Big Cherry Holler - Adriana Trigiani [104]
“I’ll be right back,” I tell Iva Lou.
I ignore her call of “Where are you going?” as I walk away. The Other Woman, the Girl on the Side, the Strumpet from Coeburn, is unaware that I am walking toward her, but she is the only woman in the room unaware of me. All eyes are on the battle-ax, the wife who hung in there till her dang knuckles bled; the poor little ole thing, me. Joe Smiddy’s Reedy Creek Band plays an old ballad that underscores my steps; I feel the layers of onlookers fall away as I pass. The Sewing Circle turns into a nervous Greek Chorus as they whisper what gore may ensue if Ave Maria gets mad enough. I can feel the nervous tension as it flows through the crowd and makes a path to the Other Woman. I follow that path to its bitter end.
“Karen?”
She turns to me. When she connects me, the real person, to her life, she has a moment of surreal disbelief. I am someone whose face she tried hard to remember, having met me only once. Maybe if she could find some flaw in me, it would make her plan to steal my husband all right. But all that stands before her is a sweaty Eye-talian wearing good lipstick. She can’t quite make the connection, so I will do it for her.
“I’m Ave Maria. I don’t know if you remember me.”
She looks at me oddly, and at first her little chin juts out as though she’s looking to fight. I’ve confused her, so the thought crease between her eyes deepens even more.
“We met at the Methodist Church,” I remind her.
“Yeah. A while back.” She looks away. I guess she’s had enough eye contact.
“I’d like to thank you for being such a good friend to my husband this summer.”
She doesn’t know what to say. She’s so nervous, the cowboy hat slides off the back of her head and down her back. The chin string catches on her throat. “You’re welcome,” she stammers.
I turn and walk back to the bleachers, past the whispers of the well-meaning Christian ladies and to my spot next to Iva Lou.
“Girl, where on God’s green did you get the courage?”
“Bette Davis. There’s that scene in Jezebel where she wears the red dress to the ball where all the nice girls are supposed to wear white. I imagined myself in the red dress, walking across that dance floor, defying all of society. Nobody ever messed with Bette Davis, and by God, nobody is ever gonna mess with me.”
“Did you tell her you’d whoop her ass if she took off after your husband agin?”
“Oh yeah.”
“That’s my girl,” Iva Lou says as she cocks her head back and takes a gulp from her beer. “In all my years and all my married men, I only had one confrontation.”
“Only one?”
“Yeah. Billie Jean Scott met me up at Skeen’s Ridge one night, right after I’d been with her husband. And she looked me in the eye, after she’d blocked the road and stopped my car, of course, and said, ‘Iva Lou Wade, were you with my Hank?’ I was caught and I knew it, so I ’fessed up. I told her, ‘Yes ma’am.’ And she said, ‘Thank you, kindly. I’ve been trying to get rid of that son of a bitch for forty-one years. And you just give me the perfect excuse to give him the old heave-ho.’ ”
Iva Lou and I laugh so hard, the Methodist Sewing Circle looks at us as though we’re crazy. And I think we just might be.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
When folks say that Big Stone Gap is for the newlywed and the nearly dead, they ain’t kidding. Alice Lambert is getting a send-off worthy of a statesman. The women in town have come down and taken over her little pink house by the brown river. They’ve scrubbed the windows, vacuumed, and waxed the kitchen floor; they wash her clothes, they bathe her; and the delectable food dropped off in shifts is not to be believed. Ethel Bartee even came over and did Alice’s hair. And folks can’t help but comment that “Alice Lambert is as sweet as pie.” And she is.
Doc Daugherty told me that it’s a matter of days for Alice. He can’t say how many, and in a way, I don’t want to know. I go and see her every day (as do the other ladies), and it’s strange to say this, but I think