Owning Jolene

by Shelby Hearon

  Glenna looks sympathetic, like she understands. Then she frowns and, without thinking, runs her finger over the line it makes. “I still don’t think your mother was there, although if you say you saw her, you of all people ought to know. But when the motel man handed me your note, I looked everybody over top to bottom. For a minute I asked myself, Glenna Rose, how do you know you’d even know Midge Temple after all this time if she was standing right smack dab in front of you, but the thing is you do; you can’t call up a person’s face on the spur of the moment, but as soon as you see it, you know.

  “It was that way with your father. It was that way with Turk. He must have been right there in front of my nose in plain sight, but we had a lot of drop-ins and Brogan was concentrating on signing up his regulars, so I wasn’t paying the off-chances much attention. I looked around as soon as I read your note, but he must have ducked out right on your heels. Then about a half an hour later there he was, and even in that fancy new hairpiece, I knew it was him, no doubt about it. To tell the truth—now you mustn’t get mad—he was a help at the party.” She checked out my reaction. “Going around the way he does, shaking hands. Like he was part owner of the business. Even Brogan said he had a lot of nerve, but he had to admit Turk was a help. Under different circumstances, you know, I bet those two would really get along. That’s not something I ever thought before. Sometimes something like that just hits you. You look at people you’ve known for a coon’s age, and it’s like you’d just seen them new for the first time. Looking at Brogan and your daddy I thought, Why, those two men could be best friends—if things had worked out differently.”

  Aunt Glenna made a little face when she said “differently,” not wanting (Glenna is always careful about that) to say anything directly derogatory about Mom. I don’t think that’s because Mom is Brogan’s sister, because Glenna can sometimes get in a few remarks about Hoyt and Cissy, his parents, but because Mom is my mother, and Glenna doesn’t think it’s nice to run down my natural mother. Because maybe that implies that I haven’t turned out so well; because if I turned out well, then Mom must have had something to do with that. I’ve heard her say that to Brogan and Cissy, defending Mom, when one of them was up in arms about Midge attempting to run off with me again.

  But maybe that isn’t the real reason; maybe the real reason is that if Mom hadn’t been the way she is, then Glenna would never have ended up with me—and I’m the nearest thing to a daughter she has.

  I tell her that the pineapple shake is her best invention yet, and we have a small refill and are just wiping our mouths when we hear Brogan’s Olds roar into the driveway.

  • • •

  “We’re cased on coverall,” he says, waving a stack of papers in the air.

  “Don’t speak to me in that foreign language.”

  “Just your bingo lingo,” he says, giving us each a kiss on the cheek and pulling out a chair for himself. “Now, you remember the table we had set up at our customers’ party at the La Fonda Sur Rosa?”

  “At the party? What table?”

  “That table. At the party. With the gun-phone display and the sheets of paper on which we got exactly fifty-five genuine signatures.”

  “Brogan Temple, you haven’t been actually placing orders for that come-on have you?”

  “That display was more than a come-on; it was a coup.” He waves the pieces of paper in her face.

  “Where have you been with those?”

  “Made a couple of necessary stops. Numero Uno, I went to Jiffy Copy and had a short contract printed up on the top of every page, right above that form for name and address.”

  “That’s dishonest.”

  “Nothing crooked, the whole thing was aboveboard. I didn’t even have to misrepresent the facts.” He leans over until he is about six inches from her face. “Now, here’s what I did. Here’s what happened. I went into the bank with the signatures as collateral you might say, fifty-five authentic names and addresses of persons interested in a product that I just might be marketing. All right? Now. I’m waving these, but I’m not making a lot out of them, see? I sit down on the customer side of the loan officer’s desk at the bank and I say, ‘I want to branch out.’ ‘Don’t we all,’ he says. ‘Some want to branch out and some want to bail out.’ And then we take time out to have a good laugh at his joke, which he’s making a note to remember so he can tell it again to the vice-president in the men’s room. Then I confide to him—still holding my signatures but not pressing them on him, not making any reference to them—I confide to him that the coming thing is vineyards.”

