Honeymooners A Cautionary Tale (30 page)

You can’t lay the blame for
that on my doorstep. What difference does it make, anyway?
Besides, since we’re on the subject of Lindsay, a subject you
brought up, do you have any idea how I felt when I heard that you
had gotten involved with her? Do you have any idea of how I felt to
have the lie put to so many of my hopes and dreams?

You were and are a married
man, Ralph, so to speak.

I don’t want to think about
these things, Ralph said, and sat down heavily. —All I know is
this. I’m going to set my house in order once and for all. I’m
going to try, anyway. We’ve got an appointment with some shyster
the day after tomorrow. For all the good he’s going to do me. I’m
not walking into that shyster’s office with any illusions, I’ll
tell you.

You probably won’t go to
jail, old Ralph. Not a first offender like you. If your mouthpiece
is any good, that is. And if the prosecuting shyster isn’t out to
make an example of you. Anyway, what’s the worst you could pull?
Six months maybe. A year at the outside. Eighteen months. Probably
easy time at some white- collar criminal country-club farm. Hoeing
in the fields. Milking some cows. And if you’re lucky enough not to
spend any time in a county lockup you might not even get
buggered.

What? Get what?

Buggered, Ralph. You know,
butt-fucked.

Butt-fucked? Me? I don’t
believe that for a minute! They go for boys. I’m too old. I’m a man
of forty or so. I’m nearly over forty. I thought they went in for
boys. Young, tender boys. Tender chickens is what they call those
boys. I’d hang myself if I ever got buggered. I swear I would. I’d
hang myself in my cell. With my belt. With my shoestrings, if I
could manage that.

They confiscate your belt
and shoestrings, Ralph.

Then I’d choke myself with
my own bare hands. What’s holding our wives up? That’s what I’d
like to know.

You see, Ralph, rape is an
act of power and aggression. It doesn’t really have much to do with
sexual attraction or gratification. Basically, Ralph, you’ll just
be another piece of white meat for the brothers to shame and
humiliate and cornhole.

But why me? I’ve always
been, you know, a liberal when it comes to, you know, civil rights.
I, for one, just thought the world of Martin Luther King. I read
most of Malcolm X.

But how are the brothers
going to know that? Nope, Ralph, you’ll just be another white-meat
avenue in old payback city.

Did you ever get buggered
when you claim you did that time?

I’ll tell you what I did. As
soon as I hit that lockup, I found out who was supposed to be the
meanest motherfucker in the joint. I took the cat on. I’m not
claiming I won, but I fought him good enough that nobody ever
wanted a piece of my ass.

I’ve had two fights in my
life. And both of them were before I was ten. I lost them both. And
one of them was with a girl.

I’ll teach you some moves
and holds. So you won’t be totally defenseless. But you’ll probably
have to get an old man.

An old man? What old man,
Jim? I don’t want an old man.

Some tough brother who’ll
protect you for sexual favors.

Sexual favors? Never!
Exactly what kind of sexual favors?

It’ll be either him or an
endless line of brothers or Paco’s tattooed cousins. You be good
to him, be his sissy, sit down when you pee, spend some quality
time on your knees, and he’ll be like your motherfucker in shining
armor.

Never! Ralph said. —Not in a
million years!

Take my advice, Ralph. As
soon as you hit that cellblock, be mentally prepared, and don’t try
to bullshit your boyfriend or think you can outsmart him. The first
thing that big motherfucker will ask you is do you want to be the
momma or the poppa. And you, Ralph, thinking you’re making the best
of a bad situation, and that you’re somehow smarter than him
because you’ve been to college, you’ll probably say you’d rather be
the poppa, right, Ralph. Well, forget outsmarting him. Your
boyfriend will just give you a big grin and drop his drawers and
say, Okay, Poppa, you just come on over here then and suck Momma’s
big dick.

I think I’ll just go hang
myself right now, Ralph said, and put his face in his hands. —While
I still have my belt. I wish those women would get here.

