Home to Big Stone Gap (7 page)

I try not to think about how I behaved when Nonna saw me last. I didn’t hide my feelings of disapproval about Etta and Stefano’s wedding. I was so opposed to the marriage, for reasons practical and emotional, and now I find out that the very thing that brought me angst gave my grandmother joy. I was so wrapped up in my own drama that I didn’t take time to be comforted by her wisdom and support. She did what family should do: she stood with Etta and trusted her. Whether Nonna agreed with the marriage or not, she did not say.

Papa told me that Nonna had made many cakes for the brides in Schilpario over the years. She considered the wedding cakes works of art. At the time I thought she’d stayed in the kitchen, baking Etta’s cake, because she needed something to do. The truth is, she wanted to make the cake for her great-granddaughter because she wanted Etta to have a perfect day.

Maybe Nonna knew at her advanced age that life can be long, but true love doesn’t come as a guarantee, if it comes at all. She saw something wonderful in Etta and Stefano together that I, as Etta’s mother, was blind to. Or maybe I didn’t want to see how happy my daughter was because then I would have had to support her decision. Nonna knew it was Etta’s moment, and she wanted her to have it, to hold it, to own it. Nonna knew it might not come again.

It took Nonna hours to make the marzipan cherubs for the cake. She carved them herself out of the almond paste with a small paring knife. They looked like putti you find hovering in Renaissance murals, some smiling with full faces, resting on wings without bodies (those were secured into the frosting, as if in relief), and others with chubby bodies and delicate spun-sugar wings doing the heavy lifting, holding up the layers between the tiers.

For every moment that I have wished Etta to be home, near me, I now begin to see some wisdom in her decision to marry Stefano and live in Italy. There are things she needs to experience in order to grow beyond the world we created in our home. Of course, I wanted her to be a single woman experiencing those things, savoring her glorious solitude and building her own life without worrying about a husband’s needs. But, as with most decisions your children make, you can be sure of them only when time has passed and there’s a context for their choices.

I want my daughter to be happy; all good mothers who ever were and ever will be have the same dream for their children. When I saw Etta take an enormous risk for her future at the expense of her youth, I couldn’t accept it. There are still days when I question it. When Etta married so young, I could not think of a single good thing to come of it. Now I see one. She is there, in Italy. Her young marriage gave my daughter the opportunity to be with her great-grandmother when she died. There is a great gift in being with those you love as they’re dying. When you’ve said all you can say, when you’ve done everything you can to make your loved one comfortable, when there is at last nothing left to
do,
all that remains is the mystical moment of surrender. Why should anyone face that alone? Maybe there
is
some master plan at work; maybe Etta knows something I don’t. How could one so young see things so clearly? Was it her fate to be there? Maybe fate is the footwork of decisions made with loving intentions.

Someday, if I’ve done my job, Etta will lead this family after I’m gone, after Jack is gone, and after her children have grown up and left her. We don’t stop being mothers when our children leave us; we continue to teach them in everything we say and do. I still marvel at how much I count on my mother’s love and advice, even though she has been gone over twenty years. I close my eyes and can still hear her voice, and there’s never any question in my mind what her advice would be. Mama is still my most important model in all things.

Taking care of my mother when she was sick prepared me to look after my son and then my husband when he fell ill. I couldn’t see it at the time, but my mother, even as she was dying, was still teaching me how to be a good person right up to the moment I lost her. “There is no such thing as too much generosity,” she used to say. She wasn’t talking about dropping off soup for someone sick (though that’s important) or running errands for someone homebound (though that’s kind). She was talking about a generosity of spirit, about being present when a person is afraid. She taught me not to run but to stay and listen. When people are sick, they crave reassurance and care, and when they’re dying, they need to feel treasured. They need to know that you loved them, and that you always will. I’m sure Etta gave that to Nonna. There couldn’t have been a better emissary for my heart’s desire than my daughter.

