Big Cherry Holler - Adriana Trigiani [40]
“Yeah, it come out good. But I don’t know how it did, with Pearl’s attention everywhere else in Wise County but here.”
“Do you have a problem with expansion?”
“I ain’t talkin’ about that. Pearl’s in loo-ve.” Fleeta rolls her eyes when she says “love.” “You know ’im too. The Indian doctor up at Saint Agnes. Bakagese. Good-lookin’ sucker. He’s as dark as mahogany, honey. Black.”
“He was Joe’s doctor.”
Fleeta thinks for a moment. “Right. Right. I bet they met up your place. He’s dark. But tain’t nothin’ wrong with it. Pearl’s Melungeon herself, so she’s mixed. So in a way, they match. Though lots of Melungeons don’t like me saying they’re mixed.”
“I thought you were Melungeon.”
“Part.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” I point out.
“No, there ain’t.”
“His color doesn’t matter.”
“You say ’at, ’course you’re Eye-talian. And Eye-talians are the great mixers of the world. Ain’t no country that ain’t been in yorn. And everybody knows It-lee is nothin’ more than a rowboat away from Africa.”
“You know your geography. Maybe they ought to put you on Club Quiz next time we send a team out.” I hand Fleeta a note regarding a prescription. “I can’t read your writing.”
“It was a call-in prescription. For a delivery. To … Alice Lambert.”
“Oh.”
“I know.” Fleeta clucks. “She oughtn’t buy her pills from here, after all the trouble she caused you.” Fleeta’s right. Alice Lambert is Fred Mulligan’s sister. When I found out that he wasn’t really my father, she claimed I was a bastard and therefore not entitled to his estate; she even tried to take me to court. That was nearly ten years ago, and I haven’t seen her since.
“When you’re sick, you probably don’t care where the pills come from.”
“What kind of pills does she need?”
“They’re for nerves.”
“Uh-huh. I’d say she has nerve tryin’ to trade in here.”
Otto comes in with his tool chest. “Hey, Otto. Can you make a delivery over to Alice Lambert’s?”
“I don’t see why not. But I need to hook up the stove back ’ere. Do you think Jack Mac could help me?”
“I’ll ask him.” Good. Just what I needed: an excuse to pop in on my husband. Iva Lou would definitely approve.
The parking spots outside the Methodist Church are filled, so I double-park behind Jack’s truck, filled with plywood sheets. I check my lipstick, which I’ve eaten off, and reapply it. I run a comb through my hair and fluff it. I look pretty good today, I think as I climb out of the Jeep.
The tension has eased between Jack and me, and I see this truce time as an opportunity to bring us together again. There have been small signs that he’s trying too. He took my hand helping me up the attic stairs to get the Christmas ornaments. He hugged and kissed me when I made ravioli from scratch. And he rubbed my neck when I was working on the bills after Etta went to sleep last night.
The door to the church basement is propped open with a barrel trash can full of shards of old Sheetrock. I should’ve brought Jack something to eat, I’m thinking as I go down the familiar steps; Iva Lou would give me a demerit for not planning ahead. I hear laughter and note that the new yellow paint they chose for the stairwell really brightens up the place.
“Hello?”
“In here,” my husband’s familiar voice says.
I walk carefully into the hall; the floor has been removed, and new Sheetrock is being applied to the walls. Jack is measuring a large flat of wood on two horses as Mousey hammers a corner of Sheetrock to the wall.
“Hi!” I say brightly, with a big smile.
“Hi, honey,” Jack answers warmly.
“I love the yellow. It’s pretty. This room is really coming along,” I tell them, surveying the changes. And then, as if in a dream, I see a woman emerge from the hallway that leads up the back stairs to the sacristy. It’s that woman. That tanned woman from the Halloween