Lily dissolved into tears.
James took Lily’s face between his hands. He placed a kiss on her forehead, allowing his lips to linger there, before pulling away to look into Lily’s eyes.
“Lily” he said. “I love you.”
Lily collapsed, toppling sideways, her head landing in James’ lap. He stroked her hair and let her cry.
Bastard.
Dolores’ memorial service was short and sparsely attended. The few local family members who were there rattled around in the vacuous sanctuary. Monsieur Debonnet the ballet teacher came late and sat in the back row between Lily’s mother and James.
Lily made a mental note to get remembered in a smaller church when she died. Either that, or find a way to make a friend or two along the way. That Dolores had none to come and honor her life was tragic. Lily hoped she could at least hold it together long enough to give Dolores this memento, her one final gift.
Lily climbed the set of stairs to the dais and adjusted the microphone. She turned and nodded to Uncle Alfred, who began strumming his guitar. Auntie Rosa let out a yelp, and leaned on a weeping Iris. Lily closed her eyes to block out all the images that would crumble her composure. She pictured Dolores sitting there in the front row, the way she always had during band practice, clutching her tissues, struggling to smile despite her pain.
Every day I face the world at large
What lies ahead is yet uncharted
Reflections of the life I’ve seen
The dreams I’ve dreamed
But never started
But now what’s done is done
And what was just doesn’t matter anymore
Every day I pray I’ll find a way
To let my spirit soar
Lily stopped to clear the lump that formed in her throat. Uncle Alfred played two extra measures of transition, to give her time to regain her poise. She nodded to him, drew in a breath, and continued.
My heart is strong, my soul is free
The weight of the world doesn’t bother me
And everything is beautiful if you just choose to believe
I’m where I belong, where I need to be
I walk in synchronicity
And every step just brings me closer to my destiny
As I walk the path of peace and harmony
I want to walk the path of peace and harmony
I always walk the path of peace....
… and harmony.
As Lily stepped down, the only sound - except for a sniff here and there - was the final echo of Dolores’ life as it reverberated from stained glass window, to altar, to baptistry, to Christ on the Cross, finally coming to rest on the heads of those who had come to mourn and say goodbye to a cousin, a niece, a friend, a dream.
29. Iris
Iris blew into her cupped hands, hoping the heat of her breath would thaw her frozen fingers. When the numbness began to subside, she unzipped the pocket of her hooded sweatshirt with stiff fingers, and found three pieces of icy metal on a ring. The cadenced jingling of the keys in her pocket as she jogged was annoying, but she was grateful for this concrete reminder of her passage into the world of people with something to lock. Back home the door was always open, and she owned no car; unless you counted the key to a pair of roller skates Auntie Rosa had bought her when she recovered from peritonitis, and the miniature key to the little blue valise that remained tucked away in the corner of her bedroom closet, the keys to her college dorm were the first she had ever possessed.
Making a beeline for the row of aluminum mailboxes that lined the far wall of the dormitory foyer, she grasped the smallest key on the ring, wriggled it into the slot beneath the label “L301D,” and flipped open the hatch with the same sense of cautious expectancy with which she approached even the most minor events which might mark her daily life with unexpected spurts of joy or stabs of disappointment. Two envelopes huddled together in the cold metal cubbyhole: one was small and pink, with an embossed crown on the flap, and before even glancing at the flowery handwriting on the front, Iris knew it was a greeting card from Auntie Rosa; the other bore the postmark EGLIN USAF Pensacola FL. Her heart, still pounding from her run, fluttered with excitement.
