The Singing Trees by Boo Walker
Chapter 30
CINNAMON BUNS IN THE OVEN
Under a July sky streaked with white wisps of cirrus clouds sliding by its puffier sisters higher up, Annalisa found Walt polishing his Plymouth. It was the kind of day that begged for you to be outside and get out into it. Even for Annalisa, she knew she needed to step away from her easel and experience life.
Admiring the state of Walt’s car, she said, “If you’d dote on Nonna the way you do on that Belvedere, she’d probably move in with you.”
Walt didn’t take the bait but offered her a charitable smirk.
Annalisa and Walt had made it a Saturday summer morning tradition to take a cruise through town or toward the sea and then stop by the market on the way home. Annalisa took Sharon’s wise words about “living and loving” to heart. Sure, painting as much as possible was the key to getting better, but living as much as possible was the secret to making true art.
What better way to live and love than to spend these cherished mornings with Walt, whose declining health showed her how valuable each moment truly was?
On their drive through Cape Elizabeth, Annalisa talked about her latest endeavors. Outside of working for Walt—growing the gallery and training their new hire—all Annalisa did was paint. “It’s the one thing that takes me away from thinking about him,” she admitted, sticking her hand out the window into the warm air. “Or worrying about him, to be more accurate.”
Her worry was very real. Thomas hadn’t responded yet to her last letter, which wasn’t like him. Though Nixon was slowly pulling out troops, two hundred thousand American men were still in Vietnam, so the war was a long way from over.
As evidenced by the splatters of paint on her jeans and shoes today, she typically painted with her coffee all the way until she stepped out the door, and then after work, she’d paint late into the night. No way was she going to return to Sharon with a portfolio of anything other than the best work she’d ever done, and that required working her way through more than a few mediocre pieces to get there. Even Michelangelo had his duds that he burned.
Thomas would be home in December, spending the last few months of his commitment back on American soil. Then April would come and Sharon’s show. What a dream to think that Thomas would be home safely—God willing—and he’d be there for her, supporting her, as she joined the ranks of the best and most innovative artists in New England.
By the time they reached the market, she had left her other worries behind and had become laser focused on one single item waiting for her in the near future: a cinnamon bun. Amid the farmers and the artists and other vendors was a baker named Eli, who made the most incredible pastries in the world. She always looked forward to indulging, but today she was particularly needy for one of his magical creations, as if she hadn’t eaten in days.
The vendors were lined up along the sidewalk on the Lincoln Park side of Federal, and they stood behind tables toppling over with boxes of fresh produce and flowers. Their trucks were backed up behind them, many with large scales dangling from their camper tops. The open tailgates revealed even more produce waiting for their eager clients.
When Annalisa and Walt came upon Eli’s table halfway down the line, the baker said, “My favorite artist, Annalisa Mancuso. Did you finally bring me a painting? I told you I’d trade you free cinnamon buns for life!” Eli drove a VW bus that was backed up behind him, and folk music played from the radio, a banjo and guitar dueling with each other.
“That’s exactly what I need,” Annalisa said. As the sweet smell of those cinnamon buns hit her, she decided she could have eaten every single one in the case, on the table, and in the van. Upon looking at the man who was most likely somewhere in his forties, one wouldn’t know that he was a pastry chef. Unless he ran daily marathons, he did not consume his own inventory.
“You know, Eli, my fiancé is going to come home and not even recognize me if I keep coming back here.” She loved how the word fiancé leaped off her tongue, each time giving her a shot of love. “The only way I know to solve the problem is if you stop making these things,” she said. “I have zero discipline.”
Using tongs, Eli lifted a cinnamon bun up in front of him. “Something tells me he’ll be just fine. What’s life without guilty pleasures? And hello, Walt. Good to see you too. Shall I cut it in half for you all?”
Leaving Eli, Walt and Annalisa strolled farther into the park and sat on one of the benches facing the Parisian fountain in the center. Sitting here had also become a tradition that Annalisa cherished. What was the point in painting if an artist couldn’t take time to breathe in moments like this?
Walt had told her that the elm trees that had once shaded the park had succumbed to disease a few years earlier, so the sun sprayed down past the leafless branches. However, there was a beauty to this park and a great presence, and this particular spot became where Walt told her about the history of Portland. Her heart had broken when he’d told her weeks earlier about how there had once been a thriving Little Italy, but that the Italians had spread apart and some had fled.
