Home to Big Stone Gap

by Adriana Trigiani

  “You got it.” I turn and look at my husband in the backseat. “Jack, you’ll help me remember, won’t you?”

  “Yep.”

  “I always wanted a genu-ine kilt from Scotland,” says Iva Lou. “You are the first folks I ever knew that went.”

  “Isn’t that odd, when practically everybody who lives here is of Scottish descent?”

  “And Irish. Don’t forget that.”

  “Granted, it took me thirty-six years to get to Italy, but it was always a goal,” I say.

  “Honey-o, look at me. I’m Scots-Irish, and I went to It-lee instead. ’Course, I felt I already knew about my own roots. I wanted to experience the historical elements of Italy.”

  “You mean the men,” Jack pipes up.

  “Them too. Everybody knows my ideal man, in theory, is Mario Lanza. Even Lyle knows it. Mario Lanza with the singing—and without the drinkin’. I can’t stand a tosser; a man who can’t hold his liquor ruins a nice night out. And you know I like my nights out.”

  “You have your standards,” I say.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Iva Lou and I have made a real effort to get our friendship back on track. We started slowly—to resume our old routine quickly would have felt phony. Sometimes she stops by for lunch, or we run up to the Mexican restaurant at the Wal-Mart plaza for dinner. She and I go to Garden Club together. Last week we went to a computer seminar at Mountain Empire Community College, where we were like two kids, whispering and giggling during class. We never refer to our estrangement; this is her choice, and I take my cues from Iva Lou: “What’s past is passed.”

  “I was telling Lovely my theories about men and drinkin’ the other night. One of her friends has a husband who’s a little too enamored of Captain Morgan rum. I told her to put her foot down now, before the problem gits so bad she has to put 911 on the speed dial.”

  It’s so funny—a year ago, I had never heard of Lovely Carter, and now she’s a part of our world, as though she has always been here. Iva Lou shares that their relationship is nowhere near perfect—that things come up all the time for Lovely, emotionally speaking, and Iva Lou has to deal with them. Just lately, Lovely has allowed her girls to stay overnight at the trailer. The girls begged and begged, and finally, Lovely let them. Well, the girls had a ball, and now they come over much more often. “Me and Lovely are friends,” Iva Lou told me, “and if it gets to be more than that, if we start feeling like family to each other, then that’ll be fine too.”

  Jack taps me on the shoulder. “Did you remember my work boots?”

  “Do what?”

  “My work boots. Did you pack them?”

  “Do what?”

  “Stop it, Ave.”

  Iva Lou, Jack, and I laugh. “Do what?” is Big Stone Gap speak for “What did you ask me?” It was one of the local expressions I shared in an e-mail with Rosalind Stoneman. She didn’t get it, and I told her, “Don’t worry. You’ll get the hang of it once you’re in the holler.”

  “I did pack your work boots, honey.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re a good wife.” Iva Lou adjusts the rearview mirror. “You’d be a better one if you taught your husband to pack his own damn boots.”

  “Too late for that,” I tell her.

  Just then Iva Lou skids to a stop in front of the airport terminal. Jack jumps out and starts unloading bags from the trunk.

  “Thank you for driving us over,” I say, giving Iva Lou a hug.

  “Have the time of yer life.” Iva Lou smiles. “Take lots of pictures. And if you see any Wades or Makinses over there, you just tell ’em we said hi-dee.”

  I laugh. “Will do.”

  Jack puts the bags on the sidewalk and comes around the car. He gives Iva Lou a hug too. “Glad you two girls worked things out,” he says.

  “Listen here, Jack Mac. I either had to make up with her or kill her, and I know you need her, so I opted for Plan A.”

  He grins. “I appreciate it.”

  We wave as Iva Lou drives off, then take our bags inside and check in. “I’m going to get some magazines,” I tell Jack.

  The gift shop at Tri-Cities Airport is stocked with local delicacies as well as newspapers, magazines, and Nabs. You can buy a small crate of apple butter, quilted oven mitts, or soy candles made in local kitchens by local craftsmen.

  “Avuh Marie?”

  I look to the cash register. “Sweet Sue, what are you doing here?”

