Big Stone Gap

by Adriana Trigiani

  “Did you buy old Bessie a diamond ring to get this table?” I kiss Theodore on the cheek.

  “Almost.”

  We haven’t had a chance to talk much over the past week, and there is so much to tell him.

  “How’s it going with Jack Mac?” he asks.

  “Well, he’s sad. But he isn’t depressed. He keeps saying he is thankful she didn’t suffer a long time. He got to say good-bye to her. He’s gonna be all right.”

  “No, I mean how’s it going with you and Jack?”

  “I . . . love him.” I’ve never said that out loud.

  Theodore smiles. “You do?”

  “I do.”

  “Why?” Theodore asks kindly.

  “I don’t know if I can say it.”

  “Try.” Theodore sits back and makes a pyramid out of the tiny half-and-half containers.

  “I love Jack MacChesney because . . . he loves me.”

  “Is that all?”

  I don’t think Theodore understands how big that statement is, how loaded it is to me. Nobody ever loved me; yes, Mama did and some friends, but nobody Loved me. I was chosen. And for once, I wasn’t afraid, I just let it in. How silly my fears seem now. Why did I wait so long to let go? Even Mrs. Mac knew how scared I was. She kept trying to assure me that I would be safe with her son.

  “Isn’t that enough?” I fire back. Theodore nods.

  “Ave, I’m going to take the job at UT.”

  “You are?” I’m instantly disappointed, and just as quickly I am thrilled for him. “Congratulations!”

  “I think it’s time to move on. I need a new challenge. I need to look at myself, where I’m going, you know?”

  Theodore! Don’t go! I want my life to be perfect. I want to be in love with Jack MacChesney and have you, my best friend, in my life forever. I don’t want anything to change! Instead, I say, “You may go. But I’m not going to let you off the hook. We’ll be long-distance best friends. Okay?”

  “That’s what I was thinking. Knoxville isn’t so far. You’ll come down.”

  “We can talk on the phone,” I say, so upbeat.

  “Every day. Just like now.” Theodore looks at me. “Tell me I’m doing the right thing,” he implores.

  “You are doing the right thing. The only thing. Sometimes you have to strip away everything to find what you were in the first place.”

  “I guess that’s what you did, too, isn’t it? Who would have thought our lives were going to change like this?”

  “Chinese face-reading.”

  “Really? Can face-reading predict what I have planned after lunch?”

  “I have to bring Edna and Ledna Tuckett their pie dish.”

  “They can wait. We’re going to Cudjo’s Caverns.”

  As we drive to the Caverns, I think of my friendship with Theodore, what comfort it brought me all these years, how it grew as we grew. I just know he will always be a big part of my life. How could he not? He’s the only person I know who likes caves.

  Ray takes us up the dark path with his flashlight.

  “Can we go to the lake?” I ask him.

  “I got something better to show you,” he promises. Theodore and I look at each other and follow him.

  For ten years Theodore and I have come into this cave to explore, and every so often Ray has something new to show us. How is this possible? Does he keep things from us? Or does he make discoveries all the time and share them with us when he’s ready? Is this old mountain so full of riches that they cannot be discovered in one lifetime or even two? The path narrows; I keep my hand on the wall as we climb into a new place. As we move in, I can feel the cool stream of mountain water that flows down the rocks to form the stalactites. It takes the water generations to change the rocks. And yet it is so gentle on the stones, barely a gray mist.

  “There it is,” Ray says. “Y’all, look.”

  There is a small alcove, a grotto, the back wall jagged rock that forms a canopy overhead. Moss grows up the sides where the water trickles. The guide shines his flashlight on the ground. It is covered in lavender sand, fine-grained like spun sugar. The light beam plays over the sand, making it shimmer.

  “How did this happen?” Theodore wants to know. We cannot believe the beauty of the sand.

  “I ain’t so sure,” Ray begins. “This was an ugly black pool of gunk for the longest time. I didn’t go near it, because I didn’t know what was in it. You never do know inside the mountain. But over the winter, it started to drain out, so I kept an eye on it. And when all the water done drained off, this is what was at the bottom. It wasn’t something ugly. It was this.” Ray steadies the beam on the lavender sand; the light makes a bright circle that burns hot in the center and fades out to the edges until it falls away in a soft gloomy blue.

