Big Stone Gap

by Adriana Trigiani

  “You’re dressed up.”

  “No. I just cleaned up after work.”

  I curl my stockinged feet under me. I think my left sock has a big hole in it. My hooded sweatshirt from Saint Mary’s is fifteen years old, and the overalls I threw on over it still have nails in the pockets from the roof patching that Otto, Worley, and I did a while back. My hair is a rat’s nest of curls held up by a thousand pins. I am a mess. “I wasn’t expecting company,” I tell him, apologizing for my appearance.

  “You look just fine,” he reassures me. He points to a set of white pearl rosary beads in a small crystal candy dish on the coffee table. “Are those yours?”

  I nod.

  “Do you use them?”

  “Not enough.”

  “How do they work?”

  “Well, the rosary is a devotion to the Blessed Mother.”

  “Mary, who you’re named after?”

  “Right. And each of these beads is a Hail Mary that you say. Is this boring to you?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Each of these ten beads represents a time in the life of Jesus. The joyful mysteries, the sorrowful mysteries, and so on.”

  “The Cherokees have meditation beads. They sort of look like these. Mama has them. She’s part Cherokee, you know. From way, way back. She had jet-black hair when she was younger.”

  “I don’t remember her having black hair.”

  “That’s because it turned when I was just a boy.”

  There is a long silence. I look at the statue of Mary on the mantel. In her blue cape and crown of stars, she reminds me of the lady in my mother’s letter, the Ave Maria I’m named after. I remember the Dieter’s Prayer: Lovely Lady dressed in blue, make me skinny just like you. I bite into a biscotti. It cracks in half loudly, and a shower of crumbs goes down the front of my overalls. Luckily, most of it lands in the front utility pocket. I brush the rest away.

  Jack breaks through the quiet. “Rick Harmon quit the mines.”

  “He did?”

  “Well, he lost the two smallest toes on that foot of his, and the doctor told him he needed to find other work. So he got a job over at Legg’s Auto World.”

  “Good for him. That was a pretty bad injury. How did it happen?”

  “When I went back into the mine, it took me a while to get to him. There was so much smoke, he couldn’t see, so he was trying to crawl out. He caught his foot under a fallen rock. When he tried to get loose, it was bad.”

  “I . . . everybody was nervous when you went back in the mine for him,” I say, speaking on behalf of the entire community.

  “You . . . or everybody?” Jack says, trying not to smile.

  “Everybody. Including me.” I don’t think I speak this man’s language. There are so many weird gaps.

  We sit for a moment in silence. Finally he speaks. “My daddy and I fixed the furnace over here once.”

  “You did?”

  “Remember that summer you went to FFA camp?”

  How could I forget the Future Farmers of America camp? Living with a bunch of surly girls in a cabin on a farm in East Tennessee, surrounded by farm animals that we had to feed, brush, and milk. Fred Mulligan thought it would be good for me. I hated it. “That was around sixth grade, right?”

  “Yeah. After we fixed the furnace, your mama made us some kind of little sandwiches. My daddy was mighty impressed. I guess they were some sort of Italian specialty or something.”

  “They were probably roasted-pepper sandwiches. She used to take a bunch of red peppers and broil them until the skin burned to black. Then she’d peel off the charred part, leaving the soft pepper underneath, and soak them in olive oil. Then she’d slice them up thin as paper—I still can’t do it like she could—and put them on the bread with a little salt.”

  “They were the best sandwiches I ever ate.”

  I want to thank him for paying my mother a compliment, but I can’t speak. All of a sudden, there is a knot in my throat. So I just nod and smile. I haven’t cried much since Mama died, but thinking of her sandwiches, and her in the kitchen, and now she’s gone forever—tears come to my eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Jack Mac says, putting down his beer, “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “No, no. I’m not upset. I just haven’t talked about her much.”

  “The wound is too fresh.”

