Olive Branches Don't Grow On Trees

  **********

  As she got off the old rusty elevator on to Cosmo’s floor, Silvia smelled something baking and the aroma was intoxicating. Tired and hungry after a long workday, she was delighted when Cosmo came to the door with a plate full of fresh baked ricotta cookies. She wasn’t surprised that he had baked such good cookies himself. Whatever Cosmo did, he did great. He said that the tree bark cookies she had brought over to his apartment inspired him. She bit into one of his cookies. They were even more delicious than they smelled.

  “These are fucking amazing! Is there anything you can’t do Cosmo?” she said, buttering him up for the favors she was about to ask of him. She had two things on her agenda: Getting him to go to the reunion and getting him to drive with her to Portland. She didn’t really expect to achieve the latter at this time, but the former objective was definitely going to be accomplished tonight.

  He smiled and stood tall releasing, for a second, the hunch that had become a part of his his body. He then walked into the kitchen to get the teakettle screaming on the stove.

  “Tea?” he asked Silvia, getting out a box of Earl Grey.

  “Yeah, thanks,” she replied, sitting down at his kitchen table.

  “How’s everything at home?” he asked as he prepared their tea. “Dad still crazy?”

  “The other night he and Vince were fighting. He said Vince was giving him a bunch of crap about buying some plastic bags. Dad’s itching for a fight all the time, and here Vince goes giving him shit about plastic bags. You know Vince though, with all the causes he’s got going.”

  “Yeah,” Cosmo said as if he understood completely. “I’m sure he considers plastic to be evil.”

  “Right,” she said as though she didn’t also oppose the use of plastic bags.

  “Somehow I managed to reconcile them,” said Silvia, with a look on her face like she could barely believe that she had accomplished such a feat. Then she thought of a way she could nicely transition into persuading Cosmo to go to the reunion.

  “Every time Dad gets mad at Vince, which is like every day, he threatens to not help him out with his tuition, and Vince gets all panicky and depressed. So I explained to Vince that Dad is more edgy than ever because Mom isn’t around and that he really wants to get Mom back, but he’ll never admit that. I told Vince that having a party for him for his graduation would be an opportunity for Dad to try to get Mom back, or at least impress her with his fatherly generosity by paying for the whole thing.”

  She said all of this very quickly, hoping that Cosmo would not recognize that the plan was crazy. But of course he did.

  “That’s insane!” he blurted out, followed by, “And what makes you think that Mom wants to get back with Dad? She seems happy for the first time in years. Why would she want to go back to him? And what makes you think that Dad’s going to pay for a party? Unless we have it at McDonald’s.”

  “I’m not sure that Mom wants to get back with Dad, or that it’s the best thing for her, but Dad doesn’t know that.”

  “So, you’re going to lie to Dad?”

  “No. I’m not lying,” she said. “I’m just going to convince him that if he’s going to get Mom back, giving Vince a party would be a great opportunity for him to do so.”

  Cosmo looked back at his sister disapprovingly and said, “What about Vince? He hates being the center of attention.”

  “Yeah, but I explained to him that if Dad has an opportunity to get Mom back, he might be in a better mood and stop threatening to not help with his tuition.”

  “Jeez, you really got it all planned out,” he said with a tone of cynicism. “And what’s your plan for me in all this? Where do I fit in?”

  Silvia looked back at him as if she had no plans for him and innocently said, “No plan for you, but why wouldn’t you want to be there knowing how comforting your presence would be to our little brother? Knowing how he looks up to you.”

  Cosmo looked back at her like he knew exactly what she was doing, and said, “So I show up because I’m the good older brother, huh?”

  “Yes,” she said, remembering that she could never lie to him or fool him in any way because he knew her too well.

  He rolled his eyes, gave a small laugh and said, “And just where do you plan on having this party?”

  “Well, first I should say that it’s really not going to be a party. It will just be our family. I’ve just been calling it a party for convenience sake. Sometimes I call it a family dinner.” Although she couldn’t fool him, she also knew that she had to refrain from using the word reunion.

  But Cosmo didn’t seem too interested in her tangent on semantics and he simply repeated his question. “Where are we going to have this dinner?”

  “I’m not sure. Some place near home. Some place...”

  “Cheap,” said Cosmo finishing her sentence.

  “Yeah, some place cheap,” she said as if to satisfy her brother. “Dad always mentions some place called Russo’s. Says the owner couldn’t make his whole legal fee years ago, so now Dad can eat there free whenever he wants. He’s always offering to bring me there for lunch. I don’t think they’re very accommodating to vegetarians though.”

  “Russo’s Bar and Grill?” said Cosmo, humor in his voice.

  “Yeah, I think that’s it.”

  “Yeah, they’re sure not accommodating to vegetarians. It’s a biker bar!” He was fully laughing now with his biggest, heartiest laugh. He then got slightly serious and said, “But it is good to know that the barter system is still in use.”

  “What about the Central Cafe?” said Silvia, not laughing at all. “We drove past it on our way back from an AA meeting. It looks pretty nice and unassuming. Not too pricey.”

  “AA meeting? You and Dad?” he nearly spit the tea out of his mouth from his urge to laugh. “Oh what the fuck. This is too funny. You got to spread this stuff out, Silv.”

  “What’s so funny about getting Dad to go to an AA meeting? I happen to think it’s pretty great.”

