Big Stone Gap (26 page)

As we drive back to the Gap, I picture the three of us: Mama, Mario, and me. What if we had been able to reunite as a family after Fred Mulligan died? What if she had told me the truth? What if we had gone to Italy, found him, and knocked on his door? Would we have fit in his life? Mama knew there was no place for us there. She knew she must stay in his memory, where she was young and beautiful and the thing men love best: undemanding. She would be the best lover in his mind’s eye: the uncomplicated great love of his youth. How did she know that those memories are what warms old age? When my father speaks of my mother, a look of contentment settles into his face. He has had many, many women since. I wonder if he really cared about her.

“Did you love her?”

He does not answer me.

“It’s okay, Mario. I can handle it.” I pat his shoulder.

“I never forgot Etta,” he says.

No one ever called my mother Etta; I am so happy he had a special name for her.

I cannot ask him any more questions right now, because I understand, just from the few short hours I have known him, that he does not have much of an attention span. He asks a lot of questions, but he doesn’t stay on any one topic for very long. I can see that he is tired of this one. I change the subject as we drive through town. This pleases him.

Theodore is being a real doll and arranging all sorts of side trips for the relatives. He borrowed the school van to take my family around. Nonna loved Cudjo’s Caverns. Her favorite local cuisine is soup beans and corn bread; she has eaten it every day. Mario and I are becoming good friends; everywhere we go, people tell me I look like him. We convinced Gala to stay for the four-day visit. Even though she is American, Big Stone Gap is like a foreign land to her. Worley has a crush on her, but he doesn’t know it. He just follows her around like he’s never seen a woman before.

Theodore and I plan a doozy of a final night for the family. We’re going to take them to the Carter Family Fold. I hope we haven’t built it up too much. My aunts can’t wait to try clog dancing and eat their first chili dogs.

When we arrive at the Fold, the parking field is packed with cars, as usual. As we pile out of the van, my Italian relatives move slowly, like they are disembarking a spaceship. They look all around at the cars, the people, and the old barn, twinkling in the field against the blue mountains.

Iva Lou and Lyle are dancing when we get there. I take sweaters and purses and stake out a row of hay bales. Theodore takes Gala and my aunts in one direction. Fleeta takes Mario, Nonna, and my uncle to the food stand.

Sitting on the bale of hay, I realize that this is the first time since they’ve arrived that I’ve been alone and had a chance to think. It has all been so crazy—their arrival, our talks late into the night every night, the touring. I’m glad I live in a place I can show off easily in four days. The Fold is pretty much the grand finale of tourist sights around Big Stone Gap.

Nonna asked me to spend the summer with them in Schilpario. I think I will. I’m happy my new family has had the chance to visit Big Stone Gap before I move away entirely. They were able to stay in my mother’s house. Even without furniture, my mother’s spirit is very much alive there. Pearl and Leah will take good care of it. The fall will be a perfect time for me to relocate and find a job. Doesn’t everyone start new projects in the fall?

Iva Lou and Lyle come off the dance floor. She gives him a quick kiss, and he’s off to get something to eat. She waves to me and climbs up to our row of hay.

“What did you do with the Eye-talians?”

“They’re having their first chili dogs.”

“Good for them. Hope they like ’em.”

“They’ve liked everything they’ve eaten. I can’t believe it. My father likes fried chicken, and my aunts love collard greens. Imagine that.”

The folks on the dance floor shift in a large circle, revealing Jack MacChesney and Sarah the schoolteacher waltzing gracefully. Iva Lou catches me looking at them.

“I hate that woman,” she decides.

“Who?”

“The bony schoolteacher.”

“Why?”

“She’s workin’ Jack Mac over. I don’t like it one bit when a woman takes advantage of a vulnerable man. Unless it’s me, of course.”

“He likes her,” I say matter-of-factly.

“It’s more than that. She’s going after him big-time. She was over at the beauty parlor today chatting me up about all the things they do together. They’ve even gone camping. It makes me sick.”

“Why?” I have to admit the camping part makes me a little sick too. You can take one look at Sarah and know she is not the outdoors type. Old Jack Mac better get a lot of camping trips in before he marries her because that’ll be the last time he sees her frying steaks in the great wild. She’s a bait-and-trap type. Once the trap shuts, no more bait.

“You know why.”

