Nonna is waiting on a swing in the patch of grass between the street and the front door of her house when we pull up. (Nonna and Papa’s home is dead center on Main Street, the perfect spot for the mayor.) She pulls herself up with a cane and opens one arm to Etta, who runs to meet her great-grandmother. Nonna’s body, thick through the middle with short muscular legs, is as hearty as it was when I first met her. She is instantly in love with Etta, whom she spins around like a top, checking her out from every angle. My grandmother is as sharp as she was the day she entered my house on Poplar Hill in the Gap. I have to remember to ask Papa how old she is, because she hasn’t changed a bit. What’s her secret?
Mafalda, my father’s first cousin, is around fifty, petite with a sweet, round face, clear, pink skin, small lips, and the trademark Barbari nose. She is bustling around the kitchen, setting the table for supper. She takes orders from my grandmother without complaint. That’s just the way things are in Italy; I never hear anyone arguing with their elders. (I hope Etta makes a note of this!) Nonna runs this homestead like a general, and for her size, she packs more punch than the Italian army. Etta can’t believe how loud she is, how she barks orders and seems to get angry, which then passes over like a storm cloud dissipating into mist before it can explode. My grandmother grabs Etta, hugs her, and rubs her cheeks at every opportunity. She promises to teach Etta everything about life in Schilpario—the cooking, the manners, and the family history. I have a feeling Etta will be a good student. Nonna wouldn’t have it any other way.
Giacomina wasn’t kidding when she told us that she has lots of plans. She brings out a calendar, and the days are full of trips and activities. She tells me when Etta leaves the room that these trips are especially for Etta, not for me. Papa wants me to rest. Only my father can see what I truly need (isn’t that true of all parents?).
Nonna treats my father like a king. He is the boss, his every whim indulged. Mafalda tells me Papa has lots of company, “town business,” men from Bergamo who come north with ideas for local trade. Something is always going on with Papa. He may disappear at a moment’s notice, without explanation. When he returns hours later, he’ll simply tell you he got caught up in a conversation. Mafalda tells me she has learned never to set the table until she sees his hat on the hook.
Papa takes us upstairs and shows Etta her own bedroom, a small, charming room with a balcony on the front and a sloped ceiling. A hand-painted yellow daybed piled high with goose-feather pillows (those poofs!) fits neatly under the eave. There is a long pillow shaped like a sausage and tied at the ends with ribbon like a hard candy. Etta holds it up and shows it to me. She’s never seen one like it before. There is a trunk, an old rocker with another blanket on it, and a vase full of edelweiss that climbs out of a small silver flute. Etta loves the walls, painted beige, with the dark brown beams on the ceiling.
“Mama, don’t the beams on the ceiling look like Little Debbie Snack Cakes?” She points overhead.
“They do.” I laugh.
“Everything in this house looks like something to eat. Like Hansel and Gretel’s house.”
“You know something? You’re right.”
“Why?”
“Well, we’re so far north in Italy, it’s almost Switzerland. So you have that Tyrolean look to everything.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s like a cuckoo clock. Gingerbread roof. Windows with shutters. Low ceilings to keep it warm and cozy in the cold. And round-topped doorways. Do you like it here?”
“I love it. I just wish Daddy was here.”
I unpack Etta’s things as she dresses for bed. She says her prayers and climbs under the covers. A cold breeze flaps the shutter open. I go to the window and look down on the narrow main street of Schilpario, lit only by the light that pours out of the houses in soft pools. An old man carrying a box shuffles up the street and disappears into a doorway. I can smell the tobacco from his pipe as he goes past.
On the horizon I see a rim of clouds, but I realize that they are actually the mountains’ snow-covered tips, lit by the moon. The sugary caps are so close, I could lean out this little window and touch them. My face is cool from the breeze; it feels good, but I don’t want Etta to catch cold, so I unfold the shutter and hook it against the frame.