  “It is. It is. I’m sorry. It’s just funny, is all. Picturing Dad sitting in one of those meetings where everybody introduces themselves as drunks. Hey, he didn’t introduce himself like that, did he?” He then began to impersonate an imagined version of their father: “‘Hello I’m Frank Greco and I’m an alcoholic.’”

  “You know, you should take it easy on him,” she said.

  “Why should I do that?” he said, turning serious. “He’s treated me like crap my whole life. And why are you defending him all of sudden, anyway?”

  “I’m just trying to have compassion for people lately. That’s all.”

  “Okay, Gandhi,” he said smirking, “why you’re giving all this compassion away to everyone, I wish that you’d fucking send some my way!”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because I spent my whole life being on the top of Dad’s shit list for no apparent reason. That’s why.”

  “So, you turned out okay,” she said. And it was true. He turned out fine. But she also knew that he probably would have turned out a lot better had their father treated him differently. He probably would have finished school for one thing. Despite his brilliance and his ability to do anything and everything great, he lacked confidence.

  “Yeah sure, I turned out fine. But I could have turned out a lot better if he hadn’t called me a fail....”

  Silvia stopped him before he could go any further. She knew what he was about to say, and she knew that what he was about to say was true, but she was also very aware of the damaging effects of blame. All that blame did, in her view, was to give the blaming person, in this case Cosmo, a way out of taking responsibility for his own problems, and therefore, a way out of making his life better.

  “Cosmo Greco, I thought you were you’re a bigger person than the type who sits around and blames other people for their problems.”

  “Well, I’m not,” he said with complete indifference.

  He wasn’t at all the type of person who ca
red if she or anyone else thought that he was a big person or a small person. In general, he didn’t care what people thought of him. He was born without a trace of self-consciousness.

  “Well, maybe he hasn’t had it so easy either.” Silvia persisted, even though she was mostly sure that it was too late for Cosmo to forgive Frank.

  “Well, that doesn’t justify having kids just so you can try to fuck them up.”

  “I’m sure his intention in having kids wasn’t so he could fuck them up, Cosmo! I’m sure that he was like lots of other parents who never bothered getting themselves together before they had kids,” she said, and then continued with, “But what about forgiving him, anyway? Don’t you get tired of carrying all that blame and anger around with you?” Truly, he, like many people, was carrying much more than he needed to carry, making himself and his life heavier than it needed to be.

  Her brother still seemed completely unconvinced by her arguments in favor of forgiveness, and so she thought that now might be a good time to tell him about her bonsai tree lesson. She recalled Frank taking him for violin lessons every Saturday morning when he was a child.

  “Do you remember when Dad used to bring you for violin lessons every Saturday morning?” Silvia asked.

  Cosmo looked like he had forgotten about the lessons and was remembering them for first time in years, “I do,” he said, without giving anything else away.

  “Well, don’t you think that was a kind thing? I mean, I know that you may have not been having the time of your life going to them, but the fact that he wanted you to learn an instrument is such a great thing.”

  “I suppose.” He was indifferent, but indifference, at this point, was an improvement over anger and bitterness.

  “I bet remembering him bringing you to those lessons makes you feel a lot better, as opposed to remembering the times that he put you down.” She was careful not to say the word failure to him.

  Cosmo had a look that Silvia never saw before, as if he might have been convinced, or, at least, mildly convinced. While he said nothing, seeing the expression on his face was satisfying enough for Silvia.

  “More tea?” he asked, getting up to refill the kettle.

  “Sure,” she said. She suspected that he was trying to divert the course of the conversation in order to avoid telling her that maybe she had a valid point about Frank. She also knew that he was attempting to get out of giving her a definite response about coming to the reunion. He should know better. He should know that she wasn’t the type of person to relent so easily.

  “So, you’re going to come to the dinner?” She said this more like a statement than a question.

  “Oh, so now you’re calling it a dinner?” he said, still unwilling to give her a definite response. She said nothing to his pointless question. Instead, she just sat there, expressionless, waiting for an answer.

  “Alright, I’ll be there,” he said, reluctance in his voice.

  “Thank you. It will mean a lot to Vince.”

  “Yeah, right,” he said begrudgingly.

  Silvia took a brief moment without talking to eat a third cookie and just savor its deliciousness. Then she was on to the next item on her agenda.

  “So, have you given any more thought to coming to Portland?”

  “Jesus Christ! What did you come over here for anyway? To ask for favors?”

  “That, and to eat cookies,” she said smiling.

  Cosmo slanted his lips and shook his head back and forth as if this was the very sort of behavior that he had grown to expect from his sister. “No, I haven’t given it any more thought. But it seems like a crazy thing to do. To leave my secure, decent paying job and move to a place where I’d probably be lucky to get a job as a barista in some trendy café.”

  He was right, and she knew it, but she persisted none-the-less, “Why don’t you just drive out there with me, and see how you like it there?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “I’ll pay for your plane ticket back.”

  “Well, that’s very nice. But, I still need to think about it.”

  “It could just be like a little vacation for you. Don’t you want to get away?”

  “Not really.”

  She couldn’t understand his way of life. She couldn’t imagine him not wanting to move out of Philadelphia, let alone not take a vacation. How could he not be bored out of his mind?

  “Maybe you don’t think you want to get away, but once you do, you’ll realize how much you wanted it all along.”

  He just looked back at her as if to say that there was nothing but nonsense coming out of her mouth. And although she knew that she sounded kind of ridiculous, she believed in her words. She believed that she spoke the truth. She also knew that convincing Cosmo of this truth was just not happening. Not tonight anyway.