“I’m not one of those Catholics. I never even met one.”
“The Sistine Chapel.”
“The what chapel?”
He breathed a defeated sigh. “It is very beautiful there. That is all I can say.” His eyes left the ceiling and moved past me to the window. “That was the good thing about being sick. I dreamed I was home again in Italy. It was so real to me. I wish it was real and not just a dream,” he said wistfully.
And it was this very wistfulness that made me suddenly furious with him. “Well, if you want to go back so much, why don’t you? Nobody’s begging you to stay, and nobody’ll remember you two days after you’re gone.”
“Perhaps that’s true,” he said. “I would not have spoken of it at all, but I kept picturing you there. It really is the most beautiful country in the world.”
“Oh, horseshit! Everybody thinks that about the place where they were born.”
He looked at me pointedly. “And do you think that about Galen?”
“Oh, shut up and rest. Else you’ll get sick again and I’ll be forever nursing you.”
After that, his recovery was quick, so that he was able to help with preparations for my surprise party.
I had known about my surprise eighteenth birthday party for some time, and I thought it was the most ridiculous thing that Jewel had thought up to date. And since my birthday was on Halloween, I had the sneaking suspicion they were going to make double fools of themselves by dressing up in costume.
Even now, so many years after, my eighteenth birthday stands out clearly in my memory. It was one of those increasingly rare mornings when I went to school. After school was out, I took a walk so as to give them time to get everything ready, and while I walked, I practiced my look of surprise that I would put on the moment I stepped through the door. Surprise is not an easy thing to pretend, and much harder than pretending to be mad or sad. I tried raising my eyebrows, but that felt unnatural. I tried jumping a little, but that looked practiced. So I decided on some more subtle gestures.
It had always been my habit to take long solitary walks in the autumn, usually at the time the sun was almost gone and its leaving turned the sky to dirty pink and navy blue. A flock of geese cut a dark triangle across the muted sky and for a few minutes their cries drowned out all other sounds.
The leaves blew up in the wind and circled around my ankles. It would be dark soon, but not just yet. I felt sad all of a sudden. Or not sad, but melancholy, which is a sweeter kind of sadness, and in a perverse way, enjoyable. Maybe it was the days growing shorter that brought on the feeling because when the days got shorter, it always followed that the nights got longer, and it’s not easy to shake the feeling that terrible things are about to happen when night begins to last forever. Or maybe it was just that I was never able to lose sight of my own mortality that made me so strange to people and even to myself.
I started across a pumpkin patch, remembering how I’d often crossed the very same patch as a child. I loved the season as much now as I had then, but I had been more joyful when I was young. I used to dive into leaves and kick them up and build houses out of them, and I thought nothing of the dirt that coated them or the bugs that lived beneath them. I suppose, it’s a sign of maturity to start thinking about dirt. I remembered, too, a time when I would drop my chewing gum on the ground and just pick it up and put it right back into my mouth and not think a thing about it. But after you’re five or so, you start to think about it. Dirt and death.
After the pumpkin patch, a field of tall grass lay between me and the inn, and I started out across it. The moon was up already but waning, and not giving much light. Trees lined the field, leafless trees that looked like gnarled old women, which can give you the creeps if you let it. A moment later, I found out first-hand just what surprise looks like. You don’t raise your eyebrows or jump up in the air. What you do is freeze into perfect stillness, just as I did when Aaron Hamilton jumped out at me from behind a nearby tree.
I knew it was Aaron right away, even though he was wearing a Halloween mask. Many a time in the past four years, I had felt his eyes on me. Before tonight, I’d always thought it my imagination. But as Jewel had early on observed, I had no imagination, and so all those times, Aaron must have been following me and watching me when I couldn’t see him.
He yelled “Boo!”
Instinctively, I backed away, raising my arm to reveal the knife I had taken to carrying. My hand shook visibly as I held the blade high. If only he wasn’t wearing the mask, I thought. Seeing his face, I’d read it and know what to do, whether to fight or flee, hold my ground or surrender it.
