Home to Big Stone Gap (8 page)

Jack gets up and reads the story of Ruth from the Old Testament, which always gets to me because it’s about a woman who leads her family, which is what Nonna did for us. Iva Lou reads the second scripture and cries all the way through it. It’s the passage about Mary the mother giving her son over to die. (Father Drake must have chosen the weepies for this service.) Nellie Goodloe, a Presbyterian, muffles her sobs with a handkerchief, though I can’t be sure if she’s missing my grandmother or crying about the disastrous first reading of
The Sound of Music.
We’ll never know.

Father Drake keeps the mass mercifully short—the less kneeling/standing/sitting combos the Protestants have to endure, the better. Father says the final prayer and recesses, stopping to embrace Jack and me. The congregation follows him out. They make their way downstairs to the meeting room, where we said mass for years before the top of the building was added to form an actual church.

I take a moment alone at the altar with Nonna’s picture. There’s a bouquet of flowers: delicate white roses and yellow daisies in a crystal vase. The card says, “All our love and sympathy, the Bakagese family.” Pearl Grimes was just a girl when she met Nonna twenty years ago, but she didn’t forget Nonna, and she never forgets me, and that makes me cry a few more tears.

“Come on, honey,” Jack says from the back of the church. He holds my hand as we go downstairs. The meeting room is fragrant with rich coffee and sweet butterscotch pie. Our friends gather around us and express their sympathies.

FLEETA’S BUTTERSCOTCH PIE

Makes 8 servings

CRUST

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

6–7 tablespoons cold water

²
/
₃
cup Crisco

PIE FILLING AND MERINGUE

½
to
¾
cup brown sugar

2½
tablespoons cornstarch
a pinch of salt
1 cup milk
1 cup cream
3 egg yolks (save egg whites for meringue)
2 tablespoons butter or margarine
1 teaspoon vanilla
¹
/
₃
cup sugar

For crust: Sift together flour and salt, then stir in the water. Cut in Crisco with a pastry blender or blending fork until pieces are the size of small peas. To make pastry extra tender and flaky, divide Crisco in half. Cut in first half until mixture looks like cornmeal. Then cut in remaining half until pieces are the size of peas.

OR

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Put all crust ingredients in a food processor and blend until mixed. Roll out the dough into a circle big enough to line a 9-inch pie pan. Place dough in pan and bake for 12–15 minutes. Makes 2 pie crusts and can be frozen (unbaked) for later use.

For the filling and meringue: In a bowl, mix brown sugar, cornstarch, and salt together until well blended. Transfer to a saucepan. Add milk and cream, stirring constantly over medium heat. Add egg yolks and cook until thickened. Add butter and vanilla, stir in, and pour into baked pie crust. Beat egg whites until almost stiff. Add
¹
/
₃
cup sugar and beat until stiff. Spread on pie and place in oven preheated to 325 degrees. Bake for 10–15 minutes until meringue is browned.

The buffet is loaded with more of Fleeta’s blue-ribbon dishes. There are trays of delicate “ham and biscuits” (tiny sandwiches made with thin-sliced ham, mustard, and flaky, fresh biscuits), hot serving dishes of scalloped-potato squares, crystal bowls of fresh fruit salad, individual Jell-O molds with whipped cream, peanut-butter cookies, and a wire basket overflowing with Catherine Rumschlag’s butter rolls from the Bread and Chicken House. I don’t know how Fleeta does it—when it comes to events, she has almost a psychic ability about how much food to make and who to call to fill in the holes. Jack and I get in line for the buffet behind Father Drake.

“Here.” Fleeta gives me a cup of hot coffee in a Styrofoam cup. “That there was a sad service, and we didn’t even have the body here.”

“What can you do?”

“Not a goddamn thing.” Fleeta shakes her head. “Can I get you a cup of coffee, Father?”

“You don’t have to wait on me, Fleeta.”

“You got that right, Padre. Self-serve is easier on everybody.”

Father Drake smiles. Fleeta goes back into the service kitchen, where she barks orders at Otto and Worley, who are prepping more platters.

“Sorry about Fleeta’s cursing,” I say.

Father shrugs. “What can you do?”

Iva Lou has her coat and sunglasses on and her car keys in hand. She gives me a quick kiss on the cheek. “Honey-o, I gotta get to work. We’re doing our annual inventory. Last time I missed, the volunteers took all my Jackie Collins books and put them in the discard bin. It was traumatic.”

