CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Convalescence
He watched over her that night, as she slept in downy respite.
A lamp on Sunny’s dresser gave soft golden glow. It wasn’t much to read by, but Dante remained content, paging through one of her books with little regard for the words. His chair was next to Sunny’s bed. She was asleep, and seemed at peace. Her muscles were relaxed, her breathing steady and clear. Still, Dante would not leave her side, nor even sleep until he was certain the blinding light which had almost killed her was set, gone once more beyond the horizon of their ideals.
Brenton had of course been furious over what happened. He’d picked them up from a nearby grocery store (after the phone booth Dante used to call him almost didn’t accept the lonely, beaten quarter he dug from his jeans) in fierce incredulity. How could they be so stupid? he kept wondering aloud. What made them both think that a church was a safe place to go? He ran a stop sign, then almost hit a pedestrian. After that he went right back to it. Especially with Sunny. Stupid, stupid girl, he called her. Spit at her in the rear-view mirror. What was next? Cave diving without an oxygen tank? Nude calisthenics with Tilikum the crazed killer whale?
He’d calmed down eventually, with Dawn’s help. They arrived at Sycamore Hills to find Sunny’s mom pacing the kitchen. She swooped on her daughter, not with anger but compassion, asking a dozen questions about what had happened, and why. Then Dante carried her upstairs (though Sunny protested this, he feared for her balance on the steps). She took dinner in bed, sending both mother and father on fetch-quests for wine, fruit, and a number of other delectable amenities. By nightfall she was asleep. Dante held her hand as she drifted off. He asked once more if everything was okay. She insisted in the affirmative while at the same time making clear he was not to budge from that seat. Dante promised to remain put come rain, sleet, or crazed killer whales. That made her laugh. And of course no killer whales did come, and here he still sat, as the clock on her bookshelf crept past 10PM.
At 10:15 Dawn Desdemona came in with a tray of food. There was bread, soup. Mashed potatoes. Cooked carrots. A glass of wine.
“Dinner,” she whispered to Dante. “How is Sunny?”
“She seems all right,” Dante told her. “Sleeping like a kitten.”
“I don’t think Brenton will ever let her walk home from school again.”
“Understood. I promise to be more careful with her from now on.”
The older version of Sunny smiled. It looked nothing like her daughter’s deviant sneer, but warm and kind. “I’m sure this wasn’t your fault. She’s a handful, this girl. Even we have trouble controlling her. You have your work cut out for you, I’m afraid.”
“It’s nice work,” Dante assured.
“Yes. I know.”
It was near midnight when Sunny woke up. Dante was standing at her window, which overlooked the fairway of a golf course. At this hour the bunkers were empty, the pine trees dark. How would I play this hole? Dante wondered. It was a par five. Dogleg fairway. He would swing hard from the tee, get his drive over the elbow. Doubtless other golfers had tried as much, only to die for their ambition in an unkempt graveyard of hungry pines.
“Hey you,” Sunny whispered.
He was at her bed in an instant. “Sunny! How are you, sweetheart? Anything hurt?”
“No,” she said, after a light kiss on his mouth. “I’m okay. What about you?”
“Everything’s here but your ring. Which I will get back.”
“Don’t worry about that right now. You look tired, dear. Get into bed with me.”
She moved over to make room, then lay on top of him, lips ready with a million kisses. “Thanks for getting me out of that place, Dante. Really. I thought I was going to die.”
“It seems that’s what Maris and Shaya wanted. You dead and me converted.”
“Oh yes. It was a trap.” Her kisses had edged down to his chest, and weren’t done with their journey. “Sweetheart?” she whispered. “Is the door locked?”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Aww. Guess we’ll just have to take our chances.”
Dante caught a glimpse of green eyes burning brighter than ever before she sank beneath the covers. No one came in. When it was over Sunny lay quietly in his arms. Content with the whole world—at least for now—Dante stroked her hair. His mind wandered back to the church. What exactly had happened there, and what did it mean?
“I don’t understand,” he said to the ceiling. “If Maris and Shaya are so good, how could they commit murder?”
He didn’t expect Sunny to hear the question. But she was still awake, and had opinions to share.
“I’m not human to them. I’m a demon. A daughter of darkness.”
“Is that true?”
“Yes,” she said, after a moment’s pause. “But that doesn’t mean they understand me. Or even have a grasp on my intentions.”
“And what are your intentions?” Dante felt almost forced to ask. The answer frightened him.
His fears, however, were proved groundless when Sunny said: “To be your wife. Forever. I hope you’re ready for that.”
Dante assured her that he was, though at thirteen the idea of marriage was little more than a range of distant, snowy peaks on the horizon of their trail way. Or a vision of God Himself, or the devil.
“Daughter of darkness,” he said, chasing down the lane of this last thought. “So you’re like…the daughter of Satan?”
She laughed. “No, no. Satan is an apprentice to Lucifer, a word that means son of the dawn. I have trouble trusting deities, great and small, as do my parents, and my grandparents, and so on.”
“Your family,” Dante said. “Has it renounced God?”