Salzburg

T
he cast of
The Sound of Music
gathers on the stage of the Powell Valley High School auditorium with anticipation. They greet one another, chatting and laughing, as they take their seats in folding chairs, which I have placed in a wide circle. The work lights are on, the coffee is brewing, highlighters are out and at the ready. It’s time to do the first read-through of the script.

I’m about to call roll when Nellie Goodloe runs down the aisle waving a letter. “It’s here! The letter from Mr. Ted Chapin of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization in New York City! We are cleared to do
The Sound of Music
!”

The cast whistles and applauds. This is good news indeed. We thought there was a chance that they wouldn’t allow us to mount a production at all. You see, we fell into disfavor with the Rodgers & Hammerstein folks over nonpayment of royalties for a production of
The King and I
that we did in 1987. Nellie didn’t pay because she had scripts and scores from a production they had done back in 1969, so she didn’t see any need for our town to pay twice. Mr. Chapin set her straight with a letter embargoing the production. We had to have a bake sale, a car wash, and a seed sale to make the nut and go on with the show. It did go on, after we paid our back royalties and fees.

Nellie gives me the letter. “Fantastic,” I tell her as I scan the page and wonder if we can import Mr. Chapin to direct the dang thing. Nellie has precast the musical, so directing this show is like being the general of an all-volunteer army without guns.

Nellie has a flair for lots of things—her talents range from horticulture to home decorating. She is forever coming up with ideas to turn Big Stone Gap from a coal mining town into an elegant tourist attraction for those who might want to experience the natural beauty of our mountains. She was in charge of the refurbishment of the downtown area. It was her idea to place hanging baskets of blooming flowers on the streetlights and electrical poles down Main Street. I wish she had the same vision when it comes to casting. Alas, she mistakes exuberance for skill. She says yes to everyone who wants to be in a play, instead of finding the right person for the role. Our chorus of
Mame
was so enormous, we could have restaged
Ben-Hur,
and we almost did during the fox-hunt scene.

The surplus of bodies begins with my chorus. I have an overstock of nuns (members of the Lonesome Pine Hospital Auxiliary, the Methodist Sewing Circle, the Dogwood, Intermont, and Green Thumb garden clubs, and Jean Hendrick’s bridge club all thought it would be “fun” to be in the production, so I’ve got the nuns outnumbering the bad guys two to one), age-inappropriate children (my Gretl is thirteen, with a figure like Ava Gardner’s, when in reality she should be five), and my Captain Von Trapp (Gregory Kress), while attractive and a terrific baritone (thank you, Free Will Baptist Church Revival Choir), is on the sunny side of seventy.

Maria will be played by Tayloe Slagle Lassiter, who we are convinced, without her teenage marriage and responsibilities at home, could have made it on the Great White Way, outdazzling any New York klieg lights with her beauty and talent. Tayloe is thirty-six years old, but her figure is better than ever, and her face is as porcelain-perfect as the day she debuted in the Outdoor Drama as June Tolliver at the age of sixteen. Still, we are asking a lot of our audience to accept an over-thirty novice in a convent. After all, Tayloe is no Dolores Hart. As I survey the cast gathered onstage, I realize this is surely the least of my problems.

Tayloe’s daughter, Misty, who is around Etta’s age, moved to Kingsport and became a roving reporter for WCYB-TV while attending East Tennessee State. She’s got her mother’s beauty and her father’s brains, which makes for good camera work and short interviews.

“Where’s my script?” Iva Lou enters from stage right. With one hand, she unbuttons her black velvet trench coat with leopard trim, and with the other, she pulls her leopard reading glasses out of her décolletage. “I watched the movie about seven times,” she admits. “I think I got the Baroness down.”

“Take your seat, please, Iva Lou,” I tell her. “Welcome to our first rehearsal. I think it would be in our best interest
not
to watch the movie; rather, let’s focus on our own interpretation of the story. The music rehearsals will be conducted by Virginia Meador, and I’m asking—let me say, begging—you all to be on time and take your work seriously.”

