Milk Glass Moon (15 page)

Instead of seeing Etta and Stefano in that canoe, I see Jack and me when we were young, before Etta was born. Having children makes a woman mark time in a different way. Sometimes it takes a moment to remember how old I am, but I can tell you in years, months, and days how old Etta is and how old Joe would have been.

Jack turns and looks at me. “What are you so quiet about?”

“What are we going to do when she’s gone?”

“I guess we’ll be lovers again.”

“Just like that?”

“You got a better idea?”

“Not really,” I tell him.

“Then that’s the plan.”

I am happy to let my husband row the canoe and answer the big questions. “Whatever you say, honey.”

I’m going to miss Stefano when he goes, not just because he’s good around the house but because of his personality. He’s genuinely interested in everyone around him. I would say his summer in the Gap has worked out beautifully. This is his last weekend here. Tonight he’s going with us to the Fold.

“Yoo-hoo, Ave?” Iva Lou calls from the front porch.

“What are you doing here?”

“Takin’ y’all to the Fold. I saw Stefano down in town, and he told me to tell you he got sidetracked and to go on to the Fold without him. So shake a leg. The Reedy Creek Band is playin’ promptly at eight, and I don’t want to miss Dr. Smiddy.”

“The father or the son?” I ask Iva Lou, grabbing my purse.

“Either one. I don’t like to be late. Besides, when you’re late for the Fold, the field fills up, and then you gotta park in Gate City and walk ten miles.”

“Let’s go, Etta!” I call up the stairs.

Iva Lou wolf-whistles. I turn to see why, and have to say, “Etta, you look beautiful.” She is wearing a denim skirt, a black T-shirt, and sandals, and has on hoop earrings, just like her aunt Iva Lou.

“Those mountain boys are gonna be all over you. But don’t you worry, we’ll protect ye,” Iva Lou says.

“Thanks,” Etta says, blushing. “Where’s Dad?”

“He went to the car show in Knoxville with Rick Harmon,” I tell her.

“Oh. So it’s just us and Stefano?”

“Stefano isn’t coming either. He sent Aunt Iva Lou to take us.”

“But it’s his last Saturday night here,” she says.

“He changed his plans, honey. Don’t let that hurt your feelings.”

“But he’s leaving on Monday!” Etta says emotionally.

“So he’s squeezing in one last rendezvous with Serena Mumpower.” Iva Lou sounds impatient.

“A date?” Etta looks confused. Her posture collapses a little.

“You know he’s been seeing that Serena Mumpower. ’Course, with his work schedule and her dance card forever on the full side, it’s catch-as-catch-can, but Serena is a catch-can girl.”

Etta’s eyes fill with tears. “Excuse me,” she says, and runs up the stairs.

“Did I say something wrong?” Iva Lou asks me.

“I don’t think so. Give me a second.” I run up the stairs after Etta. She has closed the door to her room. I throw it open and follow her up the second set of stairs. “Honey, are you all right?”

Etta doesn’t answer. She is crying.

“I’ll be right back,” I tell her, and run back down to Iva Lou. “Iva, go without us. She’s upset.”

“Oh, Lordy, let me talk to her.”

“No, no, it’s okay. It isn’t you. I just don’t think we can make it tonight. I’m sorry.”

“No problem. Call me later. Let me know what happened.”

“Absolutely.”

Lyle taps the horn, and Iva Lou hurries out the front door.

I go upstairs and sit next to Etta on the bed and place my hand gently on her back.

“Oh Mama.” She’s still crying.

“What is it, honey?”

“I like him so much.”

“Stefano is very nice, I know. But he’s eighteen, honey.”

“I know.”

I point out the obvious. “And he lives in Italy.”

“I know,” she wails.

“Is he the first young man you’ve ever liked?” I ask her gently.

She nods. “He’s cute, and he’s not stupid like the boys I know.”

“Those are two good reasons to like a guy.”

“And he listens to me.”

“That’s good too.”

“But I’m just a kid to him, aren’t I?” She punches her pillow, then lies down on it.

Part of me wants to say I hope so, but this is Etta’s first big crush, and I have to be careful. “No, I think he thinks you’re a smart girl.”

“He does?”

“Sure.”

