One Thing Stolen Page 4

  Is it?

  Yes. Everything’s harder.

  I close my eyes, and it’s dark inside. I wait for him to talk, to say something, to fix this, save me, but his words are far and I get caught inside his flood, a boat full of things passing by. Gears and gloves and bowls and scissors, the gold cylinder of a kaleidoscope and its broken, colored pieces, and silken ties and amethysts, the bright back of a moon and rose petals and royal dahlia and every nest I’ve made, every loomed cup, every whole thing, every infinite woven circle. Everything in the belly of this boat, on a dark night, on a Florence street, in the middle of Dad’s flood. I reach for the boat and the vision shatters. I open my eyes. Dad’s leaning close. Words like stones.

  Honey, he says. What’s this?

  He takes one of my hands in his hands, turns it over. Ruby dots of blood.

  He clomps down the hall, to the bathroom, opens and shuts the cabinet doors, comes back with a bright white box of Band-Aids.

  Give me your hand, he says.

  He wraps each of the broken fingertips. One by one by one.

  I don’t know what to do with you, he says, and so we sit there, the two of us, until the first raindrops come. Big splats against the windows, on the streets, against the white and pink sheets the across-the-street neighbor hung, into the sound of the morning. Jack appears in the hall, rubbing his head.

  French toast? he says.

  Have a seat, Dad says. Stands at an angle, making the toast, keeping a close eye on me.

  15

  The rain is sideways—big nails of wet stuff. The French toast smog is still here and the dark rain is out there and Jack’s gone—left with his Almost Independent Study 101 euros in his pocket. Spice of the day: rosemary. Dish of the day: Cappe santé con pomodor, agliog, e rosmarino. Mom is standing at the window in her long nightdress, watching the street and the rain.

  I hope he’s somewhere dry, she says.

  So much rain, she says.

  Now Dad is beside her, his arm over her thin shoulders. She leans and she’s so small and he’s so big, a bear. The nails of her toes shine like lip gloss. She whispers and he whispers back, and then they turn, four eyes on me.

  On the floor of this room is Dad’s flood. All its pieces on note-cards, Xeroxes, newsprint. He toes the facts around—slides them across each other, looks for patterns and themes, looks up at me, expects something, because this is my Almost Independent Study, this is my work while we are gone—to be Dad’s primo assistant, to collect the facts with him, and the dawn, to understand his flood. Fourteen thousand works of art. Sixteen miles of records. Four million books. Eighteen million cubic feet of debris. The big flood came. The city drowned. Parts of it were rescued. Find the start. My job is to help my father think in Florence. Nobody has to tell me that I’m failing.

  It’s been two hours, Mom says now, about Jack.

  You kids, she says, and your phones.

  She opens the window, puts out her hand. She says it’s hard as hail out there, and I close my eyes, listen to the rain, the drumming on the scaffolding down the street, the slosh sounds in the piazza, the faraway cry of somebody laughing, running. A game in the rain in the street. The weather is outside. The weather is inside. It is almost sleep. I hear Mom walk by in her bare feet. I hear her come back, close now, the white whish of her long dress, and now I feel her pull a blanket over me, feel a kiss on my cheek.

  Let yourself sleep, she says, but I’m already gone, remembering another storm.

  16

  It’s Maggie’s garden. Her split of land off Spruce Street—four feet by twelve feet, and a miniature red picket fence, a scarecrow, an old rain barrel flipped to make a stool. A storm is coming on.

  Some of the other gardeners in this community acre have built canopies out of woven sticks so only part of the sun will fall through. Some have planted planks all around the edges of their plots, like coffins without lids. Somebody’s put an easel where a garden should be, and on the brick face of an abandoned house are the flattening branches of an apple tree. Espaliers.

  But Maggie’s spot is the prettiest—the straw doll and the barrel and all these hand-painted signs promising: Peas. Clover. Zinnias. Tomatoes. Poppies. In the middle of everything is Maggie’s fig tree, which we grew in a bucket on her porch until it was finally big enough for the Big Transfer. We bedded it down with straw a year ago. It’s lasted the winter, and now it is March, and a storm is coming on. Hail like eggs, the weather guy says. Better batten down.

