Page 23 of The Singing Trees
Nonna moved toward her and said softly, “It’s a wonderful feeling, isn’t it? One day, Anna. One day you’ll find a man who is perfect. Like Nonno was for me.” She sat on the edge of the bed and put her hand on Annalisa’s foot. “I know it’s hard to hear, but I am truthful because I love you. It’s nice to meet people that are different from us, but when it comes to settling down, it’s always best to choose someone with strong similarities.”
If you have to choose anyone at all,Annalisa thought. “You’re probably right.” She felt herself deflating, like a bike tire that ran over a nail. Her feelings for Thomas were dangerous and could upend everything—only to prove Nonna right down the line.
“I’m happy to see you smile,” Nonna said, “but I don’t want you to get hurt. Now, please get ready for bed. No skipping church again.”
Annalisa nodded, thinking her graduation in May couldn’t come soon enough. It wasn’t Nonna she needed to get away from at all. It wasn’t even the Mills.
It was Thomas. If she wasn’t careful, her feelings could brick wall her career. It wasn’t hard to figure out how it could happen.
Annalisa lets herself fall for Thomas. She loses her creative edge, maybe stops working as hard. Starts painting butterflies swarming in fields of lavender. Graduation comes and goes, and she decides to stick around, maybe until Thomas graduates. She paints some, but has lost her fire. The next thing she knows, she’s trapped in his blue picket fence—or whatever color he’d painted it—with a stack of empty canvases and unfulfilled aspirations.
She couldn’t let her mother’s dead-ended path become her own.
Chapter 8
THEDRIVE-IN
After the school bus dropped her back home Monday, she found Nonna sitting at the small two-top table in the kitchen. If her grandmother ever took a minute to get off her feet, it was either here or her recliner in the living room. Above the table hung a calendar with a portrait of the Virgin Mary. Aside from the occasional doctor’s appointment, the calendar was mostly filled with Nonna’s obligations to the church, such as feeding a new widow, or providing flowers for the altar, or contributing to a bake sale.
“What’s going on with you?” Annalisa questioned, studying the jagged lines on her grandmother’s forehead.
Nonna shook her head, ignoring the question. “How much homework do you have?”
Annalisa couldn’t stand it when her grandmother got into these moods, so she tried to lighten her up. “Seniors don’t have homework. Something about spreading us too thin.”
Nonna removed her glasses and set them on the table. Playing along, she said, “Bene.I have a long list of chores. What would you like to start with? The toilets and sinks need scrubbing. You know where the Clorox and gloves are.”
“Actually,” Annalisa said, continuing their joust, “I have more homework this year than ever before. I don’t even know if I’ll have time to paint this afternoon.”
“Oh, is that so?” Her grandmother let out a smirk that might have required a magnifying glass to detect.
“You wouldn’t believe it,” Annalisa said sarcastically, “algebra, biology, reading. I have to finishThe Great Gatsbytonight.”
“Tonight?Didn’t you just start it?”
“I know! And I don’t even like it, what with Jay’s absurd obsession with Daisy. I’d honestly rather scrub toilets.”
Nonna rolled her eyes. “I bet you would.”
Annalisa put her arm on Nonna’s shoulder. “I’m just kidding. Can I paint for a little while, and then I’ll happily do chores all the way to dinner?”
The phone rang.
Nonna pointed to the living room. “Yes, you can paint for an hour, but answer the call first.”
The phone rested next to a starched doily on a wooden table between her grandmother’s recliner and the couch. Lifting the receiver to her ear, Annalisa said dutifully, “Mancuso residence.”
“Annalisa, is that you?”
She instantly turned into a statue, as frozen as the statue of the Virgin Mary staring back at her from the cabinet by the television.
Thomas.
Nerves shot off like fireworks, sparks working their way up her legs like fuses. She eyed Mother Mary and mouthed, “Stop looking at me.” Then to Thomas, “May I ask who’s calling?”
He announced himself as if she didn’t know.
She sank down on the couch covered in plastic, her grandmother’s way to ensure the furniture would always be brand new. Whenever Annalisa made fun of it, Nonna would say, “Italian men put too much grease in their hair.”
