“It looks nice.”
“It was.”
“It’s good to know: You know. Good hotels.”
I continue walking down the street. Pete stops me again. “Let’s go in,” he says.
I look up into his eyes. The blue of them is so clear, even though he squints. He leans down. His lips are so close to mine, I can practically taste them. If I kiss him, I know we will go to his room. I know it. My hands are deep in my pockets. I try to make the left hand into a fist. Did I remember to wear my rings today? I feel the cool gold metal against the fabric. I did remember!
“I can’t.” I step back.
“Why?”
“Because I’m married.” Now I know why there’s an ancient custom of wearing wedding rings. They’re there to remind you that you’re married and keep you out of trouble.
“Ave Maria! Ave Maria!” I turn to see Stefano, Etta’s future husband, on a bicycle. Great. Caught in the act. Perfect.
“Ciao, Stefano.”
Stefano looks up at Pete.
“This is Pete.”
They exchange pleasantries and I step back, relieved. Stefano’s interruption has given me a few seconds to regain my composure. I realize that Stefano could have easily been Etta; I have to stop this. This is wrong, and I don’t want any part of it. I almost went into that hotel, and I hate myself for it. Stefano pedals off.
“Come to my room.”
“No.”
“All right. Fine. But I want to know just one thing.”
I dread the next question, so much so that I close my eyes.
“Do you want to?” he asks me.
“Of course I want to. And I hate myself for it. I don’t even like saying it!”
“Stay with me.”
“I told you, I’m not going into that hotel with you.”
“No, I mean Italy. Let’s not go back. Ever. Let’s just stay here. Look at this.”
I look down at the cobblestones, and around at the buildings with their summer awnings, and at the people, who never rush, who always seem to savor the beautiful weather and the good food. The people move through the streets in this small town just as they do in Big Stone Gap. They look at us as they pass. And I shouldn’t kid myself; they know me. They may not know my name, but they see me, a married woman on the sidewalk outside a hotel, full of guilt, trying to resist the charms of a man who is not her husband.
“Pete?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re crazy.” I tell him this, but I know it’s really me. I’m the one who’s crazy; I think I have this under control, and deep within me, I don’t.
I found a gorgeous burgundy crocodile shoulder bag for Iva Lou and a buttery beige leather tote for Fleeta (perfect for candy deliveries). I look at all of my Italian vacation booty on the bed and am very proud of myself. I came, I saw, I haggled. Well, not exactly. I let the purse-shop lady haggle for me. I’d ask how much something was, then, instead of haggling, I’d shrug and she’d start driving the price down.
I bought a puffy black ski jacket for Jack Mac. And a pair of boots for me. Pearl will have a handmade white lace shawl to wear on her wedding day. We won’t have to do any back-to-school shopping for Etta; her grandfather has spoiled her with clothes, clogs, and even a gold chain with a dangling angel.
We haven’t seen Pete Rutledge since the day he almost kissed me. He begged out of dinner at Zia Meoli’s. He called once during the week to say he was checking out some marble farther into the Dolomites before he flew back to New Jersey. I don’t think about him. That’s a lie. I do think about him, and to be perfectly honest, I imagine what would have happened had I decided to kiss him on the sidewalk in front of the Hotel d’Orso.
“Ave Maria! Teléfono!” Mafalda calls to me from the base of the stairs.
“Ciao?”
“Girl, it’s me, Iva Lou.”
“Hi, honey. How are you? Wait till you see the purse—”
“I don’t have a lot of time. James Varner has a summer cold he can’t shake, so I took over the Bookmobile run.”
“Okay. What’s up?”
“When are you gittin’ home?”
“Next week.”
“Damn. You’ll be too late. Honey, this is an emergency situation.”
“Is Jack all right?”
“He’s fine.” Iva Lou stretches out the word “fine” until it goes from a hum to a hiss.
“Are you all right?”
“Oh God, girl, everybody is fine. But you need to git home. You got to hurry.”
“Why?”