“Do you think he thinks I’m pretty?”

“He’d be crazy if he didn’t.”

Etta kicks off her sandals, which hit the floor with a thud, and it’s as though the rattan sandals have magical powers—when she wore them down the stairs, she was a young lady, but now she looks like a thirteen-year-old again, with puffy eyes, thin legs, and a broken heart.

“Why would he want to see Serena Mumpower on his last Saturday night in America?” Now Etta sounds angry, and I want to encourage that. She should let all of these feelings out. “I thought he liked
us.
”

“He does.”

“Then why does he need Serena?”

I thought my husband had a preliminary sex talk with Etta, but I see that he evidently passed right over the Nature of a Man and went straight for cellular reproduction. I make a mental note to kill him when he returns from the car show. I scratch my head, hoping that the words will come. What the hell, I’m just going to wing it. “Men are funny,” I say loudly. Etta looks confused. “A man doesn’t necessarily go out with a girl because she’s smart or beautiful or because he has similar interests. Sometimes he goes out with a girl because she’s no trouble.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither did I until my fortieth birthday, so bear with me.”

“Okay.” Etta blows her nose and looks at me with Great Expectations, as though I’m an oracle sitting on an altar with smoke coming out of my ears and soon will predict the romantic proceedings of the next century.

“Sometimes, for a man, there isn’t a great romance involved. Sometimes it’s just killing time. Sometimes he picks somebody to have dinner with and a conversation, so that it’s light and uncomplicated, and feelings aren’t so important or even involved. Sometimes he picks a girl to be, I don’t know, a diversion.”

“Do you think he’ll marry her?”

“Oh, Etta, I don’t think there’s any way he’ll marry her. Is that what you’re worried about?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because Stefano Grassi is my destiny,” Etta says without a single note of irony or drama.

“How do you know that?”

“Because of the stars.”

“Do you mean the horoscope in
Seventeen
magazine, or the stars in the sky?”

“The ones I see through my telescope.”

“What do they tell you?”

“There are patterns to the stars and planets. And sometimes it seems like there’s a big shift up there, that everything is moving, that sometimes stars get lost and disappear. But they don’t disappear, they’re forever fixed. They always come back to their point of origin.”

“So you think that you’re like a star, and Stefano is like a star, and you’re somehow fated to connect?”

Etta nods, and for a moment I think she’s going to throw her arms around me. Right now I
am
her friend as well as her mother, though it’s a new, and probably temporary, place for both of us.

“That’s beautiful. But what about stars that burn out and fall away?”

“Those weren’t meant to be.”

First of all, I think I just had a sex talk with my daughter by way of Copernicus, and that gives me some comfort; and second, I still can’t believe that she knows so much about something I never think about—stars and constellations and universes that exist or don’t—and that she believes somehow all of this plays directly into her life and affects her choices and her future. What thirteen-year-old thinks about life on such a cosmic scale? She should have a crush on Cute Trevor or Medium-Cute Trevor, not on an eighteen-year-old Italian hunk here on a work permit. But she’s been hurt tonight, deflated, and I can’t bring myself to tell her that this will pass and next week it won’t hurt so much, that Stefano will fly home and school will start and band practice will resume and that all of a sudden boys her own age will become alternately interesting and unbearable to her, that there will be many crushes, many mini-romances, many hurts, heartbreaks, and disbeliefs on her way to True Love Town. But she won’t hear that tonight even if I say it, because the object of her ardor is dancing with Serena from Appalachia to a chorus of “Hot Buttered Beans” on the floor of the Carter Family Fold. Tonight she loves Stefano Grassi, and if she’s anything like her mother, it’s mostly because she can’t have him.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Don’t I look older than I am?” Etta says proudly as she looks at her new passport photo.

“You look fifteen because you
are
fifteen,” I tell her.

“You’re no fun.” Etta smiles and goes upstairs to finish packing.

Isn’t time flying fast enough for my daughter? Jack has been teaching her how to drive; the bottle of Mr. Bubble that has been a staple in our bathroom since she was a girl has been replaced by vanilla bath beads; and the cupcake tins that used to hold her pebbles, fishhooks, and spare change are filled with different colors of eye shadow and lip gloss. What other road signs do we need to direct us toward womanhood?

