Belen followed Mari, singing a Spanish song about friendship. I’d never known she had such a tremendous singing voice, low and resonant and confident. She filled up the whole room with her song. And Keisuke was the next speaker, saying that here he had learned that anything is bloomable, and he said he’d miss all his friends (Belen cried when he said that), and that we were all going to “flow away” the next day, “maybe never seeing us in one pot again.”
The teachers seemed to be studying us throughout the evening, as if trying to memorize our faces, maybe remembering what we’d looked like and acted like when we’d arrived, and how we’d changed since, and what we might become. I was looking around at everyone and thinking these things, especially What will become of us? I wished I had a crystal ball and could look into it and see us all in ten years, in twenty, in thirty.
It was Guthrie’s turn to speak. He began by reciting a poem by Robert Frost, the one about two roads forking in yellow woods. A traveler pauses at the fork and looks down each road, and then he chooses one because it seems less traveled, but really he isn’t sure if it is or not. In any case, he knows that some day, “ages and ages hence,” he’ll say he stopped one day at a fork in the woods and he chose this road, and it made “all the difference.”
Guthrie said he wasn’t sure whether the traveler meant that the road did make all the difference, or whether he would just say it had. “One or two or three years ago,” Guthrie said, “we each stood there in our own yellow woods, and we each chose the road to this particular school. Remember?”
I was remembering the hilltop New Mexico town and Stella having a baby and Aunt Sandy and Uncle Max “kidnapping” me. I could have resisted. I could have run away. Maybe I had made a choice, after all.
“That choice,” Guthrie continued, “did make all the difference! I don’t know if this was a harder road or a less-traveled one—sometimes I think it was too privileged a one—but it was the road we all took, and it’s what brought us all here to meet each other.”
I was thinking of Lila, thinking that she should be there with us, listening to Guthrie. I wondered how she’d feel.
“Look at us!” Guthrie said. “Here we are, back in the woods, facing more forking roads. Where are we all going? How will we all meet up together again? Dinnie here”—he waved at me—“is going back to America. Keisuke takes the road to Osaka. Belen to Barcelona. Mari to Rome.” On and on he went, naming everyone in our class of forty students. “And me?” he said finally. “Me? I’m going to America, too.” He stopped and looked at his father. “But maybe I’ll be back. Maybe I will.”
Guthrie said he didn’t want us to go down all those roads yet. He wanted us to pause for a moment, and go back to that place in the yellow woods, to the point at which we turned down this road, to this school. “It has made—and will make—all the difference, because we will continue to affect each other’s lives. Maybe in ways we can’t imagine, but there is something in the air of these yellow woods—these here in Switzerland, which we have run through and hiked through and skied through—that tells me we will take pieces of each other and of Switzerland with us wherever we go. We will! Fantastico!” As everyone applauded, someone—I think it was Keisuke—started the chant and soon the whole room had joined in: “Viva! Viva! Viva!”
44
Shifting Light
After the banquet, the faculty made their way up the steep hill to Uncle Max’s house. I was allowed to invite some of my friends, too. This was our last chance for casual celebration, because the next day’s ceremony for the older students would be more formal and serious, after which people would quickly scatter to airports and trains to depart, many of them forever.
I felt as if time was pressing in on us, rumpling our clothes and our emotions. I found myself gripping arms too urgently, regretting that this was the end, and grieving that I might never see these people again. I thought about how we had traveled together and studied together and skied and hiked and worried together.
I knew something surprising about nearly every person in my grade, and about loads of older and younger students, too. As I stood there in our house that night, in the middle of the crowd, it seemed that the most surprising thing I knew was that for all our differences in nationality, in language, in culture, and in personality, we were all more alike than not. I was very proud of this observation; it made me feel grown-up. I made a mental note to write it down later, but when I looked at it the next morning it didn’t seem as profound as it had that night.
Keisuke told me that he wished he could follow Belen down her road through the yellow woods, and I confessed that I wished I could follow Guthrie down his.
