Iris upturned her face to the indigo sky, admiring the velvet backdrop it offered to a silver sliver of moon. Again, her thoughts turned to Lily, and a poem she had sent Iris recently. Lily said they were actually the lyrics to “Halfway ‘Round the Moon,” a song written by a mysterious friend that Lily had promised to tell Iris more about soon. Every time Iris gazed at the moon and thought of the words, she fantasized about meeting Lily up there in the sky, if only long enough to touch fingertips.
“Gobba a ponente, luna crescente,” she said aloud, staring up at the perfect crescent. A waxing moon, with summer almost upon her: what could be more promising? She began strumming softly on her uke as she strolled among the olive trees, stopping to admire the lemon and the orange trees, the kumquat and the pomegranate, the lilac and the lawn, the irises and the lilies. Like her, each had a reason for being where it was, the way it was; each brought her joy with its unique offering of fruit and flower.
“A firefly, that’s what could make it more promising!” she said, spotting the first one of the season blinking in the laurel bushes, beneath which she had once spotted the pair of hedgehogs that sometimes ventured forth at night to clean up any leftover cat food, but not before the uke playing ceased.
Her spirits soared on the wings of the beauty that surrounded her and the feeling that she, too, was finally where she needed to be. The intensity of her strumming increased, until she became so lost in the music, she had the impression she could hear Uncle Alfred accompanying her. At a certain point, the second set of strings sounded so real that she interrupted her playing, and cocked her ear. Silence. What did she expect to hear? Uncle Alfred and his steel guitar? An angel with a harp? Yet as soon as she resumed her playing, she was certain it was the sound of another instrument she was hearing, not an echo of her own.
“Chi c’è?” she called out to the darkness.
The snappy arpeggio of a string instrument replied. Could it be a banjo? No, the sound was bright and woody, not twangy and flat. It must be some sort of mandolin. Iris crept toward the sound of the notes that seemed to come from the path flanking her garden. Hiding behind the jasmine vines that draped the gate, she peered into the darkness, where she discerned the shadow of a man.
“Chi è lì?” Iris asked, very curious, slightly alarmed. Even in her wildest state of paranoia, she couldn’t fathom a mandolin-wielding homicidal maniac strolling the countryside, but just the same …
“Mi scusi!” a man’s voice replied from the shadows. “Spero di non averla spaventata.”
Iris didn’t think it wise to admit to this stranger that he did frighten her, at least a little. “No, figuriamoci,” she said.
“A volte suono mentre cammino, o cammino mentre suono, non so esattamente come inizio,” he replied. “Mi rilassa.” She could understand that he liked to relax by walking and playing, just as she had been doing, but that didn’t explain where he had come from, or what he was doing here. Instead of telling her, he said, “Che strano, sentire un ukulele da queste parti.”
If he thought it was strange to hear a uke in her garden, what should she think about hearing a wandering minstrel with a mandolin there?
“La musica era deliziosa, non potevo resistere,” he said. At least he didn’t criticize her playing; in fact, no one had ever called it “delightful” before.
“Grazie,” she said. Maybe it was time for her to ask a few questions of her own. “Abita da queste parti?”
“Non proprio. Però sì, anche, almeno per un po’.” What did that mean, that he didn’t really live in the neighborhood, but also that he did live there, at least “for a while”? Like just long enough to stalk women, or long enough to show his face and introduce himself?
Iris was starting to feel ridiculous, talking to a face she couldn’t see.
“Vuole entrare?” she asked. “Può venire in giardino un momento, se vuole.” Letting him into the garden wasn’t exactly like letting him into her house. If he had evil intentions, he would have already burst right in without waiting for an invitation. Still, she gripped her ukulele by the neck, just in case. Not that the tiny instrument would provide much defense; it would smash to smithereens if she tried to clobber someone over the head with it. But just standing there on her turf, poised to defend herself made her feel strong. She could handle this.
“Certo che mi piacerebbe,” the voice accepted. “Grazie.”
Iris pulled open the wrought iron gate slowly, taking care not to damage the jasmine. The lock had never worked, and she had never bothered to have it repaired; she just closed it at night, out of some vague sense of propriety.
