Bloomability

Aunt Sandy said, “Your mother should be here tomorrow.”

  “And my father?” Lila said.

  “I think he’s detained on business,” Aunt Sandy said.

  “Oh, right,” Lila said scornfully. “Detained. Business.”

  I was relieved when Uncle Max came in and suggested we visit Guthrie. As we left, Lila said to Uncle Max, “Can’t you find me any American magazines?”

  Same old Lila, I thought. Not even an avalanche was going to change her.

  Guthrie truly did look terrible. He was lying on the bed with his eyes closed. His leg was in a cast and propped in the air; his face was pale and swollen and half-covered with a thick bandage, his chest was taped round, and his forearm was also covered in a bandage.

  When I touched his hand, he opened his eyes. “Oh, hi, Dinnie!” he said. “Hi there,” he said to Aunt Sandy. He sniffed my jacket. “You smell like real air!”

  And at that instant, when he said “You smell like real air!” I understood his story about the two prisoners. Guthrie was like the one who only saw the sky, and Lila was like the one who only saw the dirt. I wondered where I fit in. Was I somewhere in the middle, seeing the in-between things?

  “Are you okay?” Aunt Sandy asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I’m fine.” He reached up and touched his face tentatively. “Can you hand me that mirror?” He held it to his swollen face. “Hey! Look at this! I’m a balloon-head!”

  He asked how Lila was. “I bet she was scared,” he said soberly.

  “Yes, I think she was,” Aunt Sandy said. “And how about you? Were you scared?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I was.” Later, he said that in the middle of being scared, he thought about the rest of us and he could imagine us praying for him, and it made him feel better. “Then, in the middle of that,” he said, “you know what I thought of? I thought of how Keisuke says stew-pod! It made me laugh. I had a little inside laugh down there under the snow.”

  The odd thing was that Keisuke had said stew-pod while we were waiting for Guthrie to be found, and it was as if they’d had extrasensory perception, Keisuke and Guthrie, as if Keisuke had beamed him a funny word to keep him going.

  Uncle Max, Aunt Sandy, and I stayed overnight nearby, and met Mrs. King (Lila’s mother) and Mr. Guthrie shortly after they arrived the next afternoon. Guthrie’s father was not at all what I had expected. I had expected someone as exuberant as Guthrie, someone bounding and leaping, tall and muscular, but his father was a shy, frail man, soft-spoken and timid. I think I had also expected Guthrie’s father to exude wealth, to be dressed in tailored clothes, to sport a gold watch, perhaps, but his father was dressed simply in a faded pair of khaki trousers and a pale, rumpled blue shirt. Guthrie’s father spent the whole day and night seated beside his son, talking quietly to him. Sometimes from the hall, we could hear Guthrie laugh his booming laugh.

  Lila’s mother was something else entirely. We were in the lobby when she swept into the hospital wrapped in fur, patting her hair, and snapping her fingers at an orderly. “My luggage,” she said. “Get my luggage, will you?” When the orderly didn’t respond, she repeated her request, louder, and then said, to the air, “Doesn’t anyone here speak English?”

  We’d reached her by this time. Uncle Max introduced himself, and was about to introduce Aunt Sandy and me when Mrs. King said, “Could someone please see to my luggage? It’s out there on the curb where anyone could walk off with it.”

  Uncle Max and I went out and hauled in three suitcases. She must have planned to stay awhile, I thought. When we returned, she ordered Uncle Max, “Take me to my daughter!”

  There were many loud scenes coming from Lila’s room throughout the afternoon. First there was screeching because Lila was not in a private room, and then there was shouting because apparently Lila’s mother thought the nurses and doctors would understand her English better if she shouted it. Then there was shouting between Lila and her mother.

  “I am not!” Lila screamed.

  “You are! You’re coming home with me as soon as we can get you out of this dump!”

  “I’m not!”

  “You are!”

  Uncle Max and Aunt Sandy took turns going in to try and calm things, but neither of them lasted long in there. Uncle Max would come out, rubbing his forehead and saying, “Your turn,” and then Aunt Sandy would go in, and pretty soon she’d be dashing out, wringing her hands and saying, “Your turn!”

