Big Cherry Holler - Adriana Trigiani [117]
Etta looks at the fairgrounds with a clinical eye. She surveys the faded striped tents surrounded by torches like birthday candles. She smiles when she spots the Ferris wheel. “Ma, will you go on the rides with me?”
“Sure.” I agree to go but Etta knows that at the last second, when we’re standing in line ready to go up the metal plank, I’ll send her father with her instead.
“Do we have to go to the beauty pageant?” she asks.
“I thought you liked it.”
“I like the dresses all right. The talent’s always terrible.” Etta shrugs. She’s right. Last year, leggy blond Ellen Tierney, representing Big Stone Gap, did a dance routine to “Happy to Keep Your Dinner Warm”; her tap shoe flew off when she did a high kick, clocked a man in the first row, and knocked him out. The victim was rushed to the hospital and eventually revived, but may have the imprint of the metal tap on his forehead for life.
“And I hate the physical fitness part when they come out and jump around in bathing suits. Anybody can do that stuff. ”
“Etta, hon, it don’t take a lot of talent to look good in a bathing suit. That you’re born with.” Iva Lou breathes deeply and straightens her shoulders. “I ought to know.”
“I’m never gonna be in a beauty pageant,” Etta announces.
“Me neither.” I give my daughter a quick hug.
The benches in the outdoor theater are filling up fast. The aisles are covered in AstroTurf runners; the stage is banked in garlands of red paper roses; the backdrop is a cutout of a giant pine tree with MISS LONESOME PINE 1990 written in gold leaf.
It’s August, so I’ve had eight months to get used to it, but I still can’t believe it’s 1992. Etta is twelve years old. My mother would have been sixty-six this year. I feel oddly lost between them, not old yet and not young anymore. I thought motherhood was a job with security, but it’s not; it’s the least permanent job in the world. It’s the only job in which your skills become obsolete overnight. When I finally got a handle on breast-feeding, it was time for solid food; I worried that Etta wasn’t turning over in the crib on her own, but soon she was crawling and then, almost overnight, walking; and when she went to school, I thought she’d need me more, but all of a sudden she had a life apart from me and she was just fine. And now, after we have established a routine as a family, in which Etta has responsibilities, she has a newfound independence and her own opinions. This is, of course, the point of all of this—to prepare them to leave you—yet I’m so afraid to let go. I know the next six years will fly even faster than the past eleven, and that scares me. I wish my mother were here to lead me through these changes.
“Dad!” Etta waves to Jack, who waves back to her from a platform at the side of the stage. He helps the spot operator set the light levels, then climbs down the ladder to join us. My husband is still agile; his strong arms hook down the ladder rhythmically. His faded jeans are crisp in the twilight, and his white T-shirt frames his gray hair beautifully. He’s damn cute, my husband. His fine nose and lips are surrounded not by wrinkles, but expression lines. I try not to hate him for aging well.
Otto, spiffed up in new overalls, wiping his face with a bandana, and Worley, his son and partner, toting the tool kit, join us from the back of the theater.
“We barely got that stage up in time,” Otto tells us.
“It was rough,” Worley adds.
“ ’Cause you ain’t got your minds on your work. Too busy ogling the girls, I bet,” Iva Lou tells them.
“We did us some looking.” Worley smiles.
“Can’t hardly help it, they’s so purty. Of course, I