Olive Branches Don't Grow on Trees (13 page)

She
knew that all of their family fights had some point of origin, with most
continuing for so long that the origin was lost.  Whatever the origin,
Frank was either in the center of all of the family fights, or sometimes on the
sidelines, cheering the players on.  Silvia knew that he could not help
himself.  Fighting was what he knew.  It was what he was raised
on.  According to Donna, there was never a second of peace in the
household where he was raised by a
drunk
father and a
drama queen mother.  His childhood memories were filled with frequent
visits from the town police, who were on a first name basis with his
father.  When his father was not busy raising hell, his mother was busy
turning her children against each other and threatening to kill
herself
because she “couldn’t take it anymore!”  

Although
Donna was not a fighter, she had grown up in a family of fighters, and so she
gravitated towards what was familiar.  Hence, her marriage to Frank made
perfect sense.  Silvia reflected on how Donna’s family feuding escalated
when her father died.  Her well-off sister hired an attorney to contest
their father’s will, and in doing so, divided the family into two
factions.  The money that her sister would have gotten from their father’s
estate was not worth the legal fees, but she had to get what she felt she was
entitled to.  With the law involved, there was no hope of ever salvaging
what they had as a family.  “There are fights about money, and fights
about everything else,” Silvia once heard her Grandma
Tucci
tell Donna, as if she was prophesying what would happen to her family after her
own husband’s death.  She went on to say that fights about money are
dirtier, more ugly, and messier than other fights.  

           
Silvia suspected that her siblings were going in the same direction as her
parents’ families, and she wondered what they might potentially devolve into
given further complications that were bound to come.  Frank had enough
money for his children to fight over once he was dead, and perhaps one of her
siblings would get the law involved.  Although Silvia could not imagine
that happening, she was sure that Donna also had not foreseen what happened in
her family.  She then moved to thinking about other potential
conflicts.  Surely, Doug would not be the last spouse that was not liked
by one or more of the other siblings.  She could imagine whatever militant
hippie chick Vince would one day marry, and how Angie would condescend upon
her.  The godfather fight between Angie and Cosmo could not be the last of
this sort of thing to occur within their family.  As Frank and Donna moved
further away from each other, a divide in their family was bound to evolve,
with Angie by Frank’s side, and Vince by Donna’s side, and Cosmo and Silvia
left floating somewhere in between.

For
the first time in her life, Silvia felt the bigness of her family’s
feuding.  It had a life of its own, with roots going back to the early
nineteen hundreds, when one of Frank’s great aunts caught her sister sleeping
with her husband in their Naples apartment, or when one of Donna’s great
grandfathers ran through the streets of Milan chasing his brother for stealing
his money. Would this continue into the future?  She could see no
beginning and no end, like an unbroken circle.  It was way beyond some Alcoholics
Anonymous meetings, or a family get-together.  There was too much that
could not be undone. 

Many
fighting scenes of her childhood passed before Silvia’s eyes.  She
remembered, too, how, she would retreat to the cellar steps and dream about
going somewhere far away.  She had never been to a far-away place but had
seen pictures of such places on the television and on the computer.  One
of those places was Paris.  She lived in a charming, bright, colorful
studio apartment with a black and white cat.  She also lived in a white
cottage with red trim that was surrounded by chickens and sheep and situated in
the pristine English countryside.  Sometimes she lived in a weathered
beach house on the California coast.  As she got older and realized that
living at any of these wonderful residencies depended on her having money, she
imagined a career for herself.  When she lived in the country or at the
beach side, she made a living as a painter.  When she lived in Paris, she
managed an art gallery.  She was famous in all of these communities, and
everyone loved her and wanted to know her.  And so it went.  She
could still hear her Grandma
Tucci
saying to her,
“Sometimes dreams can hurt you.” The wise old woman must have known that her
granddaughter had an overly active dream life.  But Silvia could not help
herself.  She was born a dreamer and could even live on her dreams.

When
old enough to move on her own, she traded moving in her head for moving in the
real world.  She looked down upon her father’s restlessness and inability
to stop searching for a lost frying pan.  But how was she so different?
 She searched for happiness in places the way that Frank searched for it
in a bottle of gin.

As
she sat eating her chocolate covered strawberries, looking out onto the sea,
and listening to the waves on this perfect late spring early evening, she
wondered how she could feel such a strong and urgent need to move, to start
over.  She heard the words of the man at the AA meeting, who called
himself a geographic, talking about how many times he had started over.
 She heard Cosmo saying, “What’s wrong with here?”  Indeed, what was
wrong with here?  She was hard pressed to find anything wrong with her
surroundings or anything wrong with this day, short of the mooching seagull.
 Why was the next place always better than the present one?  

As
the sun was setting, she kept her eyes on it, not wanting to miss any of its
very quick show. Once the sun touched the ocean, it would sink fast into the
horizon.  The ramble in her brain quieted down, as the big yellow ball
slid down behind the ocean.  At that moment, she realized that making
peace in her family was not only for her parents and siblings.  It was for
her sake, as well.  As the sun made its final decent into the ocean, she
felt a new energy for her cause to reunite her family come alive.  She now
felt more determined than ever to make the family gathering happen.  She
firmly believed, if all of her family members could be in the same room and see
into each other’s eyes, they would remember that they loved each other. 
Then there would be an unprecedented peace in her family.  She understood
now why she was putting so much effort into planning the gathering and was so
easily willing to prey upon her family members’ weaknesses. This was underhanded
and manipulative, but it was for the good of all.  If there was some peace
in her family, maybe there would be some peace in
herself
,
and she could stop running. 

