Western Swing (23 page)

“My sister's gay. Her friends are all nice to me, at first anyway. I don't think you're gay.”

“Latently, I am.” She opened the jar and spooned mayonnaise into her slit of a mouth. “He didn't really try to kill himself. It was a show.”

“Aren't you the one who shoots calves?”

“Yearlings.”

“Why would you want your father to kill himself?”

White glop flowed from spoon to face. “‘Cause I'm miserable and it's his fault.”

“Why don't you leave?”

Darlene's mouthful of mayonnaise reminded me of a pimple joke we all told in junior high. She said, “Don't be stupid.”

• • •

I found Thorne lying on the far end of a long leather couch that had spurs carved in the wood frame. Holding a glass in one hand, he stared at a soundless television screen.

“
60 Minutes
.” I recognized Mike Wallace.

“You feeling okay?” I settled into a high-back chair that matched the couch.

“I'm still here,” he answered, which didn't exactly relate to my question. “You eat?” Thorne had an exhausted Roman senator look. The combination of weight, pride, and alcohol involved in holding together a dynasty does odd things to a man's face and shoulders.

“Maria fed me.” I slouched into my favorite position—right leg over right chair arm, back against left chair arm, left foot dragging on the floor—and watched Mike interview an Arab. The Arab had a wide gap in his front teeth, which made him look sneaky.

“Ain't Maria a doll?”

“You're a fortunate man to have her.”

“You bet.” Thorne didn't act too interested in whether I sat with him or not. I've never dealt well with being ignored.

“I met your daughter.”

He blinked and drank from the glass.

“She seems to resent my presence. I guess it's because her mom just left.”

“Darlene hates Janey more than she hates me. Shot her in the back once with a twenty-two. Said Janey read her diary.” He paused for a drink. “What could be there to read, anyway?”

“Did it hurt Mrs. Axel?”

“Getting shot? Naw, Janey's real strong. I cut the bullet out myself.” Thorne smiled, I suppose thinking of his wife's back as he cut her open.

“Could I have a drink?”

“Bar's over there.”

“You want a refresher?”

“Thanks, Jim Beam blends real nice with my new pills. I'm hardly miserable at all.”

As I poured the drinks, I thought about poor, fat Darlene shooting her mother. I tried to picture Daddy in our living room back home, cutting a bullet out of Mom's back. Daddy would wear his doctor's mask and sterilize a steak knife. Mom would cover all the furniture with newspapers.

“Does Darlene have a skin disease?” I asked.

“She's coyote ugly, ain't she?”

“You shouldn't talk that way about your daughter. Maybe she's sick.” I walked back to the couch and handed Thorne his glass, then sat on the end and propped his feet in my lap. While Thorne talked, I took off his boots. He wasn't wearing socks.

“That ain't sickness. It's lack of sun. She eats and sleeps all day and wanders around the ranch all night. The hands are scared of her.”

“Why is Darlene so unhappy?”

Thorne drank awhile, considering the question.
60 Minutes
ended and
Murder, She Wrote
came on, still without sound.

“Hell if I know,” Thorne said.

“Have you ever asked her?”

“No.”

“Lot of people talk if you ask questions.”

Thorne set his glass on the end table with a clink. He pulled his head up so he could see me better. “Listen here, Lana Ann.”

“Lana Sue.”

“Lana Sue, the complications surrounding this household took many years to build into the mess you see today. This ain't no movie. You can't waltz in here with folksy wisdom and common sense and make everybody dandy.”

“I'm sorry.”

“My wife didn't just leave on the spur of the moment. I didn't try to kill myself because I was drunk. Those aren't phases my children are going through. You dropped from the sky into a fucked-up situation.”

“I'm sorry.”

Thorne settled back down into the couch. “All right. It's not your fault. You're the first good thing to come along in years. Just don't think you can solve all our problems after two hours of hanging around.”

“Okay.”

“Christ, if it was that easy, I would kill myself.”

Thorne finished his drink and fell asleep. I sat, sucking ice cubes and watching the old lady solve the murder, which was about a rock star electrocuted on a hot mike. Even without sound, I knew who did it by the second commercial. The show went boring after that and I started to wonder about my own fucked-up situations with Loren, Cassie, and Daddy. Did I want to throw off all those complications and take on another, just as screwed-up set?

It's like my mom. Mama watched every single episode of
Guiding Light
for eighteen years. Then, one Tuesday while Alan and Hope were discovering who Phillip's real father was, she switched to
Another World
—without knowing any of the characters or their past and present loves or anything. Mom never went back.

