Is it better to choose your own spouse or have an arranged marriage?
I thought everyone would say it was better to choose your own, but there were students in the class, like Fadi, who were from cultures where arranged marriages were common. Fadi made it sound so reasonable, so practical, to have someone else choose your mate. Then everyone started switching sides. Those who first thought it was better to choose your own mate started thinking it was better to have someone else choose for you, and those who had thought arranged marriages were better started thinking maybe it was better to choose your own.
“My head is squeezed,” Keisuke said.
I thought a lot about my parents. If Grandma Fiorelli had arranged my mother’s marriage, my mother would not be married to my father, and I wouldn’t be alive, or if I were alive, I’d be different. And then I thought about Uncle Max and Aunt Sandy, and if Grandma Fiorelli had arranged Aunt Sandy’s marriage, she probably would have chosen Uncle Max, or someone just like him.
I wondered what sort of person my parents might choose for me, if they were arranging my marriage. Would they choose someone like Guthrie?
Should someone be your enemy if/because he is your parents’ enemy?
I said people should be allowed to choose their own enemies, and Mari said “What about loyalty? To your parents? Your country? You can’t go around being friends with your parents’ enemies—”
“Why not?” Guthrie asked.
“Because—because—your parents would get mad.” Mari then said, “Wait a minute—that sounds dumb, doesn’t it?”
I thought about how my father didn’t like Grandma Fiorelli or any of my mother’s brothers and sisters, including Aunt Sandy. It didn’t seem right that they should be my enemies just because they were my father’s enemies, and I wondered if my father was mad at me for living with Aunt Sandy and for wanting to know where Grandma Fiorelli lived.
What would you sacrifice for someone else?
This was a rowdy topic. We went crazy with this one. At first people said things like, “I guess I’d sacrifice my stereo if my friend wanted it,” and “I’d sacrifice my allowance in order to save up for something I wanted.” Then I said, “But what about food? Would you sacrifice food if someone else was hungry?” Keisuke wanted to know exactly how much food I was talking about.
“And what about a kidney, say? Would you sacrifice a kidney if your brother needed it?” Guthrie asked. And finally, “Would you sacrifice your life?”
On and on we went. At home sometimes, Aunt Sandy or Uncle Max would tap at my door and find me doodling. “Don’t you have homework?” they’d ask.
“I’m doing it,” I said. “I’m thinking.” And I was. I was thinking, thinking, thinking all the time. At night sometimes I couldn’t turn off the thinking, and on it would go, into my dreams.
The Dreams of Domenica Santolina Doone
I was lying on the operating table and the Doctor said, “Dinnie? Did you say we could take one kidney or two? Can we take your leg also? And maybe an ear? A heart?”
“Who needs it?” I said.
“Crick.”
I don’t know what I gave to Crick, because I woke up.
29
Andermatt
I almost didn’t go to Andermatt that weekend, because we each had to have a ski partner who skied at our level, and I couldn’t find any other beginners who wanted to go. But Guthrie said, “I’ll ski with you, Dinnie.”
“I can only do the baby slopes,” I said. “I can’t go up where you go.”
“That’s okay,” he said. “I’ll ski with you until you get tired, and then you can get warm in the hut while I ski with the others.”
It was a small group: me, Guthrie, Belen, Keisuke, Mari, Fadi, and Signora Palermo. Then at the last minute, Lila decided to come.
“I really need to keep up with everything I learned at St. Moritz,” she said. “Won’t it be brilliant?”
I didn’t really want Lila to come. I was having trouble getting used to this new version of Lila. Somehow the old complaining Lila was easier for me to deal with. Now, with all her smiling and hugging, with all her cheery, chirpy optimism, I was feeling a bit jealous. I wanted to say, “Hey, everybody, it’s me, Dinnie, the same old friendly, nice person I’ve always been,” but there was Lila, all sparkly and fluttery, eagerly grasping everyone’s attention. The old Lila seemed to need me as her friend, but this new version seemed to be everybody’s best friend.
