I Loved You More

by Tom Spanbauer

  HANK GETS UP, does a little jig around the table. The way he moves is like the night at Judith’s he danced to “April in Paris.” In the lobby of the Hotel Whitman, Hank shaking his ass. After a while the double doors behind the curtain of orange hanging beads open and there’s a blast of rock and roll. Welcome to the Hotel California. The waitress with her small round tray walks through the orange hanging beads. Big red hair, lots of cleavage. The skirt of her blue-striped polyester uni is short. Textured pantyhose. Spike heels. They click with every step she steps to our table in the corner by the window. She sets two glasses of water on our table and a yellow plastic pitcher.

  “If you boys want cocktails,” she says, “you’ve got to drink them in the bar.”

  I watch Hank watch her. When she goes back through the orange hanging beads, she doesn’t close the doors.

  It’s no longer quiet in the lobby. I’m thinking of the old man in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.” At least that’s how I remember it. That’s what it is for me, now that I’m an old man, memory: a short story by Hemingway about an old man in a café. Way too many copitas.

  But the loud rock and roll doesn’t bother me. I check Hank to see and it doesn’t bother him either. The world has just spun us around a loop we’ve never spun on before. Live rock and roll can’t hurt us. Even when it’s local and bad. We look at each other as if we stop looking at each other the night will go away. It never ceased to startle me how Hank and I could look at each other. Mad to love, mad to talk, mad to be saved. All that’s important, all of it, we’re full to bursting, we’re talking talking talking.

  MIDNIGHT. ACTUALLY THE black cat on the clerk’s wall says 12:10. I finally take a breath. The lobby where we’re sitting is twenty feet tall. On the walls, bad seams in the four-by-eight fake wood paneling. From the middle of the room, a huge swag light from the Fifties that hangs down – something too bright with gold projectiles that looks like the Jetsons. Two black marble columns. Black wrought iron tables, glass tops. White plastic outdoor chairs. Floors made of those tiny white square tiles. At the check-in counter, an orange and red throw rug. The deco sconce on the wall behind Hank’s head pushes light up the shiny brown plastic wood.

  “This place is weird and fucking ugly,” I say.

  “Historic landmark meets trailer park,” Hank says.

  About then, a woman steps through the orange beads. Mary Tyler Moore just off the golf course. Bette Davis eyes. My big sister, Margaret.

  Some moments come along in your life, there’s so much going on in them, you don’t know what to feel first. Actually I always know what to feel first. I mean my body does. The problem comes after the moment passes and I don’t know how to say it right, all the things I felt and in what order.

  Here’s some of it: just like always, my heart jumps up the way it always jumps. How high is going to depend on her. Then I’m sure of something. She doesn’t show it, but I know. The way she makes her face have no expression. Her chin, the higher that chin gets, the more I can tell.

  Shit-faced. My sister Margaret is totally shit-faced. I mean she’s staggering.

  The orange beads behind Margaret sway and clack against each other. Margaret stops, looks over at Hank and me. For a moment, that empty face, her chin a little higher, she pretends to, but really, she doesn’t recognize who we are. Then it’s like we’re somebody she knows she thinks she must know, so she smiles, gives us a goofy laugh.

  “Somewhere around here’s a cigarette machine,” she says. “You guys know where the cigarette machine is?”

  Hank’s black eyes are on me. He’s watching me like a writer watches for humanity. That’s when I remember. I mean how could I forget. But it really isn’t a memory at all, I mean it’s not in my head, the way everything, my body, gets heavy, slows down, sinks. There’s a crash too. Hit by a fucking truck.

  Margaret didn’t make it to our reading.

  I’m amazed at how I am a child. How much it hurts me that she didn’t make it. The hurt is in my chest, the fire bell going off in my chest. So loud I have to cover my ears. My teeth at the back of my mouth grind down.

  But this fire is a fire I can’t feel for too long. It is too hot. Plus what’s underneath. Something way too derelict, too dark, and I won’t have any part of it.

  HANK GIVES THE night clerk five bucks to watch our suitcases and at the cigarette machine I help Margaret with her change and pulling the right knob for her Virginia Slims. She’s standing too close. Her hand and her perfect fingernails, her forearm against me. Hell, it ain’t long and her whole body is leaning against me. I’m her little brother Benny she won’t let go of. Before Margaret’s got her cigarette lit, she’s apologized over and over maybe five times.

