Jack doesn’t answer me. “Let’s go to bed, honey,” he finally says, softly.
“Jack.”
“What?”
“There’s something I didn’t tell you about when it happened. I thought it was best not to say anything at the time. I saw Karen Bell at Holston Valley when Iva Lou had her surgery.”
“She wasn’t important to me, Ave,” Jack says quietly.
“Yeah, but she listened to you when you needed somebody to talk to. I wasn’t there for you. She was. That’s the truth.”
Jack considers this for a moment and then nods in agreement.
“That was really how you became friends, right?” I ask him.
“I don’t even remember.”
“Did you make love to her?”
I’m expecting Jack to bite my head off or roll over and dismiss my question, but he doesn’t. He looks off for a moment and then looks directly into my eyes. “I’ve never lied to you, Ave Maria.”
“But we have skirted issues sometimes. I need to know now, honey.”
I’m not nervous in the pit of my stomach asking this, maybe because I feel secure in my husband’s love for me now. Maybe I want closure. Or maybe I want to understand Spec. I do know I won’t rest until Jack tells me what really happened.
“I didn’t make love to her,” Jack says simply.
I know that he is telling me the truth. I would like to tell him that it doesn’t matter anymore, because I know now what we have in this marriage. Sex is sex, but deep emotional commitment makes a soul mate.
Jack continues, “She helped me through a rough patch. That was the extent of it. Now, I’m not going to lie to you. She fell in love with me, and I was very tempted, and I wasn’t sure you wanted me. So I thought about that, and I decided that if you left me, I would have to go on. And I went into a sort of survival mode where I figured out scenarios that could happen. I think like that, analytically. But you came home when she began to really press me to leave you.”
“Oh my God.” The nerve of that woman, I’m thinking. I should’ve slapped her at the hospital instead of giving her a big ole hidee-hello.
“That summer you were gone, Spec came to see me.”
“Why?”
“To scare the hell out of me. One night I came home, and he was sitting on the porch steps. He must have been waiting there for a couple of hours. Well, he got up and put out his cigarette and motioned for me to come closer. When I got about a foot in front of him, he reached for me with those giant hands of his and he took me by the collar, yanked me to about an inch from his nose, and he said, ‘You hurt Ave Maria and I will kill you.’ ”
“No!”
“He meant it too. He told me that he didn’t want me to mess up your life.”
I lean back on the pillows and think about this for a moment. Spec Broadwater was more than my friend. He looked out for me like a good father, offering protection and asking nothing in return.
I get up off the bed and go to the bathroom.
“Wait a second.”
“Yeah?” I turn to him.
“What about you and Pete Rutledge?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Something went on there, didn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Etta told me that you and he were close that same summer.”
“Etta said that?”
Jack nods. “Were you?”
I don’t know which is worse, that my husband is asking the question or that my daughter noticed something and felt it was important enough to tell her father.
“He’s a friend.” I try to sound casual.
“He is now.”
“And that’s all he was back then.”
“Etta wouldn’t make up a story. What happened between you two?”
“You know, I don’t really know.”
“Now who’s skirting the issue?”
“I didn’t make love to him, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I figured that.”
“How?”
“I’m married to you.” Jack smiles, and in his smile I see relief.
“What does that mean?”
“You never create a new mess without cleaning up an old one first.”
“Oh.” I go into the bathroom and brush my teeth.
Jack joins me in the doorway. “When we were young, the thing I wanted the most was to get to here.”
“Here in Cracker’s Neck?”
“No. Here. To this stage of our lives.” He continues, “I want to get old with you. Real old. And then, when the time comes, I want to die in your arms.”
I put down my toothbrush and pull my husband close. I realize that I have exactly what I have been looking for all of my life. When you honor someone, he owns you. Jack MacChesney owns me, and maybe that’s the only part of love that lasts.