  We work side by side. We undig the signs. We flip the barrel, unplant the scarecrow, lay a thick sheet of plastic down over everything and now we have to anchor the tarp with the broken plates of the sidewalk concrete that sit across the street in an abandoned yard. Back and forth we go with the weights in our hands, the dirty bits of broken sidewalk. Maggie’s wearing her denim flares and her checked shirt and her garden clogs. Her hair is pushed back into a red bandanna and flapping over her shoulders in the wind, because the wind has already started to blow, and it is getting hard to hear each other inside the storm that hasn’t happened yet. The skies stew. I stop.

  Something in the fig tree has stirred.

  Furry wings.

  A mother finch, tucked down.

  Maggie, I say. Look.

  She is a brunette with a streaked breast coat. Her nest is straw and twigs, a patch of moss, bits of colored paper, and she is perfectly still until I get too close and she spreads her wings. She hops. She returns. Her eyes on us.

  Three eggs, I hear myself say. And it’s only March.

  Too early for eggs, Maggie says.

  The storm is coming—sneaking in beneath the tarp in the places between the concrete chunks. The easel that no one has battened has started to rattle. The branches of the espaliered tree are cranking from the brick. Maggie’s hair is a red flag streaming, and mine is one black knot.

  Nothing we can do.

  Three chicks, I say. And a mother.

  They’ll have to ride out the storm, Maggie says. The nest will have to save them.

  But a nest is only twigs, I think. It’s only leaves and fragile things. The nest is so small and the eggs are so tiny, and the wind is blowing hard, and Maggie’s saying, Come on.

  The weather is hard and thick. It’s time to leave. Between the plots of the community garden and up the street and past the mosque and Manakeesh, we run. Past the lady with the window boxes stuffed with pansies and around to Maggie’s house, where Maggie’s mom is waiting at the door with two identical towels.

  You had me worried, she says.

  I made some cocoa, she says.

  We had to leave the—bird, I say.

  We sit there, the three of us, listening to the storm. The rain first, and then the hail the size of eggs, and always the wind. I call my mom, tell her I’m here, and then the lights flicker and the power goes and Maggie’s dad comes home and they stand, quiet, at the windows.

  It rains all night. The gutters are full of things and the treetops are breaking. The fire-escape stairs bang against the brick behind the house and the trash cans are rolling, and everything inside Maggie’s house is very still except for the trembling flames on the candles. We watch the storm. We stand in Maggie’s flannel shirts and Maggie’s sweats, no music on, no lights in the street. Maggie goes to sleep. I stay awake, afraid for the bird.

  The storm breaks before the dawn. The candles run out of wicks. No clocks are ticking. Out in the street the big branches of trees are down and the loosened trash can lids are rolling around and pieces of wash that had been left out on backyard lines are lying on the ground like empty people. I tiptoe down the hall, past Maggie’s parents’ room, and down the steps in the squish of still wet shoes. Pull open the door. Step out onto the porch. Feel Maggie behind me.

  Going nowhere without me, she says.

  She wears her checkered gown over a pair of jeans. She’s stuck a tiara into her hair. She hands me a shovel, a rake, a bucket, and we go, and we don’t talk, don’t say anything about the bird, about the plot, about the too-ferocious storm, and when we get there, the community garden looks like the end of the world.

  The easel smashed into sticks.

  The canopies smashed.

  The espalier yanked away from the wall like a spider’s web caught in a broom.

  The planks between plots are down and the compost is sludge. Straw is everywhere, like chopped blond hair. But under Maggie’s tarp the plot is dry, her scarecrow and her signs are dry. Up in the tree, the nest is whole.

  The birds have survived.

  World’s greatest miracle, Maggie says. We sit with our butts against the soaked rim of the barrel and watch the bird come back to life. She spreads her wings. She settles.

  We didn’t have to worry after all, Maggie says.

  And something in my mind breaks loose and almost free.

  17

  I wake up in the dark part of the living room. To Mom’s quilt up to my shoulders, another blanket thrown across my feet. The talk is Jack. The talk is a girl. The talk is Mom saying, Shhhhh. Your sister’s sleeping.

