Milk Glass Moon (26 page)

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

A
DRIANA
T
RIGIANI
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.

R
ANDOM
H
OUSE
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

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