by Bryan Mealer
“Bryan was just a nice guy,” my mother would tell me.
They took a house in Midland so my father could be closer to work, then settled in as young parents. At twenty-two years old, neither parenting nor homemaking came easy for my mother. The day she brought me home from the hospital, she leaned over the crib and quietly apologized. Trying to cook dinner for Dad, she dropped a flaming skillet on the floor and burned a hole in the linoleum. Then one day a neighbor stopped by to say she’d seen the cloth diapers in the alley dumpster that Mom was throwing away instead of washing.
“Honey,” she said, “you can’t keep doing that.”
Although I had been dedicated at Bethel Assembly of God in Odessa (as opposed to being baptized, which happens later in the Pentecostal church), Mom and Dad didn’t belong to a church yet in Midland, and besides one other couple, they hadn’t made many friends. Then one day Dad came home from work and said that Grady had just called.
“He’s living here in Midland and has a big job,” Dad said. “And get this—he’s getting married.”
“To who?” Mom asked, and Dad couldn’t believe it himself.
“To Ann Tollett. Her daddy was president of Cosden.”
7
Grady aims high … enters the Tollett family
After high school, and up until the mid-seventies, Grady lived along the margins and left little trace. From what I could find he had very few friends, and during this time even Dad lost touch. I do know that his mother, Louise, held him back in school, so that he graduated in May 1972, a year behind his class. He enrolled at Howard Community College the following autumn. On the cusp of adulthood, he still grappled with his desires.
He cruised the stone restrooms in the city park, where the smell of liquor and sweat filled the dark. He attended secret parties thrown in various men’s homes. One man who had occasional relations with Grady described nights when he’d close his business and find Grady at the back door waiting. But he had no steady lovers, as far as anyone can remember.
Grady’s desires weren’t limited to sex. He wanted to live brashly, to experience extremes. It was during this period that he bought a plane ticket to London, passed through Dallas and New York, but was turned back at Heathrow Airport when he couldn’t produce a passport.
Most of all, Grady wanted to be rich and he wanted it now, and the fastest course of action was through marriage.
According to Grady’s cousin Selena, he first attempted to marry into money in 1969, when he began dating the daughter of a wealthy Odessa banker. Despite his sexual orientation, he managed to woo the girl to the point where he needed to close the deal, which he did one afternoon by stealing his father’s checkbook. He bought a Cadillac de Ville at the lot in Big Spring, and before Luther’s check could bounce and the dealership called the cops, Grady and his date were rolling into Fort Worth to pick out an engagement ring. By the time he returned home, the police were waiting in his driveway. Louise had also called a lawyer. To keep Grady from being arrested, she convinced the law that her son was unstable and required urgent care. She then drove him to the state hospital and had him admitted.
“Play crazy,” she told him, and he did, though it’s unclear how long he stayed or whatever happened to the girl and her ring. The state hospital no longer keeps records from that time.
By the summer of 1973, Grady had taken a break from college and was working full-time. A few years earlier, Ike Robb had refashioned the Ritz Theater to appeal to a more modern audience, and in the process, he’d done away with full-service ushers. For a while, Grady sold women’s shoes at the Highland Shopping Center, then found a job at the Singer Sewing Shop as a clerk and courier.
One day the store received an order for a new sewing machine and sent Grady to make the delivery. He parked the car outside an imposing modernist home on Hillside Drive and lugged the machine up the long sidewalk. The name on the mailbox read, in bold white letters, R. L. TOLLETT.
Grady knew exactly who Tollett was, of course. He was the man whose long reach managed to touch everyone Grady knew, no matter where they worked or lived. Even before Ike Robb, Grady had admired Tollett, not for his money and influence, but for the way people loved him.
Grady had met Tollett once, back in high school. He walked into a downtown café and saw him seated at the counter, eating a bowl of chili. Gathering his nerve, he approached and asked if he could sit and talk.
“Go right ahead,” the hunched figure said, barely turning from his food. “What’s your name? What’s on your mind?”
