Growth

Mike Dell’Aquila

MY GRANDPARENTS ONLY EVER MADE one trip to our home in upstate New York. We relocated after my father took a job at a privately funded geological research institute and were still getting used to the strange dimensions of a rural American town. As far as I knew, neither of my grandparents ever traveled outside of a small radius surrounding familiar quarters in the old neighborhood. Grandpa Sforza had been naturalized, but his American citizenship was nothing more than a piece of paper that allowed him to maintain a hermetic existence more or less undisturbed.

Given my grandfather’s anti-American sentiment, it was a bit strange to invite him to our new house for Independence Day. My parents were persuasive though, and after using the growing children as leverage, they were able to successfully talk them into making the drive upstate.

Grandpa Sforza’s car was hardly road worthy. It hadn’t left their garage in years and the small rust spots that formed around the undercarriage had spread to the doors and side panels of his old sedan. My grandfather commandeered the old boat of a car from the front seat, leaning as far over the wheel as possible. His near-sightedness had worsened to the point of near-blindness, but he had still refused my father’s offer to chauffeur them back and forth.

Jumping up at the sound of a busted muffler crawling down the street, I ran to the bay window in the living room and watched their car crawl up our narrow driveway. Behind the broad windshield Grandpa Sforza craned his neck forward and squinted, trying to make sure he found the right place. Our home was just like all the others – we hadn’t done anything extreme to stand out in our uniform neighborhood.

“They’re here,” I called to my parents, who were keeping themselves busy with a laundry list of chores.

“They’re here? Already?”

My mother’s voice was on edge, stressed because this was her first chance to welcome guests into our new home.

“I’ll take care of it,” my father responded, hustling down the hallway and heading out the front door.

I followed him outside and stood on the front porch in bare feet.

The sun hadn’t risen over the hills, so the air was cool enough to tolerate, though still very thick.

Grandpa Sforza got out of the car and stretched. He was overdressed, as usual, wearing a button-down shirt, a sweater vest and pleated trousers. A fedora covered his bald head, completing his dressed-up look. Despite having all of his vestments custom-tailored, he’d lost a significant amount of weight and his clothes hung on him like the drooping branches of a weeping willow.

“Lorenzo, come stai,” Grandpa Sforza said to my father. He continued a series of questions in Italian.

Grandma Sforza slowly got out of the passenger side and smiled in my direction. “Look at how much you’ve grown,” she exclaimed.

I nodded and answered, “I’m taller than my father now.”

It was true, though not by much, and only noticeable if I stood on my tiptoes in pictures.

“Don Antonio,” Grandpa Sforza called. “Vieni qua!”

As always, I did what I was told and ran over to him. He put his hands on my shoulders, kissed both cheeks and then gave me a trademark slap with his right hand. After a quick appraisal, he took off his fedora and placed it on my head.

“You’re a real Sforza,” my grandfather informed me by way of my father.

“Let’s go see the house,” Grandma Sforza interrupted. “It’s too humid out here. You know that’s what does it, right Lorenzo? It’s the humidity that makes it unbearable, not the heat.”

“You’re right, it is the humidity,” my father said, grabbing her overnight bag from the back seat. “And today’s index is pretty high.”

Grandpa Sforza carried his own bag, despite my attempt to become his squire. I watched his gold timepiece twisting around his skinny wrist and listened to the click-clacking of his wingtip oxfords while he walked across our blacktop driveway.

“I just love these colonial homes,” Grandma Sforza said, taking the stairs slowly and heavily relying on the banister. “They’re so classic and old-fashioned. You’d think a house like this could have been lived in by George Washington himself.”

“Mom, this house was built in the early sixties,” my father explained. “It’s been a part of this country for about as long as we have.”

I watched all of this from the bottom step. Grandpa Sforza looked at the home’s exterior when he was close enough for it to come into view. Nothing impressed him. He just shrugged his shoulders and kept walking. I adjusted the fedora on my head, pulling it down a bit like a gangster in some film noir movie.

