Wild Roses

by Deb Caletti

  My mother got to see the sunset of Sabbotino Grappa, watched the sun as it dropped down into the Tuscan valley. She breathed in the smell of lemons, of plumbagos. Sat on the stone steps of the church with a plate of budino di mele balanced on her knees. Listened to the joyful language she couldn’t understand.

  And Dino, who had only previously seen this place in a book when he was sixteen and crafting a past for himself for his first interview, lavished in the affection of his “home” and “family.” The children put almonds in his pockets, and the old ladies and old men kissed his cheeks. He feasted and laughed. Told stories in Italian. Finally, he picked up the old violin that Mrs. Salducci brought, hopelessly out of tune, and tried to play Lunetta for the townspeople. The sound was too awful, and so he gave up Lunetta. He played “Bailo di Mattina” (Morning Dance), a Tuscan folk song, instead, and Karl Lager danced with Mrs. Latore, and the Bissola sisters waltzed in tiny, careful steps with each other, and the children spun themselves in circles, the colors of their clothing bright against that yellow stone.

  No wonder, my mother thought then, that Edward Reynolds had decided to respect the version of Dino’s life that he had chosen. It was a good story, with wonderful characters, in a beautiful setting. It made everyone so happy. And if you could make a choice, then why not pick happiness?

  Late that night, over wine in glass jars and a short, dripping candle in Honoria’s kitchen, Dino told my mother that he would be staying in Sabbotino Grappa. We would have to join him if they were to stay together—he had too long been in that second-rate musical city, and he would be near enough to Rome to play there.

  My mother told him then what she said she’d wanted to say for a long time. That she loved him and cared about him, but that they could not live together anymore. She would file for divorce when she returned home. He could live with a family that wasn’t real, made up of lies and things unsaid, but she had already been doing that for too long. She had a choice, and she wanted to pick happiness, too.

  Dino, Honoria’s boy, slept on her couch that night, and my mother and Andrew slept on the floor. In the morning, Eli Manzoni drove them to Rome. They stayed in the Grand Palace Hotel, ordered expensive room service. My mother had a bath. They flew out the next day from the Rome airport.

  Here was the funny thing. Her baggage never made it home, and she didn’t seem to mind.

  “You didn’t even bring anything back,” I said to her. “Not even MY MOTHER WENT TO ITALY AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT.”

  “Shopping wasn’t a priority.”

  “Did you think for a minute you might want to stay?”

  “Not for a second. Not even a split second. Or a split of a split.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Exhausted, depleted, war weary. Shell-shocked. It’s been a long four years.”

  “It all feels so strange. It’s so quiet.”

  “I know,” Mom said. “It’s hard to realize that it’s done. I’ve been trying so hard to get everything to fit for so long, but it never did. You keep trying and trying, but you’re just killing yourself.”

  “You’ve been through a lot.”

  “We’ve been through a lot. I’ve known this was necessary for a long time. But it’s not easy to do what you know you should, especially when he’s ill. God, he was so sick.”

  I didn’t say anything. Just let her talk. I was so glad he was gone. There was air in the house again. Like someone had died, and the body and the illness and the sickroom were now carted away.

  “I mean, where should your empathy stop? Your own compassion does you in. Gets in the way of self-protection. You’ve got an in-love feeling, but the relationship is damaging. When do you stop calling it love?”

  “Meanness is still meanness,” I said. “It’s not a disease.”

  “It’s true. And I’ve also got you to look after, thank God. I know how this has been affecting you, and I’m sorry.”

  “Are you going to miss him?”

  She thought about this. “I’m sure there will be things I’ll miss. I mean, when it was good, it was great. Especially in the early days. I know it’s hard for you to understand, but I loved him. I really did. And it was exciting, it really was, being part of his world.” She rubbed her forehead as if trying to get the thoughts to order themselves. “Right now, everything just hurts. But I’m also just so relieved. Mostly what I can see is that relief.”

  “Me too.”

  “You know how just now you asked if I was okay? That’s why we’re not doing this anymore. A daughter shouldn’t have to worry about her mother. That’s backward and wrong. And we should both be okay. Yes, it hurts. To get divorced again … God. But that’s exactly it. A home is where you’re okay.”

  “I’m proud of you,” I said.

  “I’m proud of us.” She held up the coffee pot she was holding. “Here’s to lessons learned. Lightness. Peace. Tranquillity. Knowing mostly what the day will hold when you get up in the morning.”