A deep sigh came from beneath the covers. At first Dante feared he may have distressed or offended her, but Sunny’s next words sounded far from both. “A long, long time ago,” she said, with profundity beyond her years. “In The Gospel Of Judas we read that God isn’t a person at all, but a magnificent cloud of light, peace, and knowledge. The cloud demands no pain from man, no sacrifice. But there are lesser gods that the cloud created. Angels too. And they demand suffering. And blood. Death. It pleases them. These are the gods we renounced.”
“I don’t understand,” Dante said.
“Of course you don’t. It’s a lot to take in.”
“The Gospel of Judas? That isn’t in the Bible. None of the ones I’ve read anyway.”
“Not anymore it isn’t. It was cut. Removed. By priests long dead who felt a traditional story of good versus evil would far better suit the palates of Christian and Catholic readers.”
“But Sunny…” He lifted the cover to find her green eyes shining right where he’d left them.
“Yes?” she said.
“I think it’s somewhere in Deuteronomy that nothing is to be added or taken away. No commandment.”
“Commandments,” Sunny told him. “But not stories. Stories were most definitely taken away.”
“More than one?”
“More than one. Jesus was also said to question the motives of the lesser gods. But none of his disciples would budge on the idea that lesser gods were in fact angels of the one true Lord. None but one disciple, who was Judas.”
“Who gave Christ over to the Romans for sacrifice.”
“Yes, Dante. He did. But on Christ’s command. ‘…for you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.’ Jesus is said to have spoken those words to Judas.”
“But why would Jesus want that?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t. Maybe he felt his own sacrifice would be so ultimate that the lesser gods would have no choice but to lay down all other demands. That’s speculation. I can tell you that Judas understood, through the teachings of Jesus, that God is a cloud of light. A realm to be entered and dwelled upon. Jesus is there now. I think Judas is too. As for those lesser gods…”
She trailed off. After a moment Dante peeked under the covers to find a girl biting her lip in deep thought. Eager to know where these thoughts would land, he waited, until at last she said: “They’re still out there. And still asking for sacrifice. Pain. Sickness. They see a two year-old toddler with a brain tumor and do nothing. Puppies dying of distemper. You can pray to them if you want, but they won’t answer. They don’t care. They’re lost, and spiteful, and they’ve guided man into the woods, and now man is lost too.”
She went back to sleep without saying anything else. Having much to think about, Dante nodded off as well. He woke up once more that night, at around 3:30, a time when, according to one man who liked to write about the future, and who died an untimely death, our minds are most in tune with the stars, along with what messages may be passing between them. Turning his head to look at the time, he noticed a sheet of paper folded beneath the clock. Dante pulled it free, opened it. It turned out to be the poem he’d written for Maris. The prank poem, meant to embarrass Shaya, but instead had drawn him from his cave, like dawn over the trees, or perhaps a midnight star that shined brighter than the rest, and led the way.
When I see you at school I cannot read,
Be it Twain or London or Sewell;
My mind rather goes with the gentle lead,
Of my heart when I see you at school.
When I see you at noon I cannot eat,
For these feelings profusely strewn,
I gather resigned become replete,
In my heart when I see you at noon.
Leave me awake; leave me asleep;
For what is a dream without you?
Test letters in red—go bend, go break!
What more can a dreamer do?
When I see you at home I cannot find,
Such meaningful lines for a poem,
May with my love become entwined,
In my heart when I see you at home.
And when I see you at night I am freed,
And by countless stars softness light,
I redress the pain and confess the need,
Of my heart when I see you at night.
He went to school the following Monday after telling a number of lies to his parents over the weekend. A dentist appointment was made for his broken tooth. Meaning to ask Maris about Sunny’s ring, he looked for her in the halls. That turned out not to be necessary, for she found him.
During lunch with Sunny’s girls (the queen herself was absent, at the insistence of her parents), Maris wordlessly passed by the table. Her hand reached out, dropped the ring next to Dante’s plate, and was gone.
∞
Things were quiet over the following days. Sunny returned to school. Her minions had questions, but they were few, and almost painfully tactful. In the middle of the week Dante made a discreet visit to Miss Cross’s home ec room. He asked her who won the baking contest.
“Maris,” she said, in a rather self-satisfied tone.
Dante cursed at her, and just like that, got himself suspended.
He used the free time to check up on Donati. He walked to number 114 on a windy, rainy morning, while all the other kids were at school. Spring was in the air. Scents of flowers in bloom swirled through the sky, happy for the coming warmer days.
FOR SALE the sign told Dante again, once he’d reached the house. Ignoring it, he went to the door, knocked as hard as he could. When no one answered he thought about breaking inside, but common sense, having failed him once during the week already, this time came to the rescue, and he decided to call the number on the realtor’s sign instead.
Number 114’s agent had the voice of an old woman. Wrinkled yet pleasant. Eager to sell. Having no idea Dante was only thirteen, she invited him for a meet-up at the house. Dante thanked her and said that he was really only interested in the home’s previous owner, Horatio Donati.
Here the woman’s tone became confused. She told him no man by that name had ever owned the house or, as far as she knew, ever lived there at all. From here she returned to her sales pitch. The Wooster-Boalt house, as it was known, had actually been unoccupied for five years, and though the interior could be described as something close to dilapidated, its foundation was solid. Restoration would require work, and time, and money, but it was all worth it. Absolutely worth it. Would Dante please pause to reconsider a meet-up?
