Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani

Author:Adriana Trigiani [Trigiani, Adriana]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 0100-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

We never saw Elizabeth Taylor again. After the bone was dislodged, she rested for several hours; then, in the wee hours of the morning, she was transported out of Big Stone Gap by helicopter to a large hospital in Richmond, on the other side of the state. She recuperated there for the remaining days of the campaign. John Warner won the election by a hair; many thought he got a lot of sympathy votes because his wife suffered an accident while on the stump for him. It’s a shame that Big Stone Gap will be remembered not for the way we honored her but as the campaign stop where Elizabeth Taylor swallowed a chicken bone. Folks ’round here have a theory about it all: Maybe there’s some old Scotch-Irish curse on us. After all, the coal-mining boom never made us the Pittsburgh of the South; now we’ve choked an international movie star; maybe we’re just not meant to be part of the Big World.

After all the hoopla (which gave me a chance to put my life on hold), I face myself again. I finally sit down and write my Aunt Meoli a letter. The letter writing is cathartic. I figure she’s in her sixties now, so I start the letter with a request for her to be with somebody before she continues reading the letter, in case she passes out or something. It is very hard for me to write about my mother’s death, but knowing that this is my mother’s sister, I give her every detail to the best of my recollection. Mama always expected the whole truth from me—how ironic—so I assume her sister would, too. I don’t know why Mama didn’t tell me about her family, especially since we had thirteen years without Fred Mulligan around. What was she still afraid of? Why didn’t she see our trip as an opportunity to clear her conscience and share the truth with me? There were so many opportunities for her to tell me her story. When our passports arrived, she could have told me everything then. She could have told me on the plane to Italy. Pick any number of days, of moments inside those days, when it was just the two of us, here alone in this house, in private, without the threat of any outsider. She could have unburdened herself. What a gift the truth would have been! We could have flown to Italy together and reunited with the people I come from. She could have introduced me to her family. We could have stayed with them, learned about them, caught up on all the time that had gone by. I would have aunts and uncles and cousins who loved me. Look at all I missed in the bubble of a lie.

I’m about to dig into a nice slice of a chocolate layer cake that the Tuckett sisters dropped off (the other half was delivered to Theodore). I’ve been getting a lot of covered dishes since I was part of the team that saved Elizabeth Taylor’s life.

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