Milk Glass Moon (16 page)

“You can say it,” Etta says as she dives into her spaghetti puttanesca.

“It’s better than sex,” Iva Lou declares. “And you know for me to say that, well, it’s a mouthful.”

I take a bite and agree. Jack chews carefully and closes his eyes, then he reaches for his wine and takes a taste.

“I think this is the best meal I have ever had,” he says, opening his eyes.

“Me too, honey,” I tell him, squeezing his leg under the table.

“Now, y’all, none of that. This is Mood Food and therefore dangerous,” Iva Lou says as she savors another bite and nudges Etta. “We single gals have to be very careful tonight. This sauce has magical powers. We may fall under the spell of some Eye-talian man.”

“But you’re married,” Etta reminds her.

“You sure know how to bring the groove down.”

“Uncle Lyle would want your groove down.” Etta laughs loudly, and Iva Lou joins her.

For a moment I wish I had the camera out; I would capture this moment forever. But I decide not to. I want to retain this night in the warmth of memory, this meal consumed in an Italian bistro where the walls are washed in an iridescent gloss the color of pumpkins, where the candlelight makes us all look like movie stars, and where, behind the striped curtains, the chef stands proudly, watching with delight as we eat.

I am so glad we rented a car instead of taking trains, I’m thinking as we drive through the hills of Umbria, the gentle green gateway to Tuscany. The four of us feel safe and at home in the familiar landscape of small towns connected by single roads.

Jack has been very cagey about plans for Tuscany. He knows that I wanted to spend more time in Florence because I love the Duomo, the art galleries, and the Ponte Vecchio, loaded with more gold treasures than Cleopatra’s jewelry box. “Ladies, next stop is Loro Ciuffenna,” he announces.

“She sounds pretty,” Iva Lou teases.

“She is a place, Iva Lou,” Jack corrects her.

“Why do you want to go there?” Etta asks as she studies her map.

“I want to meet the King of Olive Oil,” Jack says.

We girls have a good laugh. “Is there such a person?” I ask him.

“According to Renzo, the chef in Florence.”

“What’s the king’s name?”

“Giuseppe Giaquinto.”

“He sounds sexy,” Iva Lou decides.

“I don’t know about that. I do know that some chefs will use only Tuscan olive oil when they cook or bake, but Renzo uses only Giaquinto olive oil.”

“That’s a pretty strong commitment.”

“I thought so. Renzo gave me the address and called ahead.”

I can’t believe that this is
my
husband making plans with total strangers in a foreign country. He’s from Big Stone Gap, a place so small no one’s ever heard of it, and yet when he ventures outside its borders he becomes daring, curious, and bold. This is not the man I married, but I have to say, I like him.

Loro Ciuffenna is south of Florence and west of Siena at the foot of the mountains. We drive up a mountain pass that is worse than any in Wise County: extremely narrow, hollowed out, and pitted from wear, with no guardrails on the driver’s side. On the opposite side is a menacing wall of jagged rock, which, if you drive too close, could peel the car doors off like the lid on a can of tuna fish.

“This is a tight space,” Iva Lou says, shutting her eyes and sounding like she feels slightly ill.

“Wait till we go to Schilpario. The Alps are really, really high. And the roads are more narrow than shoelaces,” Etta warns her.

I hadn’t mentioned any of this to Iva Lou. Why scare her so far in advance? Luckily, we begin our descent to the town through a picturesque passage. The road widens, and the terrain becomes smooth. On one side is a deep green valley, and on the other, a hillside dotted with olive trees almost precisely the same distance apart.

“That ground under them trees looks mighty dry,” Iva Lou observes.

“It’s supposed to. That’s how you grow good olives,” Jack tells her.

Etta makes Jack stop so she can get a picture of a white Tuscan farmhouse with a brown tile roof, set back off the road behind a spectacular iron gate. Even the most ordinary things are artful in Italy.

“That’s the two-story traditional farmhouse I’ve been looking for. I want examples of architecture from the eighteenth century on,” Etta says as she gets back into the car. “See the front? That opening on the ground floor is where the animals stay, and the second floor is where the family lives.”

“I don’t know if I’d want a cow that close to me,” Iva Lou says. “ ’Course my mamaw had a goat that lived in her kitchen. Fresh milk on tap. So I guess it ain’t so bad to keep an animal indoors.”

“Everything stays warmer that way in the winter,” Etta tells us.

“You could be a tour guide,” Jack tells her proudly.

