Milk Glass Moon (17 page)

“This is Giuliana.” Federica picks up her daughter to introduce us at eye level.

“She looks just like you!” I tell her.

“The hair, no?” Federica laughs and runs her fingers through Giuliana’s thick curls.

“Ave Maria!” Zia Meoli stands in the entryway with her hands on her hips. She is older, her hair nearly white now, but her posture is still perfect and her energy as vital as ever. I give her a good long hug.

“Etta! Etta, you are all grown up! I can’t believe it!
Bellisima!
”

Etta is thrilled to see her aunt, so happy she cries. Iva Lou fishes in her purse for a tissue. “Jesus, now you’re gonna make
me
cry.”

“How is Zio Pietro?” Jack wants to know.

“Come see him.”

Zia Meoli leads us back through the house to the sun porch, through the familiar hallways that smell like lavender, past the old photographs in simple gold frames, through the sparkling kitchen with the white metal cabinets and the black and white harlequin floor. “Everything looks beautiful, the same,” I tell my aunt, and then “Zio Pietro!”

My uncle sits in a wicker rocking chair with his hands folded in his lap. He opens his eyes when I call to him. At first he is overwhelmed by the sum of us, but he sees who we are and smiles broadly. “How are you?” I kneel down and embrace him.

Jack introduces Iva Lou, and Etta makes a big fuss over Zio Pietro, reminding him of how she learned to make boxes in his woodworking shop.

“I haven’t made anything in a long time,” he says.

“I could help you,” Etta offers.

“Too much for me now. I am old,” Zio Pietro says, and smiles.

“Hello, everyone.” We hear a familiar voice in the doorway.

“Stefano Grassi!” Iva Lou throws her arms around our old friend.

“How are you, Miss Iva Lou?”

“How do I look?”

“Magnificent.”

“Then that’s how I am!”

“It is so good to see you all again,” Stefano says graciously as he shakes Jack’s hand and kisses me on the cheek.

“You remember Etta?” Iva Lou pushes Etta toward Stefano. Etta doesn’t lurch; in fact, she is refined in her movements and extends her hand.

“Etta has grown up!” Stefano’s eyes narrow and he looks at me, then to Jack and then back to Etta.

“Little Rose here has blossomed,” Iva Lou says smugly.

The term “sparks fly” takes on new meaning as we stand with Stefano and Etta. He looks at Etta as though this is the first time he has ever seen her.

Etta is tall and lean, her light brown hair falls below her shoulders in waves, and her eyes are soft, tilting upward, the color of mossy green velvet. The only Italian element I can see in her face is the set of her mouth: her lips are full and her front teeth have a slight overbite, which gives her an endearing pout. Here in Italy, her Scottish-American coloring stands out.

“How have you been, Stefano?” Etta asks him, sounding grown up.

“Very well. Thank you.”

Iva Lou nudges me as she notices how Etta smiles at Stefano. I look over at my husband. He too has not missed a beat of this. He puts his arm around Etta’s shoulder.

“We’re all so happy to see you again. We’ve planned a wonderful dinner in Città Alta,” Stefano says.

“That will be wonderful,” I say, speaking for the American contingent. Federica asks for a rain check. She will stay home with Zio Pietro, who is too tired to join us. We do our best to convince him to come, but he is stubborn, so we promise to bring him something from the restaurant. Zia Meoli joins us, and I’m very happy about that; we have so much to catch up on.

Stefano takes our group to Bergamo Alta (also known as Città Alta), the ancient town above the modern city (known as Bergamo Bassa), to a hillside restaurant with a view of the valley. Stefano is a delightful host, ordering such local delicacies as risotto with fresh truffles (it’s the hunting season for them now) and costolette, veal cutlets coated in bread crumbs and pan-fried in butter. Etta fills Stefano in on all the news in Big Stone Gap, and Iva Lou, her loyal sidekick, adds the spicy details, while Jack laughs.

“Zia, how have you been?” I ask her.

“It’s hard to get old.”

“You’re not old!”

“Eighty-three. And Zio Pietro is eighty-eight. We are old.”

