“Thanks.” Jackson smiled. “So, if you don’t mind my saying so, I noticed you’re not wearing a wedding ring. It’s strange that a single person would be interested in this place; that lawn alone is practically a full time job - not to mention what it would take to care for the fruit trees.”
“As long as we’re telling secrets,” said Lily, “I should come clean and tell you that I’m not interested in buying.” She waited to see signs of anger or disappointment on his face, but Jackson just nodded his head. Lily added, “See, I grew up here. We sold this place after my father died in the early eighties. I came because - well, I don’t really know why I came to tell you the truth.”
“No kidding?” said Jackson. “Man, I remember the house I grew up in... I’d love to go back and see it. Why don’t you just go take a look around? I’m sure you can find your way without me.”
“Really? You don’t mind?”
“Not at all. The philodendron - I call him Phil - he wants me to run through that last tune again anyway.” Jackson reached back and swung his guitar around to his chest. “You have fun.”
The house was much smaller than Lily had remembered it, and every room had been redecorated. Someone else’s memories now covered over the sights of Lily’s childhood. The little boy smells of sweat and dirt were gone from the room that Charles, William, and Ricci had shared; the big boy smells of stale pot smoke and sandalwood incense were gone from the room that Louis and Henry had slept in together once Alexander and John had left for college. Lily entered the bedroom she and Iris had shared after the older girls had moved out. She held her breath in anticipation of the onslaught of emotion she expected, only to find that there was nothing there. No peeling butterfly wallpaper, no wistfulness of dreams long forgotten, no Venetian blinds coated with a film of congealed dust, no overwhelming nostalgia. There was only the vague recollection of two distant little girls who tumbled and fumbled their way down the stairs and out the door.
Lily found her way back to a stirring yet unfamiliar tune coming from the sunroom.
“Back so soon?” Jackson paused his playing.
“Yeah,” said Lily. “I think I’ve seen everything there is to see. Hey - I know you don’t like people listening to you, but I have to ask: what was that song you were just playing? It was beautiful.”
“Seriously?” said Jackson. “It’s a new tune I’m working on.”
“You wrote it?”
“Not yet, but I hope to. Songs come to me in bits and pieces, and this one sure is testing my patience. It’s kind of like being schizophrenic, except I hear music instead of voices.”
“What do you do with them, after you’ve written them?”
“Depends,” said Jackson, adjusting the guitar strap across his shoulders. “I record them mostly, send them out to LA or New York, hoping to get an agent, or get something licensed. One day, I’d like to stop pretending to sell real estate.”
“I know what you mean,” said Lily. “I’m pretending to be a communications associate.”
“You’re also pretending to shop for a house.”
“Yes I am,” said Lily, with a chuckle.
“So technically, we’re not even really here right now.”
“Now I’m thoroughly confused.” Lily laughed.
“Hey - before you go - what’s with that cool barn out back?”
“The chicken coop?”
“Is that what it is? I wondered why it was so long and narrow. Hmmm... chickens. Interesting. She - the wife - gave me a key to it and offered me a couple hundred bucks to clean it out.”
“What did they use it for?”
“Nothing,” said Jackson. “The wife said it was one of those things they’d always intended to do, you know? They thought it might be a playhouse, but when their kids were small they didn’t have the money to convert it. She told me that later on they thought about turning it into a guesthouse, or a game room, but as the kids grew up, I guess the marriage got kinda shaky. The rest is divorce court history.”
“That’s too bad,” said Lily. “But if they never used it, what is there to clean out?”
“She told me that when they bought this place, it was still full of junk, but the sellers - I guess that would be your family now that I think about it - the sellers knocked a few hundred bucks off the asking price if she would take it with the contents intact.”
“I have a vague recollection of that,” said Lily. The final act of Capotosti neglect: leaving the mess of memories for someone else to clean out. “We were all kind of discombobulated back then.”
“Discombobulated?” said Jackson. “What a fantastic word. Discombobulated.”
