Milk Glass Moon (12 page)

“This is my boyfriend, Randy Collier.”

“Hi!” I say so loudly that a passing nurse turns around to look at me. “Nice to meet you. I’m Ave Maria.”

“Hello.” Randy smiles.

“His daddy just had surgery. They took out about six feet of his intestines. He’s gonna be all right, though,” Karen offers, filling up the silence. “How’s your family?” She and I both know what she means; she doesn’t mean my family, she means my husband.

“Oh, we’re great. Just great. I’m here visiting a friend. Well, I hate to keep you.”

Pearl comes around the corner. “Here you are. I came to help out.”

“I just ran into Karen Bell and her boyfriend, Randy,” I tell her.

Pearl’s mouth falls open, and then she forces a smile. “Hello.”

“Nice meetin’ you,” Randy says.

“I hope your dad feels better soon,” I tell him.

“This hospital is something,” Randy says to his girlfriend, “we’re always running into folks you know.” He puts his arm around her and looks at us. “Yep, she’s popular, my girl.”

“Oh, yes. Very,” Pearl pipes up at last.

We get in the elevator and Pearl leans against the railing. “What are the chances of you running into
her
?”

“Just my luck.”

“She changed!” Pearl laughs.

We fill up a tray with cups of Coke quickly. I can’t wait to get back to Iva Lou’s room and tell her the news. She got me through the most difficult time in my marriage by giving me solid advice about how to handle Karen Bell. I don’t know what I would have done without her. Iva Lou is one of the few people who deal honestly with everyone; she never holds a grudge, and if she gets angry, there’s a reason. She taught me how to handle my feelings, to stay cool and think things through. Iva Lou has as clean an emotional slate as anyone I have ever met.

“Guess who we ran into?” I announce over the tray of Cokes.

“Who?” Fleeta asks.

“Karen Bell.”

“No! What is that old toy doing here? How’d she look?”

“Bad,” Pearl answers.

“How bad?” Iva Lou leans in for details.

“That tanning bed has given her the skin of a crocodile purse,” Pearl tells them.

“How ’bout the hair?”

“The worst. I think she uses Frost and Tip from the drugstore,” I tell her.

“Perox-fried.” Iva Lou shakes her head.

“Like hay.” Pearl looks at me and smiles.

“Good thing you dressed up tonight.” Fleeta eyes me from head to toe.

“That’s exactly what I thought when I was standing there face-to-face with her.”

“She’ll go home and beat herself up all night over how good you look,” Iva Lou promises.

“You think?”

“I know. You’re so lucky. Eye-talians don’t age, it’s like the Greeks or the Africans. Y’all just defy time. But Karen Bell? She has a soufflé face. The kind that caves in at forty and never snaps back.” Iva Lou sips her Coke.

“We met her boyfriend too,” Pearl adds.

“What did he look like?”

“Well, he had a hangdog face, big teeth, and a small nose.”

“The kind where you can see every nose hair in his head?”

“His name is Randy Collier,” I tell her.

“That old buck? Please. I dated him. He’s from Pound. Cheapest man I ever went out with. Took me to Cab’s over in Norton for doughnuts. Doughnuts! And it was nighttime! We sat right there in the car and ate ’em out of a sack. Then he wanted to have sex. I told him, ‘I don’t know what you’ve heard, but it takes more than a shower and shave and a sack of Cab’s fresh-fried doughnuts to get me in the bed.’ He took me home immediately, and I never saw him again.”

Iva Lou offers us divinity from the tin and takes a piece herself. For a moment, her mind is off her troubles; she is back in the world again.

“He’s no Lyle Makin, that’s for sure,” I tell her.

“Don’t I know it? Ladies, I thank God for the man. After the surgery, Lyle climbed up here in the bed with me and wrapped himself around me real gentle-like. He was so happy I made it. I think he thought I’d die in there. I told him that things had come a long way since the days when the doc would come over to your house and do surgery on your kitchen table. You know, his people are from Lee County, and they’re self-sufficient. I think his aunt took out her own appendix back in the forties.”

“That’s where his strength comes from,” Pearl says.

“I guess.” Iva Lou shrugs. “We made love right before he brought me over to the hospital. Yeah, we decided to have a formal good-bye to my breasts, and when we were done, we just laughed, because we both realized how little a part they played in our happiness, and yet like any part of a person, they’re important because they’re part of the whole. You don’t realize
that
till you have to. And, of course, I had to. Lyle got real quiet after a while, and he said, ‘Ivy, I want to get old with you.’ Now, I ask you, how’re you gonna argue with that?”

