Big Stone Gap (27 page)

How could I be angry with Gala? My family is in my house, and we have had the best time.

“Don’t apologize,” I say to Gala. “I owe you so much more than you will ever owe me.” I really mean this.

That sneaky Iva Lou. That day on the Bookmobile, long ago, when Jack Mac was there with a newspaper, that’s when they found Gala. So, when I needed an international travel agent, Iva Lou steered me right to Gala. Jack Mac said he started planning this back when he proposed. And those Mormons; Iva Lou set that up to buy more time for Jack Mac’s plan. Is the whole town in on my business?

Everyone has gone to bed. We set three alarms so we would not oversleep. The Piedmont plane out of Tri-Cities for John F. Kennedy Airport in New York leaves at 7:00
A.M.
, and there isn’t another connection, so they must make it. (I remember that
Piedmont
means “foot of the mountains.” What a poor name for an airline!) I can’t sleep, so I’m wandering around the house trying not to make noise. I tiptoe outside and sit on the porch. I’m anticipating how sad I will be tomorrow after everyone leaves. Yes, I am going to Italy to visit them in a few weeks; Gala took care of everything without penalty, and she invited me to stay with her in New Jersey for a week and see New York before I go overseas! But after that, what? Where will I go? Maybe I’ll like Schilpario and stay there. I ponder that for a moment. How I wish Mama were here. Imagine how happy she would have been to see me with her family, knowing that I would never be alone in the world again. Even that I could not give her. Why did my mother’s life have to be so hard? I breathe deeply. I will never answer that question.

Zia Meoli stands at the screen door.

“I can’t sleep,” she says. This makes me laugh. She sounds just like my mother. And even though you would never say my mother was a comical person, sometimes she could say one sentence in such a way that it made you laugh. Zia Meoli comes outside.

“I wanted to talk to you alone.” She pulls up a chair next to me.

“Please.”

“How do you like him?” She indicates the window behind which my father sleeps.

“I like him.” She shrugs. “Don’t you?”

Zia Meoli thinks for a moment. “He’s a politician,” she decides.

I figure in Italy that’s not a compliment. “Zia . . .” I begin, but from the look on her face, I can see that she knows what I am going to ask her. “Do you remember when Mama left Bergamo?”

She nods as though it were yesterday. “Your mother left us in the middle of the night. She did not tell us where she was going. She left a letter for me, telling me that I should not worry about her, that she would write to me.”

I can tell from Zia’s expression that she has replayed these events over in her mind many times. She is still bothered by them.

“Did you want to go after her to find her?” I ask.

“Yes! Of course, yes! I thought of every place she might go. Cousins. Other towns. But no one had seen her. And she left no clue as to where she went or why. I was suspicious, because she spoke of Mario Barbari often, but I said nothing because I wasn’t sure. My mother, your grandmother, was destroyed. After Fiametta left, she could never be consoled.”

“What about your father?”

“I think he knew what happened. See, he knew Mario Barbari. He knew his family, not well, but in business. When Papa figured out that Fiametta liked Mario, he felt she was too young to court. So he forbade her to see him. She was devastated. But our father was very strict. If anything improper had occurred, he would have made Fiametta leave our home. My sister knew this. Though it broke my heart that she did what she did, I understood. She had no choice. I would have done the same thing.”

“But she was only seventeen. Just a girl.”

“At that time, many Italians were leaving the country. Some to Canada, some to South America, some to Australia. All over. Many, of course, went to New York. America. I knew that if she could, she would leave Italy altogether, so as not to bring shame upon us. I also knew that when she made a decision, she would never turn back.”

“Did you know she was pregnant with me?”

Zia Meoli shakes her head; she did not know of her sister’s condition.

“If you knew about Mario Barbari, why didn’t you go to him?”

She nods vehemently. “I went to him. I did.”

“Did you know he was married?”

“I knew a family up the mountain, in a town about fifteen kilometers from Schilpario. They knew of him, where I could find him. They told me he was married. I was sure he had married my sister. But it wasn’t Fiametta, it was another girl. I was told it was a match, and it did not work. The girl went back with her parents after a short time.”

