Olive Branches Don't Grow on Trees

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Olive Branches Don’t Grow on Trees

By Grace Mattioli

Olive Branches Don’t Grow on Trees

By Grace Mattioli

Copyright ©2012 by Grace Mattioli

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-publication Data

Mattioli, Grace, 1965-

Olive Branches Don’t Grow On Trees/ Grace Mattioli

p. cm.

1.Families-fiction  2. New Jersey-Fiction  3. Italian-Americans-Fiction

4. Peace-Fiction

I. Title   PS3556.R352    813.54

For my mom, who told me to never throw out anything I wrote

and my brother, Vincent, who told me I had a perfect sense of humor

CHAPTER ONE: THE SOUND OF NOISE

Silvia Greco knew the silence wouldn’t last. Any second, her dad would emerge from the bathroom and resume his search for a lost frying pan, with the sound of clattering pots and slamming cabinet doors ringing through the air like a series of small explosions. In the very short meantime, she enjoyed the quiet as she sat waiting for her coffee to finish brewing as if it was all she had left in the world. 

She sat at a square wooden table that took over the entire room. It looked good from a distance, but upon closer inspection revealed several nicks and scratches that gave it a memory of its own—a bad one. The table was bare except for an economy sized bottle of TUMS displayed in the middle like a centerpiece. She sat on a chair that was almost too big for her little body. 

She was a big girl misplaced inside a little girl's body with a big voice, a big laugh, a big stride, a big Roman nose that sat proud beneath her big brown eyes. Her big head of hair was currently chopped in some crude style of uneven lengths and colored orange on the top and black at the bottom. Her hair style wasn’t intended to be any sort of radical statement. It was just due to her current state of apathy. So was her attire—a paint covered T-shirt and worn-out Levi jeans that fit her like a puddle. 

She usually dressed in bright bold sixties-style clothing that showed her off to the world as an animated, free spirit. Her hair was usually evenly colored and styled like she cared. But even with her grungy clothes and her chopped hair, she was pretty. And her big nose seemed to add to her prettiness in a strange way. Angie, her older sister, urged her to get her big nose made smaller with simple surgery, but Silvia refused to do such a thing, believing that doing so would be rejecting her Grandma Tucci, who had the same big nose and whom she loved fiercely. 

Her dad's nose was in perfect proportion to the rest of his face, which resembled that of an aged Marlon Brando. Despite a lifetime of working too hard, sleeping too little, drinking too much, and smoking for the better half of his life, Frank Greco still looked good. He had all his hair and could sweep it from side to side depending on his mood. His physique looked as if he worked out at a gym on a regular basis, but in fact, he’d never set foot in one. The slight limp he developed from being maimed in a motorcycle accident in his early twenties was barely perceptible through his gargantuan personality. This was also the case with his slovenly attire of mismatched outfits and shirts buttoned unevenly with one side hanging down further than the other. Fortunately, he worked as a judge in a local courthouse, so he could hide his lack of style behind a thick, black robe.

He came out of the bathroom and wasted no time getting on with his project with a renewed sense of urgency, gallivanting around the kitchen as if he was keeping beat to a polka song. He searched for the lost pan while drinking and cooking something that smelled like a mixture of garlic and garbage left out in the rain. Silvia got up to get her coffee, careful not to get in her dad’s way. As she poured some milk into her cup, the greasy container slid out of her hand. She imagined that Frank touched it with his olive-oiled hands. 

I knew you were going to do that, Frank, who was suddenly standing over her shoulder, said. She wanted to say something like Well, maybe I wouldn’t have spilled it if you didn’t get your greasy hands all over it, but she said nothing. She just cleaned up the spill and sat down. She could tell Frank was fishing for a fight this morning and would have fished deeper had he not been so preoccupied with finding the lost pan. So rather than fishing, he just continued on his quest, moving from one side of the kitchen to another as if he was accomplishing great things. Banging steel against steel, wood against wood. 

The noise sounded like crashing cars to Silvia, but it did serve the purpose of disrupting her thoughts of yesterday when she was fired from her job waiting tables in a Turkish cafe in downtown Philadelphia. She’d overheard her boss say to the cook, I’m going to have to close the place down if she works here another day! At hearing this, she marched into the kitchen and said, I heard what you said, Usef. She spoke to him as though he was wrong for being concerned for the survival of his business. Although he was, like most people, much bigger than her, he hunched over and shrunk like a frightened monkey at her confrontation. I’m sorry Silvia. His sincere apology made her feel bad. She also felt bad because she knew his concern was legitimate. She knew she was a coffee-spilling, plate-dropping wreck of a waitress who’d surprised herself the few times she’d got an order right. 

Why were you still working there anyway after you moved in with Dad? her older brother, Cosmo said to her when she called him up right after she’d been fired. As usual, he was right. It made some sense to continue her career as a bad waitress when she still lived in the city, and the cafe was one block away from her apartment. But after she moved into Frank’s house in New Jersey, it made no sense at all. She remained at the cafe, however, because jobs were hard to come by. When she told this to Cosmo, he said that she’d find another dead-end job before she knew it. His attempt at consolation, while sincere, made her feel worse. Much worse. 

She crumbled into a hunched over position and sipped her coffee that tasted markedly bitter. Just as she was slipping into a comfortable state of misery, Frank said, Don't you have to be at work? It's eleven o'clock. What happened? Did you get canned again? She was about to speak, when he swiftly picked up a broom and began chasing a centipede that was speeding across the floor. 

