When Papo picked Lucy and Milo up for their trip to San Francisco, Dad was still in bed. Since the draft lottery two days before, he’d started to run a fever. Mom tried to get him to go to the hospital, since he didn’t seem to be getting better, but he kept insisting he was the doctor and knew what to do for himself. He had antibiotics and ten years’ worth of medical training, so there wasn’t any sense going into the hospital and having them tell him what he already knew.
Lucy didn’t want to leave his side. He’d especially need her since Mom had to go to work.
“You are going to San Francisco today with Papo, and that’s the end of it,” Dad said. “We’ve talked about this. I don’t need you hovering.”
Lucy reached in her pocket and took out the small specimen of rose quartz Dad had sent from Vietnam. “It’s a seven on Mohs’ scale. It’s supposed to help with circulation.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my circulation,” Dad said, trying to hand it back.
“I’ll feel better if you take it.”
Dad closed his eyes and took a deep breath, holding the stone to his chest. “I’m sorry for snapping. I’ll keep it right here all day. I promise. Now go. You have important work to do.”
Lucy walked to the bedroom door, and before she let herself out, she turned back to Dad. “Will you tell me your love story? It will make me feel better.”
Lucy wanted to hear about their chance encounter just then. She needed the reminder. That against all odds, people found their way to each other. And that knowing something deep in her Rossi bones was something she could trust.
“Papo is waiting. We can tell stories when you get home,” Dad said.
Lucy quietly closed her parents’ bedroom door and then put her hands in her pockets.
Onetwothreefourfive-sixseveneight . . .
Meat day was usually a glorious celebration of meat, when Papo Angelo would load up the overnight van with coolers of dry ice and drive into San Francisco so he wouldn’t have to pay someone for delivery. He’d make a day of it twice a month, visiting relatives, eating lunch at Original Joe’s and haggling the prices of his meat purchases.
Half of Lucy’s extended family lived in San Francisco. Her Big Papo Rossi, who had settled in the rolling hills of the Santa Clara Valley in order to grow his fruit, had a brother named Vito, who’d settled in San Francisco and opened up a fish store. And it was one of Vito’s employees, Ralph Emeretti, who had married Great-Aunt Lilliana. Great-Aunt Lilliana still owned their little house in North Beach.
So Papo’s first stop was always to Great-Aunt Lilliana’s. Sometimes Great-Aunt Lilliana went with him on his journey to visit with relatives and haggle meat prices; sometimes she gave him espresso and biscotti, and sometimes she just sent him on his way. Always she gave him an earful of advice, a premonition if she was feeling generous. He’d often declared her the best big sister who ever was, but only when the other two sisters weren’t listening, or he might find a chicken foot where he least suspected it. Like his coffee mug.
True story.
Lucy had gone with Papo Angelo on a few occasions while Dad had been in Vietnam to keep him company, sitting in flowered parlors and eating biscotti too heavy on the anise and patting the heads of many dogs and small children. She’d then go with Papo Angelo to Original Joe’s and always ordered Joe’s Special, a delicious scramble of eggs, hamburger, spinach and secret spices, which would throw Papo Angelo into fits of pretend offense because he’d never been able to talk the owner into divulging the “special” part of Joe’s Special. Her most important job during these trips was to get Papo Angelo to stop haggling at just the right moment, just before the butchers would throw him out.
Lucy and Milo climbed into the bucket seats of Papo Angelo’s white overnight van with the pop-up roof, and he shouted, “To the moon, Alice!” as he always did when the day was just beginning and there were mountains to climb or hills to conquer or just a nice chair in the shade to fall asleep in, depending.
Milo brought the flight helmet. Ever hopeful, figured they’d want that, too.
As they drove up 280 toward San Francisco, Lucy pointed out all the landmarks for Milo, of which there weren’t many. There was Highway 92, which went up and over the hills to Half Moon Bay, where she had looked for the starfish on that day that seemed so long ago now, where they had the best milk bread in the entire world. Even Papo Angelo said so. She also told Milo about Uncle G going smelt fishing on Martins Beach and how he’d flash fry those fish right after they’d been caught and when he brought them to the deli, they sold out in five minutes.
“I miss Cleo’s blueberry pancakes,” Milo said.
“Who’s Cleo?”
