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I should set Lovely Carter straight here and now. I found out who my
real
father was after my mother’s death, in a letter she left behind with a photograph of him. Lovely has no idea how many times since that day I have read that letter. Just a few weeks ago, I read it again. It’s the only proof I have that my mother wanted me to live in truth. Thank God Mario Barbari was alive, and is still alive, and somehow, with time and care, we’ve built a beautiful father/daughter relationship. This relationship, in many ways, saved me and held me together as I dealt with the death of my son, a crisis in my marriage, and Etta’s marriage. In fact, if my father weren’t in Italy, close to Etta, I couldn’t cope with her decision at all. At the outset, the only saving grace of her marriage for me was my father’s close proximity to them. I don’t know Lovely, and I don’t want to bury her with our similarities when she is so clearly in pain. I don’t know if it would help. I lean toward her. She settles back in the chair. I say, “I completely understand how you feel. I was raised by a father who wasn’t my biological father, and it was kept secret from me.”

“So you know!”

“Yes, I do. And I can tell you that you have to come to this with a loving heart—without judgment.”

“I don’t judge Iva Lou!”

“But you have. You sort of gave her terms for a relationship with you—and made the identity of your father the deal breaker.”

“But I’m in pain about this!” she cries.

“I understand that pain. I know it well. But I also know that you have to trust Iva Lou. She is a thoughtful, contemplative, bright woman.”

“I have a right to know!”

Lovely is emotional, so I lower my voice to a soothing level to comfort her. “Iva Lou doesn’t make decisions in a rash way. I’ve never seen her buckle under pressure, or snap at anyone. She’s a rock. If you want to have a friendship with her now, you should know that she never would have made a flip decision when it came to your best interests.”

“I understand that. She explained that to me today.”

“It was different back then too.”

“I’m sure it was.” Lovely stands abruptly. I find myself standing as well.

“If you think you can help me, here’s my number.” Lovely gives me her phone number on a scrap of paper.

Her body language has changed: her shoulders are back, and she pulls her purse close to her waist as though she has locked a gate. It’s as if a wall of clear ice has formed around her. I can see her, but she’s removed—certainly she is different than the woman who came to my door to seek some information.

Instead of finding her behavior odd, I realize it’s familiar. It’s what I used to do before Mario Barbari came to meet me. I’d find myself at a party, or in a large group, or even in a quiet conversation, and then suddenly I’d have to leave. It was as if someone were cutting off my oxygen. I’d get up, despite pleas to stay from whomever I was talking to; I couldn’t take another second of chatter, of conversation, of noise. I was living my life, but
it
always intruded. The
it
would not go away; it was my center. It was confusion from my lack of resolution about who I was. I kept shoving it down, and it would stay down for long periods of time, and then something would bring those feelings to the surface again. Silly, innocuous things like a passing comment or a look on someone’s face. I’d feel that anger rise, and I’d have to go.

After I found out my mother’s secret, I remember thinking that if my own father didn’t care about me or want to know me, who would? Why did my mother, who loved me completely, keep her story from me for so long? If I was too weak or fragile to know the truth, then what was I? Had my mother been keeping the truth from me so I wouldn’t get angry with her? Maybe she was afraid she’d lose me. I will never know. I did know that the only way to keep safe was to be alone. No one would ever see how lonely I was or know my rage. That was
my
secret. I pretended I wanted love, but I never experienced it, because I didn’t think I deserved it. What would I bring to a relationship? Who would love me? Who could, when I had no way to know who I really was?

There is no romantic love, no husband, no friend, no relationship on earth that can fill the void of a mother’s love lost or a father’s rejection. We need our parents, and we need them as long as they are alive. And then, when they’re gone, we must go about shoring up our memory banks with the wisdom they imparted while letting go of the secrets and the hurts, which do us no good when we’re moving forward. I remember the feeling in my body when I was trapped in anger—it was like being buried in wet cement. I couldn’t look to the past, because it was riddled with half-truths, and I couldn’t move forward because I couldn’t let go of my anger at the lies told to protect me.

I learned bitterness is the most destructive emotional force there is. Bitterness is anger with a few years on it (and I’d had thirty-five long years). Bitterness prevents us from loving, and without love, we are without sun and water and sustenance—without love, our bodies wither and our souls long to die. I remember thinking, Well, I’m thirty-five years old now. It won’t be that long until I’m old and death will come. I’ll just keep busy until then. I’ll fill up the years with work and trips and hobbies. Time will fly; I’ll hardly notice it passing. I’ll keep a garden and my job. That will get me through.

