Big Cherry Holler - Adriana Trigiani [101]
I’m about to turn to drive back home (I thought I’d clean out a closet), but instead I head for the Cadet section of Big Stone Gap, in the western part of town, over the bridge and down by the Powell River. It’s changed a lot; I try to remember the last time I was here. Had to be over a year ago; I delivered some pills to Oneida Mitchell. As I follow the river road, I see that they’ve added a trailer park and a convenience market.
There’s a pink house on the dead end of Morrissey Street. It’s been over thirty years since I’ve been here. Alice Lambert lives at Number 11. The simple ranch house has a deck on the front. The yard is overgrown; nestled in the brush are white concrete statuettes of a boy and girl who appear to be Dutch.
You can hear the river rushing by; the brown water is visible through the mud trees that line the river side of the road. The mailbox is slung open and full of flyers and junk mail. I clean it out on my way to the front door.
The old silver screen door has WELCOME written in cursive in the center panel, flanked by two rusted daisies. The plastic Greek urns that anchor either side of the door are full of weeds. A couple of wild yellow blooms choke through. I knock on the door. I see the Lamberts’ old Cadillac in the carport, so I assume she’s home. I hear a shuffling from the back of the house. Finally, the door opens. I am shocked when I see Aunt Alice. I hardly recognize her. She might weigh one hundred pounds.
“Aunt Alice?”
“Hello,” she says through the screen door.
“I wanted to stop by and say hello. I was thinking about you.”
“You was?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Why is ’at?”
“I was thinking about how you came to my son’s funeral so many years ago and how I never thanked you.”
“It weren’t nothin’,” she says, looking away.
“No, no, it was very kind of you. Thank you.” After I filled Alice’s prescription at the Pharmacy, I felt bad every day for not calling or stopping by.
Aunt Alice stands there. She doesn’t move to close the door, but she doesn’t invite me in, either. This was always the way it was with my father’s side of the family. They never knew what to do to make people feel at home. Or at ease. Maybe they had good intentions underneath it all, but basically, they had no manners. My mother used to say that they didn’t have creanza, proper upbringing.
“May I come in?” I ask her.
“Sure,” she says, and shrugs.
I push the door open. Her little house is neat as a pin, but it’s dirty. There is a layer of dust on everything, the windows are cloudy, and the rug needs sweeping. Poor thing. She is too weak to do the chores.
“Would you like a cup of tea?”
“No, thank you.”
“I ain’t got much in the house.”
“I don’t need a thing.”
We sit quietly until Alice blurts, “I got the cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You know’d I lost Wayne.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“He had him the black lung. That’s worse than what I git. He couldn’t hardly breathe at the end; they put him on a tank. He done filled up with water and choked to death.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It were turr-ible. And Bobby ne’er did come home to see ’im. That were the greatest tragedy of all. I don’t got a son no more.”
Wayne and Alice’s son, Bobby, was the light of their lives. I never liked him at all. He was several years older and a tease. I heard that he moved to Kingsport and took to drinking. He was on his fourth wife at last count.
“Sure you still have a son. Bobby just gets sidetracked, that’s all.”
Alice chuckles. “That there’s a good word fer it: sidetracked.”
“So what does Doc Daugherty say?”
“ ’Bout me? Not much.”
“What kind of cancer do you have?”
“It was breast. Then it done went to the bone. On account of I wouldn’t let ’em take my breast. No. I come in with ’em, and I’m a-gonna go out with ’em too.”
“Do you have a lot of pain?”
“I can’t hardly sleep a’tall it gits so bad of the night. I can’t find a good spot, you know.”
“What do you eat?”
“I ain’t