Virginia, petite in plaid, waves from the piano in the pit. She’s been a steady force in all our productions since 1970, even though she was heard telling folks at the Post Office that she didn’t have platinum streaks in her chestnut-brown hair until she started accompanying our musicals on the piano. Let’s face it, it’s stressful.

Iva Lou pulls a thermos of hot coffee out of her tote bag. “I’ll tell you one thing. We need to rewrite the ending of this old chestnut right here and now. Tayloe, you might be a singer and a dancer and a nun, but make no mistake, I’m the femme fatale of this here piece, and I want the Captain. You need to know that I’m not going down without a fight.”

“Now, ladies.” Greg rises from his seat and holds his arms out as if to stop a fistfight between the two women.

Tayloe laughs. “See you in the Abbey.”

Louise Camblos raises her hand. “Hey, Madame Director, when do we get fitted for our costumes? I’ve waited my whole life to be a nun. None in the morning and none at night.” The cast chuckles.

“Carolyn Beech is in charge of costumes again this year.” I motion for Carolyn to stand.

Cranky Carolyn stands up and raises a finger of warning. Her slender pointer finger is as bony as her body. She’s had the same Dorothy Hamill wedge haircut since 1976, but it’s a good choice because it balances her pronounced chin. Carolyn is good-looking but has the sloped shoulders of a woman who has spent most of her life bent over a Singer sewing machine and isn’t one bit happy about it. “I want to ask everybody to stay within a two-to-five-pound weight range after measurements. I didn’t appreciate it last year when the chorus of
Annie Get Your Gun
decided to go on Jenny Craig after I measured them. I had to pull all-nighters for a week, taking in those sundresses. My fingers ain’t been right since. In fact, there’s days when I have no feeling at all in my right pinky. Please be aware that we are not creating the town musical in a vacuum. Unless you get a bad disease and can’t help it, I don’t want to see a substantial weight loss before opening night. Thank you.”

Iva Lou raises her hand. “As a cancer survivor, I don’t need to hear that.”

Carolyn stands. “Sorry, but you know what I mean.” She sits.

“Anyone else?” I ask.

“Eddie Shankle can’t play Rolfe,” Nellie pipes up. “He was called in for weekend duty in Knoxville with the National Guard.” She bites her lip nervously.

“So who have we got?”

Ravi Balu raises his hand. “Me, ma’am.” Ravi is the twenty-year-old son of one of our doctors at Lonesome Pine Hospital. He is handsome, with jet-black hair and luminous coffee-colored skin. His family moved to Southwest Virginia from India when Ravi was a boy.

“How on earth can Ravi play Rolfe? Rolfe is supposed to be a blond,” Joyce Page, who with her sexy long legs and platinum hair is hardly appropriate casting for the matronly Frau Schmidt, wonders aloud. “And German.”

“Let me know now if you want me to wig him,” Carolyn barks.

“I don’t know about a wig,” I tell her diplomatically.

“Whew.” Ravi dramatically wipes his brow. The cast cracks up.

“Well, just let me know one way or the other. I don’t need to be tracking down special hairpieces and all kinds of makeup at the last minute,” Carolyn says.

“I think we’ll skip the wig,” I tell her. “And the makeup.”

“Fine.” Carolyn waves me off like she’s cheating a hot flash. I wonder if she’s even read the play.

The cast begins to read the script aloud, and waves of futility peel through me as they struggle with the words. I’m not the only one who’s nervous. The smell of Greg Kress’s Wild Country cologne wafts over us as he sweats (I recognize the Avon aftershave because Worley Olinger wears it, or it wears him, however you want to look at it). This is Greg’s first leading role, and he’s feeling the pressure. It’s a long way from the choir loft of the Free Will Baptist Church to the bright lights of the Powell Valley High School auditorium.

