About My Life and the Kept Woman

by John Rechy

  When I parked outside the glass enclosure that was the drive-in, an octagonal shape, a round counter inside, to await the waitress who would attach a tray to my side of the car and take our order, I applied the hand brake with an assured pull.

  Why did the hood of the car spring up?

  Perspiration broke out on my forehead—and probably all over my body—as if a bucket of scalding water had drenched me. I had pulled a lever that opened the hood, which remained there, slanted, defiant, merciless.

  “The hood’s up,” Isabel said, as if I hadn’t noticed.

  “I know. It—” After, in a haze, I found the actual brake, got out, and slammed the hood down—I had not dared to look around to note whether anyone was snickering—we ordered from an older waitress in a low skirt, white and orange.

  “Some car you got there, boy,” she said.

  “It’s pretty, yes,” Isabel acknowledged.

  But now another horror loomed, that I would not have enough money if Alicia—Isabel!—ordered more than I could pay for, my two-dollars share of what I made at the laundry.

  “A lime Coke, please,” she said.

  Ten cents! Now I could afford the vanilla malt I asked for, for fifteen cents.

  “Do you smoke?”

  Was she suggesting that I smoke to calm my nerves? Was it so obvious that I was nervous—and excited to be with her? Was I still sweating? “Yes, of course,” I answered her, and added, “I smoke a lot.” I had never smoked.

  She released her hands.

  So that’s what she had been holding, a pack of cigarettes. She tapped the box on one palm so that a cigarette popped out for me to take. I did, not knowing what I would do with it, just holding it for now. She took one herself after another tap on her palm. Hesitating so that I would not pull another unexpected lever, I tested the cigarette lighter. It glowed.

  In a wide, showy arc, Isabel brought her cigarette close to her lips, and held it there, barely touching, as if deciding whether to allow it yet to touch. When she did finally bring it to her lips, lightly, I extended the lighter out to her, retaining my own inert cigarette in my free hand. I missed the tip of her cigarette with the lighter—because her hand holding the cigarette between her fingers was …

  Trembling!

  She was nervous!—like me.

  Poking my cigarette between my lips, I held her hand to still the trembling while I tried again to light the cigarette for her. “I’m nervous, too,” I said.

  She stiffened, clearly rejecting my assumption that she was nervous, an acknowledgment of awkwardness.

  “Really, it’s all right, Alicia—” Too late to withdraw the forbidden name or the offending suggestion.

  She jerked her hand away from me with a whimper so slight that I barely heard it as she opened the door and ran out, dropping the unlit cigarette on the floor of the car.

  9

  A man and a woman came often—very often, sometimes with only a small bundle—into the call office of the laundry where I worked. They never honked for service. Whenever either of the other students who worked at the counter with me attempted to wait on them—even when customers were protesting about the slowness of the service—they lingered until I was free. Once I saw them waiting at the curb in their car until two other customers had left.

  He was a heavyset man, about fifty, who breathed audibly, every now and then inhaling to catch his breath. Perhaps because of his girth, he seemed to waddle. His wife—he had introduced himself and her to me formally as “Mr. and Mrs. David Kippan”—was his opposite, reed-thin, with deep-set anxious eyes. She seemed to float in, noiselessly, beside him. They had in common slight frequent smiles contradicted by deep frowns.

  The first time I had waited on them—a slow day—they had asked me about school, my ambitions, alternating questions between them. I told them I was going to be a writer. They seemed thrilled. I suspected that one or the other or both might be writers themselves and that that accounted for their sustained interest in me, and so I responded warmly.

  When they invited me to dinner at their home, I was flattered by the invitation from sophisticated adults, surely writers. Too, I had continued to discourage friendships outside school. The encounter with Isabel Franklin had left me feeling sad. On the night of our shared catastrophe, I had considered driving after her, but I was sure—afraid—that she would reject my offer.