  For a moment I don’t understand what he means. She’s only been gone a few months now, but I started to let go of her when she got really sick, which was almost four years ago. The loss doesn’t seem new to me; I felt it long before she actually passed on.

  “Nobody told me how much I would miss her.”

  “She was a fine lady,” he says plainly and truthfully.

  “The morning after she died, I went into her room. I had to go in there and pick a dress for her to be laid out in. So I went in her closet. And I found . . .” I am so embarrassed. My voice is breaking, and it never does. Why am I crying in front of this man? I remember myself and stop. “Anyway, I found eight new blouses. They were beautiful, perfectly pressed, on hangers. Four white cottons and four patterned gingham: red, blue, yellow, and black-and-white checked. She had made them for me. She made all my clothes. But I never remember her working on them. I thought she had stopped sewing entirely when she got sick. She had pinned a note to them. It said: ‘Fresh blouses. Love, Mama.’ ” I laugh and Jack smiles.

  “She even made my coats. I never had to buy anything, just blue jeans. And now that I’ve got the blouses, I won’t need to shop for a long while.”

  “A good mother is a precious thing,” he says. “You were very lucky.”

  I guess I was. But I know I never saw myself as lucky. I looked at my life as a series of small struggles and gentle, intermediate plateaus of peacefulness. But anything that I am, I owe to my mother. She taught me to revere gentleness. She brought out my good heart by example. She taught me how to read and to love books. All the places I went when I read, all the adventures I had, stayed inside the books, though. I never came into anything on my own, really. I never ventured far from my potential. I never tested myself and tried things. I wasn’t afraid, I just wasn’t particularly daring. It’s fascinating that anyone would look at me and think I’m lucky. I don’t have natural talents. I am so slow! I have to study things, ruminate, decide. I don’t have grand thoughts that could change anything. I’m smart enough, and it is the enough that defines me. I am adequate. Hardworking. I have a sense of humor, but that’s due to my prism, my point of view, and even that I cannot take credit for. Very often my odd sense of humor is lost on folks. I don’t know what Jack is seeing when he looks at me. I’m not particularly special, and to me lucky is special. There’s a lightness to it, an élan. I’m not that. I am fixture and hardware. Not a spritely thing.

  “Would you like to go for a walk?” I ask. Jack Mac looks at me oddly—he wasn’t planning on going for a walk. “We don’t have to.”

  “No, no. Let’s go.” He waits for me to stand up. I look around for my loafers, which I spot, shoved under the dining room table. I look down at my feet. Thankfully, the hole in my left sock is on the bottom. I scoot to the dining room and slip on my shoes.

  “Let me go get my jacket,” I say.

  “No. Here. Wear mine.”

  “Won’t you be cold?”

  “No, not at all.”

  Jack Mac helps me into his jacket. It is soft, and the shoulders hang down roomily over my arms. I thought I was about his size, but I’m not; I’m smaller.

  “Nice lining.” It’s an olive-green tufted satin. The stitches are perfect harlequin diamonds.

  “Your mama put that lining in.”

  “She did?”

  Jack Mac opens the door and lets me go outside first. It is cooler than I thought. I pull the collar up around my neck. It smells like sandalwood and lime.

  We walk through my neighborhood, an area called Poplar Hill, in the oldest part of town—some would say the best part of
town. I live in the smallest house on the block, a 1920s clapboard cottage-style home. It is sweet: whitewashed, with a big porch. It sits back off the road, so it looks picturesque. There’s a front-porch swing, and pink squares of stained glass frame the front windows. I look back at it as I walk with Jack, thinking for the first time that it is not my father’s house, it is really mine.

  “How’s Sweet Sue doing?”

  “Well, I broke off with her.”

  I stop in the middle of the road. This stuns me momentarily and I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I saw them practically get married on the stage of the Outdoor Drama. I remember her terror when Jack Mac went into the mine, and how she claimed him when it was over. Sweet Sue is perfect for Jack Mac! Her kids. Her pep. Her community involvement—they seem to fit so nicely with the quiet dignity of the MacChesneys of Cracker’s Neck Holler.