Ancient Eggs

Contrary to Ralph’s greatest
fear, Alice Ann and Lindsay had not searched the seedy bars for
bikers or tattooed truckers or sailors; instead, they had remained
at that roadhouse in the hills above Palo Alto drinking and telling
one another all, which did, however, confirm his second-greatest
fear.

I want to go ahead and say
this, Alice Ann had said at one point, taking a long drag on a
freshly lit cigarette. —I never really blamed you for anything that
happened between you and Ralph. I know Ralph lied to you about our
situation, so how could you know the truth about Ralph and me. I
finally couldn’t even really blame Ralph for what happened between
you two either, if the truth be told. Finally I came to realize
that I had only myself to blame. Ralph, well, Ralph was simply
being Ralph, for one thing, and he was also trying to deal with his
own pain and sense of betrayal. I’ll never forgive myself for the
agony I caused Ralph. We were childhood sweethearts. We were both
virgins when we made love for the first time. It felt fated. I got
pregnant from that very first time. We both swore we would never
make love with anybody else. We were each other’s everything. And
neither of us did make love with anybody else. For years and years,
anyway. Until I went outside the marriage. I broke Ralph’s heart.
So he was just getting back at me through you. In some ways maybe I
deserved it. Didn’t you say Ralph showed you pictures of our
kids?

Yes, Lindsay said. —He did.
They’re handsome kids.

You’ve never had children,
have you?

Not yet. But Jim and I are
trying.

They’re both just great
kids. Our daughter can’t decide whether to follow me into the
theater or study to be a veterinarian. She loves animals. Our house
is a zoo, of course, but so what is my attitude. Our son aspires to
be a police officer, or an attorney-at- law maybe. Did Ralph tell
you I was an actress in New York at one point?

I think he did mention
it.

Off Broadway, of course. But
not Off Off Broadway. One play I starred in later made it to
Broadway. Actually my part was the second lead, but my notices were
amazing. But I had to drop out. I had to take a job to support the
family so that Ralph could write full-time. I do community theater
occasionally, and of course my current job is teaching drama at a
very prestigious community college. Now and then out of the blue
I’ll get a call from New York. Or Hollywood even. Some old friend
or admirer offering me a part. Now that the kids are almost grown I
may consider an offer. If only Ralph could get on his
feet.

Alice Ann took Lindsay’s
right hand and studied its palm. She then studied her own palm as
though for the first time in her life. Alice Ann took a pack of
small tarot cards from her purse and began arranging them on the
picnic table.

They, she and Lindsay, had
been more than even sisters in other lifetimes, Alice Ann declared,
staring at a card of stars. In two lifetimes they had been twins.
Twice they had died in fire together, and once in water. In ancient
Egypt four thousand years ago, they had been royal sisters, their
mother a queen of the Nile. Alice Ann had been Lindsay’s mother in
one life. And Lindsay had been Alice Ann’s mother more than once.
In a Roman life their souls had merged. Ralph had been Lindsay’s
son once. And her father. And Alice Ann’s father and son. And once
Ralph had been their sister. It never ended, this ageless soup of
seeds and ancient eggs.

In this lifetime Alice Ann
had dreamed about Lindsay since childhood, Alice Ann declared, and
gripped Lindsay’s hand across the table. She had waited for Lindsay
to come to her. She had known Lindsay was coming into her life. She
had dreamed of Lindsay’s childhood face. After she had met and
married Ralph, Alice Ann had begun to dream dreams of Ralph holding
another woman in his arms. Ralph naked, and the woman naked, and
they had made passionate love in the dreams, and at first Alice Ann
had been inconsolable. Until she began to realize the woman in her
dreams of betrayal was her sister, her mother, daughter, was
herself, who had been lost to her in this lifetime. It was as
though one of Ralph’s missions on earth in this lifetime had been
to seek out Lindsay for Alice Ann and make them whole.

As soon as I saw you today,
Alice Ann said to Lindsay, I knew who you really were. I didn’t see
Jim at first. He was walking behind you. But as soon as I saw you
walking toward our table, I recognized your face from a thousand
dreams. We are exceptional beings, you and I. We will be safe in
this lifetime together.

