The Singing Trees by Boo Walker
Chapter 35
HOME SCHOOL
Some women become mothers on the day they find out they’re pregnant. Some become mothers on the day they give birth. For Annalisa, she didn’t fully become a mother until midway through August, six months after Celia was born.
The summer dragged her along as if a rope were tied to her bound wrists, and those beautiful days of July and August meant nothing to her but more hours of failing. She felt like an impostor, a woman wearing the wrong clothes, the wrong jewelry, living the wrong life—an art forger copying someone else’s work.
Though nothing had yet come of her encounter with Emma, a day didn’t go by when she wasn’t worried that Thomas would appear to take Celia away. Then again, maybe that would be better. Annalisa certainly wasn’t up for the challenge.
As usual, Nonna was right. Annalisa was still heartbroken. Despite the taste of pure love she’d felt when Celia tasted her first bite of ice cream, with every day, the child looked more like her father, and Annalisa couldn’t be in the same room as Celia without thinking of him. How could her love for him have been so wrong?
Wallowing in this heady malaise, she still wasn’t eating, and she questioned her faith and purpose. She was trying; it wasn’t that. She hadn’t given up, but the puzzle pieces weren’t fitting together. The true smile she’d felt for a moment at Harry’s was a distant memory now, a flavor she couldn’t even taste in her mind anymore. That idea she’d had of painting Celia tasting her ice cream . . . she hadn’t even pulled her art supplies from the closet.
By mid-August, she wondered if she’d ever be able to move on. Not that she was interested in dating again. She was just trying to figure out if she’d ever be able to smile again. Or would she keep darkening Nonna’s house with her depression?
The answer would come on a Sunday morning.
Nonna had taken Celia to church, a place Annalisa hadn’t gone in a month. She didn’t like the feeling of being stared at by people who knew everything about her. If the Mills succeeded in one thing, especially within the Italian community, it was gossip. Annalisa couldn’t handle having her mistakes twist and turn through the ears of the congregation. She didn’t like the attempts by men wooing her after mass either.
While her grandmother and daughter went to church, Annalisa lay in bed drifting in and out of sleep. Even when she was awake, she felt better in bed, far away from all the misery around her. She heard Nonna and Celia enter the house, so it must have been close to noon. Within a few minutes, the entire family would be over for brunch, and if she didn’t get out of bed, Nino or one of the other family members would run into her room and drag her out, calling her ragazza pigra. Lazy girl. Could there have been a worse insult?
A few minutes later, she could hear more voices. They were collecting. Her time was running out. Pressing herself up, Annalisa dressed and stumbled down the hall. She said hello to everyone without offering eye contact and then turned to find Nonna on the floor in the living room, sitting with Celia. Aunt Julia was telling Annalisa about a popular boy at church who was single again, but Annalisa wasn’t paying attention. She saw only one thing.
Celia had sat up for the first time with a grin as wondrous as the stars.
Even years later, Annalisa would say she’d never seen a sight more beautiful, and it was in that moment that Annalisa fell in love with her daughter. It was then that she truly became a mother, and her face stretched in a way she’d never known, save perhaps her times with her mother and with Thomas.
Nonna looked up from her position on the floor. “She just sat up.”
“I can see that.” She’d almost stayed in bed and missed a milestone. Enough was enough, Annalisa said to herself, rushing to her daughter, falling to her knees, and opening up her arms. It was a silly comparison, but she felt like she’d been seeing black and white her whole life and then woke up today to see color.
“You’re such a big girl now.” She pulled Celia in, and the infant collapsed into her lap, giggling.
Annalisa’s smile stretched wider, and something told her she wouldn’t forget this feeling now; she wouldn’t lose the sensation. The transformation felt everlasting, not a brief taste but a movement into a new world. “I love you, Celia. So much.”
“I’m such an idiot,” Annalisa said to Nonna, an apology for all of it, the hard times she’d given Nonna when she was younger, the handful she’d become since moving, but most important, for not living up to the woman Nonna and Annalisa’s mother had set out to raise.
“I’m sorry,” Annalisa said, whispering in her daughter’s ear. “I’m sorry for the way I’ve been.” She picked her up and promised her, “I’m here, my love. I’m right here, and I’m always going to be here. From now on.”
Annalisa turned and saw that her family looked at her with prideful, happy, and wet eyes. She drew in a long breath of air as they all went to her, surrounding her in a swarm of love.
Walt came up the next day to spend the afternoon with Annalisa and Nonna, and shortly after he’d arrived, they congregated on the front porch while Celia slept. The flowers Nonna had planted in pots earlier in the year were in full bloom, stretching toward the sun. Annalisa had hung the wind chimes she’d made next to her mother’s, and they trickled out a pretty song.
Annalisa told them, “I don’t know how to explain it, and I wouldn’t say this out loud ever again, but I’m not sure I loved her until now. Is that just terrible? I mean I loved her, but not the way I see mothers love their children. Certainly not the way my mom loved me. Or you loved me. Something’s different now. It was like I . . . I don’t know. Like I didn’t even see her. Like I blamed her for something she had nothing to do with. I can’t believe I’ve been like that.”
Nonna rocked slowly in her favorite chair. “You think you’re the only one who has taken a little while to figure out becoming a mother? Or a father? No. This is not easy, what we parents do. It takes time to learn.”
“She’s right,” Walt said. “Don’t beat yourself up. Though we lost our child during birth, I can only imagine that you must shed a bit of who you are before you can wear parenthood well.”
“I’m so sorry, Walt,” Annalisa said, realizing she’d never known. How awful that she’d cried on his shoulder about the difficulties of pregnancy and becoming a mother, when it was exactly what he and Gertrude had always wanted.