  “Vineyards?” Glenna knits her brow, trying to follow.

  “The same thing he said. ‘Vineyards?’ I told him, ‘Even The University of Big Texas has turned its bunch of millions from oil to grapes.’ Then I reminded him that the High Plains of West Texas is a viticultural Promised Land, and then—this is the hooker—I asked him, what does he think California was but an earthquake about to happen before they got the brilliant idea of California wines?

  “He thought about that. He was about a dozen years younger than yours truly, razor cut, buttoned vest, and he was dazed at the concept. He didn’t have a glimmer until that moment that there had ever been a California without wines. Then he had to consider, and you could see the wheels in his head go around, he had to sit there in his Hart Schaffner & Marx and wish real bad that his granddaddy, who never amounted to a hill of beans, had been out there buying grapevines when they were going cheap.

  “While he locomoted his brain cells, I added a few backup facts. Such as the fourteen varieties of native grapes and the four thousand acres already planted, and that if it’d been the French instead of the Pentecostals settling the state, Lubbock would this very minute be the South of France.

  “ ‘How much you need?’ he asked me, and I could see he was interested in ferreting out a little more information on the matter, on the sly getting the specifics on exactly where these opportunities for investment existed. So in a semi-casual way I mentioned the fine varietals available right this minute from canny vintners who were beating us to the draw, and I named a few names he was going to recognize right off the bat. Former oil types. Previous politicians. And how these folks were already selling about three-quarters of a million gallons a year, selling their own private little Red Bor-deaux or their sweet little Chen-in Blanc.”

  Glenna repeats the French names, impressed with Brogan’s unsuspected knowledge.

  “So now I’ve got his attention, the junior loan officer. So I say, ‘But first, I need to clear up a little bookkeeping matter with you.’ I’m ready to strike my bargain with him, because I can see he’s itching for me to leave so he can sprain his finger calling his broker to inquire about the return on investment in vineyards. ‘What’s that?’ he asks, and I tell him, ‘There’s this little matter of my parents who are right now not happy with your bank, which is playing the heavy with their mortgage. Hardly an amount of money worth the stamps to send out your Payment Overdue letters, but they’re getting up there in years, they have some old movie in their heads about the sheriff coming out on horseback to foreclose.’ We have a good laugh at that. Then he says, ‘These new people.’ He waves away the mortgage department with one buffed pinky. ‘They don’t know half the ass time what their right hands are doing.’

  “So real quick I give him the details, Block 48, Lot 4, nice piece of real estate in the right part of town, and he agrees, ‘No problem, Mr. Temple—Brogan, right?—no problem,’ to put a temporary balloon note on it, and then we’ve finished our business for the day. And I never had to say a word about the signed order blanks on the desk lying underneath his nose the entire time.”

  “How is that going to help when the La Fonda Sur Rosa bill comes due?”

  “More than likely we’ll be out of town at the time, on business. More than likely we’ll have to drop them a note explaining that, temporarily only, our cash flow is tied up in wine futures, that we’ve gone to check on our hol
dings.”

  “If we go out there, can I wear my coat?”

  “Can you wear your coat?”

  “My Joie de Beavre.”

  “Sure you can. Tell the grape growers in West Texas you ordered it over your cellular from your Coupe de Ville.”

  Glenna relaxes at that. “You’re nice, you know it, helping out your folks.”

  “That’s me.” He enjoys that for a spell and then pats her hand. “But I was about to forget. I just happen to have here a little token, which just happens to be something you’ve been wanting for a very long time.”

  “What?” She sees he has a tiny package.

  “Guess.”

  “How can I guess?” She rattles the box, looks all excited. “Can I open it?”

  “Your aunt,” Brogan says to me, calling on a sympathetic third party, and wanting to draw out the surprise a little longer, “has on more than one occasion expressed an interest in having herself an own name.”

  “What in the world?” She tears at the pink paper and silver ribbon.

  “It so happens that is exactly what your aunt is about to receive. Compliments of me, your uncle.”