I promised Etta that we would go back to Italy by her fifteenth summer, and she has held me to it. Of course, I don’t need much encouragement when it comes to Italy, and Jack needs even less. He hasn’t been back since our honeymoon, and he wants to take his Italian cooking to the next level. To do that, he needs to be in its country of origin.

I’ve convinced Iva Lou to go with us this time (to fulfill her life-long dream of seeing It-lee and also to celebrate the fact that she’s been cancer-free for two years). Lyle has begged off; the only foreign place he wants to go is Hawaii, so Iva Lou promised him a trip next year. She’s already had a conversation with local tour organizer/high school guidance counselor Jack “Nobody Comes Home Without a Lei” Gibbs.

I invited Theodore to join us as well, but he and Max took a share in a house on New York’s Long Island for the summer weekends. I’ll have to send them lots of postcards to make them jealous.

Etta has dated the same boy for a year, a nice kid named Dakota Clasby. She’s gone to school with him all of her life, and the part I like best is that she likes him, but it’s as much a friendship as a romance. Jack thinks I’m nuts and says I don’t see what’s really going on. But Etta talks to me about him, and I listen, and I don’t see any need to worry. Besides, she gets excellent grades and even had an internship with the Thompson & Litton architectural firm in Norton. As much as she loves astronomy, she has come to love building design and construction more (thanks to her father!).

The planning of our trip has brought out the true librarian in Iva Lou. She has been packing for six months. She kept a log for three weeks to figure out the exact amounts of shampoo, soap, and personal-hygiene items she uses over the course of twenty-one days, so she’ll have all she needs. She read an article on how to roll clothes instead of folding them square (it also involves tissue paper—don’t ask). She has an adapter for her blow-dryer, a mini tool kit for breakdowns, and a cosmetics case that looks like Doc Daugherty’s satchel, filled with small vials and tubes. She has broken in three pairs of walking shoes and one pair of stilettos (for a night out in Venice).

I’m keeping it simple. One bag for my clothes and a backpack for everything else. Jack has a natural sense of how to pack lightly (all those years of camping), and has warned us that he isn’t hauling bags all over northern Italy, so we’d better keep them light.

Gala Nuccio, my honorary sister and our family travel agent (who helped me track down my father and then conspired with Jack to bring him to Southwest Virginia for a visit), has had the time of her life planning this trip for us. She called upon many of her personal contacts in Italy so that we will have tickets waiting in Florence to go to the Uffizi Gallery; accommodations at a small private hotel in Venice; and a tour of a pottery factory in Deruta. During my previous visits to Italy, I have stayed mainly in Schilpario, but this time we’re branching out and taking in more of the Tuscan countryside (bringing Iva Lou gives me a good excuse to act like a typical tourist). This way Schilpario and Bergamo will be the dessert of our grand tour.

“Ma! Spec is here!” Etta hollers from the front porch.

“Load the bags, please,” I yell back from the bathroom, where I’m putting on my lipstick. I slathered moisturizer on this morning, knowing the plane ride would dehydrate me.

Jack pokes his head into the bathroom. “You look great. Let’s go.”

“I’m coming,” I tell him, dropping my mascara wand in the sink.

“What are you nervous about?”

“I don’t know.”

“Fleeta’s coming over to feed Shoo.”

“I know.”

“Are you worried about the plane?”

“No.”

“What is it, then?”

“You know I get funny feelings sometimes.” I wish I knew what’s giving me the jitters. What am I afraid to find in Italy? (Ever since I went to Sister Claire years ago, I’m a little
too
in touch with my inner voice—sometimes it’s downright noisy!)

I grab my purse and follow Jack outside. Etta and Jack have loaded the luggage into the Rescue Wagon; evidently, Spec’s car is in the shop.

“I hope the mayor doesn’t see us riding around in an official vehicle,” I tell Spec.

Spec smiles. “I called him, he gave me permission.”

“Good thinking.”

“Come on, Ave. You ride shotgun, just like the old days.”

Iva Lou is in the backseat with Jack, and Etta is in the way back with the bags but perfectly happy to be there.

