Western Swing

by Tim Sandlin

  “Or we can elope and go live somewhere else,” I said to Ron.

  “I don’t want to live anywhere else. Marriage and college sounds good to me. Wonder if he’d send me to Rice?” Ron’s only basketball scholarship offers had come from North Texas State and Oral Roberts. His feelings were hurt because Houston didn’t even call his coach.

  I squeezed his palms. “If that’s how you want it, that’s how we’ll do it.”

  “That’s how I want it.”

  So before I drove the Chevy down to Daddy’s office, made an appointment, and broke the news to him—in front of his nurse, by the way—I knew what the repercussions would involve. I’d made my choice. The only detail I hadn’t counted on was the summer in Europe, but that was okay too.

  • • •

  The process came about basically the way Daddy planned, the only surprise being that I spawned twins. Then, one year into med school, Ron decided he didn’t like death and sickness and he didn’t want to be a doctor. As well as I knew Ron’s every thought, he still blew my socks out the window when he came home and announced he’d chosen dentistry.

  “Dentist,” I shrieked quietly so as not to awaken the girls.

  Ron gave me his defiant look. “What’s the matter with being a dentist?”

  “You’ll smell like spit.”

  Daddy didn’t buy the change of plans. He led Ron into the study and closed the door. An hour and a half later they reached a compromise. Ron would become an oral surgeon and I would be a good mother.

  • • •

  Let’s face it, I don’t thrive on being the object of dependency. Parasites make me nervous. There’s no quicker way for a man to bring on the Crack than by turning all clutchy-needy on me. Knowing that, and looking back, I’m amazed at how much I enjoyed motherhood. Cassie and Connie were my darlings. Still are.

  In the hospital, I thought something awful was wrong with me. I couldn’t make a connection between my life and these two sucking, crying, sleeping, shitting objects. I was afraid they would break if I touched them. I thought I was an emotional freak with no maternal instincts, a spider woman.

  Then one afternoon when they were a couple of weeks old, Ron drove over to Rice to talk with his faculty adviser and, in something I took as a miracle, both girls fell asleep at the same time. Up until then, I was sure they were taking shifts at keeping me on my feet.

  Two blessed hours of rest later, I grogged back to consciousness. Shuffling into the kitchen, I poured a cup of coffee, lit a cigarette, and walked into the girls’ room to see why they weren’t howling. I had on my blue terry-cloth bathrobe and no shoes. The smoke burned my eyes. I’d only taken up the habit the week before and hadn’t quite mastered cigarette technique. Roxanne tried to coach me on blowing it out one corner of my mouth or up at the ceiling, but my exhalations tended to hiss a cloud that floated into my face and stuck.

  The girls’ window was open and fuzzy Houston light washed over the room, reflecting off the butterfly mobile Ron’s mother had hung over the cradle. Cassie slept on her side with a fist bunched at her mouth. Wispy auburn hair lay against her cheek. Connie’s eyes were open, maybe focused on the nearest plastic butterfly. I imagined they were anyway.

  Connie’s eyes showed a deep, intense green, the same green as on a pack of Doublemint gum. Her hair was white and short, more fuzz than hair. She didn’t have Cassie’s cheekbones and her forehead was wider. Her lips were thicker.

  The longer I stood looking down at my babies, the more I realized how different they were from each other. And how different they were from me. For the first time, I saw them as little people, not pets or dolls or even a piece of me that broke loose and escaped. I’d created them, but now I would never be able to think or feel or act for them again. The helpless little creatures were on their own against one hell of a rough world.

  “Holy Christ,” I said to Connie and the sleeping Cassie. “This is neat.” And—Bingo—I learned to love.

  • • •

  Ron wasn’t home much the first ten years. Premed, med, dental school, residency, the process for mounting the ladder of financial security took most of every day. He kissed his women good-bye in the mornings and hello at night. Other than that, the three of us grew up pretty much on our own.

  I mean, I was only eighteen and, except for that one three months of glory, I’d never slept away from my parents’ house. I’d never been alone more than a couple of hours in a row and I didn’t know what to do with myself while Ron was out learning to perform root canals.