Today, between bouts of coughing, Walt expressed his fear of what the Maine Mall was doing to their city. They had already seen a decline in foot traffic in the city and in their store.
“I wonder if Pride’s will go out of business,” she said, wiping beads of sweat off her brow. She almost complained about the heat but then thought of Thomas trudging through the humid and sweltering mess of Vietnam.
Walt coughed for a little while and then spat out, “Life used to be so much simpler.”
“I bet.” She thought about how even the world wars were simpler, with clear motivations to fight. Every day blurred the already-lost point of Americans losing their lives in Vietnam. After taking her last bite and losing herself in the deliciousness, she said with her mouth full, “But we still have these. Can’t get any simpler than that.” The sweet flavor coated her tongue with pleasure.
“Quite true,” Walt agreed. “There might not be a Little Italy, and we might just lose our downtown to the Maine Mall, but there will always be a park bench.”
At the same time, they both said, “And there will always be cinnamon buns.” They shared a smile, and Annalisa thought that, finally, life made sense.
Then, a cloudy sensation came over her, and she reached for the arm rail of the bench. The heat was getting to her quickly. Her head swam as she slipped away from consciousness. So hot out, she thought. Everything happened in slow motion as she fell into Walt’s lap.
While they waited for tests to be run at the Maine Medical Center, Annalisa fell in and out of sleep. She was beyond weary, thinking that maybe they’d given her something. She felt them sticking her with needles and moving her body around. She was afraid, worrying that something might be very wrong.
It was in this haze that Annalisa peeled open her eyes at the touch of someone by her side.
“Nonna,” she said with squinted eyes, “what are you doing here?” How long had she been out?
Nonna patted her hand. “Oh, Annalisa,” she said with great concern. She put her hand on Annalisa’s cheek, as she’d been doing all Annalisa’s life. “You work too hard.”
Annalisa heard the chirp of the heart monitor, the steady metronome of life. “It was hot out today; that’s all. Who brought you down? What time is it?”
“Hey, cuz,” Nino called out, looking up from a sports magazine.
She was very grateful to see them. “You guys really didn’t have to come.” She reached for the paper cup of water by the bed, and Nonna helped her take a sip.
Walt was there, too, and the four of them talked for a few minutes, mostly about what might have led to Annalisa’s fainting. When the doctor walked in, everyone parted. He wore a thick gray mustache and was only an inch or two taller than Nonna.
“How are you feeling?” he asked in a nasally voice.
“Better, I think,” Annalisa said, though that wasn’t really true. She felt dazed but didn’t want to worry everyone. Mainers had trouble in the heat; no surprise there.
She’d already forgotten his name, but the doctor turned to everyone else in the room. “Could you please give Annalisa and me a moment?”
Once the door was closed behind Walt and Nino and Nonna, he approached her bed. “Ms. Mancuso,” he started, “you’re pregnant.”
She burst into laughter. “Did Nino pay you to say that?” Even as she joked, though, realization dawned: she knew it was true. Her body had been dragging lately, changing. Oh God, what was happening? She was pregnant? But . . . the birth control. She thought she’d just overworked herself.
“I’m quite serious,” he said. “Congratulations.”
Come to think of it, she had been late. How had she not put it together?
He kept blabbing on, but she wasn’t processing any of it. She was way too young to have a baby, too young to be a mom. Her throat constricted at the severity of her mistake, trusting her pills. What had she done?
Oh God, what had they done?
Interrupting whatever he was saying, she asked, “Are you positive?”
He raked his mustache with his fingers. “You are undoubtedly pregnant, Ms. Mancuso.”
A surge of anger ran through her. This was not how she’d planned things to occur. They were supposed to get married, and she was going to establish herself in the art world, and then—only then—was she going to become a mother, helping Thomas realize his dream of becoming a father.
“Please stop calling me Ms. Mancuso,” she snapped, wanting to jump out of her bed and run away. “I’m not even twenty yet. With all due respect.”
Shouldn’t she be happier? Why wasn’t this news landing in a better way? Women dream their whole lives for this moment. Pregnant? She wasn’t ready to be pregnant. That was the business of a woman closer to thirty.
The short doctor adjusted his stethoscope. “I figured you’d want to tell your family yourself, as opposed to me intruding.”
“Thanks,” she said, still breathing in the peripheral edges of the news. It was a kind gesture, she thought.
