Page 77 of The Singing Trees
“You already have, Annalisa. No doubt in my mind. At the same time, you’re just getting started, right? I’m hoping you’ve come to say you’ll join my classes again.”
With desperation flushing her face, Annalisa said, “I absolutely want to join your classes again.”
Sharon clapped her hands together, her bracelets jiggling. “You’ve made my entire week.” Inviting Annalisa in, she caught her up on who had left and who the new students were.
Then she pointed at the tote. “What do you have?”
Annalisa smiled, and that same fear she’d had in the past rose back up. It wasn’t quite as bad, though, and she was able to swallow it. In fact, even if Sharon hated what she’d done, it didn’t matter. Because Annalisa knew what did matter—what she’d put on the canvas in the last fewhours and what she’d done these past months in her own lifemattered. Love wasn’t a potion you drank to distract yourself from reality. Love was the key to living a life that mattered.
They went into the studio, and Annalisa unclasped the button and pulled out the stretched canvas of Nonna and Walt. Setting it on Sharon’s desk, Annalisa backed away, once again admiring what she’d done. It might not be a Picasso or a Mary Cassatt, but by God it was an Annalisa Mancuso. It was her subject’s eyes, the windows into their souls, and in their movement, the way Nonna was reaching up to Walt, leaping into his heart. And Walt, his lifting her up, telling her to trust him, that he’d love her with everything he had for as long as he could.
Sharon looked at it for a long time, and when she turned, Annalisa steadied herself for whatever was coming.
“It’s about time,” Sharon said. “I don’t know what you’ve been doing and where you found it, but you did. You found you, honey.”
Annalisa felt her shoulders shake as she broke into a cry. She opened up her arms to Sharon, and the two embraced. Annalisa cried tears of joy for finally doing something with her life—and not just with this painting. She cried for all the hard work she’d put in and for her mother, who’d never gotten a real chance.
As she wiped her eyes after the hardest cry that she could remember, Sharon lifted up the painting and handed it back. “Now go do this again. And again. And again.”
Chapter 28
ALOHA, MAINERS
The last week of May, Walt drove Annalisa to Logan Airport in Boston. She hugged him goodbye and reminded him to take his medicine. Nonna was helping out at the shop while she was gone.
After checking in, Annalisa boarded the first airplane of her life. She’d first tried to read a book but was too excited and kept her eyes out the window for most of the journey. When the wheels touched down in Honolulu, she had absolutely no idea what to expect. The only communication she’d received was that he’d be waiting for her, as she’d sent her flight details.
She joined the other passengers exiting the gate and lost her breath when she saw him. Private Thomas Barnes stood in his uniform at the gate when she deplaned. She’d never seen him so handsome. For a funny moment she thought she was one of the girls in Elvis’sBlue Hawaii, and he her own private Elvis.
“Aloha,” she said, noticing as she came closer a scratch along his cheek. What had he seen and done in the few months he’d been in Vietnam? She couldn’t—and didn’t want to—imagine.
“Look at you.” He smiled, making her feel to her core how much he’d missed her. He lifted up a lei of lilac and white orchids and hung it around her neck. He stepped back as if he had no idea what to do—hug her? Kiss her? As if he was letting her make the choice.
She hadn’t come all the way to Hawaii to be friends, and he hadn’t just fought through half of his tour to shake hands. Letting herself go just as Sharon had taught her, Annalisa pressed her lips to his. The passengers around them clapped, as if this were any normal reunion.
As they pulled apart, she said, “What’s new, soldier boy? That’s a heck of a tan.”
He laughed. “Damn, I missed you.”
“You’re not going to get all mushy on me, are you?” But her own heart felt pretty soft.
“So what if I am?”
Annalisa thought his eyes looked different, like he’d lost some of his youth. “I missed you too.”
They retrieved her bag and called a taxi that took them to a simple hotel called the Moloka’i on Waikiki Beach. They entered their first-floor waterfront room, and she rushed to the patio only steps from the sand. Annalisa’s first glimpse of the beach and ocean felt like a mother seeing her child for the first time. The creamy sand was a stick of butter melting into the water, and she couldn’t imagine that all those shades of blue even existed. For a Mainer who’d barely crossed borders, this was proof enough that God had His hands all over the world, mixing in colors even the great masters could never emulate.
To the far left, past the long line of hotels, stood some sort of beautiful mountain, but it was nothing like the mountains of Maine. This one was surely volcanic, and it was treeless and jagged, almost otherworldly. She looked out toward the horizon, wondering what else was out there waiting for her.
Thomas joined her, putting his hand on her waist and kissing her neck. “I’m so glad you came.”
His breath gave her goose bumps. “Me too,” she whispered, feeling the exhilaration of a free fall into love. Would they make love while they were here, she wondered, or would she get scared and pull the cord?She couldn’t bear losing him to the war, couldn’t even bear the idea of it, so she was afraid that she was setting herself up for the greatest loss of her life.
But she couldn’t bear not loving him, either, so she had to have made this leap and taken the risk. No longer could she let her fears guide her. She knew what was right in her heart.
They breathed in the view, watching the sun worshippers lie motionless on their chairs, and the lovers strolling along the dazzling waterline, and then out in the ocean, a cluster of longboarders sharing a seemingly never-ending line of perfect curls. Other soldiers were there, too, some with girlfriends or wives, and some clustered together with other fighters on leave from their nightmare.
There was a powerful dichotomy at play between those men and their current surroundings, and Annalisa could feel Thomas’s energy—all their energy—in this brief respite from their violent situation. She could only imagine what they were going through, but she’d watched and read enough news to know that they’d experienced things that would make even the most hardened warriors tremble.