  Mr. and Mrs. Kippan offered to pick me up, but I didn’t want to give them my address—so I borrowed my brother’s car and drove to their house. It was an attractive house in a “good” neighborhood, a very good neighborhood—I never failed to notice such details.

  “What a pleasure that you’re joining us for dinner, John Rechy!” Mr. Kippan greeted me in his booming voice. He was wearing a jacket and a tie. I had not even considered dressing; I wore jeans and a sweater. I had only one suit, which my brother had given me, not yet worn out.

  Mr. Kippan ushered me into a house that seemed an extension of each of them, in equal parts. There were several delicate porcelain figurines on shelves of dark solid wood. The books in the shelves looked musty and old. Over a dormant fireplace hung a picture, in a lacy frame, of a fierce horse about to pounce.

  “John Rechy is here,” Mr. Kippan called into the house.

  Emerging briefly from the kitchen, Mrs. Kippan greeted me: “John Rechy, welcome to our home!” She confided, “I don’t often cook. David and I eat out most of the time. But, tonight, I’ve made a special meal for you, Johnny.” I simply accepted being called “Johnny” as a form of affection.

  We sat at the dining table, set with white plates and shiny cutlery. They faced each other on opposite sides of the table. I was seated in the middle. Uncomfortable at first, I rehearsed what to say to retain their impression of me as sophisticated enough to invite for dinner.

  Mrs. Kippan had cooked a “home meal”—a roast, potatoes, corn on the cob, along with a crisp salad. She served iced tea in a sweaty pitcher. a Texas staple. At home, even in winter, we drank iced tea.

  Eventually, the conversation became easy. I answered their questions—some already answered at the laundry—about school; I told them I edited the high school newspaper.

  “So ambitious!” Mrs. Kippan complimented me, her hands constantly touching her hair as if to make sure it was not messy.

  “And accomplished,” Mr. Kippan barked in his authoritative voice.

  “Thank you.”

  “And you’re only—?” Mrs. Kippan abandoned the question as she disappeared into the kitchen with dishes, returning with ice cream for desert.

  “Seventeen,” I answered when she was back.

  “Imagine that!” Mr. Kippan said. He paused to regain his breath, which resumed in loud heaves.

  “And already so smart—and attractive, forgive me for observing,” Mrs. Kippan said.

  “Thank you.” I certainly didn’t mind the observations.

  “I’m sure girls pursue you all the time,” Mrs. Kippan said.

  “Not only girls, I wager,” Mr. Kippan said with a raspy chuckle.

  What had he meant?

  Both were staring at me.

  “You’re right, David,” Mrs. Kippan broke the uncomfortable silence, “I’m sure it’s not only girls who are attracted to him. There are, you know, some pretty teachers.”

  “Precisely,” Mr. Kippan said.

  I was as relieved by what seemed to be a clarification of Mr. Kippan’s remark as I was unsettled by the new reference to teachers. How could Mrs. Kippan know about Miss Edwards? I forced myself to relax, but that was becoming increasingly difficult.

  “Do you have a special girl?” Mrs. Kippan asked with what seemed to be grave interest—she leaned toward me for my answer.

  “Yes,” I said. Who?

  “So you are a writer!” Mr. Kippan finally changed the subject.

  “I’m going to be, yes,” I said.

  “I, myself, you know, am working on a radical essay about films and the importance o
f subtle shadings.” Mr. David Kippan leaned back importantly to underscore the profundity of his radical essay.

  I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sure what he had said.

  “Why, you and David have so much in common—both writers.” Mrs. Kippan moved her hands nervously, lightly, about her face, as if to detect her expression.

  I didn’t welcome having much in common with Mr. Kippan. The silence deepened.

  “You must read a lot, for a young man your age,” Mr. Kippan said after he had waited too long for me to remark on our similarities.

  I welcomed an introduction to discuss writers I was now reading. I had just discovered Dos Passos and Farrell. Shamefully, I didn’t mention that I was reading Kathleen Winsor’s sensational Forever Amber, which all the congregants at Mass in the Immaculate Conception Church had been sworn never to read.