“The house is so beautiful, Anna,” Grandma Sforza exclaimed to my mother as the adults made their way inside.

I waited for the front door to close so I could catch my reflection in the glass. The man I hoped to find was instead an awkward, lanky teenager. It was the same reflection I always saw, only with a tan fedora placed on top of my bowl-cut hair.

Inside, the family gathered in our living room. Grandpa Sforza sat in the armchair in the corner, away from the rest of us. My grandmother took the rocking chair, just like she would have in her own home. My mother and my brother Vince sat at opposite ends of the sofa against the back wall. I stood next to my father, assuming the same position with my arms folded across my chest.

“This town is so perfect,” Grandma Sforza said, toying with the buckles and metallic embellishments on the purse in her lap. “The drive up was so scenic, too. It’s exactly what I used to dream of when I was a little girl. This is the real America, not some cramped apartment by the docks.”

“It’s such a great place to raise a family, isn’t it?” my mother asked. “And it’s not too far from Larry’s new office.”

“Oh, it’s all so wonderful,” Grandma Sforza said again.

“Just wait until you see the lake,” my mother added, already beaming from the compliments. “That’s where we’re going to see the fireworks.”

“And how do you boys like your new home?” Grandma Sforza asked both of us.

“It’s great,” Vince answered quickly.

I didn’t share his feelings on the issue. Since we first moved in, I’d been teased for my accent by the other kids on our block, so I had to practice speaking in a way that would not elicit their laughter. I also tried to stop dressing like a guido, as my friends called it. To those ends, I’d been marginally successful, but none of it felt right. Instead of mentioning any of those issues, I just said, “It’s different.”

“Let me take you on the grand tour,” my mother said, rising from the sofa.

Everyone agreed and followed her down the hall. Everyone, that is, except my grandfather and me. I felt like we were conspirators and was happy to stand near his chair as he fished through his bag. Grandpa Sforza moved his clothes around and then removed an unopened bottle of scotch. He held it out and said something, but I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to do with it.

“Cucina,” he said, paring down his language and pointing to the kitchen.

I took the bottle from him and walked up to the counter near the sink. Besides the jugs of Carlo Rossi wine that we kept near the door in the back porch, my parents maintained a dry house. There was no liquor cabinet nor any designated spot in the house for hard alcohol, so I placed his scotch on the counter and left it there, knowing that my grandfather would retrieve it soon enough.

He had other plans, though. I watched him walk through the dining room and then out onto the porch that led to our big wooden deck. He walked right up to the edge, and stared into the thick green forest behind our house.

The tour that my mother was conducting came back through the hallway and then headed downstairs into the basement. No one inquired about my grandfather or me, so I decided to join him outside.

“Don Antonio,” he said when he saw me. He smiled and said nothing more, knowing that I probably wouldn’t understand him anyway. “I wish I knew how to speak Italian,” I said, hoping he might understand. My father always insisted that Grandpa Sforza understood English but simply refused to speak it. I didn’t know if there was any truth to that, only that I never once heard him utter a word of the Anglo-Saxon language.

Grandpa Sforza didn’t respond right away. He just smoked his cigarette and looked at the dense plant life at the edge of the yard.

“Vuoi?” he asked me, holding out the skinny white cigarette.

I didn’t have a cool uncle or an older brother who could sneak me sips of beer, a pack of smokes or anything like that, so I jumped at the chance to do something grown-up and rebellious for once. Of course, I did it all wrong. I breathed in as much as I could and I tried to swallow it down like a drink. All I could feel was the presence of smoke in the back of my throat and my eyes watered right before coughing up a big black cloud.

“Bravo,” he laughed, taking back the cigarette and tussling my hair with his free hand.

I laughed and coughed and wiped at my eyes.

Pointing to the trees and the hills in the distance, he asked me, “Cue l’America, sì?”

“Sì,” I answered, not sure what I was agreeing to and not caring either.

“È brutta,” he responded dismissively.

“Sì,” I said again, trying to sound more convincing, and then coughing a bit more.

