Last night I asked Dad if the two of us could go out for ice cream sometime. He was sitting on the sofa holding two beers to his temples, which is what he does during corn season. He doesn’t drink them, he just holds them to his temples until they get warm, and then he puts them back in the fridge. It can’t be pop, either: it has to be beer.
Dad looked surprised. Mom was in the kitchen, and she did that thing where she keeps doing what she’s doing but her ears grow large.
“That’d be great, sprout,” he said finally. “I’m kind of beat now, though . . .”
“That’s okay.” I was happy to put it off. Now at least I could tell D.J. that I’d tried.
Tonight, though, Dad came home early. I don’t know if it was because of me or the corn or what. I hope it was the corn’s fault. As we were finishing supper, he asked if I was in the mood for ice cream, and at the same time Mom asked Paul to load the dishwasher. Paul these days is so lost on Planet Paul that he didn’t even mind; he just started sticking plates in and humming. Sometimes I’m not sure Paul realizes the rest of us are still on Planet Earth.
Dad and I walked over to Jorgensens’. The sun was low in the sky, although not like a Roman sunset. I thought about mentioning this, but I do not have the type of vocabulary that can describe sunsets, and also I did not want to talk about Rome. I mean, I did want to talk about Rome, but that did not seem to be the most effective way to bring it up.
I got vanilla. Dad got fudge ripple.
“So how you doing, sprout?” he asked. Dad eats his ice cream uncommonly slowly. He says he does it because it used to drive Uncle Tommy crazy. It still does: I have observed with my own eyes Uncle Tommy shouting at Dad to eat faster while Dad laughs.
I stared at my vanilla. I have thought for several days about how to say this, and I know many ways to say it that would be bad: Why didn’t you . . . ? or How come you never . . . ? But I did not know a way to start this conversation that was good. Tell the truth, D.J. had said. I took a deep breath. “I wish you had told me about Paolo.”
There. It wasn’t easy, but it was the truth.
Here is one enormous difference between my mother and my father: when Mom doesn’t speak, it is because she is waiting for an answer. But when Dad doesn’t speak, it is because he is letting the quiet tell its own story.
Dad lowered his ice cream cone and cocked his head like he was paying extremely close attention even though he wasn’t looking at me. He didn’t say anything.
I didn’t say anything either, partially because I did not know what else I could say and partially because I had started to cry. Which was embarrassing because we were sitting on a picnic table in Red Bend Park and because I had ice cream, which is difficult to eat while crying.
“Oh, sprout . . .” Dad patted my leg. “What happened?”
“Z took us to Rome to meet Paolo because they made that promise forty-six years ago, and so we sat there for hours even though the Spanish Steps were really hot, but he didn’t come and Z said she hadn’t expected him to but she obviously had, and now I am exceedingly confused because I want to know my Italian family and why didn’t you ever tell me?”
Dad sat there for a long time. Fudge ripple dripped down his fingers, but I do not think he noticed. “That’s why she went to Rome? Not because of the churches and that Hesselgram pilgrim writer?”
I nodded. “Yes. No. Hesselgrave.”
“Paolo . . . Jeepers.”
“Paolo means ‘Paul.’” I did not need to say this, but I did anyway. Possibly there is more Mom in me than I would like to admit.
“She was serious . . .” Dad was talking more to himself than to me.
Who was serious? Z? What was she serious about? . . . I did not say anything, though. I was trying to let the quiet tell its own story.
Eventually he shook his head like he was waking up. “Jeepers . . . Sprout, I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry. I didn’t know that’s what she was doing . . .”
“It’s okay. I learned a lot, you know. I am not just saying that either.”
Dad studied the fudge ripple dripping over his hand. He looked bothered, but not about the ice cream. “I believe you.”
“Dad? . . . Who’s Paolo?”
“I don’t know. Z only mentioned him to me once. She was staying with us after Paul was born, helping—well, she wasn’t much help. She was awfully discombobulated. I think the baby was really hard for her. Brought back a lot of memories.” He started cleaning ice cream off his fingers. I gave him my napkin. “Z and I were sitting at the kitchen table late one night, and she told me about an Italian man who played the guitar like Paul McCartney. That his name was Paolo. That he was my father.”