  The girls became my buddies. For the first couple of years, our talks were mostly one-sided.

  “Do you think I should smoke pot?” I asked, holding them both upright in the bath basin. “Roxanne says it’s fun. She says all the Volkswagen microbuses on the freeways are full of drug fiends having orgies. I think about that whenever I pass one.”

  Cassie cooed and splashed water with her palms. Connie stuck a bar of soap in her mouth.

  Soon, however, they learned to give advice and criticism—lots of criticism. Connie was only four years old the first time she told me my shoes didn’t match my earrings.

  The girls sure were different from each other. For maybe five years, Connie was crazy about me. As a baby she cried whenever I left her sight. Later, Connie crawled, then skipped from room to room in the apartment, following me as I sorted the clutter, babbling all the while about her dolls and pretend evening gowns, asking me questions I never had answers to. Her curiosity-about-body-parts stage lasted considerably longer than I thought it was supposed to.

  Early in her fifth year, Connie suddenly latched onto her daddy. Whatever he said was truth and whatever I said was suspect. Maybe she thought their blondness and large jaws set them apart from Cassie and me, or maybe it was the female version of Oedipalism. Almost overnight I moved from being the rock at the center of her world to the status of hired help.

  “Mama was bad to me today,” she said to Ron once. “I think we should fire her.”

  She stopped confiding and came to believe I wasn’t as smart as she was. By the time she hit thirteen, Connie was convinced she knew more about makeup and clothes than I did. She was probably right.

  All that’s normal in a girl, I guess. At her age I thought my mom was a naive ninny. It hurts, but motherhood always has been a bum rap. I guess it always will be.

  Cassie was quieter. We never had any trouble with Cassie. I don’t remember swatting her bottom or making her sit in her room. I must have sometimes, she wasn’t a freak or anything, but I just can’t recall any need for discipline.

  Cassie mostly played by herself. She was polite and friendly, more a cooperative little guest than part of a family unit.

  She looks like me, dark, thick hair that she kept long way after Connie and all her friends cut back to the short and sassy look. She has high cheekbones and a long neck, almost Indian features. I don’t remember her hands ever moving without a reason. Connie’s hands were always twitching—twisting hair, scratching at itches, drumming rhythms on the table. In all the years I lived with Cassie, I don’t remember her ever scratching herself. Isn’t that odd?

  It seemed to take forever, but all the schooling finally started paying off for Ron. We moved from the apartment to a town house and from the town house to a split level. We joined a couple of clubs for rich white people. Ron bought a Buick and a Volvo station wagon. Since I left, he’s moved into an even bigger house and drives an Audi. He bought Wanda a Cadillac.

  I look on those last four years we were together as our lessons period. Why can’t upper-middle Americans learn how to do anything without paying someone to teach them? We bought Connie lessons in swimming, tennis, and coming out—whatever that was. Cassie took horseback riding and guitar, a combination I should have been suspicious of right from the start. Ron peer-pressured me into golf, cooking, and bridge, of all things. I s
hould have left Houston after the first session when an old toucheefeelee guy in a woolen bow tie explained how to count points. Mickey would laugh himself into the hospital if I ever told him I took bridge lessons.

  Between lessons and driving girls to or from lessons, I drank coffee, beer, or Bloody Marys, depending on the time of day, with Roxanne. The years never much mellowed cousin Roxy. She’d married a crooked state senator and dyed her hair twelve times. Cowboys still called my house and left obscure messages for her like Amarillo Sunday night or Next time I’ll use more rope. Whenever I passed the messages on to Rox, she would laugh that vamp laugh of hers and look pleased.

  • • •

  We met at the Space Center Mall right after New Year’s for lunch and drinks. Roxanne wore a leather vest with big silver buttons and nothing underneath, a calf-length rayon crepe skirt—royal blue—and cowgirl boots. When she swept through the door, a roomful of expense account bankers and brokerage consultant types choked on their carrot curls. Leading the hostess, Roxanne found us an octagon-shaped table next to three of the squirreliest-looking bankers in the place. The balding three-piece-suit must have been the manager and the other two suck-ups were junior loan officers. When Roxanne laughed the first time, old baldy drained his martini glass and turned the same red as a Coca-Cola can. She has that effect on a lot of businessmen. That’s why she still prefers cowboy butt.

