“Preacher must’ve had an intervention,” Jack whispers. Clerics love a family affair, that’s for sure.
When Preacher Mutter pronounces them man and wife, Fleeta and Otto kiss, and the guests whoop and holler so loudly, it sounds like we’re at a professional wrestling match. The organ music swells (this time it’s an arrangement of Charlie Rich’s “Behind Closed Doors,” leading me to believe that no one checked the musical selections with the preacher). Otto and Fleeta lock arms and recess, followed by the wedding party. As Fleeta passes me, she grabs my hand for a second and says, “Whoo.” I look to the back of the church, where Iva Lou is wiping away a tear of joy.
The congregation takes a detour downstairs to the Fellowship Hall, directly to the punch bowls, instead of going outside for an official receiving line. I’ve never seen a crowd this big in the church basement. I remember one time years ago, Spec cleared the hall during the Cub Scouts Pinewood Derby due to “unaccounted-for overflow.” I’ll bet we have twice as many people here tonight.
While Fleeta and Otto are outside “meetin’ and greetin’” and taking photos, the Garden Club kids hand out bottles of bubbles in net bags, which the guests commence blowing. Iva Lou fills the punch bowls as the Reedy Creek band plays a jazzy rendition of “Here Comes the Bride.”
Fleeta and Otto enter the reception to another loud ovation, this one punctuated by earsplitting wolf whistles. Otto takes Fleeta in his arms. They dance in a dreamland of silver bubbles, as though they’re in a snow globe where the glitter’s been shaken. The rest of us form a deep circle around the dance floor and sway. Janine reaches over and squeezes my hand. Her brother, Pavis, joins us.
“Pavis, it means the world to your mother that you came,” I tell him.
Pavis wears a navy blue pin-striped suit and a tie printed with rows of tiny hot-pink champagne bottles. His black hair is sprayed into a clean tailfin sweep with a side part (they have a thing about hair in the Mullins family—they’re particular and partial to definitive shapes).
“I’m glad I could make it.” Pavis smiles. “Janine said she’d haul off and kill me if I didn’t show up.”
“You’ll do right to listen to your sister.”
“You got that right. I been skeered of her all my life.” Pavis winks one eye slowly. “Don’t mess with the Boss.”
Jack pulls me onto the dance floor. I exhale a huge sigh of relief. No matter what, weddings are stressful, and I’ve been on the front lines of this one since we returned from Italy. Jack and I do more shifting than dancing on the crowded floor, but I don’t care. I’m in the arms of my true love, we’re dressed up, he smells like fresh cedar and lemon, and the music is wonderful. “Remember when you weren’t allowed to dance at weddings?” Jack whispers in my ear.
“And we lived in a dry county?” I point to Iva Lou, pouring vodka into a punch bowl.
“Progress.” Jack laughs.
Eddie Carleton was kind enough to cover for me at the Mutual’s, so I have the rest of Fleeta’s wedding day off. There are so many things I want to do in the house before Theodore arrives. I’ve been meaning to clean out closets, flip mattresses, and repaint the spare bedroom, and now I have a reason to actually get some of these chores done. There’s nothing like a deadline to force me to reorganize.
Jack is out back, working on a project. He won’t tell me what it is; he wants to surprise me. I watch out the kitchen window as he lifts a small plank of wood and carries it into the forest. A few moments later, he returns for his toolbox on the porch.
Mousey and Rick came over and split logs for us, and Jack helped them stack it, though not much more than that. The doctor wants him to exercise but avoid overexertion. The phone rings. As I answer it, I don’t take my eyes off the path to the forest. Since Jack had his surgery, I watch after him a lot, like I did the children when they were small—where they were and what they were doing was always on my mind.
“Hi, Mom. It’s Etta.”
She sounds terrible. “How are you, honey?” I ask.
“Okay. How was Aunt Fleeta’s wedding?”
“A sellout. The whole county turned out.”