“And that’s why you named Paul Paul,” I whispered, finishing the story.
“What? Oh, no. That’s the wacky part. We’d already named him.”
I stared at Dad.
“Maybe that’s why Z was so discombobulated . . . I never thought of that.”
“So you named your son after your father without even realizing it?” My mouth hung open so much that I could have eaten an ice cream cone sideways.
“Yup. Universe works in mysterious ways, doesn’t it?”
“Wow . . .” I exhaled. I sounded like D.J.
“You know, I didn’t even know this fellow was from Rome—I always thought they met in New York. If they met at all. ‘Paolo’—it’s almost too much, you know? And you know, I’m not sure Z even remembers telling me. She has a way of forgetting stuff she doesn’t want to know. Or at least forgetting for a long time.”
“Until she’s sixty-four.”
Dad gasped. “Of course. The Beatles. That’s what triggered this.”
I started crying again, just thinking about my next question. “Dad? . . . What was Z like as a mom?”
“She was pretty much like she is now. Not so many wrinkles. She’d show up with presents and big hugs, and then she’d go away again.” He put his arm around me. “Some people—your mom, for instance—they’re born to be mothers. And some people are born to be grandmothers. Z was an eighteen-year-old grandma.”
“It wasn’t hard for you?” I whispered.
“Sometimes. Being a kid is hard sometimes, even when you’re grownup—being someone’s child.” He squeezed me. “But sometimes it isn’t.”
“I’m sorry.” I’d never thought about it that way before.
“Don’t worry about it, sprout. You’ll be real good at being a kid. You already are.”
Then the mosquitoes started getting to us and we walked home.
Thursday, August 1
I am sitting in the park, at a picnic table. There’s a softball game going on between a tractor-repair company and the county EMTs. If anyone gets hurt, it will be okay.
Last night Dad said he’d have to tell Mom what he and I talked about and he promised that she wouldn’t freak. The two of them were up extremely late—the lights were off in their bedroom, but I could hear them talking, which shows how much I was awake too. I will admit that this morning Mom did not do her what-if-you’d-been-attacked-by-flying-monkeys thing. But she was most definitely on the edge of doing it. Simply lying in bed I could tell she was thinking it. I did not get up for breakfast. I did not see the need.
So now I am in the park because the library is too hot and Red Bend does not have a Harmony Coffee and it is afternoon and so Mom will be back from work and I have no interest in flying monkeys.
I am still thinking an enormous amount about what Dad said yesterday. It is a huge relief that he did not know about Paolo—that Dad did not let me go to Rome to a Spanish Steps possible disaster. It is a huge relief that Dad doesn’t think Z was a bad mom. She was no worse at being a mom than she is at being a grandma, and sometimes she is extremely good at that.
I get the sense that Dad is not going to talk much more about Paolo. He’s got us and Z and corn. That’s all he needs. He’s Planet Dad.
I think that D.J. would be pleased. She would be happy
that I told the truth and heard the truth—a truth I hadn’t even anticipated!—from him.
Then she would say, And what about Curtis?
Curtis is a different planet entirely.
He comes home Sunday. In three days he will be playing baseball in this exact park where I am sitting now. He has been on his baseball trip longer than I was in Rome. I wonder if he’s gone through as much as I have. Is that possible with baseball?
Has he thought about me?
Has he not thought about Emily?
I cannot tell which of those two I want more.
D.J. told me to tell Curtis the truth. But how can I do that when I don’t even know what the truth is! When I think about boy-liking, all I feel is confusion. Confusion ≠ truth.
Thursday, August 1—LATER
Something tremendously strange and provoking to my brain just happened.
