Milk Glass Moon

  “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.

  “Girls, this way!” Jack Mac shouts from a distance. Iva Lou points toward the sound of his voice, and I follow her up the path.

  “What’s all the noise about?” I ask as we reach my husband’s side.

  “I’ll be damned. Peacocks. A slew of them,” Iva Lou whispers.

  “Watch.” Jack whistles, and the sound makes the peacocks scatter, leaving the safety of their group to create individual spaces in the field where they strut solo. Suddenly, making a big flapping sound, we see the first of the peacocks’ fans unveiled. The peacock stops, poises his neck, and spreads his glorious feathers, a mix of bright turquoise and pure white plumes that open wide, revealing tips of burnished orange and horizontal stripes of polished black. Each feather has a circle in the center of its design that shimmers like the horn of a seashell.

  “You know, the peacock is the symbol of eternal life,” I whisper to Iva Lou.

  She doesn’t say anything, just watches the spectacle like a little girl, not missing one detail of the show and in awe of every movement, as though it were choreographed just for her.

  “You know, this is Italy,” I tell her. “There’s always something around the corner that you weren’t expecting.”

  Etta and Chiara go into the old town for La Passeggiatta, the traditional after-dinner stroll, while Jack, Iva Lou, Giacomina, Papa, and I sit in the front yard and eat fresh berries from the bushes behind the house.

  “I must show you the pictures of Pete and Gina from when they came to visit last year.” Giacomina gets up and goes inside.

  “Have you met Pete’s wife?” Papa asks us.

  “No, we haven’t. They were supposed to hike through Big Stone but postponed it,” Jack tells him.

  “We had a good time with them.”

  Giacomina returns with a pack of pictures and shows them to us.

  “That’s Gina.” Mario points to the petite woman with a chic blond haircut. She wears sunglasses and smiles in the picture. Good teeth. Lots of them. Long. Narrow. White. Pete looks, well, Pete looks gorgeous.

  “Well, that is a fine-looking man,” Iva Lou says, studying a photo. “And woman too,” she adds quickly, looking at me.

  I’d like to stand up and say, “This is all too weird,” but I don’t. I just smile and look at the pictures with everyone else. I’m crazy about my husband, but the truth is, when I look at Gina in these pictures, I envy her a little. She got the guy who talks poetry and is as sensual as he is intelligent.

  “We have a gift for you,” my father tells Jack and me.

  “Papa, you’ve done enough,” I say.

  “No, this is one that’s just for the two of you.” Papa hands me an envelope. “My cousin Battista helped with this one.”

  I open the envelope. There is a single card trimmed in gold, written in Italian, inviting Jack and me to two nights at the Villa d’Este on Lake Como.

  “Battista Barbari is one of the managers of the hotel. He is your second cousin, and when he visited us last month, he wanted to meet you. So, this came in the mail. You really should not miss it.” My father rarely endorses something this strongly.

  “When should we go?”

  “Tomorrow. You can drive. It will take you about an hour and a half. You have to go down the mountain and then north a bit until you get to Cernobbio.”

  “What about Iva Lou and Etta?” I turn to her.

  “Honey, I have a list as long as my arm of stuff I want to do around here. You and ole Jack Mac could use a set-down in a romantic setting.”

  Giacomina pats Iva Lou on the back and looks at me. “Don’t worry. I will take good care of Iva Lou. Your father and I will take her to Bormio to the spa for a facial and a steam, and then we’ll shop in Clusone. She won’t even miss you! And don’t worry about Etta. Chiara will keep her busy for the entire visit.”

  Laughter coming from the kitchen rouses me in my royal bed on the second floor of Via Scalina. I wake up happy, as this is the day Jack and I depart for the Villa d’Este.

  The aroma of rich coffee and sweet steamed milk greets me at the door of the dining room. Everyone is around the table, talking, enjo
ying crusty bread with soft butter and raspberry jam.

  “Stefano!” I’m surprised to see him.

  “He missed us, Ma.” Etta laughs.

  “I thought you could use a tour guide.” Stefano smiles at me.

  “Jack and I are off to the Villa d’Este today.”

  “He knows already, Ma. Dad told him all about it.”

  “We’re making big plans while y’all are gone. Stefano here is gonna take us all up through these hills,” Iva Lou assures me.

  Jack rushes me to pack a small bag to take on our trip. Iva Lou follows me upstairs to help.

  “Iva Lou . . .”

  “Honey-o, you don’t even have to say it. I will watch Etta like a hawk watches raw hamburger. Don’t you worry.”

  “Thank you. I really appreciate it.”

  “Ole Stefano has that look in his eye. Well, the look might be in his eye, but his entire body is electrified with possibilities, if you know what I mean.” Iva Lou takes one look at my face and knows I’m concerned. “Now, don’t worry. If there ever was a chaperone who knows the wily and secretive ways of men, it is yours truly. I’ll keep ’em apart, and just friends, I promise!”

  The Iva Lou plan is in place, but I don’t hedge my bets. I pull Papa and Giacomina aside and tell them to please watch Etta while I’m gone. I know Etta has a good head on her shoulders, but even I was tempted by romance in these Alps. This is a place made for love, and my daughter is young. Even though she says she’s not interested in Stefano, she might become enchanted under the right circumstances. Giacomina understands more than Papa, who you’d think would have instant insight into this but does not. He knows Stefano is a good guy and doesn’t believe that he would try anything. “It’s not just Stefano I’m worried about,” I tell Papa. This, finally, he understands.

  The gates to the Villa d’Este are so impressive, I feel I should be in a glass carriage and wearing a tiara to enter. The guard, with his long, serious face, checks a clipboard for our names. When he finds them, he grins broadly and waves us in. I order Jack to drive slowly, as I don’t want to miss a detail of this entrance that looks like the start of a winding road in a fairy tale, with its perfectly manicured bushes, beds of red satin begonias, trees plumed with open cups of white magnolia, and a family crest carved into the hillside in flowers. The gardens are the least of the beauty, though. There is a low walkway with a rococo handrail along Lake Como, which might very well be made of midnight-blue lapis and not water, as it glitters so brilliantly in the sun.