Milk Glass Moon (7 page)

“If you want me to help, you have to let me make the decisions with you. That’s all I’m saying.” Jack’s tone is even and calm, as though we’ve had this argument before. (We have.)

“I’m sorry. This incident hit a nerve.”

“I see that.” Jack puts his arm around me. I sink into him like a spoon in cake batter.

“All the books say to get a grip on your emotions before you discipline your child. Haven’t I done that in the past? I usually have a grip, don’t I?”

“Yes, you do. Most of the time.”

“But this time I saw myself in it. I was like Miss Benton for a lot of years. It’s like Etta did something personal to the person I used to be.”

Jack holds me for a long time, and I don’t say a word. No matter how many years go by, I’m never very far from who I was, the ferriner, the unmarried one, the lone Eye-talian. And no matter how many years go by, I carry her inside me. Somehow I know that I always will.

Etta has left for school early. She has the Girls’ Athletic Association preschool basketball game, but I’m sure she wants to avoid me. Jack is off to work already, so the house is quiet. As I pull a mug from the kitchen cabinet, I see a letter addressed to me propped on the windowsill. With the end of a teaspoon, I open the letter and unfold it, then I pour myself a cup of coffee.

Dear Mom,

I know you hate me right now but I wanted you to hear my side of things. I did do the wrong thing. I did call the coal company and place the order on a Friday when we knew they were rushing to get out of there and wouldn’t check. I don’t hate Miss Benton, except for the laps she makes us run, she’s been a pretty good band director. We thought it would be funny to see a pile of coal in her yard. I didn’t think about how we would get it out of there. I am very sorry. I am sorry I hurt Miss Benton and sorry I can’t go to New York where I’ve always wanted to go. I won’t order a coal dump in anyone’s yard anymore.

Etta

I grab some paper and a pen and write Etta a note back.

Dear Etta,

I don’t hate you. I don’t like what you did, there’s a difference. I believe you are sorry for the coal dump and that you won’t do it again. But next time you think of doing something for the sport of it, would you please consider the person’s feelings? How would you like someone to do that to you?

Love,Mom

I leave the letter on Etta’s bed, noting that her room has never been so neat. She’s not a bad kid, I remind myself as I pack up for work. She didn’t try to weasel out of her punishment or blame anyone else for the prank. Maybe she even learned something. But it’s uncanny to me, how my kid can zero in on my sensitivities. She knows I’m protective of new folks who move to town. And she knows equally well what is required for me to set myself on the path of forgiveness.

Life in Cracker’s Neck Holler has been so quiet since the coal dump a month ago, you’d think this old house was a monastery. I chose not to back down on my punishment. Etta will not be going to New York City with me (this time), and Jack agreed. It is so hard to follow through with this decision, because one of my dreams for my daughter is to travel, to expose her to the outside world, to museums, plays, culture. A couple of days ago, I almost buckled, but Jack reined me in. It won’t be Etta’s last chance to visit New York City, he reminded me. And both Jack and I feel it’s more important to stand by the punishment than to let her think we can be softened up with a few nicely made beds. I keep a picture of Pavis Mullins in my head at all times to remind myself that once children think they can get away with something, they’ll continue to try.

Iva Lou volunteered to chauffeur me to the airport—I got a great fare, and I’ll be in New York City by suppertime. Etta has a football game, where Jack is working the Band Boosters’ refreshment stand; Conley Barker, who runs the taxi service, is unavailable because he also announces home games for the radio, so Iva Lou generously volunteered, even though she loves Powell Valley football and hates to miss a game. I apologize for putting her out.

“It is no problem. So, you gonna see that hunk from New Jersey when you’re up there?” Iva Lou adjusts the rearview mirror and looks at me. The road to the Tri-Cities airport is hilly, and I get butterflies as Iva Lou sails over the bumps.

“Who?” I play dumb.

“Pete Rutledge.” Iva Lou draws his name out slowly.

“I don’t know.” I’m lying, of course. I would like to see Pete, my what-if fantasy. What married woman doesn’t have a Plan B? You know, the handsome man from the past who, if the circumstances were different, would be the Man of the Present. Pete was very romantic and very interested four summers ago in Italy, but of course, I was married. So I safely placed him on a back burner, to lift the lid on
that
pot only when I was mad at Jack or bored with my life or stressed by my daughter. Pete Rutledge is like a good old movie that I return to in my mind’s eye when I need a lift. In those moments I tell myself that if anything ever happens to Jack, there is always Pete. I do feel guilty about it, but I consider it Practical Fantasizing: when I’m being taken for granted or I get bogged down by drudgery, I can return to that field of bluebells and imagine what might have been.