And although Grady’s head was full of questions, he mumbled his name, then spent the rest of the time watching the man eat his lunch. Tollett died not long after that and Grady joined the rest of Big Spring in grieving.
* * *
It was Iris who answered the door when Grady rang the bell. She pointed him around back, saying, “Annie will let you into the basement.”
A group of girls were sunbathing around a swimming pool when he opened the back gate. He recognized Ann instantly. They’d gone to junior high together, and in fact, Grady and my dad used to shoot paper wads into Ann’s hair in Ms. Wally’s class. She was prettier now, with short blond hair, and her two-piece bikini revealed a buxom figure.
“The sewing machine goes down here,” she said, and motioned him toward the door.
Once in the basement, Ann instructed him to pull out the old Singer from its wooden cabinet and replace it with the new one, then she said, “I’ve gotta get back to my friends. Let me know when you’re finished.” She didn’t even recognize him, he thought.
He wondered if Ann was dating anyone, but that was something he could find out. Even with Raymond Tollett gone and buried, everything that family did was news. After installing the new machine, he walked back upstairs and said good-bye, then showed himself out, making sure to register everything along the way.
* * *
For Ann, the memories of her father were rare—the good ones, anyway.
Like her brothers, she’d suppressed the most painful moments of her parents’ alcoholic decline: her mother screaming under the wheel of the family car; the fights with her father, and her father transforming, becoming unrecognizable, in the months before he died.
The good memories stayed alive and vivid. Like the times she rustled out of sleep and felt someone in the room, then saw her father sitting in a chair in the dark, watching over her. Or the many nights when they sat together in his study reading books, him dressed in his smoking jacket and slippers.
In August 1961, Raymond had packed the family into the station wagon and driven all the way to Seattle. They could have easily flown first class, but her father insisted on taking a family road trip. The whole way up, Raymond and the children sang camp songs at the top of their lungs, driving Iris crazy. In Seattle they boarded a cruise ship to Alaska, then boarded a prop plane for Point Barrow, located on the North Slope along the steel-colored coast. Ann remembered there being little water or electricity and having to sleep in huts, and how one day, an Eskimo kid pelted her with rocks and ruined her new parka. It was the only vacation the whole family ever took together.
After Ann flunked seventh-grade math, her father pulled her out of junior high in Big Spring and sent her away to boarding school. The San Marcos Baptist Academy was three hundred miles south, near Austin, and just over an hour’s drive from where, in three years’ time, her father would die trying to get sober.
The girls’ dorm where she lived was ancient, plagued by scorpions and rats, and had no air-conditioning. Her classmates were from places like New York and Michigan and did poorly in the Texas heat. Together they swore and learned to smoke, and on weekends they walked into town for Frito pies and movies. On Sunday mornings, Ann awoke early and walked to the Episcopal church, telling her roommates, “They’re not making a Baptist out of me.”
Once a month, her father appeared in the Heron or the Dove and sent a driver from the airport. They’d stop in Roswell, New Mexico,
to pick up her brothers at military school, then fly home for the weekend, visits the Herald would record in Monday’s paper.
The three kids would take trips with her father and his secretary, Helen Green, and Helen’s two daughters. They went to the World’s Fairs in New York and Seattle. Once, in Manhattan, Jason Blake got lost in the subway and they spent the whole day looking for him. But mostly Ann stayed in San Marcos, and when summer came around everyone went their separate ways, her brothers to Colorado, then abroad, and Ann to sleepaway camp in New Mexico. And this was how the family’s years rolled past—separate and apart, and for Ann, marked by loneliness.
On one of her last visits home before her father died, he picked her up in the car (no more company plane), and the sight of him actually frightened her. When they got home she asked her mother, “How come Daddy’s so big?”
“Oh, he’s just eating good,” Iris answered.
It wasn’t until she returned to school and spoke with her roommate that she realized her mother had lied, that her father was septic from alcohol.
