Big Stone Gap (9 page)

“Someday you ought to come down and see him preach,” June says from the makeup table. “He is one of the greatest, I’ll goddamn guarantee you.”

Tayloe Slagle and her majorettes come in giggling and chatting. They are always loud enough to draw attention, but not so loud as to be considered obnoxious.

“What can I do for you girls?”

They swarm around the magazine rack and don’t answer. If Fleeta were here, she’d swat their hands with a duster for reading the magazines and never buying them. I cut them some slack because they spend their money in other ways in my store.

Finally Tayloe asks, “Did you get any waterproof mascara in yet?”

“I don’t know. Did we, Pearl?”

Pearl continues to rub cream into June’s face like she’s waxing a car. “Yes, ma’am. We got in the Great Lash.”

“See there? One-stop shopping, girls. All your needs met right here. Maybe you ought to get Pearl to show you all of our new makeup.” Pearl shoots me a look like,
Please don’t mention me. If you don’t talk about me, they won’t notice me. I will disappear into the vat of Queen Helene Cucumber Masque.

“Now, Miss Mulligan, let me ask you one thing.” Tayloe looks at me. Even after school, without a stitch of makeup, even under my hideous fluorescent lights, she looks luminous. She sticks out her perfect chin. “Why would somebody who looks like me take beauty tips from somebody who looks like her?” The majorettes laugh loud and hard at this one. Tayloe takes my
People
magazine off of my rack and flips through it. Her casual cruelty makes me angry. Suddenly I don’t want the likes of her touching anything in my store.

“Put down the magazine,” I warn in a voice that startles me. “You never buy them.”

Tayloe quickly puts down the magazine. I look back at Pearl, whose eyes are not filled with tears, who is not blushing with embarrassment, who calmly works cream into June Walker’s face with purpose and resolve. Pearl isn’t a bundle of nerves anymore.

“I’m gonna say something to you girls. And you’re gonna listen.” Two of the majorettes, one a redhead with Farrah Fawcett feathering, the other a brunette with a Jaclyn Smith center part, backtrack to the door to escape. “You’re not going anywhere, you two.” The girls stop in their tracks and turn to face me.

“I’m sick and tired of your snide comments. You’re mighty proud, Tayloe. But I’d be careful if I was you. Someday you won’t have your looks anymore. And all those girls, like Pearl, who weren’t popular, will be the pretty ones. Why? Because they have had to work at it. So they appreciate beauty in all its forms. You only know beauty as something given, not earned. So you won’t understand what’s happening when your youth is gone and the pounds creep on and the wrinkles come; and you’ll panic because your best days are behind you. But Pearl’s best days will be ahead of her. Why? Because she had to make something out of herself from scratch. Nobody helped her. The best she got was a bunch of stuck-ups making fun of her to make themselves feel big. But trust me, that kind of power is poison. It’ll turn on you. When y’all are my age, you’ll be the ones envying her. Pearl will know the great power of self-acceptance and real self-love, not the shallow vanity you mistake for it. At the end of the day, Pearl Grimes will be so beautiful, she’ll wipe the floor with you.”

All is silent in the store except for the creaking of the spin stool June Walker is sitting on as she leans into the mirror to examine her creamed face.

“You are so weird, Ave Maria Mulligan,” says Tayloe. Finally, somebody pronounces my name correctly. Tayloe and her twirlers go. Pearl continues with her demonstration.