“I thought New York and New Jersey were as close as Coeburn and Norton.”

“They are.”

“So he’s right
there,
and you’re right there. Did you pack your high heels?”

“What for?”

“So you can walk all over him.”

“Don’t you think I have enough to worry about?”

“Yeah, you do, honey, I’m just messin’ with you.” Iva Lou laughs.

“We’re talking about me, not you. I’m not a flirt.”

“Hmm. So you been thinkin’ about how to get away with something.”

“Absolutely not. I have a good husband, and I don’t need any excitement.”

“Oh, honey-o, excitement is the only thing worth livin’ for.” Iva Lou stops at the light outside Gate City. “But I’ll make sure that things are as dull as dirt in the Gap. I’ll keep an eye on your husband while you’re off
not
gettin’ excited.”

“Not necessary.”

“I’ll be the judge of that. We just hired him to build us some storage units at the library, should keep him busy about a week.” Iva Lou winks at me.

“Isn’t that funny—the exact amount of time I’ll be gone.”

“Uh-huh. We murried gals got to stick together and form a shield around our men,” Iva Lou says with a resolve I haven’t heard since she went before the county to request a new Bookmobile (she got it).

As I board the plane, I look back and wave good-bye to Iva Lou. I have no problem leaving my life in her hands, none whatsoever.

CHAPTER THREE

The first rule about living in New York City (according to Theodore Tipton) is that no one ever picks up a guest at the airport. Never. Apparently, La Guardia Airport is a zoo, and it’s up to the guest to get in the taxicab line (I’m not taking the bus; Theodore’s instructions were too confusing), tell the driver your address, and sit back and hope he doesn’t take you on a hayride to Connecticut or beyond.

I went digging into my mom’s trunks for my wardrobe for this trip. I found a vintage cropped jacket in a navy blue velvet and embroidered pants, the wide-legged, high-waisted style from the early 1940s. Theodore said the weather had turned cold early and to dress warmly, so I figured the velvet would be perfect. I want to dazzle Theodore’s friends, so I even threw in some of Mama’s jewelry. She made a brooch of jet beads, which I’ll wear to a night out at the theater. My only wardrobe worry is shoes—mine are woefully not up to snuff, so I’ll splurge on some new ones in Greenwich Village (Theodore calls Eighth Street, near his apartment, Shoe Town). I’m wearing a black turtleneck and black jeans; I figure that’s a standard New York look, so I won’t look like I have “tourist” tattooed on my forehead.

It’s surprising how self-reliant I become when I’m alone. Part of being married is getting lazy; when I’m home I leave all the logistics (directions to Biltmore House and Gardens for a school field trip) and icky weird chores (cleaning the furnace, trapping mice) to my husband. It’s empowering for me to negotiate my way through one of the busiest airports in the world. I pass under the entry portal, where LA GUARDIA pulses overhead in giant red letters; how thrilling, a fellow Eye-talian and former mayor of New York City with an airport named after him!

As I wait for my luggage, it seems like thousands of people are milling about, no two of them alike. New York really is the capital of the world, and I’m as intrigued by the wide-eyed Indian woman in her turquoise sari with strips of gold lamé on the hem as I am by the tall Russian in a bad mood who yanks his oversize duffel bags off the carousel and loads them onto a cart. I reach my hands up over my head, embracing the whole scene, and have a good stretch, thrilled to be here, so happy to be a part of something so exciting and new (to me, anyway).

“Your first trip?” a voice says behind me (I guess my look of wonder and appreciation has given me away). I drop my arms and turn.

“I went through JFK once on my way to Italy.” Do I sound like a defensive tourist or what?

“Hmm. You Italian?”

“I am.” In New York, you’re an American second and where you immigrated from first.

“Me too.” The man is around sixty, with a shock of salt-and-pepper hair. He is small and trim, and has a long nose with a very fine bridge (according to the ancient art of Chinese face reading, he may well live to be a hundred years old).

“Where are your people from?” I ask.

“Napoli.”

“You’re southern.”

“And you?”

“North. The Alps.”

“They’re pieces of work up there.” The man laughs.

“How do you know?”

“I married one.” The man doesn’t take his eyes off the baggage carousel as it rotates. “Once my wife and me, we were in Atlantic City and went to a show, and they had a comedian there—you know, the warm-up guy. Anyway, he came over to our table and said, ‘You two married?’ and we said that we were, and he said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, these two agree about
nothing.
’ And everybody laughed, and so did we, ’cause it’s true. Northern Italians and southern Italians might as well be from two different planets, you know what I mean?”

I nod that I do. I can’t believe how fast people talk here. That same observation would have taken someone in Big Stone Gap about three hours to relate. Of course, back home we
have
the three hours to spare. Here everyone is in a hurry.