“Honey-o, I have never been so excited in my life!” Iva Lou straightens the collar on her pale blue denim jacket. Her hair is a masterpiece, highlighted with gold streaks and styled in the upsweep made famous by Verna Lisi.

“You look like a blond Italian goddess,” I tell her.

“That’s what I was goin’ fer! Well, that and a little Ivana Trump thrown in for effect,” she says proudly.

“Let’s go, Spec!” Etta calls out pleasantly.

“You got it, kid!” Spec floors it, kicking up dust as we peel down the old stone road. Spec speeds through the Wildcat Holler so fast, we’re practically off the ground as we make the turn onto Kingsport Road.

“Look, Etta. Your buddies are at the Quik Stop!” Spec points.

“That’s fine, Spec. Keep driving.” Etta’s tone is even and dry. She is not above being embarrassed to be in this bright orange station wagon with the white stripes.

“Let’s send you off to It-lee with a bang!” Spec laughs and puts on the siren. Etta buries her head in her purse as Iva Lou and Jack laugh.

Iva Lou flirts with every Red Cap when we land at New York’s JFK Airport, and when she tries to tip the man who hauls her bags to our gate, he won’t take her money (that’s never happened to
me
). Once we’re on the plane, she sits back in her seat and looks out the window. “I’m so happy. How do you like my outfit?” Iva Lou is wearing a simple black jumpsuit with a cinch belt, her jacket, now thrown over her shoulders, and very cute black loafers. “I love it. It fits like a glove.”

“Can’t tell I’m wearing falsies, can you?”

“Not a bit.”

“You wanna know my secret?”

“Sure.”

“Different boob sizes.”

“What?”

“Yep, I have a small case of them in various sizes. See, different outfits require different boobs. A turtleneck needs high and small; a peasant blouse requires larger and centered; a suit jacket, the classic Jane Russell torpedoes; and so on. You can bet I wasn’t goin’ to It-lee, the land of Claudia Cardinale and Gina Lollobrigida, flat as Fleeta’s tortillas. No, I want to look every inch the American beauty rose.”

“Well, you do.”

“Sometimes I can’t believe I made it.” Iva Lou leans back in her seat.

“I always knew you’d come to Italy.”

“No, I mean I can’t believe I made it, period. Through the cancer. That fortune-teller was right.”

“She was totally off! She told you smooth sailing, no problems. We should have gotten your money back.”

“No, ole Sister Claire predicted everything.”

“What?”

“Yeah. I lied to you that night. I told you that the news was good because I didn’t want you to worry. The truth is, Sister told me I was in for a real tough time and to just hold on, that it would pass.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me!”

“Now, what good would
that
have done? It wouldn’t have changed a thing. I still would have gotten sick. Still would have had the double mas’. And I guess in the back of my mind, I wanted to prove Sister Claire wrong. But I couldn’t. She knew something I didn’t. So much for knowin’ myself better than anyone else does. That’s the last time I don’t believe a mystic.”

After a smooth flight (we were all too excited to sleep), we land in Milan, then jump into the rental car and head south to Florence. Jack researched restaurants and found a jewel on a side street near the Duomo. The decor is simple: comfortable upholstered chairs and square marble tables. Once we’ve ordered, Jack excuses himself and goes into the kitchen to watch the food preparation. He read an article in
Food & Wine
magazine that said Italian chefs love to be observed in the kitchen, so he’s taking them up on it. He wrote letters to a couple of restaurants requesting observation time and they agreed.

“Is he going to watch the chefs make every meal we eat in Italy?” I wonder aloud.

“Ma, he wants to open a restaurant. Why do you think he tries recipes out a million times?” Etta says.

“He’s a perfectionist?”

“No, he’s experimenting. He says he’s tired of construction.” Etta shrugs.

I look at Iva Lou. “Better to open a restaurant in a midlife crisis than to buy a Harley and trade in the wife for a new model,” she adds.

“Who’s going to keep an Italian restaurant in business in Big Stone Gap? Stringer’s is a hit because it’s like a Baptist potluck supper with the steam tables and the all-you-can-eat Friday-night shrimp fries. Nobody in Big Stone is going to pay for fancy pasta,” I say.

“Who says he wants to open it in Big Stone Gap?” Etta says without looking directly at me.

