Big Cherry Holler (25 page)

“Mama, this is like our road,” Etta says.

“Yes, it is,” I tell her.

“What road?” Pete wants to know.

“Cracker’s Neck Holler Road. Where we live.”

“Cracker’s Neck?” Pete laughs.

“Hey. Don’t laugh at Cracker’s Neck,” I tell him.

“Yeah! Don’t laugh,” Etta says with mountain pride.

“If you think that’s funny, you ain’t been to Frog Level and It-lee Bottom,” I tell him.

“I’ve got to see this Big Stone Gap someday,” Pete says. “Yeah, right,” I want to tell him, “come to the Gap and meet my husband.”

At the end of the gravel road is what looks like a crude parking lot, a square of muddy field that has been driven over so many times, there is no grass, just dirt.

“Here we are!” Pete announces.

“What is this?” Etta asks, unimpressed.

“Well, not here. We have to go in there.”

Pete points to the woods. We follow him in, and for a second I think, really, how well do I know this guy? He could kill us and leave us here, and we’d never be found. But when he turns around and motions for the girls and me to walk in front of him, I look at his face and trust him. It’s just the trees, so high they block the sky and create a dank forest, that give me the creeps.

“Take a right,” he tells the girls. They turn and we pass two big rocks; one has a red arrow painted on it.

“Look. Directions!” Etta says. I nod. Chiara nods too; her English is only rudimentary, so I don’t know how she knows what Etta is talking about half the time. But they have that secret language of girls, and now I have proof that it is international. We hear a loud hissing sound, and at first it’s a little scary. But it isn’t the hiss of a machine, and it’s too loud to be a snake.

“These are the mineral baths of Assunta Mountain,” Pete announces. And there, before us, is a waterfall of deep purple rocks so dark they’re almost black, covered with glistening pale green moss, leading to a natural pool of clear water. Steam rises off the top and swirls delicately upward through the trees, like cigarette smoke from a glamorous Bette Davis moment.

I turn to Pete. “Hot springs?”

“Amazing, isn’t it?”

The girls circle around the edge of the pool and dip their hands in.

“It’s warm, Mama,” Etta says, amazed. “It’s like a bath.”

I sit at the edge and take off my shoes and put my feet in. The warmth settles into my entire body. This is bliss. The girls’ laughter seems far away. They climb the side of the hill up to the top of the waterfall.

“Be careful!” I shout. They disappear into the ravine.

“What do you think?” Pete asks.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” I tell him. I wish I were alone here. I would take off all my clothes and lie in the pool and let the minerals and salts soak through my skin and replenish my soul. I can smell the salt as it bubbles in the water. Quickly, I shake off the picture of myself in this pool (just in case Pete Rutledge is a mind reader).

Pete takes his shoes and socks off and rolls up his pants legs. He wades out into the pool.

“Come here,” he says.

At first I don’t move. I look at him out in the mist. I like the idea of him in the mist, like a mirage, something unreal that I can’t touch.

“Come here,” he says again.

I roll my pants legs up, then I stand up in the water and slowly wade out to him. The bottom of the pool is filled with sand, and every once in a while something sharp, like a shell, jabs at me. Pete holds his arms out to me. Just as I’m about to reach him, my foot slides into a hole where the bottom of the pool has given way. Pete reaches out and catches me, scooping me out of the water and into his arms.

“What was that?” I look down at the water.

Pete doesn’t answer me. He holds me. He looks at me. With my arms around his neck, I put my head on his shoulder, just for a second. I feel his heart beating fast; and now I know how it feels to be in his arms. I would stay here forever if I could, with the mist rising off the warm water and surrounding us. Beads of water run down my calf and onto his sleeve. He looks down at my legs; I take my hand and roll my pants legs down. When I look down, he nuzzles his nose into my neck.

I hear my daughter’s distant laughter, and it brings me back to the present.

“Um, maybe, put me down,” I tell him. Pete doesn’t listen; he carries me back to the edge of the pool and sets me down on the ledge.

“Let’s go home,” he says softly.

Pete Rutledge folds into our lives in Schilpario as though he was a part of the vacation plan all along. He eats meals with us; he tours Alta Città and rides the train with us to see the Villa d’Este, the great hotel on Lake Como where the movie stars go. Since the day at the Assunta Mountain, Pete has not said or done anything flirty, and I’m relieved. Maybe fifteen years of spinsterhood taught me how to shut down suitors. I hope so.