Maybe some of Mama rubbed off on me after all. I never thought so before.

I smoked a couple of cigarettes and watched Thorne sleep. As he breathed, the ends of his mustache quivered a bit. A white scar creased his leathery tan from the bottom of one ear to his cheekbone. To me, Thorne looked strong and whole, a man in control of what happens to him. Nothing like a person who would grieve to the point of suicide. Suicides are supposed to be pale and meek—like Ann or my grandmother.

The arm must have hurt because Thorne rolled over a couple times trying it in different positions. Loren sleeps spread all over the bed, sometimes using me as a pillow. Ace always curled on his left side with his right leg thrown across my hip. I guess to keep me pinned down.

When I first ran away with Mickey he slept on his back, but after Jimi Hendrix died from choking on his own vomit Mickey rolled over. He was the only one of the bunch who snored much.

I hate to think it, but I don't remember how Ron slept. Fourteen years together and I can't picture the guy in bed.

Murder, She Wrote
was followed by a detective show whose name I missed. Someone chased someone until a car exploded. I crawled along the couch and snuggled up next to Thorne's body. His breathing shifted a moment, then his good arm came around my shoulders. As I drifted into sleep, I felt Maria cover us with a blanket. Loren would have almost approved.

Way back in March of '63 when Daddy and the Christian Detective Agency dragged me, uncomplaining, back to Bellaire High, it was as if I'd slept those three months. My friends treated me like I'd been ill, Ron acted as if I never left. One of Daddy's doctor buddies checked me over and announced the family's fears were true, I had violated the sacred trust of virginity.

The funny thing was that Daddy didn't go into a week-long silence. I guess he wasted so much depression on my bad grades and minor disappointments that manic catatonia just wasn't appropriate for something as big as being found naked in a motel room with five likewise naked country musicians. My sins were so outrageous it was either forgive and forget or send me to detention hall for life. So everyone forgot—or pretended to. Daddy even bought me a used Chevy. I almost forgot myself. The days turned hot and life focused down to the country club pool in the afternoons and Pizza Hut at night.

Between the two, I circled Houston's fast-food strips endlessly in his Oldsmobile with Ron or my Chevy with Roxanne. Gas was cheap. We put on a couple hundred miles a day in a five-mile circuit, looking at other teenagers who looked at us. I remember honking the horn a lot.

Because of my long absence, they made me take two credits of summer school—which I couldn't stand. Everyone in town but me got to sleep late and drink Pepsis in front of the soap operas until time to drive over to the pool. I spent my mornings daydreaming away Texan History and Home Ec. Who knows what I daydreamed about; not Mickey, and probably not Ron. Maybe I didn't daydream at all but turned my brain into a white noise channel. That can happen when you're bored in hot weather.

I know I worried more about my tan than the economic class of real people. I listened to Top 40 all summer—“Wipe Out,” “Tie Me Kangaroo Down,” “Frankie and Johnny.” Roxanne taught me breast development exercises, but I could still look down my nightgown and see my feet. It was as if Mickey and singing onstage and my discovery of dignified poverty were only dreams.

• • •

There was one element of my fling that I couldn't forget and that was how relaxing and fun sex can be—Mickey's Regular Orgasm theory of mental health. I fought the urge, tried to ignore the urge, self-abused myself through the urge, but the honest truth is that, as summer turned into what passes for fall in Houston, my frustration grew to the point of out of hand.

“So get laid,” Roxanne said.

“I don't know.”

“It's fun, you know it's fun. Keep the fun you learned from Mickey and forget the stupid.”

“I promised Daddy I wouldn't.”

Roxanne pretended to choke on her hamburger. We were in a booth at McDonald's, waiting for Ron and Roxanne's newest cowboy, who was really a drywall hanger faking it as a cowboy on weekends. “Why in hell did you promise not to get laid?”

I sipped Sprite through a straw. “When I first came back, Daddy was going to ship me to a psychiatrist. Then he said Mom would die if I ever had sex again. Then he said it would end his career.”

“You believed all of that?”

“Then he bought me the Chevy.”

Roxanne collapsed into hysteria. She shouted loud enough so all the customers and the girls behind the counter turned to stare at me. “Your father gave you a car if you promised not to fuck?” I tried to shush her, but she wouldn't let it go. “A car for a pure ass, what kind of a deal is that?”

“It's a used car.”

“Why drive around if you can't fuck anybody?”

“Shut up, Roxanne. I promised for his peace of mind. And Mama's. The Chevy was just a bonus.”

