Milk Glass Moon (4 page)

CHAPTER TWO

It’s been three weeks since Etta almost fell off the roof. She survived two weeks of being grounded, which was pretty terrible for her because she missed all the end-of-summer barbecues and the picnic trip with her friends to the Natural Bridge. She moped around for days, and then at the one-week mark, things began to get a little better between us. She made French toast for us on Sunday morning and did her laundry without my asking. Since things are back to normal, Jack has taken her over to Kingsport for their annual father-daughter shopping trip for the first day of school. Etta wants a backpack she saw at Miller and Rhodes.

I go through the house with a laundry basket, loading it up with things that need to be put away. Etta’s shoes, comic books, notebooks, pencils, and gear fill the basket. As I go up to her room, Shoo the Cat bounds up the stairs next to me. He charges into Etta’s room, and I follow him.

Last summer we let Etta paint her room. She chose periwinkle with white trim. Her iron bed, painted antique beige, is covered with one of her grandma MacChesney’s quilts, a pattern called “Drunkard’s Path.” She has a poster of Black Beauty over her bed (does every preteen girl in America love purple and horses?).

Etta has a map of the world on her far wall. In red she’s circled where she’s been, and in pencil the places she wants to go someday. (I’m surprised to see locations in India and New Zealand circled in pencil.) I trace my finger from the United States to Italy and find my father’s hometown of Schilpario, north of my mother’s: the city of Bergamo, high in the Italian Alps. Etta has written the names of her relatives next to the dots that mark the mountain villages. South on the Mediterranean coast she has circled Sestri Levante and written her cousin Chiara’s name enclosed in a heart. Since I took Etta to Italy, she and Chiara have been faithful pen pals, and in many ways, Chiara, who is fifteen, is like a big sister to Etta. Chiara wants to come to the States one day. Judging by the length of her letters, she will have a lot to say when she gets here.

Etta’s toy chest, only a year ago filled with dolls and stuffed animals, is now filled with equipment. There’s a fishing basket, Rollerblades, a basketball, and several small branches (what she uses them for, I have no idea). She should have been a boy, I think as I prick my finger on a fishhook. I gather up some loose pencils from the bottom of the trunk and return them to the cup on her desk.

The top of the desk is covered in butcher paper, on which she has drawn a map of the heavens and written STARS OVER CRACKER’S NECK HOLLER in calligraphy along the top. She has made diagrams of the constellations and labeled each one. This pencil drawing was done with a ruler; it is so precise, I’m surprised it’s hers. Granted, there are many places where the paper is worn thin from erasures, but for the most part, her work is sure-handed. Etta loves astronomy—she points out the Milky Way on clear nights, or a planet when she recognizes it sparkling in the sky—but I didn’t know she was so passionate about the subject that she would take time to study the night sky in such detail. Evidently, Etta has an inner life that I know very little about.

When I was a girl, I spent a lot of time thinking about why I’d been born in Big Stone Gap, of all the places in the world. I would look up at the sky and wonder where it ended. I had such longing to explore that I couldn’t make the connection that my fate was somehow tied to a mountain town in the hills of Southwest Virginia. I thought a girl like me, who loved to read big adventure stories from centuries long ago, should have been from a more exciting place, a magical place. So when I found out that my mother had in fact left Italy pregnant with me and without a husband, I had my exotic point of origin at last. Etta might be very different, but she has my longing for the Big World deep in her bones. These mountains may protect us from the outside world, but they won’t hold us. We can see our way through them and over them, something lots of folks around here could never imagine.

At the bottom of the butcher paper is a very detailed drawing of our stone house, square and rustic, with its four chimneys and the front door painted pale blue. Etta has drawn the windows and their filmy lace sheers rustling in the wind. She has penciled in the roof shingle by shingle (now she knows the shingles firsthand), and her bedroom window, which overlooks the roof. Sitting in the window is Etta herself, with huge eyes and caterpillar eyelashes. In her hands, she holds a small telescope through which she gazes up to the stars above. She must have been out on the roof plenty before I caught her.

The phone rings. One of Etta’s punishments was the removal of her phone, so I have to run downstairs to answer it. I pick up on the third ring.