  When Mrs. King ordered Uncle Max and Aunt Sandy to get her “out of this dump” and find her a hotel and a decent restaurant, Aunt Sandy whispered to me, “If I kill her on the way and get put in jail, will you come and rescue me?”

  When they’d gone, I went in to see Lila. Now she did look terrible, her eyes all puffed from crying, her face red and swollen, her hair in tangled knots. “Oh, Dinnie!” she cried. “Dinnie, don’t let her take me away! I won’t go. I won’t!”

  “Lila, maybe it will be better than you expect. Maybe it’s an opportunity,” I said.

  “Opportunity!” she shrieked. “Oh, Dinnie, how can you say such a horrid thing? I hate you. I hate, hate, hate you!”

  By the next morning, however, when she’d been subdued (I suspected the doctors might have given both her and her mother something to calm them, because they both seemed much more restrained), she loved, loved, loved me, and she loved, loved, loved Uncle Max and Aunt Sandy, and she loved, loved, loved Guthrie, and she loved, loved, loved the school, and she would never ever in a million years forget us. We were hugged and kissed, and then off they went, Lila and her mother, in a taxi full of luggage.

  And that was it. The two pistols were gone.

  41

  Hats and Bugs

  In the middle of April, Aunt Grace and Aunt Tillie sent Easter cards:

  Dear Dinnie,

  Happy Easter! Do they celebrate Easter there?

  I got a new hat. It’s as pretty as anything. Too bad it has to go on an old head like mine.

  We had ham for Easter dinner. I wanted pot roast, but Lonnie says you have to have ham on Easter. I hate ham.

  Love, love, love,

  Your Aunt Grace

  Dear Dinnie,

  You are going to be so surprised if this plan works out! Your daddy is coming tomorrow to talk it over. I can’t spoil his surprise.

  Crick is in Air Force survival school. He gets tossed out in the woods and has to eat bugs and snakes and find his way back to base. I hope he makes it. Bugs aren’t very tasty, if you ask me. Better than pot roast though. Ha. Ha.

  I found a turtle by the river and met a girl who is uncovering a trail. You’d like her, I bet.

  Two thousand barrels of kisses,

  Love from your Aunt Tillie, Champion Cheesecake Jello Maker

  In April, I also received a Valentine’s Day card from my mother:

  Dear Dinnie,

  Oops! I forgot to mail this in February!

  Beneath that, she’d drawn a blue heart (blue?) with a fish (a fish?) in the center of it.

  42

  Fishing

  By the end of April, Lugano was transformed. Warm air and strong sun embraced us by day, and rain cleansed the city at night. In the Piazza della Reforma in the center of Lugano, the pigeons and tourists had returned in droves, the geraniums were already trailing from balcony window boxes, and the trees circling the lake had burst out in bright green leaves.

  On campus, the persimmon and magnolia trees were in full bud, and scattered here and there were pockets of bright flowers. White umbrellas shaded the outdoor eating area, and students clustered about the lawns, textbooks lying open, their pages fluttering in the breeze. Up on the hillside near our house, grape vines crawled over latticed frames, and sweet smells drifted in through the windows.

  On the last Saturday in April, a month before the end of term, Guthrie and I took a long-awaited excursion. He was off his crutches, only hobbling slightly, and the scar on his face had faded from red to pink. It was a two-part excursio
n we had planned. The first was his contribution to the day; the second was mine.

  We took the bus down to Paradiso, on the fringes of Lugano, and bought tickets for the funicolare, the little train which crept up the side of Mt. San Salvatore. We squeezed inside with throngs of tourists and stared out the windows as the funicolare climbed, climbed, climbed. Trees and bushes and rocks lined the route to the top. It was hard to get a sense of what was around you, beyond you. I kept thinking of all the times I’d watched the funicolare from my window across the valley. I’d watched it inch up the mountain like a red lizard, occasionally disappearing from view behind trees and then reappearing again, slipping in and out of the trees.

  On the bench across from us were five climbers, squeezed in a row, laughing and talking loudly in German. They were clad in sturdy climbing boots, thick woolen knee socks, corduroy knee breeches and green windbreakers. A yellow patch on each of their jackets identified them as members of a hiking group. When they heard Guthrie ask me something, one of the men said, “American, yah? I know someone in America. Chicago!”

