Olive Branches Don't Grow On Trees

by Grace Mattioli

  ***********

  As they exited the front door escaping Frank, the two of them synchronously sighed with relief. They walked into the lazy late spring air, where the trees drooped with heaviness and the smell of hyacinths lingered. Silvia’s shabby clothes may have fit her mood perfectly, but they didn’t match the sun shiny day. Despite her depressed mood and shabby clothes, she still brightened the space surrounding her. She moved through the world like a Peanut’s character dancing. Vince moved in a straight line with precision, his head coming forward every few steps, making his shoulder length light brown hair come loose from behind his ears. He wasn’t tall and wasn’t short but was somewhere in between, and his eyes shone with purpose and determination. His left eyebrow curved upward like a Vulcan, making him look as if he was hiding something. But he hid nothing. He was an open book in large print.

  They walked to Nina’s Pizzeria only a few blocks from their house in a small strip mall. It didn’t look like much from the outside or from the orange plastic inside, but it had the best pizza in town. Silvia ordered a piece of mushroom pizza and Vince got a slice of plain Sicilian. They were both vegetarian. Silvia had even been vegan for a while before discovering the horror of soy cheese.

  “Hey Vince,” said Silvia, while blotting the excess oil from her pizza with a napkin. “Why aren’t you at school today?”

  “Because I haven’t missed one day of school all year, so I figured I was entitled to it. Besides, there’s not much going on these last few days.”

  Silvia knew that he was telling the truth about only missing one school day all year. He was extremely conscientious and he never got sick. And, unlike the other Grecos, he never lied.

  “You must be excited about going away to college,” Silvia said, switching the subject.

  “Kind of,” Vince said as he chewed his pizza. He ate fast and nervous, as if somebody might take his food away at any second.

  “So you’re set on Berkeley?”

  “They have the best sociology program in the country, so yeah, I’m set on going there. But not so excited about going so far away.”

  “I thought you’d want to get away from here,” Silvia said, with a complete lack of understanding for why Vince or anyone would not want to go far away from Frank’s house.

  “Well, I’ve never been so far away, and Dad’s not crazy about the idea of me going to school on the other side of the country. He keeps saying that he’ll help, then he gets mad at me over nothing, and says that he won’t help. I applied for all the loans I could and I told him I’d get residency right away so the tuition would be cheaper after the first year.”

  “Lucky that he even offered to help you at all. He barely helped me. If I didn’t get a scholarship to college, I couldn’t have gone. Guess I can’t blame him, though, for not giving much help. He thought that an art degree would be completely useless. I’m starting to think he may have had something.”

  “You studied something you love,” said Vince, eyes staring right into his sister’s eyes. “There’s nothing worthless about that.” Silvia was often amazed at how her little brother was so advanced for his age. It seemed unusual, to the point of being weird, that a high school boy would care about making his older sister feel better about herself. He was such a good person, and his goodness came through loud and clear in all of his actions, like the way he refused to shop at Wal-Mart because of their “bad” politics, even though it was the only store of its kind in town; the way that he thanked their mother for cooking dinner every night; the way that he remained great friends with his ex-girlfriends, even if they were not so great to him.

  It was sometimes hard for her to believe there was a time they didn’t get along. However, had they always gotten along without a period of conflict, they would have been complete misfits in the Greco family. Silvia resented Vince as soon as he was born, for he replaced her position as the youngest child. He stole away all the attention she was used to getting for over four years, and even worse, he didn’t acknowledge his theft. And he was by far the easiest and most pleasant of all the children. He wasn’t hyper like Silvia was as a child, nor whiny like Angie, nor rebellious like Cosmo. He was the perfect child, the best saved for last, and Donna reminded her other children of this in her own quiet way.

  Silvia stopped being resentful of Vince when she was about twelve and he was seven. He won her over by sharing half of his Halloween candy with her that year when she couldn’t go trick or treating due to being sick with the flu. Only a seven-year-old child as exceptional as Vince would do such a thing. And Silvia felt that she had no choice at that point but to recognize that she was lucky to have him for a little brother, and any feelings of resentment or jealousy that were inside of her melted away.

  They lived compatibly for a short while before they started becoming so much like each other that they grew competitive. They didn’t compete about the usual stuff that siblings were inclined to compete about, like school grades. Instead, they competed with each other about who was more green or environmentally conscientious. They competed ferociously. Silvia made absolutely sure to recycle every single receipt she ever got, but Vince could clean up a spill in the kitchen with only half of a paper towel. Silvia took five-minute showers, but Vince would practically never set foot inside a car or vehicle of any sort. Silvia carried her own cloth bag with her so that she would never have to use a plastic bag, but Vince would not even purchase a product that was wrapped in plastic. So it was always a close draw. Now with Vince going to Berkeley, Silvia threw in the towel. She assumed that he was studying sociology because it would be a good major for his ambition of saving the world, but she thought she would ask him about it anyway.

  “Why do you want to study sociology anyway?” Before he had a chance to answer the question, she added her own thoughts about choosing such a major. “It’s one of those useless things to study, like painting. Not that I don’t realize the value in studying what you have passion for and all. But living in poverty sucks. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “I’m sure there’s something you can do with your degree. What kind of job do you think you might like?” He cleverly redirected the course of the conversation so that he would not have to bother responding to her question, which Silvia knew would be a useless conversation. Trying to convince him of the uselessness of studying sociology was futile. In fact, trying to sway her brother of anything was virtually impossible. He was an extremely decisive and focused type of person. He was born knowing what he wanted out of life and knowing exactly how to get it. Silvia recalled the time that he was only five years old and the family went out for ice cream, and Vince knew that he wanted a blackberry flavored ice cream cone. How did he even know what blackberry was at the age of five, let alone know that he wanted ice cream of that particular flavor?