“Ave!” When I hear the voice of my closest friend of twenty years, I become the woman I used to be—young and trouble-free. The worst problem I had when I was single, a hole in the roof of my house, seems silly in comparison to my daughter falling off one.

“Theodore! How are you?”

“Moving.”

“Finally, you’ve come to your senses and you’re moving back to Big Stone Gap.”

Theodore laughs. “Not likely.”

“Come on. We got killer majorettes, and our horn section is the best in the county.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

“You’re not going far, are you?” I have loved having my best friend so close in Knoxville. Many weekends, I jump in the Jeep and ride down to see his theatrical halftime shows at the University of Tennessee.

“It’s a dream move.”

“No. You didn’t get a job in—”

“Yep. New York City!”

“No!” Theodore used to talk about New York City as though it lay between heaven and Oz, a place of perfection and possibility. Now he’ll see for himself.

“I’ve only wanted this all of my life, and now it’s actually happening,” Theodore says gratefully.

“What school?”

“Not a school.”

“Not a school? Are you switching careers?” I can’t imagine Theodore giving up the life of a band director. He’s just too brilliant at it.

“No. I’m just going pro. I’ve been offered the job of associate artistic director at Radio City Music Hall.”

“Oh my God! The Rockettes!”

“The Christmas show, the Easter show, the concerts. All of it. I’m going to be working with the great director Joe Layton. He directed
The Lost Colony,
that outdoor drama. Remember when we drove down to North Carolina to see it?”

“One of our better road trips,” I remind him.

“Who would have thought playing Preacher Red Fox in your drama would have gotten me in the door?”

“That’s hardly what got you the job. You’re a theatrical genius, and now everyone will know it. You’re going to the big city! New York City!” I hope I’m not yelling, but I’m so excited for him.

“Now all we have to do is figure out when you’re coming up.”

Etta and Jack get home around suppertime carrying her new backpack, a three-ring binder with Halley’s comet on the cover, a hot-pink down vest, and more. I meet them outside to tell them Theodore’s news.

“When can we go?” Etta asks excitedly.

“He’d like us to come up for Columbus Day weekend in October.”

“Dad’s coming too, right?”

“I’m not slick enough for New York City, Etta.” Jack winks at me.

“You don’t have to be slick. You just need to move fast and cuss and push people out of your way,” Etta tells him with great authority.

“Etta knows all about New York. She’s read
Harriet the Spy
about seventeen times.”

“You and your mama will do fine without me.”

I’ve made Etta’s favorite dinner: spaghetti in fresh tomato sauce with meatballs, a big salad, and brownies with vanilla ice cream for dessert. She clears the dishes without a fuss.

“You girls got mail.” Jack comes in from the hallway with the familiar blue airmail envelopes. Etta practically dives on her father for her letter. “I forgot about them in my pocket, they’re so thin,” Jack apologizes.

“It’s from Chiara!” Etta shrieks. “Here, Ma. You got one from Grandpop.”

“Those two keep the Italian mail service in business.” My husband takes the newspaper and goes into the living room.

“No kidding.” I rip into my father’s letter. It is full of news. Papa and his new wife, Giacomina, are getting along great, but his mother is causing her share of agita. Nonna is having a hard time letting Giacomina take over the household. Papa says the negotiations continue; I guess Jack isn’t the only man in the world who plays referee to two women. Papa has been down to Bergamo quite a bit and over to see my mother’s family, the Vilminores, on Via Davide. There’s even an update on Stefano Grassi, an orphan my zia Antonietta cared for as though he were her son. After she died, the rest of the Vilminore family began to look out for him. He’d come for dinner and help Zio Pietro in the wood shop, though he continued to live at the nearby orphanage. He is a few years older than Etta, and she developed a big crush on him during our last visit. Evidently, the Barbari family has as well: Papa took Stefano to the opera with Giacomina and has included a picture of the three of them on the steps of Teatro alla Scala in Milan.

“Stefano Grassi sure is cute.” I give Etta the picture.

“Ma, he is Major Cute,” Etta corrects me. And she’s right. He’s lanky with a great face, a straight prominent nose, dark eyes, and blond curls that make him look like a Renaissance poet. “Stefano is way more mature than the boys around here.”