It was Iris who called her late at night, several months later, to tell her that he was dead. She can’t even remember if she cried, everything just went numb. Her brother picked her up the next morning, and for six hours they didn’t say a word until they reached Big Spring. She remembered going to the funeral home and seeing him lying in the casket, and how his salt-and-pepper hair, which she’d watched him comb a thousand times in the mirror, now appeared bone white. She remembers the flowers and the mile of cars waiting to park outside the church.
Her mother sent her away again that following summer, just months after the funeral, when all she wanted to do was stay home.
“Being home will only bring back memories,” Iris told her, and with both Ray and Jason Blake away at college, she arranged for Ann to join a group of Dallas prep school girls on a long tour of Europe. Ann didn’t know any of them.
She graduated high school in May 1971 and cried the entire day, missing her father terribly. That fall, she enrolled at Tyler Junior College, majoring in art and physical education, but soon grew discouraged. During her second year, she called Iris and said she was tired, ready to come home.
“Pack your bags and I’ll come and get you,” Iris said.
If anything positive came from her father’s death, it was that her mother had eased up on her own drinking. Iris wasn’t hammered anymore at two in the afternoon, stewing over mistresses. Raymond’s dying helped to release her, unspooled her anger, and little by little, she stepped out into the world again.
She became a serious bridge player, and with Ann no longer in college, they embarked on tournament cruises that took them around the globe. They traveled to West Africa, Spain, Portugal, and India, and went exploring at each port of call. They visited the Soviet Union, where in Leningrad they watched the Kirov Ballet perform Swan Lake at the century-old Kirov Theatre, then capped the evening drinking iced vodka with their Russian guides.
Ann had no interest in bridge, but she embraced another aspect of ship life: men. There was the Swede who rowed her into port in a dinghy and couldn’t keep his hands off her; the dark-haired Englishman from the ship’s theater who snuck her into his cabin late at night. A hot romance with a Norwegian ship captain ended with a marriage proposal, which she rebuffed. A singer from Atlanta, a much older man, bought her a ring in the ship’s boutique and proposed on deck.
“Come home with me,” he said. “I have money, I can take care of you.”
I’ve got a little money myself, she thought, and gently turned him down.
For someone who struggled with her weight, the attention did wonders for her confidence and helped ease her out of her shell. Iris not only approved of her daughter’s exploits, she even put her on birth control.
Yet back at home, Ann had trouble finding love. The years away at boarding school had estranged her from the kids her age, and aside from a couple of girlfriends from childhood, her only companion was her mother, who until recently had stayed mostly drunk.
Now that Iris was getting older, she became keen on finding her daughter a mate. Yet she worried about Ann, the way she’d worried about her since she was a girl. Part of it was her appearance. She’d fussed over Ann’s weight for years, at one point taking her to endocrinologists in Atlanta to determine why she kept gaining. But doctors could never figure out the problem (years later they discovered a faulty thyroid).
“I want you to find someone,” Iris told her daughter. “I don’t want you to be alone.”
“I’m looking, Mama,” Ann replied. “But how will I ever find him?”
* * *
In January 1974, Iris got a call from a friend who worked at the Herald. It was Jo Bright, the society columnist and women’s editor, who wanted to know if Annie was dating anyone. When Iris told her no, Bright said that she had someone in mind, a young man who had recently started working at the paper. In fact, his birthday was coming up, which was the perfect excuse to have dinner down at the country club and introduce them.
“I’ll tell him to swing by at seven and pick her up,” she said.
Ann recognized the name when Iris told her, but she couldn’t quite place him. It wasn’t until Grady appeared at the door that it finally hit her. She couldn’t explain what made her do this, but she walked over and immediately wrapped him in a hug. Both Grady and Iris were taken aback.
“Do you know each other?” Iris asked.
“Mama, I went to junior high with Grady, and he’s the one who delivered the sewing machine. I knew you looked familiar!”
Iris asked Grady what he did at the Herald, and Grady said that he worked in circulation, assembling the sections of each day’s edition to send to the carriers. It was a better-paying job than the Singer shop, and he hoped for a promotion soon.
