“No, I just have a headache,” I said. “I have migraines—fairly intense ones. If it gets much worse we may have to stop for a while until I get over it. We’ve still got a way to go before we get home and I’m not sure I can make it.”
T.R. looked fretful.
“It must be like PMS,” she said. “Dew gets real bad PMS. Sometimes when she’s trying to work with PMS she can’t tell a hot dog from a cheeseburger, she’s that out of it.”
“I can’t tell nothin’ from nothin’,” Dew agreed. “I feel like a stupid old tick, so full of blood I just need to be squashed.”
“We’ll all need to be squashed if we have to sit around in a car with these kids, waiting for Daddy to get over a headache,” T.R. said.
I was wiggling a finger at Jesse—it was the most flirtatious behavior I was capable of in my throbbing state. To my surprise she studied my finger for a moment, then grabbed it and yanked it up and down, smiling.
“Oh, you wouldn’t have to wait in the car,” I said. “I’d just get us all motel rooms. You and the kids could go swimming or do whatever you want to do. If I could just take a hot bath and a little nap I imagine I’d feel well enough to travel pretty soon.”
My suggestion seemed to stun everyone in the car, except Granny Lin, who remained unaffected not merely by my suggestion but by life itself. Granny Lin seemed to be focused far ahead, or perhaps far behind. Her eyes reminded me of the eyes of old dogs—she was looking beyond this place, to the other place. Car, motel, shabby apartment were of little moment to Granny Lin.
T.R., without slackening our speed, was looking at the folks in the backseat, checking out their responses. She was grinning from ear to ear.
“Do you mean that?” she said. “You mean we could all have motel rooms?”
“Sure,” I said. “Just stop at the next big one you see. We’ll all get rooms and take it easy for a few hours.”
“I keep forgetting I got a rich daddy now,” she said. “I ain’t stopping at the next one I see, but I’ll stop at the best one I see. Everybody watch—we’re all gonna vote except Muddy.”
“Why not me? You never want me to have no opinion,” Muddy said, deeply aggrieved.
“People that steal their own wife’s bed don’t get to vote, why would they?” T.R. said cheerfully. “You can stay in the room with me though, once we choose. Does that make you horny or not?”
“Aw,” Muddy said, evidently too embarrassed by her remark to comment further.
“Okay, choose a good one, but don’t wait too long,” I said. “I’m feeling a little carsick, and I make a bigger mess than Jesse made.”
“Grandpa don’t feel good, don’t wiggle his finger so hard, honey,” T.R. said to Jesse. “Why don’t you just give him a big kiss? It might make him feel better.”
Jesse obligingly crawled up and gave me a big kiss; then she flopped back against my chest and was asleep within seconds. The kiss warmed my heart but had no effect on the headache; power surge after power surge coursed through my temples. I became increasingly nauseous and had horrible visions of having to open the car door and throw up, in which case Jesse might fall out, or we both might fall out. I decided I’d better buckle my seat belt around Jesse, too, but the seat belt wasn’t long enough to reach around both of us. I turned it loose for a moment and it was instantly sucked back down the seat-belt holder and wouldn’t come out. Once again, in trying to do the right thing, I had only made matters worse. The realization, coming hand in hand with a fierce power surge from my headache, made me feel doomed, or, at least, cursed.
“I hope we find a suitable motel pretty soon,” I said. “This headache’s not getting any easier to live with.”
“It’s gotta be a big one, though,” T.R. said. “There’s a bunch of us.”
The big one, when it finally appeared, was in Arlington, city of cul-de-sacs. I had resolutely kept my eyes closed for fifty miles or so; with my eyes closed I felt slightly less nauseous. When I opened them we were sitting in front of a neo-Gothic monstrosity, complete with turrets, spires, and a moat, called Ye Olde Camelot Inn. Giant suits of armor—Brobdingnagian was the word for those suits of armor—bracketed the entrance.
