Big Cherry Holler - Adriana Trigiani [67]
“She’s a beautiful girl,” she says sincerely.
“Thank you.”
“I am sorry we never met Joe.”
“I know. I always intended to bring him here.”
“What was his funeral like?” my aunt asks me.
In most countries, this would be a strange question, but in Italy, a funeral is an art form. It is the last public gathering to honor a life, and therefore, it must tell the story of that life. So there are prayers and music and speeches. They even take pictures of the deceased in the casket and make copies for all to have after the funeral. It sounds macabre, and maybe it is, but it is also tradition. When Zia Meoli asks me about Joe’s funeral, she isn’t trying to upset me, she just wants to know.
“It was very simple. No wake. Just a Mass and burial. His friends from school came. You know that Papa came too.”
Zia Meoli sits quietly as I play the morning of Joe’s funeral over in my mind. And then I remember something I haven’t thought about, not during the funeral and not since.
“Remember the story of Aunt Alice Lambert?”
Zia Meoli nods and makes a gesture that indicates Alice was not a nice person. I had written to her about how Alice Mulligan Lambert tried to take the Pharmacy and house away from me.
“I just remembered something. Alice Lambert came to Joe’s funeral. She was sitting in the back row on the aisle, and at the end, when we were processing out of the church, I looked down at her, and I guess I looked surprised. She was the last person I expected to see at my son’s funeral. But she looked me square in the eye and said she was sorry. And that was it.”
“How strange that she came at all,” Zia Meoli muses.
“I know. And how funny that I didn’t remember it until now.”
This happened to me the last time I was in Italy. I remembered details, moments, that for some reason never crossed my mind in Big Stone Gap. When I came here the first time, I was able to see my life from a different perspective. It’s as though I left myself at home in the mountains of Virginia and invented this new person to have Italian adventures abroad. I can’t do that now. This time I’m on assignment, and the job is to write the plan for the second half of my life. I’m not going to be able to invent it as I go along, because Jack won’t let me. He wants to know where I stand. I’m not here on vacation, and every now and then, a pain shoots through my gut to remind me of that fact. I have to make a decision. Sometimes, when I think of my husband, I get butterflies; a surge of emotion goes through me, and I long for him. Other times, I’m glad he’s home, where I don’t have to deal with the sadness and the stress of us. This makes me feel selfish, and I hate to admit that I haven’t lived my life generously. I’ve sold myself on the idea that I am a magnanimous person, but it was false advertising. I always do what’s good for me—what makes me comfortable—and then I dictate to my family how things will go down. Usually, they play right along. I keep telling my relatives that I wish my husband were here too. But Papa could see that I was lying when I said Jack was too busy to get away. So maybe there’s another element to my summer in Italy. This is the summer I tell the truth. I will begin with Zia Meoli.
“Jack wanted me to come alone with Etta.”
“Why?”
“We’re having problems.” There. I said it. That’s not so hard.
“I am sorry.”
“You don’t have marital problems here in Italy, do you? The love center of the universe.” I wave my hand in front of me—every age of love is in the piazza: teenage lovers speed by on their motorbikes; a young wife splashes her husband as he passes the fountain; an older gentleman buys his wife gelato. Tonight, it seems, everyone is in love in Bergamo.
Zia Meoli throws back her head and laughs. “Yes, we have problems. Lots of problems.”
“Well, you’re spoiling my romantic notions, but I guess that actually makes me feel better.”
“Problems can be good. You solve them, and they bring you back together again.”
“That would be nice.”
“You’ve had a lot to cope with. Sometimes you take things out on each other. No?”
“I guess.