One Thing Stolen Read online

  Sees me.

  Bows.

  Raises his fistful of roses toward me.

  Waits for me to smile back, and I do. Waits a second beat, and now again he’s running—taking part of me with him already. I turn and his head is the color of light. I turn, and he is gone.

  Whoosh.

  Vanished.

  It’s the monk who threatens after him, bald and thin. The monk who rushes an old-man rush—his song gone and his anger rising up the stairs. His robes flutter over the marble floor. His rope belt swings. His sandals creak. He’s ancient slow; his hurrying is creeping. The boy has flown through the cathedral door into the sun and the monk is barely breathing. The monk pulls up short at the door. Lifts the hand in the tunnel of his sleeve.

  Ladro, he calls. Thief.

  Cesare!

  But the boy is gone. I hurry down the aisle, through the door, to the piazza. I search for a sign of the disturbance. It’s only Dad out here by the wide rail with his empty book, a startled look on his face.

  Nadia? he says.

  I answer with nothing.

  5

  You all right? Dad asks again.

  He presses his hand against my forehead. He tests for a temperature, the one thing he has always thought to do, no matter what, no matter where we are or how old I am, but this is the thing: Fever is not the name of my disease.

  Someone was—running, I say at last.

  You, Dad says. You were.

  No, I say. I mean—Someone else.

  Dad smooths his caterpillar eyebrows. He gives me a long look and I give him a long look back and all I see in his two green eyes is a narrow girl: me. She has black hair and her mother’s bones and a big fringe of lashes and behind her the Vespa is gone, the pink duffel bag, the boy, the monk, the song. The rose hello.

  I saw nothing. Nadia. No one.

  In the city the sun is higher than it was. The towers and the squares and the roofs and the facades are browns and yellows, whites and greens. Birds are cutting the sky—swooping low and high. Florence is down there, and so is Dad’s river, and so are Mom and Jack and the person I’m supposed to be. The boy must be down there, too, and that Vespa and that streak of pink, and now petals are flicking off with the breeze—petals like butterfly wings, like snow.

  Red rose petals.

  Nadia? Dad says.

  But I’m already gone; he cannot stop me. I’m down the steps, along the curve, hurrying. The first dropped petal feels like nothing in my hand. The next is silk. The third petal fits, like all the others fit, into my palm. Petal. Petal. Petal. Soft red sweet. My hands grow fat with the color of red, which does not weigh a thing.

  I pass the cats; I pass the tourists. I pass the stones and the bugs and the trees. I leave the altitude inch by inch, make my way into the city. Far away, Dad calls to me—tells me to wait, to stop, what are you doing, Nadia? But the steps draw me down, the streets draw me in, the red and the promise of pink. I go into the alleys, past the shopkeepers, turn back. If there was a boy (and didn’t you see the boy?), he’s altogether vanished. It’s only my father on the hill behind me, his journal in one hand, his eyebrows rearranged by the breeze.

  Like somebody had you on a string, Dad says when he finally catches up to me, when he can breathe. Down all those stairs, he’s come. Into the alleys. Through the streets. The breeze in his hair. My old, lopsided father.

  He glances out across his city. Shakes his head, very slow. Loops his arm through mine, like an anchor. Studies me hard.

  You look a little . . . He searches for the word. Mesmerized. Is there something . . . Are you . . . ? You sure you’re all right?

  There are two of me in Dad’s eyes. There’s a line of worry in his brow. He locks his arm tighter into mine and waits for me to explain, but I already have, best as I can. Someone was running. Dad waits for more. There is nothing more.

  I’m doing the best I can. See?

  How about we not mention this to Mom, Dad says finally, and I nod. How about we—? he starts, then stops, and now we walk—over the bridge, past the crowds, around the corner, beneath the statue of Dante, across the piazza, all the way to Verrazzano—his arm hooked in my arm, his heart too heavy on one side. We walk to the borrowed flat on the borrowed street, past the stink of old air and motor oil.

  Up the stairs.

  All right, I think. All right. All right.

  Tell me I’m not crazy.

