Big Cherry Holler (13 page)

“What a pretty name.”

“Thank you.”

“She’s Italian,” my husband tells her. I guess he’s explaining my name.

“Yeah, I’m just plain old Karen. There’s a million of them out there,” she says, and shrugs.

My mind races: the name Karen. I’ve heard that before. The Pharmacy? A Karen called Jack at the Pharmacy, before I went to Knoxville! Why do I feel as though I’ve caught my husband doing something wrong?

Karen Bell wears a blue-and-tan-plaid pleated skirt and a sweater set in soft blue, a shell with a cardigan over it. She is carrying a clipboard and has a pencil tucked behind her ear (all business). She is much smaller than she appeared to be at the carnival. She’s one of those women a man could carry around like a doll. And the way she moves, she comes at you one piece at a time, reminding me of the goatherd girl marionette my father sent Etta from Italy. Every movement is deliberate.

“Karen’s our supplier.”

“Supplier?” I guess I say this in a funny way because she laughs.

“I supply the aggravation,” she says.

“That must be expensive.”

“Depends.” She looks at me for the first time. Or maybe she just sees me for the first time. She slides one hip onto one of the horses and perches there. Then she rubs a pencil between her palms; it clacks against her rings. (But not one of them is a wedding band.)

“Karen is a salesperson for Luck’s Lumber,” Jack tells me.

“Yeah, that’s how we met,” she says.

How we met? What an odd phrase for a salesperson to use. “Did Jack ever tell you how
we
met?” I say, wrapping my arms around him.

“No, he didn’t.”

“In kindergarten.”

“That’s so cute. Childhood sweethearts,” Karen says, not meaning it.

“Not really,” I tell her.

“Let’s say we got together later in life,” Jack adds.

“Not too late, though.” I pick up a hammer and hit my open palm with it. I do this a few times before Jack takes it away from me.

“Jack, do you want to take one last look at these blueprints?” Karen is asking him the question, but she’s looking at me politely, like “Could you get out of the way? We’ve got business here.”

“Sorry. I interrupted. You guys go ahead. Do your business thing,” I say nicely, and go off to the far wall to examine my husband’s Sheetrock technique. I lean against the radiator to get a closer look, placing my hand on it—it’s actually very hot, and I think I now have third-degree burns on my palm. But I don’t scream, I just shove my hot hand into my pocket.

Karen unrolls the blueprints, which, out of the corner of my eye, look like complicated geometry to me. How hard is it to take down walls and put them back up again to reconfigure a kitchen? From the size of the blue paper and the series of complicated intersecting chalk lines: very. I watch as Karen, capable and professional, shows Jack and Mousey how things are to be done. What they need. How they can save on insulation. What size wood they need to lengthen the counter space in the kitchen. My husband listens carefully to what she is saying. She makes sense when he challenges her with a good question. Respect washes across his face when she comes up with a solution to a problem he couldn’t solve until she stepped in. She taps her foot and continues to roll a pencil between her hands. She has given this
project a lot of thought. This is a woman with follow-through. She always has a plan.

“Well, I guess I’d better get back to the office.” Karen rolls up the blueprints. She looks over at me as if to say, “Okay, he’s all yours. You can talk about what he wants for dinner, what time the PTA meeting starts, and does he need new underwear.” The boring stuff that wives do, not the fascinating stuff of blueprints, raw materials, architecture, and construction—the stuff of Karen Bell.

She tucks the prints under her arm like a baton and walks across the room to her coat, dangling on a nail. Mousey watches her as she goes. She’s got one of those walks where her rear end makes a complete circle as she moves. Smart and Sexy, just like
Redbook
magazine says, I think as she walks. Just what I should be, I tell myself. Jack keeps his eyes on the wall.

“Y’all let me know if you need anything else. You know where to find me,” she says as she goes upstairs.

“Nice to meet you!” I call after her.

“You too” is the muffled reply.

“I’ve got a problem, guys.” Jack and Mousey look at me. I guess my tone of voice sounds oddly curt. “Otto and Worley need help installing the oven.” Boy, does that sound like the lamest excuse ever invented by a wife who suddenly had to come up with a cover story when she caught her husband with a mysterious blonde.

“We could take a look at it. Later, though, okay?”

“That would be great. There’s some problem wiring, and the BTUs of the oven. That sort of thing. We may have to open a wall.” What am I saying? I don’t know anything about opening up walls. I’m just repeating a fragment of a conversation I heard Otto having with Worley. Who am I trying to impress? My husband? “Anyway, I don’t know details, guys. All I know is we have a deadline.”

