Being Mean

by Patricia Eagle

  Bill laughs. “Better start a list.” He is for real, and I’m absolutely delighted with this opportunity to discover a married name together.

  The list is begun, but we can’t find the right name by the day of our nuptials, on Easter morning alongside the Pedernales River just west of Austin at the Reimer’s Ranch. I’ve been camping and hiking here for years, always inspired by this magical spot in the Texas Hill country. Bill and I have picked out a flat grassy area sprinkled with wildflowers right next to the river. My sister Paula and her significant other, whom we call “Wild Bill,” have set up her painted tipi where I spend the night alone before the ceremony, and where Bill and I will spend our wedding night. In the days prior to our marriage, I have been camping here with a few friends and family, to clean and prepare the area for our celebration. Easter morning is gorgeous, offering an astonishingly blue Texas sky. The river rolls over boulders just off to the side of this lush green area where we’ll all circle up, with the tipi in the background, announcing ceremony simply by its majestic presence. Tables are set and covered with food, flowers, and bottles of wine waiting to be opened.

  Directly across a ravine from our spot, about twenty Harley guys and gals are sitting on a grassy knoll patiently waiting for the wedding to begin. After loudly blowing in late last night, I walked over this morning to tell them I was getting married today and asked if they could keep things low-key during the ceremony. “Absolutely. We look forward to it!” came a round of genuine and kind responses.

  Now sitting quietly, morning beers in hand, they are a most respectful audience.

  Evelyn, our friend and officiant, calls for everyone to circle up with cushions, blankets, and lawn chairs. Bill, in a light flowered cotton shirt and a lei draped around his neck, rounds up his children to sit beside him. I have been mingling with guests, dressed in a delicate, barely pink antique lace teddy and the lace-edged slip my mother made for me to wear beneath a skirt. To her horror, I chose to forgo the skirt when I realized it only covered up the pretty undergarment. You can’t see through the slip she made and, besides, it’s a perfect match for the teddy and the beautiful lace camisole underneath. White daisies decorate my long, blond hair and more daisies have also been braided into a bracelet. I settle beside Evelyn, who sits between Bill and me. As conversations cease, the river’s song floats over its bank, accompanied by a refreshing morning breeze. A crested caracara, often referred to as the Mexican eagle, calls out above us, and heads look up at the large bird circling our circle.

  The ceremony has begun.

  Bill, Evelyn, and I have choreographed and charted this wedding, thoughtfully choosing vows, readings, music, and meaningful rituals in the months and days prior to this morning. Everything flows together, laced with laughter, reflection, and April sunshine. By moonrise, officially married and finally alone, Bill and I wearily and contentedly crawl into the tipi to be held gently by yet another circle.

  But we still haven’t arrived at what feels like the right married name. Several weeks later, I open a letter from an old friend who comments what a wonderful last name Bill Eagle has. Eagle? Somehow in my cursive, this friend saw Eagle instead of Cagle. I share this with Bill, and a light beams on as he remembers how as a little boy he played with putting a tiny mark in the middle of the ‘C’ of Cagle and watching his name change. We stare intently at one another, both grasping the years this name has waited for Bill to remember it, and we know without a doubt how that one tiny mark changes a single letter creating exactly the right name for us. Those two familiar syllables carry an image we want to live into for the rest of our lives. This is a name we want.

  We actually have to go to court for a judge to approve of Bill’s name change, like we’re being shuffled to the principal’s office for some kind of suspicious behavior. Why, I wonder, is it still so easy and acceptable for a woman to change her name, but for a man to do so, it’s such a big deal?

  Background checks are conducted to see if he is running from the law and, with the course clear, the Kerrville judge peers above her glasses at Bill and sternly asks, “Mr. Cagle, why do you want to change your last name?”

  “My wife and I decided we wanted to choose a married name together.”

  “How will your parents feel?”

  Bill informs her they are not living.

  “What about your children?”

  Geez, this woman is relentless.