Those God damn bugs run around here like they own the place! he shouted as the bug disappeared under a cabinet. He threw the broom back in its corner as if he was angry at it. He picked up his half-full drink, looked down at it with an expression of deranged contemplation, and in a quick second, he finished it off. His insensitive remark seemed to have been wiped clean from his mind. She would have normally laughed his comment off, knowing well that it was only his way of attempting to instigate a fight. But several factors, including fatigue and the fact that she actually did get fired from her job yesterday, conspired together to cause her to react.

Why don’t you have another drink? she said, facetiously. 

He came alive like Frankenstein’s monster, eyes bulging, face reddening and screamed, Why don’t you just get your stuff, and get the fuck out of my house?!

Her sarcastic response, Because I know how much you’d miss me, heightened her dad’s anger, and his eyes bulged out so far that they looked as if they might pop out of his head. He looked as if he was about to start screaming in the scariest of all his angry voices—one of his great wall-vibrating screams. His voice was deep and heavy and carried long and far. So far, in fact, that she could still hear it no matter how far away she moved: Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Chicago, Tucson.

Just then, his phone rang, and he forcibly decompressed all that he could and walked quickly towards it, all the while still staring at Silvia as if to say that their little spat wasn’t over yet. He answered the phone, and after a few words, he began telling the caller about the missing frying pan.

I’m sure it’ll turn up, Frank, the voice on the phone said in a volume that was almost as loud as Frank’s, so Silvia could hear every word very clearly, as if he was standing right there in the kitchen. 

Frank didn’t bother asking how his friend was doing. Rather, he just went right into his problems. He went through his usual list of complaints about his children: Vince spoke about two words a year to him; Cosmo was a failure; and Angie broke his heart by moving to North Jersey. Silvia could tell that he was about to start on her, but that he decided not to with her sitting in the same room as him. So instead, he spoke about how all his children’s shortcomings were the fault of Donna, his wife, for being from a family with bad genes.  

When the voice on the phone asked about Donna, Frank walked into the other room, so he could speak about his wife in private in his not-so-quiet, quiet voice. She’d left him a little over one month ago. Silvia knew her mom would have left sooner, but she wanted to wait until her youngest child, Vince, was either out of the house or at least almost out of the house. 

For Silvia, there was about one good memory of her parents in the past ten years, and it was when they’d all taken their summer vacation to Canada. Silvia remembered the two of them walking arm in arm, both brightly smiling as the horse-drawn carriages had galloped by on the cobblestone street. But this was well before the time he hit her. That was the thing that seemed to knock out the last bit of love in their marriage. 

It was a Saturday night, and Silvia and Vince were in the den watching TV when it had happened. There were angry mumblings coming from Frank, his voice rising and falling away like a rollercoaster. There was a big shout and a cry from Donna. Silvia and her brother startled and hopped up out of their seats in sync to run into their parent’s room, where they saw Donna crying, holding her cheek that glowed red behind her hand. 

Mom! Silvia shouted out as she ran towards Donna, but her mom ran in the bathroom and closed the door, all the while hiding her hand over her face. Silvia had stared hate at Frank and stormed out.      

Now, she could hear Frank lying to the voice on the phone like he lied to everyone. She could hear him telling the voice that he and Donna just needed a little separation from each other, like they’d made some sort of mutual decision about how to proceed in their marriage. He walked back into the kitchen to freshen his drink and complained about the property taxes that would be due very soon. He ended his monologue of complaints with an expression he used frequently, I can't complain. 

Silvia thought that if Frank spent less time complaining and searching for lost kitchen utensils, he might notice the dilapidated condition of his house. The kitchen sink always leaked. The bathroom door handle fell off nearly every time someone opened or closed it. The floor creaked. The doors squeaked and hung on loose hinges from being slammed one too many times. The cracked paint struggled to cover the walls. The broken chandelier in the dining room could fall at any second.

While the interior of the house was falling apart, it still looked good from the outside, and the yard, in which Frank took great pride, was perfect. Not a bush out of place. Not one uneven blade of grass. All the flowers and plants were lined up straight and distanced apart from each other as if someone used a ruler to get them that way. His attractive, red-brick house sat on a pleasant tree lined street with other attractive houses with well-kept yards, though none were as well-kept as his own.

The house was on a street not far from the center of town, and the town wasn’t too far from Philadelphia, but not quite close enough to be considered a suburb. Frank wouldn’t set foot in the city even if it was five minutes away. To him, cities were nothing more than an unnecessary expense with their parking lots that cost ten dollars an hour and their overpriced restaurants and shops full of useless merchandise. 

He preferred the smallness of his own town with its practical shops and ample free parking. It had everything a person needed, and it was a real town too, the way towns used to be, with the sweet feeling of being slightly stuck in time. It had a street that could have been named Main Street, with the same dress shop that had been there for over forty years, the same hardware shop for over fifty years, the same grocery store for over sixty years, and the same bank for almost one hundred years. 

Silvia used to love the town. It was where she learned to ride a bike, where she had her first kiss from a boy, and where she spent long summer days with her grandma eating snow cones and playing hide-and-seek. But now, she had no place in this town, and she resented it for making her into a misfit. She resented it like some hideous monster who’d stolen something precious from her—a sense of belonging somewhere in the world.  

She went in her room, sat on her bed, and stared into the blank space of hopelessness in front of her. Her bedroom offered no sanctuary from the noise in the kitchen that traveled fast and furiously down the hallway as if fueled by Frank’s anxiety. She thought if she had more feeling for her old room, it might offer some protection, but she felt nothing for it. It was just a room inside her dad’s house. At one time, she and Angie had shared the room. Now, all traces of Angie were gone, but evidence of Silvia remained, most of which were hidden away like a treasure that no one ever wanted to