Rebirth
R.H. Nicholson
The tour bus pulled around the bend and tugged up the hill. I peered out my window onto the glorious sunflower fields which stretched out across the valley, the Duomo punctuating the landscape as Florence spread out around her in an ethereal haze. The sky had morphed periwinkle and soft apricot with a touch of coral.
“Gracie,” I shook my daughter’s shoulder, “Look at that incredible view.” She lifted her adolescent head, glanced at the otherworldly sight for a nanosecond and nestled back against her headrest. Yes, the tour had been exhausting. We had landed in Paris six days earlier, motored through France and into Munich, zipped through Heidelberg, glanced at Innsbruck, paid tribute to Romeo and Juliet in Verona, navigated the canals in Venice, and still had four days left to cram in Assisi, Orvieto, Rome, Naples, and Capri. I understood that Grace was tired. I was tired too, but I couldn’t succumb to it because 24 high school students took their cues from me as I led them through this study abroad trip of a lifetime, a trip that cost their parents a significant amount of money. My job was simple but stressful: make sure they have a good, safe time and go back home happy and more cultured. Perhaps, I pondered as the bus attempted to navigate the hilltop parking surface that had been constructed long before bus tours became a staple of the European tourism industry, bringing Grace with me was a mistake. Maybe she was too young. She didn’t know any of these students and they were all at least two, if not four years older than her. Plus, she wasn’t the most socially adjusted of our children. Our thinking was that this would be the perfect nudge for her. She could meet new friends and experience the magic of Europe’s history, culture, languages, and customs. But that plan had not materialized. She had, thus far, avoided the other students, followed me around, listening to her Beats, and constantly looking for a place to sit down.
Finally, the bus lurched to a stop, and I instructed the students to clear their seats of personal belongings and trash. I was well aware that I had become a poor man’s flight attendant, cruising the aisle checking on each student and looking for problems. We all claimed our luggage from the belly of the bus, and I clarified the morning departure time and scooted into the hotel lobby.
This unique hotel looked rather like an old convent with terra cotta tile floors and potted palm trees, white walls and rough wood beamed ceilings. One wall was dominated by a lavish mural of the assumption of the Virgin Mary surrounded by cherubs and angels all in bright blues and greens and yellow gold. The furniture looked medieval, vases of sunflowers carefully positioned around the lobby. I called out room assignments and handed students actual skeleton keys on large wooden rings, so large they would fit into no one’s pockets, an idea I liked. No lost keys. I nudged Grace toward her two roommates. She grudgingly followed along behind them, pulling her suitcase like an albatross, and I finally headed to my own room.
The complex, I quickly discovered, was made as a quadrant with a courtyard in the middle, accessible by French doors on each side. My luggage clacked on the title as I made my way to the narrow stairs which were lined with what seemed to be portraits of previous owners or local noblemen. My room was a delight in simplicity: a twin bed with a clean white comforter, an antique dresser with little flourishes on the corners, and a plain nightstand barely large enough for my accouterments. I opened the unscreened wooden shutters and looked out onto the delightful courtyard with a blooming linden tree in the center, the little white puffs floating like snow. There were picnic tables and a variety of chairs all sitting on a brick patio. Oleander bushes grew along one wall of the complex and lovely little purple columbines sprouted wherever they could find space. I sucked in the fresh Tuscan air and allowed myself a relaxing moment alone. Then I noticed a shadowy figure sitting on the ground up against the other side of the linden tree, knees drawn up, head bowed. I stared for a full minute as my awareness allowed me to understand that the slight figure was Grace. My breath seized. I knew another bout of loneliness, another conversation about unhappiness and awkwardness and self-doubt was about to fill my evening. I sighed and steeled myself to go down to her when another figure came into view, a figure I did not know. This boy, I judged him to be about the age of my high school students, stood in the doorway of one set of French doors, the light from the lobby creating a silhouette around him. His hair was ebony, his skin the color of Florentine leather. He wore cotton breeches and a white buccaneer shirt, which I recognized as the costume of the hotel staff and he held in his hand a single columbine, twirling it between his lean fingers. As the twilight settled around him he moved toward the linden tree. He paused, bent down on his haunches and smiled, handing her the flower. He spoke but I could not hear his words. A moment later, he sat down, crossing his legs, “crisscross apple sauce” Gracie would say in remembrance of her preschool days. The courtyard was otherwise empty, except for a pair of courting starlings fluttering among the branches of the linden tree. Suddenly I felt like a voyeur, eavesdropping on someone else’s private life. I moved away from the window but kept glancing at it, so I closed the wooden shutters. Was I worried about Grace? Was I excited by this encounter? Was I overcome with curiosity about this tableau playing out with my daughter in the courtyard of a rustic country hotel nestled in a sunflower field outside of Florence, Italy on a warm June evening?
