Sugar Land

by tammy lynne stoner

  Later that week, I handed over the money for Bo’s garage. Bo shook my hand over and over again, until I told him that I only had two of them, so he needed to go easy.

  That house money sent Edna to college, got Miss Debbie and Bo to a place of being supported, and bought me a new house.

  Thank you, Warden—again.

  It only took me one day to find my house: a prefab mobile home with powder blue and beige siding that I dubbed The Bland Old Opry. She was timid yet bold, my new home. She had no yard to maintain, and each of her four windows had these tiny, built-on green fabric awnings to help keep the place cool in the summer. There was even a ceiling fan in the big bedroom. As someone who tends to run hot, I loved a good ceiling fan.

  I bought it where I found it, in a mobile home park with an honest-to-goodness sidewalk and black lampposts and the most unusual display of mailboxes you will ever see. Mine was a coffee can flipped on its side that eventually rusted out. When it did, I replaced it with a metal Christmas cookie tin that I painted to look like a sleeping snake, but, if I’m going to be honest with myself, it looked more like a plate of intestines.

  I took over the lease on the land, which I planned someday to buy outright, and paid cash for the mobile home. The older couple living there was being taken to Odessa to live in a complex near their three daughters.

  “Out to pasture,” the man told me.

  “A pasture with a big swimming pool,” his wife added.

  I listened, hoping that, when the day came for me to go to pasture, I’d been mom enough for my girls to make sure I had a swimming pool.

  × × ×

  As I’ve mentioned, I’m what well-reared folks call “ample.” My genetic calling to weight was with me since I was a youngster, but didn’t branch into startling proportions until after the Warden passed on. By the time I bought the Bland Old Opry, I’d stabilized at a pleasant 260 pounds.

  At first, I thought it’d be nice for a woman of my magnitude to have the whole place to myself, just me and the Opry and my cats—but then one day I got dizzy. For no reason I could fathom, I got dizzy and felt like I was going to pass out. There, in the midst of the Earth spinning around, I thought, Who would find me if I die? Miss Debbie was off with Bo, and Edna was running around trying to “find herself.” I could fall and die and lie there in my own filth until the Angel of Death came, or the mailman smelled something rank. That would not do.

  That day I understood that I was a living ghost. I wandered around, haunted a few places—mostly snack shacks—and drifted into my solitary space, waiting for a postcard from Edna. I lived on in her brief stories about working at bookstores and listening to poetry and taking boat rides. That needed to stop. I had to get some flesh-and-blood folks to be near me, otherwise I might start to doubt my own existence.

  I decided to get myself a roommate. Someone who, at the very least, would find my dead body before it started getting funky.

  A week later, a woman at the hair salon named Dorothy introduced me to my future boarder, the Fiddler. I’d been sitting in my chair when Dorothy, sitting next to me, said her third cousin needed to rent a room in a place of no judgment, where he could finish his “transforming” after he’d had some kind of run-in with the law.

  Dorothy looked around. “Anyone know anyone? He’s very quiet and helpful around the house.”

  “Well,” I said, “I was thinking of bringing in a boarder—and I myself have just finished transforming.” I paused. “Menopause.”

  Dorothy nodded in unified sympathy.

  I asked what kind of trouble her cousin had been in.

  “He had this girlfriend—or maybe a few—and they were a bit too young for him,” she said. “That kind of thing is frowned upon by some folks, though I know many girls who invite the attentions of older men, so I don’t see why the bother.”

  All the women around us nodded their heads in agreement.

  “Sounds fine by me,” I said. “Give me his number, and I’ll set up some time to visit with him and see if we might get along.”

  × × ×

  The Fiddler—who’d yet to be called the Fiddler, but I can’t remember his real name—met me for the Blue Plate down at Terry’s: pork chops and coleslaw. The restaurant was nearly all booths, with three wobbly tables in the center that no one ever sat at, so the waitresses used them as ketchup and salt-shaker filling stations. When he walked in, I knew it was him by his bashful way of coming in—like he’d never been to the place before. He looked quiet.