Mrs. Stirling plucked a strawberry from a bowl and said, “What’s all this about following? You shouldn’t be following anyone! We haven’t been filling you full of all of this”—she swept her arm toward the balcony with its view of the mountains—“all of these bloomabilities—so that you might follow.”
Uncle Max leaned into the conversation. “We do need followers, though. It might be better to follow intelligently than to lead recklessly,” he said.
Keisuke said, “Okay, then! Belen can follow me! Me, I’m going to steam down road, I’m going to—” Off he marched across the room, his arm thrust out, the leader of an invisible army.
Mrs. Stirling planted a firm lipstick print on my cheek and sailed on to another group. Uncle Max sipped his wine. “So you’d like to follow Guthrie? Did you mean that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I wouldn’t mind invisibly tracking him—you know, a fly on the wall.”
“Mm,” he said. “Well, he does have an interesting way of traveling, doesn’t he?”
I thought about my mother and me and Crick and Stella, following my father from town to town, and I remembered the exciting parts about traveling with him. And then I looked at Uncle Max and Mrs. Stirling standing there, and I thought that they and my father and Guthrie all had that same thing in common: a way of traveling that made you keen to go along with them, to see the world the way they saw it.
The next morning, I awoke to the sound of rain flicking against my window and to the hum of Uncle Max’s voice. He was locked in the bathroom, rehearsing the citations he would be reading at the morning’s graduation ceremony for the seniors. On a hook behind my door hung my skirt and blazer, and beneath it were my shoes, newly polished, but not by me. This must have been Uncle Max’s doing. He loved to polish shoes, especially when he was under stress. It eased his mind, he said.
Aunt Sandy, still in her bathrobe and carrying two dresses and a suit, paused in my doorway. “Well, Dinnie, this is it. Andiamo! Let’s go!” She held out her clothes, like an offering. “Any preference?” she asked. “Choose the thing that needs least ironing, okay?”
She slumped at the foot of my bed and rubbed my foot. “Oh, Dinnie! I know I should say something wise and meaningful, what with you leaving in just a few days’ time, but my head is full of stupid details—what to wear, what time we have to be there, how to ease Max’s nerves. I can’t bear to think of you leaving. I want to lock you in the closet, to keep you here.”
She pulled a card from her pocket. “This just came,” she said. She leaned over and kissed me and said, “Tomorrow we’ll talk.”
The card was from my mother, giving our yet-another-new address. She’d phoned two weeks earlier, and told me about the move. She was hoping my plane ticket hadn’t been booked yet (it hadn’t) so that I wouldn’t end up in New Mexico, because they wouldn’t be there. They were going back to Bybanks, Kentucky, where I was born, and where my aunts Tillie and Grace now lived. My father had grabbed the phone and said, “It’s a great opportunity, Dinnie! Wait’ll you see!”
As I lay in bed studying the card with our new address, the phone rang. “Want to bet it’s Mrs. Stirling?” Aunt Sandy said. “Wondering if the marquee is firmly up and if the umbrellas are ready?”
Uncle Max, still in the bathroom, called out, “The umbrellas are ready!
”
Answering the phone in her bedroom, Aunt Sandy said, “Yes, it is. Yes, they are. But maybe the rain will stop.”
As if on cue, the sun exploded through the clouds. The bells of St. Abbondio pealed the hour: nine o’clock. From my window I could see the crown of the white marquee on the campus below. Over the top of the trees was St. Abbondio, the stone church with its slim clock tower. I remembered walking down its path the day I met Lila.
Thinking of Lila reminded me that Aunt Sandy had not yet told me Lila’s whole story, about her family and their problems, although I’d had a glimpse of some of those problems after the avalanche. Maybe Lila would tell me herself some day. Maybe there were good reasons why Lila was Lila.
Beyond and below was Lake Lugano, perfectly calm, perfectly silver, but with that odd, shifting light that made it, a moment later, pewter-colored and then blue-gray. And there was Mt. Bré off to the left, no longer snow-capped, and off to the right was Mt. San Salvatore, topped by its blinking red light. Creeping up San Salvatore was the funicolare, the little red lizard of a train. Up, up, up it went, inching along, and I thought of Guthrie and me traveling up the mountain and standing on top of the world.
