by Michael Lund
As his pear-shaped belly got slimmer, his drives went longer and his putts more true. The college golf course offered reasonable rates to locals, and their added fees helped fund improvements. So he played there twice a week except during the hard winter and was a regular in area tournaments.
As I approach the date of my own children's' going off to college, I see that my parents dealt with their empty nest pretty well. New activities, new horizons for them both. But since music and golf had been part of their lives at earlier times, a return to them also gave a certain completeness to their stories.
As I've said, I came home infrequently during the next few years. I was asserting my independence. And Tricia was moving in steady steps toward Broadway and her acting success. So we sisters generally saw this resumption of our mother's music career and our father's golf playing primarily as background to our own concerns.
Juliet, the parrot I'd kept that fall, went back to Springfield with Tricia right after the pageant. A mate from Africa was waiting for Juliet at Tricia's friend's apartment near campus, and, last I heard, those two feathered creatures were still together, lovers for life.
"Hello there. Come here," said Juliet when I was packing up her food and all her little toys.
"Yeah, I know, I know," I agreed. "'Pretty bird.'"
"She's a talker, isn't she," said my sister, putting a finger up to the cage for Juliet to rub against and pull on with her hooked beak.
"Say, Tricia, I never did ask you, who taught this bird to speak?"
"You mean, the 'pet me' part?" she said with a giggle.
"I . . . uh . . . well, yes, all her words." I was embarrassed. Did she understand how "pet me" had inspired me to explore my own capacity for pleasure?
Tricia gave me a little hug. "Little sister," she said. "I think it might be, it could just be, it probably was . . . me."
She detached Juliet's cage from its stand and tripped downstairs, humming a little tune. Had she meant what I thought she meant here? I didn't know, and didn't know how to pursue it.
Well, who understands, anyway, where ideas come from, what the wells of inspiration are that we tap in trying new things. Life is a series of unknowns we take on with fear and trepidation.
How do we find what it takes to make it through challenging situations, me at the Miss Route 66 Pageant, for instance? We hope for new skills to meet the unfamiliar. And we count on strengths gained in previous struggles.
Of course, all my family helped me that year. And Larry.
Larry still helps.
I did, you see, marry him in the summer before our senior year of college. We'd been unhappy waiting for letters to travel to and from Columbia and Springfield (I was not at Drury, but Southeast Missouri State).
The declaration of our intention that June was the most shocking announcement I ever made to my parents, more shocking even than my revelation that the flute on the dining room table was mine. I'd expected an explosion, especially from my dad, since we'd all assumed we could wait until graduation. But after the initial surprise, they took it pretty much in stride. Parents do that more often than they get credit for.
"He's a fine boy," my father said. "You two have been mighty unhappy apart."
"And we'll both finish college, just not in the same year." I'd insisted Larry stay in school while I worked the next year, then we'd change roles for me to graduate. It wasn't ideal, but Washington University later let him delay his entrance to law school for those two semesters and we didn't feel we'd lost anything. I wasn't going to live away from the man I love, and I haven't ever again. I'll be in his arms tonight after the drive up I-44 to our home in Chesterfield.
We don't raise worms, but daughters, fine daughters who have no particular desire to win beauty contests. They'd rather be successful lawyers like their dad.
Still, they both play music like their mother and grandmother. I guess "Do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do" runs in the family. And they enjoy the story we all tell about how I once, almost, very nearly was Fairfield's own Miss Route 66.
The End
Epilogue
What ever happened to Mr. Pierce? It's the last thing I'll write, an unhappy postscript to my own happy life history. Well, my life history to this point, I guess I should say.
I heard the last chapter of Pierce's story just yesterday, one year after my dramatic return to Fairfield and my anticlimactic speech to the gathering of Miss Route 66 Pageant fans. My husband gave me the news.
Larry was on the edge of our bed sipping a glass of Perrier while I considered what to wear to a fund raiser for the junior symphony, in which our daughters have played. He already had on one of his dark suits. I was in bare feet and a slip.
"They're fixing up the airport, did I tell you?" Larry said.
"They're always working on it. Nice?" I had hung two outfits in front of the walk-in closet in our bedroom.
"Actually, yes, though some parts aren't finished."
I stepped up to one outfit, adjusted the shoulder on the hanger, stepped back to look again. It resembled slightly, I realized, the evening gown I'd worn so many years ago in the Miss Route 66 competition.
"There's a whole new lounge where I waited for our client to come in."
"Do you like the blue or the gray?" I asked.
"Gray. There's a new men's room in the concourse where I was, new but strange."
"Gray? Do I have the right shoes?" I rummaged around on the floor of the closet.
