Big Cherry Holler (17 page)

“Did you ever ask him why he left you?”

“I did.”

“And what did he say?”

“He told me it hurt too much to stay.” Pearl shrugs. “I don’t understand it. But that’s the way it is.”

The after-Christmas sale at Mutual Pharmacy is a circus. All holiday decorations, wrapping paper, ribbons, and gift sets are marked half off. Jean Hendrick has loaded her trunk with stuff twice. Mrs. Spivey and Liz Ann Noel nearly got in a hair-pulling fight over our last mechanical angel, marked down 75 percent (even though the angel was missing a wing). Peggy Slemp bought the remaining three boxes of Whitman’s chocolates (we polished off the rest on the Fire Night) for half off (she freezes them!). “She gives ’em year-round. She is so cheap. Tighter than a truss,” Fleeta sniffed, but she rang them up anyway.

The crowds have made the Soda Fountain lunches standing room only. Tayloe Lassiter was promoted to hostess during the post-holiday rush. We have two high school kids from Mr. Curry’s Future Business Leaders Club waitressing in her place. Otto and Worley volunteered to be cooks on their days off. They’re not bad, either.

By closing time, we are exhausted. Fleeta locks the door behind Reida Rankin, who bought the last few boxes of Christmas lights. “She’d stay all the night if I let her,” Fleeta says, lighting up a cigarette.

“What a day!” Pearl says as she emerges from the office.

“Who’s hungry?” Fleeta wants to know.

“I’m gonna head out,” I tell Fleeta.

“No, not yet,” she tells me firmly.

There is a knock at the front door. “Tell ’em to drop dead,” Fleeta hollers, walking back to the Soda Fountain. But it’s Iva Lou, so I let her in.

“Did you save me the cards with the Delacroix snow village on them?”

“I put the last three boxes behind the register.”

“Good girl.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Twist my arm.”

If the sales staff (Fleeta and me) is half dead, the Soda Fountain staff is worse. Otto pours himself a Coke. Worley, who ended up waiting on customers because the Future Business Leader girls got flustered, sits in a booth with his feet up.

“I’m telling ye, people was so hungry, they’d have eaten a dead rat,” Otto tells us.

“The sale made them hungry,” Pearl says.

“What are ye talkin’ about?” Fleeta asks, biting into a stale doughnut.

“When there’s a sale, folks literally salivate, their mouths water at
the possibility of a bargain. They have a physical reaction. It’s exciting to get a deal, and the human body knows it.”

“That’s just fer women,” Worley says.

“No, it’s all people. Watch the men when Legg’s Auto gets the new trucks in. You’ll see,” Pearl promises.

“I thought we was gonna have a full-out fistfight ’tween the Baptists and the Methodists over them religious cards you had out two for the price of one,” Otto comments.

“The Baptists took ’em. Everybody knows the Baptists got more bite.” Fleeta puts out plates. “Well, come on, y’all. It’s buffet-style.” Fleeta has displayed all the food that is left in the Soda Fountain. There are four wedges of pie, coconut or cherry (“Yer choice,” Fleeta grunts), a plate of oatmeal cookies, two croissants with cheese, and several individual servings of Jell-O with a small star of whipped cream dead center on the squares. “The coffee’s fresh,” Fleeta says, apologizing for the hit-and-miss eats.

“You kept me hanging around for this?”

“Not exactly. This meetin’ is hereby called to order. Now, who’s gonna tell Ave what we heard up in Coeburn?” Fleeta announces. Iva Lou looks at her like she wants to throttle her.

“What did you hear?”

“Now, Ave, don’t git pissed at the messenger is all I’m a-gonna say.”

“I won’t, Fleeta.”

“All right. Here’s what we know and when we knowed it. Pearl sent me up to Norton to check on a couple of things fer her at the new store.” Fleeta looks at Pearl, who nods. “And when I was up ’ere, I done heard something. But as my mama used to say, you can put what I heard and what you heard together and hear nothin’.” I nod at Fleeta. What she says makes absolutely no sense, but it seems like she rehearsed it, so I don’t interrupt. “I got me a cousin up ’ere. I think you’ve met her. Veda Barker. Small woman. Vurry Christian woman. Well, she was over to the Coeburn town meeting, where they was
talkin’ about renovations and such of the town hall up ’ere, and they announced that MR. J’s won the bid.”

“I know they won the bid on a job in Coeburn.”