I hope that means we won’t
be burned at the stake again anytime soon, Lindsay said, and
stubbed out her cigarette.

We have one another now. We
will be safe now.

And we won’t go down with
any ships at sea again, will we?

We are both due long, good
lifetimes. Our lifelines about wrap around our fucking hands,
see.

Now there’s a
comfort.

Ralph told me that when you
two made love he would come to a point he thought, or rather, he
made himself imagine he was fucking us both.

Hon, Lindsay said, and
drained her glass of beer, don’t you think we should be going? The
boys will be pissed. Jim is so anal about time.

I knew every time you two
made love, Alice Ann said, and lit a fresh cigarette. —I could
always tell. I would get these strange vibes. Every time Ralph
comes, he pictures my face. He can’t help it, he just does it
automatically. Ralph can be a thousand miles away and having a wet
dream, and if he comes, I can feel it. I can feel his eyes, even in
his dreams, on my face. And it’s as though I can feel his hot seed
shoot up inside my body. Every time Ralph even masturbates, and
believe me Ralph jerks off like a monkey, I know it. Ralph and I
are thinking about having another child. Before it’s too late for
us.

I think that’s simply
wonderful, Alice Ann, Lindsay said. —I think I may be
pregnant.

This may sound bananas,
Alice Ann said, and laughed, throwing her head back and shaking
out her long blond hair, but I ordered this kit, this wild kit.
Ralph thinks it’s bananas, of course. But Ralph thinks that just
about every goddamn thing I do is nuts. He wants to keep me under
lock and key. I’m always trying new things. I’m always trying to
broaden my horizons. That is the only way one can grow as a human
being. But not our Ralph. Ralph is terrified of change. Show Ralph
something new and he turns tail. Ralph is gone like a shot. But
anyway, I’ve ordered this sort of kit. It’s for a, well, tent. Or
more like a canopy. To put over our bed. You assemble it, you know,
then install it, rig it up, whatever, over your bed. And the wild,
wonderful thing is that it’s in the shape of a pyramid. Isn’t that
wild? I don’t think it’s bananas at all. Ralph will shit a brick.
And they are really quite lovely. They come in all these lovely
colors, and the fabric part is pure silk from the Orient. They’re
really sort of what you could call designer pyramids. But the
important part about all this is the pyramid shape. It creates a
force field. This is a scientific fact. It has been proven by
scientists more advanced in their thinking and fully documented.
The pyramid shape is a mysterious and magical force. It can
preserve things, for one thing. I mean, look at the goddamn
mummies, for God’s sake. It can revitalize things, too, which to me
is the most important consideration. People who sleep under these
pyramids make the most amazing claims. Bald men grow new hair
suddenly. Wrinkles disappear overnight. And talk about pyramid
passion! Couples who haven’t had the urge in years start screwing
like rabbits. Not that Ralph and I need any help in that
department. But the most important thing is what it can do for
fertility. They have accumulated scientific evidence to prove that
sleeping under a pyramid can cause a woman to double, even triple,
her chances of conception. And it can increase a man’s sperm count
by a billion or more. An extra billion of those little buggers! Can
you imagine! Anybody can make babies. There was a report of a
sixty-seven-year-old woman who became pregnant for the first time
in her life. And believe me, she wasn’t even trying. But I will be
trying. I will be trying with all my heart and soul.

All Wet

1

Where had Ralph and Jim not
searched high and low for their errant wives, driving bar to bar up
and down El Camino Real, passing a fresh pint of Jack Daniel’s, Jim
chain-lighting joints. They toured the dives on Whiskey Gulch in
Palo Alto’s east end, a low-down area which according to Ralph
Alice Ann had been known to haunt. The hot, humid air smelled like
chicken frying; traffic from the nearby Bayshore Freeway sounded
like heavy rain over a huge body of water. Country music, shrieking
laughter, rebel yells poured out of the cowboy and biker bars’ open
doorways, where evil-eyed hombres lurked impassively as Ralph and
Jim lumbered along bar to bar.