“No, I really don’t. She’s not in your business. You’ve got Lyle. So why do you care?”

“Don’t do this,” Iva says, annoyed.

“Do what?”

“I think it’s terrible how you’ve treated Jack Mac. He sold his truck to bring your family over here, and you haven’t even thanked him properly. What is wrong with you?”

“Iva, I’ve got a house full of company. I was planning on going over to his house tomorrow night. Okay?”

“You should have chased him up the street when he left your house that day!”

“He stormed off.”

“You didn’t even holler after him to stop him. He’d have come back.”

“You don’t know what he said to me.”

“It couldn’t have been bad. The man is crazy about you.”

Poor Iva Lou. She believes in love. I want to shake her and say,
Wake up! It’s me you’re talking about. No man is crazy about me. How much proof do you need? I’m alone.
Instead, I turn defensive. “You don’t know the whole story, so don’t assume this is all on me because it’s not.”

“Fill me in, girl.”

I whisper, “A few months back, he felt sorry for me and came over and proposed. He was supposedly broken up with Sweet Sue, but after I said no, hardly the weekend passed and he was out with her again. So it wasn’t love or apple butter that drove him over to my house, it was pity. Okay?”

“Pity? Who in their right mind would ever pity you?”

“You don’t know what he’s like. He’s very confused.”

“He doesn’t strike me that way, but all right, if you say so.”

“I tried to thank him. I went to hug him. I couldn’t believe what he had done. But he pulled away, he actually stepped back and didn’t want me to touch him.”

“It didn’t look like that from the porch.”

“I’m not lying to you, Iva.”

Jack Mac follows Sarah outside to the food stand. He guides her with his hand on her lower back. She reaches back with her right hand and pats his leg. Iva Lou sees this, too, and she makes a disgusted clucking noise. “Somebody needs to tell her that flats are a no-no for girls with thick ankles.”

“Let’s just say he did love me once. He sure as hell doesn’t anymore. Let it go.”

Iva Lou can’t let it go. “How do you feel about him?”

I shake my head. I don’t want to get into all of this. How
do
I feel about him? All I know is that when I kind of liked him, he didn’t like me. And then when he liked me, I didn’t want him. I do think of the kiss sometimes—well, let’s be honest, it’s the last thing I think about when I’m in that weakened state right before sleep. I go right back to the trailer park, to the book, to the pools of light coming out of the windows, to the way he smelled, to the way my face fit into his chest like a puzzle piece, to his eyes that looked at me with such tenderness and with just a little humor, too. I re-create the whole picture, and then he kisses me. It’s my good-night kiss, I guess, and the last thing I remember before breakfast. But this is my little ritual, and I’m certainly not going to share it with Iva Lou.

“Are you afraid of him?”

“God, no.”

“I don’t mean of him per se.” Iva Lou struggles to find the words for the right way to invade my privacy.

“Are you afraid of having sex with him?”

“Iva Lou.” My tone says,
Stop this, please.

“Look, I’m just your friend. And you know all about me. But I’ll be damned, I don’t know how
you
feel about certain things. You never talk about how you feel about men. As a woman. The most fun in life for a woman is to talk about men. Look at me. It’s my favorite topic in and out of the bedroom.”

“I don’t like to talk about it.”

“Well, try. I’m a girl. You’re a girl. We got our own little club; and men have no idea what we talk about. Your secrets are safe with me.” From the doorway Lyle holds up a chili dog toward Iva Lou. She shakes her head and waves him off. He goes back to talking with his buddies.

“Come on. Tell me what makes you tick. Before you leave town and I never see you again.” Iva Lou looks so pitiful, I almost want to explain myself to her.

“I think he’s attractive. I do.” I hope this will be enough to get her off the subject of Jack Mac forever.

“That’s a start. Now, don’t leave me hanging. Go on.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen Iva Lou this excited.

“When I saw him at the end of my walk the day my family arrived, I thought he was the most beautiful person I had ever seen.”

“And you didn’t throw yourself into his arms, right there and then?”

“Because he . . .”

“Follow your impulses for once! Girl, you’re how old? Thirty-six? When do you think you’re gonna have sex? When you’re sixty? Ninety? Honey-o, get in there and have you some while you’re still limber. What are you waiting for? How could you let somebody like Jack Mac slip through your fingers? I bet the sex with him is primo. I can just tell.”