But a baby inside her? Thomas’s baby. What would he think? God, what would she do until he returned? How would her body react? Would she be able to still tap into her creative side? What about the paintings she owed Sharon? How could she possibly keep doing what she was doing at the shop? What about waiting until the right moment? And what would Nonna say?
A few seconds after the doctor excused himself, her three visitors reentered the room. Annalisa considered holding back the news, only until she could wrap her own mind around it, but her tongue betrayed her.
“Turns out it’s a little more than dehydration,” she confessed.
Her trifecta, Nonna, Walt, and Nino, stood by her bed like three people in a painting, frozen there waiting on more. She really couldn’t take Nonna lashing out on her right now and was terrified that she’d be judged.
Nino, towering over the other two, said, “Well, out with it. What is it?”
Unable to look at Nonna, she found comfort in Nino’s bright eyes, up there hovering near the ceiling like lights in a pair of lighthouses. “You’re going to be an uncle.” Only then did she slide her eyes down toward Nonna, inching them really, ever so slowly, almost like she had dipped her toes into the Atlantic, testing the temperature.
“You’re pregnant?” Nonna asked. She slapped a hand onto her forehead and then crossed herself. “Ay yai yai.” No one could say I told you so without a word like Nonna could.
Already feeling exhausted, she seared Nonna with her eyes. “Thanks for the support. I knew I could count on you to knock the last of the wind out of my sails.”
Nino and Walt seemed to slip into the background as Nonna stepped closer.
Where she struggled to find words, Annalisa did not. “Don’t judge me. I’m sure God is doing enough of that. He probably can’t wait to get me into the confessional at Saint Peter’s.” Come to think of it, she hadn’t been since before Hawaii. At least she’d made it a few times this year.
“Why couldn’t you resist the temptation?” Nonna finally said. “Why couldn’t you wait a little longer until you’re married. Until you’re ready.”
Annalisa felt like she was being kicked while she was down. She didn’t want to be pregnant any more than Nonna wanted her to be.
“It’s not the nineteen fifties anymore,” she said. “We’re at war. My fiancé is in the middle of it. The rules don’t apply like they did in your little bubble growing up in Naples.” Annalisa didn’t care that her cousin and Walt were back there somewhere. When she and Nonna needed to express themselves, an audience did little to temper their roars.
“You think this is the first war I’ve ever been through?” Nonna asked. “There’s never an excuse to go against His word.”
How could Annalisa argue? Still, couldn’t Nonna lighten up some?
“I’m not going to sit here and let you lecture me,” Annalisa said, keeping her temper at bay. “I’m not going to do it. We had sex, okay?” Annalisa felt a rush of frustrated emotions punch her in the chest. Unless someone had a time machine in the room, all this nagging her wasn’t helping.
Saying what was really bothering her, she let out, “I don’t even know if he’ll make it home to meet this baby, so don’t go on about how I’ve disappointed you.” The fearful thought lunged at her once it had left her mouth. No way she could raise their baby alone.
If only her mother were still alive. She would have understood and never attacked Annalisa, especially while she was lying in a hospital bed, wrestling with the news herself.
Nonna shook her hand in the air. “You haven’t disappointed me, Annalisa. I hurt for you. I know this isn’t what you wanted.”
Annalisa raised a fist back. “No, it isn’t! Not at all.”
The first tears came on like a hard rain, and Nonna went to her, putting a hand on her. Annalisa couldn’t take it. This wasn’t what she wanted at all. She was too young to have a baby, to raise a baby. She was still a child herself. She didn’t know enough about the world to teach someone else. She still had her own life to live.
Nonna said into Annalisa’s sobbing, “I want you to come home.”
Annalisa felt like she’d been slapped. “What? You have to be kidding. I’m not coming home.”
Nonna patted Annalisa’s side but was firm about her suggestion. “How are you going to raise a child in the city by yourself?”
Annalisa glanced at Walt, wishing he might do something, but he’d taken a seat and was staring at the floor. “Thomas will only have five more months overseas,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”
Nonna leaned in. “You can come back in the meantime.”
“I can’t come back,” Annalisa said. “I know you like your life there, but it’s not for me. I like the city. Besides, I’m not leaving Walt’s store. He needs me.”
Walt was still silent, sitting next to Nino but far from the conversation. He’d learned to stay out of their way when the two Italians fell into disagreement.
Nonna said, “He managed to do just fine before he met you. Don’t think you’re that special. It’s time to come home.”