I turn to look at Etta, who reloads her camera and smiles.

“This looks mighty modern,” Iva Lou comments as we pull up to the metal gates outside the Giaquinto olive-oil plant in Loro Ciuffenna.

“Look up,” Jack says, pointing to the hill above the factory. “There’s your old Italian town with the castle.” He presses the speaker panel. When he mentions Renzo’s name, the gates open instantly, revealing a simple stone building, a long rectangle whose only marking is an olive tree in relief over the glass doors. Iva Lou quickly powders her nose and snaps her compact shut. “I ain’t meeting the King of Olive Oil with a shiny nose.”

A young woman around thirty greets us on the steps of the factory. “Welcome!” she says in an accent that can only be described as American Deep South.

“Lordy mercy, honey, where you from?” Iva Lou wants to know.

“Mississippi.”

“Bless your heart!” Iva Lou looks at us and nods in approval.

“My name is Elaine.” She is tall and slim, with long brown hair tied back in a simple bow. Her heavy-lidded green eyes are rimmed in soft brown, but that is her only makeup; she is a natural beauty. We follow her into the hallway; several doors lead off it to small offices. She takes us to the back, to the largest office. The sign on the door reads G. GIAQUINTO.

Mr. Giaquinto motions for us to enter, though he is on the phone shouting every Italian curse word I know. We do enter the office but hover by the door, afraid to interrupt. Giuseppe motions for us to sit, in a broad sweeping gesture that tells us to follow his instructions immediately. He continues to rant to the person on the other end of the line. Iva Lou’s nose is now shiny, as is the rest of her face. She’s nervous, poor thing; she’s never heard anyone go full-out Eye-talian before. Suddenly, without warning, Giuseppe slams the phone down. Etta jumps in her seat a bit, then quickly shifts.

“Welcome,” he says, looking up at us. The King of Olive Oil stands. He’s around five feet eleven, trimly built, and simply dressed in black trousers and a white button-down shirt. He is in his mid-forties and has a handsome face, not rugged but refined. His nose ends in an elfin tip that swoops up (he’s optimistic), and he has a high forehead with a widow’s peak.

“You study me intently,” he says to me with a smile.

“Tell him,” Iva Lou says under her breath.

“Tell me what?” Giuseppe looks at me.

“I’m Iva Lou Wade Makin.” Iva Lou extends her hand. Giuseppe takes it and shakes it with both hands. “I’m a librarian, and my friend here studied the ancient art of Chinese face reading. And she’s right good at it.”

“What does my face say?” Giuseppe asks, turning to me.

“That you’re a brilliant perfectionist,” I tell him. Elaine laughs from the doorway.

“You think that’s funny?” Giuseppe says to her with a wink. “You met my girlfriend?”

“I find it hard to believe that a robust Eye-talian such as yourself had to go all the way to Mississippi, U.S.A., to find himself a woman,” Iva Lou comments.

“She found me. At a food show in San Francisco.”

“And my life has never been the same,” Elaine says dryly.

Jack Mac introduces himself, and then all of us, with beautiful southern manners. Giuseppe seems soothed by my husband’s tone and latches on to him as we tour the factory. I don’t mind being left out of their conversation as I look at the rows of dark green glass bottles. The labels are beautiful, and some have gold leaf on the edges, an elegant touch. The explanations of the contents are pure poetry.

“You really believe in your product,” I tell Giuseppe.

“Olive oil is a religion to me. I worship its natural perfection.”

Iva Lou learns that olive oil is the best moisturizer. Etta takes pictures as Iva Lou rubs olive oil into her hands.

“Can you use olive oil for everything?” I wonder aloud.

“Absolutely. If it’s good,” Giuseppe tells us. “Good olive oil, meaning it is made from the olives grown here in Tuscany. When you eat olive oil, it nourishes your body. When you apply it topically, it soothes your skin. You need never use anything on your skin but olive oil, and if you ingest anything but this natural oil in cooking, I think you are insane.”

I rattle off brands sold in the States. Giuseppe grandly dismisses them with a wave of his hand. “I would not put those oils in my car.”

I name an expensive brand.

“I would not wash my feet with that!”

“Why?”

“Because the olives come from all over the place and are picked whenever it’s convenient, not when nature dictates. Those brands take olives from Tunisia, for example, Greece, where the standards of pressing are not good, so the product is not pure. They mash everything and anything together. Stems! Leaves! Crap! They add colors to olive oils. Either green dye to make it look extra virgin, or gold to make it look standard. This is a black mark on our industry, but it happens all the time.”

