Big Cherry Holler - Adriana Trigiani [42]
“Y’all let me know if you need anything else. You know where to find me,” she says as she goes upstairs.
“Nice to meet you!” I call after her.
“You too” is the muffled reply.
“I’ve got a problem, guys.” Jack and Mousey look at me. I guess my tone of voice sounds oddly curt. “Otto and Worley need help installing the oven.” Boy, does that sound like the lamest excuse ever invented by a wife who suddenly had to come up with a cover story when she caught her husband with a mysterious blonde.
“We could take a look at it. Later, though, okay?”
“That would be great. There’s some problem wiring, and the BTUs of the oven. That sort of thing. We may have to open a wall.” What am I saying? I don’t know anything about opening up walls. I’m just repeating a fragment of a conversation I heard Otto having with Worley. Who am I trying to impress? My husband? “Anyway, I don’t know details, guys. All I know is we have a deadline.”
“We’ll stop over later,” Jack promises, and kisses me on the forehead like I’m Shoo the Cat.
As I climb the stairs out to the street, Karen Bell’s perfume lingers in the air. It’s that Charlie cologne that makes Fleeta sneeze. It’s too sweet, even in afterthought. It feels good to get out in the fresh air again.
Christmas in the Gap is a month-long affair. Of course, the kickoff was the opening of the new Mutual Pharmacy Soda Fountain. (Thank you, MR. J’s Construction, for your electrical assistance in the wee hours of November 30.) Pearl wisely featured prices from the original Soda Fountain days for the first week: Cokes for a nickel, sundaes for a dime, and so forth. It has become a real hangout. Even folks just passing through the Gap stop in for a cup of coffee and pie. One man on his way to Bristol from Middlesboro, Kentucky, stopped in for Tayloe’s autograph. He saw her on local TV selling storm windows and was thrilled to meet the Real Thing and leave her a big tip.
Inez Eisenberg heads the committee for Decoration Downtown; she’s asked every business on Main Street to hang a wreath with tiny white lights on our entrances. Everyone complied except Zackie Wakin, who hung his wreath with blue lights (he sells them, so he used them). The Methodist Sewing Circle sponsors a door-decoration contest on private homes. Louise Camblos even decorated her doghouse door, that’s how competitive folks get.
The local garden clubs boost Christmas spirit with their holiday flower shows. The Dogwood Garden Club decorates the Southwest Virginia Museum; the Intermont Club takes over the John Fox, Jr., house; and the Green Thumb ladies dress up June Tolliver’s House down by the Outdoor Drama Theatre. They ship judges in from eastern Virginia to judge horticulture (you should see Betty Cline’s Christmas cactus), arrangements (Arline Sharpe’s centerpiece of stacked Rome apples on the dining room table at the museum is a wonder), and special creations like a ceramic Madonna and Child placed amid gold gourds.
Iva Lou, Fleeta, and I are spending most of Sunday touring the exhibitions. We’re about to enter the Rooms of Historical Distinction when Joella Reasor stops us in the narrow hallway.
“Hey y’all,” she says in a tone that tells us there’s gossip. She wipes the corners of her mouth, where the orange lipstick bled, with her thumb and forefinger.
“Spill, Joella. We ain’t got all damn day,” Fleeta says impatiently.
“Pearl Grimes is in the Victorian Room with her doctor friend.”
“From here on in, we’ll have to call it the Indian Room.” Fleeta chuckles as she searches the room for Pearl and her man.
A ten-foot blue spruce is decorated with tiny handmade lace fans. The boughs of the tree are filled with hundreds of midnight-blue satin ribbons tied into neat bows. Ropes of miniature pale lavender pearls drizzle down the branches. Moravian stars punched out of old tin nestle near the trunk, throwing oddly shaped beams of light around the room. “That’s a stunner,” Iva Lou says. “I wonder if they’ll