Gala sent a telegram inviting us down to Florence. She’s conducting
a tour of the Big Three—Rome, Florence, and Venice—and wants us to meet her for the weekend. I wire back that we’ll meet her, but I don’t send details. At the last minute, Pete decides to join us because he has business in Florence. The girls are thrilled (of course). The train ride is so much fun. Mafalda packed a lunch. The girls whisper and giggle the entire trip, when they’re not begging Pete to play cards or explain what they see outside the window as we speed past.

“Have you ever been to Florence?” Pete asks me.

“On my honeymoon.”

Pete smiles. “Ah,” he says.

When we pull into Florence, I understand why artists must come here. Everywhere you turn you see art—a painting in the way the sun hits a wall of terra-cotta tile, or a sculpture in the pattern of the cobblestone, or a poem in the way an old man with white hair feeds a flock of doves.

“Mama, can we go on the bridge?” Etta points to the Ponte Vecchio, over the Arno River. The simple bridge, a sturdy U-shaped construction of ancient brick the color of ripe peaches, waits for us in the distance.

“Absolutely. But first we have to meet Gala.”

We leave the train station and find our spot in the Piazza della Signoria, where we are surrounded by rows of ornate town houses, connected but painted different shades of gray, pale blue, and beige. Only the shutters in shiny black and the touches of gold in the trim offer any glitz, but it is not necessary; the architecture is artistry enough. We stand on the corner of San Marco Street and wait for Gala.

Etta points across the cobblestone square. “Look! There she is!” Etta has never met Gala but knows her from the videotape. Boy, does she know how to make an entrance. Gala Nuccio emerges from the crowd of tourists like an exotic bird from a lake. The people in the square seem to peel back to make way for the woman who lives up to her dramatic name. Gala walks toward us in a white piqué sundress
with turquoise water lilies embroidered on the hem and bodice. A wide cinch belt gives way to a balloon skirt that grazes her knees. The square neckline lies flat against her brown chest, with just a hint of cleavage peeking above the trim. She wears dark sunglasses and carries an enormous straw hat, which catches in the breeze like a flag. She manages to walk in black stiletto heels on cobblestones without tripping. How does she do it?

How happy Gala is to meet Etta and see me again. How delightful when she speaks rapid, machine-gun Italian with Chiara. How intrigued she is to meet Pete and share a couple of New Jersey anecdotes.

Pete takes the girls to the Cathedral of Saint Paul; Gala takes me for a cappuccino. “Who is
he
?” She squeals the moment Pete is out of earshot.

“Pete?”

“Who else?”

“He’s a new friend.”

“Where is your husband?”

“He decided not to come.”

“Big mistake.”

“There’s nothing going on with Pete and me.”

“Oh really.”

“Gala, I swear there isn’t.”

“Maybe not for you. But there is for him.”

“He knows I’m married.”

“Long, tall, single lattes like that don’t care about wedding rings, honey.”

I feel my wedding band on my finger. Thank God I remembered to wear it today. “He’s been a gentleman.”

“Yeah, but you’re packing two kids. Lose the kids and see how fast he jumps your bones.”

“You’re terrible.”

“You know, your scent doesn’t shut down just because you’re married.
Trust me. Pheromones don’t know from vows. That’s Mother Nature’s little way of causing trouble. We’re animals. Plain and simple animals, no more sophisticated than dogs or cows or pigs. He took one whiff of you, and he’s hooked.”

“I don’t think so.” I can’t help but laugh.

“Jack Mac is an idiot. Letting you loose in Italy. Alone! You’d have to be dead here not to be thinking about sex twenty-four–seven. Is your husband insane? Leaving you alone in a pastoral friggin’ setting with lighting so flattering we all look sixteen? A woman alone in Florence? It’s like throwing raw hamburger to a starving rottweiler.” Gala winks at a man as he passes. He stops, smiles, and continues on. “How I love my mother country!”

As Pete promised, the churches in Florence are filled with art so astonishing that I almost cannot take it in. In the Cathedral of Saint Monica, there is a mural of the saint with her son, Saint Augustine. It’s the moment when he becomes a priest, a dream she held for her rogue son all of his life. The look in her eye, of complete joy at giving her only son to God and yet deep grief at losing him, makes me cry. I look at the corals and pinks in the painting and think of my own son’s skin, how it changed from pink to pale yellow bruises when the fever came just before he died.