“Whatta’ you pulling a knife on me for?” he asked, sounding genuinely perplexed.
“Get away from me.” I brandished the knife at him. “I almost killed you once. This time, I’ll really do it.”
“Hell, you were just a kid then and didn’t know what you was doing,” said Aaron generously. “But now you’re a full-grown woman.”
“And you’re a full-grown pig.”
He laughed and began to circle me like an Indian. I spun on my heels, knife still raised, so as he shouldn’t get behind me. “You shouldn’t be calling me names, Miss Willickers. I mean it ain’t like you were one of the pretty girls. They got a right to say what they want and get away with it. But somebody plain as you can’t afford to pass up no opportunity. It might not come again.”
“I’ll take the chance.”
He lifted his mask, and I got some of my nerve back. His face was quizzical. “You know it’s a funny thing, Darcy,” he said. “You’re not good looking and you’re not sweet-tempered. But there’s something about you. I wish I could say just what. Something that makes a man think you might be worth his while after all.”
I jabbed the knife out blindly and hearing him yell, “Shit!” I knew I’d nicked him. He stopped dancing around me long enough to study his arm. The cut couldn’t have been too bad because his good humor came quickly back.
He smiled. “I want you to know, Darcy, that I ain’t going to hold tonight against you. Just remember, I got nothing but time. And one of these nights, you’re going to turn around and there I’ll be. Might as well face up to it. You’re never going to get away.” And with those words, he turned on his heels and was gone.
Shaken, my mind so preoccupied with these new fears, it truly came as a surprise to have Jewel and Luca and the girls dash out from behind the furniture. Sure enough, they had their costumes on. Jolene was a witch with a pointed hat. Caroline was a fairy princess, a part in which she often cast herself even when it wasn’t Halloween. Jewel, naturally, was a gypsy, and Luca was a pirate with a scarf tied around his head and a patch over one eye. Jewel plunked a party hat on my head, snapped the elastic under my chin, and I suffered them all to kiss me, except Luca who shook my hand instead.
I felt dazed, but nobody seemed to notice. It would have been a relief to tell them what had happened. To see the fear in their faces would have lessened my own. But that was impossible. They were in a party mood and rowdy as a lynch mob. So I kept it to myself and reasoned that there wasn’t really anything they could do about Aaron anyhow. He was as much a fact of life in Galen as the mines.
Out came the birthday cake, a lopsided thing, the result of great effort from Jewel and my sisters. They put eighteen candles on the cake and one for luck, and I made a wish. I put so much thought into my wish that by the time I blew out the candles, they had melted all over the cake. My wish took so long because it was really four wishes in one. I wished that Luca would move out, that Jewel would marry, that the girls would go away to college, and last and most important, that I could then begin my travels, safe in the knowledge that everybody had been provided for and would make no further demands of me.
Naturally, they all wanted to know what I wished, and I said I wished I would travel a lot. Jewel commented that nobody in Galen ever wen
t much of anywhere, and Caroline snickered. Jolene gave me one of her snooty I’m-so-smart looks and told me to cut the cake. Eating that cake, I thought that Jewel was as equally unsuited for the baking profession as for the hospitality profession. If not for the melted wax, the cake wouldn’t have had any taste at all.
After we had all choked down the cake, it was time for me to open my presents. Jewel handed me a box from herself and the girls that I could tell came from the dry goods store because of the way it was wrapped, but also because the dry goods store, excepting the general store, was the only store in Galen, which cut down the guesswork considerably. It turned out to be a saw I had admired one day when we’d gone in for supplies. I thanked them politely and wondered why Luca was beaming from ear to ear and looking as expectant as a nine-months pregnant lady.
He stepped aside and I saw a big parcel all wrapped in brown paper. He pushed it toward me and said bashfully, “For you.”
Jewel looked at the package. “I’m kind of curious myself. Luca didn’t want to go in with us on the saw and he’s been so secretive lately.”
