Lone Star

by Paullina Simons

  “Why so long?”

  “I couldn’t come.”

  She remembers Johnny owing Emil money for twelve months and not being able to pay. “Why not?”

  “I was busy.”

  “Too busy to see your mother? No wonder she’s mad.”

  “She’s not mad. Well, she might be a little mad I’m only staying for one day.” Changing the subject, he says he wishes they had time to go to Cividale. It has a pastry shop from heaven, he says, and has the best speck.

  Chloe wants to say she wishes they had time for a lot more than a speck of ham.

  “Am I going to meet your mom?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll play it by ear. Sometimes she’s okay. Other times … we’ll see.”

  “Tell me something about her so I don’t embarrass myself with stupid questions,” says Chloe. “Is she nice?”

  “Is my mother nice?”

  “I mean …” Chloe means to say is she nice to strange girls? Strange girls with bare legs and without a stitch of makeup, wearing green sweaters over improper coral dresses, girls you drag in behind you, hiding them, letting a mother know after one glance why you are so late and why you can stay so briefly.

  “Yes, she’s nice.”

  “How long has she been in Tarcento?”

  “Two years. She might be leaving soon, my father said.”

  “Really? She’s all better?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “So why would she be leaving?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  Chloe clears her throat. “So what’s the matter with her?” She takes his cool hand. “Why is she in Tarcento?”

  “She’s convalescing.”

  “From what?”

  He continues to stare out the window. So does she, over his shoulder. He is right to stare. Northeastern Italy is lousy with sweeping vistas of endless mountains and flowing rivers carving out a myriad gorges. The architect said one valley, one snow-capped peak, one rocky glen, one chalet, and the builder replied, not enough. I will give you thousands. And it still won’t be enough.

  “The problem with my mother,” Johnny says, “is she never quite figured out what kind of woman she wanted to be. So now she’s spent the last ten years of her life trying to recover from the ill effects of her ignorance.”

  “What do you mean what she wanted to be? Like a career woman or a wife?” And why would she be convalescing from that?

  “Yes, but what kind of career woman, what kind of wife.”

  “Wasn’t she a singer?”

  “Yes. She did once want to be a star.”

  Well, so what. Chloe’s mother once wanted to be a dancer. But she wasn’t living by herself in an Italian hamlet.

  “My dad was quite a catch. But she thought she was the catch, you see. She was much younger than he was and misunderstood some basic things. So they fell in love. You know the way people sometimes do.”

  Chloe’s heart shrinks into a tight fist, but Johnny isn’t looking at her.

  “Falling in love is the easy part,” he says. “You give yourself to me on Italian shores. You give me your naked body, and I’m young and you’re young. It’s not even a riddle. The answer is yes a thousand times scrawled across all the stars in the heavens. It was for my dad, too.”

  Chloe swallows. “What did you mean when you said to Hannah that your dad was made wretched in a brothel? You weren’t, um, talking about your mother, were you?”

  Johnny laughs. “Some son I’d be if I were. No. That was before my mother. That’s not what I’m talking about. That one is definitely a story for another time.”

  She waits to hear anything he deigns to bring forth from his mouth.

  “The question is, do you have staying power past the rapture?” Johnny asks. “Do you give renewable pleasure? Do you suffer, believe, endure? Do you fail? Are you the real thing or a temporary flicker? So here’s the problem. My mother was the temporary flicker. But the really unfortunate part is that both she and my dad mistook it for an eternal flame. They should’ve never gotten married, because one must know the difference, and they did not. My mother just didn’t have the goods. Not like your mother.”

  “What?” Chloe hoots. “My mother doesn’t have … goods.”

  “Your green cabin on the lake is the real thing.”

  “How—how do you know?” How would he know!

  “Because I know when it’s missing. It’s been missing my whole life. My mother wanted from my dad what he couldn’t give her. But she couldn’t be what he needed either. For a long time I believed it was because he was a terrible husband, and I loved my mother, and still do, and so I blamed him and modeled my whole life on wanting to be only one thing—not him. But after he and my mom split up and he remarried, I saw the way he was with his new wife. She dotes on him and he responds with love and kindness. Kind is not a word I’d have ever used to describe my old man. But the way he walks through the door and laughs at Kerri’s stupid jokes and watches her play guitar. He never looked at my mother like that when she sang.”