  “There was so much going on,” she says. “And so many people. God, I didn’t know I knew so many people. And we were having so much fun, and we were all drinking and some of us were pretty f’ing drunk and I didn’t want to go crashing into your reading with twenty drunken people.”

  It makes sense what Margaret says. Immediately I’m sorry for the sulking, all the ways my heart’s been sore.

  “Hey, no problemo,” I’m saying, “no problemo. Nada y pues nada.”

  That’s about it for my Spanish, besides salon de belleza eres, mariscada de salsa verde, a few cuss words, and a short poem by Lorca about the color green. Still, a part of me wonders why the fuck the sudden switch to a Romance language.

  ON THE OTHER side of the hanging orange beaded curtain, it’s the Round Up Room Friday night forty-five minutes before closing time. Everything glows toxic orange and it’s jammed with people and smoke and noise. Up on the bandstand, the local band, in matching white western shirts and white cowboy hats, is singing “Desperado.” Margaret’s got both me and Hank by the arm, her in between. She’s leading us through the bar. Really though, Hank and I are holding her up. Everyone we come to, Margaret makes a fuss, she pulls her mouth up close to their ears, she yells in their ears, and then everyone looks at Hank and me, sticks out their hand and laughs extra loud. Hank and I, all we can do is smile, shake hands. There’s no way to hear a fucking thing. Except every once in a while, stretch Cadillac and Happy Birthday.

  At the line of parquet where the dance floor starts, just then the band starts up with “China Grove.” Jitterbugging and two-stepping, way too many bodies are way too drunk flying around in a cramped space. Making it across that dance floor is more like making it over an extreme sport obstacle course. Then, in the middle of all the bodies, in all the noise and smoke, Hank on one side of Sis, me on the other, there’s a moment and a memory: Hank and me at the Spike.

  Kevin’s in the booth next to the bandstand with a bunch of other people. They all shout when they see us and clap, then scoot over to let us in. Hank smashes in against Margaret, Margaret smashes against me, Kevin smashed in on my other side. Three other people at the table, two men and a woman we’re introduced to. They all look right off the golf course, but there’s no way I can get their names. Kevin is saying something to me but I can’t hear. I move my ear in real close.

  “Your sister had a great time tonight,” he says.

  I lean back and look at Kevin. He’s a sturdy guy, thick in the neck and his wrists and chest and arms. A blue and green Hawaiian shirt, a couple buttons open down the front. Blonde. That blonde thick hair out of his shirt and on his arms. What I see is how much Kevin loves my sister. What a pleasure it’s been for him to give her this magical night. That quick it’s pretty clear to me that I need to give the shit up. My sister is in love with this man and he’s in love with her and he’s gone through a lot to get the limo and set the whole night up and all. And those plans were made long before Big Ben decided in the Strand Book Store back in New York City that he and Hank were coming to Idaho. Really, to hold on to the fact that my sis didn’t make it to the reading all of a sudden seems selfish and silly.

  And something else. Some part of me sees a bigger picture. Sees me and Kevin as two guys in competit
ion for my sister’s attention. At that very moment, in fact, I’m the guy sitting between him and his loved one. What I feel next is a shitload of drut. I immediately want to get up and get away from in between them. But there’s no way. I can barely move. So I take a deep breath, breathe in all that smoky orange alcohol air, and just let it the fuck go.

  When the cocktail waitress gets to us, Margaret orders margaritas. Hank tries to say no. I try to say no. But everyone is so trashed and it’s so loud, it’s no use.

  THE SINGER AT the microphone pushes back his sweaty white cowboy hat and announces to the crowd last call. There’s high whistling and boos and one long cowboy yahoo. Then something strange, something you’d never figure. The band goes into a song my ears can’t believe they’re hearing. I look over to Hank and his black eyes are already looking right at me. That bass line, you can’t mistake it. Lou Reed and “Walk On the Wild Side.” Then from out of nowhere it’s the Mormon Lady from the bookstore. Frieda, Hank said her name was Frieda and she wasn’t a Mormon at all. She’s standing at the end of our table and asking Hank for a dance. Hank’s got that I’m-such-a-smooth-ass-lady-killer smile on his face. Margaret loves it that a woman has broken the rules and asked the man for the dance. She puts her Virginia Slim into the ashtray, laughs hard, big wide smile, rubbing her palms together. Something in her face changes. Her eyes. She is looking at Hank in a whole different way. I know that look. It’s the way she looks at our father.