The lunch crowd at the Mutual Pharmacy is proof that life goes on after someone dies. Spec’s seat at the counter is left empty (at least for now). Otto is on the stool next to Spec’s. Fleeta pats his hand as she refills his mug with coffee. This is the first sign of public affection I’ve seen Fleeta give Otto; I guess it’s true that grief binds folks together. Fleeta takes a break to join Iva Lou and me in a booth for a cup of coffee.
“I heard you had a visitor.” Fleeta cocks her head toward me.
“Who?” Iva Lou wants to know.
“Twyla Johnson.” Fleeta drags out “Johnson” like she’s singing it.
“You’re kidding.” Iva Lou’s eyes widen.
“Where’d you hear that, Fleeta?” I ask her.
“I ain’t tellin’.” Fleeta chomps on a straw. “I guess we can expect her to start sneakin’ up to the cemetery of the nighttime and puttin’ a lone rose on his grave. That’s how they do it, you know. The other woman. She wants the wife to know that she ain’t the only one.”
“That’s an awful lot of effort to make a point.” Iva Lou cuts her brownie with her fork.
“Well, don’t you think an extramarital affair is a lot of work?” Fleeta sniffs.
“Too much for me. Why do you think I gave it up and got married?”
Fleeta turns to me. “So. What did she say?”
“She said that she and Spec were just friends.”
“Oh, come on.” Fleeta laughs. Then she studies me for a moment and asks, “Really?”
“Swear to God. She said Leola was the great love of Spec’s life and that she could never hurt another woman or take their daddy away from his children.”
As Fleeta considers this, her stress-lined forehead smoothes out like polished marble for the first time in years. “Twyla Johnson is a goddamn saint,” Fleeta says reverently.
“I think so.”
“You know, Spec could piss me off worse than a blood relative. But I liked the man. I knew he was a good egg. I didn’t want to think he was like all the other men, you know, that hit fifty and run around the county with their tongues hangin’ out, looking for action.” Fleeta gets up and goes behind the counter.
Iva Lou looks at me. “That was a crock of bullshit and you know it,” she says quietly.
“And it’s the story you repeat every time you stamp a book and someone inquires about the nature of Spec and Twyla’s relationship. Okay?”
“You got a deal.”
April is a month of great celebration in the MacChesney home. Jack is in the kitchen making homemade spaghetti. He’s putting together a special supper for our seventeenth wedding anniversary.
“Happy anniversary!” Theodore sings.
“Thank you very much. Where are you?”
“At the office. I got your message about Spec. Jesus, that was fast.”
“I know. How’s Max?”
“Still cookin’.”
“When am I going to see you again?” I ask Theodore sadly.
“Anytime. What’s the matter with you?”
“It’s just so depressing around here. Etta just got her driver’s license. Pearl is
moving to Boston with her husband. And I really miss Spec.” I could go on, but I stop.
“Lots of changes in Cracker’s Neck Holler.”
“Too many,” I tell him.
“You need to look at what you have, not what’s missing. You have a good man who loves you, and if that’s all you get, you’ve already won the lottery,” Theodore promises me. He fills me in on his life, and I do feel better. When Theodore talks about Max, I hear such happiness in his voice. Max brings out things in Theodore that I have never seen before, all of them positive. Love hasn’t changed Theodore but has made him more open and willing to take chances.
Jack has already written in our anniversary book. I still haven’t had a chance. Usually I’m the one pushing him to write in it. This tradition of writing to each other every year has served us well; we look in it and see each other’s thoughts as our marriage has grown, and there is always something that we have written in the past that helps us in the here and now. This year his passage is simple but slightly arty. At the top of the page he glued a picture that Sergio took of us kissing on the banks of Lake Como. Next to that he affixed a small wild rose he plucked from the bushes outside our room at the Villa d’Este. Then he wrote:
Dear Wife:
When I was young I thought seventeen years was a long time. And now I know it is just the beginning.
With all my love, J.