“Are you okay?” Pete whispers.

“How do they know?”

“Who?”

“Artists. How do they know how I feel?”

“That’s their job,” Pete tells me. Then, as quickly as I can, I find a door and go outside. Pete follows me.

The girls ask to go for gelato around the corner. Pete and I sit on a bench.

“What happened in there?”

“I don’t know.” I feel the tears come to my eyes again. He puts his arm around me. “Don’t,” I tell him. Quickly, he pulls it away.

“I’m sorry.”

“Etta’s here.”

Why did I say that? So he’ll think that it’s okay to put his arm around me when Etta isn’t around? I don’t want that. Or do I?

“Why did that painting make you cry?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay,” he says gently.

But as soon as he backs off, I realize I
do
want to talk about it. This is precisely what I have shut down and shut off for four years. Isn’t this why I came here? Didn’t I come home to Italy to learn how to feel again? I look at Pete’s face, full of concern. “I … we had a son. After Etta. His name was Joe. He died three years ago.”

“How?”

“Leukemia.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was the colors of the paint and the brush strokes. They looked like Joe’s bruises.” I look up at Pete, and I swear he understands what I saw. I don’t know how or why, but he does. Married or not, it doesn’t matter to me: I need the comfort of another human being, so I let Pete hold me; but I’m not in his arms, I’m somewhere else, with my son.

Etta and Chiara have not returned. I look for them in the crowd. Pete says, “The line was long at the café, the girls won’t be back for a while.” I sit back. Then, Pete catches my eye in a way that tells me that he’s going to kiss me. I shoot up off the bench and call for Etta. Chiara comes around the corner, followed by Etta. They’re laughing. I motion for them to join us.

“Mama, are you okay?” Etta looks at me, then at Pete.

“I’m okay. I was thinking about Joe.”

“Oh,” she says.

“Who is Joe?” Chiara wants to know.

“I’ll tell you all about him,” Etta tells her.

“Who needs siesta?” Pete asks and picks up my book and bag. The
girls and I take our room at the hotel. Pete goes to his room and tells us he has big plans for our dinner.

Pete takes us to Cielo, a little restaurant on a side street. It is quaint—the walls filled with old pottery and the ceiling covered with tiny white lights on wires. After the most delicious dinner of my life, gnocci (tiny, light pasta ovals made of potato—“gnocci” means knees) in delicate white cream, baby lamb chops grilled with fresh sage, a glass of hearty Chianti, hot espresso, and a bite of Etta’s cream puff, I feel better.

After supper, on our way to the Ponte Vecchio, Pete surprises me and takes us by Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning’s apartment on the corner of the Piazza San Felice. He points up to the windows and I imagine Elizabeth there, recording the parade on the street below in vivid detail. “You think of everything,” I tell Pete. He just smiles.

Gala is off to Venice with her busload of Americans. (She had to skip dinner with us to take her tourists to the Opera.) We’re leaving in the morning, back to Schilpario. As the girls run ahead, I can hear their laughter as it echoes off the stone walls of the narrow side streets.

“When I get you home to Schilpario, I have to go down to Rome.”

I feel a pang of disappointment. What did I think, that Pete was here to entertain me ad infinitum? Or at least until my vacation ended and I was ready to pack up and go home. “Business?” I ask as nonchalantly as I can manage.

“Yeah.” He pauses. “I probably won’t see you again.”

“I understand.” Of course I do. Pete saw me fall apart about my son and realized that there is more to this picture than he realized. Fine. It’s best if he goes now. I shouldn’t look forward to seeing him, and I don’t like counting on him to take us places and show us around and make us laugh.

“I’m getting too wrapped up here,” Pete tells me as we walk.

“I know,” I tell him. Boy, do I know.

T
here’s a puppet show in Bergamo that Giacomina wants to take the girls to, so Papa plans a day down in the city with them. Zia Meoli will have us all over for dinner. I decide to go along at the last minute. I want to shop while the girls are at the show. I haven’t heard from Pete since he dropped us off after the trip to Florence. It’s been about a week, and the longer he’s gone, the clearer I become. It’s amazing how everyday feelings can get out of control in Italy. As the date of our departure draws closer, I turn to practical matters. I really need to shop. The dollar is pretty strong, and I haven’t bought gifts for Iva Lou and Fleeta. They want leather purses, and I am going to deliver northern Italy’s finest to them.