But she doesn’t. And I can’t.
Wildcat Holler
It seems whenever I drive from Big Stone Gap to Kingsport, I’m in a rush. I’m either late to pick up someone at the airport (today!), or worse, somebody’s sick and I’m on my way to Holston Valley Hospital. It’s a shame, because the road to Kingsport is plenty scenic, meandering through the Wildcat and out of town toward where Virginia turns into Tennessee. As far as the eye can see, the landscape is a lush patchwork quilt of deep blue farm fields set among wild green pine forests.
I have dreaded Christmas this year. The thought of being alone, just Jack and me without Etta, has been too much to bear. Theodore, who has managed to save the day so many times for me in the past, is landing at Tri-Cities Airport. Boy, do I need him now.
I pull in to the parking lot, jump out of the Jeep, and run into the airport. I see throngs of people coming off the escalator. They haul carry-on bags filled with foil-wrapped Christmas boxes. “Is this the flight from Atlanta?” I ask a stranger.
“Yep.”
I scan the crowd for Theodore. During the holidays, there are delays everywhere, so you never know if a plane will reroute and throw off the schedule. I don’t want to wait another second to reunite with my best friend.
Then I hear that familiar voice behind me.
“Ave!”
“Theodore!” I run to him. “Sorry I’m late.”
“You’re always late, so I went ahead and picked up my bags.”
I throw my arms around him and refuse to let go.
“No one has ever been this happy to see me.”
“Thanks for coming.”
Theodore holds my shoulders and surveys me from head to toe. “You look good.”
“You look better.” And he does. Theodore is always in excellent shape (“It’s the walking in the city”). His hair has a dusting of gray through the red, but it’s as thick as the day I met him thirty-some years ago.
“With all I’ve been through, it’s a miracle.” Theodore gives me a small tote and picks up his suitcase. He puts his arm around my shoulder as we push through the crowd and outside to the parking lot.
“What happened?”
“The Radio City show is over. But good news: I’m working on a new musical with a terrific composer. She’s amazing. Marcy Gendel, heard of her?”
“Nope. Then again, I only know Rodgers and Hammerstein these days. Broadway! You must be thrilled.”
“It sounds glamorous, doesn’t it?”
“Isn’t it?”
“We’re developing it at the Cherry Lane Theatre. A sweet little theater in the Village. Off-Broadway. Until we have the guts to blow it up big and take it to Broadway.” Theodore and I walk to the Jeep.
“Isn’t that theater in your neighborhood?”
“Walking distance.” Theodore throws his bags in the back of the Jeep. “This is just like the old days. You and me and the Medicine Dropper.”
I give the old Jeep a pat. “I can’t give her up. Or maybe I can’t stand change.”
“Get used to it. Now is when change starts happening fast and furious. We don’t have the luxury of time anymore, Ave.”
We climb into the Jeep. I’m in the driver’s seat, Theodore is in the passenger seat.
“You sound like my husband,” I say.
“He got a wake-up call, huh?”
“A big one. Jack thought he wasn’t going to make it.”
“How is he now?”
“Much better. You want to drive?”
“Sure.”
Theodore and I get out and exchange seats. He turns the key and backs out of the space. It’s so funny; back when I thought he’d be the man for me (can it be twenty years have come and gone? They have!), I always let him drive. It just seemed right. It also gave me a chance to look at him, really look at him, for hours on end. How many evenings we’d go for long drives in the mountains and never run out of things to talk about. I miss those conversations a lot. My husband is many wonderful things, but he’s not a yakker. “What happened with Max?”
“I got tired of his long hours at the restaurant, and he got tired of mine at the theater. We didn’t see much of each other, and neither of us was willing to compromise. So here we are.” Theodore adjusts the rearview mirror. “How about you and Jack?”
“He’s obsessed with money lately.”
“Money. That doesn’t sound like Jack.”
“He wants to leave me comfortable—whatever that means.”
“Jack’s at that age where retirement is ten years away. He wants to put away savings while he can.”
“I guess. But I’m worried about him. He’s taking a job as consultant with a mountaintop removal company.”
“Consultant?”
