Olive Branches Don't Grow on Trees by Grace Mattioli

     
     
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    Cosmo
waited a few days to send an apology email to Silvia, and although the word
“sorry” did not appear in the letter, she knew that it was the closest thing to
an apology she would get from him.  There was a link to an article from
the New York Times about
Portland declaring that it was a super place to live.  Silvia wrote back
to corroborate what the article said, and to ask Cosmo if he would consider
moving there with her.  She offered many reasons that moving to Portland
would be good for him:  Anything he was doing here in Philadelphia, he
could easily do in Portland; Portland is much nicer than Philadelphia and has
nearly the same cost of living; Portland has the best public transportation
system in the country, and as Cosmo did not own a car, it would be perfect for
him; and last but not least, there are lots of cute hipster girls in Portland!
 He responded by saying that, despite her viable arguments, he still did
not see any compelling reason why he should move to Portland and added that he
hated hipsters. 
    She
would have written back with more attempts at persuasion, but she knew that her
attempts would be futile.  She knew that Cosmo was born content and that
he could be content no matter where he lived, because place was not important
to him.  She admired and resented him at the same time.  He did not
need to get away.  He never even went on vacation and he would never get excited
about their one family vacation to Montreal every year in August, whereas she
had thought of nothing else but Montreal all summer. 
    Even
more, he seemed to have a permanent sense of space and freedom, like he could
be on the other side of the world without leaving his apartment.  Silvia
always felt like her world was closing in on her, regardless of the distances
she traveled or the openness of the space around her.  She did have her
painting, which worked well to free her spirit, but in the absence of her art,
she was trapped in her thoughts about place.  She thought about her
current place, how she wanted to get out of there, and where she would move
next.  She wondered why her own brother had this sense of permanent
freedom and why it was so hard for her to be free.  They were two very
different people and both responded to their worlds in two entirely different
ways.  Cosmo never seemed to be too bothered by Frank’s yelling.  It
just boomeranged off of him.  But their father’s screams penetrated
Silvia’s skin and went right into the very core of her being. 
    For
a long time, Silvia just accepted Frank’s rage as something that would take too
much energy and strength to change or alter in any way.  But now she
thought, if he sobered up, he might be less raging.  He might even be less
inclined to ruin the upcoming family gathering, as he had ruined so many in the
past.  Although she knew that he would probably not be able to get sober
by the date of the gathering, she did think that, at least, he could get started
on the path to sobriety.  She did not stop to consider the great magnitude
of such a challenge.  She was young and idealistic enough to think that
such a thing would be possible.  The only trick for her was to figure out how something would be possible.
 She thought that an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting would be a great
start.  She also knew that the best way to convince her father of anything
was to resort to a source that he respected, and there was no better source for
this than his brother.  Uncle Nick had several years of sobriety under his
belt and had been attending meetings for many years.  Silvia knew all
about his struggles with alcohol, as he was not at all shy about talking about
his plight from a falling apart drunk to a sturdy, sober man. 
    Uncle
Nick was Frank’s older brother; shorter and stouter than Frank, with a big head
of hair in a black pompadour and a slight widow’s peak in the center of his
forehead.  When Cosmo was