  And now because of his short life-time of focus, determination, and absolute clarity, he had no need to talk about his own goals in life. So instead, he turned his attention to trying to work out his older sister’s life. He had not even stepped foot in the world yet and didn’t understand the whole career thing, as far as Silvia was concerned, and so his attempt at helping her with her life made her feel uncomfortable. But her feelings of awkwardness at discussing this subject didn’t stop her from rambling on about all of the possible paths that she had, at one time or another, contemplated. She began with graphic design, a field she quickly dismissed as she would probably end up having to work in the advertisement industry. She thought of being a college professor, but that was way too much of a long and arduous pursuit. She very briefly thought of becoming a museum curator or archivist, but thought that that she would never find a job as one. And lastly, she mentioned a billboard painter, which she added only as a joke.

  “I like the college professor idea myself. You’d be following in Mom’s footsteps. She’d like that.”

  “Yeah, but like I said, it’s a long path. And after that big investment of time and money and energy, I’d probably
be lucky to find a job in Kansas.”

  “Well yeah, but finding a job shouldn’t be the most important thing.” Now his youth and inexperience and naiveté were showing through. Finding a job is not important when you have no concept of things like rent and health insurance. He was young and idealistic, and probably had no concrete ideas of what he planned on doing with a sociology degree. In fact, when Silvia asked him about his choice of study, he said that he wasn’t sure exactly what he would do with such a degree, but he knew that it would give him the best foundation for doing something where he could really make a difference in the world at large.

  “I can't just stand by and watch the world continue to deteriorate the way it is,” he added like the superhero he was. His eyes filled with so much sincerity that it was almost painful to look at him.

  Silvia wasn’t sure of his exact plan for saving the world, and from what she could tell, either was he. Part of her wanted to warn him more about trying to save an irredeemable world and about studying something so impractical and useless. But the bigger part of her knew he needed to fall on his own face. She only hoped that he would not have to fall as hard as she had. In the meantime, why shouldn’t he enjoy the good times? The dreaming, the cheering, the trying. So instead of giving him any lectures on the topic of self-preservation, she commended him for his lofty ambitions.

  “Well that's great Vince,” she said, making her face as serious and hopeful as possible.

  Vince smiled modestly, and then looked down at Silvia's slice of pizza, which was only half eaten. She had sprinkled hot pepper flakes on it, hoping that this addition would make it more appetizing, but it still tasted like everything else had been tasting to her since she had been in this slump-- like nothing.

  “Not hungry?” he said.

  “I have no appetite lately,” she said. “Do you want the rest?”

  Vince gladly took the rest of the pizza. While he ate, he looked around their table conspiratorially and spotted a couple eating, what appeared to be a pepperoni pizza. Silvia knew, from the mild condescension in his eyes, that her brother was thinking about how awful it was that they were eating meat. And like her, he might also imagine the awful existence led by the pig that made the pepperoni possible. She sometimes felt as if their two separate minds became one.

  “Oh shit,” Silvia said, sliding down into her seat to make herself less visible, “I went out with that guy in high school.” She was referring to the young man who just walked into the pizza place. His name was Al Santora, and she was dismayed to see that he looked really good.

  “Don’t turn around,” she said to Vince, who unfortunately had already turned around, and in doing so, had caught the attention of Al, who, in turn, stared back at the table at which they sat. It was too late to pretend that she didn’t see him. Their eyes had already exchanged glances, and now he was walking towards their table. He was dressed in a grey suit and tie with a checkered button down shirt, and had extremely bright eyes that went perfectly with his teeth that looked as if they had been painted with Wite-Out. He was very different from Silvia, like all of her ex-boyfriends, and this could have been why she was attracted to him.

  “Silvia!” he said as he walked towards the table. She forced a smile that she knew looked strained and unnatural.

  “Hey Al. Good to see you,” she lied.

  “Yeah, you too,” he said. “How are things?”

  “Things are great,” she lied again, and then quickly asked how he was doing before he had a chance to ask her any more questions about her own life.

  “Couldn’t be better,” he said, exhaling as if his body couldn’t contain all of the happiness and well-being inside of it.

  “Oh, you remember my little brother, Vince?” she said, gesturing to Vince before Al had a chance to tell her about how great his life was.

  “I do remember,” said Al, “not so little anymore.”

  Silvia and Vince laughed out of courtesy. Al then looked at his watch in the way that all busy, successful people look at their watches, and said that he had to be off to a meeting. Silvia was more than happy to see him go and thrilled that she didn’t have to hear about his current life situation. She imagined that it was much better than being unemployed and living with a crazy parent.

  She then tried to remember why she broke up with Al. He was a nice enough guy. Most girls would not have found a thing wrong with him. But Silvia wasn’t like most girls. She found whatever she could find wrong with a guy and would leave him for the next one who came along.

  “He has bad taste in music,” she once whined to Cosmo about a boyfriend with whom she wanted to break up.

  “How bad?” asked Cosmo.

  “He likes jam bands!”

  “Oh, that is bad,” agreed Cosmo with complete seriousness, “you should break up with him.”