Quiet Reparations

When Marco wishes to show us something, he sometimes tells us to make a picnic. It is cold, so Juliet and I spent time in the kitchen in the sharp light of the morning sun. I filled the big thermos from the pot of white bean soup spiked with savory, and the small one with strong coffee laced with warm cream. Juliet had risen early to bake small rolls and a thin sweet cake with apricots, and she wrapped them in towels to sit in the basket on top of a plate of cold meats.

Marco has taken us to the lake.

There are other lakes up in the hills, but Marco tells us this is the best of them, and I am given to believe him. The lake is clear, tucked under with a watery green, settled into a shallow valley that is mostly trees. The clouds have all been chased away, and the sky is a perfect vault of unbroken blue. It is colder still up here, but the wind is mercifully absent, and the sun is strong. We are taking our picnic on a small rocky shoal that spills out of the trees and into the lake. For all our bundling, we are a little cold, and I am careful to open the thermos. The soup steams within, and once we eat a bit we are all right.

The ground is strewn with flat round rocks, and I send one over the smooth surface of the water. Juliet is interested; she has not seen this before. I warm my hands on my coat and take hers in mine, showing her to place the stone against the fleshy join of the thumb to the hand, and to curl her forefinger around the edge to find good purchase. I make the motion with my wrist and arm, and she mimes it, testing flexibilities.

Her body finds the throw, and her arm reaches out, her wrist letting the rock sing free and spin toward the water. The stone splashes true and comes up true again, and again, and still again. It marches from us in a gentle leaning curve, stepping into the water to leap free, perhaps unhappy with the temperature. By the time it slows to nestle into the water and sink from sight, it is a long way away, and I have lost count. Juliet is clapping, and resting on her toes.

"Ah," Marco says, taking a pull from his coffee and sitting on a rock, comfortable in the sun. "I have always wished it to be able to do that."

I am sitting in the kitchen. Jacobo sits across from me, with his arms down on the table and his chin upon his hands. We are both looking at a small tub sitting in the middle of the table. It is very still in the kitchen, as if both Jacobo and I are waiting for the tub to move, somehow, dancing away past the parsley in the vase and scuttling into the hallway, chortling. Jacobo has made some yogurt.

"It might be safe to eat it," he says. We look at it some more. Jacobo forgot to heat the milk before culturing it. "Stupid, stupid," he says to himself. His hands rise to thin his hair, and his chin thumps wood. The yogurt shimmies a little. "It might be safe."

Juliet comes by with a bowl of jam. "Excellent," she says, and reaches for a spoon.

"It might kill you," Jacobo says. Juliet shrugs, and dollops yogurt on the jam. She marbles the two with her spoon. She tastes it.

"It's good," she says.

Jacobo holds his head in his hands.

"Ah, good." Marco has found me in the living room. "I have news. The mayor is coming for dinner..." Marco stands very still, and I can hear faint music in the distance.

"Cheese truck," Marco says. "Come with me."

We take the path to the road, and a little white van comes slowly around the corner. Marco waves it down, and the van comes to a quiet stop. There is a little horn mounted on the van, and I can hear the chugging of a compressor. The window on the side of the van slides open, and a little man puts out his head to us.

"Raphael," Marco says. "Hello!"

"It is good to see you, Marco. I thought I might find you today." He waves us over, and we move to the window. I can see a little of the inside. The ceiling is full of pegs strung with cheeses, swinging slowly above Raphael's head. "How fares your parmigiano?"

"She is old, but she still walks," Marco says. "My subscription is all right?" Raphael nods at that, and Marco peers into the truck. "I have need of other things." Raphael steps back and spreads his hands, bumping into cheese with his head.

"Provelone," Marco says pointing, and a round ball in string is handed to me, and I hang it from my arm. "Fontina from the valley," and I am given a little wheel, which I leave in the crook of the other. "Gorgonzola."

Raphael grins. "Are you having guests?" Marco nods with a sad smile, and I am given a block of butcher paper, already greasy. I hold it very carefully.

"You are lucky," Raphael says. He leans out of the truck in conspiracy. "Di bufala. I have it."

Marco stops. "How long?"

Raphael beams at him. "You are my first today. I came from there: 45 minutes, maybe less." Marco asks me if Juliet is in the house, and I say I think she is. Marco holds up 4 fingers, and four pearled balls appear on a clean piece of paper, placed into Marco's hand.

Marco takes the wheel from me to free my hand, and offers me the paper. It rustles with the movement, and the cheeses are wet and fat.

"Eat," he says. "They are very bad at waiting."