  We all got to get up so Hank can get out. The dance floor is too crowded, so he can’t get far away from our table. But he wants to. I know how stingy he is with his dance moves. Especially since everybody at the table will be watching his ass. There’s not room to breathe, let alone move, but somehow Hank manages to get Frieda’s butt toward the table and his own self behind her. They do a moderate straight guy two-step dance. Still, whatever Hank does, it always turns out sexy.

  We’re all sitting there, admiring the fuck out of Hank. There are two margaritas lined up in front of me. My elbows on the table, I’m smoking one of Kevin’s Marlboros. The wood table is a mess of empty glasses, piled high ashtrays, cigarette butts. My big sis is on my left, Kevin on the right. Both of them know what this song’s about and because it’s what it’s about they think it’s about me. Margaret leans forward, Kevin leans forward, and they smile at each other across my chest. It’s like I’m a puppy and the song is “How Much is that Doggie in the Window?” Still, though, it’s cool.

  That’s when it happens, somewhere around in there, the moment. Margaret lights another Virginia Slim, inhales, swallows the smoke, blows the smoke out, leans into me, puts her lips right up against my ear.

  “I’m surprised you’re not out there shaking your ass,” she says. “You love so much how people watch you when you shake your ass.”

  Every word that Sis’s lips speak, clear as a fucking bell. My chest jumps up to catch a breath and it comes out a little laugh. I’m surprised really and trying to figure out how to take this shit in.

  What Margaret’s just said is right on. Nothing’s better than to be lost in a song and I’m dancing and maybe somewhere out there people are watching. But nobody knows that about me. Except her. Margaret’s the only person.

  The pain between my eyes again. Dizzy. Maybe the Return of the Cockless, Most Miserable of All. How well my big sis knows Little Ben, how predictable he is. I am amazed at how I am a child.

  Shaking your ass.

  There’s something mean in the way she’s said it. And not just mean. Downright cruel. How her chin went up. Her empty face. In that tiny instant how her lip curled up. For a moment, I didn’t even recognize her.

  Her little brother, who’s not at all like their father, would like nothing more than to be like their father, but has been banished from the world of men. My big sister Margaret knows this all too well. How when we were kids, that’s how she got to me. I can’t tell you how many times. And what this little brother does best is something their father would never fucking ever ever do. No real man, really, would ever do that with his hips. Just look at Hank.

  Shake your ass.

  From over Frieda’s shoulder, Hank looks down at me, gives me a wink. That guy can always make me smile. I down the margarita closest to me, set the empty glass aside, drag the next full one over the slippery wood and set it in the ring in front of me. I smash out the Marlboro. The ashtray is nasty ashes and smashed-out cigarette butts. Right next to my elbow, Margaret’s tanned elbow. Her perfect fingernails. She’s pulling hard on her Virginia Slim. Her eyes are still looking right into mine.

  My sister Margaret’s auburn eyes. Inside in there, there it is.

  Idaho.

  This is what we do in Idaho.

  We get drunk.

  We go to truth-telling tequila land, the place in us where our dark mother dwells, and in the middle of a crowded loud bar, we set our target, we find the moment, we strike the blow.

  I know I can hurt you and because I can, I will.

  9.

  Sweat lodge

  THAT NEXT MORNING IN MY SISTER’S DOUBLE-WIDE, I wake up early, get my stuff together. I don’t try to be quiet. Make all the noise I have to make. Every step shakes the whole house. But Margaret doesn’t wake up. My guess is that morning nothing’s going to wake her up. I call a cab and by seven o’clock Hank and I are in a blue Chevy Citation, Pocatello Taxi on the side, black lettering curled over a red Bannock Rose, our backpacks, Hank’s brown faux leather suitcase, my powder blue one in the trunk, headed for the rental car place. Hank, of course, thinks I’m fucking nuts.

  “Trust me on this one, Hank,” I say. “I got to get out of here.”