I look at Lovely and wish I could say, I understand. I get it! But I can’t say any of these things, because she won’t hear them. She can’t hear them. She found the road to truth, and she’s been denied it again. I want to say all these things so she won’t feel so alone. Instead, I hold the piece of paper with her number on it. “I will call you. I promise.”

Lovely goes to the door. I follow and open it for her.

“Thank you, Mrs. MacChesney.” Lovely’s eyes fill with tears again. “I just want peace.”

“I know you do.” I reach to embrace her, but she steps away and goes down the steps quickly and into her car. I watch her as she drives away, until her red brake lights disappear into the black like rubies at midnight.

“What was that all about?” Jack asks from the kitchen.

“You won’t believe it,” I tell him. And I can’t believe it. I can’t.

Stone Mountain

H
igh in the hills, a layer of white clouds settles on the horizon like cotton padding in a gold-foil jewelry box.

“Snow,” my husband says as he drops me at the Pharmacy. “I’m gonna run some errands. Then I have a lunch date at the Mutual’s.”

“Don’t make it sound so casual. You’re meeting the enemy.”

“Tyler Hutchinson is not the enemy. He may love these mountains as much as you do.”

“We’ll see.” I give Jack a quick kiss on the cheek and climb out.

Fleeta is in the café serving lunch. I see a
RESERVED
sign on the corner table (or should I say, Jack’s meeting site with the enemy). She waves to me.

“Need me?” I ask her.

“Hell, no. People’s clearing out early ’cause of the weather.”

“Is it really going to snow?”

Fleeta looks at me like I’m an idiot. “It smells like snow.”

“You and Jack are like hunting dogs.”

“Serves us well. There is a particular smell when it’s gonna snow. It’s a sort of a frosty, smoky smell. You have to be open to it.” Fleeta gives me an order form. “E-mail this list to Cover Girl for me, will ye?”

“Okay, but just this one last time. You have to learn how to e-mail our distributors yourself.”

“I hate modern times! Hate it. Why should I, at my age, have to learn anything new? My head is already full of a bunch of useless information that will just cloud me up as I get older. I’m trying to learn less, not more.”

“I’ll show you again later,” I say, trying not to snap at her. “You should be placing your own orders.”

“I got a favor to ask of ye.”

“What is it?”

“You know, when I die, do me like your granny. Just do a picture up there on the pulpit. A good picture. Caskets always skeered me.”

I hate to disappoint Fleeta, but there was a casket in Italy, and I know because Giacomina took pictures of Nonna in the casket—it’s a tradition over there. “I’ll do as you say, Fleets.”

“I want to be cremated and put in a pot. Now, the way me and Otto got it figgered is when he dies, he goes to Holding Funeral Home, and when I die, I go down to Gilliam’s. This way both funeral homes in town get a piece of our business. It’s only right. Car Wash Gilliam always did right by me, and you know I got a special place in my heart for his wife, Want Wax.”

“I know you do.”

“I’ll get ole Lew Eisenberg to write it in a will.”

“Good idea.”

Iva Lou pushes through the front door in full snow gear: a hot-pink faux shearling coat with a white fake-fur-lined hood, beige knee boots with zippers up the calf, and a matching Cossack hat.

“Look who’s ready for the snow.” Fleeta wipes off the counter.

“What you got to go that’s fast?” Iva Lou asks her.

“I’ll make you a hammy sammy. Got fresh biscuits and some ham in the back.”

“Perfect. I gotta get up to Wise before it freezes.”

I’ve seen Iva Lou at rehearsals since Lovely came to see me, but I haven’t had a chance to talk to her about it. I’ve tried to pick up the phone, and I can’t. Jack says I should go over and see her in person, but that’s even more upsetting to me than talking about it over the phone. Outside of rehearsals, I avoid her. I wonder if she notices.

“Hey, Ave.” Iva Lou slides onto a stool at the counter. “How’m I doing with the Baroness part?”

“I think you’re a total original.”

“I know that.” Iva Lou fluffs her fur hood. “I mean, on an acting level.”

“You fit in with the rest of the cast perfectly.”