“You like Jackie Collins?” Father Drake asks.

“Love her. She’s my hero. She has her finger on the pulse and her thighs in fishnet. You can’t beat that. Do you read her?”

“
Dangerous Kiss
was my favorite.”

“Father!” Iva Lou covers her mouth. “I swan!”

Father winks. “The Old Testament gets a little dry sometimes.”

“I’ll say.” Iva Lou gives Father a thumbs-up and goes.

My time is stretched to the limit with work and
The Sound of Music
rehearsals. I want to have the house ready for Theodore’s arrival. I convinced him to come down for a couple of weeks and have a nice, long visit. This is our first Christmas without Etta, and I need total diversion. Jack doesn’t say it, but I know he’s also sad that she won’t be here. But I guess he still feels he needs to be totally supportive of Etta and Stefano’s marriage, because I wasn’t.

Theodore is not one to sit around by the fire, so we plan to go spelunking in the sand caves (just like the old days!), to the Southwest Virginia Museum for the Dogwood Garden Club Christmas show (the festival of trees is
not
to be missed), and to catch the Big Stone and Appalachia holiday parades. Theodore is used to those glamorous Fifth Avenue parades now, but there’s nothing like our hometown ones, complete with Santa throwing candy into the crowd.

I still haven’t said a word to Jack about the list I found when he was in the hospital. Neither of us keeps a diary, but I’m sure if we did, we wouldn’t want each other to read it. So, unless he brings it up, I’ll keep mum on the subject. He has rebounded from his surgery beautifully, and every day I thank God that it wasn’t worse. There won’t be a day when I don’t worry about his heart, but at least I didn’t lose him. I’ll never forget what it felt like when I didn’t know.

It’s odd to bring the ornaments down from the attic without Etta. When she was little, she’d start asking about Christmas around September, and I’d spend the next three months promising her that the holidays were coming; she’d say, “When?” and I’d say, “Soon, soon.” When she got older, she did more and more of the decorating. Last Christmas she and Jack put the tree up when I was at work, and by the time I got home, she had it decorated.

“I guess I better go and get a tree,” Jack says when he sees the piles of crates in the hallway.

“Good idea. And can you make me a holly wreath for the front door? I like the leaves with the red berries. Oh, and let’s put Santa and the reindeer on the roof. Make sure you get the guys to help you. The kids loved it. They could see it from the road below.”

“I thought we were keeping it simple.”

“I’ll feel better if we’re lit up.”

“Okay.”

“Maybe you can put a string of lights on your new bridge.”

“For who? The squirrels?”

“You never know who’ll traipse through our woods.”

There’s a knock at the door. Jack and I look at each other. We didn’t hear anyone drive up—but who would? I’m playing the Firestone Christmas CDs at top volume through the house.

I open the front door.

“Hello, Ave Maria,” Lovely Carter says and smiles.

“Why, hello,” I say. We met only once, but there’s something familiar about her that puts me at ease, so I open the door and invite her in. “Jack, this is Lovely Carter.”

“Nice to meet you. Great name.”

“Thanks. I can’t take any credit for it. My mother found it in a yearbook.”

“I met Lovely down at Iva Lou’s on Thanksgiving Day. You were watching football,” I say.

Jack smiles. “I’ll put on a pot of coffee.”

“That would be nice,” Lovely says, looking around our house. “This is a beautiful home.”

“Thank you. It’s been my husband’s family home for three generations. Can you believe it? I’m lighting fires in hearths that are over a hundred years old.”

Lovely follows me into the living room and sits on the sofa. I take a seat in the old armchair across from her.

“So, what can I do for you?”

“Well, it’s a long story.”

“The best ones are.”

“I don’t know if Iva Lou said anything to you about me.”

“She didn’t.” I won’t share that Iva Lou seemed rattled after Lovely’s visit; something tells me that would be a breach of our friendship.

“I guess I should start at the beginning. I contacted Iva Lou’s aunt down in Lee County in August of last year.”

“Why?”

“I was trying to find Iva Lou.”

“Everybody knows Iva Lou.”

“I found that to be very true.”

“She’s basically a legend. She’s been driving the Bookmobile since I was in high school. And that’s a long time ago.”

“Did you know much about her?”

“What do you mean?”

“Where she came from.”

“London, Kentucky,” I say.