I wish Iva Lou would stop talking, but she can’t. She is trying very hard to make me understand. I have never seen her on such a tear.

She continues, “Do you deprive yourself of a ripe strawberry or a spritz of nice perfume or a good book because you don’t think you deserve them? Hell, no. Sex is no different. It is a delightful gift from God that makes life pleasant. Now, what could be wrong with that? You’ll find out a helluva lot more about yourself in bed with a good man than you will traipsing off to some foreign country with a camera and a guidebook. You need to get honest with yourself. You’re afraid. But you want sex. You ought to have you some sex.”

On the dance floor Otto and Worley are teaching my grandmother how to clog. A supportive crowd has gathered to cheer her on. Iva Lou and I join in. Nonna’s body is a small barrel, her legs thin but well shaped. Her eyes gleam as she dances. She segues from an Appalachian two-step into a folk dance we don’t do in these parts—must be Alpine Italian. Otto and Worley follow her lead, and soon everyone is spinning and smiling.

Iva Lou and I run out of breath first and sit down to watch. I look off in the grass, a bit beyond the door, and see my father talking to Jack MacChesney. My father’s hands are expressive as usual. Jack Mac leans into my father’s ear and says something. They laugh and shake hands. Sarah joins them—does she ever leave him alone for five minutes? Jack Mac introduces her to my father. Jack Mac and Sarah leave. My father looks around for us and cuts across the dance floor to join me.

“What were you talking about?” I ask Mario, indicating the conversation he just had with Jack Mac.

“His Italian is pretty good,” my father says.

“He doesn’t speak Italian.”

“He just did.” Mario shrugs. How do you like that? Maybe Sarah Dunleavy taught Jack a few key phrases she picked up from the
Godfather
movies. How continental of her.

“Jack Mac is a very kind man. Don’t you think?” Mario looks off. Sure, Jack is a very kind man, and I’m very grateful. But he won’t accept my gratitude, which makes a jackass out of me. I would love to tell my father all about Jack MacChesney and Sweet Sue and the proposal and Sarah Dunleavy and everything, but I think better of it. He would just smile and say something breezy in colloquial Italian about the salt in the cupboard or the eyes of a fish or some other image that doesn’t make any sense or apply. Doesn’t anybody see how hard all of this is for me?

Gala corrals us all into a group—she is first and foremost a travel director—and we head off for the van. On the drive home, everyone laughs as Nonna recounts how Otto and Worley tried to teach her how to clog. I don’t feel much like laughing. I am filling up with sadness and regret. My family just got here, and already they’re leaving. I don’t want them to go! I wish this black road would never end and we could stay inside this van forever talking and laughing with Theodore behind the wheel and my father at my side.

When we get back to the house, Nonna gives Gala the dry soup beans and seasonings she bought at the Piggly Wiggly to take back to Italy.

“I’m gonna break it off for good with Frank tomorrow night. After I get Nonna’s soup beans through Customs. Hey, he used me, now I use him.”

Nonna kisses me good night and goes off to bed.

I watch Gala stuff soup beans in socks. She looks at me.

“Are you okay?” I nod. “You look sad. You’re going to miss them.”

“It’s gone by so fast. But I don’t want to complain, I sound so ungrateful.”

“Believe me. It was a project getting these folks over here. What a logistical nightmare. Could they live any farther up in the Alps? They’re a pack of goats, your family.”

“Gala, who contacted you about getting my family over here?”

“Iva Lou.”

“Iva Lou?”

“She called first. But it was just an inquiry. You know, to find out how this sort of tour would work. So I gave her a breakdown and took notes. Of course, I wasn’t sure how it would work, but then I thought of it as a reverse tour and I was fine. Iva Lou didn’t talk money or anything, though. That was entirely Jack MacChesney’s department. He’s a cute one, don’t you think?”

“When did he call you to make the arrangements?”

She shrugs. “A couple of months ago. I could look it up.”

“Was my trip planned before or after theirs?” I wave my hand to indicate my houseguests.

“After.” Gala looks guilty for a moment and then continues. “I was expecting your call. Iva Lou tipped me off. I’m sorry. I lied to you, I trumped up a fake trip to make you think it was happening. But we had already planned the relatives coming over, so I saw no harm in it. Frank arranged the fake airline tickets I sent you. I’m sorry.”