When they drove by the reservoir, Danny recognized Dummer Pond Road--from when it had been a haul road--but all he said to Carmella was: "We'll be coming back here with Ketchum tomorrow."
Carmella nodded; she just looked out the passenger-side window at the Androscoggin. Maybe ten miles later, she said: "That's a powerful-looking river." Danny was glad she wasn't seeing the river in March or April; the Androscoggin was a torrent in mud season.
Ketchum had told Danny that September was the best time of year for them to come--for Carmella, especially. There was a good chance for fair weather, the nights were growing cooler, the bugs were gone, and it was too soon for snow. But as far north as Coos County, the leaves were turning color in late August. That second Monday in September, it already looked like fall, and there was a nip in the air by late afternoon.
Ketchum had been worried about Carmella's mobility in the woods. "I can drive us most of the way, but it will entail a little walking to get to the right place on the riverbank," Ketchum had said.
In his mind's eye, Danny could see the place Ketchum meant--an elevated site, overlooking the basin above the river bend. What he couldn't quite imagine was how different it would be--with the cookhouse entirely gone, and the town of Twisted River burned to the ground. But Dominic Baciagalupo hadn't wanted his ashes scattered where the cookhouse was, or anywhere near the town; the cook had requested that his ashes be sunk in the river, in the basin where his not-really-a-cousin Rosie had slipped under the breaking ice. It was almost exactly the same spot where Angelu Del Popolo had gone under the logs. That, of course, was really why Carmella had come; those many years ago (thirty-four, if Danny was doing the math correctly), Ketchum had invited Carmella to Twisted River.
"If, one day, you ever want to see the place where your boy perished, I would be honored to show you," was how Ketchum had put it to her. Carmella had so wanted to see the river basin where the accident happened, but not the logs; she knew the logs would be too much for her. Just the riverbank, where her dear Gamba and young Dan had stood and seen it happen--and maybe the exact spot in the water where her one-and-only Angelu hadn't surfaced. Yes, she might one day want to see that, Carmella had thought.
"Thank you, Mr. Ketchum," she'd said that day, when the logger and the cook were leaving Boston. "If you ever want to see me--" Carmella had started to say to Dominic.
"I know," the cook had said to her, but he wouldn't look at her.
Now, on the occasion of Danny bringing his father's ashes to Twisted River, Ketchum had insisted that the writer bring Carmella, too. When Danny had first met Angel's mom, the twelve-year-old had noted her big breasts, big hips, big smile--knowing that only Carmella's smile had been bigger than Injun Jane's. Now the writer knew that Carmella was at least as old as Ketchum, or a little older; she would have been in her mid-eighties, Danny guessed. Her hair had turned completely white--even her eyebrows were white, in striking contrast to her olive complexion and her apparently robust good health. Carmella was big all over, but she was still more feminine than Jane had ever been. And however happy she was with the new fella in her life--Paul Polcari and Tony Molinari continued to insist that she was--she'd held on to the Del Popolo name, perhaps out of respect for the fact that she had lost both the drowned fisherman and her precious only child.
Yet on the long drive north, there'd been no bewailing her beloved Angelu--and only one comment from Carmella on the cook's passing. "I lost my dear Gamba years ago, Secondo--now you've lost him, too!" Carmella had said, with tears in her eyes. But she'd quickly recovered herself; for the rest of the trip, Carmella gave Danny no indication that she was even thinking about where they were going, and why.
Carmella continued to refer to Dominic by his nickname, Gamba--just as she called Danny Secondo, as if Danny were (in her heart) still her surrogate son; it appeared she'd long ago forgiven him for spying on her in the bathtub. He could not imagine doing so now, but he didn't say so; instead, Danny rather formally apologized to Carmella for his behavior all those years ago.
"Nonsense, Secondo--I suppose I was flattered," Carmella told him in the car, with a dismissive wave of her plump hand. "I only worried that the sight of me would have a damaging effect on you--that you might be permanently attracted to fat, older women."
