I Loved You More

by Tom Spanbauer

  The next evening, opening night of The Seven Year Itch, Bette – it’s been a long rough night and worse morning – that afternoon isn’t that great either – on stage she’s doing great. In the second act, though, Bette in the middle of a long piece of dialogue, suddenly forgets everything, just stands there center stage and forgets everything and stares at the audience. Minutes go by. The other actor does what he can to help Bette out. But it’s like she’s left the earth altogether. Finally, looking straight out at the audience, in a clear crisp voice, Bette Podegushka says, “My mother never loved any of her children.”

  That night, that last night in our house by the lake, sunset, the time when Bette and I usually sat on the rockers on the back porch and rocked and looked out at the sunset on the lake and called each other ma and pa, I’m alone and the show is over. Bette’s gone to behind the washer and the dryer, packed her brass-bound steamer trunks, her shiny red sheets, her leopardskin bedspread, and has left for New York City, left for good. The Book of Oracular Symbols on the wood bookshelf next to the wooden stairs, that evening, when I open it: The Symbol: A Delicate Bottle of Perfume Lies Broken, Releasing its Fragrance.

  Bette. Betty Ann Podegushka.

  A woman I have loved.

  And Olga sees it.

  SEVILLE. SALT-RIMMED, THE slice of fresh lime drips down onto the waiter’s hand. The hand reaches the frosty margareeta in the up glass across the table, over the fire in the red votive candle, past our eyes as if an apparition. The cocktail glass lands on the white tablecloth in front of Olga. Then it’s Hank’s glass, then mine. Our drinks on the table, we all rub the white tablecloth as if we have just landed, too. Each of us touch our glasses at the stem, raise our glasses, and toast.

  “And there’s even more women in there,” Olga says.

  “A todas las mujeres!”

  “And here I thought,” Hank says, “you were just a cock-sucking sodomite.”

  “Women,” Olga says. “It makes you so much more interesting.”

  “That’s Gruney for you,” Hank says, “always a surprise.”

  Seville. A night on the town. Our booth in the back, in our half-circle of plush red leather, darkness and points of light hanging in the air around us. I’m way too drunk to know what’s happened. Too drunk to remember. My journey into the history of my women. How much Olga saw, how much was only me, if I spoke any of it, or all, out loud. I do remember how close I feel to Olga. The fear of her beauty has disappeared, and we are friends, a friend meeting a new friend, and we are drinking and we are laughing. Hank’s sweet lips, Olga’s full red lips, my lips, puckered onto the rim of our salted glasses, taking the first sip. Sweet and salt and tequila and citrus. The shine. The all-important shine. Our youth.

  “You know,” Olga says, “we are breaking the Marilyn Monroe Law.”

  Hank keeps sipping. I keep sipping. Both of us, our eyes on Olga.

  “Actually with Marilyn,” Olga says, “it was martinis, not margareetas.”

  “They’re like breasts,” Olga says. “One’s not enough and three’s too many.”

  Hank and I then, our eyes go to Olga’s breasts, her nipples just barely through the pockets of her red see-through blouse, then up to up above Olga. Just above her on the wall, the kitsch painting of the peasant woman. The woman’s hair is long and black, tied with a red bandana, big gold earrings, enormous breasts, balancing a jar of wine on her shoulder.

  Three’s too many, Hank and I start laughing. The scooped elastic collar of the peasant woman’s blouse is pulled way down off her shoulders. Lots of cleavage. The only thing holding the blouse up, her nipples. Erect nipples. Diamond nips, Hank calls them. And at any second, those suckers are going to sproing right out of the blouse.

  That starts it. And that’s how Hank and Olga and I get thrown out of Seville. First, it’s Hank opening up his shirt, pulling his shirt down over his shoulders to just above his nipples. Then it’s me. Then Hank and I trying to get cleavage. Olga turns around, checks out the painting above her on the wall. Three’s too many, Olga isn’t about to be outdone. She undoes the buttons of her red blouse, pulls her blouse down over her shoulders, to just above her nipples. Lots of cleavage. She doesn’t have to try.

  When the bouncer arrives at the table, Hank’s big burst from down deep coming out fast shakes Hank around like I’ve never seen. How Hank laughing like that makes my laughter go global. Olga too. We try to stop laughing. We really do. But three’s too many.