“Permesso,” the man said, pushing the vines gently aside with his right hand, holding his mandolin in his left. “E’ che quella musica era così angelica,” he said, bowing his head as he brushed some blossoms from his dark curls. “Mi ricordava…”
“Oh my God!” Her surprise was so great, Iris instinctively switched to English, interrupting the man’s greeting the instant he raised his head. Placing her free hand over her somersaulting heart, she waved her uke at the gauze patch taped on the man’s bruised forehead, just above his right eye.
The man shook his head and laughed, his gap-toothed smile instantly flooding her with tenderness. “Well, that’s a shock. The Lone Kayaker is also a Pied Piper!” he said, in English. “Am I safe here?” He pointed to the uke she wielded in her hand.
Iris laughed. “At least this time, you’re armed, too,” she said, pointing to his mandolin.
“But I come in peace, Iris Capotosti,” he said.
“And I welcome you in peace, Martin Casagrande,” Iris said. “We all do.” She made a sweeping gesture with her arm, to encompass the little stone house, the family of plants and flowers gathered in the simple garden, the cats sitting on the steps, the fireflies glowing in the hedge, the crescent moon on the rise.
From: Iris Capotosti
To: Lily Capotosti
Sent: Mon, February 21, 2011 at 5:07 PM
Subject: Glad that’s over!
Dear Lily,
After making it through these final chapters, I’m relieved we decided to stop our story here. I don’t know how much more of this reality I can take.
When we started out, I imagined how much fun it would be to write down a bunch of anecdotes about growing up as such close sisters in our crazy family. Then I imagined it all ending with some universal statement about the fact that the bond between sisters is stronger than all the evil forces of the world, and that sisters always understand and support each other, no matter how bad they are at staying in touch or expressing their true feelings.
But things didn’t turn out quite the way I imagined. There was an awful lot of ugliness in your life that I didn’t even know about, and a lot of unpleasantness in mine that I myself never took a close look at before. It’s been tough, but I’m glad we’ve finally faced the truth.
I don’t know what comes next, but for now I just want to tell you how thrilled I am that we’ve made it to the end, and that we’ve found each other again along the way.
Now, I think a celebration is in order. Martin is taking me out for dinner to that little restaurant by the sea in Camogli where we shared our first bottle of bubbly rosé. Then tomorrow, it’s off to London for a few days. But I’ll see you online - don’t think you’re rid of me yet!
Love,
Iris
From: Lily Capotosti
To: Iris Capotosti
Sent: Mon, February 21, 2011 at 12:05 PM
Subject: Surprise! There’s an epilogue
Dear Iris:
I really can’t believe we stuck with it all this time - and that we didn’t grow to hate each other in the process. (I will admit, I had my moments...) Seriously, when we started this, I did a lot of what I had conditioned myself to do - suppress my real feelings, deny my experience of our loosely shared past, smile and nod. Iro
nically, it was in remembering those times, in reliving the sweetness of our relationship as children, and in recalling in detail all that we’d faced together that I was emboldened to be honest. I have grown to trust you with my deepest secrets.
Now that we are looking back over all of that, I discover that I am standing at a crossroads. Just as we are approaching “The End,” I find that I am asking myself if I want to make nice-nice and tell you, “Yes, it’s over, and all wounds are healed.” Or, am I willing to take this exchange one step further?
You know me well enough by now to know my answer to that question. So before we close the back cover on this story, I feel I must share one more secret.
I am sitting here, trying to get this letter written during my lunch hour at a job I can’t stand, while intermittently peering out an icy window at the falling February snow, which might actually even be kind of pretty if I weren’t stuck in this igloo of a cubicle, huddled up to my space heater, dreaming of spring. The clock is ticking out my sentence a second at a time, and I don’t even get excited about five o’clock because I know I’ll just have to come back here again tomorrow. So when you wrote about your dash down to Camogli for a fancy dinner and a bottle of champagne, followed by a trip to London, it was all I could do to keep from screaming.
Even after all we’ve been through, and even after all the growth I’ve experienced as a result, I still find myself resenting that things have worked out so well for you, while I am trapped in the ramifications of the choices I made when I was someone else. Whose life is this, anyway?
Over the course of my life, the only way I knew to cope with my perceived shortcomings and bad luck was to blame others. I felt like someone needed to be punished. I often blamed you. My interpretation of life as predator with me as its victim was simply the attempt of a powerless girl to give meaning to what she could not understand. But now I know things she did not; I can see what she could not.