  I waved him over without getting up, and he smiled. I guessed him to be in his late thirties. He had a beard trimmed close to his face, long before that became fashionable, and kept his brown hair buzzed to fuzz around his neck and ears. His cowboy hat had a horseshoe painted on it and a leather band around it. He seemed peculiar—like a coal miner without a mine—so I knew we’d get along right away, me liking peculiar people.

  As he slid into the booth, I commented on how evenly his beard was trimmed.

  He smiled and rubbed his chin. “I use the same clippers I use on my head that I use on my face. Love those clippers. Can’t shave down to the skin on my face because I get these terrible ingrown hairs.”

  “If you move in then, you’ll want to get clippers with batteries since we lose power every few days in the Bland Old Opry, which is what I call my trailer.”

  “I already have ’em in a pair of clippers I invented myself.”

  “Oh, well then maybe you can see if you can invent a battery-powered TV.”

  “I’ll surely try,” he said, sealing the deal.

  × × ×

  The Fiddler moved in three weeks later, bringing one dirty beige suitcase with a belt wrapped around it and a small canvas bag that looked vaguely military and clanked with the sound of tools. I introduced him to my six cats—a number that grew every year—and warned him that they each had a cadre of their own pets, namely cockroaches that always got away and geckos who hardly ever did.

  “You’ll have to be on the lookout for the geckos, because just before they die they turn the color of the carpet.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said as he examined the carpet down the hallway and into his room—the only other formal bedroom in the Opry.

  “Go on and get settled in. I’ve made casserole.”

  “Sounds good.”

  He carried his bags down the narrow hallway, passing by a light that never worked. Seeing it, he put his bags down, stood on his tippy toes in his boots, and jiggled the base. “I think I can fix this if you want.”

  “Sure be nice to have a light when there’s a cat fight in the hallway.”

  “I’ll get on it.”

  And five minutes later, the light was working.

  “How did you do that?” I asked.

  “I just fiddled with it.”

  With that, I named him the Fiddler.

  And fiddle he did. He was always taking things apart, then trying to reassemble them without their former squeaks or buzzes. By the end of the first year, I’d lost three clocks and two phones, and had to have the oil seal on my truck redone, God love him.

  THE LAST LETTER

  One cloudless day in 1952, I went out on the graying deck, sidestepping the termite slats, and sat down in my faded blue recliner to taunt the Fiddler, as had become my late-afternoon habit. He just made it so damn easy.

  I was retaining enough water to grow rice in Arizona, so I clicked the leg part out on my chair to raise my ankles. The Fiddler, meanwhile, pulled up errant dead shrubs from along the edges of the deck. His arms were redder than raspberry gum.

  “What are you up to today?” I asked him while I shaded my eyes from the sun.

  He held up his bony, hairy hands. They were cut up in spots from him pulling up the dry brush weeds on the hill behind and around the deck. “I’m bringing the brush back since I’m worried the wildfires will catch on to them and torch the Opry.”

  “The only fire we need to concern ourselves with is the
one in your loins!”

  The Fiddler stood up, sweat dripping off his red face. He looked angry. He clapped his hands down on his jeans, leaving big dirt marks, and grumbled, “Never mind.”

  “No, you keep on!”

  “You best put some water buckets near the house, though, in case she burns. I’m done.”

  “Fiddler!”

  Ignoring me, he walked over to the milk crate by the screen door, picked up the disembodied arm of my record player that he’d been meaning to fix, and walked inside.

  “Don’t be sore,” I called out. “You know I’m just kidding you!”

  But I’d said too much; he left for the bar.

  The next day, late in the afternoon, the Fiddler called in my front door, “You in a better mood today, Nana Dara?”

  “You just getting home?” I yelled back from the kitchen, which still smelled like my cinnamon sugar toast.

  “Don’t judge. I had steam to blow off.” The front door clicked shut. “I brought a friend over.”

  “A friend?”

  The Fiddler stepped into the kitchen, alone. He whispered: “She’s a new friend who’s leaving for Mexico in a few weeks, on account of leaving her job and wanting to get away.”