Iris slammed the mailbox shut and sprinted up the stairs to the third floor. She hoped to find her roommate absent for once, instead of glued to her chair studying. Emma Zeiss had been recommended by a mutual friend who knew both girls were looking for someone with whom to share a room; she was from Rochester, and like Iris, was studying to become a physical therapist (after admitting to herself that she had never really been interested in her father’s profession, Iris was already considering a deviation from that course to become a dance therapist). Contrary to Iris’s expectations, their common provenance and freshman curriculum contributed little to creating a sense of collegiate conviviality between the two young women. Iris had envisioned a dorm life of animated, intellectually stimulating discussions crammed between intense study sessions, concluding late at night with junk food binges; she had thought they would chat in bed after lights out, like she had always done with Lily, only their conversations would be about the latest news from home, or the guys that begged them for a date, or their dreams for the future. However, Emma’s lack of academic brilliance coupled with her unflagging ambition to succeed in her course of studies exacerbated her bookish nature, and had it not been for Iris, who occasionally rattled her cage, she would hardly have ventured from her room except to go to classes and the student cafeteria.
Iris studied hard, too, but after the anemic social life that had characterized her high school years, she was eager to explore the opportunities offered by life on campus. She thought they should try and make some friends, but each time she convinced Emma to accompany her to a dorm party (Iris seemed an extrovert when compared to Emma, but never would have gone to a party alone), she found herself wishing there were some redeeming quality in the girl’s appearance or personality that would facilitate their acceptance into some circle of friends. Iris’s wishes could do little to remedy the fact that Emma’s most striking traits created an image that would appeal to few: a moon face whose surface was disseminated with the volcanoes and craters of chronic acne, a limpid gaze whose absolute lack of underlying currents was magnified by the thick lenses of her granny glasses; a cow’s tail of lank brown hair rounded up in a rubber band at the nape of the thick neck which joined her potato head to her beanbag body. Emma’s propensity to blush severely when spoken to and to stammer when asked any question coupled with her intolerance of alcoholic beverages and visceral terror of the opposite sex, made parties about as enjoyable as chemistry lab.
“Hi, Emma,” Iris said as she opened the door, swallowing her irritation at the sight of her roommate bent over an open book, her lap cradling a half-empty bag of chips which looked suspiciously like the sour cream and onion variety Iris had stashed away in her closet, in anticipation of a late night study session of her own.
“Hi,” Emma mumbled, while her eyes and the highlighter she clenched in her pudgy fist remained firmly planted on the page. Iris recognized the textbook from their Psychology 101 course. Save for a few lines here and there, the text was awash with yellow ink.
Emma finally looked up, her eyes indiscernible behind the light of the reading lamp that ricocheted off her glasses. “You got a letter from Peter?” she asked.
“How did you guess?”
“You got that look in your eyes.” Emma held out the bags of chips. “Want some?” Iris shook her head; Emma helped herself to more. “You went running in this weather? You must be nuts.”
“I couldn’t sit on that chair one more minute. My legs were stiff and my brain was shutting down due to lack of oxygen,” Iris said. “But you’re right, it’s freezing! Colder than a witch’s tit, as my sister Violet used to say.”
Emma stared at her with a blank look, and Iris braced herself for a forthcoming request that she explain the method for measuring the temperature of a witch’s
tit, but Emma just reverted to her studies. Iris had been poring over those same chapters for an upcoming test, when the twitching in her limbs and the crick in her neck and the ringing in her ears and the pounding in her head made her spring from her chair, lace up her sneakers and rush out the door. She loved the way her cheeks burned when she ran in the cold, and the way each greedy gulp of air stabbed her lungs, and shocked her system. She preferred running alone, at her own swift pace, along whatever walkways or roads were sufficiently plowed, though sometimes she was joined by Mary Ann, a curvaceous premed student from Westchester who, in order to restrain her bouncing boobs, jogged with her forearms folded across her chest like a straight-jacketed escapee from an insane asylum. Once in a while, Mary Ann would drag along her roommate Nancy, a red-headed, freckle-faced Jewish girl from some town on Long Island with an Indian name, who adored Billy Joel. Nancy was slow, and easily winded, more from chatting than exertion. Iris had only met a couple of Jewish girls before coming to Buffalo, but none with red hair, nor had she ever met anyone who loved Billy Joel.