“I don’t think you can,” I tell her.

“No ma’am. You can’t.”

“So, why were you crying when we got here?” Fleeta lies across the bottom of Iva Lou’s bed, munching on divinity.

Iva Lou takes a moment to think, looking off to the bare wall as if the answer is there, painted in bold letters.

“Because I ain’t never gonna be the same. That’s a tough pill to swallow when you like yourself.”

“We’re so sorry, Iva Lou,” I say. Fleeta and Pearl nod in agreement. And it’s true. I am sorry that this had to happen to one of the best people I know.

“Well, I’m sorry you had to run into that floozy,” Iva Lou says.

“No, no, it was fine. In fact, I’m kind of glad it happened.”

Fleeta sits up. “You gonna tell Jack Mac you seen her?”

“Not a word!”

“That’s my girl!” Iva Lou pats my hand. “You’re finally getting with the Wade-Makin regimen. Men want women to be adorable and no trouble. Sweet as pie, that’s what they’re lookin’ for. And forgiving. They don’t need to be reminded of past mistakes.

Fleeta looks at me. “Quickest way to lose a man is to remind him of a weakness. ’Cause when they feel bad about themselves, they go right back to the woman that made ’em feel good.”

“You make men sound like idiots.” Pearl takes a sip of her Coke.

We sit in silence for a moment, until Fleeta, Pearl, and I crack up. Then Iva Lou laughs with us, and it’s the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard.

Fleeta has planned a welcome-home party for Iva Lou at the Mutual’s. Spec insisted we delay the festivities until he returned from Florida, so here we are, at the height of Christmas shopping season, throwing a big bash at the Soda Fountain for our returning soldier.

Nellie Goodloe took charge of the program. She is going to read a poem; Cindy Ashley is going to present Iva Lou with a gold heart pendant (she raised the money by passing the hat at the homecoming game); Nicky and Becky Botts are going to sing one of Iva Lou’s favorite songs, “Sleeping Single in a Double Bed”; and evidently, my husband has agreed to spike the punch (there was a note at home:
Bring the Rum
).

“Don’t touch that icing, Spec Broadwater!” Fleeta hollers from the kitchen. I don’t know how she can see Spec hovering over the sheet cakes from back there, but she can.

“You should have let me lick the spoon,” Spec yells back playfully.

Fleeta comes to the doorway. “Don’t you get enough sugar down in Pennington?”

The crowd has a good laugh on that one, and thank the Lord, Spec’s wife, Leola, is not here yet. She doesn’t need Spec’s friendship with Twyla Johnson rubbed in her face, and we certainly don’t need a marital knock-down drag-out at Iva Lou’s party.

“I’d say you know more about gittin’ sugar than I do, Fleeta Mullins,” Spec says loudly. Everyone goes quiet and looks at Fleeta.

“Now, Spec.” Fleeta points a spatula at Spec. Will she admit to the crowd that she and Otto are an item? The buzz of the overhead fluorescent lights is the only sound in the place. Spec takes a drag off his cigarette and looks at Fleeta. I haven’t seen this kind of Mexican stare-down since the Trail Theatre showed
A Fistful of Dollars
at the Clint Eastwood Film Festival.

“You got somethin’ to say to me?” Fleeta does not flinch, and the spatula stays pointed at Spec.

“No ma’am.” Spec backs down. Fleeta returns to the kitchen. The chatter resumes.

“How was your vacation?” I ask Spec. “You’re so tan!”

“Well, we was never out of the sun. And we was on the water a lot. Went fishin’ with Leola’s cousin. We had us a good time. I took a spill down there, though.”

“What happened?”

“Well, I passed out. You know, Florida sun, a six-pack, and wrangling a swordfish for three hours will deplete anybody. They took me to the emergency room, so I got to see what it was like to ride in the gurney in the back instead of driving the vehicle. I can’t say I enjoyed the experience.”

“What was wrong?” I should be able to accept that my friends are getting older (so am I) and sometimes get sick, but it’s still hard when I consider what they once were and that we’ll never see our youth again.

“I had me old-fashioned heatstroke. I was dehydrated too. So I drunk me some Gatorade for the rest of the trip. Didn’t have another problem.” Spec shrugs. “Gonna have one helluva crowd tonight. SRO, looks like.”