“He owned the U.S. Café in Fayetteville, and sometimes he’d give me and the guys a free breakfast, anything for the servicemen or their kids. We did all the grunt work for him in order to pay for it, ’cause we didn’t want to take a handout. Carried in cases of things and unloaded them into the refrigerator. Poured syrup into those pourer things he had, with the little spout.”
Milo watched the hillside go by, playing out his memories for Lucy.
“People would come and protest the war, sometimes,” Milo said.
Which started Papo Angelo on a string of Italian mumblings. “You don’t listen to the mindless idiots of the world,” Papo Angelo said with gusto.
“You think Gia is an idiot?” Lucy said.
“I think Gia didn’t know until now what she’s been yelling about. It’s different when you have something to lose.”
“It’s hard to ignore them when they’re yelling in your face that your dad is a baby killer,” Milo said.
“What did you do?” Lucy asked.
Milo half smiled, “We lit firecrackers and threw them off the roof into the crowd.”
“I bet that felt good.”
“Sometimes we’d all get together and go down with our own signs, cheering for the soldiers, our moms and dads. One time there was this lady, a loud one with all sorts of horrible things on her signs, and as soon as she saw us, she just stopped in the middle of a chant. She walked straight over to us. I thought she was going to yell, but she didn’t. She just cried and threw her sign in the garbage. The protestors went home after that. They came right back a couple days later. But not her.”
Lucy could see Papo Angelo watching Milo through the rearview mirror. He wiped at his eyes, because Papo Angelo was a feeler of feelings.
The fog was especially thick as Papo Angelo drove through the city to North Beach. Great-Aunt Lilliana lived in a two-unit peacock-blue jewel-box-shaped house on Telegraph Hill that had a rooftop deck with views of the bay. It was a tiny little piece of heaven on earth, and Lucy loved it.
Lucy felt the pricks of the summer fog against her face as they climbed the stairs and Great-Aunt Lilliana welcomed them with kisses and how-are-yous and, of course, a bounty of food. She shouted, “Mangiare e ingrassare,” to Milo, who smiled and dug in to the breakfast sausages, already used to being shouted at by Lucy’s relatives, it seemed.
“I will meet you back here at four o’clock sharp,” Papo Angelo said, pulling on his wool cap after he ate and had his customary espresso. “Good luck.”
Lucy and Milo cleared the table and carried the dishes into the kitchen, setting them into the porcelain sink.
“So,” Great-Aunt Lilliana said, “you’ve found the family.”
“We hope so,” Lucy said.
“You have. I have seen it. Wait here,” Great-Aunt Lilliana said, and went into her spare bedroom, where she clunked things together, opened and closed drawers, and then Lucy heard an unmistakable clap and what sounded like a thousand wings all flapping at once. Then silence.
Great-Aunt Lilliana came back into the room carrying a small basket filled with herbs. She laid out two small pieces of black velvet. On each square, she laid a sprig of something green. “Rue,” she said. “For protection on your journey. Now, pluck two hairs from your head.”
Lucy closed her eyes. “Ugggghhhh.”
“It’s okay,” Milo said. He plucked at his head with enthusiasm.
Even Great-Aunt Lilliana pulled on her own wild gray hair she ordinarily kept in a neat bun at the nape of her neck.
“Now we lay each hair on top of the rue.”
Great-Aunt Lilliana stood up and went to the fireplace, scooping up a small container of ash, which she sprinkled over the rue and the hair. She then laid her hands, short-fingered, hard-working hands, over each small pile, mumbled and tied the ends of the velvet together with a length of thin black cord. She placed a pouch over first Lucy’s, then Milo’s head. Lucy felt herself resisting, denying. A thousand reasonable glass-shard thoughts tried to rip through her growing sense of hope. She didn’t let them.
“Now. Close your eyes and envision your journey, what it is you want to find at the end of it.”
Lucy finally let herself think about what she wanted. She wanted to find a whole family. A family who had survived.
When they’d each taken a moment, Great-Aunt Lilliana clapped one fierce clap and threw her hands up into the air, and Lucy willed her reasonable thoughts to fly up with Great-Aunt Lilliana’s hands. For one shining moment, Lucy saw them hovering there, floating all around the ceiling, like bits of silver confetti.
In place of her reasonable thoughts, she let her heart lead the way.