I go downstairs; Mafalda is preparing the table for breakfast, Nonna has gone to bed, and Papa is watching television. I go into my father’s office and pick up the phone. It’s the wee hours of the morning in Big Stone Gap. As I dial our home phone number, I cannot wait for Jack to pick up. I want to tell him about our trip. The phone rings a few times, but Jack Mac is a deep sleeper. I let it ring again. And again. I count the rings. It rings thirteen times. I hang up the phone. Maybe … he’s not there? Of course he’s there. Where else would he be? I am not going to make too much out of this. I’m an ocean away, and there’s nothing I can do. I’ll try again tomorrow.
Etta is off to Sestri Levante, an old fishing village on the coast of the glorious Mediterranean. Papa’s first cousins live there and want to meet Etta. The Bonicellis have a candy shop and a house on the beach. Nonna’s sister has a ten-year-old granddaughter, Chiara. The girls introduced themselves to each other on the phone. Papa and Giacomina are taking her; they’ll stay the weekend and get some sun. “Bronzata,” Papa calls it.
Mafalda lets me sleep late every morning. The only job I have is to write long letters to Theodore and Iva Lou, describing everything. I collect local postcards to send to Iva Lou. I know she’ll tape them to the dashboard of the Bookmobile. I’m sending Theodore a bell for his front door—it’s a small hand-painted brass bell on an embroidered rope. (Maybe next summer Theodore can come with me and see Italy for himself.) I can’t believe we’ve been here almost a week. I’m finally feeling rested. The food makes me feel sturdy. The fragrant risottos made with saffron and sweet butter; the fresh berries drizzled in honey and served cold in sterling silver cups; and the bread, spongy and light inside, with chewy, hard crust (it’s so delicious, I don’t even put butter on it).
I’ve decided that my body could use some attention; I’ve neglected myself for too long. So during siesta, instead of sleeping, I climb the steep hills behind Schilpario alone. The mountain paths, worn from time, creep up through the green in all directions. I vow that by the end of the month, I will have followed most of them. Whenever I climb, I think of my mother, who loved these mountains with their emerald green fields, dangerous cliffs, and cold streams.
Today the mountain breeze is especially cool, so I borrow one of my father’s soft leather car coats and wrap a red bandanna around my neck. Maybe it’s just looking up at the snowcaps that makes me shiver. The sun is warm, but the ground is always cold to the touch. (I don’t think the Italian Alps have ever had a good thaw.) I opt not to wear Papa’s hat, one of those Robin Hood numbers: dark green felt with a feather in it. Besides, I don’t want to mess up my new hair.
Yesterday Mafalda took me to the next village, Piccolo Lago, where I got a haircut. The sign in the window said MODERNA. I think “Modern” is a nutty name for anything in these parts. Everything should be called “Antica.” I hadn’t had a real haircut in years; I still wore it in a braid up and off of my face. Jack always liked my hair long, so I never changed it, and pulling it back is so easy. But I’ve needed a change for a long time. Don’t I always notice women who get stuck in beauty ruts? So when Violetta, a tall blond Italian with a heavy dose of German no-nonsense in her accent, sat me down and told me to throw my head forward, I obeyed. I watched as glops of my old brown curls hit the black-and-white-checked linoleum like lengths of ribbon. When Violetta was done, she told me to sit up straight (you do whatever she tells you and fast), and the girls in the shop gathered around my chair. “Gina Lollobrigida,” Violetta said and smiled, taking full credit for transforming the mouse into a va-va-voom. The other girls agreed as Violetta spun me around like a Cadillac at a car show.
The new hairdo accentuates my face. The long, boring br
aid is gone; this is full and thick and much shorter, with loose waves that soften my cheeks and nose, and long, delicate spiraling down my neck. One of the shop girls, a birdlike brunette with perfect lips, took a tube of lipstick out of her apron pocket. At first I was clumsy with it, so she had to unscrew the Italian top for me (different from our lipsticks, there’s a latch on it). I put on the lipstick, filling out my full lips top and bottom, and my first thought was that it was too much. Too dramatic. Too purple! I felt like I was sporting a duck bill. But Violetta handed me a tissue, and after I blotted, the magenta with the little gold sparkles in it actually looked alluring. “Bellisima!” a customer under the dryer said, banging her head as she strained to get a look at me. I smiled and gave all the girls big tips. If I had a million dollars, I would have given it to Violetta. I needed this.
