“I dunno.”
“Read me something.”
She rummaged through the bowl and came up with a half-piece of paper. “Okay,” she said. “But I can’t look at you.” She turned halfway away from him. “Okay,” she said again, and read:
Cherry blossoms cannot bloom.
nor sweet waters fill the earth
till you return to the warm hollow
of my arms.
She turned back. “Really, I can’t. I don’t know you well enough. It’s embarrassing.”
“It makes me want to read everything.”
She looked at him, laying the paper down on the table. “You know Emily Dickinson?” she said.
“Sure. ‘I’m nobody, who are you?’”
“She wrote, and wrote, all her life, and never showed anybody.”
“She was a strange lady.”
“A poet.”
“Usually poets want to be read.”
“I’m not ready.”
“What’s it like? How do you get the ideas? That poem—that’s a love poem. That’s a poem after you love somebody.”
She turned her head. “A lot of writing is pure imagination. Or you use one experience to feel another, like in acting.”
“And language. It’s like one of those Japanese poems.”
“Sort of. I didn’t follow rules.”
“If you wrote that tonight, you had a lot better time than I did.”
“Oh yeah!” She smiled. “Weren’t you out with the cheerleader?”
Everybody knew his business. “I had a double date. The other couple was very hot.”
“I hate dates. I hate getting dressed and getting picked up and finding out where I’m going. I hate talking about school and other kids—”
He reached out to touch her hand. “It doesn’t have to be like that. If it’s somebody you like. You just—get together.”
She snorted. “Is that what you do?”
He got up. Glee was going to be in Snyder for a game next Friday. She’d be mad that he didn’t go on the booster bus, but he could plead exhaustion, he could say he had to help his mother. “Like I could come by Friday night? We could go have a hamburger, and then you could show me some more poems.”
“What about your girlfriend?”
“People are always saying that to me!” He banged his hand on the flimsy table. “Sorry,” he said. Quietly, leaning toward her, he added, “The whole idea is not to do it the other way. We’re going to be friends, Patsy. We’re not going to talk about school and other kids.”
“We’re not really going to go out at all, are we?”
He didn’t know what she meant, what she wanted. “I’ll come over Friday, six-thirty, seven, okay? We’ll see what happens. Don’t dress up. Don’t think about it.”
On the radio, it was time for a Golden Oldie. The Platters sang, “The Great Pretender.”
“Listen,” she said at the door. “Don’t tell Mr. Turnbow I said this. But when you get into costume? Play with it. Pick little bits of lint off of it. Straighten the lapel, that sort of thing. Not a lot, but when you think he’s a little nervous.”
“I could try that,” he said. You did wonder what to do with your hands.
“And when you come over, it’s your turn. Show and Tell. I can’t be friends with you if I don’t know who you are.”
She was working on a poem that started out, Morals are meager comfort for lame dreams—He wasn’t sure what she meant, he thought she was talking about being good when you felt like being bad, but he didn’t want to ask, it wasn’t important to understand completely. That Friday night, he told her about the woman who loved a much younger man, out of her grief. It took him nearly ten minutes to tell it, all sorts of things came to him as he talked. He thought about how Sissy was always popping up and following him, and it made him think, this woman could see him playing tennis. She could come back, day after day, while he practiced, and then one day she would say something. He would find her beautiful at first, but she was older, he would want it to stop. That’s when the woman would kill herself. “For God’s sake, write it down!” Patsy said. He told her he was Jewish. He told her about his father leaving them for five years. He thought they had that in common, though Saul came back. He touched her hands, he touched her arm, once he brushed her hair off her forehead. He didn’t kiss her. He didn’t want to cross the line. He felt so close to her. Driving home, he thought: There is a kind of sex that takes place all in the head.
He wondered if Patsy could be his muse. Maybe that was what he’d needed all along! The idea made him smile. When he got home, he turned on his radio and sang along. He took out his notebook and drew two lines of little posies. God, he had so many ideas, talking to her.
Of course that was all he had done so far, talk.
17.