“The word up in Coeburn is not good.”
“What?” My legs give out on me. I sit down on the steps.
“Yes. I don’t want to hurt you, but honey, the word is that Jack Mac wants to divorce you and murry that low-to-the-ground little witch Karen Bell. We all think that he’s just goin’ through some silly midlife crisis or somethin’, and we don’t think it’s anything but loneliness. I think the man misses you somethin’ turr-ible. You need to git home and tend to yer business, honey. The barn is burning. Understand?” I hear Iva Lou taking a drag off a cigarette; she smokes only in times of complete duress.
“How could he do this? He said he’d wait.” This is all my fault. I’ve been spending the summer with Pete while, thousands of miles away, Jack Mac sensed that I left him emotionally, so he has left me.
“I have got to figure out a way to get that sow out of the picture.”
“Iva Lou, don’t do anything.”
“A man never leaves a woman unless he’s got someone to go to. If she wasn’t around, you wouldn’t have a problem.”
I must have said good-bye to Iva Lou, but I don’t remember it. I hold the receiver like a tasting spoon. The buzz of the telephone line must have gotten Mafalda’s attention; she takes the receiver out of my hand and hangs up the phone.
“Where are the girls?”
“They went to the waterwheel.”
I go up to my room and sit on the bed. I have an amazing sense of calm all of a sudden. I believe in long leashes for men; if you give them space, they’ll find their way back to you. Maybe Jack Mac is testing the length of the leash, and if he is, that’s his journey. It was, after all, the point of our spending the summer apart. So we could make the journeys. Decide what we want. And there is nothing I can do about it until I get home. I am not going to poison my glorious Schilpario with schemes involving Karen Bell. I am not going to call Jack, either. I am going to remain calm. For the first time in my life, I am not going to panic and I am not going to worry about what I cannot control.
I slip out of my new pale blue suede loafers (how I love Italian shoes) and into my hiking boots. I’m going to climb the mountain. That will take the edge off any anxiety that might creep in. I tell Mafalda where I’m going, and she promises to watch the girls. I walk up the street, past the houses, and through the town square. The benches are empty, and the chess tables are plain checkerboards until la passeggiata, when they will be filled to capacity.
As I reach the path that will lead me up to the pastures above town, I see the door to the chapel La Capella di Santa Chiara propped open with a can of paint. This is the very place where I married Jack MacChesney so many years ago (we had a second ceremony here in Italy so that my father could officially give me away). Something tells me to go inside.
The smell of paint sails over musky notes of church incense. I climb up to the choir loft, and it’s as though I lost something and all of a sudden remembered where to find it. I look up and around, hoping my memory serves me well. And it does. There she is, the Blessed Lady in her turn-of-the-century ankle-length coat and a hat with stars pinned to it. This is the stained-glass window my great-grandfather made—I climb up and touch the grooves of each pane of stained glass, murky blues and brilliant burgundies; the pieces fit together perfectly. But it is only when you stand back that you can see what the picture means. I remember my namesake, Ave Maria Albricci, who took care of my mother when she wa
s pregnant with me and on her way to America. I must never forget what I was before I married Jack MacChesney. I was a work of art. My mother’s work of art. All the things I thought I was—simple and plain and sometimes funny—are very small words. They do not begin to describe me. They do not begin to express what is inside of me. I have value, and I have worth. I cannot be replaced like old shoes or taken for granted like tap water. I am more than Jack MacChesney’s wife, the woman he tired of and traded in for a smart and sexy lumber supplier. Come on, Jack, you can do better than that. You married me, remember! So you think I’m a terrible wife. Well, maybe I am. Maybe I stopped making love to my husband, but give me a break, it slipped away from me after Joe died, I was mourning. I couldn’t tend to Jack’s needs when I was suffering. I couldn’t even take care of myself. And then it became a habit; I started to avoid intimacy. I was hurting too much. I wanted to retreat and be alone. I couldn’t share myself. If I made love to Jack, it would have been like I was cheating on myself. I wanted to control the only thing I could when Joe was taken from me. And the only thing I could control was who I let in. If Jack MacChesney doesn’t understand that, if he is so shallow and so selfish, then he is not the man I thought he was. Karen Bell. Honestly.
