Wild Roses

by Deb Caletti

  “Oh yes, it is.” I sobbed, just let out these heaves of helplessness. Mom held me.

  “I’m here, okay? Whatever it is. Are you pregnant?”

  “Holy shit, Mom. No,” I said through my crying. I swear, for parents it’s always about sex and drugs. “I haven’t been arrested for trafficking marijuana, either.”

  “Okay, Cass, I’m sorry. You know, what am I supposed to think?”

  I curled up tight inside that blanket. The glass of the snow globe was cold, and I blew on it to warm it up.

  “Should I call Ian’s mom?”

  “Oh, God, no,” I said. “Please don’t do that.”

  Mom sighed. I peeked at her, and saw her just sitting with her chin pointed to the ceiling. She looked so tired. Thin, too. She looked like she was losing too much weight.

  “Ian broke his wrist. It was my fault.”

  “Oh, my God,” she said.

  “It was my fault.”

  “Oh, my God,” she said again.

  “I know.”

  “What happened?”

  I told her the story. She put her arms around me. I could feel her hot breath through the quilt. “Oh, Cassie.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “You didn’t cause it.”

  “That’s not what Dino will think.”

  “That may be true, but it’s not what I think.”

  I came out of the quilt, just a little. She brushed my hair away from my face. She bent down to kiss my forehead. “I’ll always be here for you,” she said. But she didn’t need to say it. Right then, it was something I knew.

  It started like a storm, low rumbling and then louder and louder still until the windows actually rattled and there was a crash of something being broken.

  I told you she would ruin this! Did I not tell you she had to stay away from him?

  And then my mother’s voice, too low to be heard, the rhythms of calm explanation.

  My God. It is over for him! I could have helped him. Things could have been different for him than they were for me. How can I help him now? How?

  I heard my mother then, clearly. His situation is different than yours, my mother said. He’s a boy with options. It’s not the same. You are not the same person.

  I could have made things turn out differently. Look what you people have done. You’ve wrecked him. You want to ruin me.

  His voice was gaining emotion; my mother’s turned pleading.

  This is not about you. This is not about what happened in your life.

  I am stuck here in this nothing city because of you.

  Calm down, my mother said. She was trying not to get angry She was saying those words to herself as much as him, I could tell that, too. You made a choice to be here, my mother said. As much as I did.

  You are all the same. You and that bastard Tiero. You want to see that I am a failure. You want to see me fall.

  I am not doing this, my mother said more loudly. I am not talking to you about any of these things. And I will not accept this kind of behavior.

  Where are you going? He was shouting now. I wondered what I should do. If I should do something. It felt bad; I knew this was bad. Should I leave? Call someone?

  I’m just going out for a while. So that you can calm down.

  Fine! Leave! Run away, you coward.

  I heard her coming up the stairs then. She called for me to come with her, and I did. As we went out the door, we heard the shatter from his office. He had slammed the door so hard that the print above his desk had come crashing to the floor, along with a paperweight and a coffee cup that it brought down with it. I made a strange little list in my head as I buckled my seat belt in Mom’s car, as she turned the key with a shaking hand. All of the things that Dino had shattered. A wineglass. William Tiero’s picture. The painting of Wild Roses. Our lives.

  I spent a few days at my dad’s house. That’s where my mother drove us, to drop me off there. They had some conversation at the door, after she had told me to stay in the car. It was another one of those moments when I would have killed to hear what was said, but I also would have done anything not to hear it, ever. I was having a lot of those times lately, where what I wanted and what I didn’t want were the same thing. I tried without success to keep Mom from going back home. She could stay with Alice, I suggested. Or we could go to a motel somewhere, the two of us, like the time she and I stayed at the Travel Lodge before Dino moved in, when we’d lost power. Yikes—unintentional double meaning, two points for me. The time we lost electricity. Losing power to Dino came later.