David and Glee went to a dance at the Teen Center. Pete Kelton was the disc jockey, “slinging platters for your entertain-uh-ment!” The place was packed. It was cold, the movies downtown were for old people this week (“Elephant Walk!”), this was the first dance of the year with a DJ instead of the jukebox or radio for music. It was the sort of occasion Glee especially liked. She was nicely dressed, in a short blue flannel skirt and a fuzzy white sweater. All evening she could run up to friends to get and give hugs, exchange silly remarks, and, generally, show off. She kept a steady tug on David’s arm, steering him from one cluster of kids to another. He didn’t have a lot to say; the play was going into dress rehearsal, so he could claim to be busy, he could encourage everyone to come. He had missed as many football games as he had gone to—Glee tormented him with complaints about his lack of interest in his own school, besides disinterest in seeing her butt twirling on the edge of the field—but he could comment on how the team was doing—very well—and wonder who would get nominated for All-State, and where the quarterback might go to college.
It was too warm in the huge room, and the drinks were sticky, in clammy plastic cups, most of the ice melted, the carbonation spent. He wanted to have a good time—why else had he come?—but he felt foolish dancing to the beat of the hard drums, or the groans of Ray Charles. He only felt competent when they danced slow tunes, when he could hold Glee close and make her happy, saying things down onto her neck, like, you smell good tonight, I like your hair, you’re the prettiest.
Kelton was doing a favorite act of his. He pretended to be the “slippery killer,” who drops knives and falls on victims. He stuttered and flailed his arms, he laughed at his own jokes. The kids called out to him, “Killer Kelton!” and then turned away, so he would go back to playing Paul Anka and Sam Cooke. Nobody could look at him very long. He was skinny to the point of emaciation, with a high roll of slick black hair. He wore tight pants and a shiny shirt open low, with a gold chain. His voice was too big for his body, round and loud and deep, bearable over the air, but embarrassing when you connected his sound and his look. Girls who had come alone to the dance found their way to the table where he was working, and stood with their arms folded, or leaned against the table, waiting for him to put a record on and lean over to ask their names, and what’s their games, and whatever other BS came out of his big mouth.
David did not miss his sister; he had never felt any particular attachment to her, they were not an affectionate family, they had not grown up “doing things together.” Yet, looking at her husband Kelton, he could not help thinking that if she were what she ought to be, what she really was—a teen-age girl—she might be at this dance, maybe with a date, or maybe with a girlfriend, hanging out. She might even be waiting for a chance to talk to Kelton, their “Red Hot Host, Your Pal and Music Master,” instead of sitting at home by herself twiddling her thumbs. But she had done all that, early on. Wasn’t that how she’d got herself into a foolish marriage? She had entered a contest to make up menus for some crazy creature Kelton had invented (fried fly wings, frog filets, disgusting nonsense), and he called to say she’d won, she could come down and pick out twenty reco
rds. Of course the records were rejects, every one, and Joyce Ellen didn’t even have a record player, but it was Pete Kelton all along she’d wanted as her prize, and whatever they had done, going through records, it has been a fairly straight march—six, eight months?—to elopement and him at the Teen Center preening, while she watched TV at home.
At ten there was a grand roll of drums and an announcement: the Cooper-Railey Muffler Shop was providing hot dogs for everybody. Donations would go toward the Teen Center activities fund, because, said Earl Railey, son of the real Railey, and only two years out of high school himself, “The dawgs are on us!” Early Railey looked eighteen going on thirty. His pants hung in the seat, and his shoes were scuffed. He was married, and his wife was pregnant. She was behind a table, stuffing sausages in buns.
Glee wrinkled her nose at the sight of the food, but David was suddenly voraciously hungry. He loaded up on mustard and pickles and onions and relish, and had a big mouthful when he looked up and saw Beth Ann Kimbrough coming in the door. He felt like Derek the night he ate the caramel; no matter how hard he chewed, he’d never get through the load in his mouth. Beth Ann was with Warren somebody, who had graduated the year before and gone to TCU. A tall boy, he was wearing a sports jacket and looking amused to be home among the babies. She was wearing a dress with a skirt that floated around her knees. They had been elsewhere, maybe to the country club, to dinner. She was a princess, visiting the serfs.
