“This is Gertrude,” Rusty answered.
I dump out the water, wash out the pot, refill it and put it on to boil while Mom continues half-ranting about Walter Eighton and half-talking to Rusty about her coloring book. While that’s going on I grab some eggs, onions, bacon, and parmesan, and get to chopping.
Walter Eighton offered to buy our family land. That, in and of itself, isn’t a problem. It’s not the first offer we’ve gotten for the hundred and fifty acres that border on the national forest, and I doubt it will be the last.
It’s the fact that when Daniel and Seth said no, things got ugly. Walter got pissed and threatened them, said he’d take the land by one way or another if he had to. He swore that he knew a guy from up in Richmond and he also swore that he’d sue us into oblivion, so it doesn’t sound like he’s made up his mind on how to do us in just yet.
Unbeknownst to any of us, it wasn’t the first offer he’d made on the land. A few weeks before he’d offered a lower price to my mom, and when she declined, he called her a senile old fool who’d regret turning him down.
Clarabelle Loveless is many things — bad cook, accomplished astronomer, doting grandmother — but she’s not senile and she’s certainly not a fool. She’s angry about the name-calling, but she’s furious that he went behind her back and tried to make a deal with Seth and Daniel.
Walter wants to build some sort of shopping center on the land, calling it ‘phase one’ of a project that will ‘bring economic opportunity to Southwestern Virginia,’ which sounds like bullshit to me. He wants to raze acres of perfectly beautiful forest for some outlet malls, followed by a ski resort and a waterpark.
We all know full well exactly who’d profit in that scheme. By and large, it’s not the people of Sprucevale.
Except the Eightons, of course. They’d profit while the rest of us would be lucky if the capitalist megaplex didn’t bleed us dry, put all our stores out of business, and ruin our beautiful countryside while they were at it.
“His mother’s a piece of work, too,” Mom says, the ice clinking in her glass. “Remember for Walter’s wedding about ten years back, she insisted on importing the lawn from somewhere in Kentucky?”
Seth snorts.
“How’d she import a lawn?”
“In sod chunks,” Mom says. “On a flatbed truck. Bluegrass. All the way here from Kentucky. No wonder he thinks the world is his for the taking.”
“Did it look good?” Daniel asks. He sounds baffled.
“It looked like grass,” Mom says, shrugging. “At least when I saw it a week later.”
“Plus, she parks like an asshole,” I add. I remember Rusty’s presence one second too late.
“Oh, come on,” Daniel says.
“Sorry. She parks like a butthole.”
Daniel just sighs.
“Every time I see her Mercedes at the grocery store, she’s parked diagonally across two spots,” I say, tearing open the package of spaghetti, the water close to boiling. I’d already put the garlic bread in the oven, a pile of bacon and onions on low heat on the next burner.
I’d also quietly thrown away the jar of pasta sauce that my mom had gotten out, since I’d given it a taste test and I was pretty sure she’d made it with mint. Spaghetti carbonara was a much better option.
“I know it,” my mom says. “Last week when I was there I parked right up next to her, not a foot away from her driver’s side door. Bet she had to get in the other side and crawl over.”
Seth snickers. They keep on talking, moving from Walter to his parents and then finally off the topic completely. I boil pasta, crack eggs, pull the bread from the oven, and try to keep my mind from wandering to Violet and how much her continued presence in Sprucevale vexes me.
I have no idea why she’s still here. By rights, she shouldn’t be — when we were growing up, she never liked this place to begin with, and even if I don’t like her I can recognize that she’s meant for bigger and better things.
I know she’d gone to college nearby, but even though I lost track of her after my own disastrous college experience, I just assumed she moved on. People like her don’t stick around a tiny town in the middle of nowhere; people like her move to big cities, Richmond or D.C. or maybe even New York, and they get high-powered jobs and wear suits and make conference calls.
It bothers me that she hasn’t. I know she wanted to. If anyone deserved to move on from Appalachian Nowheresville, it’s her.
I finish the pasta, make a quick salad, and pull the garlic bread out of the oven while the rest of my family chats around the kitchen table. I make myself stop wondering what Violet’s deal is, since she’s not my problem and, with any luck, I won’t be seeing much of her.