Wild Roses (33 page)

My mother's divorce from Dino was finalized by
the end of the summer. For a while, Andrew Wilkowski phoned her to let her know
how Dino was doing. His health was improving, his health was worsening, his
health was improving. His music was going well, going badly, going well. So it
went. Andrew Wilkowski finally stopped calling with his reports after the record
company woman flew to Sabbotino Grappa to discuss Dino's contract and ended up
staying.

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My mother is calm and happy. She plays her
cello with love, not loss. She struggles like hell financially, but she looks
more like herself. Her eyes are soft and relaxed. She's been out on a few dates
with a poet-slash-advertising executive, a member of the creatively sane. She
took in Alice as a roommate, and that worked great until Alice decided to move
in with the French horn player in the orchestra. Mom is looking for a new
roommate, and in a Bunny brainstorm, is having coffee with Janet to talk over
the possibility. I wonder what it would be like to live in the same house as
Ian's mom. It would be nice to be close to him in this way, I think, and Dog
William would be thrilled to have Rocket on a regular basis.

A few times when Alice was around, Dad came
over for a bowl of jambalaya. They all sat around the table and ate and drank
wine and played marathon games of Monopoly and made up the rules as they went
along. And yes, it felt like family. It was just as you hoped it could be, where
everyone decides they can still love and care for each other, married or not.
Where everyone just gets it together. That's all you really want or need--the
ability to love both of your parents, and for them to see that a changed family
need not be a destroyed one. I hope that is enough for Dad, to have Mom as
family, and I hope he comes over still if Janet moves in. I like the idea of the
three of them at that table together.

And Ian. I saw him once, over Christmas, and it
was perfect but brief. It is too expensive for him to fly home very much, and
long-distance phone calls, too, are few.

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We write each other, e-mailing as often as we
can. Soon he will be winning awards, performing, traveling. He will make the
circuit, following the path to certain success, maybe even fame. When I look at
my bear, floating in the globe, I try to see him as free rather than unanchored.
I try to think good thoughts about his freedom. More than anything, I try to
keep him from spinning out of control.

I don't know what will happen with Ian and me.
What I do know is that when I close my eyes, it is him that I see. When I think
of love, it is his name etched always in my mind. And it is his music that I
hear. When the notes fill my head, I do not imagine anymore the lemon trees and
curved streets of Sabbotino Grappa. I do not imagine old ladies smelling of
salami and olive oil, or a child running on yellow cobblestones. No, now Ian's
music is his own, and what I see is a winter forest of fir and cedar and
evergreens. I see diamond flakes beginning to fall, landing on a joyful,
upturned face, drifting to settle in my beloved's hair. I see poplar and spruce,
solid and sure, covered in the softest, quietest white. The snow glitters like a
sky filled with stars, like a galaxy on a planetarium ceiling.

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