Big Cherry Holler - Adriana Trigiani [81]
“I have this under control, Giacomina.” I reassure myself, saying it aloud.
As I lie in bed, unable to sleep because I’m wired from the caffeine (I should never have a cup of strong coffee late at night, what was I thinking?), I review my actions of the past day. This is a habit I’ve had since I was a child. I want to nod off with a clean slate, in case I die in my sleep. I apologize to God for my shortcomings, and while I’m at it, beg him for insight into my problems. A lot happened today. I imagined kissing a man whose attraction to me has been made abundantly clear. Bad. I opened up to him about the problems in my marriage. Bad. I allowed him to stay for dinner. Bad. I agreed to see him again. Worse. Now Pete Rutledge has a fan club at 108 Via Scalina. Now they’re invested in him. Now he’s a part of things! Am I falling for him? God, this is sick! What was Giacomina getting at tonight? Does she want me to leave Jack Mac and move to Schilpario and marry Pete Rutledge and start a new life? Of course not. But why do I think that’s what she means?
I sit up in bed.
I realize something that makes me queasy at first, then rings through my head like a proclamation. I am still repressed! That’s my problem! I hold my face in my hands. I can feel the heat rising off of my face. I thought I no longer buried my feelings and made decisions about my body and my life out of fear, but in fact, I do. Pete Rutledge unglues me, and I can’t handle it! I’m afraid he’s going to stir me up and then I’ll really have a problem. I was so smug, so shielded from temptation, in Big Stone Gap. I was proud that I didn’t want any man but my husband. That I had never wanted any man but my husband. Now I can’t say that. I can’t even think it, because it’s not true anymore. I want Pete Rutledge. Never mind I must not have him, I want him. Why can’t I tell Pete to go away? Is this retaliation for Karen Bell? No, I’m not one of those tit-for-tat people. Maybe this is what Jack Mac was talking about. Maybe he thinks I didn’t live enough before we married. I got married, but I didn’t leave the spinster behind: I moved her from Poplar Hill to Cracker’s Neck, and now I’ve dragged her across the Atlantic Ocean to northern Italy! But I’m still the same woman, and Jack MacChesney is right—I am not being honest about my feelings.
Pete promised the girls a trip up into the Dolomites, a mountain range that touches the Italian Alps. (I know, I know, don’t get me started on how I got myself into this one; Pete came back to the house with some slate to make the girls a chalkboard, and before we knew it, we were planning a day trip.) It’s a fifty-mile ride, one way, so we plan on a very early departure. He wants to show them the marble quarry. At first I think to bring Papa and Giacomina with us, but I decide against it. Etta has been spending time with everyone but me. And Pete is fun. I am doing nothing wrong (I keep reminding myself), and there’s no need to avoid our new friend. He makes us all laugh. Besides, I want to see the marble quarry.
As Pete drives, the girls jockey for position next to him. We finally decide that Chiara can sit next to him on the way over and Etta on the way home. I wasn’t planning on dealing with adolescent hormones for another five years, but here they are, in all their raging glory. I sit by the passenger window as they chat and giggle. Pete and I speak occasionally, to ask and answer questions about the directions and how far we have to go, but mostly I sit with my own thoughts as we speed and swerve through the mountains.
The marble quarry is an enormous pit dug in the side of Assunta Mountain, named for a woman two brothers loved and fought over. She died, and neither of them ever loved another woman again. As Pete explains