Page 51 of The Singing Trees
Thomas was gone, and he was on his way to war, and she was to blame.
Three weeks after Thomas left her his car, Annalisa got lucky—if anything could be called lucky, considering the circumstances. She’d been scouring the Portland newspaper every day and found a new listing for a small place a block off Congress Street. She called the slightly grumpy landlord and told him she could meet that day. After a little begging (a lot, actually), he reluctantly assured her he wouldn’t show it to anyone else.
She could feel Thomas’s presence in his car, and she wished that he was with her. Time and distance and even the brighter and warmer days of summer had done nothing to soften her love for him—if anything, it was growing stronger—and she found it so incredibly hard to shake the idea that he was supposed to be here. What if she’d never broken upwith him, despite Emma and his father and her fears? Then maybe his grades would be okay, and he wouldn’t have lost his deferment. They’d be together and he’d be safe.
Having had her license for only a few weeks, she wasn’t the savviest behind the wheel, and a few angry drivers honked at her as she entered Portland. She waved her apologies and kept driving toward the center of town. She had gotten to know her way around, but she still had to pull over a couple of times to consult theMaine Gazetteersplayed open on the passenger seat.
She rode past Pride’s Department Store, where she’d dropped off an application for an open position drawing fashion ads. Satisfied women dolled up with the latest fashions sashayed out of the revolving doors with giant bags swinging at their hips. Once she was close to the address, she eyed an available parking spot between an armored truck and a vintage car painted a sky blue.
The only problem was that she had to parallel park, a skill she had yet to master despite Thomas’s worthy efforts in teaching her. She could still hear him reeling in laughter as she’d attempted to parallel park in Davenport for the first time, and had she shut out the memory with any more delay, she might have fallen apart.
The first try was beyond embarrassing; someone could have fit a motorcycle between her and the curb. Her nerves fired at the possibility of finally finding a place, and this parking challenge didn’t help matters at all. The second try was a little better but still way off the mark. Maybe you could squeeze a moped in the space between. She pulled ahead and attempted, as Thomas had taught her, to line up her tires with those of the armored car. A line of cars piled up behind her, forcing her heart into overdrive.
On the third attempt, as the particularly angry driver in the sedan pressed on his horn while simultaneously yelling out the window something that sounded like, “Take the bus!” Annalisa committed to doing it right. She matched up the tires, swung the steering wheel all theway right, then eased backward. She tasted a bit of confidence as she watched through the rearview mirror and saw that she’d finally done it. Thomas would have been proud, and for an instant she heard his voice from the passenger seat, urging her on.There you go, Anna. Take your time.
His voice echoed into the emptiness in her chest, making her long for him. If only he could be here.
The driver behind her slammed on his brakes and held the horn down, turning her memory of Thomas into a ball of flames. Love was so damn messy! Burning with frustration, she decided to stop the car to collect herself. Forget the obnoxious jerk and his stupid horn!
With too much force, she pressed down the wrong pedal, reversing directly into the fancy blue car. Her head slammed into the back of the seat as the sound of metal on metal tore at her ears.
“Oh, no, no, no,” she said, quickly moving out of reverse and pulling away from the car. With the Beetle sticking out into the middle of the street, she pulled the brake and stepped out of the car.
Without a lick of compassion, the asshole driver behind her sped past with an ugly shake of the head. Annalisa couldn’t stop from giving him back a five-fingered flick off the chin, followed by a string of Italian that could have come straight from Nonna.
As the other cars passed by, she inspected the damage. The blue car’s hood readPLYMOUTHin big silver letters. Showing only a long scratch in the bumper, the car had fared much better than Thomas’s Beetle, which had a huge indentation to the right of the shattered rear taillight.
Annalisa knew next to nothing about cars and absolutely zilch about getting them fixed, but the first thing that came to mind as she picked up the pieces of her scattered thoughts was that this accident was an omen, telling her that she’d screwed up everything, that maybe she shouldn’t even be here—certainly not after betraying him. And then the money it would cost—there went her savings.
She glanced down the street, searching for her destination. Part of her wanted to get back in the car and return home. Who was she kidding, an eighteen-year-old from the Mills trying to make something of herself? Was it a sign from up high for her to go back to where she belonged? And why in the world had she taken Thomas’s car in the first place? What a fool she was.
Glancing at her Timex, Annalisa decided she still needed to make her meeting with her potential landlord. First, though, she had to figure out what to do about the damage. Considering the Plymouth was only scratched, she decided it would be best to avoid the police and an insurance claim. Jumping back into the driver’s seat, she finished parking. It turned out she was much less nervous after the damage had been done. She wrote a quick note with Nonna’s phone number on it to the owner of the Plymouth and then placed it on the windshield. She cringed at what Nonna might think, but what could she do now?
Trying to forget what had happened, she wandered along Congress Street and followed the addresses until she found her destination. On a small brown awning above a large display of fancy watches and clocks read:WALTBURZINSKI’SWATCH ANDCLOCKREPAIR. The three-story brick building seemed out of place, like it was left standing from a forgotten era, more modern efforts towering over it. She raised her eyes past the awning to the small balconies on the second and third floors. Two apartments per floor. She wondered if one of those would be hers.
The bell above chimed as Annalisa pushed the glass door open. She’d never seen so many clocks in one place in her life. They covered every wall and almost all the available floor space. They collectively ticked and tocked, this wonderful and mesmerizing army of metronomic movement coming from every direction, a sound that momentarily drowned out her frustration about Thomas’s car. As she bounced her eyes from one clock to the next, she recognized the smell of Murphy Oil Soap, which was what her grandmother and she used to clean the floors.
A man called out, “I’m back here. Better not be selling anything. I’ve no time for such things.”
Following the throaty and obviously cranky voice, she wound her way past two tall grandfather clocks and past a long glass display of shiny gold and silver watches. Though the glass had been polished, she fought off a sneeze as the heavy dust in the shop crept up her nose.
Behind a glass counter with an antique cash register, Annalisa found a man who looked to be in his seventies. She saw his side profile, and he was hunched over a busy work desk, tinkering with the insides of a watch under the light of a lamp. Keys and watches, both with white tags attached to them, dangled from hooks behind him on the corkboard wall. The surface of the desk was covered with tiny screwdrivers and what looked like an oil dropper and dozens of other tools she didn’t recognize.
The old man wore a tattered cardigan over a dingy white shirt and tie. He had a big nose and big ears, and what was left of his gray hair formed the shape of a horseshoe across his scalp. Stray hairs sprung out in random directions. His eyebrows were thick, gray, and unkempt too. He wore circular glasses with a magnifying glass extending from the right lens.
“I’m not interested in buying your things,” he muttered, never breaking his focus from the watch. He had knobby and gangly fingers, and they shook slightly as he worked.
“Are you Mr.Burzinski?” Annalisa asked, stopping in front of the cash register.
He side-eyed her and then went back to work. “Either you’re selling something that I’m not interested in or your name’s Annalisa.”
She gave her best smile. “Yes to the second one, inquiring about the third-floor apartment. You can call me Anna if you like.”
Mr.Burzinski lifted the watch and used the lamplight to analyze it. “What brings you to Portland?”
Wasn’t that a loaded question? “I’m an artist, a painter, to be exact, hoping to break into the art world. There’s a teacher I’m coming to study with.”
“The art world, huh?” He chuckled to himself. “I didn’t know there was much of one here.”
