Big Cherry Holler - Adriana Trigiani [92]
“Park. We’ll jump the fence,” I say. Jack gives me a look. “We do it all the time.” I get out of the truck and go around the arch and over the low fence into the cemetery. Etta hands Shoo to me, then I help Etta scale the fence. Jack follows her. Night is falling and settling on the stones in a haze. I climb the hill to the Mulligan plot. I don’t even feel it in my legs; all those Alpine hikes made me strong. When I climb the last little bit to the plot, I am glad that there is still enough light to see Joe’s headstone. I run my fingers in the gold grooves of his name and through the words “Beloved son and brother.” Black marble. White streaks.
“How do you like the impatiens?” Jack says from behind me. Etta puts Shoo down on the ground, and he trots right over to the headstone and sniffs around it. The red and white impatiens form a beautiful bright border.
“It’s lovely.”
“Mommy, it’s like the marble on Assunta Mountain.”
“You know what I wish?” I tell Etta. “I wish it was the blue kind with the black glitter in it.”
“What are you talking about?” Jack says gently.
“We visited a marble quarry in Italy.”
“Mama, take that rock off the stone,” Etta says.
“No, leave it,” Jack says.
“Why?”
“Lew Eisenberg left it there. Says it’s something they do in the Jewish faith.”
So we leave the rock. I dig deep into my pocket and place the lapis marble square Pete gave me next to Lew’s rock. “Honey, get Shoo,” I tell Etta. She picks him up. It’s too dark in the cemetery to read the stones. It’s time to go home.
I take a long bath and realize how much I missed my big four-legged white enamel tub and the way our water gushes out of the pipes. In Italy, you always feel like you’re trying to save water. Water barely streams out of their faucets. It’s the only negative thing I can say about the entire country. In fact, if they had better plumbing, it would be a perfect place.
I climb out of the tub without even holding on to the sides. I’m in such good shape, I just lift myself out of the water like Venus. I grip the stopper with my toe and yank it out. I guess my feet got stronger too. I dry off and slip into a new nightgown, white cotton with spaghetti straps and small red-ribbon rosettes on the neckline, a good-bye gift from Giacomina. She’s more a sister to me than a future stepmother.
Jack is in bed when I get there. He’s awake. I slide into my side of the bed and under the covers.
“You look good,” Jack says to me. But it isn’t a come-on. It sounds like a compliment you pay to a really nice dish of chipped beef.
“Thanks. I hiked a lot. I think I’m going to start running. It’s nice to be in shape.”
“Great.”
“Jack?”
“Yeah?” He answered me really fast, so maybe that means he has something to tell me.
“How was your summer?”
“It was pretty good.”
“Did you miss me?”
“It ain’t the same around here without you and Etta.”
“No, I know you missed Etta. But me. Did you miss me?”
Jack looks up at the ceiling. His hands are clasped behind his head. “ ’Course I missed you,” he says to the ceiling.
“Just checking,” I tell him as I turn over. He turns over to spoon against me, but he doesn’t reach around and pull me close. He puts his hand on the side of my thigh instead.
“You really did build some muscles in the Alps,” he says.
And that’s the last thing I remember before I wake the next morning.
Iva Lou meets me at the Mutual’s for breakfast. I have her new purse, and she has a boatload of gossip. The Tayloe Lassiter story is true; she’s been sporting one-carat diamond studs in her ears. Doc Daugherty has put Zackie on antianxiety pills to help him cope with his burglar paranoia. Pearl and Dr. Taye Bakagese are getting very serious.
“Now. Let’s get down to It,” Iva Lou says, buttering her toast.
“Are you sure about Jack Mac and Karen Bell?”
“Well, I haven’t caught him in the act. But I’m pretty certain. Let me tell you what I know. And don’t think it hasn’t been an effort for me. James Varner got over his cold and is itching to get back on the Bookmobile, but I won’t let him, ’cause if I let him, I lose that run up to