“He wants to come and work in the States next summer. He’s studying building and architecture and wants to apprentice with Dad,” I tell her.

“Ma, can he come? Please?” Etta lights up like a Roman candle.

“We’ll have to ask your dad. But I don’t see why not.”

Etta sits down and studies the picture. “That’s the famous opera house La Scala,” I tell her.

“I like Italy better than Big Stone.”

“You do?”

“Maybe not better. I love my friends and my school and everything. But I miss our family over there. Like Grandpop. He’s the only grandparent I have.”

“We don’t have a lot of kin around here anymore, do we?”

“Only Aunt Cecilia. And she’s about four hundred years old.”

“Well, your dad was an only child, and I’m an only child—”

“I know, I know, and you got married later in life, and therefore you didn’t have lots of kids like people that get married when they’re young.”

“Who says that?”

“You do. All the time.” Etta smiles. “Is it okay if I keep the picture?” I tell her it’s fine, and she goes up to her room. I suddenly feel like following her and explaining every choice I’ve ever made, how not every one was designed to deprive her of siblings and cousins, noise and competition and long waits for the bathroom, but rather the result of chance or luck or fate that blew through my life, woke me up, and changed my single path to this married one, and then unexpectedly, delightedly, to motherhood. But I am not going to justify my choices tonight. And I certainly can’t explain her brother’s death and the fundamental changes it wrought. I don’t know how to tell a twelve-year-old there are things that happen in this life that have no explanation. I wonder why I am always defending myself to my daughter. When I figure that one out, perhaps I’ll be ready to tackle the big issues with her, including the ones Misty Lassiter has prematurely placed on the front burner of our lives.

The Tuesday lunch special at the Soda Fountain is soup beans and corn bread, so all the regular diehards pile in for the bargain. (We’re doubly busy when the first of the month lands on a Tuesday because the black-lung benefit checks arrive.) I’m stuck in the pharmacy filling meds while Fleeta mans the Soda Fountain. It gets crazy.

“Ave Maria Mulligan MacChesney, I’m a-goin’ to Florida, and don’t try and stop me!” Spec announces from the door.

“You’re going on vacation?”

“Yup. Surprised?”

“Very. You’ve never had one.”

“No, only if you count when me and Leola take the kids to the lake. But we ain’t never left the state. I figger after forty-seven years, my wife deserves a sandy beach and a mai tai. What do you think?”

“I think it’s fantastic. When are you going?”

“Thanksgiving. First off, we’re gonna drive down and spend six days at Disney World, then we’re gonna hit Sarasota—she got her a cousin down there—and then we’ll circle back up the coast of the Sunshine State and come on home.”

Fleeta hollers from the Soda Fountain. “Spec, stop jackin’ your jaw. I ain’t holdin’ this seat of yorn no longer, I got me a wait list over here.” Spec never misses a lunch special, so he motions to Fleeta that he’s on his way.

Iva Lou greets me from the door (I guess everybody in town has a yen for soup beans today). “I had to double-park behind your Jeep, it’s so crowded,” she says as she places her purse on the counter.

“No problem. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Need a hand?”

“You can do labels if you want.” I give Iva Lou the labels run off the computer. She adheres them to the prescription bags as I load the sacks.

“I hired Serena Mumpower out of Appalachia to be my assistant at the library. Top of her class at Mountain Empire.”

“How’s that working out?”

“She’s on the phone constantly. Most popular girl in the county, I believe.”

“She’s pretty.”

“Ain’t nobody
that
pretty.”

“You’ll have to have a talk with her.”

“I guess. I don’t want her to use the Slemp Library as Dial-A-Date.”

“Feel like running over to Appalachia later?”

“Sure. What do you need?”

I whisper, “Etta needs a—a bra. I thought we’d go to Dave’s.”

“I wouldn’t miss it. Etta’s first bra? Nothing like a bra to define a figger and emphasize a waistline. I can’t believe it. Etta is a young woman who needs support! This is my favorite feminine rite of passage. Well, maybe my favorite was hittin’ the hair dye for the first time. I was fourteen when I got yeller streaks in my hair, did ’em myself with peroxide. Big chunky streaks like Tammy Wynette on her greatest-hits album. That’s when I discovered that not only do blondes have more fun, they have
all
the fun.”