“Word of the day email,” said Lily.
“Discombobulated,” repeated Jackson. “I wonder if I could use it in a song. Would be tough to find a rhyme.”
“Wait just a second,” said Lily. “Are you telling me that my family’s junk is still in that chicken coop after all this time?”
“Hard to say,” said Jackson. “But as far as I can tell, yeah. I have the key here somewhere.”
Lily clenched the tiny skeleton key in her fist as she walked toward the chicken coop. The row of windows across the front that used to taunt Lily with its Jack O’Lantern sneer now only sighed and bore a toothless grin. As she approached, the building seemed to get smaller rather than larger, its perspective skewed by the intervening years. Lily worked the key into the rusted lock on the door, jiggling and shimmying it until the latch popped open. Finally free, the stale dusty air inside lumbered past her, like a stunned and confused prisoner stepping out of solitary confinement. Late afternoon sun poured in through the windows casting spotlights on forgotten boxes and piles of junk that looked immediately familiar: a collection of mismatched ice skates, two bicycle pumps, and a moldy box containing the miniature lean-to from the old family Nativity set that the children put up every year - complete with ceramic figurines of shepherds, sheep, oxen, wise men, and of course the Holy Family. As a child, Lily had spent hours every Christmas season staring at the tiny scene, playing with the figurines, telling baby Jesus that she loved him and that if she had been there, she would have brought him inside and he could have been born in the sunroom, or even on her bed.
When Lily lifted the box, the bottom fell out and the pieces - sheep, angels, Joseph - all came tumbling out. Baby Jesus rolled away and disappeared between two stacks of boxes against the wall, and as Lily moved them to get to him, she noticed a distinct and unmistakable shade of blue peeking out from behind the boxes. Quieter than royal blue, but deeper than powder blue, it was the color of the open sky on a July afternoon. She slipped Jesus into her pocket and stretched out to retrieve Iris’ blue valise.
Without regard for the years of grime coating the concrete, Lily sat down cross-legged and placed the valise on the floor in front of her. The sketch of a young man and woman standing in front of the Eiffel tower was still clearly branded in the lower right corner.
Lily pressed on the latch, and the cover of the valise sprang open. It appeared empty, except for the pink satin lining which was still intact, though faded. Lily raised the valise to her face, and inhaled deeply. Beyond the mold, it still smelled like Saturday morning dance class, like freshly toasted Italian bread dunked in coffee the color of caramel. It smelled like Iris.
Strange that this little valise had sparked Iris’ imagination so long ago. She’d always been captivated by it, and by the idea of faraway places where boys and girls could lustfully wander, have great adventures and see amazing things. Just as strange was the way the valise had always created a sense of abandonment in Lily. How did this tiny construction of plastic, vinyl, and satin become imbued with such power as to send one sister forth and hold another back? If Auntie Rosa had not given Iris the valise, where would she be now? Or, what if she had bought two of them? Would Lily also be living another life in an exotic and remote place, or would she have remained deaf to the beckoning that Iris so clearly heard? Would Lily ha
ve escaped the misery of her life with Joe? Would she have missed the ecstasy of carrying her sweet babies in her belly, and giving them birth? Would she have been spared the agony of watching them walk away? Would that life have been a better one?
She remembered a time when a little girl she knew had lain in that spot, confused and powerless. Why hadn’t she just walked away that day when Henry had first brought her here? Why did she so often seem to stay in situations when anyone else would go, would run and not turn back? And where was that little girl now?
Lily knew that even if she overturned every box, she would not find that child. She was past, disappeared into the folds of time. She existed only because Lily sustained her with thought and memory. She was real once, perhaps, but now she was just a story of what used to be - a story that Lily had nurtured and told herself again and again throughout her life. It was a story that she had used to explain mysteries and rationalize decisions, as though the idea of that child was a discrete and volatile thing with a will of its own, steering Lily this way or that.
She closed the lid of the valise, and held it to her chest as she lay back on the cool concrete and drifted off.