“Please don’t,” he said. “That’s not why I’m telling you.”
Annalisa sighed. “I’m ready to be Celia’s mom. I guess I had to come back here to the Mills to figure it out. That’s why you wanted me back, Nonna. Wasn’t it?”
Nonna inclined her shoulders.
Annalisa looked around at the tiny houses of the neighborhood. “I get it. I see why you like living here. I’m starting to see the beauty of small-town life, and I love being surrounded by family. It’s just that . . . I need more right now, or different.”
Nonna leaned toward her. “If you want more than what you’re living, take it. Show your daughter what’s possible. If I know anything, it’s that you’re the toughest girl I know. If you want a life in Portland—or Rome, for that matter—then you go take it, Annalisa. Celia will be happy to join the ride.”
Annalisa couldn’t believe she was even considering the idea. She couldn’t believe Nonna was the one urging her on.
“Your apartment just so happens to still be available,” Walt interrupted.
She couldn’t believe it. “You didn’t rent it out?”
He smiled. “I’ve been holding it for you.”
“What?”
“Something told me you wouldn’t last long before coming back. Nonna’s right. You have dreams, and they’re strong. Show Celia that nothing can stop you.”
“What about the shop? Do you still . . . ?”
“Let’s be honest,” he said, patting his thigh. “It was a lot brighter with you there. It’s not the most normal life, but let Celia hang around while we work. Who knows? She might grow up to become a horologist. Or even an artist.” He gave a sly grin. “Wouldn’t that be scary?”
The flicker of hope that twinkled deep within her brightened, and she imagined her return to Portland. For those few seconds, she forgot about Thomas and what he’d done to her, the life he lived with another woman not far away, and Annalisa realized that she couldn’t let anything stop her. They were right. Annalisa needed to show Celia what she was made of, and that a woman doesn’t have to give up and die just because she dared to love.
Annalisa looked back and forth between Nonna and Walt. “I guess I’m moving back to Portland.”
Over the fall and winter of 1972, Annalisa often caught herself wondering in awe at what love had done to her. How could she not believe in the power of it after what she’d seen it do? It had buckled her and knocked her down and broken her. Love had also lifted her up, though, and saved her from the heartache.
The love she felt for her daughter now was a love supreme. Was it more powerful than how she’d felt for Thomas? She wasn’t sure, but were they even comparable? That was when Annalisa began to understand the vastness of love, the complexity of it. Yes, she thought this much about love lately, which was odd for a person who hadn’t believed in it. She’d loved her mother and Nonna and her grandfather and her other family members, but those were the only loves she’d understood growing up.
Love could hold you under the water with its grip clutching your neck, your body convulsing into lifelessness, or it could sweep you up and away into an explosion of joy. Love could be a ravenous and passionate need for another human, like she’d felt for Thomas, or it could be equally powerful in that unwavering way that she felt for Celia.
No matter what the category, love put her back in front of the easel, and it didn’t take her long to get back in front of Sharon Maxwell, who told her that she could be a part of her show the following April.
That was all Annalisa needed to hear. She painted with a vibrancy and spirit she’d not yet known. Even when it seemed impossible to find the time as a single parent working at Walt’s shop, she made the time. So what if she was tired? Nothing could stop her from gathering back up her chops and expressing herself with all these new and exciting feelings of being a mother. Why had she ever thought that being a mom was different from being a woman or that chasing a dream was something mothers couldn’t do?
Her typical day started around 5:00 a.m., and she’d get in an hour or more of painting before Celia even rose for the day. After getting her daughter squared away, she’d head down to the shop, where she kept a second crib. By the time Walt would come in at nine, she’d organized Walt’s work orders, polished the countertops, and prepped her gallery for showing. Once the rush of the morning subsided, she’d head back upstairs to put Celia down and to get another painting session in. If bring it on was her motto, naps are opportunities was her slogan. She took care of Walt, too, and found time to run his errands and cook him the occasional meal.
When winter came, Celia became increasingly more mobile, which made things even crazier. On a busy day during the Christmas rush, Celia crawled out of the shop. By the time Annalisa realized her daughter had escaped the pen, Celia had worked her way to Congress Street in the snow. Despite a few similar episodes, Annalisa found her groove and settled into the urgency of her life.
The only thing that would trip her up was when she saw Thomas in her daughter’s face. Had there been a better way? No matter how angry she’d been, was hiding Celia from him the right answer? There was the possibility that Emma might have told him about the baby. If so, was he curious at all? Or did he fear that the baby might be his? If so, was he relieved that she hadn’t told him?
She hadn’t seen Thomas in a year and a half. Was he back in school in Davenport? Or had he moved to Portland? Surely she would have seen him if so. Or maybe he wasn’t in school at all. Maybe the woman he’d brought home had pushed new plans upon him. Were they married yet? Had he married her in the same spot behind the club where his mother had suggested he marry Annalisa? How did the Barneses feel about him bringing home a Vietnamese woman? Was Linh pregnant? Had Emma told Thomas about the baby she’d seen with Annalisa?
Though she was in a much-stronger place and these questions didn’t bog her down, Annalisa had to wonder: Did he ever think of her? How had he not come to find her and explain himself? She might have been able to move on more easily if he’d just said that the war had messed him up and offered some sort of an apology.
Despite her better days and the strength she’d found, she did still miss him. As she came back to life and found confidence again, men had started asking her out, but she always declined. She was more certain than ever that love existed, but she was equally sure that she had enough in her life.
She hated that she still loved him, but that was the way it was, and she’d come to accept that her feelings for him would never go away. She’d have to learn how to live with those feelings just as so many women who had lost their men in the war were doing, still loving him despite the impossibility of their reunion.