A few excruciating minutes later I decided to make an early bed check on the students. I descended the stairs, strode to the lobby, pulled out my room list, purchased a sparkling water from the front desk clerk, and set out to begin my rounds. As I passed by the glass dining room doors, I caught a reflection, a movement. Something looked familiar to me. I saw Grace and this staff boy, whom I could now see had large almond eyes and a few whiskers sprouting on his chin, sitting in the corner, away from easy view. I heard his baritone voice, but not his words and Gracie let slip a giggle. She held the flower in her hands like a bridal bouquet.
“Sei molto carino,” the boy told her, and I froze and leaned my face against the glass door, eyes shifted as far left as possible so I could see them better.
“Graat-zee,” Grace answered.
“No-no, grazie,” he put his hand on her checks and pressed, “awe-awe.”
She repeated the word, following his instructions. “Molto bene,” she responded.
“You are,” she raised her finger and touched his chest, “a molto bene teacher.” He leaned over (and I leaned into my right leg so I could have a better view) and lightly kissed her finger. Then he placed his olive-colored hand on her cheek and leaned in to kiss her lips, lightly, almost bashfully.
“Can I help you find something, signior,” a staff person suddenly called down the hall to me and I bumped into the door.
“No, no,” I waved him off, embarrassed that I had been caught spying. I smoothed out my paper and pointed to the stairs.
“I’m doing bed checks. You know, to make sure all of my charges are in their rooms.” He smiled condescendingly.
“You know, Italia changes people, does something to them,” he laughed and I trudged up the stairs. When I arrived at Grace’s room I paused, knocked, and identified myself. Ellie, who was clearly the top student in my honors English class, cracked open the door with a sheepish look. “Room check. I need to see everybody’s happy face,” I called out.
“Uh, Mr. Campbell, I don’t know how to tell you this, but Grace isn’t here, and we don’t know where she is,” Ellie confessed.
“Don’t worry. She’s in my room,” I replied. “She has a bit of an upset stomach. I’m sure she’ll be in later. Lights out, now. Breakfast at 7:30, bus leaves at 8:00 for Florence. Buona notte.”
After stopping at each student room and taking thorough attendance, I made my way to the top of the stairs, preparing to sidle up to the dining room door. But my better nature spoke to me and told me to mind my own business. I struggled mightily with the fact that my own daughter was violating the rules, that any other student who missed curfew would be disciplined. I made myself very aware of the irony of the situation, that my wife and I had always steadfastly held our own children to even higher standards than we did our students. But my father’s heart melted at the knowledge that Gracie was experiencing a moment of bliss, an episode of romance most people only read about in books or watch in movies. Yes, tomorrow might be another miserable day for her, schlepping along on this endless European torture tour. But tonight, she would find a pocket of happiness and who was I to deny it?
I barely slept in this little corner of paradise, the mild breeze wafting in through the open window, the moon radiating soft silver light across the foot of my dormitory bed like something in a Keats poem. I rose early, dressed, packed, and descended to breakfast steeled for the questions about Grace and ready to roust any students who had overslept. But to my surprise, I found everyone present and accounted for, Gracie sitting amidst a group of girls, laughing, whispering, and smiling like a new bride. Becca spoke in a faux whisper, “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
“Shush. Here he comes,” Ellie shoved Becca’s shoulder playfully.
“Buongiorno, padre,” Gracie greeted me, a smirk I had never seen before on her lovely face. “Did you sleep well?”
The girls stared at me as if waiting for some kind of significant, dramatic response, a chaperone meltdown exposing Gracie’s misbehavior, her virgin sojourn into teenage recalcitrance. I stammered a bit, well aware of the predicament I found myself in. I realized the others knew of my daughter’s violation of the rules, that I had warned them all about the consequences of breaking those regulations. But I also remembered vividly the scene I had witnessed last evening, that moment of bliss, a lifelong memory Gracie would always cherish marking her rebirth, her initiation into a new phase of life with all its euphoria and dejection. Suddenly I saw before me, not my little girl, but someone on the verge of womanhood, someone who had survived a wrenching childhood and emerged stronger for it, someone who, for the first time, felt comfortable in her own skin.
“Like a big Italian baby,” I stretched out my arms and smiled.
After breakfast we loaded our luggage onto the bus and wound our way into Florence, the seat of the Renaissance, the center of the cultured world. After our obligatory tour, the students broke up into groups, secured their backpacks, and scattered to their afternoon adventures. I waited for Gracie to step behind me as the others dispersed. “Hey, Dad, I’m going to hang with Ellie, Becca, and Jasmine. See you at dinner,” Grace clarified before she slid away from me and out into a new world.
R.H. Nicholson
R.H. Nicholson taught writing for forty years but is now (finally) focused on his own work which has appeared in Ignatian Magazine, Adelaide Literary Journal, Echo Ink, The Blue Lake Review, The Back Porch, Big Window Review and elsewhere. His debut novel Justice House Shadows was published by The Main Street Rag. He and his wife live in a small Ohio River Valley town with their geriatric cat Fezziwig.