Iris stripped down to her panties and wrapped her fleece robe around her body, clammy with sweat and pink with cold. Auntie Rosa had given her the robe as a going away present; it was snuggly and warm, and its striking shade of turquoise reminded Iris of the tropical sea depicted in a mural at The Luau, bringing a note of cheer into the long Buffalo winter. The gift box had also contained seven pairs of silky undies in as many colors, embellished with lace trim along the waistband and legs. Iris had opened the package and thanked Auntie Rosa, while bracing herself to hear the oft-repeated story of how as a young woman in nursing school, her aunt had been so ashamed of her coarse cotton drawers that she would slink away into the closet to change, while the other girls puffed on cigarettes and pranced around in their fine lingerie. Safely out of sight but still within earshot, she would listen to them chatter flippantly about the schoolwork for which they professed little interest, deeming much more beneficial for their present happiness and future prospects the art of flirtation and the science of obtaining dates with the medical students and interns they encountered in the hospital wards. She pictured her aunt as a young student, around Iris’s age, crouching shamefully in a closet. She felt pity for that girl, still hiding inside the withering body of an aging woman who could finally buy her own fancy panties, but had no one around to admire them.
In that moment, Iris was so overwhelmed with empathy for the young Rosa Capotosti, she could taste on her own tongue the bitter flavor of missed opportunities macerated in regret, swallowed down one bite at a time. She felt the deep ache of her aunt’s deprivation; she was fraught with frustration and anger at the insensitive minds and tight purse strings which determined what was essential and what was frivolous for a girl. Things like dainty underwear. Or long-distance phone calls, like the ones her floor mates received from their parents for no special reason, other than to tell them they were missed, and check whether they needed anything.
Iris thought it best to file away this unannounced rush of melancholy under the generic classification of homesickness: at least that malady was familiar to her, and might be remedied by the letters she clutched in her hand. She would read them right away. Placing one foot on the edge of the bottom bunk, even though she knew it irritated Emma, who always chided her for not using the ladder, she hopped to her bed above. Settling in with her back against the cinder block wall, she picked up the small pink envelope, slipped her index finger under the flap, and extracted the card it contained. A fluffy white kitty peeked out from a wicker basket brimming with spring flowers; Iris opened the card, and found two crisp dollar bills and the verse “With each little mew, I’m thinking of you!” The words “thinking” and “you” were underscored twice in the same red ink used to add the note: “Lover-dover! Have a Coke on me! You’re in my prayers. Love, Auntie Rosa.” Beneath the signature there was a “P.S.: How does the second half of May sound, Bella della mamma?”
It sounded perfetto to Iris, who was thrilled that she might actually succeed in executing her plan. Auntie Rosa had been devastated by Dolores’s “accident,” which she insisted was caused by a broken heart. In a way, she was right; Dolores had opted for the expediency of putting her shattered heart to rest for good, over the painful endeavor of trying to patch it back together again. After finding out that Auntie Rosa had been the one to discover her adored cousin dead in her basement room, Iris had been tormented by the macabre scene replaying in her imagination: Auntie Rosa panicking when she saw Dolores’s inert figure lying in the bed, her mouth agape, her shocks of thick, black hair strewn across the embroidered white pillowcase; Auntie Rosa recoiling in horror when she touched the pale skin, and found it suited in the cold armor of death; Auntie Rosa immobilized by disbelief, her heart impaled by the pain; Auntie Rosa crumbling in grief, her soul seared by sorrow.
Iris had been the one to hatch the idea of a trip to Italy, suggesting it might assuage Auntie Rosa’s pain and guilt for not being able to save Dolores from herself, just like she had not been able to save her sister Teresa from the canal. Between her student loan and the money she had earned the previous year, Iris would have sufficient funds left over at the end of the semester to pay her own way, and then she’d earn good money at Kodak, where she had been offered a summer job. A trip to Italy would be a sound investment in her education, and a welcome opportunity to make some memories of her own, before spending another summer locked up in a place that thrived on reproducing the memories of others.