  Bill explains when they are of an age to decide, they can either stay Cagle, or choose to become Eagle as well. Or, obviously, they may choose to take the name of anyone their mother may marry.

  Maybe the judge checked our current home address, and has Bill confused with the former pastor who lived there before us who left a full marijuana grow operation in the attic.

  The judge ponders all this, a request so unusual she can’t make heads or tails of it. I wonder if she, too, has ever been married and divorced and chose to change her name back and forth. Or perhaps she had a name she liked, and then on marrying had to decide whether to take her husband’s name or keep her maiden name. What if, like me, her new husband had been previously married and had an ex that still had his last name? Oh, it’s unnecessarily complicated, this custom of taking the husband’s name and honoring the man’s lineage, never the woman’s, and for whom does this all matter anyway in the long run? What’s wrong with new beginnings? All a woman has to do is sign the marriage license with her new husband’s last name and, no questions asked, her name is changed!

  “All right, Mr. Eagle,” twangs our Texas judge, loudly stamping the papers. “Good luck to you and Mrs. Eagle.”

  We love it. The name wraps around us, lifting us right out of that courthouse into a new married life, our life. Several months later, sitting in a bank while applying for a loan, the bank officer looks puzzled flipping through our application papers, which carry a pile of my names—Johnson, then my first married name, and now Eagle—but no concern about that. But for Bill? Now that’s another thing.

  “Some of these documents say Bill Cagle and some say Bill Eagle. I don’t get it,” the banker comments while nimbly shuffling stacks of sheets.

  I turn to Bill and watch with fierce pride as he responds with a forthright ease in his soothing southern drawl, “Eagle’s my married name.”

  SHALLOW ROOTS

  1983-84 (ages 30-32)—Kerrville, Granite Shoals,

  and Spicewood, Texas

  “But I really like it here. And we’re buying this house!”

  Bill has been offered the position of printing plant manager in Marble Falls and he wants the job, despite the fact that we only moved here to Kerrville a little over six months ago—just before getting married. Kerrville, nestled in the Texas Hill Country, with the Guadalupe River running right through the middle of town, has ample places to hike and go tubing, and annually hosts a popular folk music festival. There’s so much to do here, including weekly excursions with a birding group I’ve been getting to know. And since I left my job in Austin for this move, I’ve been checking with the local school district for possible teaching positions. I thought we were settling down, that I had finally found my home. I love this old blue house with its big, open windows, and wood floors. We’ve been so happy here. My heart aches with this news.

  “I know, Darlin’,” Bill says. “But this is a good opportunity for me, and it will put us closer to Austin. It takes me more than eight hours to go pick up the boys then bring them home for their weekends with us.”

  Oh, I know this is difficult. Bill drives two hours a day to work and back, five to six days a week, sometimes spending the night in a cubbyhole at the press plant in Hondo. Of course, this is the practical thing to do. It’s just my heart won’t cooperate. I’ve felt so peaceful here and happier than I’ve been in a long time. I look around our home with the brick fireplace, the glass-fronted cabinets in the kitchen, the old-paned windows looking out on the backyard where we had a pack of kiddos camping this past summer.

  Two mo
nths after our wedding, I hosted a camp called the “Kerrville Krazies” for eight children, mostly as a way to get to know my two stepchildren, twelve-year-old Billy and six-year-old Shawn. I thought it might help them to see I expected the same behavior from them that I ask of other children—things like picking up their messes, eating healthy meals, and helping with chores. I figured the five years I’d spent teaching school and my love for children would support me in this venture. My good friends Peggy and Ron brought their six-year-old daughter, three of her cousins, and a five-year-old neighbor. I rounded out the group with the ten-year-old daughter of another friend. Whew. I planned out two weeks of activities just like I had at previous camps, where I had been both a counselor and director for years. The kids and I stayed mighty busy hiking, exploring, tubing, crafting, cooking, learning about nature, doing yoga, and going on camp-outs. Kerrville proved the perfect place for such a challenging adventure.