“You look terrific.”

“I am doing well. I have shrunk a bit, though that’s what happens to old bones. But Zio has had some problems with his heart, and his memory is not so good anymore.”

“Does he go to the wood shop?”

“Not in several years. He likes Stefano to come by and talk to him about architecture and building. That was always his passion.” Then Zia says with admiration, “Etta is a woman now, isn’t she?”

“Almost. She looks so much older than she is.”

“What are her interests?”

“Zia, she is a complex girl. She’s sensible but headstrong. Sometimes that serves her well, and sometimes it causes problems.”

“She is very different from you, isn’t she?”

“Very.”

“It’s difficult to know what to do. We think our daughters will be just like us, or at least appreciate who we are. It wasn’t really until Federica had her daughter that she realized that I wasn’t crazy or old-fashioned. It took a long time.” I sit back and exhale a long, deep sigh. Zia takes my hand. “It’s difficult now, but eventually, you will be happy you have a daughter.”

“Oh, I am happy I have her.”

“No. What I mean is, a daughter will stay by the mother all of her life. A son is different. A son will leave you. Sons are easy until they are grown. But when they’re grown, they’re gone.” She sighs.

“There’s an old expression in America. ‘A son is a son till he marries a wife; a daughter’s a daughter the rest of her life.’ ”

“Exactly,” Zia says, nodding.

We’re staying the night on Via Davide. Papa is due to pick us up in the morning. Federica has prepared our rooms beautifully with all the details we remember—the embroidered sheets, the down comforters, the silver cups on the dresser filled with wild roses. Iva Lou is setting her hair in the bathroom down the hall, so I know Etta is alone, and I go into the room they’re sharing. She is writing in her journal, which she closes gently when I enter.

“I’m not interrupting, am I?”

“No, come on in.”

“That was fun tonight, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you think?”

“Of what?”

“Stefano Grassi.”

“He’s the same, Ma.”

“How so?”

“Well, he’s very self-absorbed.”

“Really.” I’m taken aback. Where’s my daughter who had a mad crush on the older Italian boy?

“Yeah. He talked about his work a lot, and where he’s been. He spends a lot of time in Rimini, on the coast. He went on and on about the Adriatic Sea. Iva Lou asked him if he had a girlfriend, and he said, ‘Several,’ which I thought was cheesy.”

“That
is
cheesy.”

“He’s got a big ego.”

“He’s young. He’s Italian. No surprise there,” I tell her.

Etta leans back on the pillows. “I think about things too much. I analyze stuff to death. I’m too critical.”

“Sounds familiar,” I tell her.

Etta smiles knowingly. If I’ve had fifteen years to observe her, she’s had the same fifteen to mirror me.

“I’ve always been that way. It’s the one thing I wished I could change about myself. I admire people who can be light, and move through life like small birds, you know, landing, pecking a bit, and then flying off. Not getting too involved. Not caring too much.”

Etta looks at me as though she understands exactly what I am saying. “You know when Stefano was leaving Big Stone Gap? And I got so upset?”

“I remember.”

“I promised myself that I would never let any boy upset me like that ever again.”

“How’s that worked out?”

“Pretty well. I don’t let myself get too wrapped up, Ma. I keep a distance. Boys are just too fickle, whether they’re American or Italian.”

Part of me is thrilled that my daughter is so poised and confident, that she has A Plan when it comes to boys. But another part of me worries that she will isolate herself, much as I did for so long. I don’t want Etta to be repressed, as I was; that’s part of my personal legacy that I hope she rejects. But there is something within the women of my line that spends too much time worrying about being worthy, and being strong in the face of love, and rejecting it to avoid the pain if it doesn’t work out. Etta is only fifteen, too young for some of these concepts. And now that she is opening up to me, I want to encourage her to continue. I don’t want to say the wrong thing.

I sit down on the foot of the bed. “You know what my mother always told me?” I ask.

“What?”

“That all the answers to all your questions are already inside of you. You just have to listen.”

“Is that true?” Etta asks, putting her book aside.