  “I moved to Kingsport. The divorce came final, and I needed a change.” Sweet Sue reaches up and tightens her ponytail, hoisted high in a rubber band on her head. She wears white pants, a white blouse, and a forest-green apron with a patch that says RUNWAY GIFT SHOPPE.

  Every divorcée from Big Stone Gap eventually winds up in Kingsport. It’s where you go when you’re ready to start writing anew on your clean slate. It’s our version of relocating to the other side of the moon when we need space from the gossip, custody battles, and pressures that arise from love gone wrong. Big Stone Gap can shrink to the size of a dime when you’re the talk of the town. Better to shove off to sprawling Kingsport when the going gets tough.

  I haven’t seen Sweet Sue since the cast party for The Sound of Music; I’ve been busy, and evidently, so has she. “How are you doing?” I ask.

  “Well, Avuh, let me just say this. I never thought I’d be this old and on the market again. I figgered Mike and me were till death do us part. Of course, for me, the death part never meant murder, but I got so mad at him, I didn’t rule out any possibility. He cheated on me, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t,” I lie.

  “On…me! Can you believe it?”

  “Not really.” It’s amazing to me that Sweet Sue, at our age, still believes she’s a viable, hot number. Wasn’t being homecoming queen, Key Club Sweetheart, Miss Powell Valley, and third runner-up in the Miss Wise County beauty pageant, back when we were young, enough for her?

  “When he cheated, well, that’s when I left. I’ll put up with a lot—and trust me, I did—but I ain’t gonna be second fiddle to nobody.”

  “I heard you bounced back after Mike. Weren’t you dating Greg Mullins from out in the valley?”

  “Oh God, A-vuh, he was about a hundred years old.”

  “I thought he was seventy.”

  “His shoes might have been seventy, but the rest of him was a hundred. No, next time I belly up to the bar, I want me a younger man. They’re not so set in their ways, you know.”

  “I’ve heard that. Well, good for you.”

  “Ave?” Jack stands in the entrance of the gift shop.

  I turn and motion to him to come in. “Sweet Sue has relocated to Kingsport.”

  “Hi, Jack.” Sweet Sue waves at him, ruffling her fingers.

  “Hi, Sue.”

  My husband stands in the entrance as though there are invisible lasers across the doorway that might fry him if he sets foot in the gift shop. God bless him, whenever he runs into his old girlfriends, it’s like he’s trying to swim upstream fully clothed in a shallow creek. “Honey, we need to hurry,” he tells me.

  “I’ll be right there.” I grab a couple of magazines. Sweet Sue rings them up.

  “You hang on to him,” she says quietly.

  “I’ll do that.”

  I meet Jack in the main area of the terminal. “You were rude to her,” I tell him as we go through security.

  “I have a wife.”

  “I know that.” Sometimes I think Jack’s medication makes him loopy.

  Jack shakes his head. “She’s a flirt.”

  “Still?”

  “Uh-huh. She left a message on my cell phone at Christmas. Needed someone to come over and do a little maintenance work on her house before she sold it in the divorce. Said she needed my ‘expertise.’ Well, I wanted no part of it.”

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “I was nice to her!”

  “You don’t have anything to worry about, darling,” my husband promi
ses me.

  When I made our reservations, I chose to fly to Glasgow International Airport via JFK in New York. I chose it for two very important reasons: a cross-country train ride from Glasgow to Aberdeen would allow us to enjoy more of the Scottish countryside, and I wanted to see Pearl Grimes Bakagese on our layover at JFK. Her new house in Garden City is a quick drive from the airport, and she offered to meet us for the hour or two between flights.

  When we get off the plane, Pearl waves from behind security. “Ave Maria!”

  I wave back. Tears come to my eyes as I remember when she was a girl and how hard her life was. She used her intelligence and drive to build a better life for herself and her mother. Better? How about an excellent life? It’s rich and full. Pearl is educated, working, and now a wife and mother. She has come a long way from Insko Holler.

  “Welcome to New York!” Pearl gives me a hug, and then Jack embraces her. “You look great, Jack.”

  “So do you, honey.”

