Big Cherry Holler - Adriana Trigiani [109]
“Okay, babe. I know when I’m licked.” Pete opens the door of the Jeep and swings his long legs out to the ground. He swivels and looks at me. “Thanks for dinner. And Etta. And Jack. I really like Jack.” Pete leans over and kisses me on the cheek. Then he gets out of the Jeep.
“Pete?” I call after him. “Good luck.”
“Thanks.” He smiles and waves.
I watch him walk into the lobby of the Trail Motel. He has to drop his head under the walkway awning. And he looks to me a little like the great Gary Cooper—Pete sort of rode into town, set things straight, and is gone.
When I get home, the kitchen is clean, Etta is in bed, and Jack is in our bedroom, in the overstuffed old club chair, reading The Post.
“He’s taking off tomorrow morning. He’s meeting the hikers in Asheville.”
“Great.” Jack puts his newspaper down. “How come you were so nervous?”
“Oh, the news about Spec really threw me.”
“No, it was before that. You didn’t want to call Pete at the hotel. How come?” Jack looks at me, and I’m thinking, this is what marriage is. It’s like a giant washing machine. You throw everything in there, and you pour on the soap, and the water gushes in, and you think you’re gonna wash it all away. But no matter what, even after it’s spun around, you open that tub and right there at the top is the thing you tried to bury at the bottom. The thing you tried to deny and walk away from. The truth about Pete Rutledge was bound to come out, because I am not a good liar. And more importantly, I don’t want to keep anything from my husband anymore. The truth is so much easier. (Another thing Mama taught me that has turned out to be true.)
“Honey, when I was over in Italy with Etta, I was trying to forget about you. It was just too painful. I’m not proud of that. I got so tired of the knife in my gut that I just wanted it out. And so I got a haircut.”
Jack laughs. “Okay.”
“It’s insane, I know, but it transformed me. I heard the scissors and I saw the clumps of my hair on the floor and it changed me.”
“How?” Jack leans in and listens.
“I went out that night, and that’s when I met Pete. I felt so good, I forgot about our troubles and danced. Pete saw me in that moment. And he sort of fell for me. But I wouldn’t get involved with him.”
“Why?” Jack asks me this with a catch in his voice.
“The truth?”
“The truth.”
“I’d like to say that it was something noble, like our marriage vows. But the truth is, I didn’t go to bed with him because he thought I was perfect. And as someone who worked her whole life to be perfect, I didn’t want to shatter the illusion. If I had the affair it would have made me a cheater. And I wanted to stay on that pedestal; otherwise I’d just be another summer lay for an American in Italy.”
“Honey?” Jack gets up and sits with me on the bed.
“What?”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Me too.” I put my arms around my husband. “Do you want to know why you … went with Karen? Because I made you feel bad about yourself. I wasn’t there for you when the mines closed, I didn’t get behind your business; I didn’t think that what was happening to you was serious. I treated your crisis like a glitch. And I was holding on to stuff, holding you accountable for things that you had no control over, because I had to blame somebody. Like when Joe got sick, I blamed you, because I wanted you to be the hero who comes in and fixes everything so I didn’t have to worry about it. I was horrible to you. But now I understand what I did. And it won’t happen again.”
“If it did happen again, we’d be able to name it. For the longest time, we just couldn’t name it.” Jack kisses me tenderly. “So that’s the story of Pete, huh? How about a cup of tea?”
“How about Jack Daniel’s? Or did Etta finish the bottle?”
“I meant to ask you, what was with the lipstick?”
“Welcome to womanhood.”
“Great.” Jack groans. He puts his arm around me as we go into the kitchen.
Spec’s triple bypass became a quintuple. When Doc Turner got inside, he “found enough goo to fill a shoe