Home to Big Stone Gap (6 page)

“Lordy, did you see the cars?” Iva Lou says from the service kitchen. “You’d think it was the Division D football championship.”

“It’s packed wall-to-wall upstairs.”

“Thank God we have enough food. I panicked yesterday and started making calls. I had Evadean Church make a batch of her famous sand-dollar cookies, even though she’s a Pentecost. She was so sweet. Just made the cookies regardless of church affiliation. Dropped ’em off on trays here this morning. You gotta love that.”

“It’s gorgeous. Not that I lifted a finger, but it’s perfect.”

“You got the right idea. Delegate. Maybe I’ll figure that out next time.”

“You coming up?”

“In a minute. I gotta start the coffee. I didn’t borrey Barbara Horton’s silver urns for nothing. She went to the trouble to dig ’em out and polish ’em, so I gotta use ’em. I’ll catch Fleets and Otto before they kiss. Never fear.”

I sneak up the back stairs and into the church. I spot my husband at the end of a pew. He turns, looking for me, and motions for me to come and sit. The organist starts to play “Islands in the Stream,” and the procession begins. Janine looks lovely in a ballet-length pink skirt and a white blouse. She carries a bouquet of miniature pink roses and baby’s breath. Next comes Preacher Mutter and his wife, wearing dark blue robes with bright yellow sashes. As they pass, they greet the congregation on either side of the aisle. Then Fleeta and Otto enter, arm in arm. Otto looks sharp in a navy blue suit and a pink plaid silk bow tie. Fleeta looks stunning. Her hair is licorice black (L’Oréal #147, “Deeply Ebony,” Aisle 3 at the Mutual’s), slicked back in a French braid with a long shiny corkscrew curl in front of each ear. The curls are inlaid with bunches of baby’s breath studded with small pink jewels that glitter as the flashbulbs pop.

I pull a camera out of my purse and start clicking away, along with the rest of the guests. Methodist services are short, so I snap as many pictures as I can, and quickly. Preacher Mutter’s introductions are practically drowned out by the sound of cameras rewinding. I scan the front rows and see some of Fleeta’s cousins from Scott County. They wear gloves and hats. Fleeta calls them “fancies.”

Worley is the best man, and he’s smiling (good sign). Fleeta said that Worley has slowly come to accept the inevitable. When the vows begin, Janine takes her mother’s bouquet and gives her a kiss. Fleeta takes her daughter’s hand and pulls her close. Then Fleeta does something I’ve never seen: she makes the groom and best man join hands also. Worley is a little uncomfortable with that but complies. Fleeta turns and motions to the front pew. The crowd sighs as Pavis joins them at the altar. Reverend Mutter smiles.

“Preacher must’ve had an intervention,” Jack whispers. Clerics love a family affair, that’s for sure.

When Preacher Mutter pronounces them man and wife, Fleeta and Otto kiss, and the guests whoop and holler so loudly, it sounds like we’re at a professional wrestling match. The organ music swells (this time it’s an arrangement of Charlie Rich’s “Behind Closed Doors,” leading me to believe that no one checked the musical selections with the preacher). Otto and Fleeta lock arms and recess, followed by the wedding party. As Fleeta passes me, she grabs my hand for a second and says, “Whoo.” I look to the back of the church, where Iva Lou is wiping away a tear of joy.

The congregation takes a detour downstairs to the Fellowship Hall, directly to the punch bowls, instead of going outside for an official receiving line. I’ve never seen a crowd this big in the church basement. I remember one time years ago, Spec cleared the hall during the Cub Scouts Pinewood Derby due to “unaccounted-for overflow.” I’ll bet we have twice as many people here tonight.

While Fleeta and Otto are outside “meetin’ and greetin’” and taking photos, the Garden Club kids hand out bottles of bubbles in net bags, which the guests commence blowing. Iva Lou fills the punch bowls as the Reedy Creek band plays a jazzy rendition of “Here Comes the Bride.”

Fleeta and Otto enter the reception to another loud ovation, this one punctuated by earsplitting wolf whistles. Otto takes Fleeta in his arms. They dance in a dreamland of silver bubbles, as though they’re in a snow globe where the glitter’s been shaken. The rest of us form a deep circle around the dance floor and sway. Janine reaches over and squeezes my hand. Her brother, Pavis, joins us.

“Pavis, it means the world to your mother that you came,” I tell him.