“I think so.”

“How do you learn to listen?”

“Well, that’s something that comes with experience. And trusting yourself. At night, before I go to sleep, I think about what is troubling me. And then I ask myself to work it out while I sleep.”

“And you wake up knowing the answer?”

“Sometimes. But I always wake up feeling as though I’m on the right track.”

“That’s interesting,” Etta says as she braids the tip of a lock of hair.

“What do you see yourself doing, honey? After you leave Dad and me and go off in the world. How do you see yourself?”

“Well, I see myself working. I like cities, but I hope I’ll live in a small one.”

“You don’t see yourself in Cracker’s Neck Holler?”

“Maybe when I’m older.”

“Do you see yourself married?”

“Ma.” Etta’s tone tells me not to go down this road.

“I was just wondering.”

“Did you?” She turns the question on me.

I guess I’ll be honest. “No.”

“But you married Dad.”

“And no one was more surprised than me. I guess that’s what I’m trying to get at, Etta. Stay open to the big surprises, because I swear, they’ll come.”

“What are you two yammering about?” Iva Lou wants to know as she comes in. Her hair is rolled on curlers the size of orange-juice cans. “Oh, it’s serious.” She turns to go back out the door.

“No, no. We’re done.” As I stand to go, I ask Iva Lou, “Are you having a good time?”

“Do you have to ask? Look at me. I’m spillin’ over with joy unabandoned. My pap used to say that, and I have no idea what it means exactly, but it sort of fits how I feel about It-lee.”

“We’re happy you’re here.”

“I feel like family. I can’t thank y’all enough.”

As I go down the hall to my room, I hear Iva Lou squeal with delight, just as I did, when she lies down on the poufy cloud bed for the first time and sinks a good foot or two into the soft goose feathers. I stand in the hallway and listen to her and Etta laughing and realize that maybe my daughter did miss out on a big family life as an only child, but what she got instead was just as valuable. How many girls have an honorary aunt like Iva Lou? Sometimes what we don’t get in life makes way for something even better.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Where are my girls?” my father yells up the stairs at Via Davide in his rich Barbari baritone. Etta and I fly down the stairs into his arms.

“Does that include me, Mario da Schilpario?” Iva Lou says from the top of the stairs.

“Of course.”

Papa is in good health, robust and youthful. He is wearing faded jeans (with pressed creases, of course) rolled about a half inch at the hem, with a beige cashmere V-neck sweater. His face hasn’t aged much since his last visit to Big Stone Gap. The sharp angles of his jaw and cheekbones and thick arched black eyebrows are as pronounced as ever. I’m glad I was born when he was young, because now I have him in my middle years. The thought of this makes me wince. I hope I will be around when Etta needs me later in
her
life. “Where’s Giacomina?”

“She’s in Schilpario, preparing for your arrival.”

“Couldn’t take that mountain road I’ve been hearing about, eh?” Iva Lou teases.

“No, she doesn’t mind the road.”

“Mario da Schilpario, is that road as bad as these folks say? Should I be nervous?”

“Not with me as your coachman.”

Iva Lou, Etta, and I ride with Papa, who has a thousand questions for Etta about school, her internship, and even Shoo the Cat. (We put Iva Lou in the front seat in case the winding roads get to be too much for her.) Jack Mac follows us in the van with the luggage. I offered to ride with him, but I think he’d like some time alone; he has been surrounded by women since the start of the trip. It’s times like these that I think of my son—he should be here for his father, who was so proud of him; no matter where we go or what we do, Joe is always missing. When I look back and see Jack following close behind, I feel sad for him.

“Should I have ridden with Dad?” Etta asks me. I think she’s reading my mind.

“He looks like he’s okay.”

“Are you thinking about Joe?”

“Always.”

“Me too.”

I wonder what life would be like if my son were here. Or what life would have been like with more children. We tried, but it didn’t happen. I took it as a sign not to push things, to enjoy Etta, to focus on her. I wonder what she wishes; surely she hoped to have sisters or brothers. I was an only child and used to imagine a house full of siblings and what joy that must be. Jack was an only child too, but he looked at it differently. He liked being alone and loved having the attention of both of his parents. Jack still can’t speak of his father without getting emotional. They were very close, and Jack has told me he would never change that.