  Ray, Theodore, and I stay for a very long time.

  “I’ve worked in here all my life. Sometimes you just can’t explain things.”

  Jack Mac gets home from work at seven o’clock sharp. I’m making spaghetti when he comes in. Bessie’s hamburger wore off hours ago, and I’m hungry. He calls to me from the front hall and walks back to the kitchen. He puts his lunch pail down on the table and his boots on the floor. Then he looks at me.

  “I called the priest.”

  “You turning Catholic?” I tease.

  “No.”

  “What, then?”

  “I told him I wanted him to marry us.”

  “I don’t want to marry the priest, too. Can’t it just be the two of us?”

  Jack Mac laughs. “Is that a yes?”

  I nod. “Isn’t this too quick, though?” Old Ave Maria is back, questioning everything.

  Jack Mac gives me a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding look that stops me from blabbering on further and ruining a very precious moment.

  “I learned that it’s best not to let you think about things too much,” he says, and he goes to wash up.

  Never put Iva Lou Wade Makin in charge of a simple wedding. In two seconds she’s convinced me to wear a dress that’s too tight, a hat that’s too broad, and too much makeup. We argue about the blush (I don’t need it; humiliation gives me the only rose hue I need), lipstick versus lip gloss (my lips are so shiny I may slide off the groom), and powder finish (I think I look chalky).

  As I look at my vivid face in the mirror, it reminds me of the glamorous women of the Ice Capades, who need a lot of makeup to be seen from six hundred feet in an arena. I don’t need this kind of definition in a chapel that holds twenty people tops, so I slip into the bathroom to wash my face and start over. The corals, blues, and browns of my clown face disappear in the bubbles as I scrub. It’s my wedding day. Better a few hurt feelings than Jack Mac taking one look at me and sprinting from the church in horror.

  While I’m in the bathroom, I realize this fiasco is all my fault. I should have planned this better. I should have had some idea of what I wanted. I never dreamt of my wedding day. Not once. Not a single fantasy. I never imagined my bridesmaids in sherbet colors lined up at the altar, my very own ladies-in-waiting. I never saw the church festooned with flowers, heard the organ music, or thought about what color sugar Nellie Goodloe’s mints should be dipped in. I never thought I’d get married. But believe me, there are plenty of women who have six, seven, eight scenarios mapped out in their minds, every detail of the nuptials planned, and they’re all too happy to take over your big day and turn it into a monster of lace, ribbons, and flouncy details. Iva Lou Makin is the consummate romantic.

  Once I arrive at the church, I forget all the prenuptial distress. For Jack and me, this is a simple ceremony, where we will have the great honor of promising, in front of our loved ones, to be true. This thought calms me. We are having a private mass with Jack’s Aunt Cecelia and our closest friends. There will be no hoo-ha down the aisle or any other grand touches. Jack and I will enter together. The witnesses are Theodore, Iva Lou and Lyle, Aunt Cecelia, Pearl, Leah, Rick and Sherry, Fleeta and Portly, Otto and Worley, Lew and Inez
Eisenberg, Zackie, and Spec.

  Jack Mac pulls up in his truck and jumps out. He runs up the walkway and meets me in the vestibule.

  “You’re beautiful,” he tells me. You wouldn’t think so if you’d seen me an hour ago with four pounds of Max Factor heaped on my face. I smile at my groom.

  It’s the strangest thing—no one cries. There is just joy, simple and unadorned, in this little chapel with the quiet priest. Tomorrow, April 29, 1979, is my thirty-sixth birthday. How did I get to this place? Who knew?

  After church, we’ve planned a dinner for everyone in town at the Coach House (yes, we’re having the same fried chicken, ’taters, and slaw combo that was served on Elizabeth Taylor Night).

  When we cut our cake—thank you, Edna and Ledna Tuckett, for the coconut confection—Zackie emerges from the circle around us.

  “Miss Ave Maria . . . I mean, Mizriz MacChesney . . .” The crowd cheers. I look at the faces of Rick and Sherry Harmon, Nellie Goodloe, June Walker, and Mrs. Gaspar. They couldn’t be happier for me. How lucky I am.