Roxanne laughed so much I got mad and decided to wait for Ron outside. As I slid from the booth she caught my arm. “You're getting the crappy end of the deal,” she laughed. “That car doesn't have a tape deck. Tell him you won't give feel-ups for a tape deck.”

“To hell with you,” I said, though that made her laugh even more.

The truth is I made a stupid deal and I knew it was stupid at the time, but the Chevy (a '61 Impala painted bright red) wasn't the only reason I gave up sex—not that it was a bad reason. Somehow, though, from a distance of a few months, I suffered an antifling backlash. What I'd done with Mickey and the boys came to seem tacky and dumb. I mean, if Mickey loved me he should have done something to keep me around. Not that he ever said he loved me.

My mistake was I started comparing. I lined up Choosie and the black-toothed bartenders and all the truck-stop waitresses against Mom and Dad and their friends in their Grand Prix and Mercedes. I forgot how real and sincere I thought the waitresses were and only remembered that none of the women in Mom's golf foursome had to work. If one of the neighbors got sick they could go to the doctor and be taken care of. If a car broke, it could be fixed. That didn't seem to be giving up the sincere life for money.

So my values pendulum swung too far back the other way. I decided being rich was better than being poor and the symptoms I connected with poverty were whiskey, country music, and sex. For a few months anyway, I became a snotty teenager again. I reverted to typical.

However, once found, country music and regular sex aren't something that can be walked away from. By fall, I was listening to Loretta Lynn again, and this new guy named Merle Haggard. I was following the steel breaks in Buck Owens and Ernest Tubb.

Late at night I slid into my white nightgown and turned off all the lights in my room, then, using the glow from the dial, I tuned WBAP Country on my portable Westinghouse radio. I waited for Kitty Wells or Sammi Smith to come on crooning a heartbreak song, then I ran my fingers across my stomach into the gap between my legs. I pretended my fingers were Mickey's on his steel. I tried to remember what it was like to stand onstage next to him, closing my eyes and singing about sadness and pain, giving the customers part of myself. Then I pretended Mickey was in me.

The sound was so low I could hardly hear Sammi's depression. I was afraid Daddy would wake up and bust through the door. I don't know which would have upset him the most, me listening to country music or playing with myself.

• • •

Every Friday night through October and November, usually after a football game, Ron and I cruised his Oldsmobile out to a fresh housing development and parked along the newly laid-out streets. Houston neighborhoods sprung up so fast in those days we had to change tracts every few weeks to stay ahead of the houses.

Some Fridays after we parked, we argued so long over leaving the radio on Top 40 or country that nothing happened. Usually, though, one of us would give in and Ron would take his watch off and set it on the dash, then he'd slide his long arms over my shoulders and we'd put in an hour or so of adolescent window steaming. After maybe a month and a half of this, Ron realized—or became conditioned to the fact—that I went further and sweated steamier to country than I did to the Singing Nun. That put an end to the radio arguments.

Our frustration came about because Ron wanted to go “all the way”—he was desperate to go “all the way”—but he didn't know squat about technique. I had sworn not to cross the forbidden line, but I knew how much fun even coming close could be with proper finger and tongue work.

I tried being patient with Ron and his social background. He really didn't know much past basketball, Southern Baptist summer camps, and Pat Boone's
Twixt Twelve and Twenty.
He kissed with too much pressure, groped like a blind baby, whined if things didn't go his way; whenever he blundered into an erogenous zone, he poked at it with one fingernail.

One correct touch and I would have been so wet and frothy all the promises in Texas couldn't hold me back, but my Daddy-induced code kept me from showing Ron how it was done. Sometimes I prayed his fingers would accidentally brush the right spots and I could lose control without guilt.

• • •

Thanksgiving night we parked out past Deer Park in a new luxury development along Galveston Bay. A norther had blown in and Ron wanted to run the engine and the heater, but I was afraid we'd asphyxiate from carbon monoxide like the kids in Beaumont did while they were screwing in her parents' garage. Ron said we weren't in a garage and we wouldn't die if we got warm. I sat with my arms crossed and the window down all the way until he relented and turned off the engine. Then Ron sulked awhile. He was a big kid, not as tall as Mickey, but at least forty pounds heavier. Ron was an only child—his father worked sixteen hours a day so he would never have to hear his wife's constant grating babble. As Ron's mom talked, she scampered around like a squirrel, doing every conceivable suck-up task in the house. Ron had never washed dishes or made a bed or mowed a lawn. He never did anything he didn't want to do, which is a great situation for an adult, but leads to sulkiness in children, especially sports heroes.