“Whenever I’m really happy, I think of Joe and feel bad he’s not here,” Etta says to me softly.

“Me too,” I tell her, knowing that I shouldn’t encourage that kind of guilt. “He would want you to be happy, Etta.”

“I know.”

“Remember the day of the big snowstorm?”

“The one where we made ice cream?” Etta asks.

“The very one,” I tell her.

“It was so cool. You and Joe and me got all bundled up and went out into the woods with a bucket and lifted clean snow off the branches. Joe and I were so little, you had to do it all. And then we went back inside, and you took sugar and cream and stirred it into the clean snow. It tasted so good.”

“That was a great day, wasn’t it?”

Etta doesn’t answer me. She looks out the window, still remembering. Sometimes I forget she was there through the whole ordeal, and think I’m the only person who lost Joe. Maybe that’s because I’m the mother and he was born of me. But it’s really not true; Etta lost her brother and Jack lost his son, and there isn’t one of us who will ever be the same. No matter where we go, we are always looking for him, whether it’s on a curvy alpine road or in the field behind our house in Cracker’s Neck Holler.

Iva Lou makes sounds I have never before heard from her as Papa takes the sharp curves, then speeds up on the straightaways, then decelerates around dark corners, only to emerge speeding higher and higher up the alpine road. “Does anyone ever go over?” Iva Lou asks Papa, gripping the handle on the dashboard like the hand of God.

“Not often.”

“How often is not often?”

“Every few years or so.” Papa smiles, keeping his eyes on the road. “You make your living as a driver of the Bookmobile, no?”

“Uh-huh,” Iva Lou squeaks.

“You know that nothing can go wrong when you know your road.”

“Whatever you say, Mario,” she replies weakly.

“Papa, pull over so Iva Lou can look down,” I say.

“I don’t want to look down,” Iva Lou insists, her eyes shut.

“It’s really cool, Aunt Iva Lou,” Etta tells her.

Papa pulls over at a roadside viewing spot, and Jack follows suit. Iva Lou takes deep breaths while Etta coaxes her out of the car.

“Come. Over here,” Papa orders. “Is this spectacular? Lago d’Iseo!”

“Lordy, now, that’s deep.” After taking a peek, Iva Lou turns back for the car.

“Iva Lou, you shouldn’t miss this. Look,” I tell her gently.

Lago d’Iseo has all the elements of a perfectly imagined place: a thin, milky mist and pink morning light and the movement of the wind that is almost musical as it brushes over us. The air is full of the scent of sweet grapes, growing over simple arches of wood down a never-ending footpath connected by small bridges. The bridge swings out over a mighty waterfall, which pours off the mountaintop so loudly that we must shout to hear one another. The waterfall begins somewhere high in the hills in giant white waves and cascades down the mountainside like silver streamers, falling into a pristine sapphire-blue lake below. The far side of the mountain has a steep crag that is filled with rock formations protruding from the ground in a series of shivering stone fingers that reaches to the sky.

“What are those, Papa?” I ask, pointing to the rock formations.

“We call it the Forest of the Fairies. They’re a mystery. A natural wonder. No one knows how they got here.”

“Must’ve been magic. How would anything get here? This high. Or that low,” Iva Lou wonders aloud.

“Worth the ride?” Papa asks her.

“Definitely.”

We make the turn to enter Schilpario, and Papa takes us through the old town, down the twisting main street, through a series of connected white stucco houses with dark brown alpine beams and shuttered windows. Papa gently taps the horn, driving slowly as the pedestrians move single file to one side of the narrow cobblestone street. When we emerge out into the sun, the familiar town square comes to life, the waterwheel spins grandly, a woman waters her garden patch of snow-white edelweiss, and several girls around Etta’s age come from the bakery with long loaves of twisted bread, making their way up the mountain toward home.

