Wild Roses Read Online Free PDF Page A

maybe a month into the school year, and every teacher was beginning
to pile homework on as if they had sole responsibility for keeping you busy
after school and therefore out of jail and drug-free. My head was really hurting
now. I worked for a while, then I heard the crunch of bike wheels down our road.
This was not an uncommon sound, as Dino also often rode his bike; we Americans
drove our cars too much, he said. Growing up in Italy, it was the only way
people got around, he said. It was no wonder Americans had such fat asses, he
said. You could often see him pedaling to town and back with a few grocery items
in his basket. Yes, he had a basket on his bike. It wasn't a tacky one with
plastic flowers or anything (thank God), but a real metal basket. The whole bike
itself, old and quaint and squeaky, looked snitched from some cliched French
postcard, or stolen from some History of Bikes museum.
    The sound of bike wheels on gravel might not
have been out of the ordinary, but Dog William (versus Human William) barking
crazily at the sound was unusual. I pulled up my blinds and here is what I saw:
the curve of our gravel road, and the line of maple trees on each
side
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    framing the figure in the center. I saw a boy
about my age, in a long black coat, the tails flapping out behind him, with a
violin in a black case in a side compartment. I saw a yellow dog running
alongside him grinning, his tongue hanging out in a display of dog
joy.
    I cannot tell you what that moment did to me.
That boy's face--it just looked so open. It was as if I recognized it, that
sense he had--expectation and vulnerability. He looked so hopeful, so full of
all of the possibilities of a perfect day where a yellow dog runs beside you.
The boy's black hair was shining in the sun and his hands gripped the handlebars
against the unsteadiness of the bike on the dirt road. Are there ever adequate
words for this experience? When you are suddenly overwhelmed by a wave of
feeling, a knowing, when you are drawn to someone in this way? With the strength
of the unavoidable? I don't know what it was about him and not someone else. I
really don't know, because I'm sure a thousand people could have ridden up that
road and I would not be abruptly consumed with a longing that felt less like
seeing someone for the first time than it did meeting once more after a long
time apart.
    I watched him as he veered into our driveway,
causing a snoozing Otis to bolt awake and flee maniacally across the lawn. What
was he doing here? He was about my age, but I'd never seen him before. Was this
a Dino pilgrimage? A fan wanting his violin signed? He parked his bike, set it
on its side on the ground. He said something to his dog, who looked up at him as
if they'd just agreed about something.
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    The boy lifted his violin case. He ran his
fingertips along it, as if making sure it was okay--a gentle touch, a caring
that made me rattle the blind back down and sit on the floor suddenly like the
wind had been knocked out of me.
    Here is something you need to know about me. I
am not a Hallmark card, ooh-ah romance, Valentine-y love kind of person. My
parents' divorce and my one other experience of love (Adam Peterson, who I
really cared about. Okay, I told him I loved him. We hugged, held hands. He told
me I was beautiful. He told half the school we had sex.) has knocked the
white-lace-veil vision right out of me. Love seems to be something to approach
with caution, as if you'd come across a wrapped box in the middle of the street
and have no idea what it contains. A bomb, maybe. Or a million dollars. I wasn't
even sure what the meaning of the word was. Love? I loved my telescope. I loved
looking out at the depth of the universe and contemplating its whys. But love
with someone else, an actual person, was another matter. People got hurt doing
that. People cried and wrapped their arms around themselves and rocked with
loss. Loving words got