However, that night I felt friendly toward Ron. He'd given up watching the Texas-Texas A&M game on my parents' TV to take me out for a Coke. That's what kids all told their moms and dads back then when they wanted to go park for hours and whip themselves into a sexual frenzy.

“We're going out for a Coke,” I told Mom.

“Don't be late,” she trilled from her usual post in the bathroom. Daddy was studying a saffron catalog and didn't look up.

I didn't want Ron to sulk, I wanted him to be happy, I just didn't care to die from necking in an Oldsmobile. Since Ron wouldn't come to me, I slid across the plastic seat covers, reached across and pulled his watch off for him. Then I leaned up and swabbed his ear with my tongue. Ron played tough for about twenty seconds before he fell sideways on top of me. In the confusion of teeth, elbows, and my left foot in the ashtray, Ron slid his big hand down the front of my panties.

Of course, no one in church camp had told him it works better with the girl's jeans unbuttoned, so Ron's hand cramped up against my bladder and stuck. I waited awhile, kissed awhile, smelled the after-shave he'd sprinkled behind his ears, but Ron seemed satisfied with an abdomen grip.

What was I supposed to do, work on wrestling holds with the dunce? His hand pressed so hard it nearly made me pee. Leaning back against the door handle, I went into one of my internal conversations that always get me in trouble.

“God,” I said to myself, “I can't expect him to know everything.”

“What about the Chevy?” I answered.

“Remember what Roxanne said, ‘You can't fuck a car, Lana Sue.'”

So I reached down and unbuttoned my jeans—even slid the zipper down a ways.

Ron stopped in midkiss. His whole body went rigid. I think the sudden freedom shocked his hand into paralysis. Then his fingers plunged into what back then was called a “finger fuck.” Who knows what it's called now, but in 1963 a high-school boy's wildest ambition was a finger fuck.

I tingled some and was all set to tingle more, only Ron was way too low; and his fingers didn't move, they froze as far in me as he could reach. I looked at his face up next to mine. The eyes were wide open and unsure of what was real—like a little kid seeing the ocean for the first time. His breath came in gasps. A picture flashed of Ron hyperventilating and passing out with his hand up my crotch. It wouldn't have felt much different if he had fainted.

If I didn't make a move, I knew Ron would lie there and not flex a muscle all night long. Placing my hand on his, I pulled it up to the fingertips on clitoris level and murmured something like, “There, now rub softly around and around.”

Ron rubbed a few seconds and I started feeling warm. I sighed once, then he stopped.

“Don't quit now,” I mumbled.

Ron pulled his hand away. “Who taught you that?”

“What?”

Ron sniffed his fingers, then reached over to the dash and put on his watch. “How do you know where I'm supposed to touch?”

“I know where it feels best.”

“Did that steelworker touch you there?”

I pushed Ron and sat up straight, as close to my door as possible. “Of course he touched me there. I lived with him for three months.”

Ron held the foam-wrapped steering wheel with both hands. His whole face drooped like a little boy's. “I never thought about you screwing him.”

“What did you think I did with him? Besides, Mickey is a steel player, not a steelworker, there's a difference.”

Ron's tongue pushed against his lower lip. “Not to me, there's not.” His face turned from sulk to concern. “Was he a pervert, Lannie?”

I stared out the window at the bay. A silver moon was rising from Louisiana. I thought about Mickey's sly little smile whenever he wanted to try something new. “Yes, I guess most people would call him a pervert.”

Teenage boys were a lot more naive before the common use of the pill and abortions and British rock and roll. I guess even “good” girls get laid in junior high now days. I'm sure little Marcie down the road saw pictures from
Joy of Sex
before she could even read—if she can read.

I go into that rap because of what Ron said next. He turned and picked up my hand and said, without irony or sarcasm, “You didn't like it, did you?”

Didn't like it? Didn't like making love under the steel, in truckstop men's rooms, in the van, tied down on a snooker table—I liked it so much I even amazed Mickey.

I looked into Ron's concerned blue eyes. “Sometimes he hurt me, but mostly, I'd say I loved it and couldn't get enough. Why do you ask?”

Ron's big jaw sunk in his chest. He stared down at the plastic footprint he used as an accelerator pedal and mumbled, “I can't stand the thought of some pervert doing nasty things to you, Lannie. You're a princess to me. Why didn't you leave?”

“I didn't want to.”

Ron turned his head to look away out the driver's side window. Blond curls on the back of his head fell over the edge of the collar on his Ban-Lon shirt. I touched the longest curl and said, “You need a haircut.”