We took the train up to Andermatt, looping and winding back up the spine of Switzerland, the reverse of the trip I’d taken with Uncle Max and Aunt Sandy back in August. Fat flakes of snow began falling midway through our journey. Around every bend was a more jagged mountain, a more startling scene of snow and chalets, and in the valleys cross-country skiers swish-swish-swished their way along.
Guthrie couldn’t get enough of the views. He moved from one side of the train to the other. “Guardate!” he’d say. “See that valley? I bet it was formed by a glacier. See the steep sides of the cliffs, that U-shape?” Or, “Look at that one there! You can just see how torrents of water poured down forming those V-shapes, those steep sides!”
“Hey, Mr. Professor,” Mari said to Guthrie. “Don’t you ever relax?”
“Relax?” Guthrie said. “I am relaxed! This is me, relaxed! Guardate! Over there—look—avalanche barriers!” The barriers dotted the mountain slopes as far as you could see. “They keep the snow from crushing the town below,” Guthrie said.
I was wearing the red scarf from Grandma Fiorelli, and I pulled it close around my neck. Avalanches. Crushed towns. I didn’t like the sound of that.
And there, rounding a curve, was the vast Urseren Valley, with the town of Andermatt hugging the narrow streets at the bottom.
“The crossroads of the Alps!” Guthrie said. “Magnifico!”
Guthrie kept his promise and skied with me for nearly two hours on the lowest, gentlest slopes. He’d say, “Dinnie, you’re doing great! You’ll be up on the black runs in no time!”
It wasn’t true. I wasn’t doing great. I was still downfelling a lot, but it was good to hear him lie. And I was ready to sit in the hut and sip hot chocolate at the end of the two hours. More than ready. Begging.
“I’ll go on up and meet the others,” Guthrie said. “I’ll be back later. You okay?”
“Sure,” I said. “At least I won’t be falling in here.”
An hour later, Belen and Keisuke floated in. “It’s getting cold up there,” Belen said. “Brrr.”
“Where’s Guthrie?” I asked. “Lila? The others?”
“Guthrie was skiing with Lila,” Belen said, rolling her eyes. “Lila was showing off. She thinks she’s a great skier, but she’s not.”
A little later, Mari and Fadi joined us. “Ooh, raclette!” Mari said. “I can’t wait to get that big ball of cheese sitting in my stomach.”
“Where’s Guthrie?” I asked. “And Lila?”
Mari said, “Oh boy! They were having a huge fight up there!”
“What about?” Belen asked.
“Guthrie wanted to ski off piste, but Lila was scared.”
A half hour later, Lila entered. She looked angry, but when Fadi asked her what was the matter, she said, “Nothing’s the matter! Everything’s brilliant.”
“Where’s Guthrie?” I asked.
She waved vaguely at the air. “Oh, up there somewhere,” she said.
Signora Palermo entered. “Everyone accounted for?” she said. “Have you all eaten? I’m starving!”
“Guthrie’s not here,” I said. “He’s still up there.”
“Alone?” she said. “He’s not supposed to be skiing alone. Who’s his partner?”
We all looked at Lila.
“Where was he skiing?” Signora Palermo asked. “Who saw him last?”
Lila studied her hands, curled around a mug of hot chocolate. “I did,” she said. “He’s fine. Stubborn and fine. He’s just fantastico!” A tear ran down h
er cheek and caught on her lip.
Signora Palermo grabbed her gloves and hat. “You all stay here. Don’t leave this place.” And off she went in search of Guthrie.
30
Waiting
As the blizzard raged outside, we huddled in the Andermatt hut waiting for Signora Palermo and Guthrie. Skiers poured in, seeking refuge, and each time the door banged open letting in blasts of raw wind, we looked up expectantly.
I fingered the fringe on my red scarf, sliding my fingers down each strand. I told myself that by the time I slid my fingers down each strand on both ends of the scarf, Guthrie would be back.
“Maybe I go up there, too,” Keisuke said.
“Signora Palermo told us to wait here,” Belen said. “She’ll have a cow if she has to go out looking for you, too.”
The avalanche-warning sign went on in the hut. Two of the top runs were now closed.
I’d finished with one end of my scarf and started on the second end.
