CHAPTER IV

BUCKETFUL OF GOLD

***

When Paco arrived at Julia's the evening of their first official date, he came with flowers, long-stemmed, pale peach-colored roses, which happened to be Julia's favorite, and Godiva chocolates. He also came bearing gifts for the boys; Moses and Shadrach, Julia’s beloved cats. If Moses--the eldest--was the Humphry Bogart of the cat world, Shadrach was the Gary Cooper. The gifts Paco brought for the boys included a Tub-O-Catnip (organic), two furry toy mice for each of them, a can of Pounce treats, and a wire with colored feathers attached to the end, which caught his eye and looked interesting to him when he was moving up and down the aisles at Petland. He'd never been to a pet store before. Shadrach staked out the mice...both of them. In a short time they could see that Moses was so smitten with the wire with the feathers that if the building burned, he'd go back in to rescue it.

Although Paco wasn't sure where he stood with Julia the first months they were together, he knew exactly where he stood with her cats. At first they'd been as reserved with him as she was, despite the fact he kept them in cat nip and furry mice, and made sure Moses never lost track of his growing collection of the wires with the feathers on the end. When Julia flew to Orlando on a press trip in mid October, she asked Paco to drop by and feed the cats while she was away. During her absence, Paco noticed that the cats were a lot more enthusiastic about him, a lot less reserved, when he was the one wielding the can opener. From that point forward Paco assumed responsibility for feeding them whenever he was over. Soon they were almost as fond of him as they were of Julia. He was completely smitten with them. If there was ever a man who was meant to have pets, it was Paco.

By December 24th, Julia and her cats had been living very happily with Paco and Uncle Nicky in the Brooklyn Heights co-op for almost two weeks. It was crazy that morning. Sal and Libby had arrived home from Greenland a few days before and the Mortons had arrived mid morning of the 23rd. Julia was surprised that her parents so readily accepted Paco's invitation to stay at the co-op instead of taking rooms at a hotel for the duration of their stay. Uncle Nick graciously agreed to vacate his room and donate it to Renee even though she was a cop. She was a very pretty cop. Julia was surprised to see that Renee had a brand new and very flattering coif and was actually wearing make-up. Renee hadn't done anything with herself in years.

While Paco seemed undisturbed by the prospect of the Mortons and the Berellis together under the co-op's broad and accommodating roof, Julia, who knew how inflexible her parents could be, how narrow and judgmental, especially when it came to spending time with people who were only a generation or two removed from being foreigners, she expected scenes from Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf or They Clash By Night. So far, however, it had all gone well; so well in fact that when she getting out of the shower and heard one of the cats shriek in pain; a sound like chalk skidding on a blackboard amplified fifty times, she wasn't surprised. The peace couldn't last.

As the shriek died away--she'd already grabbed her robe and was racing down the hallway to the kitchen--she heard Paco bellow her name. From the volume and the desperation in Paco's tone Julia guessed the confrontation most likely going on in the kitchen would be on par with the Montagues vs. the Capulets. She was wrong.

When Julia arrived in the kitchen, Libby, Claire and Uncle Nick, who'd obviously been breakfasting together, had abandoned their meal and were now on their feet. Clair and Libby were standing at the dining room doorway--apparently the action was in there-while Nick rummaged frantically through the fridge. When he found the Tupperware bowl containing the remains of the Scampi Paco prepared for dinner the night before, he handed it to Libby, who pulled the top off, and handed it to Claire, who handed it to Paco, just inside the dining room.

"What’s going on?" Julia asked as she pushed past the bucket brigade.

Paco, with a shrimp ensconced in a congealed crescent of olive oil and butter on his palm, was on his stomach trying to lure Moses out from the forest of dining table and chair legs. "I stepped on him when I was giving them breakfast," Paco said. They both glanced at Paco's heavy cowboy boots.

Julia got down on the floor with Paco. Moses returned their looks of concern with a baleful glare and his right foreleg raised slightly in the air. "Come on, Mosie," Julia said. "Come on out now, tough guy." Moses ignored Julia’s appeal.

"He doesn't think so much of me now," Paco said.

"There’s only one way to handle a situation like this," Julia said. She got to her feet, disappeared into the kitchen, then returned a moment later with a box of catnip. She handed it to Paco, who sprinkled a bit of the stuff on the carpet. Moses immediately forgot about his injury and threw himself down to roll in it. Paco grabbed him.

While Paco held Moses in his arms like a baby--cooing and apologizing--Julia examined the cat's oval paw. It seemed fine. Paco carried Moses to the kitchen and set him down before his bowl. Moses ate every morsel of his breakfast.