Dante thanked her again, and promised to talk things over with his dad. Then he went to the public library, which was but a stone’s throw from his house. He delved through several books on opera singers and their careers. On occasion the name Horatio would pop up, but none with the last name of Donati. Furthermore, upon studying a shelf of books about Italy, he could find no mention of a Nascosto Villagio, past or present.
Frustrated, he walked back to number 114. This time, after knocking on the door again, he peeked through the lower windows. No one peeked back. Every room he could see looked empty. Buried under years of dust. Or in other words, exactly as they had always looked to Dante. The one real difference was this: The table where he’d often breakfasted with Donati was gone.
That night, after a cold, quiet dinner with his parents (both had been deeply puzzled by his outburst at school, to the point were they weren’t certain how to discipline him), he sat with Dukey in the kitchen. The little schi-tzu was smiling. He had a squeaky toy in his mouth.
“Well come here!” Dante said playfully.
The puppy jumped into his lap. He barked, licked Dante’s face, barked some more.
“Are you a good puppy? Huh? Are you?”
Dukey barked that he was indeed a good puppy. Maybe the best puppy in the whole wide world.
“You are,” Dante told him. “You are.”
He put some ice in Dukey’s water dish, and then filled the dish with clean water. The schi-tzu drank.
“See you in the morning, little guy,” Dante said. “Don’t worry. I’ll be here.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: In Memoriam
He is but a memory, and the road behind covered with leaves, and his shine is faint, through far away trees.
Many years later Dante went on a business trip to Florence, Italy. Among his peers he was envied, for the business in question took only half a day, and his booking at one of that city’s finest hotels lasted a week. He returned to the hotel when his work was done. Here his wife eagerly stripped him of his suit and tie and, upon adorning him in more casual attire, dragged him back to the cobbled streets.
They ate lunch at one café, drank coffee at another. Both of these stood in Florence’s Oltrarno District, a place of many narrow, secret streets where craftsmen lived behind recessed doors, peddling their creations. Dante and his wife strolled these streets with no particular destination in mind. Signs swayed on an afternoon breeze. An old woman swept dry leaves from her doorstep. She smiled.
“Ciao,” Dante and Sunny told her.
“Buon pomeriggio,” she replied.
A smell of cut flowers hovered at the next corner. Dante bought a bouquet for Sunny, while behind them a group of girls played Strega Ghiaccio. The girls all had scabbed knees and scraped elbows. Delirious smiles.
Piano music lilted from an upper window. Someone—a man—was singing. At the end of the street came an unexpected courtyard. It seemed hidden. Tucked away in a rain of flower petals. The petals gathered at an old stone fountain. Dante led his wife to the fountain’s ledge. They sat for awhile, holding hands.
Across the way was a wall with writing on it. Graffiti. It looked arranged, however. Structured in lines like a book. Curious, he asked Sunny to join him for a closer inspection. The wall was high—about twenty feet—and old. Ancient even. Its huge, flat stones were cracked and faded, as were the words written upon them. Dante’s Italian was rough, but it was an easy job to see the words were, in fact, obituaries. Names, some carved, others simply written in chalk, sprawled over the stones. Beneath them were years. Numbers signifying a birth and a death. Some of the names had poems written next to them. Others were decorated with hearts and professions of love.
Here Dante also discovered where all the petals were coming from. Flowers lay strewn at their feet. Old and dry, new and fresh. Dante searched them in hope of finding something to write with. An old piece of stone would do.
At first there was nothing of the sort. A few melted candles snoozed on charred saucers, but Dante didn’t feel he could get any of them lit for long enough to burn his own message into the wall. He asked Sunny for some lipstick. She looked at him, puzzled. When he explained she told him there was no way she would allow him to dirty up her cosmetics in such fashion. And besides, it wouldn’t work. Both the wall and her lipstick were dark. He needed something lighter, like chalk.
Deciding that she was right, he went back to searching the flowers. As he was about to give up something caught his eye—a shard of rock, painted white. Doubtless it had come loose from a corner and been kicked, or perhaps delivered here by current one rainy night. At any rate, it looked perfect. Pushing a flower aside, Dante retrieved it. He put its broken point to a blank space on the wall. Then he tried to write.
Horatio Donati.
“Well what do you know?” he said to Sunny. “It works.”
“What made you think of him after all these years?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Being in Italy I guess. Seeing those happy kids. Hearing that man sing.”
“Anything else you want to write?”
“Indeed.”
Using his best guess, Dante wrote the year of Donati’s birth, along with that of his death. He needed the local language for what came next. Three words.
Cantare. Ridere. Amore.
Carefully then, he placed the stone back in its previous place. Sunny put her head on his shoulder. A lock of her red hair blew in front of his eyes, fell, came back again.
“Everything okay?” she asked
“Oh yes,” Dante told her after a moment. “I’m happy. Very happy.”
“Me too, Dante,” Sunny said, with deepest affection in her tone. “Me too.”
August 2017-October 2018