  “Even though she was beautiful?”

  “Even though she was beautiful.”

  “Your mother wasn’t devoted to your father?”

  “My mother,” says Johnny, “was a beauty queen.” As if that answers Chloe’s question. “She wanted my father to be devoted to her.”

  “Who wouldn’t want that,” Chloe mutters.

  “Exactly. Mother was like, take me out dancing, to parties, to your social functions. Let me get dressed up. Let me see you adore me in public while I make you proud by being a bauble on your arm. And my dad was like, yeah, okay, hotcakes, but I’m starved, and the kids are failing math. While you and I are tripping the light fantastic, who’s gluing the Egyptian pyramid for Johnny’s school project?”

  “He’s sort of right about that,” Chloe says. In her house, her mother takes care of all she can take care of, and her dad takes care of the rest.

  “But my mom didn’t care about chicken cutlets or pyramids,” Johnny says. “Plus she hated to cook, hated math, hated school projects. She liked to sing. And she liked to look pretty. And then she started liking other things. With gin in them. And my dad was away a lot, working. So sometimes he acted as if she wasn’t the runner-up in a beauty pageant. He wanted his kids to be fed and the beds to be made. And my mother was like, I’m a beauty queen! And he was like, I don’t give a fuck, feed my kids! And she was like, if you care so much, then be home more, and he was like, I’d be home more if you made it more of a home. That’s the part my mother didn’t get most of all—that she was stunning and yet he wasn’t home. If he wasn’t home for her, then who would he ever be home for? Well, we found out. His new wife who bakes him pies.”

  “I assume, um, not a beauty queen?” says Chloe.

  “Blonde and petite and quite fetching. That’s what I mean about deciding what kind of a person you want to be. Because on that decision rest all your life’s expectations. And if they’re not met, then whoa. And woe.”

  Rocky glens and mountains into the horizons fly by their windows. “I just want to be loved and cherished,” says Chloe. “That’s what I want.”

  Turning away from the canyons and the roaring waters, he kisses her. “You are adorable. You say it as if you’ve just discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls.” He smiles. “That’s what everybody wants. Welcome to the human race, Princess of the Orient. Your fellowship is seven billion souls.”

  She can tell he wants to say more, but doesn’t. Not just then. They pass through old hamlets and villages, streams below, snowy mountains above. Italy is taking her breath away. Italy, right?

  “Why is it so hard?” she finally asks. “To be loved? Seems such a simple matter.”

  “What are you, a statue?” asks Johnny. “A movie? A flavor of ice cream? Make yourself into chocolate; who won’t love you then?” He lifts his arms, crooking them above his head, glancing at her with bemusement, as if he can’t believe she doesn’t know the answe
r to this simplest of all trivia questions.

  “Are you laughing at me?”

  “No.” He cups her face. “You’re just naïve, china doll. You may have school smarts, but you’ve got another decade of living before you be all growed up.”

  “All right, old man, you haven’t had another decade of living either. You’re like two minutes older.”

  “But I know this. Before you can be loved, you have to make yourself into a civilized being, not a wild brute, a human being capable of loving another, of giving another person something they need. I said the same thing to my mother, but she didn’t ever want to hear it. Let your father give me things, and then we shall see, she said.”

  “Is that the trick we must learn,” mutters Chloe, eyes past his black stubble to the fields beyond.

  “Yes, to love another is the trick we must learn,” he says, leaning sideways and kissing her green shoulder. “What a magic trick it is.”

  Tarcento is a stony Italian town on the fast-flowing, transparent green meandering Torre River, a narrow tributary of the pre-Alpian Isonzo. The elms and the firs cover it like a canopy, the range of ancient mountains surround the town on all four sides like a forest or a fortress. The river is full of large rocks and whirling basins. Chloe thinks it might be very good for fishing. They cross the stone bridge and then walk for miles on the road hugging the river. They walk hand in hand because they are lovers. Chloe’s body aches in all the places he has recently been and now is not. Squeezing his long thin hand, she prays as she walks that this will not be a permanent state of her being, throbbing on empty without him.