  Never do get to the Mariscada de Salsa Verde.

  Verde

  Que te quiero verde

  Verde Viento

  Verde Ramas.

  LORCA

  6.

  Pennsylvania ghosts

  THAT SUMMER MY FRIEND ESTHER WENT TO LAS VEGAS for a week and asked me to stay in her house. On the train: New York to Philly, change trains in Philly, the last stop on the train to Paoli, then a ten dollar cab drive: Esther’s house. One of those huge turreted turn of the century three-story mausoleums. Solid wood. Eaves and gables and lead glass windows and a wide wraparound porch like something out of Hawthorne.

  I was to Esther as Hank was to me; that is, she remembers the first time she saw me. In Jeske’s class one night. I was wearing my brown tweed vintage suit. I looked like someone from the Great Depression, she said. Not so much because of the suit but because of what I looked like in it: on my last legs, wearing my best clothes.

  A woman of a certain age, Esther. Maybe fifty-five. Long, white curly hair she tied up in a knot. Blue eyes that looked as if they were always crying. In class, I sat in the seat up front right next to her – across the room from Maroni. When she read in class, how her voice trembled helped me to be brave. Esther. One of those friends who were the best part of me. I don’t know how I’d have made it without her. Any weekend I wanted, I could come stay with her and Roy, her husband, in the cozy, sloped-ceiling garret with matching beds and a bay window that looked south over the cherry orchard.

  A dream come true. In the country, out of the city, and paid eighteen dollars an hour in 1988 to take care of her yard. That kind of friend.

  I was getting to know this guy Danny at work and I asked him to join me for the weekend. But something important had come up. I asked Esther if it was okay that Hank and Olga joined me over the weekend.

  “The Maroni?” she said.

  “Maroni,” I said.

  “Jeske’s Maroni?”

  “And his girlfriend.”

  “What happened to Danny?” she said.

  “Something important,” I said.

  “What’s so important?” Esther said.

  “The Club Baths,” I said.

  “There’s a bedroom in the basement,” Esther said. “It’s real cool down there this time of year.”

  “The one with the big-ass brass bed?” I said.

  “King-sized,” she said. “Only kind of bed for the Maroni.”

  WHAT A WEEKEND. Hank and Olga arrive Friday noon. I drive Roy’s old, green Dodge Dart to pick them up. On a June afternoon, Hank and Olga and me, the weekend ahead of us, seems like the whole world is ours, driving with the windows down, on the windy, one lane road, every now and then a wagon load of harvested hay, an Amish man in a straw hat at the reins of a team of horses. Big white barns with hexes on them, the smell of manure and Holsteins.

  Olga’s brought all kinds of goodies for the weekend. Bagels, croissants, paté, Brie, a couple of other stinky cheeses, four good bottles of wine, a bottle of Hennessy, fresh coffee beans, gourmet corn chips, and her homemade salsa. And my favorite. Kosher hot dogs.

  I put away the groceries and Hank and Olga settle in. Takes them about an hour. Fucking, I guessed, but I’m way past being jealous. In fact, I remember looking out the kitchen window that day onto the big weeping willow in the yard and thinking I’d probably never be jealous of Hank – who he was, what he created, or whoever wanted to fuck him. Whoever it was who would love him.

  Twelve years later, Ruth De
arden, got to go pal, no fucking idea.

  I’m on my last cup of coffee. Way over-buzzed. Olga comes up the stairs, freshly showered, her hair still wet. Long, black, wet curls. She’s wearing a white summer dress, no slip. A wide-brimmed straw hat in her hand. Her bracelets, her rings, her choker. All her gold. The sound of gold against gold. The dress when she sits, a sound like paper. Olga lays her hat on the table.

  A big sigh. “Oh my God,” Olga says. “A walk in the country.”

  “There’s a lake not far from here,” I say. “When Hank comes down I’ll give you the directions.”

  “I am walking alone,” Olga says.

  I set the coffee cup down exactly in the ring the cup had made on the placemat. Look up slow at Olga. She’s smiling.

  “Is it not possible,” she says, “that a woman go for a walk by herself these days?”