  “We wanted to do something special for you and Jack Mac,” Zackie says. “So we put together a little fund-raiser.”

  Iva Lou and Lyle emerge from the kitchen carrying a four-foot pickle jar stuffed with coins and bills. The crowd cheers again. There is a sign inside the jar: HONEYMOON OR BUST.

  “We want to send y’all to It-lee. We hope this will help.”

  Iva Lou and Lyle place the giant pickle jar at our feet. Pearl and Leah present us with a giant congratulations card signed by everyone at the reception. I look around the room. Most folks are crying. I am, too.

  Jack and I spend our first night as a married couple in his stone house on the hill. I open all the windows; it is warm and the breeze is full of honeysuckle and jasmine. My husband comes to bed.

  “There’s something I never told you,” he begins. My heart starts to race; a thousand possibilities float through my mind, all of them horrible, like he has three months to live, or he has a second family tucked away up in Insko, or that he’s been in debtor’s prison.

  What has happened to me? I get so afraid now. I never used to. Why am I more vulnerable now than I was when I was alone, in charge of everything? I lived by myself in the middle of town, for God’s sake. I checked my own oil, lit my own furnace, caught mice. I had a routine: running a home, a business, the Rescue Squad, the Drama. I was never scared then. So much for strength in numbers, I think as I look at my husband, now that we are a family.

  “The fall before your mother got really sick, I went down to your house to pick up some mending. And she was sitting in the living room. She invited me to sit down, and I did. She told me some things about herself, general things, like where she was from in Italy, how she taught herself English, that sort of thing. As I was about to leave, she walked me to the door. She told me that she was dying, and if I wouldn’t mind, could I look in on you once in a while to make sure you were all right. I promised her I would.”

  What can I say to him? Surely he knows what this means to me. My mama picked him first, way before I was ready, back when I was afraid to. I wonder if she knows how happy I am in this moment. Though I have no proof, something tells me she does.

  We cuddle down into the covers, me on my side, my husband lying next to me, on his side, holding me. He places his arm around my waist like the bar on a roller-coaster car. I am locked in for the night. We have had a long day and a lot of cake, and we are very tired. My husband tells me he loves me, and I tell him that I love him. He kisses the back of my neck and goes to sleep.

  As he sleeps, I think about Reverend Gaspar and I hear him say that word, faith. I haven’t been able to figure out what he meant that night in the ambulance until now. I don’t think he was talking about faith in God. I think he was telling me that he had faith in me, that he believed I could help him. Maybe he even thought I could save him. That’s why his eyes were so clear and his voice was so strong as he lay dying. He had a revelation. He knew that the great mysteries in life can only be solved person to person. We can pull each other through. He figured it out at the end of his life; I am so glad he shared it with me in the middle of mine. Maybe I can be of some use now. Maybe I can be of some good to one person. I hope that person is Jack MacChesney.

  The trip to Italy that was to change the course of my life has become a honeymoon. I made Jack take a leave of absence from the mines so we could spend the entire summer in Italy. My husband is a very good traveler. He’s not too persnickety about seeing everything; he’s loose about missing trains; he doesn’t get upset when a museum is closed or a church on our itinerary is locked. He speaks Italian with a mountain twang; sometimes I have to walk away because it is so funny. He ignores me and persists. The Italians love him because he tries so hard.

  We landed in Rome and have been touring the countryside north by train. There is no way for me to scientifically explain the light here, as I am ignorant of such matters. But I swear to you, the sun is hung differently. There is a peachy golden haze over Italy that makes green fields more vivid, gives brown earth a depth and people a romantic glow. I point it out to Jack, and he tells me that I’m drunk in love with the place and it is coloring my perceptions. I don’t think so. I think there is something different about the light. When the sun goes down, the sky turns a vivid blue-black, the stars seem closer, and the edges don’t fade out toward the horizon. The same saturated blue hems the skyline that nestles the moon. It is no wonder the Fortuny family makes fabric here. They have a different canopy of velvet overhead to choose from each night. All they have to do is look up and copy.