  I eyed him up and down in his black T-shirt and khaki shorts. “You’re acting funny.”

  “I always act funny.”

  “Good point,” I said, then, “I want to apologize—”

  He held up a hand. “No need.”

  The Fiddler looked around. He scratched nervously at his ingrown neck hairs, and I thought that he must have a crush on this new friend. We walked into the living room together, and I could see right off why: she was beautiful in that sun-kissed, country way. She wore her blond hair in a bob and painted her dark, babydoll eyes with waves of blue eyeshadow.

  “Joli,” the Fiddler said, still scratching, “this here is Nana Dara.”

  She smiled. “Well, hi there.”

  “Hello,” I said.

  The Fiddler headed for the bathroom. “Be right back.”

  “All right,” I said, then turned to Joli. “You a friend of the Fiddler’s then?”

  “We met last night. I’d had a few too many. Drinking away my sorrows over quitting my job down at the museum.”

  “Why did you quit?”

  “That museum is so dead that everything on its walls has started to stink. I couldn’t bear it one more day.”

  “The airplane museum?”

  She rolled her eyes. “That’s not even a true museum, is it?”

  I raised my eyebrows and nodded. She had a point.

  “But don’t worry about the Fiddler,” she said. “He was a true gentleman. He just tucked me in and fell asleep on the couch.”

  No doubt he tucked her in because he had no other interest in her sexually, she being older than his preferred age of eighteen years old—eighteen since his sexual recovery, that is.

  “Hmmm,” I said.

  Joli looked around at the colorful plates I’d hung on the walls in the kitchen and the different-colored cactus pots I’d painted myself.

  “When I was little my grandma took me fishing,” she said with a small flip of her hair. “We’d use a stick and a piece of rope and a bright, colorful button that she’d soaked in oil. She loved color too. She would have loved this place.”

  I’m not sure whether that was a compliment or not, but I took it to be. “Thank you.”

  “My dogs will love it here.”

  “What?” I picked up my cup of hot tea sitting on the side table near the mustard couch.

  “My pugs. They are right outside in the car there.” She pointed behind her. “In the shade. Relaxing. They like to relax—well, mostly.”

  “Pugs?”

  She smiled, showing off a charming gap between her front teeth. “The Fiddler said you couldn’t resist a stray. Since I’m going to Mexico I can’t take them with me, technically, they are strays!”

  I blew on my tea. Damn that Fiddler. “Well, this just might not be the right place for your dogs,” I told her.

  “Why not?” She raised her eyebrows and looked out through the kitchen at the back door leading to a very dog-friendly backyard.

  I sucked in a big breath, then blurted out, “This is a house of ill repute. You see, I’m a non-practicing lesbian.”

  “Well, I’m a non-practicing Baptist,” she answered, without missing a beat.

  Joli shifted her weight to stand with her hip out to one side, the way I’d seen cheerleaders stand. “You give up being a lesbian?”

  “No,” I answered, stunned that she continued the conversation. “My drive just went away one day.” Though looking at Joli, I knew that this was not entirely true. She was gorgeous.

  Joli leaned in. “The change?”

  “Maybe.” I coughed to hide a blush.

  Joli nodded thoughtfully. “I do not look forward to that day, to be sure! I like desire.” She stopped for a second. “Can I ask you something personal?”

  “That’s where we are.”

  “Were you ever practicing?”

  “Once.”

  “Didn’t you miss, you know, having relations?”

  “We did have relations.”

  “No, I mean didn’t you miss having sex?”

  “What I’m saying is that we did.”

  “How’d that work?”

  Did she truly just ask me that? “It just did. It worked. It was successful.”

  She smiled again, and I knew she got away with a lot with that homecoming queen smile of hers. “I often wondered about it myself.”

  A little surge of adrenaline came over me, followed by a self-condemnation—she was a good twenty years my junior! “I imagine folks do. You want some lemonade or sweet tea?”

  “I’d like a little of both,” she said, smiling again.

