, and she couldn’t even see Lily in the bunk below her, and if she tried to talk to her, their other sisters would tell her to shut up. The only thing good about sleeping was that you couldn’t do it wrong (except if you had an accident), unlike all the other activities she muddled through in a cloud of confusion, fretting over how to please, at best, or how to go unnoticed, at worst. Being noticed was never good, because that only happened if you made Trouble. The Big Kids, especially the Big Boys, were always making Trouble. As Number Eight in the Capotosti sibling hierarchy, following two boys, three girls then two more boys who were also twins, but not the kind that looked or even acted alike, Iris was considered the oldest of the Little Kids, coming before Lily and the three Little Boys. It was not a role she relished, especially as she began to understand that the Big Kids jealously guarded the privileges that came with age, (and strength) like getting to sit on the sofa instead of the floor when they watched TV, or sitting by the window in the station wagon instead of being crammed into the cargo bed (which always made Iris puke), yet they were pretty clever when it came to shirking any duties that might be borne by those too young or weak to rebel. One time, Iris had made the mistake of telling Marguerite she was bored. Marguerite, who was the youngest of the Big Kids, had taken Iris by the hand, led her to the dining room, and introduced her to the towering pile of laundered diapers on the table waiting to be folded. Marguerite was supposed to be helping Violet, who was two sisters and two brothers older than Iris. Instead, Marguerite set about teaching Iris how to fold, and Iris tried really hard to line up the corners just right, and she must have succeeded, because Violet patted her on the head and said she was a really fast learner and was doing such a good job that she could take over. Iris smiled proudly as she concentrated on smoothing and folding the soft fabric into neat rectangles, while Marguerite and Violet sneaked down to the basement to listen to one of Alexander’s LPs. Lily soon came looking for Iris, who had in turn tried to teach her how to fold, but Lily was either
too little to learn, or just plain didn’t want to, and giggled as she dashed away with a diaper on her head. That had been the last time Iris complained of being bored.
After dressing, Iris peered out the window of the upstairs bedroom of which she occupied a corner. Yawning, she ground her fists into bleary eyes, then picked at the crusts of sleep that clung to her lashes. She vaguely recalled the reassuring feeling of someone passing by to tuck her in as she drifted off to sleep the night before. Had it been her father? Probably not. She couldn’t remember smelling that cologne he wore, or feeling his bristles scratch her cheek. Maybe it had been her mother, or her oldest sister Jasmine; they were the only ones besides Auntie Rosa who knew Iris loved her sheets tucked in so tightly she could barely move her legs. It made her feel so warm and safe, and helped melt away the goosebumps she got while reciting the bedtime prayer that reminded her she might fall asleep, never to wake again.
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray to God my soul to keep.
And if I die before I wake,
I pray to God my soul to take.
Please bless Mommy and Daddy,
Auntie Rosa and Uncle Alfred,
Alexander and John,
Jasmine and Violet and Marguerite,
Louis and Henry,
Me and Lily,
and William and Charles and Richard
…and all the cats and dogs, gerbils and rabbits and living creatures encompassed in her sphere of affection, and of course Grandma Whitacre, who lived far away, and Grandma and Grandpa Capotosti, who lived near but were old and crippled and really needed it. To think that God could whisk away the souls of any or all of them, even Lily’s, while Iris lay sleeping on her pancake mattress always made her shiver with loneliness.
The Complete Series Page 1