  Hank bangs up the stairs just then in his flip-flops and cutoff khakis and a wifebeater. The skin on that guy, all that olive. Wet hair dripping down his back. Wet drops on his white T-shirt. Maybe that is the moment, I think it is, just as Hank grabs a chocolate croissant out of the pink cardboard box, sticks it in his mouth, then opens the refrigerator. Showered and shaved and freshly fucked, the moment of Hank’s life when his beauty has reached perfection.

  “Be careful not to go too far,” Hank says. “What’s for lunch?”

  “It’s Amish country,” Olga says. “These are pastoral people. They are gentle.”

  “Kosher dogs?” I say.

  “Great!” Hank says.

  “You should stay close, though,” I say. “You never know.”

  “And you better take off some of that gold,” Hank says.

  AT ONE-THIRTY, SUN-SCREENED and bonneted, Olga is out the door. She looks like something out of a Matisse painting.

  “She looks like something out of a Matisse painting,” I say.

  “She’s worked hard on that look,” Hank says. “Spent a fortune.”

  “At least she left her gold home,” I say.

  In Hank’s hand, Olga’s gold bracelets, her three gold rings, her gold choker with the little cross.

  “Let’s take it to town,” Hank says, “trade it in for a trip to Paris.”

  HANK AND ME, a couple of kids trying to act grown-up. We make kosher dogs and sauerkraut with Grey Poupon mustard. A big pitcher of pink lemonade. We pour the lemonade into tall glasses over crushed ice, go out onto the porch, sit in the wicker rockers, put our bare feet up into the sun on the railing, brush away summer flies, rock the rocker arms against the porch wood, wolf down our dogs, sip lemonade, crunch ice cubes with our teeth, and talk about what we never can stop talking about. Writing and being alive. Both our first books are coming out the following March. Fierce beauty, hidden treasure, ancient secrets, old legends, adolescent boys and sex, in whispers, how we speak of them.

  Our books. Hank will spend the weekend composing the dedication of his book to his father. I have rewrites on the last ten pages. Finally, finally, grown-up men, real published authors. The American Book Award, the Pulitzer, One Fifth Avenue, just around the corner.

  About four o’clock. Hank’s in the basement on the king-sized brass bed taking a nap. The steaks are marinating and I’m cutting up scallions for the potato salad. I look out the window. In Olga’s arms is a big bunch of big red flowers, big yellow sunflowers, and lacy purple ones. Something about how she’s walking. The brim of her straw bonnet bent back. Definitely not on a casual stroll through the countryside. By the time she gets in the kitchen, she’s really crying.

  “I’ve never been so insulted!”

  Olga throws the flowers down on the table, then her bonnet.

  “Oh what a horrible man!”

  Hank is up the stairs in no time. He’s still asleep, just in his khaki shorts, that patch of hair in the middle of his chest. He’s working hard trying to make himself be present.

  “What the fuck?” Hank says “What man? What happened? Are you all right?”

  Olga is throwing herself around. Beating on the wall, screaming and yelling. Cussing a blue streak in Spanish. Chingada tu puta madre. Cabrón. Caga duro. Her white dress not so white, heavy with sun and sweat.

  It takes Hank and me a while but finally we get her settled down enough to sit at the table. I pour her a glass of pink lemonade.

  “What man?” Hank says. “Olga, what man?”

  It takes Olga two pink lemonades to speak.

  “Some awful man,” she says.

  “Where is he?” Hank says.

  “Did he hurt you?” I say.

  “What did he do?”

  “What awful man?”

  “Over there,” she says. “In that house.”

  Olga points out the kitchen window. Beyond the weeping willow, one of those oversized particleboard Home Depot-windowed McMansion horrors. Only an evil man could live in a house like that.

  “Fucker,” I say.

  “I was just walking through the field picking wildflowers,” Olga says, “and he appeared in his doorway and started making demands of me.”

  “Demands?” Hank says.

  “What demands?” I say.

  “Just what the fuck did I think I was doing?” Olga says.

  “What did you say?” Hank says.

  “I told him,” Olga says, “that I was simply on an afternoon stroll, picking wildflowers. Then he started screaming at me and calling me names.”