One of the most valuable things I’ve learned is that while I may not be able to control everything that happens, and I may not be able to purge the residuals of my past choices as quickly as I’d like to, I can control how I respond to my life. And I can make a new choice and refuse to define our relationship according to the same terms that stole so much away from us in the first place.
That much, I can do. And maybe that’s all there is to it.
Love,
Lily
From: Iris Capotosti
To: Lily Capotosti
Sent: Mon, February 21, 2011 at 8:04 PM
Subject: Surprises are not always surprises
Dear Lily,
I was just getting ready to go out the door, when I decided to check my email one more time. I sort of wish I hadn’t.
What you wrote comes as no surprise, and I doubt what I have to say will surprise you, either. But since you’ve stepped forward, I suppose I should follow your lead.
You have always believed that I am the lucky one, and maybe I am. But I have never been able to fully savor most of the good things that have happened to me because they are turned sour by the taste of guilt always lingering in the back of my throat.
I can’t tell you how many times I have stopped myself from sharing a joyful moment with you, knowing that although you would never fail to respond, “How nice!” or, “I’m so happy for you!”, I would always sense resentment in your words, which in turn would only make me feel more guilty. If my mentioning plans to go to a place ten minutes from home for a bite to eat is enough to make you scream, I wonder about all the rest.
When I read your comment about blaming others for your perceived shortcomings and bad luck, it struck me that maybe blaming myself has been my way of coping with my successes and my good luck. The only problem is, I don’t know what I am blaming myself for. We all grew up feeling undeserving - of love, of attention, of material possessions. Maybe I have a sense that I’ve received more than I should have, as if in doing so, I was stealing blessings from others.
I don’t know whether I’ll ever be able to get rid of my guilt, but I do know that I am sick of it letting it dictate how happy I am allowed to be, and how I should behave toward you.
I think we are entitled to move on, Lily. And I think that after all we’ve been through together, we are entitled to an honest relationship. We’ve earned that much.
Love,
Iris
PS Can I still go out to dinner, or do I have to worry about you wishing I would choke on a fish bone?
From: Lily Capotosti
To: Iris Capotosti
Sent: Mon, February 21, 2011 at 2:28 PM
Subject: NOW we’re done
Dear Iris:
At least now we know what we are dealing with. And I feel like we can finally be genuine and honest with each other. I’m so grateful for that.
Love,
Lily
PS: I don’t wish for you to choke on a fishbone, but I wouldn’t mind if you got some spinach stuck in your front teeth.
November 28, 2012
Dear Julie,
I’ve always felt that thank-you notes should be written by hand, and now that our novel is complete, I feel like I should thank someone. Except I’m not sure who.
Certainly you, for never giving up. And the few special people who encouraged us and put up with us. And Iris and Lily, who never balked at doing our dirty work, or lugging around all the beat-up old baggage we dumped on them.
I know I will wonder from time to time where Iris and Lily are, what they are doing, how they are getting along. I know I’ll miss having them occupy my every waking moment and invading my every dream, and that I’ll be forever grateful to them for teaching me something very precious: how to be your big sister.
Love,
Angela
December 12, 2012
Dear Angela,
Thank you so much for your letter, even though it made me cry. Just looking at your handwriting takes me back to a time so long ago when we were separated by much more than one little ocean.
Over these past three years, there have been many times when the lines became so blurred that I feared I might slip down into the cracks between truth and fiction, past and present. Yet the more we worked, and wrote, and talked, the more I got it. Iris and Lily have helped me see things clearly for the first time. So little of what happened in my own life was really about me. Even less of it was my fault. It’s like going back in time and making things right.
I know that no matter where my story takes me next, my soul will always bear the indelible imprint of Iris and Lily.
With great respect, admiration and love from ...
Your little sister,
Julie
In honor of our mother Marion,
who gave the most any mother can:
her best.
We love you.
About the Authors
Angela and Julie Scipioni were born and raised in Rochester, New York. Angela lives on the Ligurian coast of Italy. Julie resides in Upstate New York, with her husband, Rick, and their cats, Halo and Stella.
Iris & Lily is also available in a three-volume print edition book series, as well as in audiobook form.
The novel has also been published in the Italian language, under the same title, by Bompiani, a division of RCS Libri, Milan.
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