“It’s a fancy title for a man who can show outsiders the terrain. They need someone who knows the mountains around Big Stone. And with Jack’s mining experience, he’s golden. These companies know what they’re doing. They find a local guy who’s trusted by the community and use him to swing the popular opinion their way. The last thing they want is resistance from the natives.”
“You don’t like it?”
“Not one bit.”
“How’s Iva Lou?”
“She’s cordial at rehearsals, but she doesn’t call or come around anymore.” My eyes fill with tears. I wasn’t expecting that. “Sorry.”
“You have to make up with her.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I just can’t.”
“Are you angry she kept a secret from you?”
“Well, it wasn’t much of a secret. Fleeta knew.”
“That makes it worse for you. You thought you were her closest friend.”
“I guess I did.”
“You have to talk to her.”
“It’s so weird. I like to think that I can talk to anybody about anything. But lately, it’s so hard for me to say what I’m feeling, because I don’t know what I’m feeling.”
“You’re in shock.”
“About what?”
“Oh, let’s see: that your daughter’s moved abroad; that your husband has been sick; that your friends aren’t perfect; that life goes on even when you’re terribly disappointed in people. No wonder you don’t know what to say; you can’t believe what’s happening. Well, life goes on. Not much you can do about it.” Theodore smiles.
As we head toward home, we fall into a comfortable silence. I realize how good it feels to have a neutral party to listen and help me sort through my feelings. Theodore knows me as well as anyone. “You know exactly what’s wrong with me.”
“I’m on the outside looking in. It’s the best seat in the house when it comes to empathy. That’s all. By the way, I kept a secret from you for years, and you had it in your heart to forgive me. The same should be true for Iva Lou.”
“Yeah, well, your secret was about you. It didn’t involve a third party.”
“True. Still, I think Iva Lou deserves a little slack.” Theodore veers off to take the road through Gate City and into the mountains. “I can’t believe I remember how to get around this part of the world. I guess it’s in my bones.”
The story of The Sound of Music is simple and perfect for Christmastime. At its center, it’s about love and family and overcoming outside forces of evil while learning to sing in harmony. It’s set in the late 1930s in Salzburg, Austria. A young nun goes to work as a nanny for a handsome widowed sea captain and his brood of seven children. With her guitar and gumption, she turns the kids from glum to happy, finds herself falling for the Captain, goes back to the convent in horror that she is attracted to a man, then is forced to return to the children by the Mother Superior, who insists she face her demons instead of running away. When she returns, the Captain is engaged to be married to the haughty Baroness Elsa Schraeder, who ends up getting dropped by the Captain when he realizes he is really in love with the almost-nun. All of this happens on the eve of World W
ar II, with the destruction of the world looming at every turn. Show business also looms, as the kids form a singing act under the nun’s direction.
I’ve tried to keep the production simple, but between Carolyn’s costumes and Nellie’s casting, I couldn’t. I like to think the overly ambitious production is not my fault but due to the egos of my producer and cast run amok. Community theater is an excuse for normal folk to become show people. I watch as plain, simple women put on false eyelashes, bold lipstick, and high heels (even when playing nuns) and become sexpots. Bored husbands put on their costumes and pancake makeup, becoming their version of Cary Grant. Our leading man puts a little too much into the kissing scenes (the script doesn’t call for much woo pitching, but our Captain grabs Maria every chance he gets, and she pushes him away every chance she gets).
Our annual musical is the closest most folks in Big Stone Gap get to stardom, and they milk it from the first rehearsal to opening night like the cows at Pet Dairy. Our cast parties are all-night and elaborate, rivaling Truman Capote’s infamous Black and White Ball at the Plaza Hotel in New York City back in the 1960s (granted, our parties are held in a smaller venue—the Fox house—but still). After the final curtain, folks dress up, drink up, and then come Sunday morning, fess up. More than one drunken chorus member finds a way to ask for forgiveness for a theatrical indiscretion at the United Methodist Church during testimony (the Methodist version of Catholic confession, except they don’t go into a booth, they stand up in front of everyone at the end of the service and admit their sins. It takes a lot of guts!). We can’t blame ourselves entirely, though; it’s the path of all art. The theater brings out the gypsy in all of us and, evidently, our share of sin.