  “Names?” Hank says. “What’d he say? What kind of names?”

  “You dumb bitch,” Olga says.

  “Where is this guy?” Hank says.

  “This is private property, he screamed at me, you dumb bitch,” Olga says. “Don’t you see the no trespassing sign? These flowers aren’t wild flowers. These flowers are the subject of my doctorate at MIT,” Olga says. “And then he threatened to call the police.”

  Olga’s really crying again. Along about then is when we hear the siren.

  HANK’S WALKING BACK and forth between the refrigerator and the door. He’s beside himself with being pissed. At the whole deal, pissed. The screaming neighbor, Olga, the cop outside. Pissed at himself, too, I guess. Never really seen Hank like that. The way he’s talking to Olga surprises me. Hank’s always one for the underdog, a guy who’s got your back. But he’s telling Olga she should’ve known better, didn’t she see the no trespassing sign, what the fuck what she thinking – and it’s only making her cry more.

  “Hank,” I say, “take it easy on her, will you?”

  The way Hank’s black eyes look at me. Fuck. His eyes go cold and faraway, and all of a sudden he’s a big slab of marble staring me down and my stomach is full of ashes.

  When he speaks, Hank’s lips move but his teeth stay clenched together.

  “Stay out of this, Gruney,” Hank says.

  IT MAY NOT seem like much, but this is a big moment between Hank and me.

  The moment, however, is one that I take part in, but Hank doesn’t.

  It was more the way Hank said it than what he said. Stay out of this stirred up all Little Ben’s shit. My big baby torpor was immediate and overwhelming. Little Ben was outside the grown-up male world again and there were rules going on and I didn’t understand the rules. The code of honor. This is my woman and you don’t get between me and my woman. All the while in me Big Ben is yelling: Code of honor my fucking ass. Who the fuck are you to speak to me as if I were a child?

  What’s also always inherent in moments like these is the total impossibility to talk about it while it’s happening. After all, there was a cop walking up the driveway.

  Plus, men just don’t do that. They don’t stop in the middle of everything and say you just really hurt my feelings. Isn’t that a perfect definition of a guy who’s a pussy? Isn’t that what boot camp is all about? What could be more male than a boot camp and a drill sergeant calling the soldier in training a little bitch? What does the soldier do – stop and tell the sergeant that his feelings have been hurt?

  I�
�m such a homo I just don’t get it. Big Ben either had to bitch-slap Little Ben and tell him to cowboy up and take it like a man or stop and listen to Little Ben and see what it is that he needs.

  In either case, I’ve got a big mess on my hands.

  For Hank, the moment goes by without even noticing it. He’s just an Italian guy who’s letting off steam and feels crowded and needs his space.

  THE COP IS a kid, barely twenty-one. A big round baby face, round glasses. I’m the one who goes out and talks to him. Esther’s my friend and I’m the one responsible for the house. The sun is hot and he’s sweating way too much for a cop to sweat. He’s threatening to write out a warrant for Olga’s arrest. Trespassing and the theft of valuable property.

  Cops scare me. Even twenty-one-year-old chubby boy cops. Plus Little Ben is still smarting from what Hank said. I’m feeling shaky and it takes me a while. To talk. When the Fascists killed Lorca, they slit his throat. Cut his balls and his cock off first, then cut out his voice box.

  Speaking and fucking. How they’re the same. Penetrating the void, then putting something of you in there.

  The words. I finally find the words and get my mouth to talk, and if that can happen, if I can actually get to the point of speaking words, then more often than not I can be very charming.

  Propinquity. The cop stays two arm’s lengths away. I tell the cop the situation. That Olga is a foreign exchange student, and that this is her first time in the countryside of America, and she has mistakenly thought the flowers are God’s flowers like in her country and are growing there for free.

  Hank walks out the door then, into the sun. The picture of cool. His chest up, his shoulders down, Hank’s big guy walk down the driveway. Hank reaches out his hand, the cop reaches out his, and they shake hands, that firm manly handshake I’ve tried so often but usually overdo.

  “Hank Christian, officer,” Hank says.

  Hank, all that guy stuff down in spades, in no time at all he and the cop have made the connection. I can feel it. That man-to-man thing. But how they do it, I’ll never know.