  But I’m awake now, and there’s my brother beneath the halo of the Vitale chandelier, bent over the kitchen table, slicing. I see little trees of rosemary and fists of garlic and fat tomatoes and a girl Jack calls Perdita.

  She wears cabled leggings and a red mini, work boots and a lace shirt with snaps on the cuffs of the sleeves, a navy-blue cami. She wears her hair geometric—soft to one side, shaved on the other, a dozen gold studs punched into the lobe of that ear. She has fluorescent nails and a bold gold chunk of a necklace, green feathers hanging like a pendant.

  Bright green neon feathers.

  She’s washing scallops in the sink, patting them dry with a towel. She’s jabbing a knife into the scallops’ skin and washing again, patting them drier. Shows them to Jack, who looks up, says something, in Italian or English, it doesn’t matter. Like they know each other well. Like Mom’s lost the job of prep cook to this girl with geometric hair.

  Dad’s gone. The bits and pieces of his flood are gone. The rain is a quiet slick against the panes, and Mom is sitting in the chair across from me, dressed for the day and reading a book with her half-glasses on. She takes the glasses off, puts them up in her hair, puts them down on her nose, looks at Jack and the girl, reads, but not really. There’s a huge umbrella in the hallway, little pools of water where Jack and this girl came in, and it’s still dark outside, and wet, but the storm is over, and now here’s Dad, opening the door, a bottle of olive oil in his hands. His umbrella is half bent, half folded. His wind hair is wrecked. His shoes squeak on the floor.

  At your service, he says. To Jack. And I wonder how long I’ve been lying here remembering. How long she’s been here. How well they know her—Perdita.

  Beneath the blanket I slip the Band-Aids off, push them into a pocket. I watch Jack light up the skillet, uncork the oil and pour it, split the garlic into cloves and toss them. He leans over the Book of Marcella, scratches his head. He hands Perdita the rosemary trees, stands close to her, says, Like this. With his knife. With the rosemary. Not a spice, but an herb.

  I feel Mom’s hand against my forehead.

  You slept a long time, she says.

  Who—? I say.

  That would be Perdita, Mom says.

  18

  She works the stall at the central market in San Lorenzo—spices. She is here. Real. No wonder Jack’s acing his Almost Independent Study 101. No wonder he gets up each day and hurries to the market, to the spices, to her. Rosemary is an herb Aphrodite wore. Rosemary is Virgin Mary famous. Jack has a girl.

  Blood and flesh. Sitting, not running. Real, and nobody’s secret.

  Around the Vitale table we cram. The leftover rosemary is in a coffee mug and Jack’s masterwork steams from a center bowl with a spoon. Dig in, Jack says, and Mom sits beside Dad, who is holding her hand, like it’s the most solid thing in the world, like she can’t believe her son has this friend and has brought her home and then she looks at me and her smile dims.

  Dad runs his fingers through his hair. Mom turns the wedding band around on Dad’s finger. Jack serves the scallops, three by three, pours his sweet and garlic sauce, and he sits back, and there’s talk, bits of English and Italian and something in between that I can’t follow because I am thinking of the dahlia nest and its broken place and the chain Perdita is wearing. I’m thinking how happy Jack is with the girl right here, and how the boy is out there, waiting.

  Someone was running.

  Perdita’s father owns the spice shop. Perdita’s grandfather owned it first. They sell senape bruna, three euros for fifty grams; pily-pily, four euros for fifty grams; pepe misto, five euros for fifty grams; peperoncino de cayenne, four euros for fifty grams. The best spice shop in all of Florence. The family business, and Perdita works the mornings and goes to school in the afternoons, but mostly she goes to the school of spices, and she’s talking about leaves and roots and gums and herbs and seeds, cassia and ginger, Marco Polo, and Jack raises one finger: Impressions?

  Sweet, Mom says.

  Jack nods, writes it down.

  Dad?

  Woodsy.

  Woodsy?

  Dad nods. Jack writes it down.