My cabdriver is Pakistani, and he is happy to tell me all about his homeland. I am having more interesting conversations in five minutes in New York than I do in a year in Big Stone Gap. We turn off the Grand Central Parkway and onto the road that leads to the Queens end of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. The driver waves his hand over the Manhattan skyline as though presenting a box of jewels. At any moment I expect Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers to spin across the sky; I see the clouds as her marabou cape and the stars, the heels of his black patent-leather wing tips, their glittering shoes barely touching down on the emerald-cut horizon as they dance. What could top the magnificence of this picture? Theodore is so lucky, and I am so lucky that my best friend now
lives
under these lights and inside this fabulous madness. I feel a pang of guilt, though. Etta should be here.

“You okay, lady?” The driver looks at me in the rearview mirror.

“I wish my daughter were here,” I tell him.

“New York City is not going anywhere. It will always be here,” he says, and smiles. And, oddly enough, that makes me feel much better.

A doorman in a navy blue uniform with gold epaulets greets me in the small but ornate rococo lobby of Theodore’s building on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Ninth Street in Greenwich Village. After I got out of the cab, I must have spent five minutes looking down to the arch at Washington Square Park, a four-story pale blue horseshoe that conjures the Champs-Élysées in Paris. “I just want to take one more look,” I tell the doorman as he buzzes Theodore. I go back outside and look up Fifth Avenue to where the yellow stripes in the center of the street become one giant arrow that disappears into the darkness of uptown.

“Hey, the reunion’s inside!” Theodore says, stepping out of the elevator. “You made it!” He looks handsome. His red hair is sandy with gray. He is in great shape, as though auditioning for the dance corps at Radio City instead of directing it. He looks younger somehow. The worry creases between his eyes are gone, and it seems like the whole of him has relaxed (no small feat for a perfectionist).

Every detail of Theodore’s new home interests me: the elevator with the shiny brass buttons; the walnut panels inlaid with 1930s Chinese foil wallpaper in the hallways; the carpet, a black and gray wool harlequin pattern (very deco). Any moment I expect Carole Lombard to peek out one of the doors looking for William Powell. We reach the door to Theodore’s apartment. The small name tag over the doorbell that reads TIPTON proves that this whole trip is not a dream.

“What do you think?” Theodore stands in the middle of his living room, tastefully done in simple grays and off-white, very spare and neat. There are three large windows that overlook Fifth Avenue. I walk over to take in the scene below. The traffic streams toward Washington Square like a loose string of pop beads.

“Sure beats your log cabin in Powell Valley.”

“I wish I had the closets I had in Big Stone Gap. But the only people with big closets in this city own the buildings.” I follow Theodore down a small hallway with track lighting. “Check out the bedrooms. This one is yours.” He drops my bags in a room so small, there is only a single bed, a nightstand, and a straight-back chair. He has decorated it simply with an antique quilt made by my mother-in-law (a gift from me when he got the job at the University of Tennessee). “And this is mine.” Theodore pushes open the door to his bedroom. It looks sleek, with a platform bed and a gray slipper chair in the corner. It’s almost the size of the living room, except it overlooks Washington Square Park.

“Oh my God” is all I can say.

“I know, I know. Every night before I go to bed, I think of Henry James.”

“That’s the actual spot where Dr. Sloper lived, isn’t it?” I point to a row of brownstones that faces the park.

“Could be.”

“Remember when we used to read
The Heiress
aloud?”

“Yep. Your interpretation of Catherine Sloper will never be topped. Even though I am the only person in the world who heard you read it.” Theodore laughs.

“Let’s just say I could relate to the story.” And boy, did I. The story of an oppressed daughter of a cruel father rang true to me. “Who would have ever thought you would be living in Henry James country?”

Theodore hasn’t changed so much as evolved. He is comfortable in his skin, in this apartment, in his life. There is an ease to him that was never there before. “You look better than you’ve ever looked. I’m not kidding.”

“That’s what happens when you find the place where you fit.”

“Weren’t you nervous to move here?”

“Oh, God no. I couldn’t wait. I’m just glad I finally made it.” Theodore looks at me and smiles. “You look good.”

“Oh, come on.”

“No, you do.”

I follow Theodore into the kitchen. A bar counter separates the kitchen from the living room, and he’s set the small dining table and chairs in front of the counter with white china and a white tablecloth. Then we hear a buzzer.

“Dinner’s on.”

“Dinner?”

“I can’t possibly top Charlie Mom’s Chinese. Wait till you taste the honey spareribs. Sit here so you have the view.”

