Western Swing (5 page)

Only I never expected the side effects—the amazing amount of energy, the total lack of a need for sleep. He developed an awesome sex drive. I wouldn't have minded that one so much, except, when we made love, he acted like he didn't know who he was with. Twice he jumped me without saying a word before, during, or after. I can't stand being ignored, especially when I'm fucking.

I caught him in the bathroom, whispering to Zelda. He put a padlock on his shorts drawer. I walked into the study while he was typing and Loren lurched forward, covering the page with his whole upper body.

At dinner that night, he babbled over an hour about his little sister that the Rangers killed. Sometimes he called her Kathy. Sometimes he called her Debby. He couldn't remember.

He said, “They killed her for collecting Barbie dolls.”

Loren began to affect my peace of mind. I started waking up at three in the morning, unable to get back to sleep. I took four showers a day. As his sex drive soared, mine zilched, which upset me a lot because I've always been proud of my sex drive and I hate to lose something I'm proud of.

“Let's sit naked in the creek,” Loren said.

“I'm not in the mood.”

“I'll borrow a horse from the VanHorns and we can make it at full gallop.”

“I hate horses.”

“I think I'll go watch the moon rise.”

“Go right ahead.”

Loren went out to lie on his back in the yard and discuss life with the moon and I reached for a Milky Way.

• • •

I couldn't have been more than seven when I became aware of Daddy's dark clouds. Sometimes, for no reason, he quit talking to me, quit loving me as far as I could see, and I felt so awful that I took comfort in candy. Or maybe I punished myself for letting him down, I don't know. All I know is, every few months Daddy sat in his chair with no intention of ever doing anything again, and I stuffed myself with cupcakes, soda pop, Hershey bars, anything sweet I could find. I was sneaky about it, hid Ding Dongs in my bottom drawer and chocolate kisses in my dollhouse.

All through junior high and high school, I remember periodic nightmares of long silences and junk-food blues.

Now, whenever I feel rejected, I gorge. Who knows why? But the day Loren caught me spooning down white sugar, I knew something was terribly wrong.

• • •

The next day I found a gray hair in my brush, scalded myself on the morning coffee, and my six-hundred-dollar, fourteen-attachment, will-pick-up-anything-from-tenpenny-nails-to-carpet-patterns vacuum cleaner broke. Midway through my own room, it made a clattering sound, smelled like burning rubber, and stopped sucking.

Even sane, Loren can't fix a drink, and in his infinite purity, he'd decided mechanical devices were beneath the dignity of him and his buddy God.

“My mind must be free to roam the skies of enlightenment,” he said the time I asked him to light the oven for dinner.

So, I had to take the vacuum cleaner apart, figure out the problem, and put it all back together again. Major decisions are ninety percent timing, you realize that? Three hours earlier, before the gray hair and the vacuum trauma, I wouldn't have left Loren. I'd have brained him, but I wouldn't have left. There's no use talking that way, though, because you can't change timing.

None of the damn pieces fit. I sat in the center of a dirty rug, surrounded by long tilings and tiny things and clumps of floor crud, right on the narrow edge of screaming and hurling the drapes attachment through the window, when Loren wandered in the door from the kitchen and walked through my nuts-and-washers-and-doodads-that-don't-go-anywhere pile.

“Listen to this,” he said.
“A one-eyed man is able to see, a lame man is able to tread. He treads on the tail of a tiger. The tiger bites the man.”

“Loren, you're kicking my nuts.”

“What do you think that means, Lana Sue? It sounds like if everything isn't perfect and you keep going anyway, you'll get bit by a tiger. Does that mean handicapped people should just sit down and never move?”

“What book is that?”

Loren turned it around to show the cover. “The
I Ching
.”

“The whole damn house is falling apart and you're reading the
I Ching
?”

“It seems relevant.”

I picked up a hollow, lightweight metal tube, usually used for vacuuming under things, and swung it as hard as I could into Loren's temple.

“That's it.
Crack.
You're off the list, Loren. I hope God can cook, clean, and fuck 'cause you can't and I won't.”