I had some trouble undoing the string which increased the suspense. Luca looked about to burst and I got suspicious. Maybe it was some kind of prank. So I unwrapped it real careful in case there was a mouse trap or something alive inside there. Slowly, slowly, I let the string fall, and when the paper fell away, I stood back, expecting something to jump out or spring up or go off or whatever. But when I looked, I saw that it was just a suitcase, a plain brown cardboard suitcase. I stood there like a deaf mute and stared at it. From the corner of my eye, I could see Luca beside me, his face full of anticipation, waiting for my reaction.
I looked at him and swallowed hard. I could feel my bottom lip starting to quiver and I bit it to make it stop. I looked up at him again and then back down so that my hair covered my face. The silence was terrible as they waited, sensing something wrong, unable to tell what, looking back and forth from me to each other. I had to think of something to say, something that would put everyone at ease, something witty like Jolene would have done, or maybe the kind of fetching smile that belonged to Caroline. Anything. But I didn’t. I didn’t because I knew that should I try to speak, my voice would catch and that catch would betray me.
I didn’t cry in front of them. That I would never do. Old Sam was the only one who had ever seen me cry, and then not often. So I waited until I had pushed my way past them and was alone and safe in my room. The last thing I heard was Luca’s bewildered voice asking, “Didn’t she like my present?”
His present. I wondered if he had any idea of just what he had given me. Probably, he believed it was nothing more than a suitcase. How stupid he was and how little he knew about himself or me to think his gift could be just that. It couldn’t, not after the time we had talked about Kathmandu. Such a simple message that cheap cardboard suitcase carried and yet it was one that had pierced me to the heart. Did he know? He didn’t. Couldn’t, as he could not know for I would never tell him that for years afterward, whenever I was feeling certain that everything ended in nothing, I would take out that suitcase that was destined to see virtually no travel in its lifetime, and looking at it, I would feel my heart rise. It hurts to be understood if it’s the first time ever. It cracks open the shell of your bitterness and your seeds spill out.
I cried the whole night and yelled at Jewel to go away when she knocked and asked, “Are you all right?” I said I was. But I lied. I wasn’t. I never would be again. I buried my face in my pillow and cried without knowing why. I had never been more miserable in my life. And yet there was no more reason to be sad than to be happy. I felt simply split apart, my vitals exposed, as if the very deepest part of me had been opened and could never be sealed up again. Yet I had to find a way to seal it up again if I was ever to leave my room and go downstairs again. Life, up until that time, had always seemed to me a senseless progression of incidents and coincidence. Things could seldom be arranged and never controlled. But there was one thing of which I was certain in the uncertain world, and that was my own strength. I had never gotten so angry as to forfeit an opportunity, never so relaxed as to let slip a secret, and though I cared for Jewel and the girls, it was never with the blind caring that could divert me from the most practical course. But Luca had cracked the foundations of my bitterness, and if that crack should widen, the whole structure would come tumbling down. I must seal it back up, even if it cost me the thing I held most dear.
I don’t need to tell you that things were never the same between me and him after that. I couldn’t act natural around him anymore, and so I avoided him. For his part, Luca couldn’t understand what he’d done to offend me, because no matter how he tried, I would not be drawn out.
It was the kind of situation Jewel would have thrilled to pick apart at length. There was nothing she enjoyed more than endlessly pondering the motivation behind every deed. For me, that was a waste of time. People did what they did for whatever reason or no reason at all. The end remained the same. Even my own actions, I never stopped to question.
So it followed that I never questioned why I suddenly took to watching Luca when he didn’t know it. I watched him across the dinner table. He had impeccable table manners and never made crumbs. I watched him from the shadows of the porch while he flirted with Caroline. He had a courtly way about him that made you feel as if he were just about to ask you to dance. I particularly liked to watch him while he did chores around the house. Sometimes, when chopping wood, he’d take his shirt off. Sweat glistened on every muscle of his broad back and arms. Never once did he catch me looking, though he tried, turning around suddenly when he must have felt my eyes on him. But I was always too quick for him and by the time he looked up, my eyes had gone back to my fish line, my sewing, or my reading.