  “Stan and Bea have asked us to come to Marble Falls, so you can meet them and look around the town,” Bill says, trying to encourage me. “I told them you had been a camp counselor in the area and taught sailing on Lake Granite Shoals.”

  It doesn’t matter how nice Stan and Bea, employees of the new company, try to be. My heart drags. Marble Falls feels like nothing but a big old marble quarry, and on our visit, I don’t feel comfortable with any of these people Bill wants to work with. They chug beer and mixed drinks, eat junk food, don’t listen to their wives, and live in houses with sprinkler systems and sculpted bushes. Bill objected to the blousy drawstring pants I put on for this dinner, so I reluctantly donned something more conservative.

  There’s no getting around the need to live closer to Bill’s children, or Bill’s desire for a better job that doesn’t require a two-hour commute. We find a house in nearby Granite Shoals within walking distance to the big lake. I pack us, and we move again, lugging my heavy heart to another town.

  A sailboat isn’t in our budget, even a little one and, besides, I would need a place to store it, a trailer to haul it, or a place to dock it, so the lake does me no good. This neighborhood isn’t conducive to leisurely walks. The lake houses are packed together in a way that allows everyone to secure the full stretch of their private manicured lakefront property. Right now, we only have one car, my Ford Escort—the first new car I have ever purchased—and Bill is driving it daily. I am sequestered in this house I don’t like in a neighborhood without a solitary place to sit and gaze across the water.

  Bill works long, hard hours and comes home exhausted. We don’t talk much. When he has time off, we get the boys and I stay mum about meals of hotdogs, French toast piled with powdered sugar, and six-packs of sodas. Bill is so glad to see his children, and they him—though not so much me—that I learn to step back and stay quiet. I have no friends close by, and no dog since making the horrible decision to leave Bandi-Lune with a friend in Los Angeles. I’m lonesome. My sense of failure in this marriage, and as a stepmother, looms large.

  Looking out the kitchen window one day, I realize how our new backyard space—not really a yard since our house sits in the U between two roads—could hold a circular garden. A circle garden! Soon I’m excavating the ground and building circles within the larger circle, focusing my energies on growing food and getting to know the birds of this area. On the outer circle, I position poles long enough to lean in and meet in the center like a tipi, and coax morning glories, beans, and cucumbers to grow up these. Spring turns into summer, which turns into baskets of produce that feed Bill and me, though not the boys, who still refuse to eat anything from a garden, or that I cook for that matter. I find a rarely traveled road close by where I can ride my bike far enough to get tired. One day, I stop for a sip of water, and suddenly a hundred cedar waxwings take off from what looked like empty branches of a gigantic tree. I gasp and with that sound another flock takes off. How did they do that? My heart whirs from its numbed state. Nature has put on a magic show, and I’m in the front row.

  Step mothering has been challenging me. I ask my friends for advice, but no one has experience in this area. Neither does anyone know how to deal with an ex-wife, and the mother of one’s stepchildren. I’m floundering here. My ideas of fun—camp-outs, hikes, bike rides, swims in creeks and lakes—don’t seem to appeal to my step-boys. They prefer the city, pools, television, and movies. Bill takes his youngest, Shawn, to the Oilers football games in Houston, grand adventures special to them both. I wonder what I’ve gotten myself into as I weed my garden and plan the evening yoga classes I’ll soon be teaching in Marble Falls.

  Bill suggests we move closer to Austin, on the east side of Marble Falls, cutting off another hour of his drive when he goes to pick up the boys. This will be our fourth move in less than eighteen months since we’ve come together as a couple. Every single day I miss our Kerrville home and the ease we felt in our relationship there, but I don’t know what else to do except make another move. I had no idea what it would mean to marry someone with children, especially a man who feels so badly about leaving his kids, and who is determined to take care of them as best he can. That’s a good thing, I know. I don’t begrudge him that. It’s just so hard to seldom see my new husband, and for us to not have time together between his ten-hour workdays and the weekends with his children. And during my long, lonely days, his ex often calls, slurry from alcohol, complaining about the kids and how she needs more money. I am at a total loss how to navigate these calls, these requests, or this life with Bill and his children.