Fleeta returns from the kitchen with another sheet cake and sets it down on the counter.

“How many cakes did you make?” I ask her. The parking lot is filling up, and the Italian in me is always afraid there won’t be enough food to go around.

“Six. Iva Lou’s favorite. Chocolate Coca-Cola Cake.”

“I want that recipe,” Nellie Goodloe says cheerfully.

“Then go in the kitchen and git it. It’s hanging on the bulletin board. Make and eat it at your own risk. This cake is rich. One of them Delph girls got addicted to it when she was pregnant and ballooned up eighty pounds beyond recognition.”

CHOCOLATE COCA-COLA CAKE

CAKE

2 cups plain flour

2 cups sugar

1 cup Coca-Cola

2 sticks butter

3 tablespoons cocoa

1
¹
⁄
₂
cups miniature marshmallows

¹
⁄
₂
cup buttermilk

2 eggs, well beaten

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon vanilla

A pinch of salt

ICING

3 tablespoons cocoa

1 stick butter

6 tablespoons Coca-Cola

1 pound powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1. For cake: Combine flour, sugar, and salt in a saucepan, combine & heat butter, cocoa, Coca-Cola and marshmallows until it begins to boil (add marshmallows last) . . . remove from heat & stir to dissolve marshmallows. Pour over sugar & flour and blend well . . . add remaining cake ingredients and blend well. Pour into greased 9 x 13 pan and bake at 350° for 30 to 40 minutes.

2. For icing: Combine butter, cocoa & Coca-Cola in saucepan and bring to a boil . . . mix with powdered sugar till it makes a thin paste, then drizzle over the cake while it’s hot from the oven.

The sound of wild cheers, wolf whistles, and applause can only mean that Iva Lou has arrived. There must be over a hundred people, including the staff of the Wise County main library, where Iva Lou restocks the Bookmobile. Lyle has his arm around Iva Lou, who looks slim and radiant in an electric-blue leather jacket and matching pants. Her earrings are two marcasite pyramids with enamel bluebirds swinging from the bottom.

“Thank ye all, thank ye for showing up to this shindig,” Iva Lou announces from my microphone behind the counter. “I am happy to be here. So happy I don’t have words. But I do have a story to tell ye.” The crowd cheers. “Y’all know I am not a religious person. I was raised in several Protestant faiths, none of which I can remember, because my mama never decided where to park her soul and my daddy never much cared where his soul went on Sundays or any other day of the week. Now, I’m a believer in God and Jesus and all that, but I never liked going to church or any of the socials, because we couldn’t dance or drink liquor or do any of the wonderful things that result as a combination of those two activities.”

“You must’ve been a Baptist,” someone hollers.

“Yep. For about a week.” Iva Lou winks. “Anyhoo, when I was in the hospital, a kindly preacher from the Higher Ground Baptist Church came to see me, and I confessed all my sins to him. He promised me that God had forgiven me, and I felt a sense of peace. I slept through the night and felt like a new woman. Well, the next day around the same time, another preacher came to see me, this one from the AME church, and he asked to hear my sins, so I complied and he absolved me. I had another good night’s rest and actually started to think, Well, maybe there is something to this confession stuff. It does cleanse the soul! Anyway, the next day, I got another visitor, this time a lovely minister from the Presbyterian church, and he took a listen to my sins too, and then, once more, graciously washed them away. But on that fourth day, when the friendly minister from the Seventh-Day Adventists came to see me and I confessed my sins, I began to wonder: Does every patient get this kind of spiritual attention when they come to this hospital? So I asked the Reverend Du Jour, who came a-callin’ the following day. I don’t remember what his affiliation was, but it did have Jesus in the title. He too inquired about my past. So I said, ‘Rev, I’ve had every man of the cloth in East Tennessee come visit me. What gives?’ And he said, ‘Mrs. Makin, no patient in the history of Holston Valley Hospital has ever confessed a litany of sins as colorful as yours. In fact, you make Mary Magdalene look like a wallflower. I speak on behalf of all the preachers, we are truly grateful for the spice you put in our soul saving.’ ”

The crowd’s laughter erupts into applause, wolf whistles, and general whooping. Pearl, Fleeta, and I put on our aprons and take our place behind the buffet table as the guests form a line. Iva Lou works the crowd, hugging and kissing her friends. If I ever doubted that she made the right decision regarding her surgery, I am positive now that she did. Iva Lou loves living, and whatever choice gave her peace of mind was the right one.