Big Cherry Holler

by Adriana Trigiani

  Pearl’s simple white gown is exquisite. It has a scoop neck and long sleeves, the kind that trumpet out. The tiny seed pearls on the bodice catch the light. She wears the shawl I brought her from Italy over her shoulders. Her hair, soft in the cool air, curls down to her shoulders like a loose ribbon. She has placed tiny sprigs of baby’s breath throughout. As Taye puts the ring on Pearl’s hand, Otto nudges me.

  “That there is my Destry’s ring.”

  I put my arm around Otto. He has tears in his eyes as he thinks of the love of his life, the beautiful Melungeon girl who died in childbirth bringing Worley into the world. Pearl holds her hand and looks down at the ring and adjusts it with her other hand. The judge pronounces Taye Bakagese and Pearl Grimes man and wife, and the applause echoes up and into the mountains behind us.

  I feel Fleeta’s breath on the back of my neck. “Them babies of theirs is gonna be real brown,” she whispers.

  “And beautiful,” I whisper back.

  “Yup,” she says. I turn and look at Fleeta. Could she be softening up after all these years?

  The tent, lit by tiny blue lights, showcases a feast of Southwest Virginia and Indian cuisine. Who knew that buttery sautéed kale tasted so good with grilled lamb kabobs?

  “Hey, Ava!” Sweet Sue Tinsley says as she pats me on the back. In Big Stone Gap, we have open-church weddings (in this case, open-theater); they are announced in the paper and everyone is welcome. Sweet Sue Tinsley evidently kept her subscription to The Post, so she stays in the loop and on our party circuit. I take a good look at Jack Mac’s old girlfriend. She is aging just as I thought she would: very well. She’s cut her hair very short. Little spikes of white-yellow hair stick out all over her head. She wears a strapless white dress with a red patent-leather belt.

  “How’s Kingsport?”

  “The boys love it. Mike is working at the paper plant.”

  “Great.”

  “How are you?”

  “Busy. But fine.”

  “I’m a grandmother, you know.”

  “I didn’t know!” I look at Sweet Sue. It seems impossible that she could be a grandmother.

  “Yeah, my oldest, Chris, fell in love with his high school sweetheart. And she got pregnant. Little Michael is three months old.”

  “Congratulations. You’re the foxiest grandma I’ve ever seen,” I tell her, and I mean it.

  “Thank you, honey. I appreciate that. I do. You’re lookin’ good yourself!”

  Sweet Sue excuses herself and runs off to say hello to lots of folks she hasn’t seen in a long while. I knock back an egg roll. I may look all right, but it’s depressing to think that I am actually old enough to be a grandmother.

  “I’ll give you a hundred bucks if you dance with me right now,” Theodore says in my ear.

  “I’m eating.”

  “Starve.” He grabs me for a slow dance by the Jerome Street Ramblers.

  “What is your problem?”

  “Sarah Dunleavy has a jones for me like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “She’s harmless.”

  “She’s forty.”

  “You’re forty-four.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not trying to score a husband and a baby in the next six months. She’s on a mission.”

  Then, as though we have glided into an old memory, Jack cuts in.

  “I’d like to dance with my wife,” Jack says, and smiles.

  “I’d like you to dance with Sarah Dunleavy,” Theodore tells him.

  “No way!” I step into my husband’s arms and out of Theodore’s. Theodore heads for the dessert table as Jack sways with me under the glittery canopy (the same one used every year at the Powell Valley High School prom).

  “What was that all about?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Why’d you cut in?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes you’ve got to dance with your wife.”

  “Don’t you want to dance with Sarah Dunleavy?”

  “She’s too skinny.”

  “But she’s quiet, and she choral-reads Shakespeare.”

  “I like noise, and I hate Shakespeare.”

  “Uh, Jack?”

  “Yes, darlin’?”

  “Honey, is that your—” As we sway on the dance floor, I carefully move Jack’s hand from my butt to my waist.

  “It better be my hand,” he says.