Danny sensed that this might have been an invitation for him to proclaim that he was not (and had never been) attracted to such women, though in truth--after Katie, who was preternaturally small--many of the women in his life had been large. By the stick-figure standards of contemporary women's fashion, Danny thought that even Charlotte--indisputably, the love of his life--might have been considered overweight.
Like his dad, Danny was small, and while the writer didn't respond to Carmella's comment, he found himself wondering if perhaps he was more at ease with women who were bigger than he was. (Not that spying on Carmella in a bathtub, or killing Injun Jane with a skillet, had anything to do with it!)
"I wonder if you're seeing someone now--someone special, that is," Carmella said, after a pause of a mile or more.
"No one special," Danny replied.
"If I can still count, you're almost sixty," Carmella told him. (Danny was fifty-nine.) "Your dad always wanted you to be with someone who was right for you."
"I was, but she moved on," Danny told her.
Carmella sighed. She had brought her melancholy with her in the car; what was melancholic about Carmella, together with her undefined disapproval of Danny, had traveled with them all the way from Boston. Danny had detected the latter's presence as strongly as Carmella's engaging scent--either a mild, nonspecific perfume or a smell as naturally appealing as freshly baked bread.
"Besides," Danny went on, "my dad wasn't with anyone special--not after he was my age." After a pause, while Carmella waited, Danny added: "And Pop was never with anyone as right for him as you."
Carmella sighed again, as if to note (ambiguously) both her pleasure and displeasure--she was displeased by her failure to steer the conversation where she'd wanted it to go. The subject of what was wrong with Danny evidently weighed on her. Now Danny waited for what she would say next; it was only a matter of time, he knew, before Carmella would raise the more delicate matter of what was wrong with his writing.
ALL THE WAY FROM BOSTON, he'd found Carmella's conversation dull--the self-righteousness of her old age was depressing. She would lose her way in what she was saying, and then blame Danny for her bewilderment; she implied that he wasn't paying sufficient attention to her, or that he was deliberately confusing her. His dad, Danny realized, had remained sharp by comparison. While Ketchum grew deafer by the minute, and his ranting was more explosive--and though the old logger was close to Carmella's age--Danny instinctively forgave him. After all, Ketchum had always been crazy. Hadn't the veteran riverman been cranky and illogical when he was young? Danny was thinking to himself.
Just then, in the high-contrast, late-afternoon light, they drove past the small sign for ANDROSCOGGIN
TAXIDERMY. "My goodness--'Moose Antlers for Sale,'" Carmella said aloud, attempting to read more minutiae from the sign. (She'd said, "My goodness," every minute of the drive north, Danny reflected with irritation.)
"Want to stop and buy a stuffed dead animal?" he asked her.
"Just so long as it's before dark!" Carmella answered, laughing; she patted his knee affectionately, and Danny felt ashamed for resenting her company. He'd loved her as a child and as a young man, and he had no doubt that she loved him--she'd positively adored his dad. Yet Danny found her tiresome now, and he hadn't wanted her along on this trip. It was Ketchum's idea to show her where Angel had died; Danny realized that he'd wanted Ketchum for himself. Seeing his dad's ashes sunk in Twisted River, which was what the cook had wanted, mattered more to Danny than Ketchum making good on his promise to escort Carmella to the basin above the river bend, where her Angelu was lost. It made Danny feel ungenerous that he thought of Carmella as both a burden and a distraction; it made him feel unkind, but he believed, for the first time, that Paul Polcari and Tony Molinari hadn't been kidding. Carmella truly must be happy--with her new fella and her life. (Nothing but happiness could explain why she was so boring!)
But hadn't Carmella lost three loved ones, counting the cook--her one and only child among them? How could Danny, who had lost an only child himself, not see Carmella as a sympathetic soul? He did see her as "sympathetic," of course! Danny just didn't want to be with Carmella--not at this moment, when the dual missions of sinking his father's ashes and being with Ketchum were entirely enough.
"Where are they?" Carmella asked, as they drove into Errol.
"Where are what?" Danny said. (They'd just been talking about taxidermy! Did she mean, Where are the dead stuffed animals?)
"Where are Gamba's remains--his ashes?" Carmella asked.