**********

She
stayed in Cape May until nighttime when the outdoor mall lit up and was filled
with people enjoying the lovely mild evening.  The mall was on a
cobblestone street and filled with cafes, pubs, and shops selling ice cream,
fudge, and seashell souvenirs.  With no cars on the street, Silvia
appreciated not hearing the roar of motors, beeping horns, and drivers yelling.
 The car-free aspect made it all the more a pleasant place to walk and
window shop.  She strolled by a restaurant with outdoor seating where a
tall, dark, curly haired waiter smiled at her.  She smiled back, but then
started walking fast.  Immediately, she regretted not doing more and
wished that she had gone up and talked to him.  Flirting was not something
that ever came natural to her, and it was only very recently that she acquired
the skill of flirting at all.  It was something that she had learned at
the urging of her friend
Sante
, who practically gave
her flirting lessons.  While in college, it was all too easy to meet guys,
so she never had to worry about doing anything like approaching a strange man and
conversing with him. 

She
wondered if she should go back to the restaurant where she saw the waiter and
attempt to talk to him.  It was too late now.  Besides, she would be
moving to Portland soon.  More than that, she just felt stupid going back
to talk to him, so she just continued walking on, feeling regretful and
relieved at the same time.  Then something inside of her made her turn
around and walk back to the restaurant.  To her dismay, the waiter was
nowhere to be seen, and it looked like the restaurant might be closing.

“Just
as well,” she thought to herself.  She got back on the road heading home,
and soon got a call from Donna.  “What are you doing driving down to Cape
May by yourself at night?  What if something happens, like a blow out?
 You'll be stranded on the side of the road alone.”  She could hear
her mother's panic through the phone.

“I'm
sorry Mom.  Don't worry.  I'll be home soon.”  Donna had no idea
of all the nighttime driving Silvia did
alone,
and
Silvia made sure that she never would.

“I
want you to call me as soon as you get home,” said Donna in her most firm tone
of voice.

**********

Silvia
did call her mother as soon as she pulled into the driveway of her father’s house
and she was sorry to find that Donna was not in the best of moods.  “How’s
your dad?”  Donna asked her right away, not even asking how Silvia was.

“Not
so great. The other night....” began Silvia, who was then abruptly cut off by
Donna saying,  “Well, a bottle of booze a day can’t do much for any body’s
well-being,” as if she had had this statement all prepared and was glad that he
was not so well.

“He
doesn’t drink a bottle of booze a day,” said Silvia, surprised to hear
herself
defending Frank.

“Sorry,
I should have said a bottle of booze every two days,” said Donna sarcastically.
 She was detaching from Frank.  It came through loud and clear in her
voice, in her sardonic remark, and the way she was suddenly calling him “your
dad” instead of “Dad.”  Silvia was both glad and sad at the same time.
 She was glad for Donna’s newfound independence, but saddened that the
fantasy she had about her parents’ getting back together would probably not
become a reality.  Whatever mixed feelings she had inside, she did not
have the energy to defend her father anymore, so, instead, she asked Donna how
she was doing.

“Fine,”
she replied, but did not then speak of any other details, as if she did not
want to disclose them to her daughter. 

“How
is the career searching going?” asked Donna, redirecting the conversation.

“Well,
I’ve been giving some more thought to your art teacher suggestion.  And I
think that I can see myself doing that.  But I started researching the
requirements, and found out that if I get a certification in one state, I can’t
get a job with it in another state.”

“What
are you saying Silvia?  So now you want to move again?  Why?  
Where?”
 Donna was being really rambunctious and edgy
on this particular evening and Silvia, hearing the frustration in her mother’s
voice, was reluctant to continue talking.  Fortunately, Donna then took on
a much more empathetic tone of voice, and she apologized.

“I’m
sorry honey.  I had a long day.  I didn’t mean to snap.  I just
wish that you could stop moving.  I think it’s going to be hard for you to
ever create any kind of nice life for yourself if you’re always moving.
 And what would be so terrible about getting a certification here and
staying in New Jersey?  It’s not such a terrible place.  You do have
your family here.”

She
could never tell her mother that she felt that she could never start over here,
that it felt stale, that she felt trapped like a rat in a maze, and that the
thought of staying frightened her. Silvia just told her that she would think
about it, and she was very happy when her mother changed the subject once
again.

“How’s
Vince?” asked Donna.

“He’s
doing alright, except he’s still worried about whether or not Dad will help him
with his tuition.”

“Oh,
I know he will when it’s all said and done.”

“I’m
going to tell him about the party tonight when I get home.  Oh, and I
think Dad’s going to go for it, after all.”

“That’s
great,” said Donna, the tone in her voice not conveying that she genuinely
thought that it was great.

“I
don’t know.  For some reason, you don’t sound too happy about it
Mom.”  There was an uncomfortable silence, which was rare in a
conversation with Donna.

“It’s
not that.  I
am
happy
about it.  And I’m so grateful to you honey.  It’s just that I think
it would be best if I wasn’t there.” 

Although
Silvia was taken aback by her mother’s sudden shift, she had no time to fret or
to figure it out.  Her need to make the reunion happen was stronger than
ever, and she needed to say something in an effort to undo Donna’s change of
heart and convince her that she needed to be there.  Being well-aware of
Donna’s weakness for Vince, she knew just what to say: “Mom, how would Vince
feel if you weren’t there?”

“I
was thinking that he and I could celebrate on our own.  I’ll take him to
some nice restaurant.”