  “Now you needn’t charm me, I already said I’ll take your dogs.”

  Joli paused and bit the edge of her lip. “They are royal dogs, you know, the kind the Queen of England has.”

  “Well, as long as they don’t chase cats,” I said.

  Here she only smiled.

  The Fiddler came whistling down the creaky, paneled hallway of the Opry, proud as a rooster in a hen house. “So you got some dogs now?”

  I scowled. “You didn’t need to get vindictive. I said I was sorry for teasing you.”

  “Why, Nana Dara, I truly have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “Dangit Fiddler,” I muttered.

  Joli spun around to face us. “You didn’t tell me Nana Dara here is a lesbian.”

  Here he stood stunned, blood falling clear down to his toes. To his credit, he didn’t say anything.

  Joli continued, “I think that is just amazing. Here in Sugar Land. A lesbian.” She shrugged. “At any rate, thank you for caring for my beautiful little pugs. We ought to get them in now, though, since the heat can flare up their anal glands.”

  I nearly choked on my tea. “Their what?”

  “Anal glands.”

  The Fiddler chuckled.

  “Don’t worry,” Joli said, “you can clean them yourself. But just wear gloves.”

  I felt faint.

  “OK,” the Fiddler chimed in, smiling bigger than I’d ever seen, “I’m going to drop Joli off. But don’t worry, I made the pugs a little corner to sleep in.”

  “Where?”

  “Right beside your bed,” he said.

  Joli headed for the door. “Oh, that reminds me. Don’t feed them too many vegetables or protein. They get the kind of gas that can peel your paint right off, truly.”

  The Fiddler held the door for her. “Truly,” he repeated.

  × × ×

  The Fiddler heaved in those damn pugs, then drove Joli to the train station—and all I could think was that that was one of the most beautiful women I’d seen in quite some time. I finally understood the trend to a tight waist and a high hemline.

  Sighing, I shook my head. Ther
e was no more sense denying it: I liked women—not just Rhodie, but women, in general and in specifics. My wedding ring had given me a close chain to run on, but the desire had always rumbled below the surface. All the time, just below the surface. It wasn’t Rhodie or anyone else; it was me.

  Just as I was having these thoughts, the mailman came panting up my steps and dropped off several magazines and a letter addressed to me with my maiden name but no return address. The cancelation said it’d come from Midland, Texas.

  When I opened it, a chapter of my life shut, finally.

  Dear Miss Dara,

  My name is Marigold. I am Rhodie Prevette’s daughter. I am writing to tell you that she was in a car accident and she died. She left an envelope in her desk and told me years ago that if anything should ever happen to her that I was to open this envelope and follow the directions on her list. You were number two on a list of ten items. She asked me to “write to Dara Bernard at the Imperial State Prison Farm and tell her that I’m sorry for whatever I might have done and if I didn’t do anything, to tell her that I forgive her.”

  My mother never talked about you, so I’m not sure of your history together. She once told me that she had a best friend that she lost touch with, who used to go bullfrog hunting with her. She said that next to having me and my brother and marrying my father, that this friend was her happiest moment. I think that friend was probably you, and I think she’d want you to know that.

  The funeral was last month, here in Midland. I didn’t get a forwarding address from the prison in time to have this letter reach you beforehand. I’m sorry. But I am writing now, and I hope what I’ve written you brings you some comfort in this sad time.

  Sincerely,

  Marigold Prevette

  I went numb about halfway through the letter, so I reread it a few times to make sure I understood it all. Rhodie was dead. She forgave me, and now she is dead.

  I always thought I’d get the courage to write to her and apologize, but I never did. I just kept sending letters into the fire and using her as a way to keep myself out of my own life. I’d been channeling all my affections and passions onto an image of someone that I’d spent a little less than a month with some thirty years ago. It felt stupid when I put it that way. Stupid and stagnant and fearful. Worse, my damn fear prevented me from ever sending her a letter and taking responsibility for what I’d chosen and how I’d wrecked such a sweet and gentle thing.