Big Cherry Holler - Adriana Trigiani [125]
I lean back on the stairs and take a deep breath. The mountains, still green at the end of summer, seem to intersect like those in a pop-up book. This old stone house seems hidden in its folds, like an abandoned castle, with me its wizened housekeeper, taken for granted and obsolete. I feel myself hitting the wall common to all mothers: the day your daughter turns on you. And it happened on such an ordinary day in Cracker’s Neck Holler. Nothing strange or different or particularly dramatic in the weather or the wind. The sky meets the top of the mountains in a ruffle of deep blue. The sun sets in streaks of golden pink as it slips behind Skeens Ridge. I get lost in the quiet, the color, and the breeze, and I’m back in simpler times, the time before we had the children, when this house was a place where we made love and ate good food and tended the garden.
The cool at twilight soothes the throbbing in my head. I am making a mess of motherhood. What do I know about children, really? I was an only child. Maybe I baby-sat here and there, but I never had a grand plan that included children. When I found out I was pregnant, I made Iva Lou order me every book on parenthood from the county library. I read each and every one, picking and choosing concepts that made sense and figuring out how to implement them. When my kids came along, I thought everything would fall into place. But my daughter is her own person, and she isn’t who I thought she’d be. And I know that I have disappointed her too—she needs an outdoorsy, athletic mom, one who encourages her to take risks. My goal is to keep her safe, and she resents that. I am filled with dread at what lies ahead. How do I stop fearing the future? No book can tell me that.
The high beams on Jack’s pickup truck light up the field as he takes the turn up the holler road. He slows down to check the mailbox, and I see him throw a few envelopes on the front seat. Then he guns the engine again, spitting gravel under his wheels. Soon I hear my daughter’s footsteps as she skips down the stairs. The screen door flies open and she runs past me, down the steps, and over the path to meet her father as he parks. I hear the muffled start to her version of The Roof Disaster and wish for a moment that I weren’t the mother, but the housekeeper, so I wouldn’t have to rat her out. I have to be consistent and train her so that at some point later in her life when she must make hard decisions, she will call back to these days, find the wisdom borne of experience and make the right choice (yeah right). I have to be the bad guy. Jack puts his arm around Etta as they walk up the path. I stand up. Etta passes by in a businesslike huff without looking at me. She bangs the screen door behind her.
“Are you okay?” Jack puts his arm around me.
“I guess.”
“We’re going to have to come up with a doozy of a punishment.”
“Great.”
“It’s all a part of life, Ave.”
As we walk up the stairs, I want to tell my husband that I wish this wasn’t my life, but I can’t. I have to find a way to love my job as a mother, and I’m going to need him to help me do it.
Big Cherry Holler is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 2001 by The Glory of Everything Company
Reader’s Guide copyright © 2002 by The Glory of Everything Company and The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
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