Big Cherry Holler - Adriana Trigiani [31]
“Everything about you.”
I don’t know why, but that sounds like the strangest thing I have ever heard. I don’t think of myself separate and apart from what I have to do. I think about things that need to be done. Taking care of my responsibilities. Being there for my family. When Theodore asks me about myself, I realize that I don’t have anything to say.
“Come on. Talk,” he says as he punches open a tiny white plastic barrel of half-and-half and dumps it in his coffee.
“Pearl asked me to partner with her at the Pharmacy. She’s opening a new shop in Norton. I didn’t want to say yes.”
“Why?”
I shrug. “It’s hers.”
“Well, good for Pearl for asking you to partner. You gave her a future when you gave her your store. Let her help you now. Are you going to do it?”
“Yes. I signed the papers today. I’ll be the manager and split the Big Stone profits fifty-fifty with her.”
“What does Jack think?”
“He doesn’t know yet.”
“Oh,” Theodore says casually.
“It just happened today. I haven’t had a chance to talk to him.” Boy that sounds lame—and it sounds lame because it is lame. I hold everything in, and not for any good reason I can think of!
I want to tell Theodore everything. I want to tell him that when the mines closed, I was afraid Jack wouldn’t find a job; how he laughed when I suggested he take some engineering classes; how he looked at that woman at the Halloween Carnival. And how I get scared, every day, that I am going to lose him. How can I explain it to Theodore? Months after Joe died, Father Rausch came to see me. He told me that most marriages break up when a child dies. I couldn’t imagine losing my son and then losing my husband. What good would that do? And Etta needed us. I still worry about her and the way losing Joe affected her. I want to tell Theodore every detail. But I can’t. I want everything to be just fine. It has to be. What have I worked so long and hard for? Besides, isn’t this life? Aren’t things hard? Doesn’t the romance come and go? Don’t children take precedence over everything else? Don’t all husbands stop looking at their wives instead of drinking in their beauty? Don’t they learn to see past the exterior and right into our brains, where necessary facts and schedules are stored? Don’t all marriages become routine? Spats? Silences? Weird open-ended arguments? Sex on the porch? Sour milk and burnt toast? Dirty laundry? Isn’t money always a problem?
“What is going on with you? Your face looks like a Picasso, for Godsakes.”
Looking distorted doesn’t worry me. “Do I look old?” I ask him.
Theodore laughs.
“Do I?”
“No.”
“Thank you.”
“Why did you ask me that?”
“Because I live in Big Stone Gap, where people have seen me every day for forty-two years and don’t really look at me.”
“What about your husband?”
I can’t answer. Instead, I start to cry.
“Jesus, what is wrong?” Theodore says as he yanks napkins out of the holder on the table and shoves them toward me.
“I’m scared.”
“Of what?”
“That it’s over.”
“What’s over?”
“Everything.”
“What are you talking about? Are you sick?”
“No. I’m fine.”
“What’s over? Your marriage?”
“Yes.”
“What’s going on?”
“Jack is looking at other women.”
“So?”
“Strange women with tans.”
“Tans in November?” Theodore tries not to laugh.
“I know. It makes me sick.” The word “sick” makes me weep harder.
“Who is she?”
“I don’t know her name. She wears tight pants.”
“You don’t know her name but you’ve checked out her ass?”
“I can’t help it. I had to watch them. They didn’t see me. It’s not like I stalked them or something. I just watched them fall all over each other at the Halloween Carnival.”
“Your husband is madly in love with you. He’d be crazy to even think of another woman.”
“You say that, but you didn’t see her. She was working it! She was patting his back. Low. She’s one of those predators. One of those women, and you can just tell, who only wants a married man. They’re in it for the thrill. For the pain it causes people like me. She looks like one of those women who has all day to fix a strand of hair! And look at me. I barely have time to put