He has left the book next to my place at the table to remind me to write in it.
I’m using the good china tonight, and feeling in a generous mood. I invited Etta to bring her new boyfriend to dinner. He’s a senior at Appalachia High School, an honor student who plays basketball. He has an old-fashioned name: Robbie Ramsey (his parents were not inspired by the Old West, as were so many other parents of his generation, judging by all the Austins, Dakotas, and Cassidys in Etta’s class).
I hear the motor of Tara’s cranky 1988 Dodge Dart coming up the road. Etta jumps out, and Tara toots lightly on the horn as she backs down the mountain.
“I’m home!” Etta calls out.
“Come on back,” I holler.
“Where’s Robbie?” I ask when I see Etta is alone.
“I decided not to invite him.”
“Why not?”
“I just like it when it’s the three of us sometimes.” Etta shrugs and goes to wash up. When she returns to the table, Jack serves his excellent meal. At the end of it, our daughter presents us with a gift, a first edition of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, the novel by John Fox, Jr., that our Outdoor Drama is based on. “I thought you guys would like it. Since you used to direct and Dad used to play in the band.”
“We love it.” I look at Jack, and he beams.
“I’m going to clean up. You guys go and relax,” Etta says, standing to clear the dishes.
Jack looks at me, raises both eyebrows, and says nothing. I thank Etta and follow him out of the kitchen. We grab our jackets and go for a walk in the woods. We always promise each other we are going to take long walks, but we usually get too tired after supper and scrap the plan. When we were in Italy, we often did La Passeggiatta after dinner, and we were amazed at how it relaxed us for a good night’s sleep.
“We have a good kid,” Jack says after a while.
“We sure do.”
“She knows you’ve had a rough winter with Spec gone.”
“She misses him too.”
“I know. But she understands what you’re feeling.”
“Is that the same kid who got plowed on bellinis last summer?”
“The very same.”
Jack takes my hand and leads me down the old path behind our house, the one that carries a creek in the summer and becomes a dry gulch in the winter. The old trees planted years ago by my mother-in-law hover around the property, their top branches leafless and reaching like old fingers up into the sky.
When you live in the mountains, there are signs every day that life is changing. The terrain shifts when the mountains settle, and sometimes streams disappear never to return. One year you might find sweet raspberries growing by a field, and the very next summer they’re gone. Take nothing for granted, because if you do, it will surely go. If an old tree gets leveled by lightning, it reminds you that you’re vulnerable too. And even though these woods are loaded with trees, when one falls, you miss it.
“Next year I’m going to take Etta up to Saint Mary’s to check it out. What do you think?” I ask.
“She keeps talking about UVA.”
“I just want her to see my college. She doesn’t have to go there, just consider it.”
“You won’t get bent out of shape if she decides not to go where you went?”
“I won’t.”
Jack pulls me close and kisses me. It’s one of those good, long anniversary kisses (it goes on for a full forty seconds, not that I’m counting). As he holds me, I’m thinking that it doesn’t feel like seventeen years at all, it feels like seventeen days. Jack reaches into his pocket and gives me a small package.
“What’s this?”
“A present, you dummy.”
I tear away the pink wrapping and ribbon (this is from Gilley’s Jewelers; the gold monogram gives it away) to find a small black velvet box. It’s dark out, so Jack pulls out a lighter and flicks it so I can see the contents of the box.
“They’re gorgeous!” And they are. They are gold hoop earrings with a dangling diamond charm. “So Italian!” I throw my arms around my husband and kiss him again. “Thank you.”
“Ready to go back?” he says, putting his arm around my waist.
“Your present is in the truck.”
“What is it?”
“A table saw. I’m sorry. You asked for it.” And it’s true. I asked him what he wanted, and that was his choice.
“You always give me what I want, honey.”