  “She’s a wonderful person, very caring,” he says, and kicks a stone.

  “But you were getting married.”

  “Not exactly, ma’am.”

  Does he have to call me ma’am? He’s exactly my age, for God’s sake. I decide right then and there to take a box of Loving Care Chestnut Brown from the store and soak my head in it. I thought I only had two or three gray hairs, but obviously I am mistaken.

  “What happened?” I ask, knowing full well it is none of my business. But I feel I have to know. I’m curious. I don’t think I’m being rude or forward. Plus, reading his face, I can see that the lines from his nose to his mouth have deepened in expression. These come from guilt.

  “I began to have feelings for someone else.”

  “Dear God!” I shriek. I am a judgmental shrew, but usually I keep it under wraps. “Who?” I ask, again knowing it’s none of my business.

  “Well, ma’am—”

  “Jack Mac, please don’t call me ma’am. I’m not your spinster aunt.”

  “Heck, you’ve hardly aged since high school,” Jack Mac says, and he sounds like he means it.

  “Thank you. Now, what were we talking about?”

  “You.”

  “No, we were talking about you. You and?”

  “You.”

  “Me?” What is he talking about? Me. Me as what?

  “Miss Ave?”

  “Jack, no ‘Miss’ either. That’s just one step above ‘ma’am’ at the AARP.”

  “Ave Maria?”

  “Great pronunciation.”

  Then he begins. “We’re both knee-deep in our thirties. You’re all alone. You’re an orphan, really. And I’ve got a good job. And when my mama passes, the house will be mine. And I’m in pretty good shape. I eat too much and I drink a lot of beer sometimes, but my heart’s good and I’m strong. I’ve got some money saved. I just bought a new truck. A’78 Ford pickup. Fully loaded. And I’ve been thinking that I’d like a home and family. A good wife. And when it comes down to it, at our age, there aren’t a lot of us left. The never-marrieds, I mean. The field sort of narrows and the pool dries up, leaving folks who have already been married, and that comes with complications. I like simplicity and I think you do, too. So, I was wondering if you’d like to get married.”

  “Married?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I mean yes.” He corrects himself. Good. He’s quick.

  “You’re proposing to me?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Is there something the matter with you?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Do you know anything about women?”

  “I’d like to think I do.”

  “In the first place, I don’t know you very well. I mean, we went through school together. You have a nice mother who suffers from hypertension. You play guitar very well.” Why do I feel compelled to make a list? Why do I have to be methodical? Why do I have to make him feel comfortable? Can’t I simply respond like a woman whose head is being blown off at this moment?

  “You said I was a good dancer,” he says directly.

  “Yes, I did.” I say this evenly, temperately, as if I were talking to a child who has left too many fund-raising jars on my checkout counter. I turn away from him to think for a moment. But I realize I don’t need to turn away, I don’t need to think; I understand everything all of a sudden, and it blazes through me like an electric shock and spins me back around.

  “I don’t need an answer right away,” Jack Mac says softly.

  “I can give you one, Mr. MacChesney. Sir. For you to assume that I’m spent, that I’m old and without possibilities or opportunities or dreams of my own, is appalling to me. I may appear to be a pharmacist in sensible shoes, okay, maybe I have holes in my socks, but there is a river inside of me. I’m not lonely. Or desperate. Or one bit sad. I don’t need to be saved!”

  “You don’t understand,” he says with equal force.

  “I get this! I really get this! If you are sincere in this strange proposal, the answer is no. I don’t love you. And I’m one of those kooks who think you ought to love the person you marry.”

