Big Cherry Holler - Adriana Trigiani [88]
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 was 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.