“What the hell is she doing?” Wes says. We hang back a little and watch the rest of them digging around this tree.
“I knew it!” Aunt Rose says, with a smug expression.
We can barely make out R+K and A+M Forever in the middle of a faint heart shape at the base of the tree.
“Oh my God, Rose. I completely forgot about our forever tree.”
We let Gram and Aunt Rose have a lucid sister moment standing in front of the tree, whispering and giggling, with water up to their ankles.
“Come on, girls, let’s get a photo,” Dad says, pulling his bee out of his pocket. Gram puts her arm around her big sister.
“Rockettes,” she shouts. They manage to kick up their legs as Dad takes the picture. It’s as if Bled’s magical properties have just swallowed up six decades.
On the way back to the boats, we pass a public restroom. “Hey, Janie, you see that bathroom over there?” Gram says.
“Yeah, Gram. I don’t have to go.”
“I just wanted to let you know that’s where we conceived your mother.”
A chorus of yuck and too much information and classy Assy rings out.
“That explains a lot,” Uncle Billy says.
We spread out and crank jazz music on the coach ride from Slovenia to Rome. As we pass through the burnt oranges and deep greens of the Tuscan countryside, we get a text from Eddie.
Astrid and Family, I thought you should know that our lovely dancer passed away this morning in her sleep. Holly had hoped to hold on a little longer. Services are tomorrow on the ship. So sorry to deliver the news during your travels. Eddie
Everybody looks at Janie.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen this way,” she says, with tears streaming down her face.
Marshall texts us a couple of hours later.
All, I am heartbroken. Holly was my best friend and my light. Even at her sickest, she showed me how to be a better man. Thank you for giving Holly a wonderful last hurrah and for allowing her the dignity of one last dance. And most of all, thank you, Janie, for being the friend Holly needed and deserved. You are an incredible young woman. Don’t you dare change. We need more pure spirits like you and Holly on this earth. I plan to fly home from Asia to be with Holly’s family. Please stay in touch. Love, Marshall (and Holly)
As sad as I am that Holly is gone, I’m glad she’s free of the body that betrayed her, just like Skinny Dave. I try to comfort Janie by telling her how unique she is in a world where most people, myself included, don’t know how to treat the dying. She soaks my shirt with her tears and tells me it wasn’t like that. She just liked Holly.
The bus is silent the rest of the trip.
SEVENTEEN
DAD AND I share the same first impression of Rome: The drivers are lunatics. My second impression is that Rome is our kind of city. Start with art, shoes, and food, and throw in Gram and Bob’s favorite jazz singer, a lady named Celia Hobbes, and we’re all happy to be here.
Our hotel sits at the top of the Spanish Steps. Gram wants to spend a few hours of alone time with each one of us while we’re in Rome. She picks Janie first, probably because she feels bad Aunt Mary ditched her own child and because Janie’s still pretty shaken up about Holly.
Mom, Dad, Jeb, and I embark on a whirlwind sightseeing tour. We walk at a fast clip, the way we did in the old days when we took family trips to boring places with too much rich history.
“This is a strange crumbly formation,” I say as we wander into some ancient ruins.
“This, Maddie, is the Roman Forum. My God, look at this.” Dad gets down on his knees and touches the ground. “It’s utterly amazing. The Romans constructed roads and hydraulic systems two thousand years ago.” Dad can barely contain his excitement.
“Okay, even I’m blown away by this,” Jeb says when we get to the Colosseum.
Two guys dressed as gladiators stalk us until we take a family picture with them.
If the lava tube felt mystical and energizing in a cool, spiritual way, the Roman Colosseum feels mystical in a terrifying, bad-demon, sinister way. It’s like I can sense the screaming souls of the people ripped apart by lions. I shriek.
“What the hell, Maddie?” Jeb jumps and falls onto a slab of stone.
“I felt something graze my leg. I think it was a giant rat.”
“Moron, it’s a cat.” Jeb points to a scraggly orange cat with dead eyes.
“Look, guys. I guess they don’t do a lot of spaying and neutering in Italy.” Mom nods toward a swarm of cats pacing and lounging behind a rickety gate.