As if there weren’t enough changes around here, the most seismic of all is happening now. Pearl must decide the fate of the Mutual Pharmacy. Lew Eisenberg is on his way over to meet Pearl and me in the Soda Fountain. Pearl and Taye are moving to Boston, and we have to settle our business. Pearl doesn’t say much as she takes the last bite of her BLT. Fleeta wants in on the meeting, as she feels that she has the most seniority (and she does; she has spent more years in this Pharmacy than I have).
“Hello, girls.” Lew ambles in and squeezes into the booth, taking one of Fleeta’s cigarettes. Fleeta does not actually smoke them anymore. Her quitting technique is quite original and has worked for her where the patch, hypnosis, and the classic “cold turkey” have failed. She simply dangles the cigarette from her lips without lighting it.
Lew begins, “So, here’s the deal. We’re creating a trust for the business, in which Ave Maria is the trustee. And this will ensure the operation of all three pharmacies until an appropriate buyer makes an offer or you decide to close the places down. Right now business is profitable in Big Stone Gap and Norton; the Pennington Gap branch is barely breaking even. You have six employees there, and the manager is recommending that the place stay open twenty-four hours a day to compete with the chain. That’s something for you to consider.”
“Ave Maria, I know this is more work for you. But the managers of the other stores have agreed to come here every Friday with their weekly reports. This shouldn’t be too much of a drag,” Pearl promises.
“Whoa. Doesn’t anybody want to know what I think?” Fleeta takes the unlit cigarette, now rimmed in “Mad for Melon” orange lipstick, and taps it on the table.
“Sure,” Lew says, looking at Pearl, sorry that Fleeta was included in the meeting.
“My Janine just graduated from Mountain Empire in business management. She ain’t a kid. She’s thirty-six. Top of her class. And she’s lookin’ for a job. She’s lookin’ into managing something or another. Why can’t she be the overseer of all these stores and report to you”—Fleeta points to Lew—“and to you”—she points to me—“and file some damn thing in the computer every now and agin so you”??
?she points to Pearl—“can keep up with what the hell is goin’ on around here.”
Pearl looks at me. I look at Lew.
“I like that idea,” I say aloud. “Janine is a great girl.”
“I think it could work,” Pearl adds.
“Y’all are forever jacking your jaws about giving people jobs ’round here; now, here’s your opportunity.” Fleeta leans back in her seat.
“When can I meet her?” Lew wants to know.
“She’s out in the car right now. I’ll fetch her.” Fleeta puts the unlit cigarette back between her lips and starts to slip out of the booth, then stops. “One more thing.”
“What do you need?” Lew asks her.
“I put my sweat and blood in this here Soda Fountain. All the cookin’ is mine and all the bakin’. I think it ought to be called ‘Fleeta’s.’ ”
The three of us look at one another.
“I think that’s a good idea,” Pearl tells her.
“Well, it’s about damn time.” Fleeta goes to fetch Janine.
Pearl laughs, and then Lew and I join her. Who’d have thought Fleeta Mullins would have a viable business plan and the ego of a mogul?
Pearl lives with her husband and daughter on Poplar Hill, in an old house they renovated, down the road from her mother, Leah, and her stepdad, Worley Olinger, who still live in the house I gave to Pearl when I married Jack. Otto lives with them now, and Pearl likes that India has her grandma, grandpa, and honorary great-grandfather under the same roof. All that will change now, and that’s very hard for her. I don’t think Pearl ever imagined leaving Big Stone Gap. She made the big change in her life when she moved from the housing project in Insko into my old house in town. She commuted to college at the University of Virginia at Wise, and then took on the huge job of running the Mutual Pharmacy and expanding to other towns.
“I know this is best for my family,” Pearl says as she packs dinner plates in bubble wrap.
“You’ll have an adjustment period. But think of the fun you’ll have in Boston. So much history there! You can take India up to Concord to see Walden Pond, and the house where Ralph Waldo Emerson lived, and the Alcott homestead. It’ll be great.”
“I wasn’t thinking about side trips.”