Big Cherry Holler - Adriana Trigiani [14]
“You can stay, Miss Ave. In fact, I’d like ye to,” Worley says. Worley doesn’t say anything to Fleeta, who takes this as permission to stay. She turns her back to us behind the counter, lightly dusting the outgoing prescription envelopes. Her head is cocked with her good ear toward us, so I know she’s eavesdropping.
“Is something the matter?” I ask Worley.
“No ma’am. I got me a full heart is all.”
“Sad-full or happy-full?” From Worley’s somber expression and the deep crease between his eyes, I can’t tell.
“Oh, very happy, ma’am.”
“Does this have something to do with my mama?” Pearl asks.
“Yes, it do. I’d like to murry Miss Leah if it’s all right with you.” Worley looks at Pearl and then, struck with shyness, looks at the floor. Fleeta and I look at each other. We’re stunned.
“Did you ask her yet?” Pearl asks Worley.
“We have talked.”
“Did she say yes?”
“She said if you said it was all right, then she’d murry me.”
“Well, it’s absolutely all right with me.”
Worley smiles. “I always wanted me a nice Melungeon girl like my mama was. And now I got me one.” He goes back to the storage room.
“Your mama and Worley have been dating?” I ask Pearl.
“I wouldn’t call it dating. You know how things are at the house—it’s old, and pipes go, or something goes wrong with the wiring, and Otto and Worley know where everything is, so they come over and fix it. And then it’s rude not to ask them to stay for dinner or lunch or whatever.”
“Put milk out and you ain’t never rid of a cat,” Fleeta says under her breath.
Fleeta’s got a point. Before I got married, I had so many repairs on the house, Otto and Worley practically lived there. They’d take in my mail, close the windows when it rained, and sometimes even start dinner before I got home.
“I guess Mama and Worley evolved sort of naturally.” Pearl sighs.
“Why on God’s green would your mama want to murry him? What does he got that’s worth having?” Fleeta demands.
“Companionship,” Pearl says over her shoulder as she walks back to the storage room.
“Leah will see how she likes companionship when she has him hangin’ ’round all the time. She’ll get tarred of that directly. A man can crowd a woman worse than a bunch of kids.” Fleeta cracks a roll of quarters into the register like an egg.
“Do you think you’ll ever fall in love again?” I ask.
“I had me Portly. I don’t need to be goin’ down that road agin. I’m old. Or haven’t you noticed?”
“Love doesn’t have an age.”
“Yes, it do. If you heard the way my bones creak of the night, you wouldn’t be tryin’ to get some old man to come into my bed and creak around with me.” Fleeta grabs her cigarettes and goes outside.
Falling in love with Jack Mac was almost an accident, so fleeting a moment I almost missed it. I was thirty-five and figured I’d be alone for the rest of my life. But Mrs. Mac knew better. She wanted me for her son and set about to make it happen, practically ordered me to go to the house when he would be home and she wouldn’t. And I did—I went up there and waited at the old stone house with four chimneys. I often think of that night when he told me he loved me for the first time. I was so scared of it, of him, of everything. What if I had gotten back in the Jeep and driven down the mountain before he got home? If he had decided not to come home that night to find me waiting there? If he hadn’t seen in me what even I didn’t know was there? How did he know I could love him back when I never gave him a single sign? How fragile love is. How delicate and small in its first buds, when it’s just an idea, a wish filled with hope. It is so easy to turn away from it entirely and choose to live alone in your own private fear. I had one moment of courage, and it changed my life. I didn’t turn to love out of loneliness. Or out of habit. I let love change me. I see why Fleeta doesn’t want a new man. She doesn’t want to change.
The bells on the door ring merrily.
“Saw your Jeep outside.” Spec Broadwater saunters in, leans against the counter, and starts fiddling with