They drove to the country club in Grady’s car, an old green Bonneville, the color of which reminded Ann of vomit. She also noticed how Grady’s clothes didn’t quite match. He’d paired a brown checkered shirt with blue pin-striped pants. But he was nice, gentlemanly, and she felt at ease in his company.
Jo Bright had a table reserved when they arrived. She’d brought along another writer named Gene and after a round of cocktails and a quick toast to Grady’s birthday, they settled into dinner.
Jo and Gene hadn’t seen Ann for months and wanted to hear all about her and Iris’s latest cruise. Where in Europe? they asked. And where did you stay? So Ann told them everything, and still they asked more questions. At one point she realized Grady hadn’t said a word, but what could she do? Before she knew it, dessert was over and it was almost time to go.
On the drive home, Grady seemed to sulk. Finally he said, “You talked the whole time. Don’t you think that was rude?”
“I’m sorry,” Ann said.
Back at the house, he opened her car door and walked her to the porch, then stuck out his hand and said good-bye. Not even a peck on the cheek.
“Maybe next time you’ll keep your mouth shut,” Iris told her.
A week went by and he didn’t call. Mama’s right, she thought. Then one day, when she was ready to give up hope, it was Grady on the phone, asking for another date.
She discovered years later why it had taken him so long to call, and it had nothing to do with her talking too much at dinner. He’d been engaged to another girl in Odessa and that relationship had ended. She didn’t know who the woman was or which of them had broken the engagement. All she knew was that the second time Grady appeared at her door, he surprised her by wearing a suit. He then drove her to Midland and bought her a steak.
* * *
As the new boyfriend of Ann Tollett, Grady approached each date like a job interview. His manner became formal, and so did his dress. He now rotated between two leisure suits, one green and the other brown, each with oversized lapels and flared legs, and accented with a garish tie and pointed shoes.
And he insisted they eat in what he called “the finest restaurants�
� in Midland and Odessa, which included Steak and Ale, the Shrimp Boat, and Jay’s Barn Door. Dating the daughter of Raymond Tollett gave him a new role to play, one he felt he needed to practice even when Ann wasn’t around. At Kimo’s Palace in Big Spring, the Chinese restaurant where the Herald staff drank beer, Grady ordered rounds of pitchers for the table, then waved his hand at the waiter, saying, “Put it on my tab.”
But playing that role required real money, and often Grady found himself overextended and had to borrow from Ann. “Why can’t we just go for a burger?” she would ask, and Grady replied, “Because I want you to have the very best.”
Then there was Grady’s car. It was probably their third date when the old Bonneville sputtered and left them stranded on the interstate. Grady had to walk several miles to call a wrecker, leaving Ann exposed to whatever oil field trash happened past. The Patty Hearst story was still big news, and already Iris had forbidden them from parking out front, lest Ann be kidnapped for ransom. Anything they wanted to do with each other could be done in the poolroom, she said.
One night Ann didn’t come home until 3 a.m. and Iris was frantic. Turned out Grady’s car had broken down again on the way back from Odessa, and they’d waited hours for a tow.
Grady perplexed Iris, and his behavior left her with many questions. In addition to hating his car and his clothes (“Why does he wear those ridiculous suits?” she asked Ann), she grew disturbed by the rumors that Grady was gay. But Iris never discussed the subject with Ann, who led her mother to believe that she and Grady were intimate (and they were). And besides, for the first time, Ann seemed so happy.
“Who else is going to be there to love her?” Iris would say.
After nearly two years of dating, Grady dropped to his knee one night in the living room and proposed. Although he didn’t have a ring, Ann said yes, then started planning their wedding.
They married on a Tuesday morning in March 1976 at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Big Spring. Ann wore “a princess-style gown of silk organza and Alencon lace,” the Herald reported, and carried a French bouquet with blue streamers. Standing at the same altar where her father had come to rest, her smile radiated through the chapel.
