Read Online One Thing Stolen by Beth Kephart - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Beth Kephart
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frayed jeans hem, the bend of his knees, a hand, the lime-green feather, and the rest is gone, sucked into the thick mist, and when a Vespa passes, I turn.
Nothing.
We head up the long ramp of the road that rises along the massive stone wall of Fort Belvedere. There are places in the wall that have fallen. Patches where green, leafy things have settled in, as if someone has hung the ramparts with window boxes.
We don’t talk. Sometimes a brother is a best friend, and sometimes a brother is a brother, and sometimes a secret is worse than a lie. There are olive trees on both sides of the road. Air the color of pearls and the sudden wild purple of flowers that erupt from vines tangled in the branches or caught in the thatched places of the wall. A girl with a bike appears at the top of the road and speeds toward us, a skateboard tied to her back. Jack turns and watches her fly. He stands there facing east and down, while I climb west and high.
Now Jack comes fast on the hard angle of asphalt behind me, passes me, makes his way up the hill and around thecompass points and parapets of Belvedere, where the fog is breaking. They’re not here, Jack says. Finds a stone. Kicks it.
Maybetheysaid—
Nine-thirty, they said. I talked to them. You didn’t.
He kicks another chunk of rock. He looks back to where we came from, as if he will be able to see the missing chain and its tip of lime-green feathers from up here, a new perspective. When he takes a seat on the ribbon of grass beside the stone wall, I sit too—my feet flopped out, my foot turning around my ankle, my heart banging hard.
Tell me the truth, he says.
What?
Was it you? You who stole the chain?
I shake my head. He stares at me, now past me, and I try to stop the pounding in my chest—try to keep from standing, running, escaping, and now on the road, near the bend I see Mom and Dad on the rise, a woman between them, her silver hair fluffed at the ends like a cashmere hem.
Jack stands and stuffs the feather deeper into his back pocket. I hide the weave my fingers have started to make with the grass that grows tall by the wall. Dad stops on the road, out of breath, and then Mom does, and the woman does, and her gaze is cool. She shakes Jack’s hand. She takes mine. She looks into my eyes.
This is Katherine, Dad says. A friend.
Ciao
, she says, but she’s American—dusty Doc Martens on her feet, a yellow cotton blouse that lets the muscles on her arms show through, and a pair of khaki trousers with scatter lines above the knee where the hanger was.
Good day for a view, Dad says.
A beautiful day, Mom says. Her eyes going from me to Jack to me like she can’t believe I’m actually here, like Jack just pulled off some giant magic trick, and now we’re walking—Mom and Dad and Katherine ahead, and Jack beside me on the incline, his shadow cutting the sun on my face.
Who? I ask.
Jack shrugs. He kicks another stone down the hill and watches it fall. He stuffs his hand into his back pocket, fingers the feather, and he climbs, and we climb until we reach the highest bend, the open door, the ticket lady, from whom Dad buys five passes, breathless.
Fort Belvedere is a Medici villa inside fortress walls, four-hundred-something years old. That’s what Dad says. It’s a museum for modern sculpture—the busts of naked women, a pinwheel of bronze in the sun. Look at us, Dad says. Here we are. Dad talks prof talk about the guy who designed this place for the rich Grand Duke. He says how many old walls are missing now, how the star-shaped fortress was mostly cut down to make room for the city’s growth. He points to a tunnel we can’t see—thesecret passages between Belvedere and the Pitti Palace and Florence proper over the bridge. He says the word again—
secrets
—then
fireworks
and
theater
, but his words are snipping into static. I head toward the cliff, the tumbled garden, the view. I stand there, leaning north, watching Florence click on and off,
Nothing.
We head up the long ramp of the road that rises along the massive stone wall of Fort Belvedere. There are places in the wall that have fallen. Patches where green, leafy things have settled in, as if someone has hung the ramparts with window boxes.
We don’t talk. Sometimes a brother is a best friend, and sometimes a brother is a brother, and sometimes a secret is worse than a lie. There are olive trees on both sides of the road. Air the color of pearls and the sudden wild purple of flowers that erupt from vines tangled in the branches or caught in the thatched places of the wall. A girl with a bike appears at the top of the road and speeds toward us, a skateboard tied to her back. Jack turns and watches her fly. He stands there facing east and down, while I climb west and high.
Now Jack comes fast on the hard angle of asphalt behind me, passes me, makes his way up the hill and around thecompass points and parapets of Belvedere, where the fog is breaking. They’re not here, Jack says. Finds a stone. Kicks it.
Maybetheysaid—
Nine-thirty, they said. I talked to them. You didn’t.
He kicks another chunk of rock. He looks back to where we came from, as if he will be able to see the missing chain and its tip of lime-green feathers from up here, a new perspective. When he takes a seat on the ribbon of grass beside the stone wall, I sit too—my feet flopped out, my foot turning around my ankle, my heart banging hard.
Tell me the truth, he says.
What?
Was it you? You who stole the chain?
I shake my head. He stares at me, now past me, and I try to stop the pounding in my chest—try to keep from standing, running, escaping, and now on the road, near the bend I see Mom and Dad on the rise, a woman between them, her silver hair fluffed at the ends like a cashmere hem.
Jack stands and stuffs the feather deeper into his back pocket. I hide the weave my fingers have started to make with the grass that grows tall by the wall. Dad stops on the road, out of breath, and then Mom does, and the woman does, and her gaze is cool. She shakes Jack’s hand. She takes mine. She looks into my eyes.
This is Katherine, Dad says. A friend.
Ciao
, she says, but she’s American—dusty Doc Martens on her feet, a yellow cotton blouse that lets the muscles on her arms show through, and a pair of khaki trousers with scatter lines above the knee where the hanger was.
Good day for a view, Dad says.
A beautiful day, Mom says. Her eyes going from me to Jack to me like she can’t believe I’m actually here, like Jack just pulled off some giant magic trick, and now we’re walking—Mom and Dad and Katherine ahead, and Jack beside me on the incline, his shadow cutting the sun on my face.
Who? I ask.
Jack shrugs. He kicks another stone down the hill and watches it fall. He stuffs his hand into his back pocket, fingers the feather, and he climbs, and we climb until we reach the highest bend, the open door, the ticket lady, from whom Dad buys five passes, breathless.
Fort Belvedere is a Medici villa inside fortress walls, four-hundred-something years old. That’s what Dad says. It’s a museum for modern sculpture—the busts of naked women, a pinwheel of bronze in the sun. Look at us, Dad says. Here we are. Dad talks prof talk about the guy who designed this place for the rich Grand Duke. He says how many old walls are missing now, how the star-shaped fortress was mostly cut down to make room for the city’s growth. He points to a tunnel we can’t see—thesecret passages between Belvedere and the Pitti Palace and Florence proper over the bridge. He says the word again—
secrets
—then
fireworks
and
theater
, but his words are snipping into static. I head toward the cliff, the tumbled garden, the view. I stand there, leaning north, watching Florence click on and off,
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