A Johnny Mathis song came on, and she danced with Warren. There were only half a dozen couples on the floor. Everybody was eating, or talking to someone who was eating. Beth Ann and her dated looked like they were dancing in a glass bubble, nobody could touch them. Her skirt fluttered when they turned. When the song was over, she clapped her hands lightly, and looked once around the room before departing. She saw David. She raised her hand to wave at him with her fingers. He swallowed, he still tasted hot dog, his throat burned.
The next day he went over to Glee’s to study. After an hour he suggested they take a ride. It was a clear, sunny day, with the sharp bite of late fall in the air. The sky went on forever. She wanted to talk about Homecoming; she was buying a new formal. He wondered who would take Beth Kimbrough. He wondered if Lasky had asked a girl, or some girl had asked him. He thought about his white jacket—his father had picked it up for him in Lubbock at a buyers’ closeout—and wondered if the yellow streak at the bottom on the back actually showed. The lights would be low. He resolved right then to make it a special evening for Glee. He’d take her to the Alamo Hotel for dinner. He would enjoy that, remembering the banquets he’d bussed his freshman and sophomore years. And maybe, once he was at the dance, he would have a good time. Everybody would be looking good. It was one of the rituals of high school life. At least he wasn’t one of the ones left out.
“So which do you think?” she was asking. “Pink or pale green, I think those are my last two choices.” He thought she would look silly in pink, with her dark skin. “Green,” I think, he said. “Sure, green would look good. There’ll be lots of pink, you don’t want that.” She leaned back, satisfied. She and her mother were going down to buy the dress the next day. Now David would know the color, when he chose her corsage.
He started trying to tell Glee about suburbs. They were studying them in his sociology class, which was to say that the teacher had shown them a film and given them an article to read, typed out from Time. It had to do with freeways. If you could get in and out of the city, you didn’t have to live in it. He had to write a little essay, would you want to live in a suburb, or wouldn’t you. Glee smiled and bobbed her head. “That’s nice,” she said. She had never been to Dallas or Houston; she didn’t know what a real city was. She wasn’t any different from most Basin kids. Where would he ever have been, if it hadn’t been for tennis tournaments? It was something, to have a father from New York City, and never the mention of a visit, never the chance to see relatives, or the Empire State Building, or a real library.
“If you lived in a suburb—if you were a wife, see, with a baby, and your husband worked in the city—you’d be there all day, with the other wives. You’d drive to the supermarket and the cleaners and all, but most of the time you’d be inside your house. So the houses are nice, they make them big.”
He had an idea. He had seen banners for a new housing development, Sherwood Estates, he told Glee. (A little forest, in Basin, Texas? he wondered. Maybe a bush, at the corner near the model house.) “These places are like that, it’s just that we’re not a city, so it’s not a suburb. Let’s drive out there.”
Glee wasn’t paying any attention to his explanation. She was along for the ride. Where they went didn’t really matter. She never looked past the end of her nose. He knew there was a larger world out there, and she didn’t care. He felt poised to enter that world, to break away from this one, and she only wanted to move up out of high school into the next stage.
How could anyone want to live in a suburb? Barbecues and TV, fucking after the kids went to bed. He got the picture, little that they discussed it in class. He wanted to live in a city, right in it. He could see himself in a tiny apartment, maybe a dirty building, but he’d paint the apartment white. All he would need would be a bed and a table and chair. He would sit at the table at night, and write a novel about teen-agers, he would tell the world what they were really like, and get famous. He would get rich and go to Hollywood, like Fitzgerald. Only, who cares about teen-agers? And what did he know? And look what happened to Fitzgerald when he got to Hollywood.
The development consisted of a dozen houses tidily arranged on an utterly flat and desolate plate of land east of town. There was no bush in Sherwood Estates, nor a tree, nor a flower. There were poles, with lengths of plastic streamers hung around the model house, and driveways gouged out of caliche. The yards looked like slabs of stone. The houses were in various pastel hues: aqua, pink, sand, mint, yellow. There was one floor plan, and its reverse; the houses sat side by side, their garages only six feet apart, and yards ten feet wide on the outside.