At Via Scalina Number 5, Giacomina meets us on the front porch. “Welcome!” she says, with her arms open wide. Giacomina wears a straight navy blue skirt and a pale blue sweater set, and her reading glasses dangle on a pearl string around her neck. She has lovely classic features.

Nonna joins Giacomina from behind, pushing her aside a bit. “Ave Maria!” my grandmother announces at a volume normally reserved for football coaches. Nonna doesn’t age. Perhaps with Papa’s marriage to Giacomina, she has something to fight against, and that has given her a new lease on life.

“Etta!”

We turn around to the road to see who could possibly be shouting so enthusiastically at our daughter. It’s her cousin Chiara, who is jumping up and down at the sight of her pen pal.

“Chiara!” Etta shouts back.

The two girls run toward each other and embrace, but the word “girls” no longer applies to these two. Chiara is an eighteen-year-old woman. Her black hair is full and wavy, and her once gangly legs are now long and womanly. She has found her style in a long linen skirt and an embroidered white peasant blouse tucked in and accented by a wide belt. Her espadrille sandals are tied up her ankles Roman-style, and her gold hoop earrings give the whole look a touch of Spain. To say that Chiara has turned into a beauty is to underestimate the whole process—she is a knockout. After Chiara greets Jack and me, Etta introduces her to Iva Lou, who takes an instant liking to the brunette bombshell, perhaps recognizing an alpine Iva Lou in the making. Chiara’s English is excellent. She attends the university in Bergamo, where she is studying journalism, with the goal of becoming an international correspondent.

Jack and I take the room that Etta and I shared. Just being in this room again fills me with a sense of belonging and security. I feel it is
my
room in my father’s house, and somehow Giacomina understands how important that is to me. She has placed Etta next door in a lovely single room with a daybed and a small desk. Giacomina has papered the room in a print of small daisies; I feel as though I’m inside a candy box.

Iva Lou is given the suite, which has a fireplace and a window seat that faces the road leading off Via Scalina and up into the Alps. Giacomina even left a pair of binoculars on Iva Lou’s dresser, so she can look at the stars or up to the top of the mountain peaks.

After a hearty lunch of pansoti—delicate folds of pasta filled with ricotta cheese in a sauce of olive oil and pine nuts—crusty bread, and a plummy, rich Dolcetto wine, we all part ways for various side trips. I convince Iva Lou and Jack to go on a hike with me. Iva Lou takes to the mountain paths like a goat; after all, she was raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains. She stops occasionally to drink in the wonder of what she is seeing. “Picture books just don’t do this justice.” She sits down on a rock and swigs water from her shoulder carrier (which matches her overalls and pale blue kerchief).

“Isn’t it amazing how close together everything in Italy is?” I wonder aloud.

“Perfect place to vacation because you can take in so many different places,” Jack adds. “I’m going to wander ahead. You girls take your rest.”

“Don’t get lost!” I shout after him.

“I’m just gonna follow the sound of the water, honey,” he shouts back, disappearing up the path.

“I know you told me about this place, and you showed me the pictures you took, but I really can’t believe it.” Iva Lou rolls up her pants to get some sun on her legs. “How can a place have a hot sun and cool breezes at the same time?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where’s that field of bluebells?” Iva Lou whispers.

The famous field of bluebells where I took Pete Rutledge and almost broke my wedding vows. That day could have changed my life forever if I had let it. That field is my place of secrets, and I’m not too anxious to share it with anyone, even Iva Lou.

“It’s in the other direction,” I tell her. I think Iva Lou gets the point and doesn’t press me.

“How does it feel to be at the ole Eye-talian homestead?”

“When I come here, I never want to leave.”

“I can understand that. And how about that waiting on you hand and foot? Now I know what it feels like to be a princess. This Eye-talian hospitality is no joke. It puts the southern brand to shame.”

“They care about details, you know?”

“No kidding. Giacomina even left me a fresh nightgown in the bureau. I mean, come on. That’s thinking ahead! Your nonna is a pistol, though.”

“Poor Giacomina. I don’t know how she puts up with it.”