I was sitting at this precise picnic table thinking about Curtis and Emily and life, feeling 100% confused and horrible, when D.J. Schwenk came over with two other girls and asked if they could sit with me because they had just gotten ice cream (mint chocolate chip; strawberry; something with nuts) and my table was in the shade. These were her two friends who happen to be going out together, which I know because everyone in town knows it, because two girls going out together is an unusual thing to do in Red Bend, Wisconsin.
I said yes, and D.J. introduced Amber and Dale, although I already knew their names, and I pushed my backpack out of the way and Two Lady Pilgrims in Rome fell out. I have been carrying Miss Hesselgrave around for so long that I did not even know it was in there.
Dale picked it up and laughed. “Miss Lillian! I love this gal! She was one rocking lesbian.”
If this was a cartoon movie, my jaw would have fallen onto the picnic table with a thunk.
There was a long and immensely awkward silence. “I’m sorry,” Dale said. “I didn’t think that word would bother you.”
“Lillian Hesselgrave was gay?” I asked. Then I realized how bad I sounded, so I added, “I mean, gay people are fine,” which made me sound even worse. “Miss Lillian Hesselgrave? She couldn’t be!”
“Why not?” Amber asked, looking at me suspiciously.
“Because she was bossy and mean!”
The three of them started laughing. Dale laughed so hard that she stuck herself in the forehead with her ice cream. That made them laugh even harder.
D.J. leaned toward me. “Lesbians are always mean,” she whispered loudly.
“Hey!” Amber said, punching D.J. in the arm.
“See?” D.J. looked at me knowingly.
My face by now was as red as Christmas wrapping paper. “It’s just that Miss Hesselgrave is always so critical of other people and she’s always listing how they’re being improper, and someone, you know, that way is—was—would have been improper . . .”
Dale smiled. “Lillian never got the ‘Judge not lest you be judged’ thing.”
“I think I really need to read this book,” D.J. said. “I didn’t even know there were gay people back then. I always thought they were like TV.”
“What?” Dale stared at her, laughing.
“You know: modern.” D.J. grinned at me. I guess she could tell that I had been sort of thinking that too—not the television part, but definitely the not-in-the-olden-days part. Miss Hesselgrave! Now I was going to have to think about everything she said in a whole new light.
Amber studied the cover, then studied me. “Was Rome like she described?”
“No . . . There’s a lot more going on in Rome than she ever talked about.”
“You can say that again,” Dale said with a look that made the three of them laugh more.
I did not laugh. I had too much on my mind to laugh, even if I knew what they were laughing about. (Okay, I have a suspicion what they were laughing about.) They chatted a few more minutes and then said they had to go and offered to buy me ice cream but I said no thank you, because my cranium was now so full that I could not on top of everything else pick out a flavor.
As they left, D.J. told me that Curtis is coming home Sunday, and she gave me a significant stare. I said I knew and that I would see her tomorrow on the ride to Prophetstown, and now I am sitting here alone once again trying to figure out Curtis but I can’t because I am too busy thinking about Miss Lillian Hesselgrave.
Why didn’t Miss Hesselgrave ever mention that instead of being a girl + boy kind of person, she was a girl + girl? Or in her case lady + lady. Which as a math problem could also be written as lady x 2 or simply lady(2). Miss Hesselgrave spent all those pages explaining how Italians can’t make tea and how Roman drivers always cheat you and how Bernini makes a good elephant but a bad church, yet she never mentioned an important part of her trip and her personality and her life.
Why didn’t Z ever tell me either?
I need to think about this a lot more.
Thursday, August 1—LATER
I gave up. I got a cone. Rocky Road. I figured it couldn’t be any weirder than anything else that’s happened today.
But it turns out I was wrong—again. Rocky Road is disgusting. Whoever invented Rocky Road should see a psychological counselor.
I have been pondering Miss Lillian Hesselgrave a great deal—at the picnic table and all through dinner, and now I am in my room.
For the first couple of hours I was irked with her because she is such a liar. Never once in her book does she mention that she is a lady(2), and that is an extremely important thing to know about someone, especially someone who spends so much time criticizing other people’s behavior and being so intolerant of them. (As Dad would say, don’t throw cans when you live in a glass house.)