As we read, some actors actually attempt Austrian accents; they fail miserably, falling into the Vivien Leigh Four-Door Ford problem. The story goes that when England’s Vivien Leigh auditioned for the role of Scarlett O’Hara in
Gone with the Wind,
they brought in a dialogue coach to help take her accent from British highbrow to Southern fried. She’d say “four-door Ford” as “fo-ah do-ah fo-ah,” over and over again, hoping to capture our twang. Evidently, I’m not the only one familiar with the
GWTW
dialogue-coach story. Iva Lou is playing the Baroness like Belle Watling. She goes up on the ends of sentences as though all the lines are written with a question mark (they’re not).

The only thing European about this production will be the German chocolate cake Fleeta makes for the opening-night party. Ravi Balu as Rolfe? Local newsman Bill Hendrick as Uncle Max? We’ll just have to take that leap of faith and hope the audience goes along for the ride.

“‘Oh, George…’” Iva Lou reads from the script.

I can’t take it another second, so I correct her. “It’s
GAY-org. GAY-org.
”

“Honey, I don’t care if he’s gay or hetero, I’m the Baroness Von Love Interest, and the Captain’s gonna know it before the final curtain.”

Slick patches of gray ice cover the curves of the road as I drive up to church. I slip the Jeep into a low gear to keep from sliding. My mind keeps wandering back to the disastrous read-through. I will light every candle in the sacristy this morning in hopes that some showmanship will grip my motley cast as rehearsals continue.

Sacred Heart Church sits on top of the hill in the southern section of Big Stone Gap, above the train tracks (“the southern line”; hence the name) and the WLSD radio station. WLSD doesn’t stand for dropping acid; rather, the letters represent the counties (Wise, Lee, Scott, and Dickenson) that can hear the programming from the radio tower that blinks above Big Stone Gap like the Eiffel Tower.

I’ve bought radio ads for the Mutual Pharmacy since I can remember. They run them during the afternoon music-marathon programs, which are called Pop Corn, since the DJs play pop and country music.

There was a little bit of controversy when Sacred Heart Catholic Church moved from Appalachia to Big Stone Gap. The church in Appalachia was a small, sweet blue clapboard building next to the railroad tracks on the edge of the Powell River. Roman Catholics in these parts have always been a very small but diverse group. You had sons and daughters of immigrant coal miners who came to make their living: Polish, Czech, Italians (who returned to Italy as soon as they saved enough money), and then the converts who, for whatever reason, decided to become Catholic despite the low cachet of such a move in these mountains. You could count the converts on one hand. When our ranks grew to a hundred or so in the 1970s, the church hierarchy decided to build a mod new church and rectory in Big Stone Gap (respectful of their Appalachian roots, they saved the bell tower, which now adorns the roof ). Today the bells are ringing for a memorial mass held in honor of Nonna.

There are lots of cars parked outside Sacred Heart. I’m surprised, but Fleeta reminded me that lots of folks remember my grandmother from her visit to Big Stone Gap. The cars of some prominent Protestants are parked alongside those of our members. There was a time when a God-fearing Baptist wouldn’t set foot in a Catholic church. Those days are over. People around here are generally happy if anyone goes to church regularly at all—wherever you go is fine with them.

I pull in to a parking space. My husband is waiting for me outside the church. I left home early this morning to make an emergency delivery up on Skeen’s Ridge. Jack waves to me. Once again he’s wearing a suit—this is a world record. It’s the fourth time this year, and I’m counting because I like it.

Papa is having a memorial mass said in Italy today, so Nonna will get a double boost on her journey to heaven (not that she’ll need it—but to be on the safe side, it’s better to have two masses than one or none). The one thing the Catholics get right is praying for the dead. When we pray for them, we honor their lives while helping them move up the afterlife’s angelic food chain. For example, if loved ones are stuck in purgatory, a few prayers may give them the pass out of there and into heaven.

Father Drake, our serene pastor who delivers meaningful homilies with a gentle countenance, has placed a picture of Nonna on the lectern (Jack must have brought it—I didn’t think of it). As we begin the mass, I am swept into the words and ritual that have meant so much to me through the years. I would never say I’m a religious person, but I am a person of tradition and habit. So when I hear prayers I learned in childhood, I am still moved by them.