“It looks big enough, at least,” I said.
T.R. had pulled across the moat and was right in front of the entrance, but she made no move to get out and register us.
“I love ye olde stuff,” she said. “There used to be this miniature golf course in Lufkin that was ye olde. On the last hole you had to hit your ball into the mouth of a fire-breathing dragon. Earl Dee took me there on our first date. I guess that’s what led to my downfall.”
“Them suits of armor look kinda spooky,” Dew said. “A rapist could hide in something like that.”
T.R. surveyed the suits of armor calmly. “I bet they’re empty,” she said. “We could drop Bo down in one and let him scream his little lungs out sometime when we don’t feel like listening.”
“It looks like a fine place to finish off my migraine in,” I said. “Why don’t you go in and get us seven or eight rooms?”
T.R. looked subdued—the turrets and spires of Ye Olde Camelot Inn had caused some of the confidence to drain out of her. Drained, she looked like a nervous teen-ager instead of the brash young woman who had just engineered a jailbreak.
“I never stayed in a fancy motel before,” she said. “I’d be scared to walk in by myself. Besides, I ain’t got a cent.”
No one else in the car seemed any more confident than T.R. They were all looking down at the floor, socially paralyzed by the magnificence of the motel.
I dug some money out of my pocket and handed it to T.R. I suppose it was two or three thousand dollars, in hundred-dollar bills.
“Offer them cash,” I said. “They’ll give you all the rooms you need.”
Muddy whistled. “Look at that money,” he said.
“Yeah, well, don’t look at it too hard, Muddy, it ain’t yours,” T.R. said, snatching the bills as if she expected him to grab them and flee, though he was firmly wedged in the center of the backseat.
“I wish you’d go in with me,” T.R. said plaintively. “They’re just gonna think I stole this money if I come walking in with it. Where would a person like me get a bunch of hundred-dollar bills is what they’re gonna think.”
“I don’t know if I can walk that far without getting sick,” I said truthfully. “Besides, if I move, Jesse might wake up.”
T.R. reached across and transferred Jesse from my lap to Granny Lin’s. Jesse, wheezing slightly, slept on, undisturbed.
“Both my kids can sleep through car wrecks, if they have to,” T.R. said. “You don’t look as sick as you did. Come on in with me.”
Gingerly I opened the door and stood up. My vision was swimming and my legs felt shaky, but T.R. took my arm and we managed to walk the hundred yards or so across King Arthur’s Lobby, as it was called, to ye olde reception desk, where a clerk dressed like a Knight of the Garter accepted my credit card and booked us most of a wing of the motel—three connecting executive suites. The clerk recognized my name from the American Express card: I had once made one of their I-never-leave-home-without-it commercials. Karl Malden made the first one, I made the second.
“Goodness, we’re pleased to have you, Mr. Deck,” the clerk said. “We’ll just put you in the King Arthur suite and your friends will be right next door in Lancelot and Guinevere.”
“Fine,” I said. “This is my daughter. Please see that she and her friends get anything they want in the way of refreshments.”
“Yes, sir, we’ll send up a hospitality tray right now,” the clerk said. “Do you think they’d like a pitcher or two of margaritas?”
“Dew would,” T.R. said. “Dew drinks ’em like water.”
“We’ll just make that three pitchers, then,” the helpful clerk said. Without his ridiculous Knight-of-the-Garter garb he would probably have been a nice-looking young yuppie. From the sparkle in his bright blue eyes I judged that few
of T.R.’s charms were lost on him.
“I think that clerk just fell in love with you,” I said as we were sorting out the giant ye olde keys we had been given.
“Naw, that was just the hots,” she said with an aloof look. “I don’t like them ass-kissin’ types. I’ll bite his head off if he don’t behave.”
We went up to check out the suites, which were vast and ugly—large enough not only for the crowd in the car but for the car too, if it could have been fitted into an elevator. Each room had a Jacuzzi—T.R. immediately kicked off a sandal and stuck her foot in the one in hers. She looked excited but also a little apprehensive.