"It's wonderful to find an absolutely clean men's room. Maybe I was their very first customer, using the only clean urinal in America. White, vestal, virgin."
"You don't like the blue?" I looked at it again, taking a step back, considering. I thought for a moment how I'd look at the fund raiser, what sort of figure I'd present to fellow supporters of the arts.
"Uh, yes." I seemed to have thrown him off a minute. "I do like the blue. I like them both."
"You like them both?" I reached past them into the closet to pull out a third set, a white blouse with flowery skirt--deep colors--and red sash, which I carried over to the full-length mirror on the back of the door.
"So, in the new men's room at the airport," Larry went on, recalling his story. He took a sip of water. "I did what I'd come for, stepped back to flush and couldn't find a handle, or a button, or a pedal."
"Don't tell me they forgot?" I was looking at the three choices, chuckling to myself at the thought of the evening's being a beauty contest, a showing of women and men.
"No, at least I don't think so. Anyway, I gave up looking after a minute, went around to the other side, where the sinks were, and, just as I turned the corner, I heard a flush."
"The whole row?"
"No. Just mine."
"Must be on some sort of timer. Automatic, serial."
"Or, probably," he said, "it's some photoelectric device, five seconds after you break the plane, whoosh."
"Hmm," I said. He was wondering, I figured, how he looked in that row of men at that row of urinals.
"But then, I thought, perhaps size is a factor. I stepped back in front and pretended. Maybe there's a minimum. You know, to trigger things. It's a new measure of America, that's it!" He was getting into it now, up off the bed pacing, eyeing me for a response. Now I suspected there was more to this little story than I'd thought at first.
"Can you see those dark-suited businessmen, commuting to New York for a day's meeting, wondering, 'Am I all right? Did I trigger that thing or was it the guy next to me?' Think of how adolescent boys would feel, intimidated. How about football teams on a road trip, what a show!”
"Oh me," I said. I turned to face him, my three shadow selves arranged behind me. He took a ball point pen from his pocket and rang the glass with it. Ding-ding-ding!
"But, of course, you don't have to worry," he said, pointing. "On my second try, not only did my urinal fire, but the ones on each side! Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh." He was coming up to me. "Shoot, I had to get out of there, the whole wall was s
tarting to shake, know what I mean? They were all flushing."
I was smiling now too, because I knew what he was doing. Oh, men! You poor sad creatures, pulled around by desire. He dipped his finger into the glass of water he was holding.
"One of the units was about to overflow and rolls of toilet paper were popping out of stalls, coming across the floor, and . . . and. . . ." He waved wildly. "Two of the hot air dryers cut on and the doors swung open. I think there was music. Yes, a powerful, erotic hum! Rrrruummm!" He placed his wet fingertip on the lip of the glass and dragged it around the edge.
I held up the blue outfit on its hanger, a shield against this sex maniac. He set the glass on the dresser, put his arms around me, and tried to back me toward the bed.
"We have to get ready. Stop that!" I said, but he was funny.
"Stop? A real man can't stop."
"He can if he's married and over forty-five and has to be across town in thirty minutes."
"No, no!"
"And if he gets a promise about later. . . ."
That stopped him. "Later? You're sure."
Then, his face changed, went sober all of a sudden.
"What?" I asked, giving him a light kiss.
"I'd repressed telling you, but . . . but that . . " He pointed to the glass resting on the dresser top. "It reminded me. I heard about old Mr. Pierce this week."
"The Senior Consultant to the Miss Route 66 Pageant, the Fairfield High School assistant principal? I've always wondered what happened to him."
I took the gray outfit off its hanger, stepped into the skirt, and went over in front of the mirror.
"Well, Pierce is dead. Suicide. Happened more than fifteen years ago. The new guy in our office, he grew up in Neosho. That's where Pierce went after Fairfield."
"I'm sorry. That's sad."
"It is. The story was he never could control himself, his, um, urges. There was another incident with a young girl and . . . well. . . . He knew he was headed for prison this time."
Larry stood behind me for a minute, his arms around my waist. Then he said, "I'll wait for you downstairs."
Larry knows that the minutes wives spend every day in front of a mirror are not simply time devoted to examining or adjusting what we look like. The fluffing of hair, the arched neck to achieve different views, the steps back for inspection are really parts of a deliberate composition of the self. Right then I needed a little extra time to compose myself.
When I examine myself, I often think of my mother and all the times I came looking for help with school projects, music lessons, boyfriend questions. She was in front of her mirror drawing upon deep inner strength unavailable to so many people. Our daughters have inherited the practice, studying, not themselves in the mirror, but possibilities. "Do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do," we all hum, seeing deeper than faces, bodies, poses.