  HUNGOVER. A JUNE morning in Idaho and it’s already hot and way too bright. Hank and I, all the windows rolled down in our rented red-orange Ford Pinto, drive the old two-lane Highway 30 to my brother Ephraim’s house in Fort Hall. Fort Hall’s just a wide spot in the road on the Bannock Shoshone Indian reservation. A trading post on one side of the highway, and on the other, across the railroad tracks, low government buildings set in among the cottonwoods.

  When I was a kid, my family traveled from Tyhee to Blackfoot every Sunday. Grandma and Grandpa and most all our relatives lived in Blackfoot. When we passed through Fort Hall, my mother made sure all the doors were locked. More often than not, too, we were praying the rosary. Any chance my mother got, she prayed the rosary. Hell was such a terrible place. About the time Fort Hall rolled by outside the Buick’s locked doors and rolled up windows, we were generally somewhere near the fifth and final mystery, whether it was glorious, joyful, or sorrowful – usually sorrowful, and all there was, was only ten more Hail Marys to get through and the damn thing would be over.

  Turn left off the highway and a quarter of a mile on the dirt road is Ephraim’s house. That morning, we could see the smoke from the fire as soon as we turned off the highway.

  Ephraim lives in a beige HUD house with his granny and his mom and any other relatives who need a place to stay. He’s always got the place looking good. New roof. New siding, and the addition to the back of the house for the new laundry room. The lawn mowed. A row of apple trees and a row of cherry. Raspberries and blackberries. Big weeping willow in the front yard. Birds all over the place.

  Quite some drama when we drive into the yard. Clouds of dust and barking dogs chase the car, other dogs chase cats and the cats are running. I park between a dead pink Nash Rambler and a green Oldsmobile 88 on cinderblocks. Behind the Olds is the chicken coop. Behind the chicken coop, a ways out, in the middle of a bare field, is the fire pit and the fire. Ephraim’s standing out there. Looks like a scarecrow with his big hat and floppy pants. When he sees us pull in, he waves, starts walking toward us.

  When Hank and I open our doors, on Hank’s side there’s a yellow lab with three legs wanting him for lunch. On my side, two dogs, Border Collie and Austrian Shepherd mix. Between them they have two eyes. No way I’m going to move another inch.

  One holler from Eph
raim sends the dogs off under the Chinese Elm.

  Ephraim’s a big man. Got twenty pounds on me. Solid. He’s wearing his straw hat he bought in Bermuda and an extra lovely blue and green flowered shirt and what looks like pajama bottoms. He’s smoking his ever-present More Menthol. As he gets closer, I notice he’s wearing his Birkenstocks and socks, too, even though it’s hot, because he has to be careful with his feet.

  “Brother dear!” he calls out. “Welcome to the rez.”

  Ephraim’s nickname on the rez is Owlfeather. I’m just a little taller, not much, so we fit together well. Our arms go around each other. We turn our faces in and kiss. Ephraim’s wearing his light-sensitive glasses, so I can’t really see his eyes.

  “You look tired,” he says. “You okay?”

  “Margaritaville,” I say. “I need to sweat.”

  Hank standing there looks like he doesn’t know what to do. I think maybe he thinks he’s supposed to kiss Ephraim, too.

  “This is Hank,” I say.

  Ephraim holds his hand out and Hank steps up and Ephraim takes Hank’s hand, lays his other hand on top.

  “Nice to meet you,” Ephraim says. “I liked your book.”

  Never seen Hank blush before, but there he is in the high noon sun, Hank Christian as red as a beet.

  Inside the house, the blinds are drawn and a fan’s going in every room. The TV’s on. Ephraim’s mom, Rose, is on the sofa, a big Navaho rug with shades of gray and red spread over the sofa. She and Ephraim look so much alike. She’s a nurse at the Fort Hall clinic and she’s in her pink nurse’s uniform on her lunch hour. On her plate is a bologna sandwich, one slice of bologna between two slices of white bread. She’s drinking a Tab.

  “Benny Grunewald!” she says. “We never get to see you anymore.”

  “This is Hank,” I say.

  “Make yourself a sandwich!” she says. “You guys must be hungry.”

  In between the doorway to the bedrooms and the front door, Ephraim’s grandmother’s in her old rocking chair. Her hair in pin curls. On the dining room table next to her, a glass of water with her teeth in it. She’s fanning herself with a paper fan, red Chinese letters and the name of a Chinese restaurant. On her shoulder’s her pet monkey, Charlie Brown. He’s eating a banana.