Olive Branches Don't Grow on Trees (3 page)

“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 did not
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 smiled an uncertain smile at
him.  She didn’t feel confident today.

“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 could not 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 did not 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 was not 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.”

**********

When
Silvia and Vince returned to the house, Frank was sleeping in the den in front
of a blaring television set, snoring loud and rhythmic.  Even when he
slept, he was loud.  He snored and squirmed and tossed and rattled.
 He slept in the den probably more than he slept in his own bed,
especially since Donna had left.  The room was dark and cozy, and had a
long red plaid couch that stretched from one side of the room to the
other.  The built-in shelves were filled with his books from college and
law school, with a smattering of Plato and Dickens and legal codes.  These
reminded Frank of his accomplishments and of who he was.

“He’s
passed out for the count,” said Vince, as he always said when Frank was passed
out.

“I
think he has court tonight,” said Silvia, semi-worried.  Frank worked as a
judge in a local courthouse, and despite the fact that his family life was a
wreck,
his professional life was quite together.  He
shined as a judge just as he had shined as a lawyer.  Silvia had gone to
court with him on occasion and was almost unable to recognize the distinguished
man who sat before the courtroom. 

“Don’t
worry.  He’ll be up in time.  He always is.  He’s never late.”

“Oh
yeah,” said Silvia, as she recalled that Frank never needed an alarm clock.
This was not true of herself.  Waking up was always difficult for Silvia,
even with an alarm clock.  She was inclined to push the snooze button
several times after the buzz went off.  She had tried moving the clock
across the room from her so that she would be forced to get up out of bed to
turn it off.  But this never quite worked out.  She would get up and
go over to the clock to push the snooze button and then drag the clock closer
to her bed so that she could proceed to push the snooze several more times.
 It was no wonder that she was perpetually late for everything.

 
She and Vince went into their respective rooms and closed the doors, which was
another thing that Frank hated and did not understand.  “Why are people
always closing doors in this God Damn house?” he would say.  He liked open
doors.  He thought that there was nothing to hide.  He figured that
his children closed doors because they had inherited a bad gene from Donna’s
side of the family that caused them to be introverted.  Silvia thought
that Frank often confused things, and that in this case, he confused
independence with introversion.  She thought that her mother and siblings
enjoyed being alone for the same reason that cats like being
alone-- because they were independent.  She also thought that Frank was
sorely mistaken in thinking that any of her mother’s family members were
introverted, and Donna, herself, least of all.  On occasion, she could
even be gregarious.

Frank
possibly mistook his wife’s seriousness for introversion.  She was a
serious person, too serious to be bothered with incidental things like small
talk or the conventions of conversation.  And tonight, when she called
Silvia, she wasted no time getting right to the point.

“Hi
Silvie
, dear,” she said in a low voice. “I’m worried
about Vince.”  Silvia could see her mother sitting in her very tiny studio
apartment that overlooked Rittenhouse Square.  It was in a high rise with
a neat
, clean and simple, blandly colored beige and off
white interior.  She moved into the place, after leaving Frank, at the
suggestion of a colleague who lived in the very same building.  When
Silvia had last seen it, she was struck by its complete lack of decorations.
 It looked more like a hotel room than a place where a person lived.
 Silvia wondered if her mother had not made any attempts to decorate
because she was intent on getting back with Frank, or because the rent was too
expensive for her to afford long term and that she had planned on leaving it
for a cheaper apartment.  Silvia assumed that the apartment was more than
her mother could afford on her part-time college professor salary.

Aside
the financial stress that Silvia imagined her mother must have felt, she was
also surely stressed over leaving before Vince had graduated high school and
was safely out of the house.  Every time she and Silvia had spoken since
she left Frank, Vince had been the focal point of their conversation. 
  

“He
sounds depressed when I talk to him on the phone.  And last weekend, when
I saw him, he moped around the whole time.  I know he's not mad at me.
 I didn't do anything to make him mad, and he doesn't get mad.  You
know the way he is.  He could be depressed.  I really hope Dad isn’t
being a total bastard to him.”