  The turn-off they’re looking for is a dirt road that leads to the Tarcento Pensione nested on the banks of the wild Torre. The grounds the house stands on are park-like. Immaculate like the Italian trains. The only clue to what kind of a place it is, is the carefully camouflaged fence, hidden by bushes and trees. Chloe doesn’t want to make any comparisons, favorable or otherwise, to other camouflaged fences she has been told about recently by the surreal Adonis at her side. This fence has a gate and an intercom, and though the gate is locked, Chloe needs to assume that Johnny’s mother is not a prisoner and can leave if she wants to, but chooses not to. The Italian voice on the intercom says gravely, “Ciao, chi e questo?”

  Johnny replies in Italian. The only words Chloe understands are Ingrid Camala or something like that. Maybe Coomala. Kumala? The gate clicks, unlocks, and slowly swings open. They walk down the winding path to the pastel blue house, Chloe thinking all the while that no gates or fences can keep someone in when the choppy river is but an embankment away. For God’s sake, hasn’t anyone here read the biography of Virginia Woolf? Before they get to the house, Johnny stops walking, turns to Chloe, and runs his palm over her silky hair, perhaps meant as tenderness, or perhaps to smooth her out before the presentation. “Are you ready?” he says. He kisses her. He doesn’t sound anxious, but who can tell? “It’ll be fine. Remember, best to speak as little as possible. Our role here is not to talk. It’s just to listen, if we can bear it.”

  Chloe doesn’t know if she can bear it. Can he bear it? Depends on what your mother wants to say, she thinks, as they walk up the porch steps of the house.

  The staff at the Tarcento Pensione all know Johnny. The nurses squeal as they rush to embrace him. They ask a flurry of questions in a gorgeous rolling Romance tongue about his well-being, or perhaps about how long it has been since he was here last, or perhaps about the splendid hardness of his naked body. Chloe doesn’t know for certain they’re actual nurses. They’re dressed a little wantonly for Chloe’s taste, in tight white dresses that some might call uniforms. These so-called nurses to the one, even the really old one, suddenly acquire shiny lips and flushed cheeks. Chloe stands back disapprovingly, watching them effuse all over her Johnny. He leans back into her with a toothy grin. “Did you hear, by the way, how they keep calling me Johnny?”

  “Oh, I’m hearing many things,” she says.

  He agrees with a cheerful squeeze. “Italians are a very friendly people.”

  “Clearly. And they said Yanni, or Anni. Could be anyone.”

  Even one of the doctors on duty comes out to shake Johnny’s hand. The doctor, because he’s a male, nods to Chloe, but the female staff eye her as if she is a vagrant who’s wandered in.

  Finally Johnny is released from their clutches. “Wow,” she says as they walk down the short corridor past the reception counter.

  “Are you saying wow because you’re impressed with the facilities?” he asks, swinging his arm around her.

  “That too.”

  The house is a glorified bed and breakfast, spacious, cosy, homey, rustic, Italian, soft lighting, beautifully furnished, classical music playing. The only difference between an inn and this place is the doctors on standby waiting to dispense the meds and the pretend nurses doing whatever the heck it is they do.

  “My mother is outside,” he says. “She is taking her lunch in the garden. They asked me if we wanted some food. I’m kind of starved, are you? They said they had some speck from Cividale.” He smiles. “At least we’ll get some of my favorite thing in the world.”

  “Really, favorite,” Chloe says in a grumble.

  “Okay, like fourth or fifth favorite.” He nuzzles her cheek as they descend the veranda steps in the back. The landscaped lawn leading to the river is enormous and wooded. Secluded foliaged spots are everywhere, with little tables under the gazebos set on the grass or on stone patios. There are comfortable reading chairs, a hammock, a bench swing. It is beautiful and comforting. Only one or two people are out in the garden, including a print-clad female shape in the far distance, facing the river, her back to the house.