“Hey, kids, maybe they’re reincarnated from the lions they kept chained here, ready for battle.”
“Stop, Dad, that’s annoying,” I say, but part of me wonders if he’s onto something. Cats creep me out with their claws and sneaky prowling.
“Can we go?” I say.
We track down the fake gladiators and pay thirty bucks for a five-by-seven photo of the four of us half-smiling. With everything that happened in ancient Rome, it ends here with a cheesy souvenir photo.
It only takes pit stops in four piazzas for us to realize they’re pretty much all the same. But we discover the true draw of these cobblestoned squares: gelato. We sit four in a row on the edge of a fountain.
“I gotta say, kids, I’m proud of you two.” Dad sets down his gelato cup and puts his arms around us. Mom jumps up and fumbles in her bag. “None of this has been easy, but you’re both going with the flow.” Dad pats us on our backs.
“Thanks, bro,” Jeb says. I stifle a laugh.
“Let’s do a selfie.” Mom has wrestled her bee out of her bag, and plops herself down on Dad’s lap.
“Mom, you have wicked BO,” Jeb says.
“I’m sorry, it’s hot.” She clicks the bee and gets the top of our heads.
“Well, there’s a memory,” Jeb says.
Mom takes out a lipstick and applies it to her lips and mine. Jeb grabs the bee and takes a bunch of pictures.
“We’ll title this one Italians make fun of loser Americans taking endless selfies,” I say.
“Onward and upward.” Dad gets up and dabs at the giant gelato stain on his golf shirt.
Mom and I have had it with the ancient rubble piles and creepy cats. We send the nerd archaeologist and his sidekick on their way, and sniff out the unmistakable scent of soft Italian leather.
We try on gorgeous Italian shoes in a little shop. I am confident nobody at college will own these shoes, and I will stand out as Maddie Levine, shoe goddess. Mom walks over with a low-heeled black pump.
“Is this not Gram’s dream shoe?”
“She’ll love it. You have to get them for her.”
Mom’s face drops. She staggers slightly, then grabs the edge of a display case and pulls it to the ground as her knees buckle. It happens in slow motion. By the time I realize what’s going on, she’s sitting in a pile of stilettos in her khaki skirt and kitten heels. And she just sits there, staring at the shoe.
“Mom, are you okay?”
The portly little saleswoman rushes over. She talks a mile a minute in Italian, then runs back to her post when Mom still doesn’t move.
“Mom, try to breathe. Do you want to get some air?” It’s like she’s in a trance. She doesn’t take her eyes off the shoe.
The saleswoman comes back over with a bottle of water. I wish I knew how to tell her that my mom is okay, just grieving in the way people do when they’re about to lose the most important member of their family.
And soon, Gram won’t need shoes.
I clear a path in the shoe pile and kneel on the floor next to Mom. We sit together in silence for a long time. I rub her back the way Dad always does.
“I’m so sorry, Maddie. I just, I…” She shakes her head.
“It’s okay.” I lean over and kiss Mom’s flushed cheek. I don’t know what to say. My mind is playing tricks on me, saying, Don’t think about it. It’s not happening yet. Don’t think about it until you have to.
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We stand up and dust ourselves off. The saleswoman treats us as if nothing happened. She won’t even let us help clean up the mess. We thank her by buying an excessive amount of footwear, including Gram’s low-heeled pumps.
I sleep well our first night in Rome, despite the heat and lack of air-conditioning. Gram meets me in the lobby at ten AM sharp for our date.
“Shall we sit awhile?” She’s wearing her giant beetle sunglasses. People are sipping cappuccinos on the Spanish Steps. I miss my Starbucks chai.
“So, Mads, Janie and I had a good long talk. Your cousin is a complex, sensitive, bright young lady.”
“She is?”
“Yes, she is, wiseass. You, on the other hand? Pure bimbo.”
“It takes one to know one.” Gram acts like she didn’t hear me and puckers her lips. It’s her thinking pose.
“I’m trying to get a mental picture of the future Maddie. Formal wedding or elopement? I suspect formal for you.”