“Yeah, but what you don’t know is that Kurr-en Bell got up and spoke on behalf of MR. J’s.”

“She vouched for Jack’s company. So what? She manages Luck’s Lumber; they supply MR. J’s with their materials.”

“Kurr-en Bell is after your husband. And you need to wake up.”

“Fleeta. Your tone,” Pearl says to her gently.

“What do I need to wake up about?” I ask innocently. Suddenly, I realize how wives have done this for centuries. We buy time, pretending not to know what folks are talking about when they’re talking about our husbands and how they spend their time and with whom. This pretend act will get me out of here so I can breathe and think.

“Karen Bell is going around telling folks she’s in love with your husband. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s just gossip.” Pearl puts her arm around me.

“Like hell. This is one story circulatin’ through Wise County that has some meat on its bones. Now, get serious. You can’t just turn yer husband loose up in Coeburn and expect him to find his way back home. That’s too far from Cracker’s Neck. He’s lost. You got to make him come home. Or I’ll tell you what, he’ll be gone.” Fleeta sits down. I’ve never seen her upset in this way.

I sit down. I have to. “Okay. I’m listening.”

“I’ve followed the woman,” Otto announces. “I ain’t proud of it. But I done did it. I know where she lives. And I know what company she keeps up ’ere.”

“You saw …” I look at Otto, and he looks away sadly. “Well.”

I study my hands as though they’re brand new and I’m seeing them on the ends of my arms for the very first time. I don’t know what to say to my friends. Do I tell them that I’ve seen signs too, that I’ve been suspicious? That I had a feeling the first time I saw Karen Bell? I want
to open up and tell them everything, but I can’t. My loyalty to my husband, who has probably been disloyal to me, stops me.

“I need some air,” I tell my friends. I stand up. So do they, and the sound of stools scraping linoleum is deafening.

Iva Lou follows me out to the Jeep and jumps into the passenger side. Mentally, I know I need to turn the key to start the engine, but I can’t.

“Look. It ain’t a done deal.”

“Do you think it’s true?”

“I been trying to tell ye. I heard bits and pieces of things. You know how stories travel.”

“What do I do?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? How can I do nothing?”

“We do not know the extent of it. Now, I know your husband. I don’t think he loves her. I don’t think he could. I don’t think he loves any woman but you. Really. So that’s good fer you. But you got a bigger problem.”

“What?” What is Iva Lou talking about? What could be worse?

“Karen Bell is your problem. She wants him. And she wants him baaaaad. That’s a fact. I heard that straight out of the mouth of her best friend, Benita Hensley up to the county library. She works up ’ere, and she told me herself.”

Who are all these people, these strangers, who know my name and my business? What do they want? Why do they care about me and my situation? The noise in my head gets louder as Iva Lou goes on.

“ ’Cause Karen Bell, you can’t control. She’s a wing nut and a wild card, ’cept she’s a genius, ’cause she acts like a sure and steady professional woman. She’s had a series of men too. Not that there’s anything to judge about that.” Of course there isn’t. This is Iva Lou, the Siren Goddess of Big Stone Gap talking.

“I don’t want to hear another thing.”

“Listen to me. I have some experience as the Other Woman. I don’t think there’s a single scenario out there that I ain’t in some way, at some point, been in. So you have what might be called a secret weapon in me, as your friend. I know what Karen Bell is up to. She can’t pull anything I ain’t seen before or done myself.” Iva Lou fishes in her purse for a cigarette. “You need to listen to me, because I know what I’m talking about. There’s Other Women who just want to play, have dinner, a movie, and some exciting sex; and then there’s the Other Women who are husband hunting. And they are relentless. They don’t rest till they got of yorn’s what they think they want for themselves, and then it’s too late for all concerned. Karen Bell is thirty-four years old—”

“She’s forty if she’s a day.”

“Honey. She’s thirty-four. Spec checked with the DMV.”

“Spec!” I hit the steering wheel. Does everybody in Wise County know my business?

“He has a connection at the DMV. We had to tell him. Honey-o, here’s the deal. She wants to git murried, and she wants kids, and she thinks Jack Mac would pass on a fine set of genes. She told Benita Hensley that Jack MacChesney is one of the smartest men she’s ever known, that he’s a man with a lot of Unrealized Potential. How do you like that? Karen Bell can spot potential. I almost threw up.”

“I feel sick myself.”

“I know. I know. I am so glad I’m murried and not foolin’ around no more, ’cause I feel dirty just thinkin’ about the pain I inflicted as the Other Woman. I hate myself for that, well not entirely, but certainly for your sake.”

