How I Saved My Father's Life (and Ruined Everything Else)

by Ann Hood

  Dressing, I struggled to remember things my parents had agreed on. But I could find none. Those happy times of just a few years ago were already fading away. They couldn’t even agree to stay married, and now I knew why.

  Cody tiptoed in, his eyes wide. “Don’t leave me with her,” he said.

  We were united now in our hatred of Ava Pomme, home-wrecker, wicked stepmother, strega—witch.

  I shrugged. “I think Daddy’s trying to cheer me up.”

  “But she’ll ignore me all night. I’ll have to color or something.”

  Cody hated to color, but Ava had bought him dozens of coloring books and crayons because she never bothered to notice how much they bored him.

  “Can’t you stay in the lines?” he mimicked. “Why is the girl’s face purple?”

  I laughed. “Strega,” I whispered.

  “Strega,” Cody whispered back.

  The cafes in the piazza were full in the warm summer night. People sipped coffee and emptied liters of wine, their heads bent together in conversation, cigarette smoke furling around them.

  “Cody loves Italy,” my father said.

  He had his arm hooked in mine, so gentlemanly that I could almost, but not quite, forget that he was not a gentleman. Gentlemen followed certain rules of behavior, and even though I wasn’t certain exactly what those rules were, I knew they didn’t include cheating on your wife or jettisoning your family. He guided me to an outdoor table, pulled out a chair for me to sit, then pushed it back in, effortlessly.

  “How about you?” he asked when he settled himself into the seat across from me. “How do you like Italy?”

  I wanted to explain the things I loved here, the churches and the oldness and the way the Italians understood something important about me. But wrapped up in that was what I had figured out here, about him and Ava Pomme. I felt homesick. I missed my mother. I didn’t know how to say all of that, how to tell my father that I thought Italy was wonderful but he was not. A part of me still loved him so much that I wished what I knew could go away.

  “It’s all right, I guess,” I managed to say. It was the best I could do.

  He looked surprised. “I figured you loved it, Mad,” he said. “What with your interest in religion and your love of churches and saints.”

  Mad. Funny that my little girl nickname expressed exactly how I felt. Why couldn’t my father see that?

  The waiter came over and my father ordered wine and food in perfect Italian. Every morning he went off to Italian class. That’s how he was, total immersion with everything new. If I bothered to ask him, he could tell me the dates of Roman war victories, who had built which building and when. He could quote what Henry James had to say about Rome, and what was written on Shelley’s grave over in the Protestant cemetery. He could teach me to conjugate verbs.

  When the waiter brought our wine, my father poured a little in a glass for me. I thought about how happy this would have made me just a few days ago. Now, it just added to my misery.

  “When in Rome,” he said, and even though he didn’t have to finish the old saying, he did, maybe just to fill up the empty space between us, “do as the Romans do.”

  I folded my arms across my chest and made him work hard at a conversation.

  He’d ordered all of my favorite things, buffalo mozzarella with basil and tomatoes, a pizza with quattro formaggio, gnocchi in tomato sauce.

  “To my prima ballerina!” my father said, lifting his glass.

  I was expected to clink mine against his, to smile and adore him. But I did none of these things. Instead, I said, “Remember when I asked you if I could live with you and Ava? In the spring, when Mom told me I couldn’t study with Madame anymore?”

  Slowly, my father lowered his glass, which was suspended there in midair while I talked.

  “Remember you said no?”

  My father took a quick sip of his wine. He sat up straight. “When you were a little girl,” he said, “I used to make you promise that when you got older you wouldn’t act like a teenager. That you wouldn’t grow obstinate or argumentative. That you would stay your wonderful self.”

  “I am my wonderful self,” I said.

  He laughed and said, “Yes! You are! You made the cut for that school. How many kids tried out, Mad? And how many got picked? Bravo!”

  I frowned. My insides were getting all jumbled up. I always loved the way my father had of making me feel special. It was hard to reconcile that with the fact that he was a cheater and an abandoner.

  “Speaking of wonderful,” he was saying, “Ava and I have some wonderful news.”

  My mouth tasted sour, like I might throw up. “I have a terrific new book contract on investigating the church’s practice of canonization, and Ava and I are going to live here for a few years. Right in Rome. We’ve rented a big apartment near the Pyramid so that when you and Cody come to visit next summer there will be plenty of room.”

  “You mean I’m not going to see you until next summer?” I said. That cheese was rising up in my throat, all four kinds, and I had to swallow hard to keep it where it belonged.

  “Living in Europe is an incredible experience that I want my children to have,” he said. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, really.”