  The woman next to him nodded. “Hans Dolmahn, our cousin! Dolmahn—you ever come across him?”

  Guthrie and I looked at each other. “Hm,” Guthrie said. “Dolmahn, Dolmahn. It does ring a bell.”

  “No!” said the man. “You know him, you know Hans?”

  Guthrie nudged me. “Dinnie? You’ve been to Chicago, right? You ever meet anybody named Dolmahn?”

  “It’s a big place, Chicago,” I said.

  “Big man,” the woman said. “Big man, big beard.”

  This happened a lot, this sort of thing. Someone would find out you were from the States and then ask if you knew someone there, as if the States were a tiny little country and you’d be likely to know most everyone.

  When we reached the end of the funicolare line, we tumbled out onto a platform sheltered among trees. It wasn’t what I expected. You couldn’t see anything beyond the trees.

  “We have to go up there,” Guthrie said, indicating a curved stone path which led further up the mountain, another five hundred feet. I could just make out a cross on a stone church at the top. Up the winding steps we climbed, circling round the peak, until there at the top was a wide flat plateau. In the center was the small church, and surrounding it were benches and a railing.

  “Oh!” I gasped. “Oh!” For there, beyond the railing, all around you, was the most magnificent view. It was as if the whole wide world was spread out before you and you were standing up in the sky looking over it.

  Three thousand feet up in the air, you could see the whole of blue Lake Lugano, and you could see beyond Lugano, across the Alpine foothills, and you could turn and see Italy and Lake Maggiore and the Lombardy Plains. An impossibly blue sky stretched over blue lakes and over row upon row of mountains—some green, some almost blue in the light, and some in the distance still snow-capped.

  “See?” Guthrie said, stretching his arms wide, as if he were grasping the whole world in it. “Fantastico! Sono potente! Sono libero!”

  I had an odd feeling, as if I were aware of being a speck on this mountain, a speck in this wide scene, my little dot self, but also, simultaneously, I felt a part of it and above it and very, very free, as if this were my world, mine. Libero, libera. I breathed in the air, and I thought: This—this is me!

  I glanced at Guthrie. He was breathing it all in, his smile so wide. I thought about his father. Mr. Guthrie seemed a kind man, but not outgoing like his son, and I wondered where the son got his boundless enthusiasm from, where he had learned to rush headlong into every opportunity.

  At the top of Mt. San Salvatore that day, we stood a long time at the railing, gazing out at the world, and then we went into the cool, dark church and climbed to its tower and out onto the ledge from which you could see even farther across the Lombardy Plains of Italy to the south. Campobasso might be down there somewhere, I thought. I would go to Campobasso someday and see where my Grandma Fiorelli walked when she was a girl.

  We rode back down the funicolare and strolled through some of the smaller passageways that twist through the city of Lugano. There were open markets selling flowers and cheese and pizza and huge, fat, three-foot-long salamis which hung from the stalls. We ate slices of pizza as we walked along, and Guthrie said, “Really, Dinnie. You’ve got to admit it, this is such the best, don’t you think?”

  We took the bus back up the hill, past the school, and got off at the Collina d’Oro and walked down the Via Poporino to our house, where I got my fishing pole, and then we hiked up through Agra to the percorso. Through its winding paths we went until we came to the stream, and then we sat on the bank and I cast my line into the water.

  “You don’t use a hook?” Guthrie said. “No bait?”

  “I’m not really fishing for fish,” I said.

  “Oh!” he said, wrapping me in a sudden hug. “You’re a very interesting person, Domenica Doone.”

  Interesting? Had he said interesting?

  “And you, Peter Lombardy Guthrie the Third, are such the best.” And, because it seemed that that needed some sort of follow-up, I kissed his such-the-best cheek.

  That day, I fished for all of Switzerland, for every piece of it I had seen and everyone I had known there. I even fished for Lila. And then I fished for my father, my mother, for Crick and Stella and the baby. I fished for Grandma Fiorelli and Aunt Grace and Aunt Tillie.

  When school finished at the end of May, I’d be going home.