  6

  Spiceologist at work, Mom says when we open the door to the flat.

  She goes tiptoe in her bare feet to kiss Dad on the cheek. Touches her hand to the tornado of his hair. Points at Jack like he’s a game-show prize.

  Behind Mom Jack lifts one hand in a hello salute without looking up from the kitchen table, where he’s got his spice jars out, his tablespoons, his whisks and bowls, like some medieval experiment. His hair spikes through his Skullcandy headphones. There’s a dark dot of fuzz on his chin. He wears the plastic apron the Vitale family left behind—the one with pictures of the Duomo stacked up in columns and rows, versions of purple and yellow.

  Zuppa di cozze con fagioli borlotti, he says. Hot mussel soup.

  It’s the Day, Mom says, of the Chili Pepper.

  Dad touches his hand, briefly, to Mom’s waist. He looks at me. Smiles at her. Stands there lopsided, his empty book in his pocket.

  Jack slides a headphone off one ear, gives us a mealtime update. He puts the music back on and waves his hand above the page in the Marcella cookbook that he’s been working from. Marcella Hazan, the queen of Italian cooking, is Jack’s idol. This is Almost Independent Study 101—the recipes Jack’s been cooking through to get his science credits for Friends High. Mom got the school to approve the scheme. Jack calls it his fair trade, since everything he loves is back there in Philly and only his own fine cooking ranks as a sufficient consolation prize. He’s rinsing the mussels now. He’s soaked the cranberry beans. Plum tomatoes sit in a bowl, drowning in their juice.

  Amir called again, Mom tells Dad.

  And?

  Trouble, Mom says. I told him he has to see it through.

  She crosses her arms like she does when she talks about her at-risks: the kids who need her wherever she goes, the kids, she says, who keep her young, and she is young, in those blue pants with the wide waistband and the little white T-shirt that she irons. Her dark hair streaks cinnamon. Her arms are yogi-thin. Amir’s her toughest case, the kid she didn’t think she should leave behind, and now Jack looks up and hands Mom a fresh bowl, a sharp knife; Jack always knows what to do. Like Thanksgiving eve, a year ago, when the news about my uncle Mike came in—wrong splurge of blood in his brain. He had the worst jokes, Jack kept saying. He gave us the stupidest gifts. Which is what we were going to miss most about my mother’s brother—the stupid and the worst of him, his piles of wrong presents, the hiccough in his laugh. Mom kept cooking, she couldn’t stop, the light coming in yellow and green through the stained glass of the Victorian twin, the roosters gawking, a spill on the white kitchen counter. She was banging and stirring and making. She was stuffing the turkey. She was sugaring cranberries. She was folding and pounding and finally Jack got up from the table and helped her sugar and fold and pound until something eased in her. Until she could cry out loud, with us.

  You have a good morning? Mom asks Dad now, her knife working a steady rhythm in the small space beside Jack.

  Dad squints like he’s looking for something.

  He lies outright for me.

  7

  When it’s all done and good, all soaked and steaming, Jack takes the lid off the pot and delivers his lesson of the day: Chile peppers. History? Americas born, Columbus discovered. Medicinal value? Plenty. Influence on the mussel soup? Properly administered, Jack quotes Marcella, chile peppers “add spice with restraint.” He lifts his spoon and takes a sip. He closes his eyes and swallows. A MasterChef wannabe. A TV star in the making. A kid without a secret. My tall little brother, Jack.

  The spi
ce jars are bouquets on the table. The pots and the pans and the whisk and the bowls and the tablespoons and the suds are stacked in the sink. Dad sits at one end of the table and Mom on the other and Jack and I sit across from each other, our bowls so big and the table so narrow, and they’re talking like the Caras talk. News of home. News of the weather. News of Florence and Philadelphia—sister cities an ocean apart. I think of the boy. I think of the weight of the petals, which is the weight of nothing, the secret in my pocket. I think of what I saw and what Dad didn’t, and all the tricks my mind plays on me.

  Impressions? Jack is saying, I hear him saying, I listen.