  One of the things that had apparently been discussed during the porch powwow was my punishment for the Ian caper. Apparently, I could not be disciplined for ruining his life and his mother’s life and their chance to save their financial future, but they could make me pay for skipping school. They decided that my absence would go unexcused, which meant that I had to stay after school one day for a detention.

  Zebe made fun of me all day after I told her I had to go. I told her I skipped school because I was just sick of being there, but that was all. I couldn’t talk about it any more than I already had. It was one of those things that hurt so much that you needed to keep it safely contained in its little box in your gut, because who knew what might happen if it got out. I could see the awfulness spreading like some noxious gas in a sci-fi movie, poisoning a large city. Or at least, eating up my insides more than it had already. Ian’s mother, Janet, had answered the phone when I had tried to call Ian to see how he was. Hi, Janet, it’s Cassie, I had said. For a moment there was silence. And then, Cassie? Please don’t call here. There’s been enough damage done already. Then there was a click. A click and then silence.

  I paid my dues in detention, sat amongst the coats that reeked of cigarettes and the notebooks with the Led Zeppelin stickers on them, and tried not to feel like I was a nerdy tourist in a Hawaiian shirt who had mistakenly wandered into the wrong part of town. The whole thing was pointless, because my real punishment was happening every moment, missing Ian, being away from him, feeling as if I’d ruined him. I’d gone ahead and loved him, and it destroyed him. At least, that’s how I felt. I understood that they didn’t want me around anymore, but it made life seem black-and-white, flat and one-dimensional. I craved the oxygen and color Ian brought. He had changed life, and now it just couldn’t change back again.

  That night Dad was cooking meatballs, rolling them around in the pan over the heat. He was wearing one of Nannie’s old aprons that had a parade of smiling fruit on it. She sat on one of the kitchen chairs, arranging her collection of salt and pepper shakers that Dad had kept on the windowsill.

  “I just can’t believe the stoners are still listening to Zeppelin,” he said, after I told him my story.

  “They were hoodlums in my day,” Nannie said. “If I missed a day of school, your grandpa would have beaten me silly,” she said to my father. “Kids these days.”

  “Oh, he would not have,” my father said to the meatballs. “He was the biggest softie. He never lifted a hand to you.”

  “Maybe not,” she said.

  “And from what they told me, they couldn’t keep you in school if they tied you to the flag pole.”

  “Top of my class,” she said.

  “You barely graduated.”

  “Maybe not,” she said. She took a pair of chefs with holes in the tops of their hats and paired them up with two glass Dutch girls.

  “Anyway, I’ve done my time,” I said.

  “Let that be a lesson to you,” my father said. “Though who am I to talk? I missed a college Spanish final and nearly flunked the course because your mother and I were having an argument on the front lawn of the foreign-language building. All that upset, and years later I can’t even remember how to ask where the bathroom is.”

  “Quisiera el pollo.” I’d like to have the chicken, is what it really means.

  “See? That’s why we had you.”

  “Top of my class in Spanish,” Nannie s
aid, and we both ignored her.

  “You failed a final. You didn’t wreck someone’s future and their family’s life.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. Did you try to call Ian again? Get the dishes out, these are done.”

  “I’m afraid to call. After what his mom said? I went by his house, just to apologize if nothing else, but no one was there. He must hate me. I keep thinking he’ll try to call, but Mom says he hasn’t. God, it’s just killing me.” It was a relief, at least, to finally be able to talk to Dad about Ian. I went to the cupboard, took out three plates and lined them up on the counter for Dad to dish out the steaming food.

  “Why your mother is still in that house I do not understand,” he said.

  “I don’t know, Dad. Dino’s concert is coming up in only a few weeks. She thinks things will be okay then.”

  “Things were never okay. Things will never be okay. I don’t care if he has the most triumphant concert in the history of concerts. She fell in love with an image.”

  “Well, she knows what he’s like now.”

  “He’s a lunatic. A bastard lunatic liar.”

  “Just like my father,” Nannie said.

  “Your father was a saint,” Dad said to her.

  “He was a sweetie,” she said. “Such a softie.”