  I grabbed the nearest thing, a flower vase. We clinked them together. We toasted to a new life.

  Siang Chibo still followed me home.

  “You know he’s not here,” I told her. We were at the beginning of my street. I watched Courtney’s brothers let themselves in their house, saw the blue glow of the television a moment later. “Even his study is getting packed up.”

  “You’re my friend,” she said. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Okay.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me, you know. What happened that night,” she said. “You act as if that changes something.”

  I stopped before we went in. Slipped my backpack from my shoulder and set it on the walkway. “He let you down.”

  “Let me down? You’ve got to be kidding.” Her Indiana Jones Temple of Doom boy voice grew even higher pitched. “Were you not there? Did you not hear Lunettal Did you not hear Amore Dolce Della Gioventù? My father was sobbing.”

  Dog William was out on the front lawn. We watched him chew someone’s tennis shoe. I don’t know whose it was. I was hoping he didn’t snitch it from Mr. Frederici’s front porch.

  “I would have thought the rest of the night might’ve thrown a little cold water on the evening.”

  “Look what he gave us. Remember his painting? Wild Roses. That music. Beauty that could not be tamed. It was magnificent. Unforgettable.”

  I thought about this. “Yeah. Unforgettable, all right. And roses have thorns.”

  “Oh, Cassie,” Siang said. “I want to be your friend even if you don’t seem to get things sometimes.”

  I watched Dog William. I wondered if we should change his name. I tried a few out.

  “Marley,” I called. “Hey, Marley!” Dog William didn’t look up. “José. Here, José. Archie!”

  He ignored me. Kept chewing that shoe.

  “William!” I said, and Dog William popped his ugly little chin right in the air, looked at me as if slightly exasperated at being interrupted.

  “He is who he is,” Siang said.

  Ian and I spent the rest of the year together. It was a peaceful time—Janet apologized to me, even made me some cookies, and, of course, Dino was gone. A happy, happy time. Ian left for Philadelphia in August. Janet could not bear to take him to the airport, so Chuck and Bunny drove, and Ian and I rode in the backseat. I couldn’t keep the tears from rolling down my cheeks.

  “I don’t want any blubbering,” Bunny said. But he kept blowing his nose and sniffing a lot. Trying to keep the tears back.

  It was five o’clock in the morning, already warm and smelling good, the air feeling promising and full of new beginnings. It broke my heart. Ian kept squeezing my hand and looking at me as if trying to get my features deep into his memory.

  “Cassie, I …” he choked.

  “Okay, all of you,” Chuck said. “We’re never going to get through this.” But his voice was wavery, too. “On the count of three, think happy thoughts. One, two, three. Clowns.”

&n
bsp; “Clowns are creepy,” I said.

  “Gumballs. Cartoons. The beach. A vacation,” Chuck said.

  “Real good, Chuck,” Bunny said, and honked into his Kleenex again. “Vacation? Travel? Planes?”

  “There’s so much to say,” Ian whispered.

  “We’re going to be seeing you,” Bunny said. Now his voice was hoarse. It was hard to keep back emotion. It always kept pressing, pressing at the edges of you, even if you didn’t want it to. “It’s not like we’re not going to be seeing you.”

  We took the exit for the airport. The sight of the big planes there, parked and waiting, made my stomach feel sick. The airport was such a wonderful and awful place. For every arrival there was someone on the other side, left behind.

  The plan was to pull up to the curb, unload Ian’s bags. We’d say good-bye there. We wouldn’t prolong it.

  Bunny fought the cars and the shuttle buses and taxis, eased into a spot at the airport curb. “Kid,” he said. His eyes were full of tears now. He leaned over and hugged Ian hard. “I love you. You be good.”

  Ian hugged Chuck, too, who was having a hard time holding it together. “Puppies,” Chuck squeaked. “Sno-Cones. Heineken.”

  “Good-bye, Chuck.”

  I stepped out onto the curb with Ian. He was not wearing his long coat, as it was August and it was packed for a Philadelphia winter, but he was carrying his violin case. He took his suitcase from the trunk and set it down by his feet.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you.” I hugged him. We kissed for a while. And then we separated, and I watched his back disappear into the sliding doors. I just watched him go. And like that, he was gone.

  “Thank you for showing me how,” I whispered.

  And then I got back into the car, and let Bunny hold me as I sobbed.

