Big Cherry Holler (27 page)

A clean, cool breeze ripples through the bluebells as one perfect white cloud hangs overhead.

“I want you, Ave Maria.” Pete doesn’t look at me when he says this. Instead, I study him. The breeze musses his hair, and his eyes, as they narrow in the sun, are the very color of the bluebells.

“You have a way of saying things that …”

“That what?”

“Unglue me.” I roll over and start rolling down the hill like a child. Pete tucks and rolls beside me. Finally, we stop and I crawl back toward him. We’re laughing so hard, I swear the goatherd, who must be ten miles away, looks in our direction with disgust for disturbing this perfect pastoral setting.

“Pete. You don’t want me.”

“Why shouldn’t I want you?”

“Because I can’t handle anything.”

“What can’t you handle?”

“Haggling. Grief. Lust. My husband’s midlife crisis. You name it. I can’t handle anything. I just run. Find a brave girl to love. That’s what you need.”

“I don’t think you’re the best judge of what I need.”

No one has pursued me or wanted or needed me in this way in ten years. How new it all sounds. When I first heard words like these from Jack, I couldn’t believe it. I love the first moments of discovery with a man. When he tells you that you’re beautiful, and that there is no one like you, and that you’re the only person in the world he can really talk to. What a feeling of connection and purpose!

“Why did you bring me up here?” Pete wants to know.

“I wanted you to see the bluebells.”

“I’ve seen bluebells before,” Pete says in a way that makes me laugh.

“Not like these.”

“No. Not like these.” He looks at me. “You asked me why I came back. Now can I tell you?”

“I owe you forty-seven dollars.”

“No jokes.”

“Okay. No jokes.”

“When you left me at the hotel in Bergamo, I had a rough night.
That’s why I didn’t come up to Schilpario again. I wanted to shake the idea of you and me. And I couldn’t. I had to see you one more time.”

“Why?”

“For the same reason you had me climb this mountain. You want this too.”

I don’t answer him. We lie on our backs, talking up into the sky just like the flowers. Pete rolls over onto me. I move my leg so I can grip my boot into the earth to slide out from under him, but he hooks his leg around mine and I can’t move. I could say something like “get off of me,” but I love the way he smells and the feeling of his breath on me and the way his leg hooks around mine. He slides his hands under my back and lifts me off the ground a little. He kisses my neck. Now there is no place for me to put my hands, so I give up. I wrap my arms around him, and I feel his back and his shoulders, and then I take his face in my hands. I know for sure that I am in Big, Big Trouble.

His lips find mine, so tenderly that I am compelled to say something. But I don’t want to talk. I want to kiss this man right off this mountain. For the first time in years, I am in my body. I feel my bones, my heartbeat, and my breath. My lips burn into his mouth like hot honey. I am beyond what I am. I am so far from what I know, I don’t even have a name. The air cuts through me as though I’m a vapor. I feel his body begin to move against mine. We roll into the bluebells. I want to let him in. The sun blinds me. Pete covers my eyes and kisses me again. He unbuttons my jacket and slides his arms around my waist. I must have a temperature of two hundred degrees—I am throwing heat like a furnace. I pull away from him to breathe and look up over the ridge. The goats and their herder are gone. There are no witnesses! We are alone. I can do what I feel, be what I am, have something just for me! Haven’t I earned this? Isn’t life supposed to be about pleasure and connection and wild kisses? What else is there? To be alive—but how? Isn’t my husband, right this second, probably having sex with a woman who carries a clipboard and
wears too much Charlie cologne? Kiss this man, I cheer myself on. This man understands you.

“Pete. Stop.” I say it so quietly he stops.

“Why?”

“I can’t. That’s the wrong word. I can do this. But I won’t do this.”

“Ave.”

“No. I won’t. I want to. But I won’t. People can’t just do things for selfish reasons. It has to matter.”

“Who are you talking about? People? Do you mean you?”

I shake my head. Somewhere I’ve heard this tone and these words before. Jack MacChesney made the same observation. When someone gets too close, I always talk in generalities and speak on behalf of a large group, in this instance a worldwide community of women who are tempted to have sex with men outside of their marriages. I’m talking about Those Women—I do not say “I.”

“Yes, I mean me. You make me feel good. But this is wrong.”

I button my jacket and tighten the laces on my boots, which loosened when I was rolling around.

