I hadn’t wanted to notice anything nice about Luca before. I’d been too busy thinking up ways to torture him and put as great a distance as possible between us. How very successful I had been. It was too late now to call to him. He would be too far away ever to hear me again. All this, I’d done by myself, and I took a twisted pride in having been able to ruin things so thoroughly without any help. Now, we hardly ever spoke at all. Yet in the widening silence, I saw for the first time how it really was with him.
He’d been a proud boy who had grown into a proud man, but one who had been forced to swallow that pride so often that it had choked off something inside him. Humility did not become him, and I could not stand to see him humbled. It was like seeing royalty dethroned, or a mountain lion made docile. He should have been cocky and conceited. He should have been bold and unafraid. But he was none of those things. When Luca raised a fork to eat, his hands shook, and I knew that something at the core of him was shaking, too, its foundation soon to rent asunder.
There was one thing more I found out about Luca in those days of silence, and that was that he cared for me. Not loved. He did not love me. But he cared for me, and believing I had no right to expect more, it would have been enough, if I had not known the reasons for his care. It was in Luca’s nature to always take the part of the weak, the homely, the outcast. And while I didn’t mind him thinking me homely and outcast, I couldn’t bear knowing that at some time, when I was unaware, he had seen me weak, and moved by the sight, had come to care for me. I could stand to be hated, taunted, shunned, but not this, this terrible compassion.
Luca. I can hardly stand to tell of him during those two years. He changed so much that it was as if we hardly knew him. While I blamed myself for the change, it was the mines, I knew, that really did him in.
After we came back from New Jersey, Luca started working in the mines, the only work he could find, despite knowing five languages. There was no demand for linguists in Galen.
Jewel begged him not to do it. She said it wasn’t natural for men to work in dark little holes in the ground. She said it would break his back and his spirit and he’d be old before his time. She said that with his cleverness and knowledge of five languages, he should be a diplomat or an ambassador or something important. She begged me to talk to him. She said that working in the mines would keep him from ever reaching his potential. But I knew it was useless, and all I could say was, “How many of us will reach our potential, Jewel? Will I? Did you?”
All of us noticed the change in him. I can’t remember him ever smiling in those years, so that everybody almost forgot what nice teeth and dimples he had. Except me. I never forgot how he looked when he smiled, and I watched and waited but I wouldn’t see it again for a long time. He seldom spoke to me, and even when he did, it was never a word more than necessary. He didn’t talk much to Caroline or Jolene either, and when they talked, he seemed to begrudge them an answer. Only with Jewel, he never changed. Only with her was he unfailingly patient and kind.
Every week he insisted on turning his pay over to her, and I wondered how he could be saving for our divorce if he gave all his money away like that. But I never got the chance to ask him, because we were never alone together, and I sensed that that was as he wanted it. Every night, he’d come home all full of soot and coughing up dust, and after he’d wash up, Jewel would serve him dinner, and after he’d finish, he would go to bed or fall asleep over his coffee.
He never complained. Not once. Not ever. But it must have been bitter to him all the same. He’d come here looking for opportunity and instead had found coal. It was what he woke to and what he dreamed about at night. Not the coal exactly, but the tunnels. Jewel was the only one he talked to about it. I heard him tell her once that he had nightmares about the tunnel collapsing on him and being buried alive. He told her how every day he felt certain that the space had gotten smaller, and how he felt always nauseous and got persistent headaches even when he wasn’t in the mine. Still, he would always add, it wasn’t really so bad as it sounded and he didn’t truly mind it so much.
When the whole business of living got too much for me, I always thought of Kathmandu and watching his brooding face, I wondered what it was he thought of when things went badly. Probably escaping us all and going back to Italy. I knew nothing of his country, and yet I feared its power. Always there was the threat that someday it would call him back home again, and he would go. Luca never talked about Italy anymore and that was maybe most disturbing of all because it was like he had forgotten all the things that had once made him happy and now all that was left was a creature that worked and ate and slept and woke to do it again the next morning. Nothing more.