  “How can your mom afford to live in a place like this?” she asks him as they cross the wide lawn. “This is very lux.”

  “My grandparents help pay for it,” Johnny says. At the edge of the grass he stops walking and takes her by the shoulders. After lightly kissing her lips, he shows her to an Adirondack chair nearby. “My mom is just over there.” The motionless print-clad shape is now but a bush away. “Can you sit here for a few minutes while I go talk to her?” he says quietly. “I don’t want her to think I came late and not alone. Do you mind?”

  She nods as she half-frowns. “But you did come late and, um, not alone.”

  “Well, I know. I just need a few minutes with her. To make sure she’s okay. Then I’ll introduce you.”

  “Of course,” she says, perching down in the wooden chair. “I’ll be right here.” Right here, where I can hear everything. She leans back. The place is so tranquil, the sound of the river like white noise, set on extra loud, and she hasn’t had any sleep in two nights. She might pass out in the stillness. She doesn’t want to miss a word, but she fears that any moment life is going to stop making sense. She pinches her arms to stay awake.

  Chloe can’t see Johnny’s mother well from where she is sitting. Ingrid’s back is to her and she is partly obscured by a blooming rhododendron. She looks full-bodied. She gets up when Johnny approaches, exclaims, “My son!” and maternally embraces him. She is quite heavy, and she wears a loose long geometric-print kaftan that makes her look twice as large. “You’re finally here,” she says. “Sit down, sit down, no, wait, let me look at you. I haven’t seen you in so long.” The mother examines the son, palpates his unshaven face, caresses his head, tugs disapprovingly on his ponytail, judges his black jacket. “I don’t know what your father is going on about. My God, did he go on for days about how terrible you looked in Trieste. You don’t look so bad.” She pats his cheek, a little roughly, almost like a half-slap. “I’ve seen you look a lot worse than this.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  They sit, she back in her chaise longue, he in an upright straight-back lawn chair. He places the guitar on one side of him, the duffel on the other. She takes hold of his hand, kisses it, won’t let go of it. “I’m so happy to see you,” she says. “How’ve you been?”

&nbs
p; “Good, Mom. You?”

  “You talk to your sisters? Your brother?”

  “I haven’t had the chance. Thought I’d do it when I’m back Stateside. Dad said everybody is good.”

  She waves her hand. “Your sister is annoying me.”

  “Which one?”

  “Take your pick. One wants to go to graduate school for, get this, business! Like she’s not even my daughter. And the other one wants to get married immediately. God. Both of them are just going to wreck their lives.”

  “They’ll be fine. Dad said Tomboy is good.”

  “How good can he possibly be? He’s staying with your grandparents for the summer. Your grandmother will ruin him. She could never say no to you, and look at you now in your alligator boots. Now she’s hooked her claws into my baby boy. He’ll be a disaster by the time I come back.”

  “When are you coming back? Dad said maybe soon?”

  “Your father doesn’t know anything. I’m not well. I can’t just up and go. We’ll see. I’m still recuperating.”

  Johnny chews his lip. “I brought you some biscotti,” he says, handing her a white paper bag.

  She takes it indifferently. “That’s not what I want. What about … are you having lunch with me? Because you know what Churchill says. There’s no celebration without wine.”

  Johnny rubs his bristly face. “First of all, that’s not how the quote goes. It’s: there’s no celebration without food. And Churchill didn’t say it. Either one.”

  “Oh, Churchill would say it about the wine, if I know my political leaders.”

  Johnny stays quiet.

  “Well? Did you bring it, or didn’t you?”

  “Bring what?”

  She points to the duffel. “That little flask you carry with you everywhere you go. That’s gotta have something good in it.”

  Intensely he presses his hands together. “Mom, no. They’ll throw me out.”

  “They don’t have to see.” She reaches for his bag between their chairs. With a deft foot he pushes it behind him.

  “Can we not start immediately?” he says. “Can we not begin like this?”