“How do they make a match?”

“The families come together and decide who their children will marry. Pietro and I were a match. He was one of five children, four of them sons. His father came to my father, and they discussed which daughter would be suitable for his sons. Antonietta loved a boy in Sestri Levante, near Genoa, and Fiametta was gone, so that left me. I met Pietro, I liked him very well. We courted for one year, and then we got married.” She folds her arms, indicating that making matches is the most natural way to make a marriage in the whole world.

“So, what happened when you went to find Mario Barbari?”

“Oh, yes!” She remembers as she goes back to her story. I notice that Italians do digress—I am guilty of it too. In the middle of a story, one element of it grabs their attention, and then they’re off the subject entirely, never to return. I am reminded of how alike we are, even though I was not influenced by them when I was growing up. These similarities, though, are deep and in our bones.

“Mario da Schilpario was very suave. The black, black hair. The black eyes. Very striking man. I figured out a way to get up the mountain without my father finding out the real reason for my trip. I was hoping that Fiametta would be there with him, and I could talk sense to her and have her come home. When I got to Schilpario, I found Mario working in the church. His family are glass and metal workers. They make stained-glass windows.” Another fact about my father I didn’t know!

“I knew it was him right away, because I remembered him from town; he drove a carriage down for supplies sometimes, and all the girls in Bergamo took note of him. I asked to speak with him alone. He was very pleasant, but he knew nothing of my sister’s whereabouts. He had not heard from her. He asked me to understand his position; he had a wife, and they were trying to make their marriage work, even though they did not live under one roof. He thought my sister was beautiful and sweet, but theirs was a romance that could never be. Would I tell her that when I found her? I told him that was something he needed to discuss with Fiametta himself. I remember that, at the mention of her name, his eyes had great pain in them. I believe he loved her.”

Zia Meoli has obviously given this a great deal of thought. But she is a woman, too, and she knows what happens to unsuspecting girls who fall for the town Lothario. At first, they accept that they are one of many, but they hope they can tame him, win his heart, and make him faithful and true. At seventeen, my mother didn’t know that she would never win this battle. But she was so in love, she gave him her heart anyway. It is so ironic that I am Mario’s only child. All those women, all that romance, and I am the only child that grew from it.

“So, I went back down the mountain, with no more information than when I left. I gathered my mother and my sister in a room, away from my father, and told them what I had learned. My mother was devastated; she was certain I would find Fiametta and bring her home. My mother’s health turned at that time. She cried all the time, she took to her bed. The Italians would say that her blood turned. Her sadness had made her ill.”

“What about your father?”

“My mother never discussed it with my father. She knew where he stood on the matter. If Fiametta had done wrong, she had to live with the consequences. One time he and I had an argument about it. He told me he knew that my sister was alive and well. He knew how strong-willed she was. Papa thought that she could protect herself. I thought he was cold and indifferent, and I was very angry with him for not setting out to find her. But he and Fiametta had always had a sense about each other; I never had that with him.”

“A sense?”

“Papa knew what she was thinking. He always did. He could tell before she did something what she was going to do. It was mystical.”

“When did Mama write her first letter to you?”

“It was almost a year after she left. How happy Mama was when that letter came from America.”

“I didn’t find any letters from your mother to my mother.”

Zia Meoli shakes her finger back and forth. “Never. My mother would never go against my father! Never!”

“Did your mother know about me?”

“She was so happy. But you were only a year or so old when she died. But my mother knew your name and all of the details Fiametta sent to me.”

“Did you ever tell your father?”

My aunt shakes her head sadly. “If he knew, we never talked about it. Don’t judge him for it, Ave Maria. It was a different time. A girl could not leave the family home without being married, nor could she—”

“Dishonor the family name.”

Zia Meoli shakes her head again. “I knew there was no dishonor. She was young. She was in love.” Zia sits back in the chair, rocking a bit.

Mama in love. I wish I could have seen it.