Jewel was changing, too, in a different way. She was getting thinner and thinner, and soon her shapely form that had been such a joy to the boys in Texas began to look almost childlike with its flat chest and narrow hips. Sometimes she had trouble breathing and I’d scold her not to smoke so much. But she’d always tell me to mind my own business.
In September of the next year, we sent the girls off to college. It wasn’t a real good school but it was the one we managed to afford. Before the girls left, I sat them down for a long talk to remind them what the whole purpose of their going away to college was for: To meet and marry rich husbands, and that they had better devote themselves to the task at hand and never let studying get in the way of the main goal. Caroline, I knew, would obey me, partly because she was easily cowed and partly because stalking potential husbands came so naturally to her. But with my youngest sister, I was less confident, for like Jewel, Jolene was the kind who would hang on your every word, nodding agreement after every sentence, never saying anything to contradict you, and then go ahead and do exactly what she pleased and to hell with you. So it was anyone’s guess how Jolene would end up.
After the girls were gone, the house got so quiet that it made me want to scream, what with Jewel grown unusually silent, and Luca always too tired to make much noise. Maybe it was the awful stillness that started my sleeplessness.
There’s nothing worse than not being able to sleep, than lying awake staring into the dark, convinced that every other living soul on God’s good earth was asleep and that you, and you alone out of all mankind, were still wide awake while the rest of humanity peacefully slumbered. Luca had told me once that in Italy time runs ahead, so that when it’s midnight here, it’s almost morning there, and I got some comfort imagining all those Eye-talians running around starting breakfast. But dammit to hell, this was not Italy and it was not morning in my bedroom, but the heart of the night, and if I did not fall asleep soon, I would jump off the roof and hang myself as the reverend had done.
Of course, getting mad only revived me more. So then I tried clearing my mind of all thoughts, which if you’ve ever tried it, you know is impossible. My mind stayed clear for about three seconds before who should pop into it but Cathleen Haddock, Luca’s old crush. I hadn’t seen her since my rare visits to high school, but now against my will, I remembered her in detail. What a shame that she and Luca had never married. She was just his type. Pert and pretty, with a petite figure and pleasing personality, and agreeable as the day was long. Cathleen had married some boy from West Virginia, and when Caroline had told Luca about it, I’d watched his face but he hadn’t even blinked. Of course, that was an act. He just didn’t want to give me the satisfaction of seeing how smitten he truly was and what a terrible blow her wedding another was to him.
From there my thoughts went on to wondering if Cathleen’s marriage was what had started Luca visiting the whorehouse in the woods every Tuesday and Thursday nights. I supposed he was too tired for some things but not for others. And since tonight was Tuesday and well after midnight, I didn’t have to wonder with what my lawfully wedded husband was occupied.
Soon, I quit trying to sleep and went downstairs to sit on the porch. I wasn’t afraid to sit out in the dark alone. The only one who mi
ght have been lurking about was Aaron and he had enlisted in the Army the year before to avoid the mines. It was very hot out, in spite of its being September, and I didn’t bother to put on a wrapper. My nightgown was enough and no one would see me in the dark anyway. The gown had belonged to Jewel, old but still pretty, of pale blue satin with lace over the bust. Jewel had worn it as a girl, but since losing so much weight, it kept falling off her shoulders and she’d given it to me.
Putting it on for the first time, I was amazed how well I filled it out. My chest and hips were as full and round as Jewel’s had always been until a few months before. Remembering a picture I’d seen of her, it crossed my mind that I was built rather like her except bigger. But the thought passed quickly and never for a moment in a self-congratulatory way. If I ever thought about my body at all, it was only when it wasn’t working right. If I couldn’t lift something, I’d wish my back was stronger; or if I couldn’t haul something, I’d wish my legs had more muscle. I never wondered if my arms and legs and hips and chest, and the way they came together, were pleasing to the eye. But as I sat in the rocking chair with my legs tucked up under me and Old Sam in his customary place beneath my chair, I wondered exactly that.