Loren raised his hand to his head, feeling the place I'd whacked. “I don't understand.”

“That's the first truth you've found all day. You don't understand anything and you're understanding less by the minute.”

“Why did you hit me?”

I turned and headed for the door.

“Lana Sue, are you leaving?”

Whirling, “I'm not going down with you, Loren. You want to go insane, that's your business, but don't expect me to go with you. And don't expect me to be here when you come back.”

He just looked at me, fingering the lump on his head.

Since Loren wouldn't argue with me, all the way out to the truck I argued with myself. “Lana, what are you doing? You love this one. Don't blow it.”

“I don't have to put up with this crap anymore. There's no excuse for living with a metaphysical boogieman.”

“Sure there is. Kick the vacuum pieces in the closet. They don't matter.”

“I'm not killing my marriage so I won't have to put a vacuum cleaner back together.”

“Bullshit.”

• • •

I stopped in Jackson long enough to gas up the Toyota before heading south. South is the secure way to head in a crisis. It's warm all year in the South. Daddy lives there.

Rolling down all the windows, I jammed an Emmylou tape in the deck and cranked the truck up to 80.

Life wasn't fair all of a sudden. I'd married one man who turned into someone else who forced me to do something I didn't want to do.

I screamed into the wind,
“My husband's an idiot.”

“The others were idiots,” another voice said—a voice from a part of me I don't see too often. “Loren's good. Nothing good ever happened to you before. Don't throw it away.”

“Fuck off, who asked you anyway?”

“You always talk like a slut when you're upset.”

“Look what's happened, I'm talking out loud to something that calls me a slut. This doesn't happen to me…
I'm normal.”
I turned Emmylou up loud, hoping to drown the conversation, but inner voices are persistent suckers.

“Don't shout when you're alone, Lana Sue.”

“Shut up, creep.”

“Loren accepts you. He doesn't judge or want anything from you. He doesn't force anything on you.”

“He reads the
I Ching
out loud. He talks to the moon and it talks back. Do you want to live with a man who talks to the moon?”

“Do you want to live without him?”

I cranked the truck up to the 95-100 range, which scared me and my voices into shutting up. Wyoming flew past like it was on a video screen and nothing was real. I imagined if the Toyota crashed, a light would flash, a buzzer would honk, and I'd have to put in another quarter—not a good pretend game to play when you're driving. A stray antelope could have turned the Lana Sue story into a tragedy without even knowing what hit him.

Emmylou sang a fast song about a pinball machine in Amarillo, Texas. I hummed along, picking the guitar breaks on the steering wheel. Our band played Amarillo several times—I even sang at the Golden Sandies Homecoming Dance way back in another life. I've had so many lives and sometimes they don't connect.

The high-speed emotionalism wasn't safe, and I'm not stupid—at least not for more than ten minutes—so I backed off on the accelerator, watching the sagebrush slow to a dull blur. Digging through the glove compartment, I replaced Emmylou with Bru Hau.

I got a hole in my boot, I got a hole in my coat, there's a hole in my fancy shirt, I got a hole in my life, where my baby walked out.

The main attraction, and drawback, to country music is that if you've just left a husband, wife, or love of some kind, or even worse, been left by a husband, wife, or love of some kind, every single one of those syrupy, corny, otherwise trite songs touches you. Sometimes I don't want to be touched.

Sure, it's all been said before, but as I try to explain to Loren, all real emotions have been felt millions of times. Nothing sincere is original. Trite is basic, and if your emotions are basic, you relate to trite.

There was a hole in our love and she walked right through it,

To get a better point of view you might say that I blew it.

As Bru Hau's heartbreak song got to me, the Toyota moved slower. I saw less and less of the high desert and more and more of what used to be. I slid into memories.

You work me too hard and your jokes ain't funny

I can't live in your life full of dreams and no money

More than slid. Skimming along Highway 89, rolling south away from Loren, I got down and mud-wrestled with my past.

Slime might be a better term than mud.

Daddy was a gynecologist. Grandma committed suicide.