I turned to look up the path to Montagnola and saw Herman Hesse’s house and thought of the cappuccinos I’d had up in the village with Lila and Guthrie and Keisuke and Belen and Mari, and how we had sometimes done our thinking homework sitting outside the café, as cats roamed in and out between our feet. On the red bench planted on the hillside between our house and Montagnola, I had listened to Lila’s complaints and to Guthrie’s stories.
At that moment, I loved Switzerland completely. I loved it with every piece of me, with every hair on my head and every eyelash and every cell. I felt as if this was my home, and I was no longer a stranger. Instead, I was like the snail who carts his home along with him on his back, from place to place. I thought about my fishing in the streams and wondered if I was carting not only my home along with me, but also my family, too. If that was the case, I could take Switzerland and Guthrie and Lila and Aunt Sandy and Uncle Max and Keisuke and Belen and Mari—all of them—with me when I left.
45
Ciao
The commencement ceremony for the seniors passed like a slow-motion film. I felt as if I were a stand-in, an extra, waiting for my turn to go on. I kept wanting to leap up and shout, “Wait! Stop! Unwind! Back to the beginning…” and by the beginning, I meant last September.
The rain had stopped, and a misty pale light spread over the campus. Each dark-suited boy escorted a white-dressed girl cradling a bouquet of pink roses in her arm. The grass, still damp, left wet slashes on their shoes as the graduating seniors marched into the marquee.
Guthrie took my hand and said, “Looks sort of like a mass wedding, doesn’t it?”
The pairs nervously took their seats before the stage, on which sat Uncle Max, Mrs. Stirling, and the American Ambassador, who would give the commencement speech. In the audience were teachers and younger students, parents and grandparents, bobbing up and down with cameras.
I kept thinking about those words graduation and commencement, which seemed to be used interchangeably. Graduation seemed like the end of something, and commencement like the beginning. It seemed as if both words were needed, not just one or the other, because this was an end of something, and the beginning of something else.
There was an opening prayer, followed by the ambassador’s speech, and Uncle Max awarding the diplomas, none of which I heard. What I heard were the rustles of dresses, the pealing of St. Abbondio’s bells, birds in the persimmon trees outside the marquee.
We sang the American and Swiss national anthems, Mrs. Stirling read a final prayer, the seniors filed out, gave one collective shout of joy, and headed for the luncheon on the terrace. We feasted on salmon, shrimp, turkey and roast beef, on salads and strawberries, mangoes and avocados. The air swished with laughter and with shouts.
It seemed as if anything could happen, anything at all. The bloomabilities were endless.
And then, unseen and unannounced, time steamed through the crowd, wrenching people away to gather their suitcases, leap into taxis, and vanish amid shouts: Good-bye, good-bye! Arrividerci! Write! I’ll miss you! Ciao bella! And on down the Collina d’Oro the shouts echoed, as the taxis pulled away.
I had ten short minutes with Guthrie and Belen and Keisuke and Mari. They were foolish, wasted minutes, in which we asked silly questions: Do you have your passport? What time is your train, your plane?
Guthrie hugged me, handed me a small package, kissed me smack on the lips, and said, “Ciao bella!” He leaped into the waiting taxi and shouted, “We’ll have a reunion. All of us! Even Lila! You’ll see!” As the taxi pulled away, I could hear him shout, “Liberooo—”
For a while, I sat on the bench near the driveway entrance, waving people off, and then there were no more taxis, there was no more noise. I wandered back across the campus. Already the tables were cleared. Only a few empty glasses sat here and there on the stone walls; programs lay crumpled on the terrace. The grounds-keeper sat on a bench, talking with two other workmen.
“Ciao, Domenica!” they called.
The marquee flapped idly in the breeze as I walked up the stone steps, past the dorm where housekeepers were already flinging duvets across the windowsills for airing.