“Thank you. You know I’m a-tryin’.”

“It’ll be great by opening night. Theodore can’t wait to see it.”

“It’ll be good to see him. The three of us back together again.”

“Yep.”

Iva Lou looks at her hands. She reaches over the counter and pumps some of Fleeta’s hand cream into her palm. “Everything all right with you?”

I nod that I’m fine.

“I’m glad. ’Cause you seem a little distant.”

How can I tell Iva Lou I’m feeling preoccupied because she’s failed to tell me that she has a daughter? It’s almost as if I’m testing her, waiting for her to tell me. I don’t understand why she’d keep it from me. But she has, and for all the years I’ve known her. Am I trying to respect her privacy? I think I am. “Oh, I’m just up to my ears. And I’m missing Etta.”

Iva Lou pats my hand. “I know, honey-o. We always had so much fun with her at Christmastime.”

“So much fun,” I agree. “Well, girls, I’ve got to get to work. Be careful driving up to Wise.”

“I will. Don’t worry. Lyle put the chains on my tires, so I won’t wind up over Powell Mountain.”

Obviously, Lovely didn’t tell Iva Lou that she came to see me. This makes it even worse. How do I bring it up?

The doorbells jingle as Iva Lou goes. Fleeta leans over my counter. “What’s going on with you two?”

“What do you mean?” I don’t look up from my work.

“You’re acting as cold as a cuke to ole Iva Lou.”

“I don’t mean to.”

“Now, lookee here, Ave. I’ve been around too long for you to tell me a story. What’s on your mind?”

“Do you really want to know?”

Fleeta nods.

“A woman came to see me at the house the other night. And she said some shocking things to me.”

“Who was she?”

“Her name is Lovely Carter.”

Fleeta’s face turns the color of Pond’s cold cream. “Oh.”

“You know her?”

“Not personally. I know the name Carter.”

“But you know
about
her.”

“Uh-huh. That’s the baby that Iva Lou done gave away.”

“
You
knew about that?”

Fleeta nods. “For yars and yars.”

“Years? And you didn’t tell me?”

“What fer?”

“It’s a huge thing.”

“That’s Iva Lou’s business.”

“Yes, it is. I feel she should have told me.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re—we have been—very close.”

“Maybe that’s why she didn’t tell you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Maybe y’all is too close. And it’s too much for her.”

“Do people around here know about Lovely? Besides you?”

“Most of ’em’s dead now. Spec knew.”

“He did?”

“Oh, yeah. But that old rascal knew pert near everything that went on in this four-county area.”

“I need a cup of coffee.” I get up from my counter and go to the café. Fleeta follows close behind me. “Where did you hear about it?” I ask.

Fleeta sits down on a stool. “Iva Lou told me herself,” she says.

“What?”

“Shortly after she moved here.”

“You can keep a secret—I’ll give you that.”

“I’m known fer it.” Fleeta throws her shoulders back. “It was odd how I found out though. Back in the day, we made up Christmas baskets for the poor. We didn’t just put food in them things neither. There was toys and warm socks and even underwear. They was more like boxes instead of baskets. Anyhow, Iva Lou was only workin’ at the library a few weeks when she volunteered to help us. She was a fresh import at that time—do you remember when she got here?”

“Yes, I do.” I remember all the women trying to look like her and smell like her and move like her. She was very beautiful and blond. Funny and friendly. Very warm and mountain-gracious.

Fleeta chuckles. “Iva Lou drove the Bookmobile like a Sherman tank. She’d take those curves on holler roads on two wheels, skiddin’ all over the damn place, then she’d barrel into town here and plow over trash cans and street signs if they were in the way when she went to park. I remember when she took out Ida Holyfield’s mailbox after she threw the Bookmobile into reverse out on Valley Road. More than once Chief Bentoski would chide her for her reckless driving. She’d work her charms on him, and instead of writing a ticket, he’d smile and send her on her way.”

“I remember her wardrobe.”

“Who could forget it?”