“How can you tell good olive oil from bad?” Iva Lou asks.

“Once you taste my oil, you cannot ingest another. The other oils taste like gasoline. You’ll see. My family has made olive oil since nineteen thirty. I’ve been running the company for the past twenty years. To not be educated in this, I would have to be the village idiot. Let me show you.”

We pile into Giuseppe’s van to tour the farm where his olives are picked. As we drive along a long, dusty road, he points to the trees, small and spindly with a sprinkling of green leaves, many anchored to the ground by string. “I use the best pickers. Some have been doing this for fifty years. It takes a trained eye to know a good olive. They can feel if the olive is good as they pick it. I never have to check their work. They are more selective than me!” He laughs.

“I find
that
hard to believe, Big G,” Iva Lou tells him, giving him a nickname now that she feels at home.

As Giuseppe explains the evolution of olive oil from tree to bottle, we are mesmerized. It really is a simple process, with three steps: growing, harvesting, and mashing. Etta is amazed that the pits, as well as the meat of the olive, are crushed to make the oil.

“I work in the only pure manufacturing business in the world. Nature does the work, I collect the gold.” Giuseppe raises his hands in victory. “But I must be a soldier, watching every step without taking my eyes off it for a second! If I look away, maybe an imperfect olive makes its way into the tubs, or the storage drums are the wrong temperature, or God knows what could happen. I have to watch everything!”

“Now you taste.” Giuseppe gives Jack three small pieces of unsalted bread, then pours three types of oil into small cups and sniffs the first before handing it to Jack. Giuseppe taps the side of his nose. “This, this is my la-bore-a-tory.”

Jack sniffs the oil, then dips the bread into the cup and tastes it. “This one is spicy.”

“Aha! Good taste buds. This oil is made from olives that have just begun to ripen. Full-bodied, yes?”

Jack nods and tastes the next oil sample. “This is . . . flowery.”

“You are a genius! This oil is made from olives about to peak. We snatch them at the last possible moment.” Giuseppe claps his hands together. “I may have to hire your husband.”

Jack tastes the third sample. “This is very mild.”

“Because the olives it comes from are very ripe! Now try this one.” Giuseppe gives Jack a sample from an unmarked bottle. He tastes it and makes a face.

“What is wrong?” Giuseppe asks.

“I’m sorry. This is bad.”

“Of course it is! Tell your wife! It is the brand she cooks with in the States! Terrible! I would not use this to—”

“Wash my feet!” Etta, Iva Lou, and I say in unison.

“There is a huge difference. Really, you cannot compare,” Jack says to us.

As we pile back into our car, Giuseppe and Elaine wave from the steps of the factory. Iva Lou snaps a few pictures of them from the car. Elaine promises to ship a case of olive oil to Big Stone Gap. “We can be in Bergamo by sunset,” Jack promises.

Etta puts her hand on my shoulder, and I reach back to take her hand. She is as happy as I am to return to Bergamo and Schilpario, to our Italian Alps. I grasp her hand tightly and look back at her. Etta loosens her grip first, but I continue to hold her hand, pulling it close to my face. We’re both a little embarrassed; it reminds us of when Etta was little and we were close. Then she does something she hasn’t done in years—she leans forward and rests her head on my seat. I think about what I have learned from my daughter over the years. She taught me that the stars, even when they seem to disappear, always return to their origins. And here we are, back to the place we came from, only one generation after my mother left to find her destiny in America. Who knew we would return so soon?

“There. Dad. Turn there.” Etta leans between us into the front seat, pointing to the turn to Via Davide.

“You know where it is?” Jack can’t believe she remembers.

“Third house on the left,” Etta says confidently. “Black shutters. Lemon trees. There!”

“It’s adorable.” Iva Lou climbs out of the car. “How long’s it been since you were here?”

“Seven years,” I say.

“And it hasn’t changed a bit!” Etta says excitedly, running up the familiar walkway with tiny purple flowers.

My cousin Federica peeks out the window (her brilliant red hair gives her away instantly) and shouts for Zia Meoli when she sees us coming up the walk. Federica greets us at the door. She is very pregnant, and luminous. Her red curls are cropped close to her head, and a three-year-old girl hovers around her knees. “Welcome home!” Federica throws her arms around me, remembers Jack, cannot believe how much Etta has grown, and is delighted when Iva Lou presents her with a gift of Outdoor Drama baseball caps from Big Stone Gap.