Juliet is sitting across from me, on a wide cushioned bench that she built. It fits her well, and I have seen her feet rest solidly on the decking that holds the benches above the ground. Her arms are resting wide on the bench back, furling her sweater. The sweater is too big for her, but too comfortable not to wear in the cool of the evening, and her slippered feet are tucked beneath her. The bench I am sitting on is a twin of the other, but I am too tall for it, and my feet can only rest awkwardly thrust into the space between us. The line of Juliet's arm ends in a mug of cocoa. My own sits in my lap, warming my fingers. Night has nearly fallen all the way, and the air is cold. I am glad of it.

"The Mayor is coming," Juliet says. "Marco is making a stew."

She built a pergola, too. We planted vines, but they have only begun to climb the corner posts, and the naked slats do little to shield us from the purple sky or the strong stars, fighting through the light from their terrible distance.

Juliet sips her cocoa. "Do you know why he's coming?"

Juliet had asked me to bring a clay chimney down from the house, and I have set it on the granite hearth she built at one end of this place. Slim pieces of split wood burn in it, and embers float from the top of it from time to time, stepping carefully into the night and slipping through the rising air, hesitant. The fire casts low amber light across us in tides.

"I hope nothing has happened." She looks carefully still.

The light spills across her face, and she is lovely.

Dinner is over, and we are lingering at the table. I am idly pushing creases around on the table cloth, and Juliet is sitting back, content, attempting to make her wine glass sing. Jacobo has fled upstairs, and neither Shen ever came down, although we set places for them. It was not a formal meal, but a good one: the stew turned out well. Marco has brought coffees, and the Mayor sips his with gentle fingers, even though the cup is stout.

"Thank you, Marco." The Mayor is a short man, with thinning hair and tired cheeks. I have seen him in town, but I had not known who he was. "It has been some time since I have had such a pleasant evening." He touches his cup carefully.

Marco is sitting back and softening, feeling good from the food and the wine and the dim light like the rest of us. "The nights, they are still hard?"

The Mayor smiles a little. "Yes," he says. "It is very quiet in my house, in the evenings. I am not used to it." He looks up at us. "What do you do, in the evenings?"

Juliet is peering through the wine in the bottom of her wine glass, nearly elsewhere. "Sometimes we tell ghost stories."

The Mayor becomes still. His hand reaches out to find Marco's across the table, as if unable to see.

"Marco," says, and his voice is firm. "You remember Greta well, no? I do not know if I have ever thanked you for your kindnesses to me ever since she went on." Marco nods. A waiting falls across the table. My finger has stilled in forming a long wake in the white of the table cloth, and I can see Juliet's eyes focus on the wine, intent. The Mayor begins again. "I have a ghost story to tell you. I am sorry it is not a very good one. I do not know how to tell it except in this way, and I have told few.

"It is the evenings of the Fridays that are dimmest for me. The work of the week is safely put away, and the revelers sing from step to step on their routes from a place to another, all outside my windows. I do not wish to join them and I do; it would be nice to taste too much wine at the public tables, pressed to the arms with others, but I know that the Saturday will come after, and it is the Saturdays that I still dread.

"It was the Saturdays that Greta and I kept for ourselves, you see. We would take the long walk through the hill yards, stealing a grape or two and talking of the week. We would measure the lives of our children against our hopes for them and never find them lacking, we would tell tales of the things we had yet to see." He stopped. "She had wanted to see the Moon, did you know? She knew the impracticality of it, but she always thought it would be nice to stand there, in the grey, and look up at this pretty place.

"And then, one Saturday, she was there in the kitchen when I woke. She had made coffee and biscuits, and fretted that there was no proper jam, for I had been trying different kinds, and I had none of her favorite. We ate and bathed and dressed, and too easily we found ourselves walking the back ways to the market on our Saturday. I was afraid to arrive at the market, for then I would know if this was a dream, or perhaps worse, forgive me, if it was not.

"At the last turn before the market I took her hand. I remember that it was warm as mine, healthy and slightly dry in the cool wind like mine. I told her, 'Greta'. I told her that she should not be here, that she had gone on. I told her that I didn't know how to tell her, but there it was.

"She smiled and told me she knew that, but here she was, and we needed jam. Then she frowned. She said the strangest things: that she was sorry to be so light about it. She had no answers for me, she said. Only that she wanted to walk with me that day, and perhaps discover some new corner of things like we often did. I did not know what to say. We bought jam from Kasper, and he said nothing to us. I have not been able to ask him about it since, and he is careful with me now.

"On Sunday, I awoke to find she had laid out on Sunday clothes for Mass: my good suit, her favorite dress. She had laid them out on the dressing table like always. But she was gone."

The Mayor's fingers tighten Marco's hand. "Marco," he says. "What is happening to me?"