Theodore and I see everyone off at the airport, but it is in no way a sad parting. We promise to call and write to one another, and we’re all looking forward to the long summer in Schilpario.

My father tries to give me a wad of money, which I stuff right back into his pocket.

“Papa, I don’t need it.”

“Please take it.”

“Papa, you keep it. Take care of Nonna.” He smiles, and we hug for a long time. We will see each other very soon, and we’re happy about that.

Theodore and I watch the plane take off. After it disappears beyond the mountains, we go to Shoney’s for a leisurely lunch and relive every moment of the Eye-talian visit.

I load up the Jeep to return all the pans to the ladies in town who dropped off food while my family was visiting. One of my favorite things about Big Stone Gap is the stream of covered dishes that flows from house to house in times of joy or sadness. The ladies make it easy to get their pans back: On the bottom of each, in indelible ink on heavy tape, they print their names: N. Goodloe, E. and L. Tuckett, I. Makin, J. Hendrick, and N. MacChesney. It will take me the better part of the day to shuttle these back to their owners.

I drive up to Cracker’s Neck first, starting at the top of the mountain with the first pan return. Then I’ll work my way back down to town. Tufts of white smoke puff out of the kitchen chimney at the MacChesneys’. I knock at the door. No answer. I knock again. Still no answer. In a split second there is loud barking behind me, and I practically jump out of my skin. It’s the family dog. He keeps barking and circles back around the house. I follow him.

Mrs. Mac is hanging out the laundry. The white sheets are whiter than the clouds overhead, and even outdoors the air is filled with the clean smell of fresh laundry. She looks up and sees me and smiles.

“Thank you for the chess pie. My family loved it.”

“Who wouldn’t? It’s good pie.”

“Do you need some help?” I ask.

“I’m all done. Come inside. I got coffee.”

I follow Mrs. Mac into the house through the back porch. I have never seen this porch or entered the house this way. In fact, I didn’t even know she had a room like this on the back of the house. You can’t see it from the kitchen; it is off at a different angle and easily hidden.

The sunporch is lovely. There is rattan furniture with soft cushions, quilted in elaborate designs; I recognize the traditional “drunkard’s path” motif on a matching chair. There are hanging plants everywhere, spilling over with blooms of pink, purple, and yellow. I have never seen an indoor garden quite so beautiful; it looks like it belongs in another house, not in this clean, spare stone house in Cracker’s Neck.

“Yep, this is my favorite spot in the house. Plants need a lot of care, though.”

I imagine Mrs. Mac making the sunporch her own special room, full of her feminine touches. But it is more than that; it has a spiritual feeling, like a sanctuary. I follow her through a small pantry back into the kitchen that I know so well.

“Everybody get off all right?” she asks as she fetches me a cup of coffee.

“They had the best time.”

“How about you?”

“It was a dream.”

“Good.”

“Mrs. Mac, you probably know that Jack sold his truck to pay for all of it, and I—”

She holds up her hand to stop me. “That is his affair.”

“I know. But I want you to know that I appreciate it.”

“Honey, it ain’t none of my business.”

“But—”

“It ain’t.”

We sit in an uncomfortable silence for a few minutes.

“You raised a very fine person.”

“Thank you kindly.”

“Mrs. Mac, are you upset with me about something?”

“I wouldn’t call it upset.”

“What would you call it?”

“There is a word for it; let me think.” She thinks a moment, gets up, goes to the cake saver, pulls off the lid, cuts a couple of pieces of pound cake, puts them on a plate, fetches two forks and two plates and two napkins, and comes back to the table and sits down with me. “I’m mystified.”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you want my son or not?”

I can’t answer her. Not only am I embarrassed, I realize that I am in that horrible position of having dragged somebody’s mama into my confusion, a bad place for her and me.

“Do you mind if I don’t answer that?”

“Suit yourself.”

We eat our cake and drink our coffee. Mrs. Mac stares off at the field. She looks old to me this morning. Or maybe I’m afraid that I will miss her when I leave.

“I got a lot of pans in the car, so I better shove off.”

“Ave Maria?” Mrs. Mac looks at me directly and does not blink.