  “Anyway, if there is one more incident like that, I’m filing for sole custody and getting a restraining order.”

  “Make your feelings known, Dad. Jeez, come on. I’m a little old for a custody arrangement.”

  “It’s my right as a father. I won’t have you in that mess. She’s not using her brain, and you’re the one getting hurt. I won’t stand for it.”

  “I don’t want things to get worse, Dad. Can we not make this about your rights? Can it be about my needs? You and attorneys and all that crap again … no.”

  “Maybe there’s another way to get that man out of your life,” he said.

  “Mafioso hit man,” I said. “As much as the idea appeals to me …”

  “Nah, prison food is supposed to be terrible. Something else is … happening. Something that may change the way your mother sees things. Grab some forks.”

  “What do you mean?” Okay, I’m sorry. I had brief Child of Divorce Reunion Fantasy Number Twelve Thousand. A meeting of the minds and hearts that occurred on the front porch step. Flash to Mom packing her bags. Flash to her lighting Dino’s compositions on fire, which was maybe getting a little carried away on my part. It’s a tad embarrassing to admit. The child of divorced parents is supposed to be over these things when you reach the age of eight. “Is this about you and Mom?”

  “God, no. Nothing like that. Just, I’m doing what I can to reveal the bigger picture. I don’t know if it’s the right time to tell you. Things are upsetting enough for you right now with that wacko.”

  “Is this my recipe?” Nannie said when Dad placed the plate in front of her. She couldn’t cook to save her life. Her favorite used to be creamed corn, which, I can say with some authority, looks like what a chicken might barf up. Nightmare flashback.

  “I hate it when you do that, Dad. You drop these little hints of knowing and then, bam, clam up,” I said.

  “It’s not very mature of me,” he agreed. He sat down. “I try to do the right thing, but sometimes the wrong thing gets the better of me. The human condition.”

  “If you know something that has to do with my life, I’d appreciate you sharing it with me,” I said.

  He cut a piece of meatball, studied it a while. “It doesn’t have to do with you. Just, I’m sorry, okay? I wish I could solve this mess, but there’s only one person who can do that for you. And she’s on a high wire without a net.”

  “Yeah, and you know she’s not exactly the athletic type,” I said.

  “She’s actually an excellent athlete,” my father said.

  “Thank you very much,” Nannie said.

  Dad and I stayed up late and watched an old Die Hard movie on what must have been a conservative station, because they’d eliminated any hint of swearing. Bombs would be dropping all over and Bruce Willis would face his enemy and say something like, You rascals! Of course, the voice that appeared at those times sounded nothing like his, and his lips were forming different words. Our favorite was when he barely escaped being killed by a landing airplane, and he stood up and remarked, Holy shoot!

  I got ready for bed. I knew I shouldn’t do it, but I tried to call Ian. I only let it ring twice before I hung up. I was missing a connection with him so much, that it helped just dialing that number. Maybe he’d hear the ring and know it was me. Maybe at least he’d know how much I cared. I tried to call Mom, too, but there was no answer.

  “I’m worried about Mom,” I said to Dad when he came into my room to say goodnight.

  “She’s strong, Cassie. I think she can handle things,” he said.

  “I know. But sometimes she doesn’t … I don’t know. See.”

  “She is one of the most logical people I know,” he said. “Even if she isn’t showing it at the moment.”

  He was right about that. “She’s logical, but then suddenly she gets carried away with a burst of passionate feeling,” I said. I was thinking about her own cello playing, her methodical practicing, her sane musicianship. But then I would see her listening to Dino play, the way she closed her eyes and let him bring her to where she couldn’t go herself. Like me, I realized. Great, like Ian and me.

  “It’d be good if you could have passion without it having you,” my father said. He was lost for a moment in his own thoughts. Memories, I’m sure, that he didn’t want to share with me. And then one memory he did want to share. “Remember when Mom cut the bushes into the shapes of animals?”

  “Tried to cut the bushes into the shapes of animals.”