  Of course, we cannot wait to get to Bergamo, my mother’s family home, for a two-day visit, and then on to Schilpario, where Mario and Nonna live. Mario is scheduled to come down the mountain and pick us up to take us to his home. I cannot explain the deep joy I feel. My husband is sleeping next to me on the train, and I am sailing through the place I come from. There may not be a greater feeling on earth.

  The train pulls into Bergamo. I wake Jack and begin yanking suitcases down from the bars overhead. We brought so much American crap for the relatives. They had time to get home and decide which items they missed, so I am loaded down with cigarettes, Bic pens, staples and staple guns, Moon Pies, Goo-Goo Clusters, and giant plastic paper clips. I didn’t question their choices; I just went out and bought in bulk and loaded a trunk.

  Two of my cousins, Mafalda and Andrea, are there to meet us at the station. Their happy faces move alongside the train until it makes a full stop. I hang out the window; they see me and run to our exit steps to wait for us. I don’t think anybody has ever been so happy to see us. They negotiate the cumbersome bags, leaving me to carry nothing but my new leather-bound journal, which my husband bought me in Florence.

  The train station is on the outskirts of town, on a side street nestled in some trees. Andrea and Mafalda load our luggage into their small car, we squeeze in, and we’re off. Andrea drives very fast, and Mafalda chides him to slow down. We take a sharp right turn that leads us to a C-shaped street that connects to the town circle. Mafalda points out the newspaper office, the government building, the church. Bergamo looks just like the picture in the book Iva Lou found at the university library. Nothing has changed. The Fountain of Angels, the cobblestone streets, the upright shoe-box-shaped houses painted subtle pastels, the little park, the outdoor cafés—they are all the same! There is only one change that I can see: The car has replaced the horse and carriage.

  The Vilminore family lives in a four-story house in the middle of a block on Via Davide. Zia Antonietta, Zia Meoli, Zio Pietro, and my cousin Federica are waiting for us in front of the house. My aunts cry when they see us. They can’t seem to let go of Jack, who doesn’t seem to mind their heartfelt, sturdy embraces. The family home is neat and spare. Everything is white but the floor, which is made of glossy dark brown planks. Mafalda takes us up the stairs to our room, a good-sized simple room with a sleigh bed and a matching settee
. The bed is piled high with white coverlets, just the way Mama liked. Mafalda tells us to rest, they will see us for a light supper later. Before she goes, she tells me that this used to be my mother’s bedroom.

  While Jack unpacks, I lie down on the bed and look up at the ceiling, smooth and white. The window and door frames are painted an almond color. It’s the same white and the same almond trim in my mother’s bedroom in Big Stone Gap. My mother may not have talked much about Italy, but she surrounded herself with details that reminded her of her home.

  We lie down for a nap and wake at about seven o’clock. The sun has set; we are surprised that we slept so long. The kitchen table is set for the two of us. Zia Antonietta serves us a delicious thick soup with greens in it, and soft bread with a hard, chewy crust. There is lots of creamy butter, and good, rich red wine. Italians eat their biggest meal at noon; this supper is perfectly sized, just enough for us to feel full but not stuffed.

  When we are done eating, Zia Antonietta tells us to get our sweaters, and we go for a walk, or la passeggiata, as they say here. We walk a short distance to the main piazza in Bergamo Bassa, where folks stand in small groups chatting. Others sip coffee in the cafés on either side of the fountain. There is laughter, and the children run and play. The people here are so animated; they raise their voices to make a point, they use their bodies for emphasis; they are so full of life and comical! It is no surprise that the commedia dell’arte theatrical tradition started here in the fourteenth century. Everyone seems to have a divine sense of humor. Zia Antonietta tells us that this goes on every night. “It is soothing to laugh before sleep,” she explains in Italian. Jack thinks it’s the best idea he has ever heard. Zia Antonietta points to a rim of light above the city; in the twilight it looks like there are pillars and some buildings. “Alta Città. That was the ancient city Bergamo Alta. Now it is very desirable real estate. Our university is there. Mafalda will take you tomorrow if you like.”

  “Why did the city move down here?” Jack wants to know.

  “War. Rock slides,” she explains. She sees me frown. “But that was many centuries ago. Don’t worry, Ave Maria. Don’t worry.”