Chapter Eight #3
You’ll find the Rustic Nail Ornament in a bright red velvet box labeled with the number 4.
Open the lid and prepare to be… well, underwhelmed.
The rusted and bent nail looks as if it’s seen better days, and it has.
This nail came from the Old Bloom Mill House.
During its transformation, as I walked the property, I nearly stepped on this nail, which might have altered the whole story I’m about to tell.
Instead, I spotted the nail, like a copper penny on the ground, picked it up, and slid it in my pocket like a good luck charm.
How desperate I must have been to think a rusty, old nail would serve such a purpose…
This rusted nail should be hung fourth down on your tree.
I’ve tied a gold ribbon around its head.
Here’s the story behind it.
The day I drove home from New York on my way back to Bloom, it rained the entire trip.
Looking back, I can’t decide if it was actually raining or if it was just my tears blurring my vision that gray afternoon because the windshield wipers couldn’t seem to make anything more clear.
Truthfully, I’m shocked I made it back to the house where I grew up. But I did.
I was home. That’s how I felt when I passed the WELCOME TO BLOOM sign. Some part of me also felt like I was returning with my tail between my legs and a secret baby in my belly.
I didn’t want anyone to know about the pregnancy at first. Least of all Ralph. I’d left him with no good-bye, just like he told me to. And I was terrified he might not take me back. I wouldn’t if I were in his shoes. My worst fear was that he wouldn’t want our baby.
It was ours, of course. I’d never been with any man before Ralph. He was my one and my only.
All I knew as I drove those miles back to North Carolina was that I did want the baby.
Whether it was a him or a her. Or one of each.
Twins run in the family, you know. I hadn’t even been to a doctor yet to confirm the pregnancy, but I didn’t need to.
A woman knows these things even if she’s never experienced them before.
My first stop when I returned to Bloom was my parents’ house.
I parked inside their garage, went inside the house, and closed myself off in my childhood bedroom.
I didn’t show my face for three days. On the third day, my mother knocked on my bedroom door and came in without waiting for me to respond.
“How far along are you?” she asked with a knowing look.
The tears exploded out of me. Uncontrollable sobs.
Holding in a secret is so lonely, but I didn’t know how to tell them.
I knew they’d be so disappointed in me and, after a lifetime of trying to be the good girl, the one my parents could brag about to their friends, I felt like a failure.
I couldn’t face her. Instead, I turned my gaze out the window that overlooked my mother’s beautiful flower garden in the backyard.
“I-I don’t know.” My voice was barely more than a whisper, and my body was trembling.
My cheeks were wet with the tears streaming down.
My mother stepped over and kneeled at my bedside. She laid a gentle hand on my forearm. “Does Ralph know?”
I shook my head quickly, nearly choking on my sobs.
“I haven’t spoken to him since I left town.
I made him promise that we wouldn’t… he couldn’t…
” I could barely get the words out, and I didn’t want to explain.
Explaining made me feel like a bad person.
There were all these ideas in my head about how things were supposed to look and feel and be.
Having a baby was supposed to feel joyful, and that wasn’t at all how I felt.
I was scared. Lonely. Heartbroken. I’d even heard that Ralph had been seen around town with an old classmate of mine. “Does Daddy know?”
When my mother didn’t answer, I finally looked in her direction.
What I saw was so unexpected. There was no disappointment in my mother’s eyes. Instead, I saw warmth. “Mom?” I asked again.
She squeezed my forearm, a tiny hug and show of support.
“Men aren’t as intuitive when it comes to these things.
And your father is more clueless than most.” She laughed quietly.
Then her expression grew serious. “Is this something you can live with? Leaving your dreams of Broadway behind to raise a child? It isn’t easy.
In fact, motherhood is the hardest thing you’ll ever do. ”
I’d been asking myself the same question since the moment I knew.
“Broadway wasn’t what I thought it’d be.
” I took a steadying breath. In Bloom, I had been the best. I don’t say that in an egotistical way.
A person knows when they’re good at something, and I knew I was good.
Every time I stepped onstage, my entire body had this electric feeling, buzzing from my head to my toes.
That’s how I felt onstage in Bloom, at least. But in New York, there were hundreds of young women just like me, all competing for the same role.
It was a wake-up call. I was no longer buzzing.
No longer happy. After dozens of auditions, I got the smallest of roles—smaller than anything I’d ever played before.
“I’ve always thought theater was like playing dress-up, but that’s not how it felt when I was there,” I told her.
My mother looked at me as if she were reading me like a book.
I’m not sure how long that moment lasted, but when she was finished, she took a quick breath and expelled it quietly.
“Nannie, this is what we’re going to do.
” She was in full mom-mode, even though she’d been great about giving me my independence once I was eighteen.
“I’ve saved quite a bit of money. When I married your father, my mama told me to put away a couple of dollars here and a couple there.
In case a time ever came when I needed to get out of a situation. ”
“With Daddy?” I asked, surprised.
She waved her hand as if to erase whatever thoughts were rushing into my mind. “I realized long ago that wouldn’t be an issue. Your father isn’t perfect, but he tries. And he loves me. I’ve never for a moment questioned that.”
It struck me that Mama didn’t say she loved him too.
“The mill is for sale,” she finally said decisively. “We’re going to buy it.”
I honestly had no idea what my mother was talking about. “A mill?” Did she think I had come home pregnant, dejected, and desperate enough to run a mill? I had no training or knowledge of what even happened in a mill.
“We’ll buy it and turn it into a theater. All these years, watching you onstage in the school cafeterias or random buildings, I always thought that Bloom should have a proper stage. A community theater.”
Pride was reflected in her eyes. When I’d wondered how she’d react when I finally told her my secret, I’d never imagined her offering to buy an old mill and turn it into a theater.
“Mom, that will cost a small fortune,” I whispered, too afraid to hope that her idea had any merit. And what kind of community theater could possibly be built inside a building that was halfway falling apart?
“Good. Because I listened to my mother.”
At that time, my grandmother was suffering early-onset dementia.
The grandmother I knew wasn’t the wise woman who my mama loved to tell me about.
Leaning in, as if telling me something very important, only for my ears, my mother said, “Because a small fortune is exactly what I’ve stored up all these years. And now I’m giving it to you.”
The thing about nails is that they may be small, but they’re strong.
They weather the storm, even if they come out a bit rusty.
Nails have teeth and they can do a lot of damage with one misstep.
Have you ever stepped on one? Oh, but in the right conditions, a nail can build homes, cities…
a theater. A nail can even build a dream.