“Of course. I want to design my own wedding dress.”
“You can still elope if you design your own dress. My friend Ruth eloped in a custom French gown at a Vegas chapel in 1969. Second marriage, though.” Gram lifts her sunglasses to check out a very hot guy fifty years her junior. “Anyway, we need to figure out your something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. It’s my very favorite wedding tradition.”
“What did you do for your wedding?”
“My grandmother’s blue handkerchief for old and blue. I don’t know where that thing went. Rose’s drop diamond earrings for borrowed. And new, of course, was my grand gown.” She pinches my stomach. “Your waist would never be small enough to fit into that dress.”
“Hey, that’s mean. Are you calling me porky?”
“No. Our waists were freakishly tiny back then. Women—such odd creatures we are. Anyway, it would give me great joy to plan your wedding somethings.”
I want to say, Let’s worry about that some other time. But she wants to do this now, because now is all we have left.
“I would love that, Gram. What are you thinking?”
“Let’s stroll awhile. It’ll come to us.”
We stop at the Trevi Fountain, where people are supposed to throw a coin to guarantee a return to Rome. Gram hands me a coin like she did for the gumball machines when I was little.
“If I recall,” she says, “you throw with your right hand over your left shoulder.”
“Am I supposed to make a wish?”
“It can’t hurt, can it?”
I should wish for a miracle. I should wish for Gram and the other Wishwell patients to get better. I should wish for peace or gay equality or an end to fossil fuels. But the coin slips out of my hand and flies over my left shoulder before I can change my impulse wish.
Enzo, come back to the ship with me. I am an evil person.
“Now, then. On with our wedding shopping.” We weave through the crowded streets. “I won’t be around to choose the husband, so please, dear, use your brain, not your body. The content of a man’s semen is very important.”
“Gross, Gram.”
“Hear me out. First, the little buggers need to be able to swim. You can’t know that ahead of time. Personally, I think it was Karl’s plumbing that didn’t work, not Rose’s. We North women are very fertile.” She hesitates. “I even got pregnant the first time with Bobby,” she blurts out.
“What? Are you serious? You had an abortion?”
“No. Abortion was illegal. I could have paid big bucks for an under-the-table one, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do that. I lost the pregnancy early on. That’s when I started believing in God.” She reaches over and pinches my arm really hard.
“Ow.”
“You need to use protection. I don’t ever want you to be in that position. It’s hell.”
“Got it.”
“Anyway, we’re missing the point,” Gram says. “Sexy is good for dating. But it’s best if you marry somebody kind and honest, somebody who can give you smart, well-adjusted children. Someone like Martin or Bob.”
“Okay, Gram. I’ll be sure to do careful semen sifting.”
We walk slowly because the heat and exertion are already getting to Gram.
“Oooh. That gelateria is open. Sit, Gram. I’ll go get us gelato.”
“If you’re not porky now, you will be after this trip,” Gram calls after me.
We lick the tiny flat spoons.
“Do you have any regrets, Gram?”
“I’ve made mistakes. Who hasn’t? But I do not have one regret.”
“Not even the ass tattoo?”
“I love my ass tattoo. My ass, however, has a mind of its own. Trust me. I don’t know what it’s trying to do back there, all flat and flabby. Maddie, I’ve got it!”
“What?”
“Your something borrowed and blue will be an ass tattoo.”
“Hilarious, Gram.”
“No, this is it. You’ll borrow the idea from me, and do a blue sea star tattoo on your ass. Let’s go find a clean tattoo parlor.”
“Wait, you’re serious. Gram. I would totally do it, but I don’t like pain—tattoo pain or Dad pain. Because you know my dad will literally kill me. He’ll string me up by my ass tattoo in that piazza.”
“Maddie, how often does your father see your behind?” She squeezes my butt cheek. “If I listened to my parents, I’d be sitting in a country club in Greenwich about to play bridge with some red-nosed old fart.” She laughs. “My life has been fabulous because I never listened to my parents.”
My grandmother is peer-pressuring me.