  Pearl and Taye kiss by the band; Spec presses his fork into Nellie Goodloe’s cherry jubilee; Leola has a smoke with Fleeta (I’m sure Leola is catching her up on all the News); Iva Lou and Lyle stand over the steam tables surveying the choices; and Theodore takes the last seat at the table with Rick and Rita Harmon and their kids, so he doesn’t have to sit at Sarah Dunleavy’s, where there are two open seats on purpose. Etta waves to me from the corner of the tent, where the kids eat sugared mints and tell silly jokes. I wave to her; she smiles.

  As the clock hits midnight, Pearl and her new husband take to the dance floor for one final go-round. The remaining guests, and there’s just a few of us, leave the floor to the bride and groom. Otto rigged up a couple of portable heaters under the tent, so it’s warm inside. The stage of the Outdoor Drama, fully lit and bathed in pink light, is empty now.

  “Your shoes,” my husband says to me as he hands me the strappy sandals that stayed on my feet for about ten minutes into the reception. “Why do you wear shoes that hurt?”

  “Because they’re pretty.”

  Jack shakes his head and motions for Etta to join us. Theodore waits by the flap of the tent.

  “Wasn’t it beautiful?” I ask Theodore as I look back at Pearl and Taye on the dance floor, shimmering beneath the canopy.

  “It was fine. It would have been better if I didn’t have to play Hide the Band Director with Sarah Dunleavy.”

  Etta climbs into the front seat with Theodore; Jack and I settle into the backseat.

  “Mama, is Daddy drunk?”

  “No honey, he’s just very very happy for Pearl and Dr. B.”

  Theodore looks at me in the rearview mirror and smiles.

  As we circle around the cul-de-sac and back onto Shawnee Avenue, we stop at the turnoff to Beamontown Road at the light. The black gates of Glencoe Cemetery glisten in the middle distance where the road meets the river. For a moment, I think to ask Theodore to make the turn. But I think better of it and let it go.

  “Cracker’s Neck?” Theodore asks.

  “Yeah.”

  Jack puts his head on my lap as Etta tells Theodore about a small drama at the wedding between her friend Tara and some cute older boy named Chad. Soon the lights of Big Stone Gap blur behind us, and we’re speeding in the dark toward home.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The first and best thing that ever happened to me was to have Ida Bonicelli Trigiani for my mother. What a beauty! What smarts! She gave up her career as an architectural librarian to raise our family, but she never gave up her love of books, which she passed along to me. Mom’s twin sister, Irma B. Godfrey, another fabulous librarian, is an inspiration to me, too.

  Because my mother was a librarian, I always took to them: so to Billie Jean Scott, Ernestine Roller, and James “Wheels” Varner of the Wise County Bookmobile, thank you. You introduced me to some great ladies of literature: Beverly Cleary, Astrid Ericsson Lindgren, Kay Thompson, Betty MacDonald, Madeleine L’Engle, Margery Williams, Carolyn Keene, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Johanna Spyri, and Louise Fitzhugh. And when it was time, you gave me Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, Margaret Mitchell, and Gwendolyn Brooks (thank you, Frances Lewis). Miss Scott always made sure I read the periodicals in high school, so from there, I read the great Erma Bombeck, Judith Viorst, and Meg Greenfield. Thanks to my dad’s subscription to Esquire magazine (it was stamped “For men only”), I read the wonderful essays of Nora Ephron.

  At mighty Random House, I thank my brilliant, tireless editor, Lee Boudreaux, and Ann Godoff, Andy Carpenter, Todd Doughty, Beth Pearson, and Pamela Cannon; and at Random House AudioBooks, Sherry Huber.
And at Ballantine: the Italian force of nature, Gina Centrello, and the Irish typhoon, Maureen O’Neal. To Suzanne Gluck, the best agent on earth and an even better friend, my thanks and a new purse. New purses also to ICM’s Caroline Sparrow, Karen Gerwin, and Margaret Halton. Lorie Stoopack, you’re amazing. In Movieland, thank you to Lou Pitt, John Farrell, Michael Pitt, Jim Powers, and Todd Steiner.