  “Have you read Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer?” Mr. Kippan dismissed my proud listing of readings. “Would you like to?”

  Henry Miller? Forbidden. Banned. Censored. “Sure, I—How? He’s not allowed in the country, is he?”

  Mrs. Kippan leaned over me to whisper, “We have a copy David smuggled past customs!”

  “I’d like to borrow it,” I said, curious about the notorious book by the notorious writer, but, also, to return the subject to books I had read.

  “We don’t let it out of our sight,” Mr. Kippan said.

  I felt trapped without knowing what the trap might be.

  Mrs. Kippan went to one of the musty bookshelves and pulled out—very, carefully, edging it out—a worn book without a jacket. She held it out toward me. “Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer!”

  When I reached for it, she pulled it away. Mr. Kippan took the book.

  Mrs. Kippan uttered a sigh. She pressed her hands against her temples. “Migraine,” she said. Then to me: “I’m sorry, Johnny. I have to lie down in the dark until it passes.”

  I stood up, concerned, ready and eager to leave. “I’m sorry. Thank you very much for the delicious—”

  “No!” Mr. Kippan said, restraining me with a firm hand.

  “You must stay,” Mrs. Kippan encouraged. “David will be happy to read to you from Mr. Miller.” She left the room quickly.

  Mr. Kippan linked one heavy arm through one of mine, leading me to the living room. “You sit here,” he instructed, indicating a chair with a large footstool.

  “I really have to go—”

  “You don’t want to hear the banned words of this great writer, this towering intellectual? You—a writer yourself? Every writer owes it to himself to read the man’s work! Why, it’s fraught with subtle shadings; I intend to discuss that in my radical essay. Now sit down and take advantage of this rare opportunity.”

  Sit down? He was ordering me! I didn’t move.

  “Please, sit down,” he said smiling and frowning.

  I sat down slowly, to indicate I was only deciding.

  Quickly, David Kippan sat on the footstool in front of me, hardly fitting in it, so that I had to lean back, into the chair.

  He opened the book to a marked passage. In a declamatory voice he read to me—not about “subtle shadings”—but about thighs and cunts and cocks and lice and smells and buttocks and lice and odors and cocks and cunts and lice …

  “Exciting, isn’t it?” he asked. He had had to interrupt his reading now and then to catch his breath, at times a wheeze.

  I shook my head, No. The characters were dirty, disgusting.

  “Listen to this—” He went on reading, rushing now breathless. More lice and odors and—“Aroused?” he gasped at me.

  “What?”

  “Are you aroused!”

  “No!” I stood up so abruptly he almost fell off the stool. “I have to go. I told my brother I’d have his car back early.”

  “You have to leave?” Mr. Kippan asked, his voice softening as if he was suddenly very sad.

  “Yes. Please tell Mrs. Kippan that I enjoyed the dinner very much, and I hope she gets well soon, and thank you, Mr. Kippan, for reading to me. I enjoyed the ‘subtle shadings.’”

  In my brother’s car, I felt angry at them, but, more, at myself. How had I invited this strange evening?

  During the following days when I had my brother’s car, I drove around Isabel Franklin’s house—the house where I had picked her up—considering stopping by, even thinking that I might ask her to accompany me to the approaching senior prom. But I didn’t. I couldn’t picture her coming out to greet me in the unimpressive Nash, let alone getting into it. Too, she’d be angry that I hadn’t believed her story about a friend living there.

  At school now, she and I would pause to greet each other, just that. Eventually we merely nodded. Finally we ignored each other.

  Then she stopped turning up in classes. She was considered only absent at first.

  Each time I saw my sister Olga, I realized how far we had come in our childhood roles. I would look at her and try to grasp the evolution that had transformed the girl who had been my buddy, a plain tomboy, into the woman I saw now. I felt that the added closeness between us—or rather, the extension of our closeness—had come about in significant part from my having told her what I had withheld for years, how unhappy I had been when she had left on her honeymoon without saying “so long” to me, how I had hidden, certain she would seek me out.