I come from a long line of moody people on my father's side and social climbers on Mom's. Dad's family was wealthy and wanted to be normal, were desperate to be normal. Mom's family was normal and wanted to be wealthy. The two lines culminated in me, Lana Sue Goodwin Potts Roe Paul, the moodiest social climber.

My sister Dessie once said, “Daddy fell in love with Mom because her mom served dinner at exactly the same time every night and all the furniture in the living room was wrapped in plastic. He figured anyone that normal couldn't put out crazy kids.”

He figured wrong, of course. Dessie turned gay at eleven. I caught her going down on the baby-sitter the night Mom and Dad drove downtown to see
The King and I.
I thought she was playing hide-and-seek from me and had found a really dumb place to hide. Dessie lives in New York City now with a famous lesbian magazine editor. My sister never was cute like me. Maybe she got the wrong hormones.

Dessie won't go to Houston to visit Mom and Dad anymore, says they're provincial and have bad taste.

“I do not care to associate myself with anyone who serves Riunite on ice with a salmon loaf,” Dessie says, “even if they are my parents.”

From the earliest I remember, especially after Daddy started having sad spells, much was made of “Grandma's blood.” When Dessie sat in the middle of Wildwood Way and refused to budge, Mom said, “Grandma's blood.” When I threw the veal piccata into the living room knickknack shelf, it was “Grandma's blood.” I never found out what Grandma's sin was, other than killing herself while her sons were off on Iwo Jima wasting Japs, but she sure got blamed for a lot of grief fifteen years later.

Once every seven or eight months I'd come home from school and Mom would meet me at the door, whispering, “Grandma's blood is in your father again. Why don't you go to Roxanne's for the night?”

“Why do I have to leave?”

“For one night. You can come back tomorrow.”

“Daddy won't be any better tomorrow.”

“Yes, he will. He just needs some rest. You'll be fine at Roxanne's.”

“Sure, Mom. We got any candy bars? I'm hungry.”

I packed off to my cousin Roxanne's with my toothbrush, a rolled-up nightie, and an overnight case full of junk food, which I finished off by bedtime. The next day I would walk home to find Daddy sitting in his overstuffed Naugahyde recliner, staring at his hand on his knee. He usually sat about a week, sometimes a week and a half or two, not talking, not even blinking as far as Dessie and I could tell. Each night around bedtime he'd exhale a sigh that tore my spine from bottom to top.

I reached a time where I could handle the catatonic daddy routine by pretending he wasn't really there, that man in the chair was a visiting plant, but I never got used to the sighs. I still remember how terrible the nightly wait was and how much I hated myself when it came.

Then one morning I'd wake up and Daddy would be in the kitchen, teasing, rumpling hair, flipping pancakes, full of energy and projects. His favorite project was the garden. Daddy spent hundreds of hours piddling over strains of saffron, trying to find one that flourished in Houston's climate. I don't think gynecology was all that important to him. He only put in enough time at it to finance his real interests, like saffron.

Poor Mama married the wrong money. She didn't want a family of temperamental neurotics. She wanted a television commercial life. A household where the biggest problems were choosing a feminine spray and stains in the toilet bowl. She wanted two large American-made automobiles and a separate family room away from the dining and living room combination—a bathroom of her very own.

Lord only knows what Daddy wanted—to get through it all, I suppose, to grow old with a presentable wife, plenty of insurance, virgin daughters, and enough money to bury himself with dignity.

That was the problem right there—virgin daughters. His spells coincided with my first period, my first date, my first C in school. Any excuse from me and Daddy's eyes filmed over and he shuffled around the house like an old man for a day, then he moaned out loud and sat down and I got sent to Roxanne's for another night.

Mom knew who to blame, all right. Daddy had a spell just before I ran away with Mickey. It started on Christmas Eve, midway through Perry Como.

Perry sat on a three-legged stool, singing about the bells of Saint Somebody while Mom hummed along. She had set up a card table for stringing cranberries and popcorn. Mom just couldn't accept the fact that we were not a regular, wholesome American family like the ones on Donna Reed and “My Three Sons.” Daddy leaned back in his recliner, smoking a cigar. Dessie was upstairs with her best friend, Brenda.