  Once in a lifetime. That was the same thing my mother had said when she’d tried to convince me to come on this trip. Was that what adults really believed, that opportunities only came once in a lifetime? I couldn’t imagine that in my entire life that stretched before me that I would never again visit Italy if I wanted to, or never get the chance to live in a different country. But it seemed that adults forgot about possibility, that in a life there were always new chances to take, new roads to travel. How sad grown-ups seemed to me at that moment, with their vision of lost opportunities and missed chances.

  I was folding my pale pink napkin into small accordion pleats, tight ones that would spring open if I let them go. But I didn’t. I held them tight.

  “But I won’t be living here. Only Zoe and Ava and you will be. I’ll be a whole continent away.” My stomach churned some more. I had wanted to jettison my father, but here he was, casting me off again.

  “Madeline, you’re going to have an amazing year with ballet and everything. Then you’ll spend next summer in Italy with us. And,” he added, “guess what?”

  I didn’t guess.

  “You’re getting another brother or sister.”

  “What?” I said, jumping to my feet.

  “Ava and I are having another baby. Due on New Year’s Day. The start of a great year, right?”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. How could he think that this was going to make me happy, watching his life fall into place while the rest of us tried to fix our own?

  “For you and your real family, maybe,” I said. “You ruined my life once by falling in love with Ava Pomme while you were supposed to be loving us—taking care of us. And for all this time I’ve been on your side when really I should have been on Mommy’s. There you were buying a new house and telling us how wonderful we were when you were doing what? Secretly meeting Ava Pomme? And leaving Mom with all the broken things? And now you’re moving to Rome and leaving me!”

  Conversation around us came to a halt, except the whispered Americano, the embarrassed glances away from us.

  I made sure everyone was still listening when I shouted, “I hate you!”

  Then I threw up, all over the gnocchi and the pretty pink tablecloth. I had not thrown up since I was a little kid, and it felt awful. I ran out of the café, fast, across the piazza where lovers nestled each other and small children chased one another, squealing with joy. I ran past the fountain, where the statues and their covered eyes seemed meant for me. I ran up the stairs of the church and through its open doors. Inside, it was hushed and dark, except the candles flickering in their tall red chimneys.

  I kept running, down the aisle to the altar. When I reached it I dropped to my knees on the cool marble floor, clasped
my hands together, bent my head, and prayed for a miracle.

  I did not know how long I stayed there like that. But as I knelt and prayed, a vision played out in my mind. It was my life, really, the one that before the divorce stretched out in front of me with so much hope and possibility. I didn’t realize that all this time I had wanted the impossible to happen, just like Antoinetta. But now I saw that. I thought of all the times in my life, ballet recitals and performances, graduations and proms, even my wedding and the birth of my own children, all of these times when a person’s parents came together to celebrate with them, and I imagined my parents still together. I imagined finding their faces in the audience, in a crowd, in a church, and I imagined them together.

  I imagined the two of them in the front seat of a car and Cody and me in the backseat, playing Botticelli and Ghost and all the other car games our parents loved to play. I saw the four of us, a family, moving into rented beach houses and hotel rooms, traveling through life together. If I closed my eyes and searched my memory hard enough, I could see my parents holding hands, sneaking kisses, sleeping together like spoons. There was no Ava Pomme. No Zoe. It was just the four of us, happy.

  But suddenly, kneeling here, I saw my life differently. It would always be fragmented, broken in two. I would find my parents’ faces in a crowd, but they would be watching me separately. They would be holding hands with other people. They would be making different lives. And I would always be choosing, taking sides, feeling bad no matter which parent I left behind. My life would be full of train rides that left one of them waving good-bye and one of them waiting for me on the other end.

  This wasn’t the life I would have chosen for myself. But I saw that my choices lay ahead of me. In this matter, my parents had decided. They had fallen away from each other, and I would forever be somewhere stretched between them.

  When my father came and knelt beside me, the church had grown darker still.

  “I’m sorry, Madeline,” he whispered. “I wish it could have all turned out differently.”

  That was how I knew I was right. Sometime in my happy past, he had met Ava Pomme and fallen in love, and left Cody and our mother and me. Maybe he had done it because adults believed things only came to you once in a lifetime. Maybe someday he would understand that was not true.

  Back in the apartment that night, I climbed into bed with Cody. Asleep, he looked almost like one of the angels in the Sistine Chapel, and I wanted to wake him up and hug him hard. Instead, I just pressed myself close to him, hating that someday he, too, would figure out what had happened, how our father had betrayed us all. On the walk home, my father didn’t say anything, and neither did I. What else was there to say?

  In the morning, I woke up to Cody staring right into my face, breathing his morning breath all over me.

  “Are you sick or something?” he said. “You smell bad.”

  I smiled. “I threw up in the restaurant.”

  “Really?” he said. “Awesome!”

  “I want to go home,” I said.

  “I want Mommy,” Cody said.

  “Me, too.”

