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 might 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
