“You did great, Ma.”
“I didn’t come in here for you to tell me how great I am. I came in here to tell you how wonderful you are. It’s been a great privilege to be your mother. I was thinking that I always made a big deal out of everything you did wrong, instead of honoring all the things you did right. And now I know what a waste of time it is to focus on the things that really don’t matter. It took two children to teach me that. I’m just glad I got the lesson before you checked me into Heritage Hall Nursing Home to live out my days.”
Etta throws back her head and laughs. “I won’t put you in a home.”
“Never promise your mother that. I may very well end up there making fudge with the Tuckett sisters.”
“You’re young, Ma.”
“Thank you. I never thought I’d think that was a compliment, but by God, I’ll take it.”
“Ma, I love Stefano so much.”
“I know you do.”
“We know we’re young, but we feel ready.”
“Then it will work, honey. It works when you make it work.”
“Would you marry Dad again?”
“Absolutely. We’re very different, but somehow we admire our differences instead of letting them annoy us. And the real truth is, he’s a great man. They don’t make them any finer than your father, so why would I choose anyone else?”
Etta looks at me for a moment as though she wants to ask me something; and I’ve known this girl since the day she was born, so I know what she wants to know.
“Why did you invite Pete?” I ask her.
“He’s such a part of Italy to me. That summer we were here. I remember the trip to his marble quarry and when he took us to Florence on the train.”
“You remember all that?”
“Oh yeah. He made you happy again, Ma. After Joe died, you hardly ever laughed. And when we came over that summer, you started to smile again. And one night, you even danced. That’s when I knew you could be happy.”
“Pete was, he is, a good friend.” I look at Etta. “And that’s all he was. A friend.”
“I figured that, Ma.”
“It’s true,” I tell her. “It was nice of you to ask him to come. Dad likes him too.”
“I know! See, even that was meant to happen. Dad made a good friend because you did.”
“Is that what the stars tell you?” I ask her.
“I don’t need stars to tell me that.” Etta looks at me seriously. “Do you have advice for me, Ma?”
“You really want my advice?”
“Sure.”
“Well, I would just be patient with Stefano. He grew up very differently from you. He didn’t have a mother and father, and that created a void in him that no one can fill. I know this because I went through it. When my mother died, leaving behind a letter that told me that Mario Barbari was my father, not Fred Mulligan, it took me a long time to understand what had happened and what it meant. And Stefano will spend much of his life trying to understand why things happened to him the way they did. And if you’re smart, and you are, and if you’re like your father, and you are, you’ll know how to handle it.”
“How did Dad handle it?”
“He let me be sad about it. And he listened. And he never tried to make up for what I didn’t have, he just loved me for who I am, knowing that my sadness was part of me.”
“I’ll remember that.”
“Ma, do I have everything?” Etta asks me.
“You did a more thorough job packing than Aunt Iva Lou did when she came to Italy when you were fifteen.”
“That good?” Etta smiles.
“That good,” I tell her. “You’re going to have the best honeymoon. Rimini is perfect.”
“Thank you for everything, Ma. For coming over and for your support.”
“I have something for you.” I give Etta a package wrapped in white paper with a pink satin ribbon.
Etta tears into it. “An empty book?” she says, flipping through the leather-bound journal.
“Your dad and I—”
“It’s my own anniversary book! Isn’t it, Ma? I always loved that you and Dad wrote to each other every year.”
I try not to cry, but I realize now that she noticed everything, including the good stuff. All these years we watched Etta closely, and the whole time she was watching us. Maybe she is ready to write her own story. “I got the one with the extra pages, since you’re getting married so young,” I joke. “Dad and I went with a slimmer volume, since we got married later in life.” Etta and I laugh.
“And one more thing. I don’t want you to be scared about having children. We lost Joe, but it was out of our hands. I still don’t understand why, but even if I knew why, I wouldn’t trade one day of the time we had with him.”
“Me either,” Etta says quietly.
“If you can, don’t make any decisions based upon fear. Try to choose the big things out of love, and I don’t think you’ll ever go wrong.”
Etta and I hold each other for a very long time. Parenthood, the least permanent job in the world, just ended for each of us, and a new story begins tonight. This next chapter ought to be a doozy.
Etta and Stefano’s wedding day, September 3, 1998, is the most beautiful day I have ever seen. The cobblestones on Via Scalina, on the way to La Capella di Santa Chiara, glisten. The sky is aquamarine blue without a cloud, and the air is cool enough to wrap yards of silver taffeta over my shoulders like a countess. My husband looks so handsome in his Italian-cut navy blue pin-striped suit with the red handkerchief. We didn’t say a word as we got ready this morning. He just kissed me every chance he got.
Zia Meoli and Zio Pietro are sitting in the front row of the chapel. Before the procession begins, I go up the stairs to the tiny choir loft and say a prayer by the stained-glass window of the Blessed Mother that my great-grandfather designed and installed so many years ago. I pray to my mother and to Ave Maria Albricci, who took care of my mother when she was alone with only me inside of her to keep her company. Jack comes up the stairs to tell me it’s time for the service to begin.