  Pearl is trim, in a navy blue suit. She wears sneakers and socks with the suit. “Ignore the shoes,” she tells us. “It’s a New York thing. All the working girls, me included, carry pumps in a sack.”

  “You have to do a lot of walking.”

  “Yep. It’s not like back home, in and out of the car all day. I hardly ever see a car. I take a train in to the city to work, and so does Taye.” Pearl puts her arm around me as we walk inside the terminal. “Mama sends her love to you. She’s watching India.”

  “Give her my love! I can’t believe India’s five years old.”

  “Neither can I. We’re working on number two now.”

  “Good for you.”

  “I don’t know how we can top her, though.”

  “You don’t think you will, but each child is so different.” Pearl remembers Joe, and I know what she’s thinking. “Don’t worry. Everything will be fine!” I tell her.

  “I worry about everything.”

  “That’s motherhood. I wish I could tell you that you’ll worry less as time goes on, but I’d be lying.”

  We catch up on all her news, and then Pearl wants to hear about home, so I pull some pictures from Christmas out of my purse.

  “Someday I want to come home,” Pearl says as she looks at a picture of Cracker’s Neck Holler covered in snow. “We’ve been lucky. We’ve seen a lot of the world. But I miss those mountains.”

  I sleep most of the flight over, while Jack stays awake, too excited to sleep. He pores over his travel book and finishes the novel by Ian Rankin (star of Scottish fiction) that he started reading back home. I know Jack loves our trips to Italy and considers it his second home, but the truth is, his own true homeland is Scotland.

  It’s dark when we land in Glasgow. We pick up our bags and take a taxi to One Devonshire Gardens. It’s hard to see much as we speed through the hills in the dark. A dense fog covers the city, a mysterious gray mist that reminds me of the old Miss Marple movies they used to show at the Trail Theatre back home. Miss Marple was a doddering old detective who cracked cases with common sense, putting clues together in her rocking chair by the hearth. Very English.

  One Devonshire Gardens is a hotel in a series of connected Victorian town houses. When we enter the main lobby, the building reminds me of a stately home, with its crown moldings, flagstone floors, and portrait gallery (some of the paintings must be ten feet tall). The grand staircase that leads to the second floor is made of cherrywood inlaid on walnut. Jack can’t resist and goes to the carvings on the banister to feel the grooves of the wood. He is beyond impressed with the craftsmanship.

  The furniture, a combination of eighteenth-century hunting lodge and Victorian, is covered in ocher, deep brown, and beige velvets and faded navy blue matelassé. There are small tea tables situated by the windows, overlooking a garden in the back. An enormous ornate mirror hangs over the deep fireplace. The mantel is decorated with a series of small hunting lamps, all lit.

  “This is fancy,” observes my husband.

  “The Stonemans’ recommendation,” I tell him.

  We check in and are escorted to our room. As the valet explains the features of the hotel, I have to listen closely. The Scottish accent takes some getting used to—it’s lovely, but they speak at a clip. We are fascinated, though, because there are similarities between the accent here and our mountain one. Jack and I unpack very little. We are exhausted from the flight and plan on getting right to sleep. I put my husband’s Dopp kit in the bathroom. When I return to the room, he is standing at the window, looking at the sky. “What is it?” I ask him.

  “Come here. There’s a hole in the fog.”

  I look up at the sky. The clouds seem to have been ripped apart at the seams to let the moon shine through. It glitters like a whiskey diamond. “A golden moon.”

  “I’ve never seen one.” Jack smiles and puts his arms around me. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For making this happen. I never thought it would.”

  “Hey, that’s what I’m here for. I’m supposed to help you make your dreams come true.”

  “What about you?”

  “I have my dream.”

  “You do?”

  “I have you.”

  We climb into bed, and it wouldn’t matter if it were a park bench: I’m in the arms of my husband, and we’re in a place he’s dreamed of since he was a boy. There is nothing more satisfying than reading about a place in storybooks and then one day making the leap from those pages and into real life, every detail as vivid as it lived in our imaginations. This trip will be more than a tonic for Jack; it will be a new start, and boy, does he deserve one.

  Rosalind Stoneman had told us the most scenic way to get from Glasgow to Aberdeen was by train. She explained that she and her husband would be able to meet us at the station before showing us their house and departing themselves. They’ll be stopping in London to visit their children before heading on to the U.S.

