Olive Branches Don't Grow on Trees (10 page)

“Oh
my,” said Donna in response to the huge plate of food the waiter set before
her.  “You have to help me, honey.  I know you don’t want the turkey,
but maybe just some of the sides.”  Silvia gladly accepted the offer and
took a generous amount of stuffing, mash potatoes, and cranberry sauce.  

Like
most people, Silvia associated turkey dinners with Thanksgiving and was
reminded of the one when she was ten.  The weather was unusually warm on
that Thanksgiving Day, which put everyone, except for Frank, in a good mood.
 He had used the holidays as an excuse for drinking even more than usual.
 On this particular day, he had prodigiously searched in every corner of
the house for some kind of fight, and was gravely disappointed when he had
found none.  So when Cosmo showed up for dinner, stoned, Frank was
relieved to find an excuse to fight.  Donna telling him to “take it easy”
propelled him into a state of rage that stayed fresh in Silvia’s mind to this
day.  His quick, Incredible Hulk transformation was followed by a scream
at Donna to “Fuck off!”

He
screamed to Cosmo, “You no-good-for-nothing loser of a son! You’ll never make
anything out of yourself!” His arms were raised in the air, as if he was
holding a giant rubber ball above his head.  But Cosmo just kept on eating.
 In fact, he was the only one eating.  Frank’s frenzied abuse just
seemed to bounce off of him, as he shoved a continuous stream of food into his
mouth.  His lack of reaction caused Frank to get more upset, who then
started throwing plates and glasses on the kitchen floor.  After that, he
started crying like an overgrown schoolboy, as if he was furious and remorseful
at the same time.

When
he went into the bathroom, Donna grabbed the kids, and they all made an
escape.  Silvia remembered piling into her mother’s car and zooming down
the driveway, like they had all just robbed a bank and were now making their
getaway.  She remembered Donna stopping at a Wawa to buy a pack of
cigarettes, as soon as they were far enough away from the house, and how upset
she felt seeing her mother reignite the habit she had worked so hard to
quit.  They drove until they reached a Motel 6 around Moorestown and
settled for the night.  As they all huddled together in the small, dark
motel room, Silvia could feel the sense of relief they all shared.  But
relief was only one of the many emotions.  There was also sadness,
confusion, denial, and frustration.  Cosmo was coming down from his high
into a state of depression.  Vince was too young and confused about what
was really going on.  Angie switched channels on the television, while
Silvia drew pictures in her sketch-book.  Donna smoked outside and then
came inside.  She then went to sleep only to wake up screaming at around
three in the morning.  Silvia consoled Donna by telling her that
“Everything will be alright.”  At first, Silvia felt strange to be acting
like a mother to her own mother, but then it felt very natural.  The next
morning, she resumed being a child by playing on a swing set that was just
outside the motel.

“I
joined Netflix,” Donna said, as she sipped her wine. “Already, my queue is so
long.  I hope I live long enough to watch everything on it.”

Silvia
chuckled, “I have a feeling you’ll be around for a long time.”  She wanted
to add something like, “Now that you left Dad,”
but she stopped herself.  She did not want to go further
into family drama at the moment.  Rather, she just wanted to enjoy her
food while she could because she knew that, at any second, Donna would continue
her pursuit of asking about herself or their family.  

“Do
you ever think about what you would like to do, eventually, in terms of a
career?” asked Donna, eating a piece of turkey with cranberry sauce.

“All
the time, Mom.
 It’s just that I rule out every
idea I come up with.”  She stopped eating as if the subject at hand had
ruined her appetite.

“Tell
me some of them,” said Donna, who seemed to be delighted and relieved that her
daughter was opening up to her.