“I still got all that money you gave me,” she said. “What do you want me to do with it?”
“Well, keep it,” I said. “I may be zonked out for a few hours. Six Flags and several other amusement parks are right across the road. You could take the kids, if you want to—or go shopping. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to buy Muddy some clothes—as it is, he looks like he just broke out of jail.”
“I probably should have left him, he’ll want to steal everything he sees here,” she said. “He’ll wanta haul off the TV sets and most of the furniture. He always did like to steal antiques.”
“Buy him some clothes,” I said. “Maybe that’ll satisfy him.”
“Are you gonna leave the door to your room open?” she asked, looking more and more nervous.
“Sure, if you’d like me to,” I said. “What’s the matter?”
“I never been in a big old motel like this,” she said in a shaky voice. “I might get scared.”
“You’ve been living in one of the rougher parts of Houston and you weren’t scared,” I pointed out. “Nobody’s gonna bother you here.”
“I ain’t scared on the street,” she said. “I can handle the streets. But I don’t know if I can handle this.”
I felt a little faint, but T.R. was looking at me insistently. Actually, the rooms were depressing, particularly with all the curtains closed. I opened the curtains and let the strong sunlight in. Our suites were on the top floor; below us, across a freeway, was a giant water amusement park, with thousands of tiny swimmers in it. There were giant slides that seemed to plummet sliders straight down from alpine heights, and huge winding tubular tunnels through which kids shot in inner tubes. There was a pool that even seemed to have waves. Man-made whitetops curled toward the buglike swimmers.
“Look at that!” T.R. said. “They got one of them outside Houston. Me and Muddy were always gonna take the kids, but we couldn’t afford it.”
“Take them now,” I said. “You can afford it.”
“You can, you mean,” she said. “I don’t have a cent to my name and Muddy don’t neither.”
She was holding the bills I had given her, looking at them hostilely, it seemed. Then she looked at me, also hostilely.
“This is so much money it ain’t real,” she said. “It’s like it’s play money to you.”
“It’s just money,” I said. “Go spend a little of it—you’ll find out that it’s real, soon enough.”
T.R. suddenly flung the bills onto the floor.
“Men have offered me hundred-dollar bills before, only not for nothing,” she said. “Men come up to the Mr. Burger every day and offer me money. They all say they don’t want nothing, they just want to help me, but I took it once or twice, and that ain’t true. They always want something, and they don’t wait very long to let you know what it is.
“So what are you gonna want, Mr. Deck?” she asked, her eyes furious.
“I want to take a very hot bath,” I said. “Then I want to take a nap and get over my headache.”
“I mean, what do you want for this money?” she said. “I don’t care if you have a stupid headache.”
“For the money, nothing,” I said. “Don’t take it if you don’t trust me—just bring the gang in and watch television or something. But I am different from those other men who offered you money, you know.”
“I doubt you are—all men say they’re different, I’ve heard that a million times,” she said, her eyes still blazing.
“Oh, I’m sure you have,” I said. “And you’ll hear it a million times more. But I’m still different.”
She stared at me angrily and I tried to meet her eye, but the headache was pounding harder and the room had begun to wobble. I felt as if I might faint; at the very least I was soon going to be sick at my stomach.
“Maybe it’s too late to matter,” I said, “but I’m your father. I don’t want to buy you, I just want to know you. Take the money or leave it, I don’t care. Right now I have to be sick.”
I made my way shakily into my suite and began to undress. I wanted to sink into the Jacuzzi; I also wanted to pile a towel full of ice on my throbbing head. Fortunately the room had a little refrigerator—it wasn’t even ye olde—and I was able to get the ice tray out, but my hands were shaking so badly that I knocked all the ice cubes off on the floor.
To my surprise, T.R. picked them up.