  Glenna pulls out a gold charm, reads the engraved inscription to herself, then reads it aloud with a squeal of delight:

  “ ‘Glenna Rosé’!”

  “That’ll be the premier wine from our first crush.”

  “Brogan Temple, you are without a doubt the sweetest man in the whole world.”

  It’s great to be with them again, with Hoyt and Cissy’s house saved, and Brogan off on another scam, and Glenna getting a wine named after her (or getting herself renamed after a wine), and me between them, serving as witness. It seems like old times.

  And sure enough it is.

  Just at that moment a big, rental-red car crawls slowly down the street and pulls to a stop at their house.

  29

  “SHE’S RIGHT OUT LIVING with a man old enough to be her father.”

  “How do you know?”

  “How do I know? Because I’m her father, that’s how. I know how old I am.”

  “That she’s living with him.”

  “I saw with my own eyes. Went in, she did, and as far as I know didn’t come back out all night. Next morning he showed up and let himself right in, big as you please.”

  “Maybe it’s a family. Wife and five children.”

  There’s silence. Dad is stuck. I imagine him patting his Velcro; rocking back and forth on his heels. Is he going to admit to Brogan he looked in the windows, or bugged the studio? Did he? Could he? Or is he only guessing?

  Glenna and I are standing in her bedroom listening through the door. Henry should be proud of me. Here I came back to pick up my stuff and when that rental-red car pulled right up in the drive, instead of doing my vanishing act, I disappeared into the bedroom. He ought to give me points for that, although I admit I’ve got my eye on the double windows. The screens look easy as pie to unlatch and the ground is right there three feet down on the side of the house away from Dad’s Avis Mercury Marquis.

  If he followed me to Henry’s the night of the Sub Rosa party, has he been hanging around ever since? The idea that he and Mom are circling again like vultures doesn’t make me feel great. (Not that Dad would know that Mom was around; that’s where she has the advantage over him.)

  Glenna motions me to come sit by her on the bed. It’s not as if we have to press our ears to the keyhole. Dad and Brogan can probably be heard across the yard on the patio next door. The dentist’s wife is more than likely listening to every word; she’s turned down her soaps and is getting the real thing.

  “If you’re casting aspersions on that fine daughter of yours or making any low-grade cracks about what she’s up to, you can get out of my house right this second, Turk Jackson, and that’s a genuine threat. A finer girl than that one doesn’t walk the streets of the Alamo City.”

  Dad clears his throat, sort of the way one dog backs down from another. “What you have to take into account, Brog, and here I’m talking man to man, is that it’s a new ball game out there.”

  “What ball game are you talking about? It wasn’t paddle tennis in our day.”

  “I mean sexually speaking. The rumble-seat stuff has gone out the window.”

  “Did you ever even lay your eyes on a rumble seat even at an auto show? Where’d you ever hear about a rumble seat? Hoyt and Cissy were making out in the back seat of a Pontiac in their day.”

  “Figuratively speaking.”

  “So say what you’re saying.”

  “I’d like you to take a look at this packet.”

  “I’m having sex education in my own living room? My sister’s husband is giving me sex education? Pardon me, but anyone who married my sister Midge has got a large-size gap in his own sex education if you ask me.”

  “Brog, give this a look-see.”

  “ ‘Safe Sex,’ ” Brogan reads aloud.

  Glenna smothers a laugh. She grabs the blender full of pineapple milkshake and takes a big gulp.

  “Safe sex, my heinie, you’ll see what I mean,” Dad says.

  “ ‘What Is Safe?’ ” Brogan’s voice sounds half an octave deeper, like he’s showing that this topic does not in the least bother him, a man like him, of the world.

  “ ‘Masturbation; oral sex on a man using a condom, being sure to avoid the pre-cum …’ Jesus, Turk, where’d you get this filth?”

  “This little packet in the blue plastic envelope was handed to me by your sorority sister with a lot of hair on the campus of our very own state university.”