Pavis wears a navy blue pin-striped suit and a tie printed with rows of tiny hot-pink champagne bottles. His black hair is sprayed into a clean tailfin sweep with a side part (they have a thing about hair in the Mullins family—they’re particular and partial to definitive shapes).

“I’m glad I could make it.” Pavis smiles. “Janine said she’d haul off and kill me if I didn’t show up.”

“You’ll do right to listen to your sister.”

“You got that right. I been skeered of her all my life.” Pavis winks one eye slowly. “Don’t mess with the Boss.”

Jack pulls me onto the dance floor. I exhale a huge sigh of relief. No matter what, weddings are stressful, and I’ve been on the front lines of this one since we returned from Italy. Jack and I do more shifting than dancing on the crowded floor, but I don’t care. I’m in the arms of my true love, we’re dressed up, he smells like fresh cedar and lemon, and the music is wonderful. “Remember when you weren’t allowed to dance at weddings?” Jack whispers in my ear.

“And we lived in a dry county?” I point to Iva Lou, pouring vodka into a punch bowl.

“Progress.” Jack laughs.

Eddie Carleton was kind enough to cover for me at the Mutual’s, so I have the rest of Fleeta’s wedding day off. There are so many things I want to do in the house before Theodore arrives. I’ve been meaning to clean out closets, flip mattresses, and repaint the spare bedroom, and now I have a reason to actually get some of these chores done. There’s nothing like a deadline to force me to reorganize.

Jack is out back, working on a project. He won’t tell me what it is; he wants to surprise me. I watch out the kitchen window as he lifts a small plank of wood and carries it into the forest. A few moments later, he returns for his toolbox on the porch.

Mousey and Rick came over and split logs for us, and Jack helped them stack it, though not much more than that. The doctor wants him to exercise but avoid overexertion. The phone rings. As I answer it, I don’t take my eyes off the path to the forest. Since Jack had his surgery, I watch after him a lot, like I did the children when they were small—where they were and what they were doing was always on my mind.

“Hi, Mom. It’s Etta.”

She sounds terrible. “How are you, honey?” I ask.

“Okay. How was Aunt Fleeta’s wedding?”

“A sellout. The whole county turned out.”

“Good for them. Mom, I’m in Schilpario.”

“Did you go to Grandpop’s for the weekend?”

“Not exactly. He called me to come up last night. Stefano is with me.”

“Is Papa all right?” I feel my stomach turn.

“He’s fine. It’s Nonna. Ma, she passed away early this morning.”

“No!” I sit down.

“She went very peacefully. We were all with her. She woke up this morning, had her coffee and hot milk, took a bite of a roll, and said she was tired. So we took her back to bed, and she died.”

I begin to cry. All the things she meant to me come flooding back. I remember when Nonna came to Big Stone Gap twenty years ago with Papa—how she kept a bright red cotton handkerchief, starched and pressed, tucked in her sleeve at all times; how she made fried eggs in a hearty marinara sauce in a skillet and then tossed them through fresh greens, and I thought it was the most delicious thing I’d ever tasted. She didn’t make an ordinary tossed salad. Her wild greens were spiked with color, flower petals tossed through to add pizzazz. She taught me which flowers were edible (sweet woodruff, rose of Sharon, African marigolds) and which weren’t (calla lilies and crocus). My grandmother taught me how to make fresh gnocchi when I stayed for the summer in Schilpario. Nonna even tried to teach me how to make lace, but I couldn’t get it right. I never tired of watching her dip the threads in sugar water and weave them over a ceramic plate until the strands became an ornate pattern, each an original. Every doily in her house was homemade. In fact, everything she touched was beautiful. On a hot summer day, she’d dip grapes in ice water and roll them in sugar, and they’d look like they were drenched in diamonds. She knew how to make the ordinary seem magical.

“I’m sorry, Ma,” Etta says.

“How’s Grandpop?”

“He’s very sad. But death isn’t scary here. People don’t seem to dread it; they sort of expect it. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“In America, we think we’re going to live forever.” As soon as I say it, I wish I hadn’t. After all, I have a husband who I wish would live forever.

“Here, they celebrate a long life for the gift it is.”

“I’m so glad you were there.”

“It was amazing, Ma. Really. It’s like she went to sleep. Very sweet. So peaceful. I gave her a kiss from you and Dad. She smiled when I did it.”

“Thanks, honey.”

“The last thing she said to all of us was ‘Don’t cry.’ And then she made a fist. We all laughed, but she meant it. And then she was gone.”