I come out from behind the counter and stand in the doorway and watch them walk up the street. And I don’t know how to pinpoint what I’m feeling exactly, but for some reason I see myself at sixteen walking away from myself. I know it’s not me out there on the street, but it is, in the image of those girls, walking away getting smaller and smaller, and disappearing. For the first time in my life I feel the thread of who I am unravel. I am one of those people who swears she knows herself well, who in any given situation can be described and counted on to behave in a certain way. I never yell at people, nor do I make speeches. When things get tense, I usually make a joke, so everyone will feel at ease. But something, beyond defending Pearl, beyond standing up for what is right, compelled me to speak. Where did she come from? Who is this voice that isn’t going to make nice anymore, but will tell the truth? It isn’t Fred Mulligan’s daughter. I think of Mario da Schilpario, my father, the man in the picture. Why have I tried to put him aside, thinking him dead, gone, uninterested in the likes of me? But suddenly I know—and I am as sure of it as I am sure of myself standing here—that my father is alive, and he is well, and I must find him. I put my hand on my chest, expecting another anxiety attack to come, but it does not. Practical Ave Maria must go. Me. The never-married town pharmacist who is never caught without her first-aid kit. Me. So responsible she carries two spare tires in her Jeep instead of one. Me. Who has double insurance on everything because she’s afraid one of the companies will go out of business and leave me penniless after a flood. Me. The girl who built her life so carefully so she’d never have to ask anybody for anything. I have had it with me. Whoever I was! Get mad, Ave Maria! You’re alone in this world. You were abandoned. Let that anger fuel the job you must do. Find him. Find your father!

I walk out of my store and into the street. I breathe deeply right down to my toes. I walk to the Bookmobile. I have a job for Iva Lou.

 CHAPTER FOUR

It is quiet in my living room except for the sound of Theodore and Iva Lou turning pages as they read. I’ve never had Iva Lou over to my house. I don’t know why. When Mama was alive, I didn’t have friends over much. Mama ran her sewing business out of the house, so people were always stopping by anyhow—maybe it didn’t dawn on us to formally entertain. Fred Mulligan hated having company. Mama had better have seen her last customer before he came home. Even after he died, she kept that schedule. When I came home from work, everything was put away. That must have been so hard for her. She was social. Mama loved people. She never knew a stranger. After she died, so many folks came up to me and thanked me for her kindnesses: girls, now women, who wore prom dresses that Mama had made for free. Brides who needed wedding gowns with extra fabric in front because they were a little pregnant and didn’t want to show for the occasion. She’d never complain; she’d just make the adjustments.

Fred Mulligan, however, had boundaries in all things. He could never make his customers his friends. I think he felt he couldn’t make a profit from friends, so he simply never made any. Or maybe nobody wanted to be friends with him. Anyway, it feels right and glorious to have Iva Lou and Theodore sitting in my living room, eating chess pie, surrounded by stacks of books, all special orders from Clinch Valley College, a division of the University of Virginia in Wise. Iva Lou was allowed to check out these books because she knows the powers that be at the university library. (They’ve shared Sanka.)

She shoves a book under my nose and shows me a panoramic photograph. “Look, here’s Bergamo. It’s about the size of Big Stone Gap.”

I study the panorama of Mama’s hometown. There is a fountain with dancing angels in the middle of the square. Buggies led by donkeys cart people around. There are cobblestone streets. Fig trees. Small stone houses. Children. I picture my mother there as a girl. It seems to fit.

Theodore and Iva Lou leave around midnight. I clean up the dishes and walk through the first floor, turning out the lights. Then I do something I haven’t done since my mother died. I go into her room.

My mother’s room is simple. There is a double bed with a white cotton coverlet; over the bed hangs a small wooden crucifix. A straight-backed chair and a bureau stand against the wall opposite the window. Her sewing machine is tucked in a small alcove next to the window. The closet is small, its contents neat. I sit on the edge of her bed and look around the room as though I’ve never been inside of it before. I used to lie in here with her when she was dying. I took my rightful place next to her, as I was all she had. When I was little and I got sick, I would come and get her, but she never took me into her bed with my father. She would always come to my room on the second floor and lie with me there. She used to tell me that she didn’t want to disturb him, but now I know she could not disturb him. He knew I wasn’t his, and though he could have lovingly claimed me, he did not, and she kept me quiet. That was their understanding. And it was an understanding that lasted both of their lifetimes.