The salesman was standing in the driveway talking to a couple that had come out just as David and Glee arrived. They went inside, alone in the place. David had never been in a tract house before. There was something spooky and yet wonderful about it. Everything was perfect. The kitchen had a large center bar, tiled in turquoise and yellow, with pine cabinets and yellow walls. The living-room was painted a neutral, sandy color, and the blond wood furniture was upholstered in turquoise and light brown. Huge lamps sat at each end of the couch. The drapes were beige with flecks of gold and aqua; they were pulled back to let in the bright light. Glee squatted and patted the carpet. “God, it’s so nice,” she moaned. She rushed around the kitchen, opening the refrigerator door, peeking in the empty cabinets. A bowl of plastic flowers sat on the yellow formica table. Glee ran her fingers over an ugly pink rose.
She led the way into the bathroom. The shower was huge, like a bright yellow cave. Glee stepped next to David and he put his arms around her. “I bet there would be lots of hot water,” he said. He couldn’t help thinking how nice it would be. Glee was nearly whimpering. “I hope I have a nice house like this some time,” she said. “I’d cook dinner every night. I’d keep it clean.”
“That sounds boring,” he said softly. She was wiggling, moving in as close as she could get. He realized that he was as eager as she was. He stepped out of the shower, locked the bathroom door, and stepped back in. She had already pulled off her panties.
“You kids in here?” they heard the salesman calling. Glee was giggly and nervous, and happy. David leaned back against the cold shower tile; he turned his face to let his cheek cool for a moment. He closed his eyes.
“Always someone dropping in,” Glee whispered. She was tugging and rearranging herself, laughing. He stepped out of the shower. Her eyes were shining. For a moment he felt sealed in the fancy model bathroom, trapped in Glee’s fantasy.
18.
He often found himsel
f staring at Patsy. She was a puzzle he wanted to unlock. She intrigued him; on stage, she mesmerized him. She might listen to the director intently, leaning slightly into the pool of light, and the act of listening was suddenly fascinating. She spoke with such clarity and resonance, you could hear her perfectly anywhere in the theatre. He asked her about her voice; he knew his own was weaker, that he strained to match her. It’s all in the breath, she told him. She showed him how you have to breathe from deep in the cavity of your body, how your diaphragm is a floor. She put her warm hands flat against his ribs. He caught on fast. She said, “Of course you would, any athlete has learned something about breathing!” The strain in his throat went away. He could hear the difference, and so could Mr. Turnbow. “You’ve relaxed, David,” he said. “You’ve started really acting.”
The acting had seemed easy at the beginning, like playing dress-up. It was only as he got better—Patsy told him so many things—that he saw how much work it was to get it right. He learned lines easily, he learned how to turn, stand, walk across stage. He learned to keep his body “open,” for the audience to see. Derek was a big Dr. Sloper, and David enjoyed the feeling of taking him on, standing up to him. He thought their scenes worked fine. Derek had a big voice and lacked subtlety, so David tried to be especially smooth in his scenes with him. With Patsy, something else was happening. There was a fine wire between them, a tension he could almost reach out to touch in the air. She could have taken every scene from him, but what mattered was that they were a team. What they made together made the play work. “Lucky me,” she told him. “I thought Mr. T. would cast Jerry McCain, Morris straight off the ranch.” He realized she considered it her play.
He took her home after rehearsal each night and stayed a little while. They talked about their scenes. She told him about parts she wanted to play some day: Nora in “A Doll’s House,” Antigone, Lady Bracknell in “Earnest,” Gittel in “Two for the Seesaw.” They talked about what it would be like to move to New York. You would be poor, you would have to find work as a waiter or a clerk or who knows what, but you would be in the heart of the heart of the world, where everything was happening, where there was everything to learn. She thought about going there and taking acting classes on Bank Street (he wondered how she knew about these things); she said, “You could, too, you’re talented,” but it was unimaginable. He said he wanted to go to college, and as he said it he wanted it more than anything. College was how you climbed up out of the hole your parents were in. It put you in the running.
Walking Dunes Page 14