There’s no denying that a part of me wanted him to stay with us so I could go on stealing glimpses of him. But a bigger part never stopped wishing he’d get out of our lives that he had unnecessarily complicated and go back to Italy. We would all have avoided so much misery. In the spring, he would graduate, and believing my opportunity had come, I awaited with great anticipation the fast-approaching day when they would hand him his diploma and he would go buy his boat ticket.
Three weeks before the graduation ceremonies were to take place, Luca got into a fight with Mrs. Hennessey over her cat, Emily. It seemed that some animal had gotten mad at Emily—which wasn’t surprising, Emily being as old and mean as her mistress—and bitten off a hunk of Emily’s ear. It sounded to me like the work of a raccoon. Mrs. Hennessey, for no reason other than that she hated our guts, concluded that Old Sam had done the damage; she marched over to order Luca to shoot the dog for viciousness.
The idea of Old Sam being the guilty one was ridiculous. He was Jewel’s dog in disposition and outlook and there wasn’t a creature living that Old Sam didn’t like. He never chased squirrels like other dogs, and as for cats, why he and Emily had always been friends. Back when Emily was a young mother, Old Sam had been over there every day, just sitting by the basket out on Mrs. Hennessey’s front porch, looking down so proud at those kittens, you’d have thought he was the father. Besides that, Old Sam would even let stray male dogs come into his yard—his own front yard, mind you—and lift their legs on his very own trees without so much as a bark of protest, and after they were gone, he never ran up behind and wet over the spots where they had wet like most dogs would do. He just sniffed a little to see who the visitor was and left their scent undisturbed on territory that was rightfully his. And he never bothered humans either, not even Mrs. Hennessey when she took a broom to him. Yet this was the dog that she wanted shot.
I was upstairs when she stormed over with broom in hand, and hearing the commotion, I hung out a window to listen and was just in time to hear Luca ask her if she had ridden her broom over or if she had walked. Then in his own formal way, he told her that he would sooner shoot a meddlesome neighbor than h
e would a harmless dog and finished by telling her never to darken our door again. He’d never shown such spunk before, and in spite of myself, I had to smile. In fact, it was all I could do to keep from applauding. Unfortunately, Luca was soon made to pay for giving the old lady what for, and I was made to pay with him.
A week later, we were paid a visit by the immigration authorities. Someone, who the officials refused to name, had reported Luca as being in this country against the law, and if he didn’t leave of his own free will, he would be sent back to Italy.
What a golden opportunity for him, I thought. Here was his chance to get the government of the United States to pay for his return to the country that had spawned him. So you can imagine my surprise when he pleaded with Jewel not to let them send him away.
“You can’t be serious,” I said to him. “What about all those times you were so homesick? What about Italy being the most beautiful place in the world?”
He didn’t argue with me, just sat there with his head in his hands looking miserable.
“Don’t you understand anything, Darcy?” Jewel turned on me. “Luca’s life is here now. All his friends are here and we’re here. We’re his family now.”
“But he’s Eye-talian,” I insisted. “And Eye-talian people should be with other Eye-talian people.”
She paid me no attention and as I watched her face, I saw an idea take hold. She rose so suddenly that she gave all of us a start, including Luca, who by now was savvy enough to know there was good reason for fear when an idea presented itself to Jewel.
“I know!” she said, and we all shuddered in unison. “We’ll marry Luca off to an American girl. They could never deport him if he was the legal husband of a legal United States citizen.”
I saw that the wheels were turning a mile a minute in that mind of hers, but never in my wildest imaginings could I have foreseen what came next. With unusual innocence, I said, “Now why would anybody in her right mind agree to marry Luca? He doesn’t have a pot to piss in! Who could possibly—” The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as one by one, Jewel, Caroline, Jolene, and finally Luca himself turned to stare at me.
Angels Unaware Page 9