I sat on the couch, eating a TV dinner and wondering how Mom would feel if I told her Dessie wasn't upstairs gossiping about boys. Wouldn't it be neat at sixteen to surprise your complacent
Better Homes and Gardens
mother with, “My sister's up in her room licking Brenda's clit, Ma.” I'd love it. She could never act so damn self-righteous around me again.

But, I didn't. It would be too much like stepping on a puppy's head. Instead, I silently chewed Salisbury steak and watched Perry Como and my mother fake the Christmas spirit.

Daddy leaned over and took off his left slipper and threw it at the television. Mom and I stopped in midhum and chew, staring at the slipper on the floor.

Daddy groaned, “Jesus Christ.”

He didn't say another word clear through
The Tonight Show
—just sat there with one slipper on his foot and one slipper on the rug.

Before bed, Mom caught me in the hall and pulled me into her and Daddy's bathroom with the fuzzy toilet seat cover. The towels were red and green, used only during the holiday season.

“Grandma's blood is acting up in your father again,” she whispered loudly. “What did you do?”

“I didn't do anything, Mama,” I said, though I knew better. I didn't know what awful injustice I'd committed, but I knew Daddy's depression was my fault. It was never Dessie who caused him to stop talking. Always me, I was older.

“You're so pretty and sweet,” Mom said, touching my hair. “You have all the advantages, Lannie. Don't break your father's heart.”

A week later, I ran off to get laid and become a country star, but if someone says you're breaking their heart before you've done anything, you might as well do something. You get blamed either way.

A couple of years after the twins were born, I took a course in psychology at Rice. The course gave me just enough undergraduate ammunition to try defending myself.

“Daddy's manic,” I shouted at Mom. “It's bad chemicals he inherited from Grandma or too much salt or something. I don't cause these episodes. They just happen.”

Mom looked at herself in the lavatory mirror, holding her narrow chin up and to the right. Every serious talk I ever had with her took place in the bathroom. It's like the woman can't express herself more than three feet from a douche bag.

“If only you hadn't run off with that musician.”

“The spells were as bad before I left as they are now.”

“That's not true, Lannie. Your father has never been happy since that first night you didn't come home.”

“My father's never been happy since the day I was born. I can't vouch for earlier.”

Mom's lip quivered and she blinked quickly. “Don't say that. We were happy when we were young. I remember.”

“I'm sorry, Mama.”

She opened the cabinet and reached in for another blue Valium. “You must be careful, Lannie. Your father loves you more than anything on earth. I hate to think what he might do to himself if you ever pulled another stunt like that.”

Translation: Disappoint Daddy and he'll kill himself and it will be your fault.

• • •

Daddy was a gynecologist in Houston, which means we never had to do without. He chose Houston because of the humidity. A gynecologist's dreamland, he called it. We lived in Bellaire, which is a reasonably upper-middle part of the city—mostly white people, mostly with money. I was typical to the point of nausea. Skirts to the knees, socks to the knees, hair usually straight, though flipped up during a Doris Day stage and page-boyed when Patty Duke pageboyed hers.

I had a boyfriend, Ron, who played basketball and ate pizza. He drove a huge '55 Oldsmobile with bad springs that rode like a ship in heavy weather. We went out four times before he kissed me, seven times before he felt my left breast, thirteen before he felt my right.

Most of our “dates” were spent sprawled on the floor in the family room, reading DC comics and drinking 7-Ups. Sometimes we played Ping-Pong in the garage with another couple. Passion didn't come up too often.

I don't remember school. I don't think it was important. I never stopped to think about myself or whether everyone was like me, or I was like anyone. I do remember the summers. We circled from the A&W to the Sonic endlessly, singing along with the Rhondelles, beating out Ventures drum solos on the dashboard.

Ron and I French-kissed a couple of times at the drive-in
(Son of Flubber),
I giggled about how weird it felt later with the girls at a slumber party where we each smoked a Lark cigarette and I threw up in the kitchen sink because someone else was throwing up in the bathroom.