I kiss the window of the Blessed Lady. I am not thinking of sacred relics but of my mother. She would know what to do at a time like this; she could talk some sense into me. In a way, I hope that wherever she is, she doesn’t know about how I’ve been spending my summer. (How appropriate that I should have a little dose of Catholic shame in this perfect chapel.)
As I leave the vestibule, the midafternoon sun hits my eyes, so I close them. When I open them, Pete Rutledge is at the bottom of the path, leaning against his rental truck from the quarry. At first I don’t think he’s real. Why am I running down the path to him and throwing myself into his arms? And why am I crying?
“What happened to you?” he says, holding me away from his body and looking me over from head to toe.
“I haggled and got a good deal on a purse for Iva Lou,” I say as I quickly wipe the tears from my eyes.
“Good girl. Sorry I couldn’t come and help you drive down the prices.”
“You came back.”
“I had to see you again.”
“Why?”
“You owe me money,” he says with a straight face. “Forty-seven bucks. The train tickets to Florence.”
“I’m sorry. I have the money at the house.”
“I don’t want the money,” he says with a slight smile, pulling me close and burying his hands in the back pockets of my jeans. The timing of this is too perfect. I could have him and it would be only fair. My husband is carrying on with a woman thousands of miles away. Who would ever know?
“Do you want to see the field of bluebells?” I ask him.
“Okay.”
So, surefooted and strong, my legs like sculpted stone from a month of climbing around these Alps, I lead Pete Rutledge up the path to the ridge above Schilpario. I kneel and watch him as he looks at the field of bluebells for the first time. The hum of the bees drowns out the way my heart is thumping from the climbing (or, more likely, from my nerves). I catch my breath.
“God. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“And look. Look. Goats.” I point to a far ridge, where goats mill around a pasture and a boy herds them from the edge. “Doesn’t that look like something out of the Bible?”
“It does,” Pete says, squinting.
I want to tell Pete about Karen Bell, but I can’t. If I tell him that, he’ll think Jack is terrible, and I don’t want him to think that. I want him to think that I am going home to a husband who cherishes me. A husband who worked hard all summer and missed me every night and dreamed of the sex we would have upon my long-awaited return. A husband who can’t look at other women because none of them measure up, not even the young ones or the beautiful ones or the ones who flirt madly. A husband who wants sex only with me, even in his fantasies. A husband who pictures my face when he’s putting up a Sheetrock wall and finishes the job perfectly in my honor. A husband who, when I have fantasies about another man, dismisses it as healthy, normal, and good for our relationship. A husband so dutiful that I could treat him badly and he’d love me anyway. A husband who doesn’t expect me to put up a fight when I go ahead on vacation without him, as though he’s a blow dryer I accidentally forgot to pack.
A clean, cool breeze ripples through the bluebells as one perfect white cloud hangs overhead.
“I want you, Ave Maria.” Pete doesn’t look at me when he says this. Instead, I study him. The breeze musses his hair, and his eyes, as they narrow in the sun, are the very color of the bluebells.
“You have a way of saying things that …”
“That what?”
“Unglue me.” I roll over and start rolling down the hill like a child. Pete tucks and rolls beside me. Finally, we stop and I crawl back toward him. We’re laughing so hard, I swear the goatherd, who must be ten miles away, looks in our direction with disgust for disturbing this perfect pastoral setting.
“Pete. You don’t want me.”
“Why shouldn’t I want you?”
“Because I can’t handle anything.”
“What can’t you handle?”
“Haggling. Grief. Lust. My husband’s midlife crisis. You name it. I can’t handle anything. I just run. Find a brave girl to love. That’s what you need.”
“I don’t think you’re the best judge of what I need.”