  Brogan tries a joke. “For my purposes, I think Glenna and I’ve pretty well got the thing figured out.”

  “Keep reading. We’re talking about my little daughter who is right this minute engaging in God knows what with a pervert old enough to be her father.”

  There is the sound of breathing and a couple of coughs. “ ‘What’s Unsafe?’ ‘Kissing.’ Kissing? ‘Anal intercourse.’ What the hell?”

  “Keep going.”

  “ ‘Fisting’?” Brogan coughs again.

  “Go on.”

  “ ‘Rimming’?”

  “Keep reading.”

  “ ‘Watersports’? Jesus Himself Christ, Turk, this is your homosexual tract you’ve got here.” Brogan’s voice cracks. “This calls for three fingers of Mr. Jack, if you ask me.”

  “I won’t say no to that idea, Brog.”

  We hear glasses and then we don’t hear anything for a few minutes. Glenna finishes off the milkshake, to be sociable. She looks shocked but at the same time a little bit thrilled. You can see she wants to ask me what all those things mean and am I really doing them, but then part of her wants to believe that I’m not that kind. I know she and Brogan will sit up half the night reading the pamphlet on Safe Sex and getting themselves excited, or else, more likely, getting themselves sobered up into not feeling like doing it after all.

  Then Brogan asks Dad, “Tell me the truth, Turk, do you know what all this stuff is? Do you have any idea what this means? Fisting? What the hell. Do you have any idea what we’re talking about here?”

  “It’s a new ball game, like I told you, Brog. People are dying of doing things that you and me, old-timers, that you and me don’t know one little thing about.”

  “Kissing? Kissing? Jerking off is okay but kissing isn’t? We didn’t see stuff this hard-core in fourth grade, if you know what I mean.”

  “Now you get my drift, Brog. My little girl has got herself out there in a world which isn’t even a double first cousin once removed to normal any more. Do you see why I want to take her back? Take her somewhere safe?”

  “You got a place at the South Pole?”

  “She’s entitled to a normal life.”

  “You casting any aspersions on anyone in this house? You suggesting any abnormalities on these premises?”

  Dad clears this throat. “A man gets a certain age, he wants his family.”

  We hear glasses bei
ng refilled. Then Brogan uses a calmer tone. “Now I’m going to remind you of a little evening not too long ago, the occasion of a little party of mine for some loyal customers. As I recall you put in an appearance, helped out with the crowd.”

  “It was a good party.”

  “That evening, the one under discussion, the young lady we’ve been talking about had a date with a stockbroker. Do you understand what I’m saying? A stockbroker who right out loud confessed to a customer of mine that he engaged in insider-trading. Now the first thing to remember about his type, the upward mobe, is that he is making it hand over fist and what he doesn’t put up his nose he’s going to spend on investigating your high-class leisure-time activities, some of which we’ve just been reading about. Now, don’t you just suppose that someone like this, busy with skimming and wristing and loiter-sports is going to do more harm to our girl than some guy as old as we are who’s never heard of a one of these newfangled methods and who thinks it’s real nice just to put his hand up some lady’s skirt? Which would you rather? You’ve got to take a look at the realistic alternatives.”

  “You’ve got a point.”

  “A man doesn’t know what something is, he can’t be doing it.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Let me give you a couple more fingers, Turk. For the road.”

  “I could be persuaded.”

  “That age, the best thing you can do is hope they got sense.”

  “She never had a decent home.”

  “Present location in which you’re sitting excepted?”

  “No offense. I forget when I get riled up you’re next of kin to the girl’s mother.”

  “I forget that myself when I can.”

  “How’re your folks? They must be getting up there.”

  “Hoyt and Cissy had a recent scrape with the bank, nothing major, a matter of their mortgage on Lot 4, Block 48—”

  Dad laughs real loud. “Some things don’t change.”

  “How about checking back with us come summer?” Brogan thinks he’s got things smoothed over. “You’ll be down this way; things are going to pick up in the oil business, mark my words. If you still want her then, well, me and Glenna, for one, will be willing to reason.”