“Hello?” Jackson’s voice startled Lily awake, and in the moment before she realized that decades had passed since she last found herself lying there, she bolted upright. Jackson stood in the doorway, his body a silhouette against the setting sun.
“Whatcha got there?”
“Oh, hi,” said Lily, gathering her composure. “Can you believe it? This used to be mine.” She held the valise up, hoping to distract him, as though he might otherwise see the memories suspended in the air all around her. “Actually, it was my sister’s.”
“Wow... “ said Jackson. “What was her name?”
“Iris.”
“How did she die?”
“Oh! She’s not dead... she lives in Italy.” The thought of Iris dead sent a chill up her spine. She would send her a message as soon as she got home. There was suddenly so much to say.
Jackson extended his hand toward Lily and helped her up.
“May I?” asked Jackson, pointing to Lily’s head. Without waiting for her to answer, he extracted a long sticky cobweb from her hair, and held it up to show her. “How long were you in here, anyway?” He laughed.
“A lifetime,” said Lily.
“I hate to disturb you, but I gotta close up shop here,” said Jackson.
“No - not at all - I’m sorry if I held you up.” Clutching the valise to her chest, Lily asked, “Do you think I could keep this? I mean, technically it belongs to the house. I don’t want to steal it.”
“Clearly, it’s yours.”
“I could pay you for it, if you want.”
“I tell you what,” said Jackson. “Have coffee with me sometime, and we’ll call it even.”
Lily felt a flush to her cheeks. “Deal.”
They stepped back outside into the oblique sunshine.
“Have you ever been?” Jackson asked, locking the chicken coop.
“Where?”
“To Italy. To see your sister.”
“No, not yet.”
“I’ve heard it’s gorgeous,” said Jackson. “I’ve always wanted to go - Italians are best at three of my favorite things: wine, coffee, and bicycles.” Jackson tugged on the padlock, to ensure it was locked. “So how come you’ve never been?”
“I guess I never had the time, or the money, or the freedom... I don’t know, maybe those are all just excuses. It’s a long story.”
“Stories are fun,” said Jackson. “Maybe yours has a chapter with a trip to Italy, but you just haven’t gotten to that part yet.”
“Could be,” said Lily. Holding up the valise, she added, “At least now I have a suitcase.”
Lily and Jackson walked back toward the house, a flurry of insects and dandelion tufts dancing toward dusk, the blue valise gently swinging to and fro at Lily’s side.
13. Iris
Iris stepped into her denim overalls, slipped the straps over her shoulders and hooked up the bib over her T-shirt, feeling quite American indeed. Max would have considered the dungarees the epitome of un-sexiness, and made some disgusting remark about how he wouldn’t get an erection (only he would call it a hard-on) for a week after seeing her dressed like that. Gregorio, not to mention Isabella and dear Cinzia, would have thought them an abominable garment for anyone of a certain social standing, let alone a woman, to be seen in. But Iris felt right at home in her OshKosh overalls; she had been thrilled to stumble upon them at a used clothes stall at the Festa di Primavera, a little country fair just down the road from her house, where she had also bought some plants for her garden. It had been on the first of May, a day which commemorated different things for different people, among them May Day, Labor Day, and Bea’s fiftieth birthday. Iris wondered whether she would be as self-assured and independent as Beatrix when she turned fifty herself. She was working at it, and fortunately still had a few more years to go. Like her mother always said, she’d cross that bridge when she came to it. Over the past several months, her mother - perhaps finally finding an opening for more closeness now that Auntie Rosa was gone, perhaps because she had learned of Iris’s struggles through Lily - had also suggested more proactive ways for her to deal with the challenges of rebuilding her life. Betty Capotosti was always ready to come to the aid of a struggling woman - even it was her own daughter.