Theodore answers the door. A cute Chinese kid delivers two brown bags. Imagine. Dinner delivered hot to your door. How I wish I had this sort of setup in Big Stone Gap! Theodore unloads the bags, filling the table with small white boxes. “Tell me why you didn’t bring Etta.”

I tell Theodore every detail of the coal prank. He listens without interruption.

“What was the punishment?”

“We made the kids shovel the coal back onto the truck and resod her yard.”

“They got off easy. I would’ve made them shovel the coal into wheelbarrows and walk it back to Appalachia.” Theodore loads my plate with all sorts of delicacies—tiny shrimp, fluffy rice, chopped vegetables. “Etta organized five other kids to pull this off?”

“Yes. I couldn’t believe it. She was in charge, but she had Misty Lassiter egging her on.”

“Tayloe’s daughter?”

“Yeah. She’s got all of Tayloe’s beauty and talent plus a cunning criminal mind, which really adds to her allure.”

Theodore smiles. “That bad, huh?”

“Well, I’m a little put out by the whole thing.” I stab a sparerib. “I feel like I can’t trust Etta now, and I hate that. If she’s not climbing on our roof, she’s pulling pranks. I don’t want to monitor her every move. I don’t want to hover. But she doesn’t leave me a choice.”

“You need to keep her busy.”

“She’s in the band; she plays basketball before school; she works with her dad on weekends. How busy can I keep her? I don’t know what else to do, short of sending her to convent school.”

“There’s a good one right across the river in Jersey.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

“Back when I was teaching kids, I noticed patterns—”

“What kind of patterns?” I blurt nervously. As usual, my mind leaps to the worst-case scenario.

“Relax. It’s just that the smartest kids were the ones who pulled stuff. Now, I’m not talking about the suck-up brainiacs, I’m talking about the kids who, no matter how many clubs and activities you put them in, still have time to cut up. Etta sounds like she’s bored. She’s hanging out with older kids, she’s got time on her hands during the school day. These are all the classic signs of a troublemaker. You have to help her find a way to engage her mind.”

“I’d like to find a way to engage her heart,” I tell Theodore plainly.

“What do you mean?”

“I’d like her to think of other people and their feelings. Don’t get me wrong. I know it could be worse and I know she has a good heart, but she’s more headstrong than loving.”

“She sounds like Mrs. Mac.” Theodore leans back and laughs, remembering my mother-in-law. “That was one tough lady. She had that cane. She didn’t carry it around because she needed the support, she used it to intimidate people. She was always banging it on the floor or catching a closing door with it. I remember I was in the post office once, going out, and she was coming in. I was in a rush, so I sort of sprinted out of there. She stopped me and said, ‘Mr. Tipton?’ And then she whacked me on the butt and said, ‘Youth! Always in a hurry!’ ”

“How about when she came into the Pharmacy and asked me why I didn’t accept her son’s proposal? I was humiliated.”

“She wound up getting her way, didn’t she?” Theodore laughs and refills our wineglasses.

“How
are
you and Jack doing?”

“We’re in a good place.”

“No distractions?”

“You mean Karen Bell?” If there are even rumors about your husband straying, it becomes the touchstone of every conversation you’ll have about your marriage. But I don’t mind, because this is Theodore. “Well, I haven’t found any notes, and there haven’t been any phone calls, and Iva Lou says that Karen found a serious boyfriend up in Honaker, and Fleeta says she hasn’t heard tell of her in Norton, so I guess she’s out of the picture entirely.”

“Well, that’s good. It’s funny about affairs, though, isn’t it? They’re so—I don’t know,
urgent
when they’re happening, uncontrollable almost, and then once they’re over, it’s hard to remember why the passion consumed you in the first place.”

This is why Theodore and I remain so close after all these years. He can look at my life and see it clearly, in ways that I cannot. He reads my heart like a passage from a play, with emotional understanding of the moment but with one eye always on the bigger picture. Wherever he is, I feel at home with him, even in New York City, a place that once lived only in my imagination.

The guest bathroom is loaded up with all sorts of bubble baths and soaps in a basket. I take full advantage of a faceted bottle marked CALM, pouring the opulent lavender milk into the hottest water I can stand. The stress of my trip and all the anxiety leading up to it float up and out the transom in the steam. I let it go and breathe deeply.

Theodore knows how to treat a guest. The candles, nestled in a series of crystal cups, are scented like sugar cookies and throw shadows of snowflakes onto the wall. There’s a stack of fluffy white towels in a wrought-iron antique stand; they’re monogrammed not with initials but with the word RELAX. There’s even a shower radio, and I turn on some music while I soak. (It’s set on a country station, which makes me laugh.) Theodore thinks of everything; maybe that’s why Radio City Music Hall snapped him up—great art is in the details.