"Jack."
Jack looked up as Ruth came into the dining room, eyeing the papers and canvases scattered across the table.
"What is this?"
"Rose and I were looking at each other’s art. We’re both artists."
"I see." Ruth picked up the drawing of Jack’s family and looked at it for a moment, but didn’t seem to recognize the people in the picture. "Clean this up, please. Rose has gone out with her boyfriend and won’t be back until dinner."
"I know." Jack started putting the drawings back into the portfolio. "She introduced us."
Ruth looked at him, wondering why he sounded so sour. Deciding it didn’t matter, she added, "Pick up the canvases, too. You can just stack them on the table in the hallway near Rose’s door."
"Sure." Jack turned to the canvases, avoiding looking at her. He didn’t want to give her another excuse to yell at him.
After cleaning up the table, Jack wandered outside, bored. He had seen some of the neighborhood when Tom Bukater had brought him home the day before, and had seen more when he had accompanied the Bukaters to church that morning, but it was still largely unfamiliar to him. He wondered if he would get into trouble if he went for a walk on the chilly fall afternoon.
Jack was nearly to the end of the driveway when he saw a boy close in age to him working in what were probably rose bushes, now barren and brown in the late fall weather.
Curious, he walked over to him, noticing that he seemed to be pruning the bushes, carefully selecting which branches and twigs to remove. Jack stood and watched for a moment before he spoke.
"Hi…you need any help there?"
"No, no…I have it." The boy looked up at him, frowning slightly as he tried to figure out who Jack was.
"I…uh…I’m Jack Dawson. I just came here…moved here…yesterday."
"I’m Fabrizio di Rossi. I’m the gardener and handyman for the Bukaters." He started to offer Jack his hand, then saw the amount of dirt clinging to his gardening gloves and thought better of it. "Are you a cousin of the Bukaters or something?"
"No…my dad and Mr. Bukater were friends during the war. My parents and sister died recently, so he took me in."
Fabrizio’s eyes widened. "Oh…I’m sorry to hear that."
"Thanks." Jack ducked his head, not wanting anymore pitying looks. "You sure you don’t need any help there? I don’t have anything else to do."
"Well…" Fabrizio glanced at Jack’s clothes—jeans and a heavy shirt, not things that would be ruined by getting them dirty. "I do have an extra pair of gloves…you don’t want to touch rose bushes without them."
"I know…my mom grew roses at our house in Chippewa Falls."
"Where’s that?"
Jack sighed, a little aggravated that no one seemed to know where his hometown was. "It’s in Wisconsin."
"Oh." Fabrizio handed Jack the extra pair of gloves. "I don’t have extra pruning shears, but I do have some scissors…you can go through and remove any dead flowers you find."
"Okay." Jack took the scissors and started looking through the bushes. "Di Rossi…is your mom the housekeeper here?"
Fabrizio nodded. "Yeah. She’s been here since before I was born."
"Does your dad work here, too?"
"No…he died in World War II, before I was born."
"Sorry to hear that."
"I never met him…I’ve only seen pictures. Mom came here from Italy when the war ended. She says I was born two weeks after she arrived in America and three days after she got a job here."
"So…how old are you?"
"Sixteen."
Jack nodded. "I’m fifteen, just like Rose." He snipped a few dead buds, then asked, "Where do you go to school? Smithfield?"
Fabrizio laughed. "No, no. My mom can’t afford to send me there. Only rich kids go to Smithfield. I go to one of the public schools—John Bartram High School. I’m a junior."
"What’s it like, living in Philadelphia? I never even visited here before yesterday."
"It’s okay. Most people aren’t as rich as the Bukaters."
"Most people aren’t rich where I’m from, either."
"Most people aren’t rich anywhere." Fabrizio chuckled. "My mom and I aren’t poor, though. The Bukaters pay her enough to live on, and Mr. Bukater hired me part-time when I was fifteen, plus I can work as much as I want in the summer." He stopped for a moment, concentrating on a scraggly-looking bush. "Where do you go to school?"
"Mr. Bukater says I’ll be going to Smithfield."
Fabrizio whistled, impressed. "He must think of you as part of the family…that school’s expensive."
"I went to public school in Chippewa Falls…it’ll be weird going to private school. Mr. Bukater and Rose both say it has a good art program, though."
"You like art?"
"Yeah. I like to draw."
"Have you seen Rose’s paintings?"
"She showed some of them to me this afternoon. She’s good at painting."
"I don’t know much about art…but she does paint good pictures." Fabrizio tugged at a loose shrub, frowning as it came out of the ground easily. "Damn. This one’s dead…it looks like something chewed on the roots."
"Maybe it was a gopher," Jack guessed. "Or some of those snails they like to eat."
Fabrizio made a face. "I tried those snails once—they’re called escargot. They’re disgusting, but Mrs. DeWitt-Bukater makes them for all her parties."
"She…uh…she makes them herself?"
"Mom says that’s the only thing she cooks."
"Does she catch them herself, too?"
"I think she buys them from somewhere."
Jack thought he understood a little better why she’d been so mad when he wouldn’t eat the snails—when he had refused to eat something his mother had cooked, she had gotten mad at him, too—but never so mad that she had yelled at him in front of guests. "I still don’t want to try them. I wouldn’t eat them last night and she sent me to my room without dinner."
"Feed them to the dog."
"That’s what Rose said, but her mother caught me trying to hide them in my napkin."
Fabrizio laughed, then stopped when he saw the look on Jack’s face. Changing the subject, he asked, "Do you like sports?"
"Yeah. I was at a football game when…" He trailed off, not wanting to discuss the accident.
"When what?" Fabrizio saw Jack’s expression and stopped. "Oh…before you came here?"
"Yeah…uh…there was a car accident while I was at the game."
Fabrizio shook his head. "That’s awful…and you lost both of your parents in the accident?"
"And my sister." Jack looked down, his hand clenching around the scissors. "I’d rather not talk about it right now, though."
"Sure." Fabrizio tried to think of something else to say. "Hey…have you ever tried boxing?"
"Boxing?"
"Yeah."
"I’ve seen it on TV…but I’ve never tried it. I don’t think my parents would have allowed it."
"Me and some of my friends belong to a youth boxing league. You should try it sometime."
"Maybe I will."
"We almost always practice on Wednesdays after school…you could come by then."
"Sure. Thanks. It sounds like fun." They had reached the end of the hedge. Jack handed the scissors and gloves back to Fabrizio. "I’ll see you on Wednesday, then."
"Cool." Fabrizio stuffed the gloves in his pocket. "Nice to meet you, Jack."
"You, too, Fabrizio."
It was the beginning of a close friendship.