I leaned back in the shadows and listened to Old Sam snore. Until my untimely rising, he’d been asleep at the foot of my bed, but when I got up, so did he. That’s the wonderful thing about dogs. When you want to sleep, they sleep with you, and if you should want to get up, even if it’s one o’clock in the morning, they get up with you and follow wherever you like, even into Hades, judging from Old Sam. Thinking of his congeniality, I reached down to rub his ears. He was getting old now and not as alert as he’d been as a pup. So he didn’t even stir when Luca came up the stairs, making them creak.
From the recesses of the porch, I watched him in the moonlight. He looked haggard but not dirty, and it piqued me to know that wherever he’d been he’d taken off his clothes and had a bath. He didn’t notice me, and I could have let him pass unseeing, but it had been so long since he’d directed a word at me, even a hateful one, that I thought even mean words would be better than none at all.
“Through whoring for the evening, I see.” It was an observation sure to get the conversation started.
He gave a start, but if I’d hoped to arouse him, I was soon disappointed. He turned to me with tired eyes, and said simply, “It’s none of your business where I spend my nights or who I spend them with.”
His tiredness made me even angrier than knowing he’d taken a bath somewhere naked, and I said, “Listen, you foreign bastard!” So suddenly did I come to my feet that Old Sam was jolted awake and ran off howling. “You married me for your own rotten selfish reasons, and now you went off and made a fool of me with whores and sluts and all kinds of lowlife.”
“We had an agreement—” he began wearily.
“You’re damn right we had an agreement! You agreed to save up for a divorce and so far, I haven’t seen one red cent for divorce money. Now just when do you plan on getting that divorce you promised?” I stood before him with hands on hips, glad that I was tall enough to stare him down.
“Soon,” he answered with a reassurance that enraged me. “I’m tired and I’m going to bed.”
“Oh no, you’re not, damn you,” I said, blocking his path. “You used me and took advantage of me, and you married me just because Jolene and Caroline and Cathleen wouldn’t have you, and now you’re going to stay right there until I’ve finished telling you just what I think of you. Why are you looking at me like that?” I was put off by the way his gaze kept travelling up and down the length of me.
He gave me a half smile. “I was thinking that the next time you decide to play innocence wronged, you should choose a more appropriate costume.”
For the first time in my tirade, I was aware of the thin lace over the breast of the blue satin nightgown that Jewel had originally bought to thrill the justice. I was embarrassed. Hoping now to abandon the conversation and that he would continue on his way upstairs, I shrunk back into the darkest corner of the porch. But he did not leave, and his face seemed to change as he slowly came toward me, his lips parted but not in a smile, his eyes holding mine. My back touched the porch rail, preventing further retreat.
“And now you will listen to me,” he spoke with authority, in a voice that was at once soft and rough, like a cat’s tongue. “And you will not interrupt. The day I came here to the inn, yours was the first face I saw. Shy, I hid behind my father, but I was watching you all the time. You came around front, wiping your bloody hands on an apron. How fascinated I was with this girl with the bloodied hands. And then your sisters came out, too, and I looked at Caroline and saw how beautiful she was with her black hair and blue eyes. But when I looked from her to you, I was confused. The one is very beautiful, I thought. The other, less so. But what is it about the girl with bloody hands that makes the other seem so ordinary?”
My knees buckled a little because I was falling under the spell of his soft eyes, the lullaby in his voice, a voice ever-tinged with the music of the language he had first spoken. He touched my arm lightly, and even that slight touch seared down to my bones, so that I felt it in the core of me, something shifting and melting.