“Good for them. Mom, I’m in Schilpario.”
“Did you go to Grandpop’s for the weekend?”
“Not exactly. He called me to come up last night. Stefano is with me.”
“Is Papa all right?” I feel my stomach turn.
“He’s fine. It’s Nonna. Ma, she passed away early this morning.”
“No!” I sit down.
“She went very peacefully. We were all with her. She woke up this morning, had her coffee and hot milk, took a bite of a roll, and said she was tired. So we took her back to bed, and she died.”
I begin to cry. All the things she meant to me come flooding back. I remember when Nonna came to Big Stone Gap twenty years ago with Papa—how she kept a bright red cotton handkerchief, starched and pressed, tucked in her sleeve at all times; how she made fried eggs in a hearty marinara sauce in a skillet and then tossed them through fresh greens, and I thought it was the most delicious thing I’d ever tasted. She didn’t make an ordinary tossed salad. Her wild greens were spiked with color, flower petals tossed through to add pizzazz. She taught me which flowers were edible (sweet woodruff, rose of Sharon, African marigolds) and which weren’t (calla lilies and crocus). My grandmother taught me how to make fresh gnocchi when I stayed for the summer in Schilpario. Nonna even tried to teach me how to make lace, but I couldn’t get it right. I never tired of watching her dip the threads in sugar water and weave them over a ceramic plate until the strands became an ornate pattern, each an original. Every doily in her house was homemade. In fact, everything she touched was beautiful. On a hot summer day, she’d dip grapes in ice water and roll them in sugar, and they’d look like they were drenched in diamonds. She knew how to make the ordinary seem magical.
“I’m sorry, Ma,” Etta says.
“How’s Grandpop?”
“He’s very sad. But death isn’t scary here. People don’t seem to dread it; they sort of expect it. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“In America, we think we’re going to live forever.” As soon as I say it, I wish I hadn’t. After all, I have a husband who I wish would live forever.
“Here, they celebrate a long life for the gift it is.”
“I’m so glad you were there.”
“It was amazing, Ma. Really. It’s like she went to sleep. Very sweet. So peaceful. I gave her a kiss from you and Dad. She smiled when I did it.”
“Thanks, honey.”
“The last thing she said to all of us was ‘Don’t cry.’ And then she made a fist. We all laughed, but she meant it. And then she was gone.”
My daughter has such a good heart. No matter how frustrated I can be with her decisions, she instinctively knows the loving thing to do. She knows what people around her need and how to comfort them, and that’s more important to me than the so-called big stuff. Etta possesses the kind of wealth we value: a generous spirit, first and always.
“Do you want to talk to Grandpop?” Etta asks.
“Ave Maria?” I hear my father’s voice, and I try not to cry, but I can’t help it.
“I’m so sorry, Papa.”
“She told me she was going to die before the end of the year. And she did. She was ninety-seven years old.”
“We should be so grateful for her long life.”
“We are. We are.”
“Papa, do you want me to come home?”
“There’s no need. She was so happy that she could go to Etta’s wedding. She really liked Stefano. So she felt like she had been given a gift.”
Papa talks about the townspeople stopping by to visit, and how bereft they are; after all, Nonna witnessed three generations come and go in their village.
I pull on my jacket and go out to find Jack and tell him the news. Since he’s been sick, I’ve tried to avoid any discussion of death and dying. If we’re watching something on TV and someon
e dies, I change the channel. If I see a story in the newspaper about a fatal accident, I pull out the page. If I hear a story about someone suffering, I tend not to repeat it to him. He probably thinks about health and mortality enough; I certainly don’t need to pile it on. I wish I didn’t have to tell him about Nonna.
As I make my way to the woods, the field crunches underneath my feet. I see a scythe, a rake, and an ax at the fence line, which means Jack was planning on clearing some brush. I see his footprints at the edge of the field and take the path into the woods. I hear the sound of a hammer against wood, so I follow the sound. The afternoon sun makes pink ribbons of light through the gray trees.