“Ciao, Domenica!”
In a heap beside the door was a pile of used textbooks, crumpled notes, and cast-off clothing. On up the Via Poporino I went, amid bees sailing lazily across the narrow lane. The bells of St. Abbondio rang the hour: three o’clock.
Uncle Max and Aunt Sandy were not yet home. They would still be with Mrs. Stirling and the ambassador, in Casa Stirling. Our house was cool and dark. I unwrapped Guthrie’s package. It was a book of drawings of the Ticino. I crawled into bed with it. There was the lake, the mountains, the funicolare. There was Montagnola and Lugano. There were the paths and rivers and streams.
The Dreams of Domenica Santolina Doone
I was still in my skirt and blazer, but with skis on my feet. I was racing down the hill toward campus. Branches clipped my face as I sailed along without poles, my arms spread like an ungainly eagle. Over moguls, across the path, wildly I flew straight across the top of the marquee. I wondered where I would land.
Ring-ring. Ring-ring.
I woke up, saw my blazer hanging on the door, noticed that on my feet were socks, not skis, and stumbled to the phone. It was Guthrie.
“Hey, Dinnie, I’ve got an idea—”
There were long shadows in Via Poporino, and an eerie stillness.
“Where are you?” I asked. “What time is it?”
“Did I catch you napping?” he asked. “It’s nine o’clock. I’m in Zurich.”
“What? In Zurich? Now?”
“I missed my flight! No problem. Keisuke missed his, too. We’re in a hotel near the train station. Why don’t you meet us and we’ll stay up all night and then you can go back to Lugano in the morning?”
“What, now?” The house was quiet. I figured Uncle Max and Aunt Sandy were still at school. “I don’t have any money—”
“Ask your uncle—”
“Nobody’s home. Nobody but me.”
“Well, then,” Guthrie said, “come C.O.D. Cash on Deliverino! Seriously, Dinnie, come collect! It’ll be such the best!”
I thought about it. Even if I found some money and could make the nine-thirty train, I wouldn’t get to Zurich until one or two in the morning. “Uncle Max would go ballistic,” I said.
“Tell him it’s a celebration of your maturity,” Guthrie said.
Keisuke grabbed the phone. “I told him it was stew-pod idea. Girl should not be traveling late on train by herself.”
Guthrie was at the phone again. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry, Dinnie. It’s not a good idea.”
I thanked him for the book. “It is such the best,” I said.
“Dinnie? Aren’t you going to miss me? Aren’t
you going to miss Switzerland? Dinnie?”
The phone went dead. As I stood there staring at it, it rang again.
“Dinnie? It’s me again,” Guthrie said. “You didn’t give me your address. I need your address.”
I gave it to him, and asked for his address, and then he said, “I’ll see you again.”
“Fantastico!” I said.
After I hung up, I wished I’d gotten the name of the hotel Guthrie and Keisuke were in. Maybe I could go. Wouldn’t they be surprised? Would Uncle Max and Aunt Sandy let me? But no, there was no reason to go, except to see them one last time, and then there would be those good-byes all over again, and I’d have to get back on the train to Lugano alone, all alone on the fast mountain train.
I was feeling pitiful.
46
Next Life
Three days later, Uncle Max, Aunt Sandy and I boarded the Lugano train bound for Zurich. They were taking me to the airport for my flight to Washington, D. C., where my father would meet me and drive me home to Bybanks, Kentucky. It seemed odd to be going “home” to a place I couldn’t remember, to a house I’d never lived in.
We traveled on up the spine of Switzerland, my face against the window. “Guardate!” I kept saying. There were waterfalls, stone churches, terraced vineyards. There were the castles of Bellinzona, the rising Alps beyond, clear rivers, and chalets blooming up out of the ground.
An hour outside of Lugano, we moved to the dining car, where I sat across from Uncle Max and Aunt Sandy at a table laid with a white tablecloth. We gazed out the window as the train rocked along. We ate clear broth and omelettes. Aunt Sandy kept pulling things out of her purse and presenting them to me.