“We’ll stop over later,” Jack promises, and kisses me on the forehead like I’m Shoo the Cat.

As I climb the stairs out to the street, Karen Bell’s perfume lingers
in the air. It’s that Charlie cologne that makes Fleeta sneeze. It’s too sweet, even in afterthought. It feels good to get out in the fresh air again.

Christmas in the Gap is a month-long affair. Of course, the kickoff was the opening of the new Mutual Pharmacy Soda Fountain. (Thank you, MR. J’s Construction, for your electrical assistance in the wee hours of November 30.) Pearl wisely featured prices from the original Soda Fountain days for the first week: Cokes for a nickel, sundaes for a dime, and so forth. It has become a real hangout. Even folks just passing through the Gap stop in for a cup of coffee and pie. One man on his way to Bristol from Middlesboro, Kentucky, stopped in for Tayloe’s autograph. He saw her on local TV selling storm windows and was thrilled to meet the Real Thing and leave her a big tip.

Inez Eisenberg heads the committee for Decoration Downtown; she’s asked every business on Main Street to hang a wreath with tiny white lights on our entrances. Everyone complied except Zackie Wakin, who hung his wreath with blue lights (he sells them, so he used them). The Methodist Sewing Circle sponsors a door-decoration contest on private homes. Louise Camblos even decorated her doghouse door, that’s how competitive folks get.

The local garden clubs boost Christmas spirit with their holiday flower shows. The Dogwood Garden Club decorates the Southwest Virginia Museum; the Intermont Club takes over the John Fox, Jr., house; and the Green Thumb ladies dress up June Tolliver’s House down by the Outdoor Drama Theatre. They ship judges in from eastern Virginia to judge horticulture (you should see Betty Cline’s Christmas cactus), arrangements (Arline Sharpe’s centerpiece of stacked Rome apples on the dining room table at the museum is a wonder), and special creations like a ceramic Madonna and Child placed amid gold gourds.

Iva Lou, Fleeta, and I are spending most of Sunday touring the exhibitions.
We’re about to enter the Rooms of Historical Distinction when Joella Reasor stops us in the narrow hallway.

“Hey y’all,” she says in a tone that tells us there’s gossip. She wipes the corners of her mouth, where the orange lipstick bled, with her thumb and forefinger.

“Spill, Joella. We ain’t got all damn day,” Fleeta says impatiently.

“Pearl Grimes is in the Victorian Room with her doctor friend.”

“From here on in, we’ll have to call it the Indian Room.” Fleeta chuckles as she searches the room for Pearl and her man.

A ten-foot blue spruce is decorated with tiny handmade lace fans. The boughs of the tree are filled with hundreds of midnight-blue satin ribbons tied into neat bows. Ropes of miniature pale lavender pearls drizzle down the branches. Moravian stars punched out of old tin nestle near the trunk, throwing oddly shaped beams of light around the room. “That’s a stunner,” Iva Lou says. “I wonder if they’ll sell it to me.”

“There they is!” Fleeta clucks. Pearl and her doctor kiss under the mistletoe hung on the pocket doors between the Victorian and antebellum eras.

“Doctor B. It’s so good to see you again.” I give him a big hug. We ferriners should stick together. Besides, if this romance works out with Pearl, he’ll be family.

“Joe’s doctor.” Iva Lou whispers this as though she doesn’t realize she’s said it aloud.

I cover for her. “Iva Lou, you remember Dr. Bakagese.”

“Of course. How are you?”

“Fine. Thank you.”

Fleeta looks at me sadly; she can be sensitive once every hundred years or so, and this is one of those times.

Dr. Bakagese smiles at me. I feel instantly guilty. So many times over the past few years, I meant to call him and thank him for all he did for our family and for Joe. But I have not called him to come to dinner, as I meant to do, nor did I go to see him. I kept meaning to,
but I couldn’t. When I look into his eyes, he seems to understand. I flash back to the day I met him; of course, that was the day that would change our family forever.

“Mama! Joe fell!” Etta hollered from upstairs.

That kid is driving me nuts, I thought. I went up the stairs.

“I’m fine,” Joe said, rubbing his hip.

“Where did you land?”

“On my butt.”

“Good.”

“Why? It wouldn’t hurt him if he landed on his head.”