“What am I going to do?” I turn to Iva Lou. I almost want to grab that cigarette out of her mouth and smoke it myself.

“You can’t let on to Jack that you know anything.”

“Why? If I stop it …” And then I stop talking. Stop what? Their first kiss? Their first time together? Their falling in love? His packing up
and leaving me? Their outdoor wedding at the lake in Big Cherry Holler with my Etta as the flower girl?

“Here’s what you need to do. Are you listening to me?”

“Okay. Okay. I’m listening.”

“She is counting on the fact that you are gonna blow this. She already knows, ’cause she’s hooked your husband, that he ain’t happy. So all she has to do is be sweet as pie. Uncomplicated. And that’ll keep him coming back for more. If you go crazy and start following him and making him miserable and accusing him of things, it’ll give her an advantage. You’ll look like the hag wife, and she can be the sweet young thang.” Iva Lou looks at me. “Bless your heart.”

“How did this happen?”

“This happened ’cause there’s a man involved. And they’s vulnerable on account of the fact that they surrender their will to their ego. Don’t forget that: their Will to their Ego. ’Cause their ego is what keeps them male. You got it?”

“I don’t want this trash in my life! This sordid stuff. I don’t want it!”

“Ave, there’s that point in an affair where nothing’s happened yet—nothing physical, that is. The man and the woman have established contact. They’re friends. They work together. They probably talk about things. Personal things. She probably confides in him; maybe even, once in a while, pulls a little something where she has a problem at home and doesn’t have a husband or any man around and something needs fixin’ like a pipe or a wire and he says he’ll stop by her house to fix it, and next thing you know, he’s in the web.”

“What web?”

“Her web. The little scene she puts together with her and him in it. Picture this. He fixes whatever she needs fixed. She has to thank him, so she makes a strong cup of coffee and a good sandwich for him. He sits down. And they get to chattin’ about this and that, and next thing he knows, he doesn’t know where the time went. So he gets up and says, I gotta get home to my wife, my kid, whatever. And she
looks sad, but she understands. That’s the important part. She understands.”

“Understands what?”

“What his life is like. What he deals with. What he needs. What his problems are. She is His Friend. Get it?”

“Men don’t talk to other men about their relationships, so they need a woman to talk to?” I ask. Iva Lou nods. Now I’m getting it. Jack Mac talks to Karen Bell about me. Etta. Work. Just like I talk to Iva Lou. (If this weren’t my life, I’d be thrilled at the notion of this breakthrough in male-female relationships.)

“Now you see what I’m sayin’.” Iva Lou leans back.

“Oh, I see it.” Iva Lou doesn’t know how clearly I see it.

“Jack Mac don’t want to be in the web, but he’s trapped, and he got there by being nice. Men don’t understand how something innocent becomes routine, and then routine can become a relationship. You got no idea how many men I’ve known who told me that they’re surprised when they find themselves having an affair. They didn’t see it coming or plan it. But somehow, just by being nice, they got themselves yupped into bed. The Other Woman makes these innocent requests of their time, and they say, ‘Yup, I’ll help you out,’ and pretty soon she says, ‘Kiss me,’ and he says, ‘Yup,’ and the kiss leads to the next yup.”

“I don’t want him to yup himself away from me.”

“He won’t. If you use your head. Ave Maria, that’s where you’ve got to be smarter than her. He doesn’t want this. He knows it’s wrong. But you can’t accuse him of something you’re not sure he’s done yet, or for sure that will drive him right to her because he’s gonna need someone to talk to about that too.” Iva Lou takes a deep breath. “I would rather be you in this situation than her.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s a good man. And he’s gonna try to do the right thing. Now, I ain’t sayin’ he’s a saint. But he’s gonna wrassle right good with it before he gives in.”

“You think so?”

“I know it.”

I know I should thank Iva Lou for helping me see what I should already know. But I’m not feeling much gratitude at this moment. I feel the gloom and despair of all women who have found themselves in my position, the terrible place of not knowing yet knowing all. The tricky thing is staying in the middle. I wonder if I can pull this off. I’m not going to hand over my husband like a covered dish at a church supper. If she’s going to take Jack, it will be only because I let her. I guess I will find out what sort of a fighter I am. I twist my wedding band around on my finger; it feels loose. “The world’s tiniest handcuff,” Lyle Makin called it once. I think he was right.