  Pungent, Dad answers, after a long think.

  Jack slips his journal from his apron pocket and writes the word down. Seven letters. Substantial flourish.

  An extravagance of basil, Mom says.

  Notes of basil, Jack rephrases. Writes it down. The tip of his tongue poking through the O of his lips.

  Nads, he says. Impressions? He holds his pen up in the air like a conductor waiting to strike, and I’ve got—nothing. I’ve got a brain like a nest, thoughts in a weave, red in my pocket, questions about the color pink. Jack waits. I take another sip of his mussels, close my eyes, concentrate. Do this, I think. Try. Open your mouth and speak. And suddenly I’m remembering Scrabble games in West Philadelphia. Adjectives, inflections, hooks, the racks of blanks and S’s, my famous double doubles, the JQXZ that I could always blitz, and Jack kicks my shin beneath the table. Gives me a look: a big don’t-fail-me stare.

  Yo, he says. Earth to Nadia.

  Good, I say, at last.

  Good? Jack throws himself back against the chair. Good? For Marcella’s mussels? For chiles? That’s it? Jack looks at Dad who looks at Mom who looks at me and bites her bottom lip for half a second.

  Giving you a pass on impressions, Jack says now.

  Mom tucks a strand of hair behind one ear and looks again at Dad. Jack puts his pen and his journal back in his pocket and rubs the dot of hair on his chin. The talk starts again, a quiet circus. I stand up, very quiet now, my bowl shaking in my hands.

  Feeling really—tired, I say.

  Honey? Mom asks.

  Just. Need a little—nap.

  It’s early afternoon, Dad says. The day has only half started.

  Mom reaches up, touches her hand to my cheek. Dad lifts one hand to his heart.

  Really good, I turn and say to Jack. Really—good, Jack. I swear. You’re a—master.

  You need anything, sweetie? Dad says. From us?

  I shake my head no.

  Anything we can get you, anything you want?

  No.

  Okay, then, Dad says.

  But it’s not okay.

  The boy, I think. What would he do, if he’s real, if he’s true?

  What would he do?

  What would you?

  8

  Don’t say a word.

  Hold out your hands.

  See?

  The petals soft as down and red as blood and real. I’ve glued one to one to one and dipped the edges into gold and strung a stolen tassel from the bowl, and what was lost is found, what was fractions is whole, what is beauty is perfectly strange.

  See?

  What is the name of this disease, the name for the girl who builds nests with stolen things, who sees what others do not see, who can barely, hardly speak?

  Hurt like this is a terrible thing.

  The night has come on. Through the window the darkness falls on the shrugging backs of the hidden courtyard. The loose screen door to the restaurant kitchen. The broken stones where the waiters stand. The butt end of the alley. The room where the bookbinder works among so many stealable things. Pretty papers. Spools of thread. Buckets of glue and glue brushes, a tick-tock watch—old, heavy thing. He keeps the lamp off, his shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows. Streamers hang from a rack above his shiny head in every nestable color. He works late as I do, obsessed as I am, and I wonder what he makes, and for whom.

  This one’s for you, I think, the words rising up from the past of me. Gift for the gifted. Old words, and suddenly I’m remembering Maggie in West Philadelphia, last October. She is pulling up to the curb by my house on Spruce, with the canvas lid of her Dad’s Mustang down, her candy-apple hair blowing sideways.

  The car is 1970s vintage and Maggie-style—the seat belts buried in the foam of the unstitched seats, the up and down of the windows only working on one side, a pile of towels tossed in the backseat to clean up whatever mess she might get in, including the bird poop that falls from the sky. Hang a flag from the thing and it’d be its own parade, and here’s Maggie.

  Where are we going? she asks when I climb in.

  She has the wheels. I have the ideas. That’s how it is.

  She ties a straw hat to her head with a pink ribbon. She wears a green sundress, a yellow sweater, and a pair of boots a la Cher.

  East and south, I say. Queen Village.