“Jack?” I call out.
“Over here.”
I follow the sound of his voice over the hill toward the flats where the creek runs from Big Cherry Lake down the mountain. The path is muddy where the creek gets wide in the spring, so I hold on to the tree trunks to get to my husband. I see Jack take the hammer and put it back in his tool belt, like James Stewart with a Smith & Wesson in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. When I get to him, he steps aside and says, “What do you think?”
Jack points to a small bridge over the creek. It’s about five feet long and three feet high, fashioned from planks of wood from an old barn. A perfectly shaped crescent, the small bridge fits over the creek at a narrow pass. Clear water pulses over the shiny black rocks underneath. The bridge is so beautiful, in scale and placement, it looks like it has been there a hundred years.
“Is this the surprise?”
“Yep.”
“It’s gorgeous. I love it.”
“Thanks, hon. It always bothered me. We’ve needed a footbridge over this creek for a long time. I used to have to carry Etta and Joe over the rushing water when the spring rains would come. Now, if we want to get to the blackberry patch, we have a bridge.” Jack looks at me. “Are you sure you like it?”
“No, no, it’s wonderful.”
“I had Mousey and Rick do the heavy stuff. They cut the wood and sized it.”
“I’m sure you didn’t overdo it.” I put my arms around him.
“I’m trying to follow doctor’s orders.”
“I know you are.”
“I hate asking the guys to do things for me. I can’t wait till Doc gives me the go-ahead to work like I used to.”
“He will. You just have to be patient.”
Jack holds me a long time.
“I have sad news,” I finally say. “Etta called. Nonna died.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Are you okay?”
“I feel like everything is ending.”
“She was very old.”
“But it’s still ending. It doesn’t matter how old she was, she’s gone. Why did we do it, Jack?”
“Do what?”
“Why did we have children when we knew how sad the world could be?”
“Well, that’s a philosophical question.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And I’m not a philosopher.”
“I know that.”
“But I know why we had children.”
“You do?”
“Because most of it is really good. And if grief is the price you pay for what’s really good, it is well worth it. Now, try ole Blackberry Bridge.” Jack takes my hand and helps me across. “What do you think?”
“You built a bridge.”
Jack smiles. “I always wanted to.”
Iva Lou calls and invites us for wedding leftovers, but I just don’t feel up to it. She’s sad to hear about Nonna. Though no one is surprised because of Nonna’s age, nobody can believe such a life force has gone.
I’m reluctant to let go of any of the members of my Italian family, because no matter how much time I have with them, it will never be enough. I began this race with time the day I met my father. I had missed thirty-five years of connection and was desperate to make up for it. My Italian family never knew me as a baby, or a girl, or a young woman. We missed so much, so many holidays, graduations, and birthdays; special times that should have been rich with celebration were hollow for me. I didn’t know why, of course. I was just aware that something was missing.
I try not to think about how I behaved when Nonna saw me last. I didn’t hide my feelings of disapproval about Etta and Stefano’s wedding. I was so opposed to the marriage, for reasons practical and emotional, and now I find out that the very thing that brought me angst gave my grandmother joy. I was so wrapped up in my own drama that I didn’t take time to be comforted by her wisdom and support. She did what family should do: she stood with Etta and trusted her. Whether Nonna agreed with the marriage or not, she did not say.
Papa told me that Nonna had made many cakes for the brides in Schilpario over the years. She considered the wedding cakes works of art. At the time I thought she’d stayed in the kitchen, baking Etta’s cake, because she needed something to do. The truth is, she wanted to make the cake for her great-granddaughter because she wanted Etta to have a perfect day.
Maybe Nonna knew at her advanced age that life can be long, but true love doesn’t come as a guarantee, if it comes at all. She saw something wonderful in Etta and Stefano together that I, as Etta’s mother, was blind to. Or maybe I didn’t want to see how happy my daughter was because then I would have had to support her decision. Nonna knew it was Etta’s moment, and she wanted her to have it, to hold it, to own it. Nonna knew it might not come again.