The sun was beginning its descent behind the hill as Iris stepped out the door of her little stone house, pausing to drink in the sweet scent of the jasmine climbing over the wrought iron gate, and to allow her computer-weary eyes to rest on the view of the terraced olive groves across the valley. She loved the freedom of working from home, but sometimes forgot when to quit, especially when she was immersed in writing about hotels that enthused her. She took pride in capturing the atmosphere of the properties she inspected in her descriptions, while respecting the three-hundred-word limit – not a simple feat, given her tendency to write on until she had covered every single aspect that might spark an interest in readers. Her goal was to make them crave the deep sense of inner peace and timeless beauty inspired by the Fiesole hills when admired from the rooftop terrace of a particular hotel in Florence, for example; to make them succumb, heart and soul, to the overwhelming romanticism of a fiery sunset over Capri as viewed from the restaurant of a certain charming resort on the Sorrento coast; and, ultimately, to book their accommodations at any of the hotels in the Delightful Hotels and Resorts Italian Collection.
She reached her arms to the sky in a stretch, then touched her fingers to her toes, before sitting down on the steps leading to the garden to lace up her sneakers. Two cats approached: one tiger-striped, the other black and white. They stopped by their empty bowls, crouched on their haunches, front paws daintily composed in front of them, and stared at her.
“Sorry, you two. It’s not time yet,” Iris said, holding her hand out in the vain hope of caressing one of them. The cats spent their days roaming freely about the stone paths and country gardens of the sleepy little neighborhood, stopping by for their fill of food and compliments when they felt like it. “Come on, I’m not asking for much,” Iris said to the pair, who simply looked back at her and blinked. A little love and affection was not easy to come by these days.
Ready to set to work, Iris fetched a pair of clippers from the tool shed and headed straight for her lilac bush. The plant had survived tough times while confined to a pot on the terrace in the hostile company of Max and his cacti, but Iris had continued caring for it throughout the summer and autumn until her move the past winter – a move in which neither Max nor his prickly pears were included. Since sinking its roots into the soil of its permanent home, the lilac had begun to finally thrive, and repaid her with the generous gift of five fragrant blooms.
Iris was conscientious about providing all her plants with proper water and nourishment, but as she carefully clipped away bits of dead wood and suckers from the lilac, she r
ealized that she was not a good pruner. Because she had a hard time recognizing the difference between growth that benefitted a plant and growth that was detrimental to its long-term wellbeing, her clipping was more conservative than recommended by the manuals she consulted. She wondered whether that tendency was part of an ingrained behavioral pattern of hers which might also be responsible for her difficulty in making a clean break with the past.
Sniffing a pale purple bloom, she closed her eyes and thought of Lily, who had emailed her a picture of a grinning Joseph and proud Pierce on their bicycles as they toured the Lilac Festival in Highland Park. The lone bush in Iris’s garden was no match for the scores of varieties that flourished in the park, but its presence helped Iris keep alive some pleasant recollections of her childhood. On more than one occasion, Lily had remarked on Iris’s knack for cultivating the good memories and weeding out the bad, another trait that made it difficult for her to have an objective view of the past. Iris could never see the point of dwelling on past memories that upset her, but at times she wished her tendency was inverted. If, when glancing over a shoulder at the past, Iris could see nothing but pain and disappointment, wouldn’t that inspire her to run headlong into the arms of a more promising future, and never look back?
Since that day when she kicked Max out - Iris still did not like to think of it in such brutal terms, but Lily insisted she force herself to; it was “empowering”, she said – one of her greatest challenges had been to overcome that very tendency. Whenever she thought back on her relationship with Max, her mind inevitably selected memories of the romantic dinners, the spectacular sunsets, the travels, the freedom from rules and routine, and, let’s face it, the hottest sex she had ever been party to. Granted, those mental incursions into what Lily referred to as Iris’s la-la-land usually occurred after a disastrous date with some divorcee who had moved back in with mamma after the breakup, or some hopelessly boring engineer (Liguria was crawling with them, in particular naval engineers, possibly the most tedious sub-species of the profession).
[Iris and Lily 01.0 - 03.0] The Complete Series Page 143