Bloomability Page 7

  On Christmas Eve, Uncle Max, Aunt Sandy and I walked down the Collina d’Oro through the snow to the church of St. Abbondio. Inside were red poinsettias and gold ribbons and hundreds of candles. Whole families were there together: great-grandparents and grandparents and parents and teenagers and toddlers and cherry-cheeked babies.

  “Buon Natale,” people said to us, and we to them. “Buon Natale!”

  Just before the service started, Mrs. Stirling appeared at the door. She was wearing a long black cape over her black dress and a black lace mantilla over her face. People turned to look at her. She looked regal, gliding down the aisle, pausing to touch the hands of people she knew. She slipped into our pew and sat beside me. “Isn’t this beautiful?” she whispered.

  After a group of boys and girls had sung a Christmas carol, Mrs. Stirling leaned toward me and, tapping her program, said, “Look at this, Domenica dear. Voci bianche—that’s what we just heard. It means ‘white voices.’ Isn’t that a lovely way to put it?”

  She’d said it like this: VO-chee bee-ON-kay. White voices. I sat there thinking about what blue voices might be, and red ones, and violet ones. At the end of the program, we heard more white voices, more voci bianche, clear and pure, soaring up to the beamed ceiling, and I wished I could sing like they did.

  In one school I’d been in, I’d joined the choir, but after a week of rehearsals the choir director asked me if I would please just mouth the words. “Don’t actually sing out loud,” he said.

  As I sat in the church of St. Abbondio listening to the voci bianche, I thought maybe I’d take singing lessons. It would be a good struggle for me. I would try really, really hard and the teacher would block his ears and wring his hands and pray to heaven, but at least my struggle might make me more interesting. People would say, “Look at that Dinnie, struggling away, trying to learn how to sing. Isn’t she valiant?”

  But in the end, I figured that struggling to learn how to sing was probably not a very important struggle in the scheme of things. Unless, perhaps, I was trying to be the soloist in an opera, and I was desperate to be the best singer ever in the whole world and…

  “Domenica?” Mrs. Stirling said. “Domenica? We’re leaving—”

  We walked back up the hill with Mrs. Stirling, who insisted we join her at her house for a nightcap. We sat by the fireplace as she bustled about, thrusting silver bowls of nuts and candies at us, and dashing to the next room to answer the phone, which rang about every five minutes. She’d answer the phone, “Pronto?” in the Italian way, but then, depending on her caller, she’d switch to English or French or continue in Italian.

  Aunt Sandy sat there shaking her head. “I don’t know how she does it,” she whispered. “I’m half her age, and I’m pooped.”

  We left to the tune of Mrs. Stirling’s effusive buon natales, and Aunt Sandy and I stood on the walk as Mrs. Stirling kept Uncle Max behind for a few more minutes. We heard the words “fix” and “change,” and he came away fishing in his pocket for a piece of paper on which to make notes.

  On the way home, Aunt Sandy said, “I’m sure your parents sent you something, Dinnie. I’m sure they did, but with the mail you can never tell. It’s probably held up somewhere.”

  A month earlier, I had sent a package to my family, of photographs that I’d taken and developed in photography class. When it came time to choose which photo was for which person, I realized that I had already chosen when I had taken the photos in the first place.

  The photo of a man fishing, that was for my father. A woman at an easel beside Lake Lugano, that was for my mother. A young woman pushing a baby carriage, for Stella. A juggler entertaining toddlers, for the baby. A young man in a black leather jacket, for Crick.

  My photography teacher had said, “Specializing in portraits? Interesting subjects you’ve chosen.”

  Only when I was wrapping them up did I see that I’d photographed my family, or substitutes for my family.

  A week after I mailed the package, we got a card from my mother saying they were moving farther north in New Mexico, to Taos. She’d send an address when she knew it. I imagined my package sitting forlornly in the post office, or falling off a truck and rolling off the road and down a long hill.

  “We’ll call them on Christmas Day,” Aunt Sandy had said.

  “We don’t know their new number,” I said.

  “We’ll get it from Information, don’t worry,” Aunt Sandy said.