  “Wait a second—”

  “And if you aren’t sincere, I think it’s mean. It isn’t funny to play on a woman’s station in life. As though she is somehow responsible for being married or being alone! Sometimes things happen in life, the pieces move around so that the game can’t go your way. Things like cancer and mental cruelty and fear. So don’t think it’s funny to dangle some happy thing like that—like joy can be invented in a second. It can’t! I am happy alone. I don’t need you or anybody else! I take care of myself. And it might seem dull to you, or pathetic, but what you think of me does not change my life one way or another.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Let me lay it out for you. I could lose everything I have, and I may. But if you think my definition of security is a mate with a job and a truck, you don’t know me very well. And if I were you, I would think twice about proposing anything to anyone you don’t know very well.”

  I turn and walk briskly up the street. He’s following me. I am sweating so hard, I get a whiff of sandalwood and lime from my neck and remember the jacket. I take it off and turn.

  “Your jacket.”

  He takes it.

  “One more thing. In the future, if you want to win a woman, don’t tell her you’ve got a new truck. Most women don’t care about new trucks. It’s not a selling point. Good night.”

  About three blocks from my house, I realize that I walked a long way with Jack Mac, and this insight alone makes me more furious. Why was I walking with him, wearing his jacket, making small talk? I don’t even like him. He yups and nopes and is altogether too quiet. I hate that! Those long quiet spells he lapses into, forcing me to talk, to fill the spaces with personal stories and observations that I didn’t want to share in the first place. The crust of that guy! Knee-deep in our thirties! You’re the one knee-deep in old age, with your bald head! I still have some glimmers of youth around my edges; yours are gone, Jack MacChesney! Don’t lump me in with you and your mother in a stone house in a holler!

  I break into a run so I can make it home faster, and the nails from the roof loosen in my pocket and drop out onto the street. I know that I should stop to pick them up because they could rip somebody’s tires as they drive over them, but even the thought of a blowout and subsequent three-car pileup can’t make me stop. I want to go home. I want to lock my door and be alone with the only person in the world I can trust: me. As I turn my corner, I see Theodore’s car parked in front of my house. Theodore is sitting on my front stoop. Beautiful Theodore who understands me! I run up the walk and throw myself into his arms. He holds me tightly.

  “What happened?”

  “I hate him, Theodore. I hate him!”

  I sound like a twelve-year-old girl. I remember myself and sit up.

  “Did he do something to you?” Theodore sounds like he could kill anyone who would harm me. He slips off his jacket and wraps it around me. He looks into my eyes. In the porch light, Theodore’s face has a golden glow—sepia and stone
. Strength in the features! How I love this face! This Irish face. The crow’s-feet. The strong nose that tilts ever so slightly down. The chiseled jawline, an advertisement for his determination in all things. No man could be stronger in this moment than my very own Theodore Tipton. With him I can be honest, always.

  “He asked me to marry him.”

  A moment passes. Theodore pulls me close. “And what did you say?” His tone tells me he hopes I said no.

  “I said no! Of course. Are you crazy? Why would I say anything but no?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t want him!”

  “It’s funny—”

  “There is nothing funny about this!”

  “About a month ago, Jack Mac stopped me at the gas station,” Theodore begins.

  “What for?”

  “He wanted to know if we were in love with each other.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t think about it. I get ribbed about you all the time, so I thought nothing of it.”

  Ribbed? Am I the town joke? I am so mad I almost forget to be embarrassed.

  “What a phony Jack MacChesney is! Mr. Respectful. Mr. Perfect Manners, all quiet and calm. Who’s he kidding? It’s all an act! How dare he run around upsetting people!”

  “You mean you. He upset you.”

  “Yes, I mean me!” Me. Be concerned about me. I got myself good and scared tonight. In my fury I cannot cry, so I issue orders like a commando.

  “Theodore Tipton, you are sleeping over tonight.” I don’t care if he wants to. I need him. I need to be held. I need reassurance, the kind you can only find in the arms of a strong man.

  “I think I should.”

  “You have to,” I decide, not backing down from Furious Hill for a second.

  “I have to?”

  “Yes. I love you. I don’t love anybody else. I’m tired of this. You need me. Just like I need you. I need my friend.”

  I can’t see Theodore’s face, so I can’t read it. He just sighs deeply and we go inside.