“Well, ole Grandma was part of a package deal.”

“I couldn’t do it.”

“Me neither. Why do you think I married a man ten years older than me? I was looking for an orphan. I did not need to be forty-plus and dealing with a mother-in-law.”

“I’m sure Lyle feels the same.”

“Nah, he would’ve loved my mama. But my daddy, now, that would have been a different story. Lyle doesn’t like anyone who shirks responsibility. And my daddy was the all-time shirker. I’ve been thinking about ole Pap a lot lately. About how he left us. Why he left us. How that formed me. Maybe spending time with your daddy got me to thinking about it. I don’t know.”

“What was your dad’s name?”

“Jessie Creed Wade. I said if I ever had a son, I’d name him Jessie. I guess I wanted to replace my dad all my life.”

“I like that name. It’s strong.”

“He was Scotch-Irish and French-Indian.”

“I guess that’s where you got your cheekbones.”

“That’s what Mama used to say. That and my temper.”

“What was he like?”

“I remember him being nervous. Skittish almost, around us, like family life was too much for him. You know, a lot of folks have bad nerves when it comes to raising children, and he certainly was one of them. And he’d get sad when he had to leave us. You know, when there was no work, he’d head north to Michigan to work in the factories. And then one time he left, and by God it was a good eight years ’fore we saw him again. Mama was devastated, kept trying to find him, and eventually, you know, she tracked him down. Somehow he always made his way up north. Mama would complain that he didn’t love us. But I always looked at it differently. I thought he loved us so much it was painful for him. He didn’t come from a happy home, and he didn’t know how to make one. Skeered him to death, I think.”

“You don’t sound very angry.”

“I never was. Mama didn’t like that neither. She thought I should hold him accountable, I guess. But I understood the man, even as a youngin I just understood him. I knew what he was made of, and I didn’t expect anything more from him. And then, of course, you know, I’ve known me some men, and it’s held me in good stead never to expect too much.”

“So when Lyle comes through and is there for you . . .”

“I’m surprised. And happy to be surprised, by the way. No, Lyle Makin is a shocker. I can’t believe how well he handled my cancer, or how he stuck by me when I’d get that fidgety wandering feeling in my bones, my wantin’ to be alone a lot. I guess I’m just like my daddy. I want to move, find the action.”

“You’re a mountain girl who longs for the ocean.”

“I guess I am. I can’t believe I’m here. Me. The Wade girl from Appalachia. I’m in the Eye-talian Alps. And how, I ask myself? How did this happen to me? Number one in her steno class, president of the Lucky Leafs Library Club. And now a goddamn world traveler. What a life.”

As Iva Lou and I follow the trail after Jack, we don’t say much. I’m thinking about my father, Mario, and the man who raised me, Fred Mulligan, and my mother, who loved Mario until the day she died but served Fred until the day
he
died. I thought as I grew older that my parents would become less of a focal point for me, that my child would take precedence. And I do put Etta first in all my decisions, but it is also true that I have never really resolved how I was parented or let go of my sadness that my mother revealed the secret of my real father only after her death. I often wonder if my life would have been different without the shame of that secret. Would I have been more daring? Would I have stayed in Big Stone Gap? Once a woman falls in love, her vista changes. She becomes a helpmate, an organizer, and leaves behind her solitary existence. Men seem to control their destinies. Didn’t Iva Lou’s father walk away when, for whatever reason, family life was too much for him? Fred Mulligan, who raised me but never really embraced me—didn’t he find a way to carve out his solitude even with a family to support? And Mario da Schilpario, his whole life a testament to his choices and not his obligations? I never like to say it’s a man’s world, but it often seems like it is, and it will be for my daughter. And I know, as surely as I pick up these loose rocks on this path and toss them into the woods, that my own daughter will feel an obligation to take care of me in my old age. I don’t know that my son, had he survived, would have done the same. He would be off pursuing his life. The daily care of his old parents would be woman’s work. And I know that no matter how I would have raised him, sensitivities and all, his selfhood would have won out over any responsibility he would feel toward me.