“Well,
I thought of becoming a college professor, like you,” said Silvia, which affected
a flattered expression on her mother’s face.  “But that’s a long road,
like I’m sure you know.  I just don’t know if I have it in me to go to
school that long, and with the economy being such crap, getting a job like that
would be tough.  I’m not into the whole graphic design thing.  I
don’t want to get stuck working for some advertising whore.  And I thought
of museum conservation, but I would have to go back to school for that, and it
seems like it might be boring and I might not be able to get a job.”

“What
about being an art school teacher?  I can see you working with children.”

Silvia
formerly dismissed this option with the excuse that she did not like children,
but she was learning, through her brief experience at Savor the Flavor, that
she really did like them.  This was not a bad idea at all.

“Yeah,
I can really see you doing that,” Donna continued. “You’re so playful and
spontaneous for starters.  You’re an amazing artist.  I think it’s
something that might be rewarding and fun for you.”

A
smile of hopefulness came upon Silvia’s face, as she thought of doing something
besides the dead end jobs that she had been working since she graduated
college.  This would be something that she might actually enjoy, and
something in which she would be able to utilize her talent as an artist.

“Now
you might have to go back to school for a teacher’s certification, but I’m sure
that can’t be too difficult,” Donna said. “Maybe you can live at home.”

This
last suggestion did not bode well with Silvia, and she swiftly jumped at her
mother. “You can’t live with Dad!  What makes you think I can?”

“You’re
better at it than me.  Look at the way you got him to AA.  Besides,
living with him
temporarily
is
not the same as being married to him.”

“That’s
true,” said Silvia, her new found hope coming back into her eyes.  Indeed,
maybe living with him would not be so bad.  Maybe he would get better.
 Maybe he would even stop drinking.  She had not heard him vomiting
in the bathroom in at least a week.  That signaled a possible cutback in
his alcohol consumption. Besides, she would barely be at the house between work
and school.  And it would be temporary.  As soon as she was done
getting her certification, she would be off to Portland.  She felt
overcome by exhilaration.  The first thing she would do tonight would be
to look into teacher certification programs in south Jersey.  Then she
would have to find out about the requirements, costs, and the length of such a
program.  Her brain began to get noisy.  
Really
noisy.
  She was getting ahead of herself, her mind zooming in her
maniac fit of excitement.  Her mother, who must have somehow intuited her
daughter’s racing, brought her back by the gentle reminder that she was still
very young and had plenty of time. 

**********

But
Donna’s attempt to calm her daughter down was in vain, and within five minutes
after getting to her father’s house, Silvia was online to look up schools and
programs. She discovered, from doing a small amount of research, some rather
disturbing news:  That if she was to get her certification in one state,
it may not be reciprocal with another state.  This could severely limit
her bohemian existence, which was frightening, but she also knew would be for
her own good.  Maybe it would be better to move to Portland now. 
There was an undergraduate certification program in Portland, as well as a
graduate program in the field of education.  It made so much more sense,
financially, for her to go to school while living at Frank’s.  But what if
she got her certificate in New Jersey and then had to live in the state
indefinitely.  Her body went stiff with fright.  Even the idea of
living in the area for the next couple of years seemed like a prison sentence.
 She saw herself drooping to classes at some nearby state school, coming
home to her father’s house only to find him drunk and passed out or drunk and
raging.  This scenario had no boyfriends, no dates, and no friends.

Just
as she was on this long, dark alley of life in south Jersey, she got an email
from Emily telling her how much she loved the city and how she was sure that
Silvia would feel the same way.  She said that she was possibly falling in
love with a guy and that she might be getting a job at a local art
gallery.  Silvia took this as a sign that someone above, her Grandma
Tucci
no doubt, was trying to tell her to move to Portland
and to pursue whatever educational program there.  So Silvia began
researching programs in Portland.  Between researching programs and
thinking of where she might spend the next two years, all the while
compulsively checking her email, she was up until two in the morning.  And
she was supposed to drive up to north Jersey to see Angie tomorrow.  It
would be a coffee-filled day. 