  Their old phone was disconnected. There was no listing for them in Taos.

  “I’m sure they’re trying to call us this very minute!” Aunt Sandy said. We waited around all day, not leaving the house even for a walk in the new snow, but there was no call.

  Under the tree at Aunt Sandy and Uncle Max’s were three small packages for me, and an envelope. In the packages were: ski gloves, ski goggles, and one of the “children” from the spider plant, which had been replanted in its own pot. In the envelope was a piece of paper on which they’d written: Santa dropped something on the balcony: go see!

  I rushed to the balcony and pushed open the doors. There, propped against the railing was a shiny new pair of skis, and beneath them, a pair of ski boots.

  “Go ahead,” Aunt Sandy urged. “Bring them in. Try them on.”

  “They’re for me?” I said.

  “Of course they’re for you,” Uncle Max said.

  “Dinnie?” Aunt Sandy said. “Don’t cry—”

  “I’m not crying.” But I was. I could hardly touch the skis. I loved them, but I’d never received anything like that before. They were so grand, and I didn’t deserve them, and I didn’t want to be so greedy for them, but I was. I hoped my parents wouldn’t find out that Aunt Sandy and Uncle Max had given me anything so expensive, but if they did find out, I hoped they wouldn’t feel bad.

  Aunt Sandy and Uncle Max made me bring the skis inside where I tried on the boots and then the skis, right there in the living room, and later that day I took them to my room and put them on again and held the poles and pretended I was skiing. And then I took them off and wiped off the few smudges they’d acquired and stood them in the closet, but I left the closet door open so I could admire them from my bed.

  The next day we took the train up to Grindel-wald, where the snow was deep and blindingly white. We watched a parade of Swiss in national costume, and cows with huge swinging bells, and everywhere people were speaking German, which still sounded like achtenspit and flickenspit to me. We took a horse-drawn sleigh through the village, and I was Dinnie the dot in my bubble, sealed up tight, but I was dreaming of my skis and wishing I’d brought them so I could try them out.

  That night, back at home, I watered my new spider plant. How did it feel? I wondered. Was it happy to have its roots in its own soil, or was it lonely, cut off from its mother?

  I kept waking up throughout the night. I was uneasy about something, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. And then I saw the skis. What was it about those skis?

  At about four o’clock in the morning, this is what I decided: I hadn’t had to struggle for those skis. Someone had given them to me out of their own generosity, without my having struggled for them, without my having earned them.

  I thought maybe I should give them back and tell Aunt Sandy and Uncle Max that first I’d better earn the money for them. I’d wash floors and windows and chop wood and do all the laundry and all the cooking. What a struggle!

  But in the end, I decided that it was Christmas and people liked to be generous at Christmas, and maybe I ought to just accept this struggle-free gift. It might be hard to do—wait! That would be my struggle. I would struggle to accept their generosity. Yes, I would.

  I put a sign in my window: GRAZIE.

  20

  Trees and Cows

  The week after Christmas, I received two letters, one from Crick and one from Aunt Tillie. Each was written before Christmas. Crick said:

  Hey Dinnie goober! Guess what? I’m not in jail, and I may have a new op
portunity. I’ll tell you about it when I find out for sure.

  Got our Christmas tree today. It was too big for the car, and it didn’t fit the tree stand, and it fell over every ten minutes, until I tied it to the curtains. Then it pulled down the curtains. It’s on the floor right now. Big mess. Gotta go fix it.

  Wish you were here,

  Your macho-macho brother,

  Crick

  Aunt Tillie enclosed a copy of her Christmas letter. It was a month-by month outline of life on her farm. It went like this:

  January:

  Baked strawberry cheesecake jello and milked cows.

  February:

  Baked peach cheesecake jello and milked cows.

  March:

  Baked apple cheesecake jello and milked cows.

  April:

  Baked blueberry cheesecake jello and milked cows.

  It went on like that through December. At the bottom, she had added this note:

  Hi Dinnie darlin’—

  Grace gave me a copy of her Christmas letter to mail to you because she is too lazy to go to the post office and get some stamps, but I’m not mailing it to you because she didn’t do nothing all year but make pot roast and it wasn’t even very good pot roast even though she tries. Lord knows she tries.