  Cody studied my face for a minute, then grinned at me. “Was it projectile vomit?” he asked. “Or just regular?”

  “Regular,” I said. “But gallons.” I laughed.

  Our father took us alone on the subway to the airport, checked our bags for us, and walked us to the gate where an Alitalia plane would take us home. When I hugged Ava Pomme good-bye at the apartment, I kept my body all stiff, imagining another baby for my father’s new family.

  On the train, Cody chattered about the pizza he would miss and the spaghetti carbonara, and the pony rides in the little park.

  “Next summer we’ll do all those things and more,” our father said, and his eyes met mine over Cody’s head. I wasn’t ready yet to forgive him. Perhaps in a way I never would. But I knew one thing that adults didn’t: Over time things change. Kids don’t close the doors the way grown-ups do.

  We stopped and bought chocolate in the shape of gladiators for the plane ride. We bought American magazines. Then, finally, we were at the gate.

  It was crowded, and I searched for my mother among the people waiting to board the plane. I searched and searched but I could not find her.

  Then, I heard her call my name—my mother who knew exactly how to hold me when I cried, how to comfort me when I was sick. “Madeline!” I heard. “Cody!” And I saw our mother running toward us, with her arms already outstretched to take us in.

  “Mommy!” Cody shouted, and we both ran into her waiting arms.

  I closed my eyes and breathed in the simple smell of my mother.

  Without letting go of us, she looked at our father.

  “Thank you, Scott,” she said, “for getting them back safely.”

  We kissed our father good-bye. Then, arm in arm with our mother, we walked toward the plane that would take the three of us home. Just once, I glanced back, where my father stood watching. This time, he was the one left behind. But I knew that in my lifetime that role would change from one parent to the other, and that I, Madeline, would always be kissing one of them good-bye, and one of them hello.

  This was my life now. It wasn’t a life that would get me into sainthood, but I decided that maybe I should concentrate on being a ballerina for now. I would never understand why I got that miracle. Maybe it wasn’t for me to understand.

  “Hey,” my mother said as she settled into the seat between Cody and me, “look what got forwarded to you.” She handed me a letter.

  While I opened it, she did mother things—tightened Cody’s seat belt, made sure my bag was safe under the seat in front of me.

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The return address on the envelope said Papa Benedetto XVI, Città del Vaticano, ITALIA.

  “How in the world did you get the Pope to write to you?” my mother asked me.

  I opened the letter and laughed. It was written in Italian. I couldn’t understand a word.

  I looked out the window and watched as the plane lifted into the air. Somewhere below us my father stood, waiting. I lifted my hand and waved good-bye to him as the familiar ache that comes when you leave someone behind settled in. My mother squeezed my hand.

  “I missed you,” she said. “I missed you like crazy.”

  “Me, too,” I told her. Then I closed my eyes and began to make a list of all the miracles I’d had in my life.

  The first one, I thought, was my mother. Of course.

  Acknowledgments

  I WOULD LIKE TO THANK SAM AND ARIANE ADRAIN, THE YOUNG ADULTS IN MY LIFE, FOR INSPIRING ME TO WRITE A BOOK THAT THEY WOULD WANT TO READ; LINDSAY WALLER FOR READING THE MANUSCRIPT EARLY ON AND BRAINSTORMING TITLES FOR ME; MY AGENT, GAIL HOCHMAN, FOR ENCOURAGING ME TO WRITE THIS; MY MOST FABULOUS EDITOR, FRANCESCO SEDITA, WHO ACTUALLY MADE THE EDITING PROCESS FUN AND WHOSE ENTHUSIASM IS BOUNDLESS; AND MY DARLING HUSBAND, LORNE ADRAIN, WHO LETS ME DISAPPEAR INTO MY STUDY FOR HOURS ON END AND DO WHAT I LOVE TO DO—WRITE.

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2008 by Ann Hood

  Jacacket Illustration © 2008 by Tuesday Mourning

  Jacket Design by Kristina Albertson

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC PRESS and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hood, Ann, 1956–

  How I saved my father’s life (and ruined everything else) / by Ann Hood.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: After her father leaves and marries the glamorous
Ava Pomme, Madeline blames her mother for their difficult new life, but in spite of the twelve-year-old’s efforts to achieve sainthood, it takes a summer trip to Italy to put her family into perspective.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-439-92819-9 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 0-439-92819-2 (hardcover)

  [1. Divorce—Fiction. 2. Remarriage—Fiction. 3. Family life—Rhode Island—Fiction. 4. Catholic Church—Fiction. 5. Rhode Island—Fiction. 6. Italy—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.H7627Ho 2008

  [Fic]—dc22

  2007010868

  FIRST EDITION, March 2008

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  E-ISBN: 978-0-545-23168-8