Don Andrea, the priest who married Jack and me, stands at the altar. The alpine air must be good for him; he seems as robust as the day he married us. Etta has asked her father and me to walk her down the aisle. We are preceded by Federica’s daughter, Giuliana, who wears a pink tulle dress and carries a small bouquet of edelweiss and is followed by Chiara, in a simple pale green silk sheath with a small wreath of boxwood.
Giacomina is the matron of honor, and Papa is the best man. Stefano, in a black Edwardian suit with a pale blue tie, never takes his gaze off our daughter as we walk down the aisle. When we reach the altar, I kiss my girl and step away. My husband kisses her and holds her for a very long time. Only I could know what these two mean to each other, because I have seen from the moment she was born that she felt understood and heard by her father, treasured by him. They have always been the best of friends, and it gives me great comfort that she has the very thing I was missing all of my life.
I expect to cry through the ceremony, but I don’t. I listen carefully to the instructions that the priest gives my daughter and my son-in-law. He tells them that love is central to a marriage, but forgiveness is the one element that makes a marriage last. Jack takes my hand when he hears this, because he and I know from experience that it is the truth.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” my husband whispers to me. I nod. And truly, in all of my life, I have never seen a woman so lovely. Etta’s long brown hair is twisted into a low chignon and set in place with tiny clusters of edelweiss. She is tall and slim, almost her husband’s height, and as they stand beside each other, I see that she is every bit his equal. Her eyes are the same deep green as her grandma MacChesney’s, the Scottish freckles peek through the pressed powder, and her rosebud mouth is set with determination.
Theodore must know what I am thinking. He reaches over the back of the pew and takes my hand. I don’t let go. I turn around and smile at h
im. A couple of rows behind Theodore is Pete Rutledge, who smiles at me. Here, under one roof, are the most important men in my life, who have loved, accepted, and changed me. What sort of fate has brought us all together? What strange karma? Why does it feel that we have all been here before, in this chapel that smells of frankincense and white lilies? What connects us all is in some cases a blood tie, but more often than that, it’s some centrifugal force that throws us together for reasons we can never understand. Did my mother have to leave these mountains to go to the hills of Southwest Virginia so I might find Jack MacChesney? And why, after all of that, does my daughter return to the very place where her grandmother was born to find her true love? I almost laugh, but I catch myself. We Vilminore women, we always take the long way home.
I saved up all my tears for the flight home. Jack tries to nap but wakes up intermittently just to see if I’ve dried up yet—I haven’t. Etta and Stefano left for Rimini on their honeymoon, and for a few seconds, I thought I would jump in the car and join them. Jack held me back, or maybe he was resisting the urge himself. He and I have spent so much of our time and most of our conversation on Etta for the past eighteen years. So it seems strange that we hardly spoke about her this week. We didn’t stay up and talk through the night before the wedding, we didn’t analyze it at breakfast that morning, and we didn’t say a word on the way to the church. Of course, this is my husband’s way; when something really matters to him, he can’t talk about it.
I take a walk up and down the aisles to stretch my legs. When I return, Jack is awake. I slide down into the seat next to him and lie across his chest. He encircles me with his arms, and I rest my hands on his.
“Why are we going home?” he asks me.
“Because we live there,” I tell him.
“Our daughter’s in Italy. What are we going to do back home?”
Jack is right. Pearl is in Boston, and with Janine in place managing the pharmacies, they don’t need me. Spec is gone, and when he died, my anchor died with him. I love the old stone house in Cracker’s Neck Holler, but it was made for a family, a family to eat in that kitchen by the fire, to rest in those rooms with the big windows, and to run in the field that faces Stone Mountain. The woods will get lonely with two middle-aged mountaineers passing through once in a while when the mood hits them. The woods should be filled with kids, hanging from trees, fishing in the stream, and eating the wild strawberries from the thicket by the Lonesome Pine tree.
“What do you want to do?” I ask him.
“Are you wide open to any possibility?”
“What does that mean?”
“Can you think with your heart, not your head?”
“I could.”
“What are we going to do with the second half of our lives? I say half because I’m being generous.” Jack laughs.
“I haven’t thought about it.”
“I have a little.”
“Since when?”
“Since Etta told us she was getting married.”
“We can’t follow her to Italy,” I tell him. The last thing a good mother does is horn in on her newlywed daughter.
“I don’t want to follow her, I just want to be closer.”
“Do you think the Olive Oil King still wants you?”
“Maybe.”
As Jack holds me, I turn my head to look out the window, but there is nothing to see. It’s as though a black velvet drape has been drawn on our window, in the dead of night. I know the Atlantic Ocean is under us and somewhere, buried behind these clouds, is the moon. In my husband’s arms, these are the only two things I am sure of.
“We have to redream,” I say.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you have to be honest, to start with. You have to admit that one story has ended and another one needs to begin.”
“We know one story has ended, Ave. What do you want that you haven’t had?”
“That’s a hard question for a goal-oriented girl. I always tried hard for what I wanted, and when I got it, I figured I was lucky.”
“Do you think I’m part of your future?” Jack asks without an ounce of self-pity. “If you could, would you choose me all over again?”
“Maybe a thousand times.”
“Good. Because I choose you every morning.”