  Maybe love, too, is beautiful because it has a wildness that cannot be tamed. I don’t know. All I know is that passion can take you up like a house of cards in a tornado, leaving destruction in its wake. Or it can let you alone because you have built a stone wall against it, set out the armed guards to keep it from touching you. The real trick is to let it in, but to hold on. To understand that the heart is as vast and wide as the universe, but that we come to know it best from here, this place of gravity and stability, where our feet can still touch ground.

  My mother’s divorce from Dino was finalized by the end of the summer. For a while, Andrew Wilkowski phoned her to let her know how Dino was doing. His health was improving, his health was worsening, his health was improving. His music was going well, going badly, going well. So it went. Andrew Wilkowski finally stopped calling with his reports after the record company woman flew to Sabbotino Grappa to discuss Dino’s contract and ended up staying.

  My mother is calm and happy. She plays her cello with love, not loss. She struggles like hell financially, but she looks more like herself. Her eyes are soft and relaxed. She’s been out on a few dates with a poet-slash-advertising executive, a member of the creatively sane. She took in Alice as a roommate, and that worked great until Alice decided to move in with the French horn player in the orchestra. Mom is looking for a new roommate, and in a Bunny brainstorm, is having coffee with Janet to talk over the possibility. I wonder what it would be like to live in the same house as Ian’s mom. It would be nice to be close to him in this way, I think, and Dog William would be thrilled to have Rocket on a regular basis.

  A few times when Alice was around, Dad came over for a bowl of jambalaya. They all sat around the table and ate and drank wine and played marathon games of Monopoly and made up the rules as they went along. And yes, it felt like family. It was just as you hoped it could be, where everyone decides they can still love and care for each other, married or not. Where everyone just gets it together. That’s all you really want or need—the ability to love both of your parents, and for them to see that a changed family need not be a destroyed one. I hope that is enough for Dad, to have Mom as family, and I hope he comes over still if Janet moves in. I like the idea of the three of them at that table together.

  And Ian. I saw him once, over Christmas, and it was perfect but brief. It is too expensive for him to fly home very much, and long-distance phone calls, too, are few. We write each other, e-mailing as often as we can. Soon he will be winning awards, performing, traveling. He will make the circuit, following the path to certain success, maybe even fame. When I look at my bear, floating in the globe, I try to see him as free rather than unanchored. I try to think good thoughts about his freedom. More than anything, I try to keep him from spinning out of control.

  I don’t know what will happen with Ian and me. What I do know is that when I close my eyes, it is him that I see. When I think of love, it is his name etched always in my mind. And it is his music that I hear. When the notes fill my head, I do not imagine anymore the lemon trees and curved streets of Sabbotino Grappa. I do not imagine old ladies smelling of salami and olive oil, or a child running on yellow cobblestones. No, now Ian’s music is his own, and what I see is a winter forest of fir and cedar and evergreens. I see diamond flakes beginning to fall, landing on a joyful, upturned face, drifting to settle in my beloved’s hair. I see poplar and spruce, solid and sure, covered in the softest, quietest white. The snow glitters like a sky filled with stars, like a galaxy on a planetarium ceiling.

  1 Dawson Cook, “Cavalli Strikes a Perfect Note” Strad Magazine (April 1996): 12-15.

  2 Alice Lambert, “The Season’s Best” Strad Magazine (May 1989): 20-22.

  3 Dino Cavalli—The Early Years: An Oral History. From Edward Reynolds, New York, N.Y. Aldine Press, 1999.

  4 Dino Cavalli—The Early Years: An Oral History. From Edward Reynolds, New York, N.Y. Aldine Press, 1999.

  5 Dino Cavalli—The Early Years: An Oral History. From Edward Reynolds, New York, N.Y. Aldine Press, 1999.

  6 Dino Cavalli—The Early Years: An Oral History. From Edward Reynolds, New York, N.Y. Aldine Press, 1999.

  7 Dino Cavalli—The Early Years: An Oral History. From Edward Reynolds, New York, N.Y. Aldine Press, 1999.

  8 Dino Cavalli—The Early Years: An Oral History. From Edward Reynolds, New York, N.Y. Aldine Press, 1999.

  9 From Sylvie Partowski, “Master’s Chat: Dino Cavalli.” Strings Magazine (August 2002): 56–60.

  10 Dino Cavalli—The Early Years: An Oral History. From Edward Reynolds, New York, N.Y. Aldine Press, 1999.