Fourth of July is nothing without fireworks. Any good American knows that. There are other national holidays and other reasons to barbecue with family and friends, but only one day of the year warrants the sky to be lit up and painted with the colors of Old Glory. Our new town was no different: we had an expensive fireworks spectacle that was supposedly choreographed to music, but year after year, it looked like the same shapes appearing in the same order with only a fresh play-list from the local Classic Rock radio station.

We walked down to the lake as a family, moving slowly on my grandmother’s account. The sun had started to set an hour before, but the big ball of gas had barely tucked itself behind the mountain on the other side of the lake, so the sky was still lit up and colorful.

“This is just too beautiful,” Grandma Sforza exclaimed. “I wish I had my camera. Look at this lake and the trees and the mountains and all the colors in the sky. I wish I could remember this image forever. Isn’t it beautiful?”

“It is,” my father answered.

“Hey dad,” I started to say, hanging back from the family. “Tell grandma and grandpa how this was all formed.”

“I don’t want to bore anyone,” he answered.

“Yes, tell us,” my grandmother pleaded. “I don’t know anything about natural science. You’re the expert, Lorenzo.”

“What do you want to know about? The mountain or the lake?” “Both.”

“The mountains are easy to explain,” he began. “Basically, the Earth’s crust is made up of a series of plates that are in constant friction with one another. Over time, their series of little collisions keeps pushing up layers of rock and soil until we get these gigantic mountains.”

“È brutta,” Grandpa Sforza said, speaking up for the first time.

“Don’t listen to him,” my grandmother warned. “He’s just being difficult.”

“Brutta,” Grandpa Sforza said again, nodding as he looked at the mountain in the distance.

“Lorenzo, your father simply cannot appreciate the majesty of the natural world,” my grandmother said and then turned to face Grandpa Sforza. “You can’t, can you?”

My grandfather raised his index finger and pointed toward the sky. “Mi fido nel cielo e le stelle.”

“I trust in the sky and the stars,” my father translated.

I looked up. Only the brightest stars were visible, but after night fell in earnest we’d be able to see them all.

Grandpa Sforza waxed poetic about the stars. They were beautiful and only visible at night. Clouds could obscure them, so we were lucky when a clear sky presented itself. They spoke to us, too, and told us the future. The Romans appointed augurs to interpret their movements, and those augurs were the ones who accurately predicted the fates of Romulus and Remus.

“Enough with the sooth-saying,” Grandma Sforza said, adding, “Basta.”

Moving his balled-up fist up and down, Grandpa Sforza asked, “Perché?”

“Because it wasn’t an augur that found your tumor. It was a doctor in a lab with X-Ray machines and blood tests. The stars didn’t tell you anything.”

I looked at my father and then back at my grandfather. Both men had blank expressions.

“È il mio tempo,” Grandpa Sforza told us all. It didn’t need translation; the finality of his voice was all the confirmation we required.

And with those words, the world stopped spinning for a moment. The powerful inertia slammed me in the chest, robbing me of breath. I did not cry, though. I’d cry later, in the privacy of my bedroom where my tears could turn a pillow dark and damp. At that moment, I fought against childish impulses and remained stoic, just like the two men I stood next to.

“That’s all he’s been saying since he found out,” Grandma Sforza informed us. “And he’s been more intolerable than ever.”

Over the lake, the first rising balls of light shot up into the sky and their reflections sank to equal and opposite depths. Cheers rung out from the crowd, but my family remained silent. There were, for the next few minutes, a steady cycle of booms and exploding fireworks swiftly sinking down through the thick air toward the water’s inconstant surface.

I took a step back and stood beside my grandfather. The scene in the sky was fuzzy, the smoke and thick summer air created a translucent canopy that stretched over our valley. Grandpa Sforza put his hand on my shoulder, gave it a tough squeeze and then left it there. Before the grand finale, there was a pause to let the smoke settle. There was no wind to speak of, but with enough time the haze would dissipate and leave us with a clear black sky.