Jack settles in his seat to go back to sleep. I pull his arms close to me as he sleeps, and I decide to be completely open to his dreams and encourage him to follow his heart. If we wind up in a Tuscan olive grove, that is fine with me.
“Are you on your honeymoon?” a woman with white hair asks me as she passes.
“Yes,” I tell her.
“It’s always sweeter the second time around.”
“First time wasn’t so bad either,” I say.
“Don’t tell him that,” she whispers, pointing to Jack Mac, and proceeds down the aisle.
I lean back on my husband and do what I always do, which is inhale deeply and exhale until my breathing is in rhythm with his. Of all the decisions I have made in my life, marrying Jack MacChesney was certainly the best.
As we fly through the night sky, it’s good to know I did something right. Love may not be enough, but when it’s right, it’s plenty.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
How lucky I am to have Anthony Trigiani for my father! He has the best comic timing of anyone I have ever met. My dad is a big risk taker, and never seemed to care what the outcome of taking a chance would be, just that it was important to try. That sort of fearlessness is catching, and it made me ask the question, “What’s the worst thing that could happen if I try this new thing?” When my father taught me how to drive, he said something at a yellow light that I always remember: “He who hesitates is lost.” It never made much sense to me, until I understood the heart of that sentiment: make a decision and move. It works in driving and it works in life.
At magnificent Random House, my everlasting thanks to my Editor Queen, Lee Boudreaux, the fabulous Ann Godoff, Prince of Publicity Todd Doughty (someone please find anyone on earth who works harder!), Dan Rembert, Beth Pearson, Ivan Held, Laura Ford, Libby McGuire, Victoria Wong, Allison Heilborn, Ed Brazos, Eileen Becker, Steve Wallace, Sherry Huber, and Stacy Rockwood. At Ballantine: the great team led by the amazing Gina Centrello, Maureen O’Neal, Allison Dickens, Kim Hovey, Candice Chaplin, Kathleen Spinelli, and Cindy Murray. And thank you to the irreplaceable Lorie Stoopack.
To Suzanne Gluck, the best agent on earth and an even better friend, my love and gratitude. More of the same to WMA’s hit parade, including: Emily Nurkin, Karen Gerwin, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, and Cara Stein. At ICM, more still to my champion Nancy Josephson, Jill Holwager, Ben Smith, Caroline Sparrow, Betsy Robbins, and Margaret Halton. In Movieland, I adore and thank Lou Pitt, John Farrell, Michael Pitt, Jim Powers, and Todd Steiner.
My love and thanks to the fabulous Mary Testa, Tom Dyja, Ruth Pomerance, Rosanne Cash, Bill Persky, Joanna Patton, Phyllis George, June Lawton, Larry Sanitsky, Jeanne Newman, Debra McGuire, John Melfi, Grace Naughton, Dee Emmerson, Gina Casella, Sharon Hall, Beth Thomas, Wendy Luck, Sharon Watroba Burns, Nancy Ringham, Constance Marks, Cynthia Rutledge Olson, Jasmine Guy, Susan Toepfer, Craig Fisse, Joanne Curley Kerner, Max Westler, Pamela Cannon, Dana and Richard Kirshenbaum, Marisa Acocella, Sister Jean Klene, Reg Bain, Fred Syburg, Susan and Sam Franzeskos, Jake and Jean Morrissey, Beata and Steven Baker, Brownie Polly, Aaron Hill and Susan Fales Hill, Kare Jackowski, Rhoda Dresken, Bob Kelty, Christina Avis Krauss and Sonny Grosso, Greg Cantrell, Rachel DeSario, Mary Murphy, Rita Braver, and Irene Taylor. Heaps of gratitude and love to Caroline Rhea, president of the Ave Maria Fan Club, and to the ever-true Elena Nachmanoff and Dianne Festa—my love and thanks and a big dinner that includes liquor. Thank you and love to Michael Patrick King for inflating my life raft and giving me the shove out to sea.
To the Trigiani and Stephenson families, to my Italian relatives, the Spada, Maj, and Bonicelli families, thank you. To the people of Big Stone Gap and their
neighbors in the Blue Ridge and Appalachians, my everlasting gratitude for your support and readership.
And to my husband, Tim Stephenson, who shares my life and the fear dance at three a.m., thank you for everything else, so considerable in size and scope it could not fit in the state of Rhode Island.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ADRIANA TRIGIANI grew up in Big Stone Gap and now lives with her husband in New York City. In addition to being the bestselling author of Big Stone Gap and Big Cherry Holler, she is an award-winning playwright, television writer, and documentary filmmaker. She has written the screenplay for the film version of Big Stone Gap, which she will also direct.
ALSO BY ADRIANA TRIGIANI
Big Stone Gap
Big Cherry Holler
Milk Glass Moon is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2002 by The Glory of Everything Company
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Trigiani, Adriana.
Milk glass moon: a novel / Adriana Trigiani.
p. cm.
1. Big Stone Gap (Va.)—Fiction. 2. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. 3. Mountain life—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3570.R459 M55 2002
813′.54—dc21 2002017945
eISBN: 978-1-58836-284-1
v3.0
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