Lila sniffed and pouted. “I told him to come down,” she said. “I told him not to ski off piste.”
“I’m going out there,” Keisuke said. “I’m not waiting—”
Belen pulled on his sleeve. “Don’t go—”
Another gust of biting cold blew through the hut as the door opened, letting in a new batch of shivering skiers. “Brr! Fa freddo!” they said. “Can’t see a thing!”
I was nearing the end of the fringe on my scarf. I was sliding my fingers down the strands very slowly.
Keisuke wrapped his scarf over his mouth and pulled his hat down over his forehead. “I’m going—”
Belen still clung to his sleeve. The wind howled around the outside of the hut, rattling the windows.
Again the door blew open and this time it was Guthrie who stomped in, knocking the ice off his boots and shaking snow from his hat. “Wow!” he said. “It’s just unbelievably brilliant up there!”
“Where’s Signora Palermo?” Belen asked.
“She’s coming. She’s right behind me—ecco!”
In she swept, laughing and shaking snow from her jacket.
“You’re not even mad at him?” Lila asked.
Signora Palermo tried to look more serious. “Oh,” she said. “Si, si. I told him not to do that again. You always ski with someone else, you hear me?” She stared at Guthrie.
“Si! I hear you!” He smiled his huge smile. “But you have to admit, that last run was fantastico, wasn’t it? Such the best!”
I was so relieved to see him, I could hardly speak.
“You loco person,” Belen said. She whacked him on the arm with her hat. “We thought you were dead.”
“Me?” Guthrie said. “Never! Sono potente! Powerful!” He flexed his arms and sat down next to me. “Didn’t mean to make anyone worry,” he said. “I just couldn’t come in. I had to keep going up that mountain and whizzing down. I found the greatest trail—some day I’ll take you up there.”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “I ought to be ready for that in about twenty or thirty years.” But I liked the thought. It would be me and Guthrie racing down the mountain, and I wouldn’t be afraid, and I wouldn’t be a dot.
Lila said nothing. She wouldn’t look at Guthrie, and she trailed behind us as we trudged through the blowing snow to the train.
Most of us dozed on the way back to school. I clutched my lucky scarf. Lila sat off by herself, refusing to talk. Guthrie moved over to the seat beside her once, but she told him to get lost.
“Uh oh,” he said, to no one in particular. “The pistol is back.”
The Dreams of Domenica Santolina Doone
My thin bubble was rolling, rolling, rolling down the mountain, bouncing through the snow. I had to keep wiping the mist from the inside. “Guthrie?” I called. “Guthrie?”
There was a loud crack of a gun, followed by a tremendous boom, and the earth shook and heaved, and then I woke up.
31
Pot Roast and Plans
Aunt Grace and Aunt Tillie were at it again:
Dear Dinnie,
Tillie told me she never sent my Christmas letter to you. I’m gonna bean her someday.
Now I’ve got two bum knees. Why don’t you come and live with me and help me out? I’ll teach you how to make pot roast.
Love, love, love,
Your Aunt Grace
Dear Dinnie,
Your daddy is fine. We’re cooking up a plan and if it works, I’ll tell you about it. It’s a doozy.
Crick finished basic training. He lived. He said he learned how to make his bed and iron his shirts and how to play poker. He’s not flying any planes yet.
You will love our river if you ever come and see it.
Two thousand barrels of kisses,
Love from your Aunt Tillie, Champion Cheesecake Jello Maker
32
The Pistol
The pistol was definitely back.
“I want to go home,” Lila wailed. “And not to Saudi, where my parents are. They’re going to be there for two years, Dinnie. Two years. I want to go back to the States. I want to live in a real house and go to a real school. Don’t you want to do that Dinnie? Go back to your real house and go to a real school?”
I wasn’t exactly sure what a real house was, or what a real school was either. Sometimes I got glimpses of places I used to live, but it wasn’t houses I was longing for or remembering. It was the places around the houses: the air and the grass or fields or rivers or roads or barns. I remembered a dusty road in Tennessee and a tall crooked evergreen in Ohio. I remembered a hot-dog stand in Indiana and a park in Wisconsin.