Nonna flipped for the haircut; she said, “Ornella Muti!” when I came into the house. Ornella, a Roman actress, is featured on the cover of this month’s Hello! magazine, which has claimed a permanent spot on Nonna’s coffee table. She grabbed it and pointed to the exotic green-eyed beauty, who, yes, has my haircut. Or more to the point, I have her haircut. I made Nonna take a Polaroid of me and my new hair to send to Theodore.
So it is with more than a little renewed self-confidence, a bright lipstick (God bless the kid; she gave me the tube), a new purpose, and a dazzling haircut, that I climb the Alpine trail like the Eye-talian native I would have been if my mother had not run off to America pregnant with me and without my father, Mario da Schilpario, and married Fred Mulligan instead. I look down at my thighs as I use them to power my short, quick steps up the trail. I shouldn’t have such muscles in them; I’ve been climbing around here only a week. But they’re there. I never got muscles like these hiking up Powell Mountain. The leather in Papa’s coat smells like him, clean and woodsy. I feel great. Maybe it’s the altitude.
I decide to take a new path today, the one that’s a little more finished-looking than the rest. There are actual stones that anchor either side of the path like a garden walk. At the very top of that trail, there is a plateau that piques my curiosity.
Once I reach the top of the ridge, I have to hoist myself up and over a small shelf of ground to reach the plateau. There, high above Schilpario, in a place where only goats go, is a field of bluebells so thick, they look like a carpet stretching across the expanse. So blue, it could be a lake, or the Mediterranean Sea. Bees buzz above the sweet blossoms, so many of them that they knock into one another in midair before they dive below to drink from the flowers. Beyond the blue carpet is a green field that leads to a ledge of rock dripping with vines. I won’t venture out to the edge. I know there is a drop there—probably one of those frightening gaps, so deep you cannot see the bottom. I sit down in the flowers; the only sound is the music the bees make. I think of Mrs. Mac. I must remember to bring Etta up here and tell her about the origin of the middle name that she inherited from her grandmother Nan Bluebell Gilliam MacChesney about the bluebells that bloomed in the field behind our house in Cracker’s Neck the day that her grandmother “got born.”
When I return from my hike, Giacomina announces that she and Papa are going to take us to a disco tonight. The whole family. (Except for Nonna, who tells me she would rather someone throw her off the mountain than make her go to a disco-tekka. Mafalda thinks Nonna is seventy-nine years old, but isn’t exactly sure because Nonna won’t fess up.)
Etta is back from Sestri Levante. Papa bought her a turquoise choker, which she vows she’ll never take off. It lies flat and clean against her brown skin; her time on the beach brought out her freckles. Giacomina and Papa thought it would be a good idea to bring Chiara back to keep Etta company.
“Hello, Cousin Ave Maria,” Chiara says to me, sounding like one of those learn-a-foreign-language-fast tapes.
“Ciao, Chiara.” I give her a hug. She’s a beauty, with her shiny black hair and wide brown eyes. Chiara is taller than Etta, but just as lean. She wears plastic rings on all of her fingers, a style that Etta has eagerly copied. They look like a couple of five-and-dime Cleopatras.
Then she tells my father in Italian that I am pretty and not too old. I tell my little cousin that she should have seen me before the va-va-voom haircut. Chiara looks at me like I’m crazy.
Chiara is full of mischief. In pictures, she comes off as serene and serious, but in life, her dark eyes constantly dart about, looking for excitement. She is very quick, instantly picking up English phrases from Etta. Etta is doing fine with her Italian too. Chiara is teaching her Italian curse words, which make my daughter laugh. She is the perfect foil for Etta, who tries to do the right thing even at the expense of fun. But I instantly love my cousin; I want her to help Etta test her limits. Etta needs to loosen up. She needs to run and get dirty and play. I just want them to be careful, but I don’t have to worry. Giacomina takes them under her wing like her own little summer charges, and they obey her without question.
As we drive through the mountains, Papa tells Giacomina about town business, something about tourist season come winter. Then, in a split second, he swerves off the main road and through a mass of vines and brush. We bump onto a gravel road that pitches us around like loose fruit. The girls laugh and hang on. Soon we see a clearing with tall lanterns on spikes stuck in the ground around a dance floor of portable linoleum.
