Big Cherry Holler - Adriana Trigiani [22]
“You got to come now, Etta.” Tammy tugs on her.
“They got a man that bleeds actual red blood in the Spookhouse,” Tara says flatly. “I wasn’t skeered.”
“I was!” Tammy says, her eyes widening. The girls run to get in line at the Spookhouse. I know all about the Spookhouse because I spent the better part of this morning peeling grapes for the bowl of eyeballs the kids feel on their way in. Nellie convinced Otto and Worley to play monsters: Otto lies in a casket with blue goo on his face while Worley chases the kids through the locker area with a plastic ax strapped to his head.
“Yoo-hoo, Ave!” Iva Lou hollers. She is selling used library books in a booth decorated like a study in a historical home, and is dressed in a sexy turquoise hoop skirt and a frilly peasant blouse that exposes her creamy bare shoulders. Her cleavage forms a clean line like an exclamation point. “Is this a good idea or what?”
“The blouse or the booth?”
“The booth, silly. I’m unloading all our old stuff, making way for the new. What do you think?” Iva Lou spins like a plate on a stick.
“What a deal!” I hold up four Lee Smith paperbacks tied with string, priced at two dollars even.
“Hold off. In another hour, I’m doing a flood sale: everything must go.”
Iva Lou leaves the booth to James Varner, who looks much taller in real life than he does behind the wheel of the Bookmobile. Iva Lou still turns every head in the room. (There are some women who never lose their allure.) Lyle Makin stands off with a group of his buddies. He nods and smiles at us.
“How’s your husband?” I ask Iva Lou as I wave to him.
“Well, he ain’t been soused this month. Of course, no full moon yet.”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“He gets drunk almost exactly with the tides of the moon. It’s the strangest thing. He can go dry for weeks, and then boom, he goes on a four-day bender. There’s no getting around it, either. I can hide the stuff; I can try to divert his attention; I can fuss, but nothing works. When he wants to drink, he’ll find a way to drink, and that’s that. So I learned to live with it. He’s good for weeks on a stretch; and you know, that’s more than most women git.” Iva Lou unwraps a chocolate marshmallow witch and takes a bite. “How are you doing?”
“We’re okay. Better than okay. Jack is fine.”
“It’s a big damn deal when a man is out of work.”
“I know.”
“They are their jobs. You have to be careful. He’s vulnerable right now.”
“To what?”
“To getting sick. Taking to the beer. Running around. You know.”
“My husband?” Iva Lou has got to be kidding.
“He’s a man, ain’t he? He’s forty and change. Jack Mac’s hittin’ that mortality wall.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“Women are different. Men ain’t got markers to show them that they’re getting older. Not like us. Mother Nature takes us women by the hand and leads us into it slowly. You got your monthly to tell you that you went from girl to young woman; childbirth to let you know you’re in the middle; and then the Change to tell you that soon it’ll all be over. What have men got, really? Losing their hair? Losing a job? A pot gut? What?”
“I don’t know.”
“You got to git a man to talk. It ain’t easy to git a man to talk about his feelings. They’d rather not have them at all. It’s our job to draw ’em out.”
“Ivy Loo-ee?” Lyle hollers from the Coin Toss.
“Lyle’s hungry.”
“You can tell what he wants from the sound of his voice?”
“I’d know that call of the wild anywheres. I don’t even need him to use words. I can tell by a grunt.” Iva Lou gives me a quick hug and goes to the Coin Toss.
Jack is shooting ducks outside the Spookhouse. As I make my way across the crowded gym, I think about how a good woman can suss out her husband’s needs. Or how a good man can do that for his wife. Sometimes Jack reads my mind. But do I read his? Does he know how I feel about him? Is he still attracted to me the way I’m attracted to him? My husband has a great body. Really. He has broad shoulders and strong arms. His legs are thick and muscular