Big Cherry Holler - Adriana Trigiani [108]
I cannot believe how weird it is to eat dinner with my husband and my summer almost-boyfriend, who with some amazing kisses could have brought down the House of MacChesney entirely. I look across the table at the two of them, doing a compare-and-contrast. They are different, and yet there is an all-boy quality to both of them. They instantly like each other (how bizarre is that!), and they seem to have lots to talk about. Etta interrupts whenever she can think of ways to get Pete’s attention. My daughter is never going to be the town spinster, that’s for sure. She can’t wait to be a grown-up woman. She awaits her first period like it’s the Preakness of Womanhood.
Headlights flash across the living room; we see the end of the beams against the wall outside the kitchen. Jack looks at me.
“Expecting anybody?”
I shake my head and take a look out the window. It’s Iva Lou.
“Sorry to barge in,” Iva Lou says as she throws open the door without knocking.
“Hi, honey. We have company. Pete Rutledge.”
Iva Lou’s eyes roll around as she tries to place the name, and when she does, it’s her turn to have her eyeballs bulge out of her head like rockets. I quickly motion for her to act casual (my first mistake) as she puts a frozen smile on her face that borders on ghoulish.
“Hi-dee. Pleased to meet you, Pete.”
“I spent a lot of time with Peter in Italy this summer, Iva Lou,” Etta says in an accent no one has heard since Grace Kelly used it in High Society.
“Yeah, well, I would’ve too.” Iva Lou winks at Pete.
“Iva, can we get you something to eat?”
“No, no. I just had a chili dog at the Mutual’s. I just stopped by on my way home to tell y’all about Spec.”
“Something wrong?”
“He’s having an emergency triple bypass tomorrow at Holston Valley Heart Center.”
“Oh my God.”
“Don’t worry. He’s okay for now. In fact, he drove himself over there in the Rescue Squad. He said if it got rough, he could give himself his own oxygen. Well, I’ve got to go.”
“I’ll walk you out.”
Iva Lou says her good nights and meets me in the hallway.
“Man alive, and I mean man alive!” she whispers. I motion for her to hush until we get outside.
“What is he doing here?”
“He’s hiking the Appalachian Trail.”
“Well, you tell him to get himself down to the trailer park and practice on Mount Iva Lou.”
I push Iva Lou out the door; when she’s worked up like this, there is no telling what she’ll say or do.
I drive Pete back to the motel; I wanted Etta to come along, but Jack made her stay behind to do her homework. I didn’t want to look suspicious, so I didn’t press it. I cannot explain how strange it feels to be in my Jeep with Pete Rutledge. I am not comfortable entertaining him here at home; he is strictly a European vacation fantasy.
I pull up in front of the hotel. I can see the top of Conley Barker’s crew cut behind the desk.
“Well, have a great hike.”
“Thanks.”
“You want to come in?” Pete asks.
“No,” I tell him so loudly it’s a shout.
“You don’t have to.”
“I can’t. But thank you.” I say this with a cool I didn’t think I had.
“Have you thought about me at all?”
“Pete.”
“Just a little?”
“Here’s the only way I can explain it. I live in a holler here in these mountains, where the weather is pretty good most of the time. And once in a while, a hell of a storm comes through, and it stirs everything up. When it’s over, this amazing blue sky appears, and things become so clear and clean that I actually see better; and from my field in Cracker’s Neck Holler, I can see as far as Tennessee, in such detail that I can make out the veins on the leaves. Without that storm passing through, you’d never get that crystal-clear vision that follows. You came through my life like a hurricane. You stirred me up and made me look at myself. You made me look at what I wanted and what I needed to choose. And there is a part of me that wishes I had thrown you down in that field of bluebells and had the wildest sex I could imagine, just for the thrill of it. But a thrill comes and goes, and we both know that. We did the right thing.