  I hope people in Switzerland celebrate Christmas and that you have a wing-ding of a one even though you won’t be with your family, which is too bad.

  I am sending you forty-two gazillion kisses from me—

  Your best Aunt—Tillie

  21

  Libero

  The bus from Lugano had crossed the Julier pass, and from there to St. Moritz, the sun sparkling off the ten-foot-high snow drifts was so bright and sharp that it hurt your eyes. You wanted to stare out at the white, white mountains and valleys, but your eyes would water and you’d have to stare down at the dark floor of the bus to calm them.

  The Hotel Laudinella squatted low in the valley of St. Moritz, midway between the Signalbahn cableway to the beginner and intermediate slopes, and the funicolare to the higher slopes of Corviglia and Piz Nair. The low buildings of St. Moritz curved around a frozen lake, and surrounding the town and the lake were snow-covered mountains.

  I had come down from Lugano a day early with Uncle Max and Aunt Sandy and the faculty. They’d put me to work, helping them set up their office on the ground floor of the Hotel Laudinella, and checking the rooms, to be sure they were ready for the two hundred students about to descend on the hotel.

  Uncle Max and Aunt Sandy went up to the slopes to talk with the Swiss ski instructors, to confirm arrangements for the next day’s lessons, in which students and faculty would be divided according to ability, and mixed—students and teachers—into groups.

  When they returned from the slopes, Aunt Sandy rushed into the school’s makeshift office in the Laudinella, dressed in a red ski suit, her face flushed from the sharp, cold air. “Dinnie!” she said. “I’ve got to take you up there—you won’t believe it! You can see for miles and miles and miles. You’re on top of the world up there. This is going to be brilliant!”

  Uncle Max looked less sure. He had just learned, from the school nurse, that during the previous year’s ski term, there had been twelve fractures among the students.

  “Twelve?” Uncle Max had said. “Twelve?”

  “Not so bad,” the nurse had said. “Some were just thumbs, you know. Everyone falls on their thumbs sooner or later.”

  “And the others?” Uncle Max said.

  “Oh, some normal ones. Legs, you know. A couple arms. And only two really bad ones—multiples—legs and arms. They’ve got a good hospital here. They’re used to fractures.”

  “Are you going to be able to enjoy this?” Aunt Sandy asked him.

  Uncle Max slumped into a chair. “I don’t know. Trying to move a whole school to a hotel? The idea of two hundred students zinging down a mountain? I don’t know about this.”

  I hovered near the fax machine. A steady stream of paper rolled out of it. A flight from Tokyo was a day late. Nils and Hans were stuck in an Amsterdam airport. Fadi was ill and would be returning a week later. Pedro’s lost luggage had been located and was on its way.

  “Nothing about Lila?” I asked the school’s receptionist.

  “Lila-the-pistol?” she said. “No, nothing from Lila-the-pistol.”

  The first bus pulled up outside the Laudinella. A clamor of boots and shouts poured out of it.

  “Get ready,” Aunt Sandy told Uncle Max. “Here they come—”

  Luggage and skis were piled outside. Students scrambled to claim their belongings and clattered inside to get their room assignments.

  “Hey, Dinnie!” Keisuke called.

  Belen was behind him. “Dinnie! We made it!”

  And then a whirlwind as students called to each other: “Gustav! Here! We’re in with Marco and Faisal!”

  “Sonal—Sonal—you’re with me!”

  “Where’s Paulo? Seen Paulo?”

  “Gherardo! Over here! We’re with Yoichi and Tim!”

  “Nadya! Kelly! We’re together!”

  And there was Guthrie, with that wide grin. “Hey, Dinnie!” he called. “Want to help me with this stuff? Isn’t this the best? Don’t you love this place? Man, I can’t wait to get out on that mountain! It’s going to be brilliant! We’re going to have the best time you ever saw in your whole life. Hey, Keisuke! Over here! You’re with me—”

  “Seen Lila?” I asked Guthrie.