  Rox waved across the dining room to the bartender and yoo-hooed. “Tanqueray on ice with a Pearl back, Biff honey.” She turned to me. “What you drinking, Lannie?”

  “Double gin gimlet.”

  She shouted this as I sat almost alongside the red-domed bank manager. He moved his chair as far from Roxanne and me as he could. Rox twirled as she sat so the audience and I could appreciate the total style.

  “You look like a San Antonio hooker,” I said.

  Rox threw back her hair, which was a blue-blond that week, and yodeled a laugh that would make a Roto-Rooter man squeamish. “Hail, honey, I’m what San Antonio hookers wish they could look like.”

  “How many threatened species died for those boots?”

  She lifted her left foot up to tabletop level. “You like ’em? Claibourne bought ’em for me. Tops are coral snake and he claims the toes here to be foreskins off southern sea otters.” She flew into another gale of laughter. “You think they’d git bigger if I squeezed ’em hard?”

  “I always knew you’d end up sucking pointy-toed boots.”

  The next table was reflected in Roxanne’s vest buttons. Those bankers looked entertained as all hell. One of the junior loan officers pulled his chair around for a better view.

  Roxanne rubbed one pale blue fingernail along the ankle stitching. “Claibourne bought ’em ’cause I caught him coming out a whorehouse down on Ladybird Avenue.”

  “What were you doing on Ladybird?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” she winked. I had no idea what that meant.

  With the arrival of alcohol, we cut the spiffy patter and got down to business. I ordered crab crepes, Roxanne had a chicken fried steak, hold the gravy. We both drank what we could. Roxanne topped her lunch off with a sticky, dark dessert called a Stairway to Heaven.

  She studied the chocolate gob from several angles, debating between an attack by spoon or fork. Then, all set for the first bite, Roxanne seemed to lose concentration. “We bought a sterling silver saddle yesterday,” she said. “Sucker must weigh in at two-fifty.”

  I blew cigarette smoke on her uneaten bite of Stairway to Heaven. “What does a person do with a sterling silver saddle?”

  “I’m gonna ride on it in the rodeo parade, if I can find a stud it won’t bow back. We’ll be the hit of the show.”

  “Sometimes you two work at being eccentric,” I said.

  “Do not.”

  “Hasn’t anyone ever told you faking weird is just as pretentious as faking rich?” I think I got her with that one.

  “Who you calling pretentious, Miss Racquetball-court-in-the-basement, Miss Swimming-pool-with-Muzak-you-can-hear-underwater? How many Princess phones do those girls of yours need? They only got two ears and one mouth apiece.”

  “The swimming pool’s not ours, it’s Daddy’s. And the girls only have one phone each.”

  “How about them buttons they push to stick their hairless-balled boyfriends on hold?”

  Our bankers about fell off their billfolds from leaning my way, and I was near sick of it. “Roxanne, you’re not being fair. There’s no buttons and there’s no boyfriends. Cassie and Connie are too young for boyfriends.”

  She snorted and finally crammed some chocolate goo into her mouth. Roxanne talked as she chewed. “My golden taco was split at their age. Yours would have been too if you weren’t so scared of your daddy.”

  She washed the chocolate down with a shot of Tanqueray. “Eccentric my ass, eccentric’s a damn sight better than what you got with the dentist. He pull any fun teeth lately?”

  Many conversations with Roxanne wound up with me defending Ron. Come to think of it, many conversations with Ron wound up with me defending Roxanne. None of my loved ones ever could stand each other.

  “Ron’s not so boring,” I said. “He just works hard.”

  “Radio bingo without a card is more fun than a night out with your husband. He could put the Coast Guard to sleep.”

  “I happen to like him.”

  “You like stopping at red lights. Tell me, did he discover your right tit yet?”

  I’d made the mistake at a luncheon somewhat similar to this one of confessing to Roxanne that Ron had reverted back to the old high-school pattern of necking—all interest in the left breast and none in the right.

