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Vince slept on the floor, while Silvia slept on the couch. It was hard and creaky, and the gray blanket that Cosmo gave her, which looked like it might have been white at one time, was about as warm as a towel. Even if she had been sleeping on a luxury mattress with clean sheets and cozy blankets, she would still not have slept well. Her mind was too crammed full of stuff, like whether she should stay in the area and look for an apartment and start school, or move to Portland and put school off for another year or two and hope for the best in terms of finding a job there. Periodically, her mind would switch to plans for the reunion. As a result of the continual stream of thoughts racing about her head, she spent the night in one of those light sleeps, more awake than asleep, almost like she was watching herself sleeping. She could hear Vince sleeping soundly on the cold, hard floor beside her. She wished that she could feel happy for him for sleeping after their very stressful day, but in truth, she was jealous for his ability to sleep through the night while she lay awake with rambling thoughts racing about in her head.
She wanted to be angry with Frank for coming home like such a raging bull. She wanted to be angry with having to grow up in a house where things always went wrong, like all the Sunday dinners that ended in a fight between Frank and Cosmo, or like the summer road trip vacations with Frank turning the car around and driving back home just as they were nearing their destination. But as much as she wanted to be angry with him, she knew that he could only be who he was, and she really understood, now more than ever, that he could just not help himself.
She wanted to be angry with Donna for not leaving her father long ago and taking all of them with her. Why did she stay as long as she did and, in her own way, help to make him into who he was? But she knew that her mother, like most people, just did the best that she could do. And besides, Silvia knew that blame was a wasteful thing. That is what she told Cosmo and Vince. So why was she letting her mind go wayward now? The simplest and most truthful answer was that she was tired. So she got up and made herself a cup of chamomile tea with a bag she happened to have stashed in her backpack. Finding a clean cup in Cosmo’s anarchic kitchen wasn’t as difficult as she had expected, and shortly after making and drinking the tea, she nodded off.
Olive Branches Don't Grow On Trees Page 32