“…And later, after I had lived here a while, I was drawn to you. But I was just a boy and the things that a man wants are not the desires of a boy. I was still a child and I wanted dolls to play with. So I pursued the doll and hoped that you would wait for me to grow up…”
He brushed a strand of hair from my forehead and then his fingers, calloused from his work, dropped to my chin and he turned my head up toward him so that I felt his breath on my face.
“…And when I married you, I did it for selfish reasons, yes, but not for those you think. It’s true I wouldn’t have married you if I hadn’t had to. Still a boy, I was not fit to marry anyone. But if I had to marry, I was happy that it was you. I knew that given time, I would come to love you. I always wanted you—yes, wanted, Darcy. Don’t pull away from me. Wanted to feel myself inside you, to feel your warmth around me, to see your face change when you felt me for the first time…”
I could feel my face turning red like a fool but still I could not bring myself to turn away. The hand that held my chin was gentle but unyielding.
“…But it was more than that. I admired you and looked up to you as someone who had something to teach me. You seemed to have seen so much of life, and I was willing to learn from you. There was so much inside here.” He touched my breast over my heart. “Your courage, your strength, your loyalty, your ambition, not just for yourself, but even more for those you love. Even your brutality. Yes, even that I admired. And so I knew that you were meant for me, and that I would love you, almost from the beginning, because I wanted you and admired you, and when there is desire and respect, love is never far behind…”
Time passed or must have, and it seemed to have left us in its wake. I was enchanted as in a fairy story, kissed by fate and time, and in my trance, there was nothing but whispered words, and warm skin and gentle hands.
Then into the dream came a sensation both strange and familiar. The hands were no longer gentle but possessed of something I remembered vaguely from a long ago nightmare. They reached under the lace of Jewel’s nightgown, purposeful and rough. His mouth was against my throat and I couldn’t turn my head. I smelled whiskey on him. Pinned against the side of the porch, I strained against him and felt him rock hard against me, his whole body grown taut and driving. His breath came fast and shallow as he pressed into me, again and again, rhythmically, in a violent dance that demanded more than I could give just at that moment. I felt his teeth in my shoulder, and it hurt. Most hurtful of all was that he seemed so unaware of me, as if it might have been anyone or anything against him, and he would be pleased, so long as it was soft and warm. Like that day with Aaron. Not just like it, but like it enough to make me panic, to make me forget
the porch and remember the barn, remember the feeling of heedless hands grabbing at my clothes. There’d been a sickle to grab then. There wasn’t one now. But ever resourceful, I was always my own best weapon.
My knee came up between his legs and at the same time I pushed him away from me hard.
“I hate you,” I said, as he doubled up against the wall. “You ruined my life and I hate you.” I tried to sound cold and dignified but my breath came too quickly.
As I moved around him, he straightened up and grabbed me, but not like before. This time, there was no passion in his grasp, and just enough force to prevent me from passing.
“You don’t hate me,” he said, “though you’d like to. You don’t want me to touch you and you don’t want me to touch anyone else. You’d like to keep me in a jar where you could look at me once in a while with the lid tightly closed.” And with that, he let me go.
Running upstairs, I caught Jewel’s nightgown on a nail and tore it. In the safety of my locked room, I took it off and got under the sheets naked. My teeth chattered, though the room was hot, and at the same time, I felt the sheets beneath me dampening with sweat as I took the pillow and covered my head with it. Sometime, near dawn, I fell asleep and when I woke, the only clear thing to me was that nothing was clear to me. The world and all its creatures were an abiding mystery, and nowhere dwelled a more mysterious creature than I to myself. It seemed to me that hate is a tortured kind of love, but that didn’t make sense at all.
Downstairs, Jewel sat alone at the breakfast table. “Luca didn’t come down to breakfast this morning,” she said. “He left a note that he’d put in for a double shift and not to wait up for him.”
I listened to her talk and realized that Luca had won after all. Last night, I had locked my door against him. This morning, he had locked his heart against me forever. And I might have grieved in my own way over this, were it not that soon, as in every life, new troubles came to take the place of the old.
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