Big Cherry Holler - Adriana Trigiani [113]
“Your shoes,” my husband says to me as he hands me the strappy sandals that stayed on my feet for about ten minutes into the reception. “Why do you wear shoes that hurt?”
“Because they’re pretty.”
Jack shakes his head and motions for Etta to join us. Theodore waits by the flap of the tent.
“Wasn’t it beautiful?” I ask Theodore as I look back at Pearl and Taye on the dance floor, shimmering beneath the canopy.
“It was fine. It would have been better if I didn’t have to play Hide the Band Director with Sarah Dunleavy.”
Etta climbs into the front seat with Theodore; Jack and I settle into the backseat.
“Mama, is Daddy drunk?”
“No honey, he’s just very very happy for Pearl and Dr. B.”
Theodore looks at me in the rearview mirror and smiles.
As we circle around the cul-de-sac and back onto Shawnee Avenue, we stop at the turnoff to Beamontown Road at the light. The black gates of Glencoe Cemetery glisten in the middle distance where the road meets the river. For a moment, I think to ask Theodore to make the turn. But I think better of it and let it go.
“Cracker’s Neck?” Theodore asks.
“Yeah.”
Jack puts his head on my lap as Etta tells Theodore about a small drama at the wedding between her friend Tara and some cute older boy named Chad. Soon the lights of Big Stone Gap blur behind us, and we’re speeding in the dark toward home.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The first and best thing that ever happened to me was to have Ida Bonicelli Trigiani for my mother. What a beauty! What smarts! She gave up her career as an architectural librarian to raise our family, but she never gave up her love of books, which she passed along to me. Mom’s twin sister, Irma B. Godfrey, another fabulous librarian, is an inspiration to me, too.
Because my mother was a librarian, I always took to them: so to Billie Jean Scott, Ernestine Roller, and James “Wheels” Varner of the Wise County Bookmobile, thank you. You introduced me to some great ladies of literature: Beverly Cleary, Astrid Ericsson Lindgren, Kay Thompson, Betty MacDonald, Madeleine L’Engle, Margery Williams, Carolyn Keene, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Johanna Spyri, and Louise Fitzhugh. And when it was time, you gave me Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, Margaret Mitchell, and Gwendolyn Brooks (thank you, Frances Lewis). Miss Scott always made sure I read the periodicals in high school, so from there, I read the great Erma Bombeck, Judith Viorst, and Meg Greenfield. Thanks to my dad’s subscription to Esquire magazine (it was stamped “For men only”), I read the wonderful essays of Nora Ephron.
At mighty Random House, I thank my brilliant, tireless editor, Lee Boudreaux, and Ann Godoff, Andy Carpenter, Todd Doughty, Beth Pearson, and Pamela Cannon; and at Random House AudioBooks, Sherry Huber. And at Ballantine: the Italian force of nature, Gina Centrello, and the Irish typhoon, Maureen O’Neal. To Suzanne Gluck, the best agent on earth and an even better friend, my thanks and a new purse. New purses also to ICM’s Caroline Sparrow, Karen Gerwin, and Margaret Halton. Lorie Stoopack, you’re amazing. In Movieland, thank you to Lou Pitt, John Farrell, Michael Pitt, Jim Powers, and Todd Steiner.
Michael Patrick King, this would be a weary, impossible road without you; Elena Nachmanoff and Dianne Festa, you rule; Caroline Rhea, I adore you. My endless love and thanks to: Rosanne Cash, Ruth Pomerance, Tom Dyja, Mary Testa, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, June Lawton, Nancy Josephson and Larry Sanitsky, Jill Holwager, Jeanne Newman, Debra McGuire, John Melfi, Dee Emmerson, Gina Casella, Cara Stein, Sharon Hall, Wendy Luck, Faith Cox, Sarah Jessica Parker, Sharon Watroba Burns, Nancy Ringham, Mike Allen, Constance Marks, Cynthia Rutledge Olson, Jasmine Guy, Susan Toepfer, Joanne Curley Kerner, Doris Shaw Gluck, Whoopi Goldberg, Max Westler,