“Right.”

“And then she moved here,” I go on. “She had kin here and there in the area. And she was a workingwoman, a single workingwoman until she met Lyle Makin.” Why am I telling Lovely so many details? I feel like I’m defending my friend. There’s something in Lovely’s tone that makes me feel I have to. “Oh, sorry. I don’t mean to ramble.”

“I don’t mind. Anything you tell me helps.” Lovely’s clear blue eyes fill with tears.

“Is there a problem?”

Lovely snaps open her purse and pulls out a Kleenex. “I’m sorry.”

“Is there some reason you came to talk to me?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Whatever it is, you can say it.”

Jack comes in with a tray of coffee and a few leftover cookies from Fleeta’s funeral spread. He puts the tray down on the coffee table. “I’ll leave you ladies alone.”

“Thanks, honey.”

Jack goes, giving me a quizzical look, as Lovely dries her tears.

“I didn’t want to have to do this, but I need your help. I just turned forty. I was born in 1958, and I’m adopted. For many years I wondered who my parents were, and they finally unsealed the records in Kentucky, and I was able, with the help of an adoptee group, to start the process of finding my biological mother. In fact, I have found her. But she doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“Lovely, who is your mother?”

“Iva Lou Wade Makin.”

I’ve taken in all sorts of information in my life, and even when the news was surprising, I would take it in stride. But at this I gasp aloud.

Lovely looks at me, surprised. “She never told you?”

“No.” So many thoughts swirl through my head at once. I’m close to Iva Lou, as close as friends get without being family. She’s been a part of my life through all the good times and the terrible moments too. She was an honorary aunt to both my children. She got me through my romantic travails with Theodore, my fate with Jack, Joe’s death, and Etta’s marriage—I can’t imagine why she wouldn’t have told me this. It’s inconceivable. I blurt, “Are you sure?”

Lovely is put off. “Yes, I’m sure.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just—I’m so close to her, I can’t believe she wouldn’t have told me.”

“I believe she put the whole event out of her mind.” For the first time, I hear anger in Lovely’s voice.

“That doesn’t sound like Iva Lou.”

“I don’t know what her reasons are—” Lovely begins.

“I can’t imagine.”

“Maybe she’s ashamed of what happened.”

“How do you know that?”

“She told me that she was sorry she had to give me up, but she believed she did the best thing for me.”

“When did she tell you that?”

“After I came over on Thanksgiving, I realized that was awfully rude of me. I just assumed she’d be gone that day and I’d leave a note with my phone number. I found her address, so I thought, I’ll just leave my information under her door. That way, if she wanted to see me, she could call, and if she didn’t want to, well, I had my answer. But when she opened the door, I had to say something, so I sort of blurted it out—and she was stunned. But she took my number and called. We met again for lunch in Norton today.”

“Today?” Iva Lou had said she had inventory.

“Yes, ma’am. And we talked everything through. It was very emotional for her and for me.”

“Of course it was.”

“We both did a lot of crying. I felt terrible. I didn’t want to hurt her. Eventually, we came to a place where we both were feeling a little more in control of our feelings. And then I asked her who my father was, and it was like a wall went up. She didn’t want to tell me—and she wouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m here.”

“But I don’t know who your father is.”

“Everyone said you and Iva Lou were the closest of friends. I want you to find out who my father is for me.” Lovely implores me with her eyes. She looks so sad, I might promise her anything to see that sadness go.

“Lovely, I’m…Well, I’m so stunned by your news, I’ll have to think about that. I’m not sure she’ll tell me—I mean, she never told me about you. Iva Lou came to work here around 1958. I didn’t really know anything about her before that.”

“But she would tell you if you asked her.”

“I don’t know why she would. She never told me about you, why would she open up about your father?”

“Mrs. MacChesney, I’m worried I will run out of time. For years and years, I swore I’d never, ever try to find my biological parents. My mom and dad are the best—well, my mom was the best. She died this year. She always encouraged me to find my biological parents; she never set up a single obstacle. And as clear as I was about not trying to find them, one day my feelings changed. Maybe it’s my age, or the fact that I have children, or maybe I was just tired of wondering. But now I won’t rest until I meet him. I can’t tell you how devastating it is to know my mother—for her to admit that, yes, she’s my mother, and she’d like a relationship, but only if she can keep the identity of my father a secret. I don’t know if you can understand that.”