Iva Lou was known countywide for her fashion sense. She wore coordinated ensembles—I remember a certain pair of lime-green cotton gloves, with buttons in the shape of tiny plastic lemons on the wrist, that she used to wear in the early 1960s with a bright yellow suit. She’d match head to toe and then throw on a hat in a contrasting color. Then there was the jewelry. Lots of shine. She won a trip to Hawaii for selling the most Sarah Coventry jewelry back in the 1970s. Despite her glamour IQ, she knew books. She gave me lots of things to read that I might not have ever selected on my own. When she drove her circuit, she’d make sure to stop the Bookmobile in Big Stone Gap first, so we’d get the best picks from the county library. “Where would I be if she hadn’t given me
The Ancient Art of Chinese Face-Reading
?”

“You were obsessed with that book.” Fleeta need not remind me.

“It changed my life. It was like I was a carpenter and somebody finally handed me a hammer and nails and wood. Everything clicked.”

“Yeah, that book done changed you. You was able to look at people in the face finally. Your shyness left you.”

When I was a teenager, Iva Lou gave me classics. The first book she insisted I read was
The House of Mirth.
I don’t know what she saw in me that made her think I would connect with Edith Wharton, but I did. How was I to relate to a woman struggling to climb the impossibly elegant social ladder in New York City in the last century? Looking back, I realize she often gave me books about women who didn’t fit into society. She wanted me to know that I wasn’t alone. Iva Lou knew that books, filled with insight, language, and relationships, could save an Eye-talian girl marooned in loneliness in a place she didn’t belong.

I used to take long walks in town with my mother. Everybody drives in Big Stone Gap, so Mama and I were a couple of oddballs, walking the few blocks from our house down to the Pharmacy or for a run to the Post Office or to meet the Bookmobile. I thought we walked everywhere because Fred Mulligan didn’t want my mother to spend money on gas; he was frugal to a fault. But I loved those walks; they gave me a chance to talk to my mother, and they bonded me to her. When I was a girl, Iva Lou called me Lizzie, because, like Elizabeth Bennet in
Pride and Prejudice
(another book she recommended), I savored long walks to sort things out.

I remember when she gave me
Good Morning, Miss Dove.
The gift of that book was a warning that I should live my life for me, but it didn’t matter; like Miss Dove, I eventually became the woman known as the Town Spinster.

When I returned from college, Iva Lou figured I had gotten worldly, so she gave me contemporary novels, like
Valley of the Dolls
and
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
Iva Lou looked at novels like sex manuals, in a way. Those racy subplots gave us something to talk about on the Bookmobile, and boy, she loved to talk about wild goings-on in places like Hollywood and Europe. Iva Lou thought if I read about sex and love, I might find the courage to express myself romantically and to own my own heart. She believed romance was a birthright, that the search for true love was mandatory and that, ultimately, life was downright sad without it. I always looked at romance as though it were an extra, and only if a woman was lucky would she find her happiness. It was as if Iva Lou was emptying the shelves of the county library, trying desperately to find proof in the pages of books that I too could be happy and spin my own tale of daring and seduction. “Don’t be a Melanie, be a Scarlett!” she said when she gave me
Gone with the Wind.
I was no Scarlett, but I wasn’t Melanie either, as I hadn’t yet found my Ashley Wilkes.

Iva Lou would try to help me feel part of a greater universe with popular Italian-American titles too, which was so funny to me because I didn’t know any other Italian-Americans, growing up. I was stunned by
The Godfather.
I was working full-time in the Pharmacy by then. I remember the black-and-white jacket, covered carefully in Mylar by Iva Lou. The book made me understand that family loyalty was something missing in my life. I didn’t have the myriad of siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles to rescue me or to celebrate with me. I didn’t have a family name I would die for, or a code to live by; right or wrong, it didn’t matter. I was adrift always. The only anchor I had was Mama. The Mulligans were always feuding, and later, I found out why I didn’t respond to their dynamic. I couldn’t because I wasn’t a Mulligan.

Mario Puzo wrote of the Corleones with passion, and while they weren’t gentle people, they were a family, something I hadn’t known as an Italian. I longed to celebrate my mother’s heritage, which was why I planned the trip to Italy, the one that Mama and I never took. She didn’t like that I read
The Godfather;
she believed it was immoral. I reasoned with her: “Mama, it’s just a novel.”

When I look back, though, I see that the books Iva Lou recommended were, for the most part, stories about strong women at a crossroads. She liked plots wherein a female protagonist struggles to learn how to stand up for herself, until, with newfound strength, she finally takes charge of her destiny and finds happiness. I remember she said, “There ain’t nothing like a woman-in-peril story.”