  Michael Patrick King, this would be a weary, impossible road without you; Elena Nachmanoff and Dianne Festa, you rule; Caroline Rhea, I adore you. My endless love and thanks to: Rosanne Cash, Ruth Pomerance, Tom Dyja, Mary Testa, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, June Lawton, Nancy Josephson and Larry Sanitsky, Jill Holwager, Jeanne Newman, Debra McGuire, John Melfi, Dee Emmerson, Gina Casella, Cara Stein, Sharon Hall, Wendy Luck, Faith Cox, Sarah Jessica Parker, Sharon Watroba Burns, Nancy Ringham, Mike Allen, Constance Marks, Cynthia Rutledge Olson, Jasmine Guy, Susan Toepfer, Joanne Curley Kerner, Doris Shaw Gluck, Whoopi Goldberg, Max Westler, Susan and Sam Franzeskos, Jake and Jean Morrissey, Beata and Steven Baker, Brownie Polly, Aaron and Susan Fales-Hill, Kare Jackowski, Bob Kelty, Carol Ann Story, Christina Avis Krauss, Rachel DeSario, and Beth Thomas.

  My thanks and eternal love to my dad, for the title; also to my brothers and sisters, our family in Italy, the Spada, Mai, Bonicelli, and Trigiani families. To my girls back in the Gap—Iva Lou, Kaye, Debbie, Beth, Tammy, Janet, Teresa, Mary Ann, Joyce, Cindy, and Jean—thank you for your friendship and memories; to the folks of Big Stone Gap, thanks for your support and encouragement; and to my husband, Tim, for everything.

  Big Cherry Holler

  ADRIANA TRIGIANI

  A Reader’s Guide

  A Conversation with Adriana Trigiani

  Fleeta Mullins, the cashier and cook at the Mutual, sits down with Adriana Trigiani to discuss the finer points of Big Cherry Holler, Trigiani’s sequel to Big Stone Gapset in, where else? Big Stone Gap.

  Fleeta Mullins: Okay, now just let me turn this thing on.

  Adriana Trigiani: Fleeta?

  FM: What?

  AT: Is there a reason we’re doing this interview in your car?

  FM: Yes ma’am. I didn’t want a bunch of input from those layabouts at the Mutual Soda Fountain. I don’t need me Spec Broadwater tellin’ me what to ask and how to ask it.

  AT: No problem.

  FM: Now, my first question is: did Jack Mac cheat on Ave Maria—some of us think he did and some of us think maybe not.

  AT: What do you think?

  FM: I think men are men and he definitely had himself a fine time whilst Ave Maria was runnin’ around It-lee.

  AT: Okay.

  FM: So he did! I knew it! I knew it!

  AT: I didn’t say he did or didn’t, Fleeta. That’s up to you, the reader.

  FM: Well, that just stinks. You ought to tell us.

  AT: If Ave Maria wants to find out, then you’ll find out. The books are written in her voice and she makes all the decisions.

  FM: But you’re the one writin’ the story.

  AT: I’m just passing along what she’s thinking.

  FM: Well, I guess I’ll have to live with not knowing.

  AT: For now.

  FM: You mean I may find out in a future book?

  AT: I think you might.

  FM: Hallelujah. ’cause I got me a pool goin’ and I wanna win. Now, I want to know about Pete Rutledge.

  AT: Fleeta, I don’t mean to be a pill, but if you’re going to smoke, could you crack a window?

  FM: Sorry. I liked Pete. I wanted him to be happy—but I didn’t want him to be happy at the expense of our local Jack. Now, help me with this—is Pete really in love with Ave Maria, or is he just after her ’cause he can’t have her?

  AT: I think he really loves her.

  FM: That’s bold.

  AT: Don’t you think you could be married and make a friend and the feelings sometimes get intense?

  FM: Of course. It’s happened to me.

  AT: Really.

  FM: There’s a man that comes to the wrestling meets over in Kingsport—and we had coffee after a GLOW show.

  AT: What’s a GLOW show?

  FM: The Glorious Ladies of Wrestling. Anyway, I had to have a talk with him, ’cause he got fresh and I told him we had a lot in common but he didn’t need to be puttin’ his hand on my knee to make a point, you know what I’m sayin’?

  AT: I do.

  FM: I think when you’re murried, you’re murried and there’s no room for hanky-panky. ’Course I was raised Baptist and we got us some rules.

  AT: Were you surprised where the story went in Big Cherry Holler?