  She drives. Through West Philadelphia, across our river, all the numbers of the streets going backward until finally she stops and parks at the city’s east edge, leaving the Mustang open to the sky. Stands beside me hooking her arm into mine.

  Now where? she says, oh, Plan-ess. Which is like Goddess, only smarter.

  Here.

  We walk south toward the Village, past the little restaurants and the shops. We walk and Maggie tries to guess the name of the adventure.

  Ice cream.

  No.

  Thrift shop.

  No.

  Gargoyles and phonographs.

  Not today.

  What, then?

  You’ll see.

  She throws her head back and laughs.

  We walk and we talk and we gossip. We discuss, like it’s thesis-worthy, the things we’re supposed to be and supposed to do as the professors’ daughters we are, the two best friends who skipped high school in favor of taking classes with the undergrads. Early Matricks, we call ourselves. Our parents’ idea of quasihomeschooling, because they want the best for us. Take the classes, take the tests, get the state to certify. We’ll never go to high school—not Maggie, not me. We already have what we need. Our future is a snap and a ping.

  At a shop called Curiosities we stop. It’s a redbrick trinity way off the beaten path, three slender stories tall. Its door is tall and narrow. We open it and the bells chime sweet. We step inside, and it’s a brave new world—taxidermy and garden tools, glass elephant eyes, shark teeth on a string. There are the fine white bones of a coyote, the caverns of shells, the twisted horns of an antelope scratching at the walls, packets of seeds. There’s a bat trapped in a frame, feathers in a basket, the wings of ladybirds, and a cave-bear tooth, and the aisles are crooked, and a live bird is singing in a cage, and Maggie takes off her hat and throws back her head again and laughs and we are the two most uninsane girls in the world.

  Jesus, she says. This is the best adventure yet. Why didn’t you ever tell me about this place?

  Just heard about it, I say.

  Just when?

  Dad was telling Mom, I say. A student told my dad.

  Leave it to you, she says.

  We walk through splintered aisles, single file, Maggie holding her hat out in front of her very careful, very prim, so that she doesn’t break a tooth, a claw, an eye. So that she doesn’t make the stuffed partridge fly.

  Impossible, she keeps saying, and we keep our arms tucked in close, we talk to the bird in the cage, we walk one behind the other. The back room of Curiosities is odd and lovely—plants erupting from glass vials and amber sitting in transparent tubes. The guy at the desk has his feet up by the register. There’s a card that says DON’T PRESUME. ASK.

  If you need anything, the guy says. Then he goes back to the book he’s reading.

  Jars, baskets, shelves, drawers, crates and frames and a tray of keys, like old prison keys, with mangly, iron teeth, and there’s a coil of stairs—metal and thin, and we climb them up to the second flo
or and we stop, and Maggie catches her breath.

  Because the entire back wall is tinted yellow glass. The roof is glass and light. From vents a breeze is being blown up into the room, and from the ceiling, from hooks, from strings, hang the wooden heads and arms and legs and nobs of marionettes. Jesters. Angels. Clowns. Woodsmen. Old ladies with hooked noses. Carpenters. Sprites.

  World’s greatest miracle, Maggie says, reaching up and brushing the beeswaxed feet with her hands. She touches the hems of the skirts, the funny noses. Our heads tilt. The puppets dance.

  How can anyone make anything this lovely? she says, and we stand there wondering, the two of us, which hands made these, and how, until I take an angel off its hook, lift its wings, touch Maggie.

  This one’s for you, I say. Gift for the gifted.

  It was so easy, being me.

  9

  Nadia.

  Yo.

  It is the cool part of the morning. Flies buzz. Sweat runs in small rivers down my neck, my shoulders, into the insides of my elbows, and I don’t know what time it is.

  Just open the door, Jack is saying. For Christ’s sake.

  Another night gone.

  Another nest.

  I run my fingers through my hair, push the window as high as it goes, fan the stale air out into the alley, and I’m coming. I knock the scraps of things off my jeans, collect the scissors, plug the bottle of glue, tuck the new nest into the dark beside all the other nests I’ve built in hours I don’t remember. The museum of the beautiful and strange.