My mother was an avid reader, too. Occasionally, she bought books, but usually she just checked them off the Bookmobile as I did. She loved books about romance. Books that took place in faraway places and times. Stories with costumes. When Mama designed the costumes for the Drama, she studied the period, drew the sketches and everything. She had less theatrical tasks too. Mama has made every cheerleader uniform since anyone can remember. She made elaborate square-dancing skirts. And prom dresses, of course. When a customer wanted fancy, my mother would say in her Italian accent, “Simple is better. Simple. Simple.” Sometimes she succeeded, but often I would hear her clucking as she sewed sequins and lace onto dresses that didn’t need the fanfare. Many times when folks dropped off their clothes for altering or mending she would convince a lady to line a cloth coat in red satin or a skirt in silk. “No one will see it, but you will know it’s there and it will feel wonderful,” she’d say. My mother knew the finer things, but she didn’t have a life that could celebrate them. I pick up a book off the nightstand. Glamorous Gene Tierney is on the cover. It’s a book about costumes from the movies of the Golden Age in Hollywood.

Mama always took me to the movies over at the Trail Theater, right next to Zackie’s. I didn’t know it at the time, but Jim Roy Honeycutt, who owned the place, showed movies that were ten, fifteen years old. I never bothered to ask my mother why the people on the screen were wearing funny hats and hairdos; I just accepted it. It wasn’t until years later that I found out Mr. Honeycutt saved a lot of money renting old prints. That’s how I fell in love with the leading men of the 1930s and ’40s: Clark Gable, William Powell, Spencer Tracy, Robert Taylor, and especially Joel McCrea. Mama loved the actresses, costumed by the great designers Edith Head, Adrian, and Travis Banton. I remember their names because Mama always pointed them out to me on the screen. We would see the same movies over and over again so Mama could study the clothes. Later she would discuss them with me in great detail. The movies were black and white, but Mama could tell when they used real gold thread on Hedy Lamarr’s harem pants or real sable on Rosalind Russell’s coat.

My mother was a great beauty. She had black hair so shiny it seemed lacquered; she wore it simply, combed back off of her face in a blunt bob. Her skin was golden—she died without a wrinkle or a line on it. She had deep-set brown eyes with lots of lid, like a Modigliani painting. Her neck was long and so were her fingers. She had full lips and beautiful teeth; she always was faithful about going to the dentist and taking me. Her nose was regal, aquiline. Her high forehead belied a nobility; to me she was a queen. But there was a deep sadness in my mother’s eyes always, a longing to be somewhere else. I used to ask her, “Why, Mama, why did you come
here
?” As though here were worse than a swamp, a place without air. But she loved the mountains. Mountains meant everything to her.

I begged her to go to Italy with me after my father died. We had the time, we had the means, and most important, we no longer had him. We were free, but we couldn’t adjust to it. After he died, we could play Sergio Franchi as loud as we wanted, but we still kept it muted so we could hear his approaching car in the driveway. He wanted nothing Italian in this house, except food. He ate my mama’s cooking with relish; in fact, that’s when we could count on him to smile. My mother made everything fresh, from her own garden; olive oil she ordered out of New York. My father even drank espresso. Her cooking was his one concession to my mother’s heritage. Though he had studied Italian in college, he refused to speak it. He preferred my mother speak English. She taught me Italian, her regional dialect; we used it as a secret language.

The summer after I graduated high school, we went to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home outside Charlottesville, Virginia. It bugged me when my father mispronounced Monticello—he made a soft
c
, like “Monti-sello.” I corrected him, and he got so mad he slapped me. But that was the last time he slapped me. From that moment on I stayed out of his way. I gave up. Then Mama did too. For years she tried to make us get along, but it was not to be. When I look back, I realize that she protected me from him. We built our world around keeping him comfortable and not upsetting him. I never showed anger, frustration, or passion in front of him. I swallowed everything, and soon it became part of my character. I was there to amuse and entertain, never, ever to challenge or disrupt. When I was alone with my mother, I could have my feelings, but then I would feel guilty—why upset her?

My mother was Roman Catholic. She was allowed to go to mass and take me, but then we would have to attend the Methodist church with my father as well. The Catholic church here is run by a small missionary order of poor carpenter priests called the Glenmarys. We didn’t even have a real church building until five years ago; the priests were so busy building churches in poorer areas, they kept putting ours off. Finally, we built it, and nothing made my mother happier than writing a big fat check to the Catholics after my father died. She gave them so much money, they finished building our church! When the Methodists, who have a grand big church, came for their share, my mother gave them a small token, citing their large congregation and huge donor list. They weren’t happy about the slight, but being good Christians, they let it go.