My daughter has such a good heart. No matter how frustrated I can be with her decisions, she instinctively knows the loving thing to do. She knows what people around her need and how to comfort them, and that’s more important to me than the so-called big stuff. Etta possesses the kind of wealth we value: a generous spirit, first and always.

“Do you want to talk to Grandpop?” Etta asks.

“Ave Maria?” I hear my father’s voice, and I try not to cry, but I can’t help it.

“I’m so sorry, Papa.”

“She told me she was going to die before the end of the year. And she did. She was ninety-seven years old.”

“We should be so grateful for her long life.”

“We are. We are.”

“Papa, do you want me to come home?”

“There’s no need. She was so happy that she could go to Etta’s wedding. She really liked Stefano. So she felt like she had been given a gift.”

Papa talks about the townspeople stopping by to visit, and how bereft they are; after all, Nonna witnessed three generations come and go in their village.

I pull on my jacket and go out to find Jack and tell him the news. Since he’s been sick, I’ve tried to avoid any discussion of death and dying. If we’re watching something on TV and someone dies, I change the channel. If I see a story in the newspaper about a fatal accident, I pull out the page. If I hear a story about someone suffering, I tend not to repeat it to him. He probably thinks about health and mortality enough; I certainly don’t need to pile it on. I wish I didn’t have to tell him about Nonna.

As I make my way to the woods, the field crunches underneath my feet. I see a scythe, a rake, and an ax at the fence line, which means Jack was planning on clearing some brush. I see his footprints at the edge of the field and take the path into the woods. I hear the sound of a hammer against wood, so I follow the sound. The afternoon sun makes pink ribbons of light through the gray trees.

“Jack?” I call out.

“Over here.”

I follow the sound of his voice over the hill toward the flats where the creek runs from Big Cherry Lake down the mountain. The path is muddy where the creek gets wide in the spring, so I hold on to the tree trunks to get to my husband. I see Jack take the hammer and put it back in his tool belt, like James Stewart with a Smith & Wesson in
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
When I get to him, he steps aside and says, “What do you think?”

Jack points to a small bridge over the creek. It’s about five feet long and three feet high, fashioned from planks of wood from an old barn. A perfectly shaped crescent, the small bridge fits over the creek at a narrow pass. Clear water pulses over the shiny black rocks underneath. The bridge is so beautiful, in scale and placement, it looks like it has been there a hundred years.

“Is this the surprise?”

“Yep.”

“It’s gorgeous. I love it.”

“Thanks, hon. It always bothered me. We’ve needed a footbridge over this creek for a long time. I used to have to carry Etta and Joe over the rushing water when the spring rains would come. Now, if we want to get to the blackberry patch, we have a bridge.” Jack looks at me. “Are you sure you like it?”

“No, no, it’s wonderful.”

“I had Mousey and Rick do the heavy stuff. They cut the wood and sized it.”

“I’m sure you didn’t overdo it.” I put my arms around him.

“I’m trying to follow doctor’s orders.”

“I know you are.”

“I hate asking the guys to do things for me. I can’t wait till Doc gives me the go-ahead to work like I used to.”

“He will. You just have to be patient.”

Jack holds me a long time.

“I have sad news,” I finally say. “Etta called. Nonna died.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Are you okay?”

“I feel like everything is ending.”

“She was very old.”

“But it’s still ending. It doesn’t matter how old she was, she’s gone. Why did we do it, Jack?”

“Do what?”

“Why did we have children when we knew how sad the world could be?”

“Well, that’s a philosophical question.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I’m not a philosopher.”

“I know that.”

“But I know why we had children.”

“You do?”

“Because most of it is really good. And if grief is the price you pay for what’s really good, it is well worth it. Now, try ole Blackberry Bridge.” Jack takes my hand and helps me across. “What do you think?”

“You built a bridge.”

Jack smiles. “I always wanted to.”

Iva Lou calls and invites us for wedding leftovers, but I just don’t feel up to it. She’s sad to hear about Nonna. Though no one is surprised because of Nonna’s age, nobody can believe such a life force has gone.

I’m reluctant to let go of any of the members of my Italian family, because no matter how much time I have with them, it will never be enough. I began this race with time the day I met my father. I had missed thirty-five years of connection and was desperate to make up for it. My Italian family never knew me as a baby, or a girl, or a young woman. We missed so much, so many holidays, graduations, and birthdays; special times that should have been rich with celebration were hollow for me. I didn’t know why, of course. I was just aware that something was missing.