“Well, where does he want to open this restaurant, then?” I sound pitiful, but I am out of the loop on this one.

“Kingsport, maybe. Knoxville. I don’t know. Ask him.”

“I didn’t think he was serious about it. I thought he was kidding around. You know, like when I say I want to go back to college and study spelunking.”

Etta gives me one of those looks like I’m insane, snaps a bread stick in two, and munches on it quietly. Iva Lou looks at me and pours me a glass of wine, then pours one for herself.

“Excuse me,” I tell the girls. I pretend I’m heading to the ladies’ room, but instead I take a sharp left and sneak past some red-and-gold-striped curtains with enormous red tassels across the top, which separate the kitchen from the wait station. A waiter looks up at me, I smile, and he shrugs, so I enter the kitchen, hovering close to the curtains, so as not to draw attention to myself. Here is something I have never seen before: my husband is assisting the chef. The chef, a short, balding man around sixty, continues to work at a clip as he explains what he is doing. He allows Jack to take the homemade noodles off a drying rack and throw them in the boiling water; he pinches salt into the water and hands Jack a slotted spoon to stir with. When Jack stirs too hard, the chef grabs the spoon and demonstrates a gentler technique. About three minutes go by before Jack asks the chef if he can drain the noodles. The chef looks at Jack suspiciously, and Jack indicates the sink, then explains that in America, we strain the noodles in a colander and run water over them before we add the sauce. The chef feigns a heart attack and asks Jack to watch closely as he lifts some of the steaming noodles out of the water into a colander, shakes them, and puts them aside. He explains to Jack that if you rinse the noodles, you kill the flavor of the pasta and make it impossible for the noodles to absorb the sauce.

The chef then takes another pan and pours olive oil into it. In a flash he dices up some fresh garlic and throws it in. As it sizzles, he takes strands of pancetta, a salty ham sliced so thin it’s see-through, and lays them in the pan (it reminds me of the hunk of pork fatback Fleeta uses when she makes collard greens). Then the chef dumps in about a cup of fresh cream, followed by some pasta. Quickly he cracks two eggs on top of the mixture and, just as fast, tosses the eggs through the pasta and the sauce below until all the noodles are coated evenly. The pasta is whispery golden, like yellow rose petals when they’ve faded.

You’d think I would know this from my mother’s cooking, but the truth is, we rarely ate pasta. Mostly we had risotto, a creamy rice dish, in many variations. When we did make pasta, it was often baked in small pots, or layered like lasagna in a pan, or gnocci (which means “knees”), a pasta made from potatoes and flour (rolled by hand into small round puffs light as clouds and coated in a light cream sauce). Spaghetti with tomato sauce was not a typical meal in my mother’s hometown of Bergamo.

Jack is still unaware that I’m watching (a testament to his passion for cooking) and asks a question. The chef motions for Jack to remain quiet, and what he does next is pure art. He takes the pan and turns to a butcher block behind him. He has only to pivot, like a ballerina; every spoon and pot, strainer and lid, hangs within overhead reach, and his pristine cutting board and knives are lined up along the counter. The chef flips a wooden cap off a wheel that is a foot and a half across and about ten inches deep; at first I don’t know what it is, but then I realize it’s Parmesan cheese. He takes the steaming pasta, now coated with the buttery mixture, and throws it into the wheel—which is dug out deeply in the center, from many such dishes, I imagine—and then, putting the hot pan aside, he picks up two wooden instruments (they actually look like hands) and tosses the pasta while a thin layer of cheese peels off the sides and bottom of the wheel and onto the pasta.

“Hi, honey,” Jack says, looking up at me. I am startled and smile back.
“Mia sposa,”
my husband says, introducing me.

“Italiana?” the chef says, smiling in approval at me.

“I’m a better one having seen you cook,” I tell him in Italian.

“Andiamo!”
he tells the waiter, who takes the plates from the worktable and hurries them to our table. “Go. Go. Eat!” The chef pats Jack on the back. I practically run to the table. I can’t wait to taste the masterpiece.

When it arrives at our table, Iva Lou rolls the tender pasta around the fork and takes a dainty bite. “Jesus Christmas. This is better than—”