I was expecting an indoor disco. When we say “disco” in America, we mean a dance club, a place where you would find John Travolta in an ice-cream suit. But here a disco can be any place there’s music. The music, which sounds like Italian covers of American hits, plays out through the black night. Folks are gathered around the bar (a table set up in the field), and the kids are drinking a dark red fizzy drink, which they throw back like shots. “Bitters,” Giacomina tells me. There’s a crowd. A big crowd. It seems that most of the mountain villages emptied out and came here tonight. Cars are parked haphazardly along the sides of the field.
Chiara acts sophisticated and points out all the particulars to Etta. I can hardly hold on to them as they bolt from the car and head for the dance floor. Papa and Giacomina see friends from town and stop to chat. I whisper in Giacomina’s ear that I am going to go exploring.
I love the way Italians look. Maybe it’s because I’m relieved that there’s a place in this world where I look like somebody. But I find their faces so interesting. I don’t know what makes the women so beautiful—you would never see any of them on a magazine cover in America—but they are striking. Here a strong nose is a source of pride. Most of these noses wouldn’t last in America, with their length and their regal breaks in the bridge—they wouldn’t be appreciated. Maybe these women are so attractive because they like themselves. They accept what they are born with; even their flaws are a source of pride, the very thing that makes them distinctive and alluring.
The men are beyond handsome. Even when they’re short (I guess height is an American thing), they have a strength that makes you believe they could take one of these Alpine boulders and roll it down the hill like a basketball. They live in their skin like kings; their mothers encourage that. A son is a prized possession, more treasured than land or gold. A son means continuity. A son can become a father, and a father is the center of wisdom and policy in the home. I see it in action, in the small pockets surrounding the dance floor. Of course, the men seem to be in charge only because the women let them. Entire families are here together, enjoying the night air and the delicate paper lights and the music. (It reminds me of the Singing Convention held at Bullit Park back in Big Stone Gap. Families come with a picnic basket and stay all day listening to the music.)
“Ave Maria! Andiamo!” Chiara says, grabbing one of my hands while my daughter takes the other. They yank me onto the dance floor. Some Italian singer has covered an old American disco standard, and the girls want me to dance with them. At first I don’t want to dance. I’m old, I want to tell them. I’m a wife and a mother and a pharmacist. There’s no place for me on the d
ance floor; I have no business moving to the rhythm that makes the floor buckle under the impact of all these feet. But I look at my daughter’s face, and she wants me to dance. She seems to be saying, “If you dance, then I can. I want a mother who is happy and free and moves without worrying about what other people think.”
And for some reason, on this mountaintop, hidden inside all of these bodies as they sway and bounce, it’s okay for me to let go. I feel safe in this place where I am not known. My daughter is with me, and her cousin, but really, I am alone. I’m not married in this moment, and I am not a mother. I took my wedding rings off to collect stones in the stream above Papa’s house, and I forgot to put them back on. No, tonight I am Ave Maria Mulligan, the girl I left behind before I decided to give everything away to be simply a part of the MacChesney family. I let the music take me to that place where I was before I knew life could be so complicated.
Chiara and Etta and I have locked arms and are spinning in a circle, laughing. People on the dance floor make room for us. I throw my head back and look at the open sky above. I am connected and at the same time completely free. I am here, in my body, in this moment, but I’m also flying overhead in the inky sky streaked white with stars.
When the song ends (and I’m so sorry it did!), Chiara and Etta giggle and run off to find my father. I breathe deeply; my heart is beating fast. I lean over and rest my palms on my knees. I am hot and winded and sweaty and I like it.
“Ciao,” a man’s voice says to me. I look up and into an amazing pair of blue eyes.
“Ciao,” I say. He extends his hand to me. To be polite, I take it.
He looks as though he is searching for words. And he is. Italian words.
“Uh, dove e …” I do my best to follow along. In a few broken sentences, he has asked me to dance and to point him to the garage (we’re in a field, there is no garage), and inquired as to what village I’m from. I’m getting a kick out of him. He has beautiful hands, which make grand gestures to help me decipher what he’s trying to say in Italian.