Page 74 of The Singing Trees
She looked at both Nonna and Walt, who showed you-can’t-fool-me looks on their faces. “Maybe just the two of you could go?” Annalisa felt bad for lying, but not bad enough. Even when Nonna fired missiles with her eyes, she shrugged it off. “I was going to be stuck in the back seat anyway.”
Walt took a confident step toward Elena. “I’d love to still take you, if you’re interested.”
Annalisa’s heart swooned.
Until Nonna looked at her, as if she either needed permission or a way out. She couldn’t be sure, but Annalisa thought she saw in her grandmother’s face the fear of risking her heart again after losing Nonno.
“Are you kidding me?” Annalisa said, deciding to answer for her grandmother. “She’d love to go.” Walt was a gift that Nonna was being given, and she couldn’t dare turn it away.
“Maybe we can do it another time,” Walt conceded, clearly reading Nonna’s skeptical face. “I think we all know what’s going on here.” Walt was just as afraid as Nonna.
To everyone’s surprise, Nonna made the leap. “I suppose I still have time for a drive.”
“Really?” he asked.
Nonna’s face warmed. “It would be nice.”
Annalisa would never forget the change in both of them, their bodies, their faces, their energy, as if their decision to let the light in on their lives had snuffed the pain they’d been suffering for so long in missing the ones they used to love.
Walt opened up the passenger-side door, took Nonna’s hand, and guided her in. Annalisa wondered when either one of them had touched the hand of the opposite sex. It was very much the cutest thing she had ever seen, and she couldn’t help but feel like she’d done something that actually mattered for once.
He scurried over to his side and cracked open his own door. Looking back at Annalisa, he said, “Don’t worry; I’ll take good care of her.”
“I know you will,” Annalisa said with a sly wink.
He let out a subtle smirk that said it all. Walt Burzinski was smitten with her grandmother.
Annalisa ducked down to say goodbye to Nonna one more time. She waved through the closed window.
Nonna shooed her away.
“I can’t believe you,” Nonna spat as Annalisa pushed into the apartment after work that day. “I don’t want you meddling with my life.” She stood at the stove, makingsoffritto, the holy trinity of celery, carrots, and onions. Funny how Nonna could take over any kitchen she was in.
Thomas had written his first letter from Vietnam, and Annalisa felt hesitant to read it. Was she making the right decision by corresponding with him, leading him on? They couldn’t keep playing this game for long. With them, it felt like they needed to fully love each other or shut each other out.
“What can’t you believe?” Annalisa asked, looking at his handwriting on the envelope. Not only was this proof of life, but it was proof that she was still on his mind. As dangerous as that idea was, it was also utterly delightful.
Nonna waved her knife at Annalisa. “That was very embarrassing, the game you played today. Don’t meddle with my life. You worry about yourself.”
Annalisa crossed over the black and white tiles of the kitchen and invaded Nonna’s space. “It worked, didn’t it? How was the drive? Don’t tell me you didn’t have fun. Walt says he had a blast and that you’re a very interesting woman.”
The volume of Nonna’s knife hitting the chopping board increased. She pretended to ignore Annalisa breathing down her neck.
“Nonna, how was it?” She put a hand on Nonna’s shoulder. “You had fun, didn’t you? Walt’s adorable.”
Nonna slid her pile of celery to the side with her knife and then reached for a peeled carrot from a ceramic bowl. “Back away or I’ll stick you.”
Annalisa gave her a little space. “He likes you, you know?”
Nonna chopped the carrot like nothing else in the world mattered.
“And you like him,” Annalisa said. “Don’t you? Why won’t you admit it?”
“We had a nice morning,” Nonna said, as if she had confessed to Father Laduca back in the Mills.
Annalisa looked back at Thomas’s letter, and it tugged at her. She might be hesitant to read it, knowing it would be like opening Pandora’s box, but that wasn’t going to stop her. No way.
“I’d say you had a nice time,” she said. “Walt was late to his shop for the first time in...who knows? Just admit that you had fun.”