That's probably why I turned against beauty pageants in general along with many in my generation. They're by definition superficial. Judges rank the outer you, no matter how much time is given to talent, questions-and-answers on world issues, personal accomplishments.
This doesn't mean I don't want men to look at me, especially Larry, who also wants me to look at him. When we come back from the fund raiser, I'll give his only slightly pear-shaped belly a score. And he can appreciate my flat tummy, which he never fails to do. But we see so much more in each other that what's outside is made beautiful no matter its flaws.
I'm not Miss Route 66, you know. But I do wear proudly the crown of Susan Bell Thornton.
Route 66 books by Michael Lund
Growing Up on Route 66 —Michael Lund (2000) ISBN 1-888725-31-1 Novel evoking fond memories of what it was like to grow up alongside “America's Highway” in 20th Century Missouri. (Trade paperback) 5x8 260 pp, $14.95
Route 66 Kids —Michael Lund (2002) ISBN 1-888725-70-2 Sequel to Growing Up on Route 66, continuing memories of what it was like to grow up alongside “America's Highway” in 20th Century Missouri. (Trade paperback) 5x8 270 pp, $14.95
A Left-hander on Route 66--Michael Lund (2003) ISBN 1-888725-88-5. Twenty years after the fact, left-hander Hugh Noone appeals a wrongful conviction that detoured him from “America's Main Street” and put him in jail. But revealing the details of the past and effecting a resolution of his case mean a dramatic rearrangement of his world, including troubled relationships with three women: Linda Roy, Patty Simpson, and Karen Murphy. (Trade paperback) 5x8 270 pp, $14.95
Route 66 Spring-- Michael Lund (2004) ISBN: 1-888725-98-2. The lives of four young Missourians are changed when a bottle comes to the surface of one of the state's many natural springs. Inside is a letter written by a girl a dozen years after the end of the Civil War. Lucy Rivers Johns ' epistle contains a sad story of family failure and a powerful plea for help. This message from the last century crystallizes the individual frustrations of Janet Masters, Freddy Sills, Louis Clark, and Roberta Green, another group of Route 66 kids. Their response to the past charts a bold path into the future, a path inspired by the Mother Road itself. (Trade paperback) 5x8 270 pp, $14.95.
Miss Route 66--Michael Lund (2004) ISBN 1-888725-96-6. In the fourth novel of Michael Lund's Route 66 Novel Series, Susan Bell tells the story of her candidacy in Fairfield, Missouri's annual beauty contest. Now married and with teenage children in St. Louis, she recounts her youthful adventure in this small town along “America's Highway.” At the same time, she plans a return to Fairfield in order to right injustices she feels were done to some young contestants in the Miss Route 66 Pageant. (Trade paperback) 5½ X8¼, 260 pp, $14.95 Audiobook on 5 CD’s ISBN 1-888725-12-5 $24.95
Route 66 to Vietnam Michael Lund (2004) ISBN 1-59630-000-0 This novel takes characters from earlier works in the Route 66 Novel Series farther west than Los Angeles, official destination of the famous highway, Route 66. Mark Landon and Billy Rhodes find the values they grew up on challenged by America's role in Southeast Asia. But elements of their upbringing represented by the Mother Road also sustain them in ways they could never have anticipated. . (Trade paperback) 5½ X8¼, 270 pp, $14.95.
AudioBook on CD—Route 66 to Vietnam ISBN: 1-59630-011-6 Michael Lund’s fictional commentary from the viewpoint of a draftee. by Michael Lund unabridged 6 CD's --9 hours running time. $24.95
Route 66 Chapel Michael Lund (2006) ISBN 1-59630-012-4 Route 66 Chapel, Michael Lund (2006) (Trade paperback) 5½ X8¼, 260 pp, $14.95. When the forces of progress threaten the foundation of smalltown life—a small church—five senior citizens, a mysterious newcomer, and one young couple band together in an unlikely campaign to save it. The embattled meeting point of old and new is Route 66 Chapel, a building curiously linked to America's "Mother Road."
Route 66 Choir-- A Comedy (2010)
Michael Lund ISBN 9781596300583 284 pp 5" x 8" 14.95 In Route 66 Choir Stanley Measure takes early retirement just before September 11, 2001, and his impulsive decisions participate in an unraveling of confidence in the American way of life. His wife Felicia finds that everything she holds dear is in danger of coming apart: her marriage, her church, her business, and even her country. Who or what can orchestrate the recovery of harmony necessary to sustain the spirit of the Mother Road?
Route 66 Bride (Fall 2010)
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Table of Contents
Volume One: Instruments. Chapter 1
Volume Two: Ensemble. Chapter 1
Volume Three: Discord. Chapter 1
Volume Four: Harmony. Chapter 1
Epilogue