It took Nonna hours to make the marzipan cherubs for the cake. She carved them herself out of the almond paste with a small paring knife. They looked like putti you find hovering in Renaissance murals, some smiling with full faces, resting on wings without bodies (those were secured into the frosting, as if in relief), and others with chubby bodies and delicate spun-sugar wings doing the heavy lifting, holding up the layers between the tiers.
For every moment that I have wished Etta to be home, near me, I now begin to see some wisdom in her decision to marry Stefano and live in Italy. There are things she needs to experience in order to grow beyond the world we created in our home. Of course, I wanted her to be a single woman experiencing those things, savoring her glorious solitude and building her own life without worrying about a husband’s needs. But, as with most decisions your children make, you can be sure of them only when time has passed and there’s a context for their choices.
I want my daughter to be happy; all good mothers who ever were and ever will be have the same dream for their children. When I saw Etta take an enormous risk for her future at the expense of her youth, I couldn’t accept it. There are still days when I question it. When Etta married so young, I could not think of a single good thing to come of it. Now I see one. She is there, in Italy. Her young marriage gave my daughter the opportunity to be with her great-grandmother when she died. There is a great gift in being with those you love as they’re dying. When you’ve said all you can say, when you’ve done everything you can to make your loved one comfortable, when there is at last nothing left to do, all that remains is the mystical moment of surrender. Why should anyone face that alone? Maybe there is some master plan at work; maybe Etta knows something I don’t. How could one so young see things so clearly? Was it her fate to be there? Maybe fate is the footwork of decisions made with loving intentions.
Someday, if I’ve done my job, Etta will lead this family after I’m gone, after Jack is gone, and after her children have grown up and left her. We don’t stop being mothers when our children leave us; we continue to teach them in everything we say and do. I still marvel at how much I count on my mother’s love and advice, even though she has been gone over twenty years. I close my eyes and can still hear her voice, and there’s never any question in my mind what her advice would be. Mama is still my most important model in all things.
Taking care of my mother when she was sick prepared me to look after my son and then my husband when he fell ill. I couldn’t see it at the time, but my mother, even as she was dying, was still teaching me how t
o be a good person right up to the moment I lost her. “There is no such thing as too much generosity,” she used to say. She wasn’t talking about dropping off soup for someone sick (though that’s important) or running errands for someone homebound (though that’s kind). She was talking about a generosity of spirit, about being present when a person is afraid. She taught me not to run but to stay and listen. When people are sick, they crave reassurance and care, and when they’re dying, they need to feel treasured. They need to know that you loved them, and that you always will. I’m sure Etta gave that to Nonna. There couldn’t have been a better emissary for my heart’s desire than my daughter.
Salzburg
The cast of The Sound of Music gathers on the stage of the Powell Valley High School auditorium with anticipation. They greet one another, chatting and laughing, as they take their seats in folding chairs, which I have placed in a wide circle. The work lights are on, the coffee is brewing, highlighters are out and at the ready. It’s time to do the first read-through of the script.
I’m about to call roll when Nellie Goodloe runs down the aisle waving a letter. “It’s here! The letter from Mr. Ted Chapin of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization in New York City! We are cleared to do The Sound of Music!”
The cast whistles and applauds. This is good news indeed. We thought there was a chance that they wouldn’t allow us to mount a production at all. You see, we fell into disfavor with the Rodgers & Hammerstein folks over nonpayment of royalties for a production of The King and I that we did in 1987. Nellie didn’t pay because she had scripts and scores from a production they had done back in 1969, so she didn’t see any need for our town to pay twice. Mr. Chapin set her straight with a letter embargoing the production. We had to have a bake sale, a car wash, and a seed sale to make the nut and go on with the show. It did go on, after we paid our back royalties and fees.