Annalisa didn’t say that he was older now, and she wasn’t so sure he could run it without her help. The assistant they’d hired wasn’t capable of filling Annalisa’s role. “I’m not leaving everything I’ve worked for. Sharon is waiting on my pieces for the show. I can’t give that up.”
“It’s not about you,” Nonna said. “You’re going to be a mother soon. You need to let go of all these dreams now and focus on the baby.”
Annalisa wanted out of that bed. “I know you’re trying to help, Nonna, and I really appreciate that . . . but Thomas will be home soon. He’ll finish his commitment only a few months after the baby is born. Why don’t you move down to Portland? I would love for you to be more involved with our lives. And you’d be with Walt.”
Nonna tutted, as if a move to Portland was an impossibility. “I’m too old to move anywhere.”
“Suit yourself,” Annalisa said, “but know that we’d love to have you. Truly, Nonna. I can’t imagine you not being involved with our baby. I won’t stop trying to convince you.”
Nonna wagged her finger at her. “Try all you want.” Then she added, “I won’t be far; you know me and babies.”
Sitting at the dining-room table that evening, as she tried to find the excitement she should be feeling, Annalisa wrote a long letter to Thomas. Actually, she wrote several but tore them up halfway through. He didn’t need to take on her worries of how she’d manage without him until he came home. Or how they could give their baby the best life. Or how she could possibly continue to paint. Annalisa could worry about all this on her own for now. The only thing he needed to know was that she was pregnant and happy, and soon they’d be a family of three.
When she finished the letter, the other five attempts crumpled up on the table, she didn’t hesitate in kissing her signature, leaving rose-red lipstick marks before folding it closed. She was out of stamps, so she decided she’d swing by the post office during lunch the next day.
She sat there for a long while, staring at the unstamped letter and then into the negative space between her paintings that covered the walls and then out through the porch to the dark of the city. Was sending this letter the best idea? She thought back to Hawaii, back to Thomas’s reaction to her getting fired, back to those conversations when he’d said he hated being so far away from her. Sure, the news of a baby would be a strong new reason to come home, but didn’t he have enough reason anyway? As much as it might help, it might hurt too. He might be worried about Annalisa and how she had taken the news and not keep his mind fully where it needed to be for his survival.
She closed her eyes and prayed, asking for a clear vision. Her prayer turned to more fear as she realized Thomas wouldn’t want her working and pregnant, and he’d worry that she would go crazy trying to go it alone. He’d want to be here helping, paying the bills.
He knew her so well that he’d know how the baby might hurt her career. How could she keep painting as her energy levels declined? He’d consider all these things, and he’d kick himself all over again for letting his grades slip. He could have avoided all this by holding on to his deferment. He might even consider dropping out of college so that he could be a better father. He might drive himself crazy figuring all this out while working through the nightmare that was the Vietnam War.
What about his family? How would they react? Bill Barnes would find a way to be even more furious, whereas Elizabeth Barnes might be thrilled. During both of the phone conversations they’d shared this summer, she’d mentioned how excited she was to prance her little grandbabies around town and how much she’d love it if Thomas and Annalisa would move to Davenport. Annalisa had simply shrugged the idea off, assuring her she and Thomas would make such decisions together upon his return. Annalisa wondered what kind of grandmother Mrs. Barnes would be. Aloof with a side of fortitude? Distant with a side of engagement?
And then Emma. As much as Annalisa would hope that she’d be thrilled by the news, knowing that she’d be an aunt, she might instead be knocked back into her shell. Annalisa wanted nothing more than to share with Emma, a way to reconnect with her, but she couldn’t take the risk. Despite the fact that they were going to be sisters, Emma still hadn’t shown any interest in having a relationship with Annalisa, who had attempted to speak with her two times by phone and had even extended an invitation for a weekend in Portland. So the chances of Emma being anything other than hurt and angry were infinitesimal.
By the time the bells of midnight chimed, she’d decided to wait on telling Thomas and his family. She even thought it might be fun to surprise him in person as he set foot back on the safe ground of American soil in December. The idea was absurd, though. She pictured Thomas stepping off the bus.
In a jolly holiday voice, she said out loud, “Hi, Thomas, welcome back from the war. This? That’s your giant baby inside of me—your little Hawaiian gift coming to a theater near you in February. No, I can’t imagine Waikiki Beach is good for population control. By the way, turns out pills are not one hundred percent effective!”