  The Dreams of Domenica Santolina Doone

  I was on a raft floating down a river. There were other rafts tied up to mine: Guthrie’s and Lila’s and Belen’s and Mari’s and Keisuke’s. We all had huge nets that we waved in the air. I scooped up my whole family, one by one and dropped them on my raft.

  I am a transparent eyeball! I shouted.

  We were coming to a bend in the river, but I don’t know what was around the bend because I woke up.

  43

  Forking Roads

  The final week of school was a blur. First came three days of exams, followed by our middle school graduation ceremony, and the next day the commencement ceremony for the older students, the seniors. There was a mix of excitement and sadness during this time: excitement at finishing exams and preparing to go home, and sadness at leaving our friends and Switzerland. My friends would be flung to all the corners of the globe. Some would return the following year to the school, and some would not, but I didn’t know whether I’d be able to see any of them ever again.

  A month earlier, Uncle Max and Aunt Sandy had given me a choice. It was a choice not entirely mine, I figured, because first I had to find out what my parents wanted me to do. Uncle Max and Aunt Sandy would give me a plane ticket to America, and I could either go on to school wherever my parents were, or I could spend the summer in America and then return to school in Switzerland in the fall. I hadn’t been able to make that decision yet. All I knew at the time of our graduation ceremony was that I was going home, at least for the summer.

  We middle-schoolers had been pretty rowdy during the final weeks, shouting, racing down halls and across campus, pulling pranks. It was as if we had bushels of tumbling emotions and energy to get rid of, and we dumped them out whenever and however we could. Uncle Max took this pretty well, reassuring Aunt Sandy that all middle-schoolers went through this. “They’re doing us a favor,” he told her. “It keeps us from getting all slobbery over them.”

  The teachers seemed tired. Mr. Koo said, “You beanheads are driving me crazy!” and Mr. Bonner told us, “I want you all to leave before you ruin an otherwise great year!” Before our English exam, he told each of us, “Don’t worry. You’ll do fine,” and it seemed as if he wasn’t just referring to our exams. It seemed as if he meant forever, in our whole lives.

  It was tradition at the middle-school ceremony to have a banquet with teachers, students, and their parents. I was surprised that most parents came, and they came from all over the world: from
Japan and Korea and Spain and Argentina and Norway and Saudi Arabia. My parents weren’t there, but I had Aunt Sandy and Uncle Max.

  It was also tradition at this banquet for the headmaster and Mrs. Stirling to give speeches, and for their speeches to be followed by speeches from four students, elected beforehand by their classmates. We’d elected Mari, Belen, Keisuke, and Guthrie.

  The tables were laid with white tablecloths, the lights were dim, and candles were on each table. The boys were dressed up in sport coats and ties, and the girls in dresses. We looked nice, but odd, I thought, as if we were playing grown-up. We were acting differently, too, because of our new clothes and the presence of so many parents. We were a little stiff and overly polite.

  “You look very nice.”

  “Thank you, so do you.”

  “I love your dress.”

  “Thank you. I like yours too.”

  Uncle Max began with a funny, gentle speech about Variety. He gave examples of how varied we all looked and spoke and acted (that was the funny part, because of the way he told it and the examples he chose), and how variety was the key to what was special about the school and how much he’d learned from it (that was the gentle part). He got a standing ovation when he finished.

  Mrs. Stirling was there in her low-cut black dress, her pearls and her high red heels. Before she rose to speak, she reached down the front of her dress and pulled out a tube of lipstick which she opened and swept around her mouth. Mrs. Stirling gave a stern and rousing speech about how privileged we were and what we owed to the world and how we must give something back to it. We were her “army of goodwill ambassadors, marching out into the world.” I felt as if we were all getting taller, there under the eyes of Uncle Max and Mrs. Stirling and all those parents. Parents were nodding away like crazy as she spoke, and she, too, got a standing ovation when she finished.

  Mari was next. She spoke about fear, about how she’d been afraid when she’d arrived, afraid of being away from home and of meeting new people. She told how the fear had slipped away through the year, “slipped away silently and secretly,” and how we mustn’t be afraid to try new things. It was as if she’d crawled inside my head and seen what I’d thought and felt. When I looked around, I saw my classmates nodding, smiling, and realized she’d probably crawled inside all their heads, too.