Most of the summer of '62 was spent in a one-piece bathing suit at the country club, though I don't remember swimming that much, mostly just lying around the pool, watching the boys show off. I had a good tan by August. I remember that tan. Happiness was not an issue. Who thinks,
Am I happy?
when they're fifteen? Loren probably did, but he's peculiar.

School started. I was a junior. Football season, Thanksgiving, basketball season, Christmas. The high point came on my birthday in October when I got a driver's license. Because I was going with the captain of the basketball team, I had a fairly good shot at Queen in February. I didn't worry about it much. I was more worried about keeping my weight down and my teeth straight—braces terrified me. I also stood in front of the mirror most nights, searching for boobs that never came. Other girls had boobs. I knew all the kids thought I was a squirrel for not having any.

I asked Daddy for a car for Christmas, but he gave me a watch instead. What did I need a watch for? What I needed was wheels of my own. With wheels I could be popular without knockers.

• • •

All this life based on growing up in the American dream ended on New Year's Eve. It was my cousin Roxanne's fault. Roxy is my favorite hell-raising relative. She's a year and then some younger than me, but her daddy wasn't a manic gynecologist, so Roxanne started her smoking, drinking, life-in-the-fast-lane period way before Dessie or me. Not only did Roxanne get lucky at fourteen, but she claims she had regular orgasms. I doubt it.

The reason I doubt it is because Roxanne's supposed Big Os came off rodeo cowboys. Even older women complain about short rides and losses of concentration on the rodeo circuit. Bull riders and calf ropers are just too horny. I can't conceive of a kid cowboy lasting more than eight seconds, but I guess that shows a prejudicial viewpoint picked up later after several years of working honky-tonks.

Looking back, I find Roxanne's pastime really amazing. I mean, knowing her rich and easy background, hanging out with cowboys was a lot more rebellious than the early sex, but then, Roxanne didn't give a damn what anyone thought of her cowboy fetish. She said a limp turned her on.

Rox's cowboy that winter was an older, browner guy named Neb—which I think was short for Nebraska. Neb had a face like a muddy teardrop and knees farther apart than his shoulders. He chewed and spit. I thought he was repulsive, though I never have figured out Roxanne's tastes in butt.

Along about Thanksgiving, Neb gave Roxanne two tickets to a New Year's Eve concert by something called Conway Twitty and the Twitty Birds, his obvious plan being that I should drive Roxanne to the concert so he could get her drunk and hump her. I didn't cooperate.

“No.”

Roxy pleaded. “Every Christmas Ron gets drug off to his grandma's in Wichita Falls and every New Year's Eve you sit home watching TV. It's time you had some fun, Lannie.”

“I can't stand hillbilly music. Twitty sounds like twang and twang stinks.”

“I bet you never even heard any real country music.”

“I heard it and I hate it. No.”

“Maybe Neb can bring a friend for you.”

“I'm not going to pop my cherry with a smelly cowboy in a pickup truck. Besides I'm going steady. Why should I screw a stranger if I won't screw Ron?”

“Because Ron doesn't know how.”

“That's possible.”

“You don't have to screw Neb's friend. Just pretend you might and he'll buy you some drinks.”

“Forget it.”

Roxanne bothered me the whole week after Christmas. Part of her problem was that I was sixteen and could drive and she was fifteen and couldn't. If Neb picked her up at home, they were afraid her parents would call the police.

I finally gave in. You can ask Loren. Or Ron, Ace, or Mickey. Persistence is my weakness. I'll give in to anyone who's willing to beg awhile.

We told Mom and Dad we were going to a slumber party at Brenda's with Dessie. Dessie and Brenda were glad to cover for us. It made them look less suspicious also. I wore my pink sweater and jeans. Roxanne wore a skirt and cowboy boots. She looked like Dale Evans pretending to be a teenage hooker.

We ate Mama Burgers at the A&W before driving downtown, but the night almost collapsed right there because Roxanne tried to steal her root beer mug and we got caught and the man threatened to call the cops. He only let us go because she cried.