The Botts family has done a lovely job painting the scenery, a series of trompe l’oeil backdrops that will fly in and out on a pulley system operated by our stage crew. There’s a cathedral with an altar for the opening number and a palace on a lake for the Von Trapp family home. The abbey is a black velvet scrim with a gold cross on it (it’s slightly creepy, but it works); and for the finale, there’s a scrim of an endless blue sky and clouds. Our chorus of nuns turns upstage and flips their veils to reveal green velvet foliage, thus becoming pine trees to conjure the Alps (it was Nellie’s idea, and I liked it).
“I need to make an announcement,” says Carolyn, our costumer, coming out from the wings.
“Go right ahead,” I tell her.
Carolyn sighs.
“Lordy Mercy, I know what your mama went through, sewing for all these plays.”
“She loved every minute of it.”
“She was a better woman than me, that’s for sure.”
“The floor is yours.” I turn to the cast, assembled in the first three rows of the auditorium in their Act One, Scene 1, costumes. They’re giggling and chatting with anticipation. “Everyone. Please. Listen to Carolyn.”
“Just a reminder about costume etiquette.” Carolyn takes her place, center stage of the Powell Valley High School auditorium, with a set of pinking shears in one hand and an extra nun’s wimple in the other. She attempts to straighten her shoulders, but years of bad posture won’t let her, so she makes her point with the big scissors. “I need y’all to be careful. I ain’t got time to wash and press these costumes during the run. Therefore. Do not eat or drink in your costumes. And for the love of sweet Jesus, use the makeup hoods before applying the pancake. Iva Lou, please demonstrate.”
Iva Lou stands in the first row and turns to the cast. She pulls a sheer hood over her face.
“Makeup is a killer of fine fabrics. Be careful of smears. I ain’t got time to fix them neither.”
“Is that it, Carolyn?” If I let her continue, she’ll harangue all night, and we’ll never get the Lonely Goatherd puppet show set.
“One more thing. Please, and I’m begging you. Return the costumes to the proper rolling rack in the Glee Club practice room. And mothers of the Von Trapp children, don’t allow them damn kids outside in their costumes. I had to dye Gretl’s white party dress celery-green on account of the grass stains she got on it when she was allowed to play out back. Remember: it might be a costume to you, but to me, it’s about three nights of sweatin’ over my sewing machine. I wouldn’t piss on your performances by banging a pot during your solo, so give me the same consideration when you wear your costumes.”
“Thank you, Carolyn. Round of applause for our costumer, please.”
The cast applauds. Carolyn is less than galvanized for opening night. She slinks offstage like an old cat.
I begin my pep talk. “Tonight is our final dress rehearsal in front of a live audience…” Just the mention of an audience sends the cast into a chattering fit—they can’t contain their enthusiasm. I wait for them to quiet down. Final dress rehearsal is the biggest hurdle for amateur performers. The adrenaline runs high, and my actors don’t know what to do with it, so they get silly. The show will stink tonight; there will be mistakes and outright unprofessional behavior. The cast will giggle uncontrollably during dramatic scenes, flub lyrics, and miss entrances. It’s not just the young folks either—it’s the older ones who, in costume and makeup, get a taste of the stage and want to suck the experience dry and live the dream.
I can relate to how they’re enamored of the world of live theater. It’s fun to make a play. Each cast becomes a family. Rehearsals give that wonderful feeling of being a lug nut in a well-oiled machine. When you’re cast in a play, you belong somewhere, you have a place to be, lines to say, and a personality to project. A drab secretary from the courthouse becomes a singing nun; a coal miner becomes a handsome sea captain. All it takes is a book and music by Rodgers & Hammerstein.
Who doesn’t love the applause? No one ever gave me a standing ovation at the Pharmacy, or Nellie at the bank, or Greg in his cubicle at the accounting firm. We’ll get it tonight, though, and we’ll revel in it. If there’s one thing in this world that folks need, it’s to feel that they’ve done a good job. How rare that reinforcement is! Most of the work in this world is thankless: parenting, the drudgery of our daily jobs—we contribute so much that no one sees or acknowledges. But in the theater, when it’s good, that gratitude is there, audience to actor. They let us know they like what we do with applause and whistles and standing ovations. You can’t beat it.