That evening when Paco fed Shadrach and Moses, Moses came into the kitchen on his own. Paco and Julia believed the breakfast mishap was forgotten. That wasn't the case.

The next morning, when Paco doled out breakfast, Moses waited at the kitchen door and wouldn't come in, even after the food was in the bowl. He remained in the doorway instead, giving Paco the silent meow, until Paco picked him up and carried him on his shoulder across the kitchen to his bowl and then set him down in front of it. Maybe Moses intuited that mornings in the Berelli household were always a little frantic and potentially dangerous for brevipeds, or maybe he liked the extra attention he received during the breakfast ride in Paco's arms, but it remained a routine until the day Moses died.

It was an exceptional dress; cashmere, winter-white, with a high collar, inset puffy sleeves and tight cuffs, a tailored bodice that fit tightly at Julia’s waist, and a flowing skirt that just skimmed her ankles. It was the most beautiful dress Julia had ever seen. Clair watched the skirt of the dress billow out as her daughter twirled in front of the Cheval mirror in the master bedroom. "I'm so happy," Julia said and threw herself down on the bed.

"I know you are," said Claire. "Sit up. Let's try the hat." Clair lifted the soft peach-colored felt cloche with its three silk roses in the side of the satin band out of the hat box and set it on her daughter's head as though this were a coronation.

"Well?" said Julia.

"Honey, I've never seen you look prettier." Julia hugged her mother. "It's all been going so beautifully, Claire finished."

"I've been wondering about that, waiting for the other shoe to drop, kind of. "

"I doubt it will, sweetie."

Julia raised an eyebrow.

"They're all such nice people," Claire gushed. "It's so important to Paco that everybone's together and that we all get along."

"Mom, the last time you saw Paco--"

"Paco and your dad and I all agree that day's best forgotten."

Julia didn't know what to say.

"Your dad and I talked it over and we decided we can roll with the punches as well as anyone. That's what we're doing."

"I see. What's gotten into you, Mom?"

"First impressions aren't always correct," Claire said. Julia sat back down on the bed. "We were wrong about him," Claire went on. "Daddy and I are big enough to admit it when we've made a mistake. We've talked to Paco for hours and hours long distance on the phone. Renee, too."

"When?"

"Well, it started when you were in Orlando. We called your apartment and you weren't there. He picked up. He's a very good conversationalist. He's interested in a lot of things. He seemed really interested in us. He's called us on his own a few times, you know, just to talk. He's sent cards and letters, cartoons he knows we'll appreciate from magazines and the Times. Hair and make-up tips for Renee. It's been a constant barrage."

"I had no idea."

Clair shrugged. "He's got me taking that water-color class at the junior college I always wanted to take, and he's encouraged your dad--well you know how daddy doesn't like to do anything--he and daddy are going deep sea fishing in March in Boca Raton."

Julia was amazed.

"Paco simply insisted that we like him. He's made it impossible to do anything else." Claire fussed with the corsage on the lapel of the jacket of her midnight blue raw silk suit. "I feel very good about everything now. You're lucky you found him, Jules."

"I almost lost him," Jules said. "I held back too long."

"It’s not always a good thing to wear your heart on your sleeve."

"Our family credo," Julia said. "But with someone like Paco, you can’t hold back. You don’t have to hold back. There’s nothing to be afraid of."

***

As darkness fell, standing before the Christmas tree in the front room of the co-op, Paco and Julia made their pledge to each other. The guests included Julia’s parents and sister, Sal and Libby, Uncle Nick, Paco’s best friend Jay Russo (best man), and Julia's and Paco's cats. A judge friend of Uncle Nick's officiated. Uncle Nick arrived home that evening carrying a hard-sided leather briefcase that he continued to hold on to throughout the ceremony.

"Look, Claire!" her husband Mike nudged her and whispered, "Uncle Nick is carrying a gun!" It was jammed into the side of his waistband. They discovered later that the briefcase was handcuffed to Uncle Nick's wrist.

As Paco and Julia promised the customary for better/for worse, for richer/for poorer, in sickness and in health, several members of the wedding party, who were documenting the ceremony with flash snapshots, popped up and down and around them like the metal ducks in a shooting gallery. Paco and Julia both got the giggles, but got themselves under control because there were other things they wanted to say to each other. Paco went first. Eyeing Sal, who already crying openly, Paco said, "My dad always said I'd know her when I saw her. I figured my dad was right and he was." Paco looked at Julia. "What I didn't figure on, was what finding her would mean . . . how when you did, afterwards you'd never be the same, how full your life would be with her in it, and how empty it all was before, without your even knowing it."

By now, there was some sniffling from a few of the others in the room. This was also the moment when Shadrach--at Paco's feet--howled for attention and Paco picked him up.