**********

The
ride up the turnpike got progressively busier and more chaotic as Silvia drove
to Angie’s home in north Jersey.  Drivers became increasingly aggressive,
fighting through their steel encapsulations.  Weaving, racing, and
tailgating.  The increase in traffic, as she drove north, was telling of
the difference between north and south Jersey.  But it was not just the
increased speed of life and the density of population.  There were other
more subtle differences, as well. In the south, lunch
meat
sandwiched inside of long rolls are
called hoagies; in the north, they
are called submarines or subs for short.  In the south, the convenient
stores are Wawa’s.  In the north, they are 7-Eleven’s.  South Jersey
is like an extension of Philadelphia.  They share the same accent and
style, while north Jersey shares the sameness of New York.  There is
Philly Jersey and New York Jersey, with the latter assuming superiority to the
former. 

“They
turn their noses up at us,” Frank often complained of the way northerners
treated the southerners.  Maybe it was reminiscent of the way northern
Italian folk treated their southern counterparts, and Frank, having his roots
in southern Italy, did not like this snobbery one bit.  

He
also did not like the idea that his favorite child had relocated to north Jersey.
 He did not even want her to go away to college at Rutgers, but he was
certain that she would return home after her four years.  In fact,
everyone in the family thought that she would be happy to come back home.
 No one expected her to remain “up there,” except Silvia, who knew that
her beautiful sister would quickly be snatched up by some rich guy with a
bright future.  And she was, during her junior year. 

Doug
Rothchild
had just completed the MBA program at
Princeton and was guaranteed a position at Goldman Sachs.  After only a
few months of meeting Angie, he proposed at his parents’ Christmas party right
in front of his family and their esteemed friends.  His parents were
surprisingly accepting, despite her ethnic diversion from their long line of pure
blue bloods.  Their grand children’s eyes would most probably be brown,
and they might even inherit some fat gene that the
Rothchilds
surely suspected to be lurking in the Greco family.

Frank
was panicked that, as the father of a bride marrying into a wealthy family, he
would have to spend a major amount of money for an expensive wedding, but he
also figured that he would be off the hook for life.  At least Angie had
the good sense to marry rich.  He still was not going to go for some gala
affair, so the wedding was nice, but small.  He told his daughter to tell
her future in-laws that she did not want a lot of people at her wedding and
that that sort of thing would make her nervous.  This could not have been
further from the truth.  Angie would have absolutely loved a big bash with
lots of people she did not know or care about.  Angie’s soon-to-be mother
in-law was less than pleased with the idea of a small wedding, but she was glad
that it was held at a local fine dining establishment.  Silvia more than
appreciated the absence of a cheesy wedding band and liked the smallness of the
wedding party, which consisted of herself and Doug’s best friend, a former frat
guy named Ray, who made Silvia feel like she was completely invisible.

While
Frank was happy that Angie was marrying into money, the occasion was sad and
disheartening because his favorite child was moving away from his home of south
Jersey.  A move to the northern part of the state was like a slap in the
face, as his devotion to south Jersey was so unwavering. When Angie announced
the plans to her family, Frank pretended to be overjoyed, but he was a bad
actor and everyone, including Angie, could see the sadness coming through his
eyes.  Donna understood and accepted his sadness, for she knew how he had
invested all of his hopes and dreams into the one and only child who really
seemed connected to him. 

None
of the
Grecos
were really surprised when he got
inebriated at the wedding party and made a toast while drunk.  Embarrassed
and uncomfortable, but not surprised.  The toast consisted of some slurs,
followed by a long pause that led pathetically into tears.  Angie’s new
mother-in-law, who could drink and drink and drink and yet remain perfectly
composed, suddenly looked weak with shock, like she might pass out at any
instant.  Her new father-in-law was stiff and distinguished looking and
gave no apparent response at all.  He stood firm, strong, and
expressionless like a department store manikin.  Angie smiled to the small
crowd, as though to apologize for her father’s poor behavior, too ashamed to be
touched by his tears.