My cast is grateful for the opportunity to be in show business temporarily. They are proud to be hams. There’s something exciting about getting to be somebody else; to put on makeup and sing and dance. It brings out sensuality in a person who, under normal circumstances, might not know she has any. Our community theater is the last place of daring and escape in Big Stone Gap. These annual productions give us a touch of glamour and connect us to the outside world. We figure we are as good as any productions out there. We also believe we have as good a talent pool as the next town, including Hollywood. “After all, Ava Gardner was from North Carolina. Right over the mountain.” Nellie Goodloe sniffs. (As if that will destine my cast for the silver screen.)
I go on, “I’d like to thank you all for a wonderful rehearsal period. I believe you are ready to give our audience a terrific show. Remember dressing room and backstage etiquette. Keep your chatter backstage to a minimum, and please whisper—there’s nothing worse than a scene drowned out by backstage antics. Now, places, everyone, for the abbey. Nellie, when the curtain is closed, please let the invited audience in.”
The stage manager, Sweet Sue Tinsley, corrals the talent up the stairs and into the wings. My old classmate (and Jack’s ex-girlfriend) Sweet Sue still has her looks; she’s as blond as she was when we were in school. She’s trim, a devoted user of aqua eye shadow (Revlon’s cornflower hi-glow powder; she buys it at the Pharmacy), but there’s a sadness about her now, for the first time in her life. Her husband, Mike, recently left her for a younger woman. Not to worry, though, I understand she’s dating a widower from over in Powell Valley. She wasn’t about to let the situation get her down.
Theodore sneaks in th
e side door. “Ave, where do you want me?”
“Come to the light booth with me.” As we turn to go through the door to the hallway, Theodore is spotted.
“Theodore Tipton!” Sister Louise Camblos screams. “You’re back!” Louise takes off in a sprint toward Theodore, wimple and veil askew as she trips on her billowing skirt. She is followed by her fellow nuns, among them Carol Wilson, Nina Coughlin, Nancy Toney, Dawn Suzette Burnett, Patsy Arnold, Flo Kelley, Catherine Brennan, Paula Pruitt, Pat Bean, Nita Wilson, Sharon Burns, Dee Emmerson, Lou Randolph, Ginger Legg, Mitzi Thomas, Ann Hunter, and Mary Susan Giles, who storm the lip of the stage en masse, as if it’s Normandy Beach. Linda Church, busy bobby-pinning her wimple, turns and shrieks when she realizes Theodore is in the auditorium. She follows the pack. Louise reaches Theodore first and smothers him in kisses as the others gather round for a turn. If Big Stone Gap has a rock star or ever did, it’s definitely Theodore Tipton.
Theodore steps back. “Now, ladies.”
Tayloe emerges from the stage right wings, wearing her novice costume. “I’m gonna be a nervous wreck knowin’ you’re here,” she tells Theodore. She puts her hands on her hips and pushes aside the bangs on her short strawberry-blond Julie Andrews wig.
“Just do your show. Remember, you’re actors!” Theodore claps his hands.
Sweet Sue fans her arms to herd the loose nuns to their places in the wings. Once they are all backstage, I holler, “Let ’em in!” to Nellie, who throws open the entrance doors of the auditorium.
“What happened to Sweet Sue?” Theodore whispers.
“Love gone wrong.”
“Too bad. She’s wearing it. She’s more beat than sweet.”
The audience takes their seats. I excuse myself to go backstage and give the sets one final look. God love her, Sweet Sue is in the wings corralling the Von Trapp children, like show dogs, into single-file rows for their entrance. Friedrich is playing with the stage weights, but I shoot him a look and he stops, taking his place in line behind the others. I go back to the dressing area, which is quiet now that the cast is in position to begin. I wander among the dress bags filled with street clothes, as well as piles of schoolbooks, purses, and other gear.