Mama and I tried to be good Italians after Fred Mulligan died. We wanted to reclaim that side of ourselves that we had hidden. We decided to go to Italy. We had great fun planning our trip. We did our research, made all the arrangements, bought the tickets, and then, as the date approached, Mama panicked, complaining of a fear of motion sickness. She became so distraught, I canceled the trip. Then, after a few days, she became herself again. The incident upset her so badly, I never mentioned traveling again. I didn’t try to plan another trip. She could not have gone anyway. She got cancer, and that changed our lives forever.

I look around this room and see that she had one of everything: one lamp, one bureau, one chair. She only ever had one winter coat. One pair of good shoes. One pretty hair clip. One child. One of everything, but only one, as if to keep her life quiet. She lived by her own philosophy: Be unobtrusive and maybe he’ll let us stay. As though that was all she deserved! My mother deserved so much more! The best of everything! No gold, no rubies, no rare diamond would have ever been enough for my mother. She was a woman of great character. My deepest sadness comes because I know she lived a life where she wasn’t treated that way.

You would think, after she died, I would have come in here and gone through her things, but I couldn’t. And now I am putting too much importance on this room. I want to find clues to her. Figure out what she really wanted. What she desired. What she was secretly interested in. I pull the books off of her nightstand and onto the bed and begin sorting. One on breast cancer. Another on regional Italian cooking. Ingrid Bergman’s life story (we both love biographies). And, finally,
Lake Maggiore and Its Regions
.

I take the book, turn off the light, and leave her room. I am never afraid in this house, but tonight a chill runs through me. An urgency. I have led a life of quiet desperation (as my favorite author, Henry David Thoreau, described in
Walden
), just like my mother had, and now I want to change. As I pass through the living room to go up to bed, I pick up a small book from the large stack Iva Lou left behind. It’s called
Schilpario: A Life in the Mountains
. The checkout card in the back says, “University of Virginia Architecture Library. DO NOT REMOVE.” Iva Lou really went to some trouble to get me these books. I may have to break down and buy some Sarah Coventry jewelry from her.

Once I’m in bed, I turn on my bedside lamp and look through the pictures in the book about Schilpario. The Italian Alps are pointed and snowcapped. They seem three times as high as the Blue Ridge Mountains, and more dangerous, not as soft and maternal. The roads look new but narrow. There is a picture of a race car taking the dangerous curves, showing deep, jagged valley plummets to the sides of the road. No guardrails. Just like Powell Valley! I turn the page, and there is the town. This is a long-shot vista photo, probably taken from another mountain. The houses are close together and painted in muted shades of terra-cotta, gold, and soft brown. The main street leads to a waterwheel. On the next page, a picture of the waterwheel, a point of interest for tourists. In another time, before electricity, the waterwheel provided fresh water and power to the town. Now it is a museum.

I turn the next page, and there are some dignitaries from the town. They stand in a row—all men, puffed up and proud of their little village. I glance down at the names listed under the picture. As I’m reading, I look up at the row and study one man in particular who catches my eye. It’s the expression on his face. I have seen it somewhere—in my own mirror. My heart begins to pound as it did the night at the Fold. I look down. My pajama buttons are moving, but this time I can hear the attack and the whoosh, beat, whoosh, beat of my blood as it chugs through my heart with force and fear. I breathe deeply, but I can’t inhale very well, so I suck in the air in small gulps. I think of Lew, who tells me not to worry, that it’s nothing. I steady my fingers against the book. They are sweating and leave small circles on the book jacket. I rub the book on my bedspread. Then I pull the light as close as a microscope and prop the book open on my knees to steady it. I count over four names; the fourth man is the man I think I know. I scoot my finger across the faces and down to the matching name: Mario Barbari, Mayor, Schilpario, 1961–present. I flip to the front of the book and check the copyright date: 1962. That’s a long time ago. I pull the small lacy picture of my father out of its envelope—I keep it with me at all times—and compare the faces. Mario Barbari is small in the picture, but I can see the shape of the face, the eyes, the eyebrows—all look similar to the young man in the picture Mama left behind for me. Is he my father?