  Roxanne thought that was a riot. She wanted to buy him a girlie magazine with all the right boobs cut out.

  In the reflection of one of the buttons on Roxanne’s vest, I noticed our neighboring-table eavesdroppers frozen over their T-bones, awaiting my answer. Something had to be done.

  I said, “He hasn’t touched me since the mastectomy.” Counting one, two, I whirled—caught all three copping tit stares. “What the hell are you looking at?” I shouted.

  An intense interest suddenly developed in home fries and cole slaw. Baldy raised his lap napkin to his lips and hid.

  I put my head on the table and sobbed. Roxanne, bless her heart, jumped right in and ran with it. Standing, she advanced on Baldy.

  “The first time my cousin has the courage to go in public since the operation and you insensitive jackbutts ogle her mangled breasts.” “Mangled breasts” came out as a near scream. “You should be ashamed.”

  I faked a stifled cry.

  One of them stammered. I couldn’t see which one but I imagined it to be Baldy, as he looked like team leader. “We’re sorry, ma’am. We didn’t mean anything.”

  “Sorry don’t pick cotton, buster.”

  Pick cotton? All buzz of conversation died around us. I could hear dishes rattling in the kitchen and a slight wheeze from the table in front of Roxanne.

  “What are you waterheads going to do about it?” she demanded.

  In the silence, I figured the lechers had been punished enough and it was about time to bounce up, singing, “Fooled you, assholes,” but Roxanne held my head down with three of her fingers. Evidently, she had something else in mind.

  “Would it be helpful if we paid for your lunch?”

  Rox appealed to her audience. “Isn’t this just like a Texas stud? Destroys an innocent woman and thinks he can make it all hunky-dory by throwing money at her.”

  The silence was ugly. Finally the first voice said, “What can we do?”

  Roxanne tapped my head. “Trot off to the ladies’ room, honey, and gather your shattered pride while I have a talk with these dildos.”

  I ran from the room. It’s a good thing fighting laughter looks th
e same as fighting tears.

  When I returned ten minutes later, the bankers were long gone. Roxanne sat in front of two fresh drinks and three hundred dollars in twenties.

  “Now we know the price of insulting a woman in Houston,” she said. “Plus I made them promise to send their wives a dozen roses before supper. They better do it too.”

  I picked up a stack of twenties. “Didn’t know I was worth that much.”

  “Hell, honey, you’re worth way too much to live with a dentist.”

  “Somebody else said those exact same words to me this week.”

  Roxanne demanded to know who and even offered her half of the three hundred, but, although she pestered me through two more drinks, I kept my mouth shut.

  • • •

  The who was my old flame, Mickey Thunder. Ever since Patsy Cline died and I lost my virginity, picture postcards had taken to appearing in our mailbox. Once in six months or so, a card arrived from some exotic nightspot like Kamloops, Alberta, or Tin Cup, Mississippi. The pictures were mostly large mockups of local crops with a banner cutline running diagonally across the card declaring whatever town this was as the capital of something—RUSH SPRINGS, OKLAHOMA, WATERMELON CAPITAL OF THE WORLD. PARSONS, KANSAS, BUCKLE OF THE BIBLE BELT. On the backs of these cards, pithy little country-western sayings had been scrawled in Mickey’s drunken handwriting: Never take a rattlesnake by its tail or a woman by her word. Or: When high on LSD, one should not look in a mirror. Or: Fucking with a rubber is like taking a shower in a raincoat.

  Less often, maybe once in two years, the phone rang in the middle of the night, always on the hour at one, two, or three, whatever closing time happened to be in whatever state the band was playing that night. The calls began with ridiculous, raving nonsense and ended in a fairly serious come-on.

  “Run away from the dentist and meet me at the Holiday Inn in Fairbanks.”

  “Is this a marriage proposal?”

  “Fuck no, Lannie, I wanta see if you can still suck a golf ball through a garden hose.”

  Ron didn’t mind the calls. Mickey was so far beyond belief to him he never dreamed I might hop a flight to Fairbanks and show Mickey what I could still do. Ron took Mickey as wacko comic relief from my distant past that embarrassed me no end. He would tease me at breakfast the next day.