  “Who? Lila? Haven’t seen her. She’s probably on one of the other buses. Man! We’ve got to get up that mountain. Where’s your gear?”

  “I don’t know how to ski,” I said.

  “What? You’ve never been down a mountain? You’ll learn in no time. Then we’ll go up to the top and whiz down together. But come on, at least come up with us while we get in a couple runs—”

  “But—”

  “You can sit in the café midway up. You can watch.”

  “Maybe I ought to stay around here and wait for Lila.”

  Keisuke said, “No way, you come on mountain. You come with us.”

  Guthrie threw me his jacket. “Got some goggles or something? It’s going to be bright up there.”

  Outside it was bitter, bitter cold, but the sun shone bright and strong on the white snow, and if I kept moving and turned my face to the sun and pulled my knit hat down over my ears and my collar up over my neck, I could will myself to be warm inside all the layers. Guthrie and Keisuke led the way through the village to the bottom of the slope where we watched the Signalbahn swing high in the air and slide down to the platform.

  I was scared, thinking of riding up the mountain in the Signalbahn. I had to shut off my mind, make it numb, and not think about being suspended in the air hundreds of feet above the snow, zooming up and up and up the mountain.

  Guthrie and Keisuke and I were pushed along with the crowd of other skiers into the cable car, and then the doors closed and there was a jerk and whoosh as it left the platform and lifted into the air. I moved away from the window, burrowing into the middle of the crowd, staring down at the boots and the puddles of water where snow was melting.

  I knelt to the floor, pretending to fix my boot, sick and queasy, knowing I was about to die. The cable would snap and we would fall, fall, fall—

  There was a tremendous lurch and surge—this was it. The cable had broken! I heard others squeal. The car swung forward.

  But it was only the halfway point, and we weren’t falling. “It always does that,” I heard Guthrie telling someone else. “Fantastico!”

  And at last the car slid to a quiet stop and I stood and was pushed out onto the platform with the others, and when I turned to look back, I had to grab for a pole because there it was—the long, long, long stretch down the mountain. You could see all of St. Moritz, a tiny speck now in the valley far below. And you could see beyond, over other mountains, and everywhere you looked it was white, white, white. Behind and above us wa
s more mountain, rising higher, higher, and the sky was so blue, and the sun was a perfect round brilliant yellow circle overhead.

  Guthrie grabbed my shoulder. “Isn’t it the best? Isn’t it magnificent?”

  Just beyond the platform was an outdoor café. “You can sit here,” Guthrie said. “You can watch. We’re going to that lift—see there? And on up there.” He waved his gloved hand farther up the mountain. “And then you’ll see us zoom right down over there! Man, I feel free! Free! Libero!”

  Guthrie and Keisuke sang and whooped all the way down from the top to the café, over and over. “Sono libero!” Guthrie shouted. “Libero, libero, libero!” They’d ski down to where I was, shout and laugh, and then ski straight back to the lift and on up they would go again.

  “Look at this,” Guthrie said once. “Look at it. It’s God’s country. It’s our country! All ours for two whole weeks.” He flexed his arms. “Power! Sono potente!”

  I wanted to feel potente, too, like Guthrie, and for a moment there, as I watched him, I felt as if my little dot self was expanding. Guthrie and Keisuke took off again for the ski lift, and I laughed and laughed, and people turned to look at me, an expanding dot laughing to herself on the mountainside.

  Keisuke and Guthrie raced and tumbled and flew down the mountain. Belen joined them, shouting and whooping. “Viva St. Moritz!”

  We had lunch together in the café. “You’ve got to try this raclette stuff,” Guthrie said. “Viva raclette!”

  I stared at the raclette: potatoes and pickles swimming in a sea of melted cheese. “I wonder who thought of this combination,” I said.

  “God did!” Guthrie said. “It’s the best. Such the best!” He’d already said this about the ski lifts, the snow, the views, the runs down the mountain. “Dinnie,” he said, “I want you to bury me on this mountain. Those are my final wishes. Keisuke? Belen? Bear witness. When I die, Dinnie has to drag my body up here and bury me on this mountain.”