Page 8 of The Singing Trees
Nonna struck the counter. “Hold you back? You’re the one holding yourself back with all this...”
“With all this what?” Though the soup was at a simmer, she felt like the top of the pot if she’d turned the knob to boiling.
“With all this anger,” Nonna finished. “You have to start moving on. It’s been more than two years, Annalisa. I’m tired of putting up with your rebellion.”
Even Annalisa would admit her disagreeable nature had a lot to do with losing both parents, but she’d been a wild child long before she was parentless. Maybe it was the Taurean in her—the stars havingsomething to do with it. Whatever it was, probably an amalgam of her Italian blood, her April birthday,andher jaded and often furious father, who’d essentially murdered her loving mother, she was not making it easy on her grandmother.
Perhaps she and Nonna butted heads because they were so similar. Annalisa stood a foot taller, but there was no denying their resemblance. Whenever a guest of the house saw the black-and-white photograph of Nonna in Naples, Italy, as a young teenager, they’d never fail to compare her to Annalisa, mentioning the same big brown eyes (Enough with the big eyes!Annalisa always thought) and that thick, wavy hair. More to the point, the two women were as stubborn as anyone in Maine.
Annalisa backed away from the counter, as if in retreat. “I’m trying to move on. By getting out of here.”
Nonna leaned back against the sink. “Moving on from your grief doesn’t mean driving away. You don’t need to move to Portland to find yourself. You just need to find peace.”
“Peace?” Annalisa let out a cackle from the center of the kitchen. “What kind of peace is there anywhere in this world? You mean in Vietnam?” She felt so frustrated and sad, thinking that she’d actually found some excitement today, only to be knocked down once again. “Peace doesn’t exist,” she continued. “Happiness doesn’t exist. Sometimes, I don’t even know if God exists.”
Nonna pounded the counter so hard the dirty dishes in the sink shook. “Don’t you ever say that.”
Annalisa snapped her hands to her waist. “It’s true.”
Mimicking her, Nonna said, “Then you need God more than ever.”
“He’s welcome to pop down for a visit,” Annalisa said. “He knows where I live.” She’d been going to church and praying to God all her life, but after losing her parents, God had a lot of making up to do as far as she was concerned.
Nonna took the wooden spoon she’d dried and stuck it into the pot of soup. “You’re not the only one who lost someone.”
“I’m the only one I know who lost both parents.”
“He was my son,” Nonna said, stirring the soup. “I lost him too. And then I lost my husband of forty-four years. Don’t pretend you’re the only one in this family who is suffering.”
“He was my father!” Annalisa yelled to her grandmother’s back.
“He was my son.” Nonna whipped around and slapped her hand against her own chest. “My son!”
Seeing and hearing Nonna’s pain cut to Annalisa’s core, and she got the point. Everyone in the family had lost her father. He was a father, a son, a brother, a cousin. They’d all lost him to alcoholism and then to that car wreck.
And they’d lost Annalisa’s mother, Celia, as well. From the first day her parents had met, the entire Mancuso clan had hoped that the talented, beautiful, and smart Celia Russo could rescue Tony Mancuso from continuing down his path of trouble. She’d done a pretty good job for a while, but eventually the whiskey had won.
Annalisa couldn’t take it anymore and turned away. With tears sliding down her cheeks, she stomped out of the kitchen. After slamming her bedroom door in frustration, Annalisa reached for her heavy Michelangelo book on the dresser and slung it across the room. The book crashed into her easel in the corner and knocked it, and her work in progress, to the floor. She collapsed onto the bed.
Through the thin walls, she could hear the crashes of her grandmother finishing the dishes, as if every collision further drove home her point.
Curling up, Annalisa lost herself in the lava lamp on the bedside table, letting the neon-green blobs absorb her anger. The drama of which her tiny grandmother was capable was extraordinary. She was the poster woman for fiery Italiannonne, and no woman could deliver a rant with such Oscar-worthy passion or issue a guilt trip with such sniper-like precision.
Even though they fought on occasion, she admired Nonna for being so strong and for being the cornerstone of the family. That being said, Annalisa certainly didn’t want to grow up to be like her grandmother.She didn’t want to be barefoot and pregnant, confined to the kitchen and shut out from the world. That life didn’t interest Annalisa at all. She could never stand for the way things were arranged, almost as if their lives were predetermined for the females in their family.
As much as Annalisa hated her father, she did like that he’d broken out of the Mills himself and actually chased his dreams. Even after hurting his back and discovering alcohol, he’d cleaned himself up and gone to college and landed a well-paying job at a bank in Bangor. By the time he’d met Annalisa’s mother, he was back on top. For a while, at least.
Like her father, Annalisa craved independence. She didn’t want to be told what to do, where to live, whom to marry, or what to believe. No wonder he’d gotten the hell out of this town. Nonna was probably drowning him.
She didn’t like spending much time comparing herself to him, though—or even thinking about him—but she could feel his presence here. She was living in his old bedroom, for God’s sake, where he and two of his brothers had been crammed in all the way through high school. Her indoor studio was in the very space where her art-hating father had slept! In addition, almost every face in the Mancuso family, with the exception of Nino and a couple of others, bore a strong resemblance to the man. Talk about holding her back. The bottom line was that she could never be the artist she wanted to be here, and nothing Nonna or anyone else said or did would change that fact.
When she finally calmed down twenty minutes later, Annalisa decided she’d better apologize. Though Nonna couldn’t care less, her mother had never let Annalisa go to bed angry, and it was a practice she’d held on to. Stepping into the hallway, she saw amber light shining through the crack in Nonna’s closed bedroom door. She walked down the hall decorated with family photos and some of Annalisa’s earlier works and stopped at the door.
She raised her hand to knock but stopped at the last second, putting her ear closer. Her grandmother always prayed for a long timebefore going to bed, and sometimes Annalisa had heard her talking to someone, probably her late husband or even Annalisa’s father.
Tonight, it sounded like she was crying.
Annalisa felt terrible. What kind of awful person had she become, being so nasty to the woman who had taken her in? Nonna was right anyway. Why did Annalisa always have to make it about her?