“Yeah, but what about the pain? I can’t even wax my eyebrows without nearly passing out.”
“Stop being a drama queen. Yes, it hurts a little. But no pain, no gain. If I hadn’t pushed your giant mother out of my vagina, you wouldn’t be here. You can get a tiny tattoo. Come on, live a little.”
“Fine. I’ll do it. I will suffer for you, you sadistic old nut.”
“There it is.” Gram points at me.
“What?”
“The scrunch face.”
Gram sends me up the Spanish Steps to whisper our request to the concierge. “This is the one the rock stars use,” he says with a wink.
Between the death-defying cab ride and the anticipation of the searing pain I’m about to feel on my tender ass skin, I’m violently nauseated. Gram is busy sketching out my tattoo on a napkin.
“Here. How’s this?” She holds up a perfect sea star. I’ve forgotten how gifted Gram is.
A woman, tattooed in watercolor from neck to ankle, greets us in front of a charming storefront brimming with potted flowers. Ink Woman loves Gram’s sketch. She makes Gram sign a minor release. Gram makes her show us her hygiene routine, so I don’t get AIDS or hepatitis. Great, more diseases to worry about.
“Holy fucking shit,” I scream. Gram holds my hand.
“I know, honey. It hurts. But it’s looking fabulous. Just keep thinking about your wedding day.”
“I’m a teenager. I don’t care about my wedding day. This is abuse.”
“Almost done. Shh. She’s just doing the shading now.”
“Ow. It’s worse. How did you do this to your whole body? This is insane.”
Ink Lady finally stops.
“Just wait until childbirth.” I hate it when Gram says that.
I hold a hand mirror to my butt. The area around the tattoo is red, but there it is, my delicate starfish in shades of blue. It’s barely the size of a quarter, but it looks like it’s floating on my skin, brought to life by Gram’s creative genius and a stranger’s steady hand.
“Oh, honey. It’s fabulous. It’s so you.”
“It’s a companion for your saggy seahorse. I love it.”
Ink Lady takes a picture and emails it to my friends for me. I’m sure the lake club could use some good gossip by this point in the summer.
“Now we have your something borrowed and something blue. The n
ew will be the dress. Even if you don’t design it yourself, buy it new. You don’t need some vintage thing with another woman’s secrets stuck to the seams.”
We stop for real Italian pizza, and Gram makes a toast with sparkling water or, as the Europeans call it, “water with gas.”
“Cheers to all the fun we’ve had. There are no words for the joy you have brought me. I love you, honey.” Her eyes fill with tears. I shake my head. I can’t do this now. If I start crying, I’ll never stop.
We barely make it up the steps. Gram is breathless and holds her lower back as she crawls into bed.
“I need to nap if we’re going to the jazz club tonight. But come here. I have something.” She reaches into the nightstand drawer and hands me a macaroon from her stash. “That’s not the something. Here it is. Come to think of it, you could have used this as your blue and your borrowed.” She passes me a small, square box. “Oh well, the tattoo is divine. This isn’t borrowed, anyway. I’m giving it to you for keeps.”
I open the box. It’s Gram’s sapphire.
“No way. You can’t give me this. This is your favorite thing in the world.”
“My babies are my favorite things in the world. This belongs to you. My fingers are too skinny now.”
“But, Gram—”
“You’ve loved this thing since you were an infant, and I let you teethe on it, much to your father’s dismay. He was afraid you’d get it lodged in your trachea.”
She smiles. I slide the ring onto my finger. It fits perfectly.
“Wear it in good health, my dear.”
“Oh, Gram. There are no words.”
“It’s good luck, by the way. Right after I bought it at a shop on Madison Avenue, I vomited all over a man’s foot. That was my first sign that I was pregnant with your mom. Whatever you decide to do for your wedding, wear the sapphire. Then I’ll be there.”
I’m a little queasy. I can’t tell if it’s because of the ring or the butt soreness.
“You should know how proud I am of you, honey. Going sleepies now.” Gram closes her eyes. I draw the curtains and kiss her on the forehead. She’s already asleep.
The Loose Ends List Page 16