  FM: I think it got serious, but I didn’t mind that. I think as you go on in life, you get you some problems and things have to be worked out. And I like how everybody in town got into Ave’s business, ’cause you know, that’s just how it is in this town. You can’t hardly floss without half the town knowin’ it. Now, them ladies at Ballantine wanted me to ask you something.

  AT: Sure.

  FM: When you boil it all down, what is the theme of Big Cherry Holler?

  AT: Letting go. Letting go of the past, of expectations we have about our mates, letting go of old hurts and making room for something wonderful to happen. Growth and change are good, don’t you think?

  FM: I guess so. If both in the marriage is growin’ and changin’ together—but there ain’t nothing worse than bein’ on different pages—when that’s happens, well, it’s look-out-it’s-Splitsville.

  AT: What did you think the theme of the book was?

  FM: Keep an eagle eye on your husband. That, and don’t let your wife go off to It-lee without you.

  AT: Very practical advice.

  FM: Well, I’m known for that.

  AT: I’ve heard.

  FM: Well, I got to get back to the Mutual. The lunch crowd’s loading in and when they’re hungry, I got to get them fed.

  AT: What’s the special today?

  FM: Soup beans, corn bread, collard greens, spiced apples, and coffee.

  AT: Sounds good.

  FM: I’ll save ye some.

  Reading Group Guide and Topics for Discussion

  Big Cherry Holler is a sequel to the bestselling Big Stone Gap. Does it help to read Big Stone Gap before delving into Big Cherry Holler? How did the author structure this book as a stand-alone novel, and how does it function as a continuation of the first book?

  What is the significance of the title Big Cherry Holler, both literally and figuratively?

  When the book opens, Ave Maria and Jack Mac have been married for eight years. How have her attitudes about herself and about relationships changed during that time? How has she remained a “spinster” in spirit?

  Early in the book, it’s disclosed that Jack and Ave’s son, Joe, died after a sudden illness. In what ways do Jack and Ave deal with his death, both separately and together? How does their marriage bear the scars of their son’s untimely death?

  What role does small-town life—both in Italy and in Big Stone Gap—play in Ave’s life? How do the mammoth physical attributes of the outside world play against her life?

  Ave Maria sees Jack Mac chatting with a tanned, blond woman named Karen Bell, and immediately feels anxious. What evidence of marital estrangement accumulates after that incident? What aspects of Karen’s personality do you think would appeal to Jack Mac?

  How does Ave Maria see Karen Bell as a rival, and in which ways does she feel superior to her? Which feeling ultimately proves more accurate?

  Were you surprised by the revelation of Theodore’s homosexuality? Which clues—both in this book and in Big Stone Gap—are provided before his confession? How do you think this will affect his relationship with Ave?

  When Ave’s protégé, Pearl, pleads with Ave to become a partner in the pharmacy, she signs on without consulting Jack Mac (much to his chagrin). What other decisions in her life does Ave keep to herself? Is Jack justified in his anger, or does he, too, keep some aspects of his life private? Which ones?


  Ave’s daughter, Etta, is a main character in the book. Ave describes her as “wide open, and yet very private.” What parallels can you draw between Ave and Etta, and how are the two characters different? How is Etta a product of Jack Mac’s influence? How does she cope with her brother’s death?

  How do the women of Big Stone Gap—Fleeta, Pearl, Iva Lou—function as a sort of Greek chorus for Ave? How does Ave affect each of their lives, and how do they, in turn, influence hers? How has each woman evolved throughout the two books?

  The reader sees Ave Maria in a brand-new environment when she travels to Italy. Which facets of her personality come to the forefront? To what factors do you attribute this change in attitude and appearance?

  While in Italy, Ave imagines what her life would have been like had her mother not married Fred Mulligan. How do you envision Ave’s life if she had grown up in Italy? Would it have been more or less fulfilling?

  Ave’s haircut spurs an absolute transformation. In which other ways does her appearance play a role throughout the book? Of which other novels is this reminiscent?

  What does Pete represent to Ave, both literally and figuratively? How does he reawaken passion in her?

  Theodore dismisses Ave’s assertion that she didn’t really have an affair with Pete. How is this juxtaposition of “word vs. deed” a recurrent motif in the book? What examples can you find in the behavior of Ave, Jack Mac, and their friends?