  Early the next morning, Jack and I climb aboard, hoisting our bags onto the metal shelves overhead. We sit across from each other with a small table between us. The train is beautifully appointed, with deep brown leather seats, polished wood panels, and a patterned sisal rug on the floor. The windows slide open (just like they do in the movies!). As the train pulls out of the city, we look ahead and see a castle on the hill in the distance, and it’s as though we’re traveling back in time. Its majestic granite walls seem a border unto themselves. The dormers and peaks jut up into the sky like daggers. The slits in the stone have rows of tiny bars. “Look, Jack, no windows.”

  “Would have been a bad idea to let the enemy see in.”

  As we head out to the countryside, we sweep past farms, nestled in the rolling hills like jewels. A herd of sheep gathers by a stream flowing down into a gulley and beyond. Their white coats stand out against the soft palette of spring.

  Winter is slowly making its exit, and the fields are sprouting pale green, not yet the lush emerald color that Rosalind promised will come. But it’s the sky that enchants us. The mountains back home make the sky overhead seem small, doled out in portions where the peaks let light in, but here the sky seems a broad and limitless canvas. It’s stippled with swirls of soft peach, and over the hills, we see a hem of ruby red on the horizon, with streaks of lavender against white clouds on the field of bright blue. The explosion of color overhead plays against the taupe tones on the ground, like rubies, opals, and emeralds set in copper.

  When the train reaches the North Sea, it runs along the cliffs of the coast, giving us a perfect view of the water. There’s a dramatic drop from our perch down to the beach. The shoreline appears ancient, its edges scribbled along the water’s edge. The sand itself is rocky, jutted with shards of black stone on brown sand. In the middle distance, the gunmetal-blue sea pitches a fishing boat to and fro on milky waves. The moors are covered in tall brown grass, with hints of beige where the heather will grow soon, and I can’t help but think of Wuthering Heights.


  Jack points. “Look, seals!”

  There, on a series of flat rock formations by the water’s edge, two seals are draped, dipping their fins into the water. There aren’t many of us in the train car, but we all crowd the windows to watch them. We are startled when the door between the cars flies open, and in comes a concession cart, its shiny aluminum sides a sharp contrast to the muted decor.

  The server’s name is Iris (so says her name tag). “Tea?” she asks. Jack and I each ask for a cup, and she gives us several packages of shortbread to eat with it.

  “Are you American?” she asks.

  “Yes, we are.”

  “Scottish descent?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jack says proudly. “I am.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To Aberdeen.”

  “You must go to the Cairngorms. It’s what I hope heaven looks like. Oh, the pinewoods. You’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “We won’t miss it.”

  After she goes, Jack adds the park to the list of things he wants to do. I take the notebook and look at his list. “We only have six weeks, honey.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll pack it all in.”

  I know Rosalind immediately when the train pulls in to Aberdeen. She waves to us from the platform. She is small and trim, with bright red hair that tumbles out of her scarf in a ponytail. She’s around my age, but she has that forever-youthful quality that only theater people possess (Theodore is another example). Her face is quite beautiful, with a small, upturned nose and a wide, warm smile. There’s a hint of dusty pink rouge on her cheeks, which makes her blue eyes pop.

  “Welcome!” she says, extending her hand. “Donald stayed home; forgive him. He is a slow packer. We’ll be on our way once we show you about the house.”

  Jack loads our bags into the back of the van. It’s a beat-up old Volkswagen, painted bright orange with white accents. It has a stick shift—I hope Jack can manage it from the driver’s seat on the right side of the car. As we wind through Aberdeen, Rosalind chatters, telling us of her favorite restaurants and museums. There is nothing cramped or citylike about this place; it has breathing room. There is definitely plenty of antiquity among the modern. His Majesty’s Theatre opened in 1906. It’s named after King Edward VII and sits next to a sleek shopping mall; gardens, with the first crocus peeking through the brown dirt, are planted next to parking garages. I know I’m going to love this place: I can feel the possibilities as we drive through. From the front passenger seat, I look back at Jack, who is taking it all in.