But the more that I’ve thought about it, the more I think that Miss Hesselgrave—even though she is judgmental and intolerant and a Bernini-disliker—is not a liar. She admits all the time that she has a lady companion who she travels everywhere with. She even calls her book Two Lady Pilgrims in Rome, which is an enormous clue. She is just not as blunt about lady(2)ness as she is about bad-tasting tea.
I have also been pondering why Z didn’t tell me about Miss Hesselgrave’s lady(2)ness. Maybe Z thought I knew (clearly I did not), or she didn’t know herself (impossible; now that I know, it is so obvious), or she wanted to protect me from inappropriate adult behavior (ha). But I don’t think it’s any of those explanations. I think the real reason is that to Z, the lady(2)ness didn’t matter. It’s not the part of Miss Hesselgrave that she wanted to focus on. She only wanted to remember the bossy pilgrim part.
It’s funny, but figuring this out about Z and Miss Hesselgrave has made me feel like I understand Z in a bunch of other ways too. If Z was a bacterium and I was a scientist looking at her on a slide, I would say that I now can see her at 50x rather than 10x. That is how much clearer she is to me. Like Dad said, Z has a way of forgetting stuff she doesn’t want to remember. Or, as in Miss Hesselgrave’s case, ignoring stuff that doesn’t matter to her. But she also has a way of focusing on stuff she doesn’t want to forget. She’s never forgotten walking around Rome in 1967 with her college friends, visiting Miss Hesselgrave’s pilgrim churches. She’s never forgotten dancing in St. Peter’s Square. She sure hasn’t forgotten her night with Paolo. She remembers every single detail.
Maybe Z never told anyone about Paolo because she wanted to keep that night in her mind. She didn’t want to risk having that beautiful memory attached to other memories that were worse. She wanted that one perfect moment . . . the tingly moment, just like the tingly moment that Caravaggio paints.
Wow, Sarah, that is actually an extremely beautiful thought.
Thursday, August 1—LATER
Tonight Mom and Dad and Paul and I had a big talk. Mom and Dad wanted to know what happened in Rome. What really happened. Not the egg on the pizza and Bernini’s elephant. They wanted Paul to hear it too, because it’s his grandmother and grandfather and family.
So I told them. Mom did really well—she was
working hard, you could tell. Even though she got that face a couple of times, she never said anything. Even when I told about Z spending the day in bed while I went out and bought us food.
Dad didn’t say much. But he did a better job of listening without twitching. I showed him the journal that Z wrote to Paul and me. Dad flipped through the pages and set it down.
“Don’t you want to read it?” I mean, I hadn’t wanted to read it, but that was different, I think. This is Dad’s father. I’d want to know about my father.
“It’s not mine to read,” he said. “Besides, I’ve got all the family I need. Too much, sometimes.”
“Hey!” Mom said. But it was a nice hey.
Paul didn’t even pick Z’s journal up; he just listened to us all talking. “Is that it?” he asked finally—after hearing for the first time about his grandfather—his crazy-universe Paolo-Paul name! “Because I’ve got to go practice now . . .” And he left.
I stared after him with my mouth hanging open (my mouth has been hanging open a lot recently).
Dad patted my leg. “Give it time, sprout. Give it time . . . You know, you handled yourself really well over there. Really well.”
“You were very mature,” Mom added.
Now I felt awkward. They were making it sound like the trip had been terrible—but it hadn’t. It had been hard and it had been sad, but that’s not bad. Right? If everything in life was easy and happy, how would you grow up?
Then Dad had to call work about a replacement part, and Mom and I were alone.
“Mom?” I asked. This was something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. “Why don’t you like Z?”
“What? Of course I like Z!”
“It always seems like you disapprove of her. You know, her food things and her talk about karma and how she tells stories that might not be extremely realistic . . . Is it because she never got married?”
“No! I like Z . . .”
I did not say anything. I will confess that it was a great feeling to be the one waiting for an answer instead of being the one who was expected to talk.