  “Oh, how sad!” she agreed. Instantly she was crying.

  I assured her that I had long since recovered. That seemed to annoy her.

  Although she was still beautiful—her skin, like my mother’s, unblemished—she was increasingly prone now to gain a few pounds, lose them, regain them. More often than not, she was—I chose the best term to award her—“lush.”

  She had accepted her role as the family gossip, or, more kindly, as the family chronicler, constantly increasing her dramatic powers of presentation. By tacit understanding, we did not speak about my father, who now, in my life at home, I thought of as lurking like an avenger of something I couldn’t grasp; and when my rage at him allowed momentary surcease—pity—I would wonder whether I would ever understand, if I continued to try, the violent anger he aimed at me.

  As kids, my sister and I had haunted the Texas Grand Theater during Revival Week, after I had confided to her that I used to sneak in, alone, by a side entrance, an entrance we then used together. When, once, my mother joined us, we told her we had special “student tickets” for ourselves and would meet her inside. That time, we sat, my mother in the middle, all three of us holding hands and crying as we watched Mata Hari led to the firing squad.

  Often now, I would detect in my sister’s stories something borrowed—no, integrated—from those grand old films. When she was annoyingly judgmental about someone, usually about Isabel—“Her name is Alicia, Alicia, Alicia!” she would insist—I reminded her that she herself had been the object of gossip before she married, and about Señor’s threats, especially among the vicious aunts.

  “Those stories,” she said, “were just rumors.”

  “Then you weren’t pregnant when you married?” I had never considered that she had not been.

  She burst into laughter: “You think it’s possible to give birth to a nine-pound boy at seven months? Our mother still does, God bless her. Besides, the rumors never bothered me. I was in love, little brother, and of course I was pregnant, and so we married.”

  Knowing that she remained close to Señor’s wife—who was now nothing less than fat—and to her sister-in-law Tina, I turned to her for information about Isabel Franklin.

  We had lunch frequently, my sister Olga and I—always awkward sandwiches; she was not a good cook—in her new two-room apartment while her husband was working and the growing boy had been sent to play in another room.

  We had just finished that day’s awful sandwiches when she settled her slightly expanded form—plump today—on her favorite soft chair.

  When, oddly, she hadn’t brought up the subject, I asked her about Isa
bel Franklin.

  “I knew you were waiting to ask, weren’t you, little brother?” Having, I suppose, determined my enduring interest, and having decided to add suspense by withholding her information for me to draw out, she said, “Of course you mean Alicia Gonzales. She’s gone.”

  “She ran away?”

  “Tina was too embarrassed to tell anyone about it till now. Alicia left a note that said only, ‘Goodbye, don’t look for me, I’m OK.’ Imagine!”

  “Where did she go?” I had convinced myself that she would still be in El Paso. I felt rejected.

  “Tina has no idea, and she’s despondent, sobbing on the telephone; she’s called her ex-husbands, both of them, to see if Alicia went to see them. No word. Imagine Tina’s sorrow over that nasty brat! She probably went to Hollywood to be a movie star, with all those airs she has. I never thought she was all that pretty, did you?”

  “Yes,” I said, “she was and she is.”

  My sister shrugged.

  “I’m sure Isabel will come back for graduation.” I was hoping that she would.

  “I’m not so sure Alicia Gonzales will ever be back, little brother,” my sage sister prophesied.

  Had Isabel gone to Mexico, as she had said, that disastrous evening?

  “Little brother, do you still have a crush on Alicia?”

  Still? I had never told her I did. I wanted to deflect her question: “Why don’t you like Isabel?”

  My sister started pretending to count on her fingers Isabel’s many faults, exhausting one hand, going on to the other.

  “Stop it, Olga. Why? Are you jealous of her because you think I like her?”

  “Oh, hush. … How can anyone like someone who leaves her mother without telling her where she’s going, or why? And how can you like someone who’s such a fake?”