A shiver of excitement ran through her, as she set aside Auntie Rosa’s card, then crossed her ankles and buried her cold feet under her thighs to warm them. She studied the handwriting on the second envelope with the USAF postmark, and imagined Peter Ponzio taking a pen in hand to write her name on it. If she opened the thin envelope and found it empty, she would have been content to simply sit and stare at her name written in his peculiar, elongated scrawl. She eased the envelope open slowly, deliberately, to denude the letter that lay within. She fondled it with her fingertips for a moment before spreading it open, savoring the fact that she did not yet know what perceptions and emotions its words would convey to her. Peter was not a gifted writer; the unrefined thoughts he presented in his unpolished style would have sunk under the burden of spelling and grammar errors, had they not been buoyed by Iris’s enthusiasm; his rough-hewn letters would have made her cringe, had Iris not convinced herself that they were utterly endearing, and denoted the writer’s spontaneity and sincerity.
One Saturday morning the previous August, when she and Lily were grocery shopping, Peter had finally approached Iris and asked her if she would like to see The Spy Who Loved Me, and Iris had said yes. They had held hands and kissed all through the show, and decided on the spot that “Nobody Does It Better” would be their song. They had spent almost every evening together since then, until it was time for them both to depart on their separate adventures: Iris to Buffalo, and Peter to Air Force boot camp. A Polaroid of him in his uniform and combat boots genuflecting by a sign on a lawn, coupled with a burgeoning bunch of letters in a shoebox, was all it took for Iris to fancy herself in love. None of the boys she met on campus could inspire the same level of romanticism she derived from writing and reading letters. She felt free, as she roamed the realm of the written word, dipping her pen into the thoughts and feelings and reactions and provocations that eluded her tongue, and indulged in the delicacies of an idealized love rendered perfect by the lack of foreseeable opportunities for its concrete expression.
In his letter, Peter wrote of a possible tour of duty in England. Overseas! She imagined the foreign stamps and postmarks on the letters he would mail her, and wondered what captivating notes she might write on the postcards she would send him from Italy. She must be sure to post one from each place she visited, which would make the trip almost as romantic as if he were there with her, perhaps even more so. This was the stuff of the novels she kept by her bedside, in her backpack, in her purse, who
se narrative swept her off to eighteenth-century England, nineteenth-century Russia, twentieth-century France, any time or place she could find a heroine who captured her attention and aroused her sympathy. She tucked her letters under her pillow, slid down from the bed and gathered her shower supplies.
She no longer felt homesick. Except for Lily. She would have to tell her about the Italy plan soon. She felt guilty going without her, but what could she do? Thriftiness had never been Lily’s forte, and what money she might have scraped together this year would have to go toward paying for her first year of college, certainly not squandered on a vacation abroad. If only Dolores were still around. Maybe she would have helped Lily, and all four of them could have gone together. The beauty that abounded in Italy’s art and countryside, the warmth of its climate and people might have soothed Dolores’s aching soul. Then again, maybe not. Maybe Dolores was born to be sad, and destined to be broken. Iris sighed; there was nothing she could do for Dolores now, just like there was nothing she could do about the fact that she would have to leave Lily behind.
They’d spend the rest of the summer together, anyway. They would have their jobs, and they’d be busy running things at Chestnut Crest, but there would be ample time for late night heart-to-heart talks, for catching up on the things that had happened in each other’s lives during their time apart, for playing the guitar and singing, for drinking iced tea under the apple tree and dreaming about their futures. It struck Iris that just maybe the time for dreaming was at last turning into a time for deciding. This was the year in which they would both finally be in a position to begin shaping their own lives and forging their independence. They would have three full months to talk about all the exciting possibilities that were opening up before them, before they would both finally be on their way, separated, but never far apart.
The Complete Series Page 46