No one has pursued me or wanted or needed me in this way in ten years. How new it all sounds. When I first heard words like these from Jack, I couldn’t believe it. I love the first moments of discovery with a man. When he tells you that you’re beautiful, and that there is no one like you, and that you’re the only person in the world he can really talk to. What a feeling of connection and purpose!
“Why did you bring me up here?” Pete wants to know.
“I wanted you to see the bluebells.”
“I’ve seen bluebells before,” Pete says in a way that makes me laugh.
“Not like these.”
“No. Not like these.” He looks at me. “You asked me why I came back. Now can I tell you?”
“I owe you forty-seven dollars.”
“No jokes.”
“Okay. No jokes.”
“When you left me at the hotel in Bergamo, I had a rough night. That’s why I didn’t come up to Schilpario again. I wanted to shake the idea of you and me. And I couldn’t. I had to see you one more time.”
“Why?”
“For the same reason you had me climb this mountain. You want this too.”
I don’t answer him. We lie on our backs, talking up into the sky just like the flowers. Pete rolls over onto me. I move my leg so I can grip my boot into the earth to slide out from under him, but he hooks his leg around mine and I can’t move. I could say something like “get off of me,” but I love the way he smells and the feeling of his breath on me and the way his leg hooks around mine. He slides his hands under my back and lifts me off the ground a little. He kisses my neck. Now there is no place for me to put my hands, so I give up. I wrap my arms around him, and I feel his back and his shoulders, and then I take his face in my hands. I know for sure that I am in Big, Big Trouble.
His lips find mine, so tenderly that I am compelled to say something. But I don’t want to talk. I want to kiss this man right off this mountain. For the first time in years, I am in my body. I feel my bones, my heartbeat, and my breath. My lips burn into his mouth like hot honey. I am beyond what I am. I am so far from what I know, I don’t even have a name. The air cuts through me as though I’m a vapor. I feel his body begin to move against mine. We roll into the bluebells. I want to let him in. The sun blinds me. Pete covers my eyes and kisses me again. He unbuttons my jacket and slides his arms around my waist. I must have a temperature of two hundred degrees—I am throwing heat like a furnace. I pull away from him to breathe and loo
k up over the ridge. The goats and their herder are gone. There are no witnesses! We are alone. I can do what I feel, be what I am, have something just for me! Haven’t I earned this? Isn’t life supposed to be about pleasure and connection and wild kisses? What else is there? To be alive—but how? Isn’t my husband, right this second, probably having sex with a woman who carries a clipboard and wears too much Charlie cologne? Kiss this man, I cheer myself on. This man understands you.
“Pete. Stop.” I say it so quietly he stops.
“Why?”
“I can’t. That’s the wrong word. I can do this. But I won’t do this.”
“Ave.”
“No. I won’t. I want to. But I won’t. People can’t just do things for selfish reasons. It has to matter.”
“Who are you talking about? People? Do you mean you?”
I shake my head. Somewhere I’ve heard this tone and these words before. Jack MacChesney made the same observation. When someone gets too close, I always talk in generalities and speak on behalf of a large group, in this instance a worldwide community of women who are tempted to have sex with men outside of their marriages. I’m talking about Those Women—I do not say “I.”
“Yes, I mean me. You make me feel good. But this is wrong.”
I button my jacket and tighten the laces on my boots, which loosened when I was rolling around.
“It isn’t wrong. We’re not wrong,” he says quietly.
“No, we’re not. We could be absolutely right for each other. But I have a husband.”
He stands and brushes his hair back with his fingers, as he always does. He walks several steps down the path toward the ridge. I look at him, tall, gleaming in the sun, backlit like an MGM-musical moment—silent, looking at me, waiting for the music to begin.
“Pete?” I kick the bluebells squashed by our kiss-tuck-and-roll back into their standing position with the toe of my boot. “I want to, but I’m not in love with you. I’m sorry. Once there was a man who had one rule. He’d make love only when he was in love.”
“That guy was a saint.”