Paco took a moment to compose himself--Julia needed a moment, too--and then he said to her, speaking only to Julia now, "I've been trying to come up with something special to say when the moment came tonight. I couldn't think of anything that I don't already say to you every day. Then I started to think about what being married really means, about the real nature of the promise you're making when you say I do. What it means to me, Jules, is that from this day forward, one foot in front of the other, through every holy moment (believe me, they're all holy), my primary calling is to figure out exactly what you need to keep you on the path and to see that you get it. So for all time, to the best of my ability, that's the promise I'm making to you."

It was now Julia's turn to speak. She had written a speech and memorized it, but when she opened her mouth, nothing came out. The speech had gone completely out of her head. She fumbled for a moment, swallowed the lump in her throat, ran her hand down Shadrach's sleek gray body as she tried to gather her wits, then she put her hand on the back of Paco's neck. Looking down at her he smiled deeply. Within the warm and merry depth of his eyes, she saw the infinity of joy awaiting her. The speech, when she finally remembered it Christmas afternoon, as she scooped stuffing from the turkey, was full of honest emotion and honorable promise, but far too prissy and prim to befit the moment of this occasion, and she was glad she'd forgotten it. Instead of the speech Julia repeated what she could remember of Edna St. Vincent Millay's Recuerdo, which meant so much to her, and to Paco, too:

"We were very tired, we were very merry--

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;

And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,

From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;

And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,

And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold."

Before Julia could get to the poem's third stanza, the one she and Paco liked best, she was crying too hard to recite it. Paco juggled Shadrach, then took Julia in his arms and kissed her, which squished Shadrach, who squawked as the air was pressed out of him. Julia and Paco clung to each other.

The Judge smiled at the assembled guests and said: "I think you'll all agree these two are definitely married."

This was where everyone cried and laughed and hugged and kissed each other.

Uncle Nick presented Julia and Paco with the briefcase. Heavy. There was five thousand dollars cash inside. "Don't worry. It's clean," Nick said in answer to Salvatore's raised eyebrow. "I won a trifecta last week."

Libby and Sal popped the corks on the two bottles of Dom in unmatching ice buckets on the coffee table, startling Moses, who had watched the ceremony from within the lower branches of the Christmas tree, and who now scampered up it. The tree canted forward when the cat reached the top, then gave way. Julia's father sprang forward and caught it. Moses leapt neatly to the back of the sofa.

Everybody laughed (except Salvatore. Damn cat! I can't believe we've got animals living in this house.)

Twenty minutes later, Julia and Paco were sitting close together in the cushy leather back seat of Uncle Nicky's canary yellow Cadillac--restored the week before when Sally Red finally caught up with Lou The Goo. Nick was hunched over the wheel, peering over the top of his glasses, driving about five miles and hour, but getting a kick out of pretending he was the newlyweds' chauffeur. The three of them, along with the rest of the family in a variety of borrowed vehicles, were headed for the Bayside Yacht Club where a group of Paco and Julia's closest friends, and a lot more family Julia had yet to meet, were waiting in the Emerald Room to help them celebrate their marriage.

Julia glanced over at Paco. He seemed so far away.

"For the first time in about fifteen years," Paco whispered looking out the window, "I wish I'd contacted my mother. I wish I'd invited her to come here for this."

"Why didn't you?" Julia said.

"Because I don't think she would've."

It was the first time Paco had ever spoken to Julia directly about his mother, and the last time he would for several years.

September 5, 1960

This evening, after a supper of nok-qui-vi (lamb and corn stew) and piki (parchment-like bread made from blue cornmeal), Dewey and I entered one of the village kivas. In this underground ceremonial chamber at the edge of Sichomovi, I watched him as he carved from cottonwood root a tiny Katcina figure, Matsop (fertility), crucial to the Soyal observance, whom one of the villagers will impersonate when the ceremonial dance cycle commences. We smoked. Always reticent about personal matters, Dewey confided this evening that he's in love--and is hoping there will be a marriage before the start of Soyal (not too soon before, I selfishly hope, because within a certain time after the marriage, as this is a matrilineal society, Dewey will leave his mother's household and become a part of his wife's . . . I wouldn't see so much of him). Just before my arrival, they got engaged in the Hopi sense--she has presented him with the ceremonial offering of the qomi (a specially prepared loaf of bread), and he has accepted it, and their parents approve. Now he must wait for her to make her move, to get the marriage ceremony rolling.

Coincidentally, the girl he wants to marry is the beautiful potter I saw with her brown puppy out on Walpi. Her name is Juanita . . . she's seventeen.

(to be continued)

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