“It isn’t wrong. We’re not wrong,” he says quietly.

“No, we’re not. We could be absolutely right for each other. But I have a husband.”

He stands and brushes his hair back with his fingers, as he always does. He walks several steps down the path toward the ridge. I look at him, tall, gleaming in the sun, backlit like an MGM-musical moment—silent, looking at me, waiting for the music to begin.

“Pete?” I kick the bluebells squashed by our kiss-tuck-and-roll back into their standing position with the toe of my boot. “I want to, but I’m not in love with you. I’m sorry. Once there was a man who had one rule. He’d make love only when he was
in
love.”

“That guy was a saint.”

“No, he’s no saint. He’s my husband.” If only I could tell Pete the truth: Jack Mac has not been acting like my husband, and he’s probably been breaking his own rule all summer.

——

I want to savor my last night in Schilpario, so I go to bed early. After rolling around Heidi’s pasture above Schilpario with the Marble Man from New Jersey, I think it’s best if I take some time to be alone. When I told Pete good-bye last night, Etta and Chiara were with me. They seemed more upset than I did. Pete just seemed resigned to the whole thing. I need my solitude and my rest. I am going home to battle. And I have a hunch that I am going to lose.

I turn over onto my side and try not to remember Pete’s kisses. When I lie on my back, I can feel him on top of me. It’s as though he is right here in this bed. Yes, his kisses were real. And real kisses are dangerous. I could go find him and ask for more. Thank God he lives far away!

Maybe I like the idea of that; maybe I like the idea that Pete will be in New Jersey pining for me. I could have made love to him and evened the score with Jack MacChesney. But my conscience is mine. I can’t control what anyone else does, including my husband. I know only my own heart. I couldn’t live with myself if I made love to another man outside my marriage. I’m going to glue this wedding band on my finger from now on. I’m sure there will be days when the idea of Pete and marble fireplaces and the woods of southern New Jersey will call to me like a corner of heaven right here on earth. I just won’t choose that little piece of heaven. I have my safe place, my home in Cracker’s Neck Holler. But it may not be mine anymore. Karen Bell might have taken it from me. I know one thing for sure: I have never been this confused in my life. This mess I am in has made me yearn for my days as an old maid; how simple it all was. This femme-fatale business is a lot of work.

Etta is exhausted on the flight home. She sleeps so peacefully; while she didn’t sleep a wink on the way over, now she’s just another blasé American who uses time on airplanes to catch up on sleep. My daughter became more beautiful this summer. More self-assured.
And her personality and humor came through. How lucky I am to have this great kid. She has written “Stefano” seventy-two times on the back of her notebook. Even Etta developed new romantic muscles in Italy.

I don’t think she senses how much I dread going home. Most of the time I think I’m doing a good job of shielding her from my angst. Maybe I’m fooling myself; maybe she’s like the coral sponge she brought from the beach of Sestri Levante. Maybe she soaks up everything and it becomes a part of her eternal self. Maybe she’ll realize this later and resent me for it. I hope not.

The airport at Tri-Cities is empty. Etta and I deboard the little prop plane and go inside for our bags. I look up to the viewing window on the second floor of the airport and expect to see Jack there, behind the glass like a mannequin in the Big & Tall Men’s Shop. But there is no one there. Etta and I walk into the luggage area.

“Daddy!” Etta screams and rushes toward her father.

He scoops her up in his arms and kisses her. She hugs him and kisses him. Jack looks good; too good, with a tan and a perfect patch of pink sunburn on the bridge of his nose. He looks slim too. His jeans hug his thighs. Must be from the construction work. I don’t want to think about what else he might have been doing, or with whom. I’m all Mommy right now, watching the two of them fussing over each other. I will forever be a sucker for fathers and daughters. Jack looks up at me and grins.

“Isn’t Mama pretty?” Etta says loudly.

“Yes, she is,” Jack says, and kisses me on the lips lightly.

I want to say, “Pretty enough to keep you faithful?” but instead I say, “Thank you.”

“Etta, honey, guess who’s in the truck?”

“Who, Daddy?”

“Why don’t you take a look?”

Etta opens the door of the cab, and Shoo the Cat tiptoes across the
front seat with his tail in a stiff loop like a Christmas ornament hanger. He jumps into her arms.

“God a-mighty, did your luggage give birth over there?” Jack laughs as he hoists our bags into the back.