  Nads? Jack says. Impressions? His voice all don’t-fail-me, don’t-embarrass-me, be a normal sister, please, and I take a good long look before I try to speak. Jack’s hair is puffy from all the scallop steam. There’s a bruise on his neck, a streak on his cheek, and he’s a tall dude with this girl beside him, the sticks of her legs crisscrossed and her boots so big for her bones and her hair crooked and striped. Don’t fail me. I look at Mom and Dad holding hands and the sticks of rosemary bouqueting in the coffee mug and I need a word. I need a Scrabble double double. One word for my brother.

  Per—, I say. The start of it.

  Jack leans toward me, the dot of the beard on his chin round and hopeful.

  Per, what, Nads?

  Perfect—ion.

  Yo, he says. Yo, yeah. He high-fives Perdita. He high-fives Mom and Dad, and his smile is a bridge that runs from one ear to the other. Perfection, he writes in his book. Big and bold and underlined. Perfection: Jack’s scallops according to Nadia. He looks at me like I’m the sister he’s been hoping for, the kind who gives out props when the girlfriend comes home, and I stand up; that’s it. Perfection is all I need.

  19

  I slip out the door in the clatter of cleanup; nobody sees. I walk where the buildings are the colors of skin, and the arches and shutters are the color of old rain. Toward the shop windows and the bank windows and the restaurant windows I walk, then walk on, until I am lost and far away and the only thing that can compass me back is the Duomo, its cap a lighthouse lanterning the way.

  Birds are up high—thin black streaks. Kids are on the streets on bikes, and there’s the tourist crowd, and there are bobbling balloons and rubber-ducky boots splashing in the rain that fell all morning. I walk alleys, bridges, riverways, circles, until I find myself at the Santa Croce piazza, where the puddles are catching the sun and the birds have come to rest on the head of Dante. Some skateboarders are throwing tricks off smooth boards they’ve laid down across the stones. They’re riding and smashing and backing, their music coming from a tin box. One of the boys hits a ramp and whoops the sky and stops clean. One of the girls takes too much air and she flies, flies, flies, and I want wings, I want to crush the fear, the millions of things that make me afraid, the millions of things I can think but not say.

  What do they mean: mesmerized?

  What do you mean, when you say it?

  What is the worst thing you’ve ever lost, and how in the world did you find it?

  20

  A shout from the east.

  A bright, raw streak of pink.

  In the piazza, on the fringe of the skateboard crowd, I see him. In the shadows of the outdoor cafes, in the margin places, the secret places—too fast, too quick, a zip of speed. It’s him, hitting the piazza’s south edge and running free. It’s him with a clutch of sunflowers in one hand—too fast for the men on the chase, too fast for anyone; he is blooms and fire.

  Hey, I say.

  And he turns.

  Wait, I say.

  And he stops.

  Drops a flower, bright and singed. Raises an eyebrow and winks. Runs.

  Nothing will stop me. This is him, this is what I see: the thief, the giver of flowers. I cut through the crowds, go where he went. Follow him toward the Arno. Through the shadows of the cathedral, into the narrow parts of the street. Past the gates and gelato shops, past the round stones of the biblioteca, past the coffee shops, toward the Lungarno. There is the whacking tail of a dog and the wheels of a wagon and a man in plaid, and the boy could be anywhere, but he’s gone.

  On the bridge the tourists are posing in the sun. At the top of the hill, San Miniato shines. Up and down the Lungarno the artists are putting up their stalls, putting out their tins, brooming the gypsies from the stone walk, and now in the other direction, between boots and sandals and flip-flops, I see a second flower, dropped to the ground. Its face pointing toward the backstreets of Santa Croce.

  In the streets behind the cathedral, I am lost in a place I’ve never been. Some of the doors are as thin as chimneys. Some of the windows are bricked in. Some of the edges of some of the streets are lined with smooth old stones and my thin shoes slip, like I am running on a bed of feathers.

  In the gutter of a roof a silver cat sleeps. In a window box a garden grows, the heads of the flowers catching the rain from the sheets that hang from a rope. Above the shoulders of some houses I see the gold domes of Florence and the fake David, and the cutout face of San Miniato, a toy city. Through the iron rails of a park gate children play, and it is late in the afternoon and now, in one of the windows, I see a girl with her two-flower bouquet. Me.