  Bill and I try to talk about all this, but our conversations often turn into arguments. He gets quieter, and I get louder. A familiar depression crushes me. Blinding, pounding headaches take up the empty space of my days. It’s like I’m lost in a cornfield maze and can’t find the exit.

  We find a lake cabin to rent close to the Pedernales River in Spicewood, east of Marble Falls, less than an hour from Austin, and make the move. This house is propped up on stilts, with a full deck on its long east side as well as floor-to-ceiling windows that provide a spacious view of treetops. I scrub down yet another home top to bottom, and we move in. Bill keeps up his fifty to sixty-hour workweeks, and I plot a return to school, desperate for something I can focus on that might make my life feel valuable and worthy.

  Taking a break from unpacking, I step out onto the home’s deck and lean against the railing, looking across the trees toward the river. Heaving sobs erupt, and, in the isolation of this new home, I wail. I hang onto a rail and sink to my knees, resting there until it’s just too damn hot, then go back in and unpack another box.

  DO YOU FEEL WHAT I FEEL?

  1984 (age 32)—Spicewood, Texas

  The lake cabin is sixty percent windows. We’re cleaning them all, looking out on scrubby Texas hill country as the surrounding scenery slowly comes more clearly into view. The Pedernales River is just beyond the treetops that are level with us in this raised structure. Cara is making me laugh as our arms brush one another’s while we sweep our towels across the glass.

  Out of a vast blue, turning her wide, open brown eyes on me, she asks, “Do you feel what I feel?”

  Without hesitation I answer, “I do.” Somehow, I know exactly what she is talking about.

  Cara puts down her squeegee and towel. I put down the Windex bottle. She waits with ease, then reaches gently toward me as I step into her embrace. Skipping words that might explain what we’re feeling, we both slip into a place that feels absolutely natural. As Cara’s lips meet mine, I feel my entire being begin to let go into such a blend of warmth and feelings so beautiful that I wonder why I have never been with a woman in this way before.

  Cara and I met in Fort Davis, Texas at a summer fitness and training camp I co-founded. I was there several days before the camp started to get things ready for the participants, and she was there as a friend of the family whose ranch we leased for the camp. She pummeled me with questions, her dark eyes curious and receptive. Laughter erupted frequently and with ease in our convers
ations. We played tennis, hiked, biked, ran, swam and, on our last night together, camped out. Although she had been a striking athlete in all our other activities, she proved to be a naïve camper.

  Despite the dazzle of a gazillion West Texas stars, Cara had greater concerns. “What about raccoons? Won’t they climb up on the picnic tables where you are spreading bedrolls? They can do some damage, you know, with their claws.” She must have heard about raccoon injuries while doing a stint in the ER as a medical resident.

  “Sleep in my car,” I offered, “but you’ll miss the Perseid meteor shower blasting through these skies.” She lasted about thirty minutes before settling into my locked car.

  In four short days, I came to know that Cara held a tennis racket with as much ease as a cello and, soon, assuredly, would hold a scalpel. I knew how a smile moved across her face and how her eyes laughed. We stayed in touch on leaving the camp. I returned home to my husband in Spicewood and my second semester of premed studies, and she to medical school in Houston. After numerous long phone conversations and lengthy letters, she finally came to visit. I was cleaning windows.

  Now with our lips and tongues exploring, the way our bodies mesh surprises me. Our breasts pump the strong beats of our hearts. Passion seeps through us with an awareness of something that is not quite defined. Words familiar to these feelings simply do not exist for either of us. The entire experience feels unexpected, and also like the most natural thing in the world.

  It is as though a house full of clean windows is allowing us to see clearly.