“That’s not funny!” Joe pushed Etta. Before they could fuss full-out, I pulled them apart.

“Stop it. Both of you. I can’t take it anymore!” The tone of my voice scared them (a little), so Etta went off to her room in a huff.

“Come on. Let’s get you dressed.”

Joe took off his pajamas and waited for me to hand him his clothes. As he climbed into the red pants, I noticed a bruise near his knee.

“What’s that from?” I asked him.

“What?”

“That bruise.”

“I dunno.”

“You’ve got to be more careful.”

“It doesn’t hurt.”

The room was dark because of the gray day outside, so I pulled open the shades to let more light in. The sun peeked out of a curtain of charcoal clouds, enough to help me see. I turned to help Joe into his shirt. There was another bruise on his back, right under his shoulder blade.

“Jesus, Joe. You’re all banged up.”

His skin looked a little transparent, and there seemed to be deep pools of shadow right under the skin, almost like bruises that turn from blue to yellow as they heal.

“I don’t like the way this looks,” I told him, and then my son wriggled
away from me. I loaded the kids into the Jeep and took them up to Saint Agnes Hospital. Looking back, that seems extreme; after all, it was just a couple of bruises. Somehow, I just knew something was terribly wrong.

Joe sat in the front seat, holding on with his hands as we bounced down the holler road. I remember looking down at him and thinking how much I loved his little face. His profile was perfect; his chin stuck out like an emperor’s. Etta rested her head on my shoulder as she stood between the seats. I didn’t yell at her to get into her seat belt. She had her hand on her brother’s neck, the way she did when we took him into his first crowd at a high school football game. For the first time in a long while, my kids were quiet. Neither of them said a word. There was only the sound of the windshield wipers, of the wheels hitting the wet road and our breathing.

Sister Ann Christine met us at the reception desk. She’s five feet tall (at most) and was dressed in a white shirtwaist habit, white shoes, and a white wimple. She was around sixty then, but you couldn’t tell by her skin. It was smooth and pink, not a wrinkle in it. Her small nose dipped down in a straight line; her blue eyes stood out like patches of sky against clean white clouds. As she leaned over to embrace my children, I imagined my mother holding them and almost cried.

Dr. Bakagese entered the examination room with a big smile. “What’s happening, little buddy?” He spoke American slang with an Indian accent. He was tall and slim. He had beautiful hands with long, tapered fingers. His hair was jet black and cut short. His skin was a beautiful shade of café au lait. He had a small nose, full lips, and wide brown eyes. I’ve always had a hard time surrendering my children to doctors, but this time, I wasn’t afraid. I trusted this man.

“Ave. Yoo-hoo.” Iva Lou pokes me back into the present.

“I’m sorry.” I look at Pearl, whose face wears an expression that I’ve never seen before. It’s motherly. She knows what I’m thinking. Pearl
always knows. “You know, I would love to have you both to Christmas dinner.” I turn to Iva Lou and Fleeta. “And you too. Lyle. Dorinda. Baby Jeanine. Everybody.” I turn back to Pearl. “Your mom. Otto and Worley.”

“Hell. Let me check my calendar.” Fleeta searches her pockets for her cigarettes. “Yup. We can make it.”

“Are you sure?” Pearl asks. She knows that I haven’t celebrated Christmas in a big way since Joe died. I put up a tree for Etta, but we haven’t had a party or a big dinner.

“Yeah. I think it’s time. Lots of things to celebrate this year. Jack’s new job. The Soda Fountain. Lots of good stuff.” I look at my friends, reassuring them that this is something I really want to do. They all agree to come; we’ll talk about what they can bring later. Even if you throw a dinner in the Gap, it’s potluck. We live to get out our pans and fill them with our best dishes. Pearl and Dr. B. move on to the Roaring Twenties room.

Iva Lou watches them go. “They’re so sweet. Like a romantic postcard.”

“From somewheres in the Middle East.”

“Jesus, Fleeta.” Iva Lou turns to her.

“What?”

“India is not in the Middle East. Git yer facts straight.”

“It don’t matter. The man knows he’s black.”

“Indian,” Iva Lou corrects her.

“Black. Indian. Brown. They’s all ferriners. What’s the damn difference?” Fleeta, having had enough of the Victorian era, heads into the antebellum room. Etta runs in from the hallway.

“Mommy, I barely touched Mrs. Arnold’s gingerbread house and the roof caved in!”

“I told you if you touched anything, we were going home.”