“What can I tell you, I learned how to haggle,” I tell him, doing my best impression of Gala Nuccio.

Etta talks nonstop on the trip home to Big Stone Gap, and I’m glad. I don’t want to start a conversation with my husband, because I know it will get serious fast. It’s best for all of us if I keep it light. As we roll into the Gap, from the top of the hill on the descent into town, I see the stage lights from the Outdoor Drama. Rose and white beams shoot out into the blue twilight. I have always loved this time of day best. It wasn’t so many years ago that I spent every night at the theater. We drive past, and I don’t mention it. As we make the curve off of Shawnee Avenue, on our way out of town through the southern section and then on to Cracker’s Neck, Etta looks up at her father.

“Daddy, can we stop in Glencoe? I brought Joe something.”

Jack makes the right onto Beamontown Road. When we get to the entry arch, the curlicue gates are locked with a chain. Jack starts to turn around and head for home.

“Park. We’ll jump the fence,” I say. Jack gives me a look. “We do it all the time.” I get out of the truck and go around the arch and over the low fence into the cemetery. Etta hands Shoo to me, then I help Etta scale the fence. Jack follows her. Night is falling and settling on the stones in a haze. I climb the hill to the Mulligan plot. I don’t even feel it in my legs; all those Alpine hikes made me strong. When I climb the last little bit to the plot, I am glad that there is still enough light to see Joe’s headstone. I run my fingers in the gold grooves of his name and through the words “Beloved son and brother.” Black marble. White streaks.

“How do you like the impatiens?” Jack says from behind me. Etta
puts Shoo down on the ground, and he trots right over to the headstone and sniffs around it. The red and white impatiens form a beautiful bright border.

“It’s lovely.”

“Mommy, it’s like the marble on Assunta Mountain.”

“You know what I wish?” I tell Etta. “I wish it was the blue kind with the black glitter in it.”

“What are you talking about?” Jack says gently.

“We visited a marble quarry in Italy.”

“Mama, take that rock off the stone,” Etta says.

“No, leave it,” Jack says.

“Why?”

“Lew Eisenberg left it there. Says it’s something they do in the Jewish faith.”

So we leave the rock. I dig deep into my pocket and place the lapis marble square Pete gave me next to Lew’s rock. “Honey, get Shoo,” I tell Etta. She picks him up. It’s too dark in the cemetery to read the stones. It’s time to go home.

I take a long bath and realize how much I missed my big four-legged white enamel tub and the way our water gushes out of the pipes. In Italy, you always feel like you’re trying to save water. Water barely streams out of their faucets. It’s the only negative thing I can say about the entire country. In fact, if they had better plumbing, it would be a perfect place.

I climb out of the tub without even holding on to the sides. I’m in such good shape, I just lift myself out of the water like Venus. I grip the stopper with my toe and yank it out. I guess my feet got stronger too. I dry off and slip into a new nightgown, white cotton with spaghetti straps and small red-ribbon rosettes on the neckline, a good-bye gift from Giacomina. She’s more a sister to me than a future stepmother.

Jack is in bed when I get there. He’s awake. I slide into my side of the bed and under the covers.

“You look good,” Jack says to me. But it isn’t a come-on. It sounds like a compliment you pay to a really nice dish of chipped beef.

“Thanks. I hiked a lot. I think I’m going to start running. It’s nice to be in shape.”

“Great.”

“Jack?”

“Yeah?” He answered me really fast, so maybe that means he has something to tell me.

“How was your summer?”

“It was pretty good.”

“Did you miss me?”

“It ain’t the same around here without you and Etta.”

“No, I know you missed Etta. But me. Did you miss me?”

Jack looks up at the ceiling. His hands are clasped behind his head. “ ’Course I missed you,” he says to the ceiling.

“Just checking,” I tell him as I turn over. He turns over to spoon against me, but he doesn’t reach around and pull me close. He puts his hand on the side of my thigh instead.

“You really did build some muscles in the Alps,” he says.

And that’s the last thing I remember before I wake the next morning.

Iva Lou meets me at the Mutual’s for breakfast. I have her new purse, and she has a boatload of gossip. The Tayloe Lassiter story is true; she’s been sporting one-carat diamond studs in her ears. Doc Daugherty has put Zackie on antianxiety pills to help him cope with his burglar paranoia. Pearl and Dr. Taye Bakagese are getting very serious.