  “Talk about getting carried away. She just had this sudden idea and whacked away at the poor plants. When I got home, they’d been massacred.”

  “One really did look like a rabbit.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. A Picasso rabbit.”

  “And then this one time? She was teaching me to drive,” I said. “We were in Seattle. She was doing really well. Not freaking out or anything. She sat there with her hands in her lap and only pushing her foot to the floor mat when she thought I needed to brake. Then we got onto the freeway. I’m trying to merge, right? And this big truck is coming.”

  “Oh, God,” Dad laughed.

  “She suddenly screams, Oh, shit, FLOOR IT!’ Always good advice for the beginning driver.”

  “I think that’s in the traffic-safety manual,” he said.

  “I practically wet my pants.”

  “Holy shoot!” Dad laughed. He shook his head, but it was a loving shake, not a critical one. It was strange to be talking like that about her, the two of us, but good, too. Nice. You got so used to keeping both parties separate, Mom here, Dad there, trying to be sensitive to everyone’s feelings, that it sometimes got exhausting. No, it always got exhausting. Trying to keep track of the separate piles of emotions and what was to be kept where. Don’t talk to Dad about this part of your life; don’t mention to Mom about that. Dad will be hurt if he knew we had a good time. Mom will be hurt to know I tried something new when she wasn’t there. Dad will be hurt at Mom’s new car/vacation/home/baby/clothes/guinea pig. Mom will be hurt at the things Dad’s family said about her. Even if they told you a thousand times that there was nothing you needed to hide, that they were both okay about sharing all parts of your life (chapter three in the bestselling Divorced Parenting for Dummies), you could still see those brief flashes of feeling pass over their faces. A jealous look, a hurt one. And even if they were sometimes okay at hiding the snide comments, you could still see the feeling there, raw and exposed.

  It was good right then, talking with Dad. Just having everything in one pile and it all being okay. Not having to walk the loyalty tightrope. Just for us all being able to love each other in the complicated ways of a family. For one moment we had that
thing that I will go out on a limb and say that every divorced kid wants, this sense of family that is still family even if apart.

  The possibility of it was sweet, but then it was gone. The human condition again.

  “I worry about her too,” my father said.

  “I know you do.”

  “The thing I wouldn’t tell you?”

  “Yeah?”

  “She doesn’t even know the whole story.”

  “What?”

  “About Dino.”

  I scooted up in bed. Again, I didn’t want to know. A sick warning urge was creeping up my insides, but racing along with it was this adrenaline-fueled desire to hear what he was about to say. Maybe it was the same kind of desire little kids felt with the box of matches in their hands.

  “What? Just tell me.”

  “I know now for sure. He’s not who he says he is.”

  “Who is he then?”

  “I don’t know the whole story, but I know this. There was no Dino Cavalli born in or around Sabbotino Grappa, then or ever.”

  “No way. What about all of those people? They’ve all told their stories. You’ve read them.”

  “I don’t know. Group hysteria. The desire to be part of the greatness. Reporters coming to this small town and livening things up. Maybe they’ve come to believe it themselves. Maybe the attention has just become too much fun to give up.”

  “No. The fig trees, his beautiful mother, the tossing him bread as he played …”

  “Fiction. All fiction. Good fiction, a great story. But a lie.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “Believe it. Cassie, there was no Cavalli family in Sabbotino Grappa.”

  I made him prove it to me, the things he said about Dino. I wanted to believe in Honoria Maretta, and the Bissola sisters, in lemon trees, and a small boy who made a tiny village happy with his playing.

  And apparently the few people of Sabbotino Grappa wanted to believe it too. Whether it happened or not, they were pleased to go along. Same with Edward Reynolds, who must have found out the truth somewhere along the writing of his book. Because there was no Cavalli family in Sabbotino Grappa and there never had been. I didn’t know yet what that information meant to me, or what I would do with it, but I did know one thing: my mother wasn’t the only one who had fallen in love with an image.