The Night Singers by Valerie Miner Read Free Book Online Page B

family developed a penchant for marrying Anglos, which is how she became blond, blue-eyed and named Priscilla. Prill, she claimed in the sixth grade. Prill Donatello, when she married the son of Milano immigrants. Joy in her son’s frequent company. Grief in her husband’s sudden death.
    Dear, dear Silvio—she had begged him to slow down. Grateful as she was for the furnishings that his canny investments installed at their increasingly elegant “heritage house”, she urged Silvio toward healthier, less stressful habits. He’d laugh, “If I sat at a loom all day like you, I’d die of boredom in a week.” The massive coronary took him in twenty-four hours.
    Tonight is unusually hot for June and she savours the faint breeze flowing between the east and west windows. She’s set the Goldberg Variations CD at a soft volume, so as not to disturb the neighbours. She might live in a landmark farmhouse that survived the Earthquake and Fire, but she has no illusions of invulnerability or wide-open spaces. She’s lucky with her neighbours—most of them—who also tend their gardens, hose down their sidewalks and keep the music low.
    This front room is perfect for work, really. Prill has become even more thankful for her ancestral haven since Silvio’s death; it’s as if the house embraces her, holds her steady.
    She was just surfacing from paralytic mourning when Cousin Fred lost his mind.
    â€œ Why Freddie, why do you want to sell to that voracious realtor? You know he works with developers and they’ll want to build condos, using up every inch of ground. They’ll want to chop down Grandpa Leo’s tree .” They sat across from one another in her living room drinking strong black coffee.
    â€œPrill, dear, I have five college tuitions to pay. I need to make a profit .” His familiar voice was both patient and ironic.
    â€œBut you could sell the place to that pleasant couple from Hayward. They adore the tree.” She sat back in her mother’s green armchair.
    â€œYou’re an artist, Prill. Silvio would understand. In business you take the best bid.” He spoke louder now and averted his gaze.
    â€œProfit,” she sputtered. “How about fairness, civility, family loyalty?”
    â€œListen, honey, Grandpa Leo has been dead for a long time. And he would let go of the tree. He was a man of adventure, of progress.”
    â€œProgress!” She was going to start yelling in a minute, yelling at Fred who had been like a brother when she was growing up.
    During the next month, she struggled toward compromise. Maybe she could borrow the $5,000 and pay Fred the difference. The bank officers didn’t understand. Then she decided that a good gardener could move the tree to her small lot. One month and four gardeners later, she accepted that the olive tree was too old to be transplanted.
    Something turned in her. Maybe all this came too soon after Silvio’s heart attack. With raging powerlessness, she had witnessed his strength ebbing hour after hour in the ICU. Or maybe the root of her tenacity was simpler to locate. She had watched the tree through each season of her life; she couldn’t imagine continuing without it.
    Private, diffident Prill found herself going door to door with a neighbourhood petition to preserve their family olive tree. Aunt Winnie admonished that this campaigning looked unseemly, so soon after Silvio’s death.
    But her son Tony said, “Right on, Mom, this will be good for you.”
    Fred, who had already sold the property to the realtor who, indeed, sold it to a developer, had no objections now.
    Prill stayed up late at night, neglecting her work, to compose impassioned letters to The Chronicle and The Bay Guardian and environmental newsletters.
    KGO called. A farm in the middle of San Francisco? The interviewer was astonished. Listeners phoned in. The story appealed to their romantic impulses, to