Silvia
was hurt by her mother’s lack of concern for how she was doing.  Yet, she
was relieved that she did not have to delve into her problems, because each
time she did, they seemed to grow like a big pile of trash getting higher
because of a garbage strike.  Feeling hurt, while understandable, was rare
for Silvia.  She never seemed to need anything from anyone, including her
own mother, and never felt hurt for someone’s lack of concern for how she was
doing.  But she was at an all-time low and so she felt hurt.  Of
course, she made no display of her hurt feelings but rather listened to her
mother continue with her monologue of worry.  She told her mother that
Vince was just nervous about going so far away to college and about the
possibility of Frank not paying.

“Dad
will pay.  He just likes to threaten that he won’t.  And as far as going
so far away is concerned, you think he'd be happy to get as far away from that
house as possible!” Donna said.  Although Silvia could not agree with her
mother more about how Vince should be happy to get far away, this comment
caused her to sink even further down.  Fortunately, her mother caught her
insensitivity. 

“I'm
sorry,
Silvie
.  I didn’t mean to put the house
down.  Besides, you're only staying there until you get yourself together.
 You could stay with me here.”

“In
your little studio Mom?
Where would I sleep? 
In the bathtub?”

“Well,
you’re much better at dealing with Dad than I was.  And you’re much better
than Vince.”

“He
and Dad are getting along fine Mom,” she said.

“I
don’t believe that,
Silvie
.”

“Well
then I’m not sure what to tell you.”

“Hey,
didn't that weird girl he was seeing break up with him a little while ago?”

“I
don’t know.  He doesn’t talk about that stuff to me.  I don’t know if
he discusses his love life with anyone.  I just think he’s anxious about
going far away.”

Then
Donna blurted out, “I bet that Dad is trying to turn Vince against me.
 Turn a son against his own mother.  Imagine that.  Do you hear
Dad mentioning my name at all to Vince?” 

Silvia
could very clearly picture the indignant expression on her mother’s still
youthful face.

“No,
I didn’t hear him mention your name to Vince, Mom.”

“It’s
just that I always worry about Vince.  Oh, I wish I could have stayed
there longer, but I just couldn’t.”

“You
don’t have to explain yourself to me, Mom,” said Silvia with a hint of sarcasm.

“Maybe
he thinks I was neglectful.”

“He
doesn’t think that, Mom.”

“Maybe
I can plan some kind of party for his graduation.  That would be a way to
make it up to him.”

“Make
what up to him?” Despite Silvia’s frustration, she was beginning to accept the
fact that her mother was not listening to her, so she decided to stop talking
and to let Donna rant on freely. 

 “Yes,
it can be something simple.  We can plan for a family dinner at a nice
restaurant.”  She cleverly inserted the word
we
where
the word
I
should have been to draft Silvia
into helping her with the party she was planning.

Of
course, Silvia would help her mother.  It was difficult to refuse
her.  For starters, she felt sorry for her for being married to
Frank.  And now, after being with the same person for just about all of
her adult life, she would have to start over.  The thought of her mother
being trapped between the guilt of leaving Vince and the pain of living with
Frank made Silvia want to do whatever she could do to help.  Although she
could not refuse her, she did wish that Donna had asked someone else for
help.  But who would she ask?  Cosmo was in his own world, and Angie
kept her distance from their mother.  So it was up to Silvia. 

Besides,
she knew that she was the only one in her family that would be able to
accomplish this great feat.  All the Greco family members had not been
together for over six years, since Angie’s wedding.  When together at the
wedding, they did not fight demonstrably, but kept a silence that, for Silvia,
was almost worse than the loud fights.  Cosmo showed up with an outrageous
date to further solidify the conflict he had had with Angie.  Donna could
not hide her sadness for being so distant from her bride daughter.  Frank
could not hide his sadness for losing the only child he was close to, and this
was expressed in the tear-filled drunk toast he gave before the dinner.

However,
the wedding still wasn’t as bad as more typical family gatherings, like holiday
dinners, which were filled with angry words and one of Frank’s rampages. 
On occasion, the family left the house to stay in a motel until he calmed
down.  Silvia could only remember two Christmases that Frank did not rage,
which was compensated with siblings fighting each other.  She could only
recall one family gathering that did not involve fighting.  During the
extremely rare gatherings that did not involve a fight, the threat of one hung
in the air like the sword of Damocles.  For Silvia, this threat was worse
than a fight.  It made a knot in her stomach that took over her entire
body.