Two of the items in my box of things, the box I’d been carting around for years from place to place, were tattered notebooks, one yellow and one blue, each with a picture on the front of a girl fishing. In the yellow notebook, I kept a record of my dreams. There were dreams in there all the way back to when I was seven. The first dream was this:
I dreamed I was a frog. I was yukky.
I didn’t have very many dreams when I was seven, eight or nine—or if I had them, I didn’t remember them when I woke up. But since then, I’d had loads of dreams, and there they were, all crammed into the yellow notebook.
In the blue notebook I had carefully written the addresses and phone numbers (usually we had a phone) of all the places I’d lived. I’d started the book when I was seven, and had to ask my mother to tell me about the places I’d lived before.
The first entry was Bybanks, Kentucky, where I was born, and the address there was just Morley Road, Bybanks. We didn’t have a phone. I couldn’t remember anything about Bybanks.
Then there were entries for Virginia and North Carolina and Tennessee. There were entries for Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin. And more for Oklahoma, Arkansas, Oregon, Texas, California, and, lastly, New Mexico. I hadn’t yet entered anything for Switzerland. This was because I only listed a place as I was leaving it.
Sometimes I’d read through the whole list of towns: Bybanks, Dinwiddie, Swannanoa, Sweetwater, Euclid, Wabash, Antigo, Kingfisher, Calico Rock, Roseberg, Odessa, Chico, and Abiquiu. When I’d say each town’s name, I’d get a flash of a picture in my head, a quick little image, one after the other, as if someone were rapidly flashing slides on a screen. I had a plan that some day I’d return to all these places, and there I’d find little pieces of Domenica Santolina Doone.
In my box of things was also the fold-up fishing rod that my father had given me. I could remember fishing in streams in Sweetwater and Kingfisher, in Calico Rock and Roseberg, on and on, me and my father fishing in streams.
I looked around at Montagnola and Lugano, and I wondered what I would remember about this place. I’d remember the mountains and the narrow Via Poporino and the lake. Maybe I’d remember the lizards and persimmons, shutters on windows, duvets hanging over windowsills to air.
“I want American water,” Lila moaned. “Like they have in Florida,” she said. “It tastes right. I’m the kind of person who has sensitive tast
e buds.”
I remembered the taste of water in Oklahoma, with its faint smell of earth, and the cool, clear taste of water in Oregon. Would I remember the taste of Swiss water, with its pebbly smell?
“I want to go to a mall. I want tacos. I want hamburgers, real ones,” Lila said.
I remembered throngs of kids in malls and a girl who got caught stealing nail polish. I remembered wandering around wondering where people got money to buy things, and what they would do with these things when they moved. I remembered tacos in New Mexico, fat, spicy ones that made your throat burn.
Would I always remember cappuccino and pizza quattro stagione from Federales in Lugano? Would I remember the rock-hard biscotti?
“Dinnie, don’t you want to go home?” Lila said.
Where was that, exactly? I wondered.
Lila didn’t complain only to me. She bombarded Belen, Mari, just about everyone except Guthrie. One day Mari said to me, “I’d like to chop her up into hamburger and dump her in a taco. She’s driving me crazy.”
Two weeks later, Lila grabbed me as I left the dining hall. She waved a letter in front of my face. “Oh, it’s too, too awful!” she said, and burst into loud sobs.
“What is?” I thought maybe someone had died.
“I can’t believe they tell me this in a letter! I’ve got to call—make your uncle let me call, Dinnie, please—”
“What is it that’s so awful? What happened?”
“My mother’s going back to the States. She hates Saudi. Hates it!”
“Well, that’s not so bad, is it?” I said.
She slapped my arm with the letter. “Dinnie! This means a divorce! I’m sure it does. But that’s not the worst!” And she burst into loud sobbing again.
“What is the worst?” I asked, trying to imagine.
“The worst is that I have to go, too. I have to go back to the States with my mother.”
I thought maybe I had missed some important development. “But Lila, I thought that’s what you wanted to do—go back to the States and drink the water and eat hamburgers and stuff.”