“You’re shaking like a leaf,” she said, the fury gone from her voice. “You look worse than Dew looks when she gets her PMS.”
“I just wanted some ice for my head,” I said. “What I really need to do is get in the water. I’ve had a million of these migraines. It’ll pass.”
T.R. made a nice poultice of ice cubes. I held it against my temple and stood where I was, weaving slightly.
“I thought you was gonna get in the water,” T.R. reminded me.
“I am, but I can’t undress with you in the room,” I said. “Which is not to say I want you to leave.”
“I’d want me to leave if I felt the way you look,” T.R. said. “I’m going right now.”
I could think of nothing but sinking into the hot water of the Jacuzzi. T.R. left and I undressed and did just that, holding the poultice of ice to my head.
“Daddy, it’s okay, I didn’t peek,” she said from the doorway to the next suite. “I just want you to know I think I’m gonna take that money. I think I’ll take the kids and the girls on a little spree.”
“Do that,” I said. “A little spree might be just what you all need.”
Again I thought she was gone; again, I was wrong.
“Daddy?” she asked.
“What?” I asked—I was scarcely conscious.
“I don’t want you to lock your door, though,” she said. “I might need to get back in.”
“I won’t, honey,” I said.
12
We stayed in the Ye Olde Camelot Inn for three days. T.R., Muddy, the girls, and the kids had spree after spree, hordes of sprees, while I entertained my migraine in the King Arthur suite.
I knew even before I left Houston that this migraine was going to prove to have a lot of kick, and I was not wrong. Like an obnoxious relative, the migraine moved in for a lengthy stay. I had not invited it, but, on the other hand, neither had I taken the trouble to negotiate the terms of the visit—I had been too busy with T.R., the kids, the move, the jailbreak, etc. For several hours, when I should have been taking firm steps to limit the visit, I did nothing, and the migraine settled in.
Once there, it refused to leave: I took baths, I took pills, I slept under an igloo of poultices, and these methods, in combination, gained me a measure of control over the headaches—but only a measure. I subdued the migraine, but I couldn’t evict it. As long as I kept still, it behaved, retreating to the far corner of my consciousness—but the minute I got up, put on my clothes, and acted as if I meant to resume a normal life, it insinuated itself back into my presence, if only as a low, intermittent throb.
After two or three unsuccessful attempts to resume my life, I gave up, went back to bed, and waited as patiently as possible for the migraine to get bored and leave. I could tell that it enjoyed interrupting what few patterns I had; it seemed to me that the only way to get rid of it was to make myself as vacant and patternless as possible. After a while, if I did that, the migraine might go look for s
omeone more interesting to torment.
Shockingly, for the whole three days I didn’t call my message machine even once. Jeanie, Nema, Marella, Viveca, not to mention Godwin, Gladys, my agent, were temporarily abandoned to their fates. I knew if I called and got the messages I’d start to feel things; I’d want to respond to the chatter of the machines. Perhaps new boyfriends had appeared; perhaps old boyfriends had been behaving even more terribly than they had been behaving when the headaches moved in with me. Perhaps exciting or depressing career developments had taken place. Undoubtedly something had taken place; my lady friends were nothing if not active. Their volatility had provided the counterweight to my passivity for years and years.
“You’re always the same,” Jeanie said often. “You’re always the same.”
Sometimes she sounded glad about that, but in this instance it clearly annoyed her.
“Yep, that’s why you call me,” I said, just as she hung up in disgust.
But this time I didn’t check the machine. When I felt well enough to be amused, I was mildly amused at the thought of the annoyance this might be causing in several interesting boudoirs. In less ebullient moments I could not but reflect that in all likelihood it was causing no annoyance at all; none of the women might have noticed that I’d beeped off the radar screen. They might all have fallen in love simultaneously, or decided to go to Venice or Hong Kong. Their message machines might be my anchor, but the reverse was far from true; those ladies were mostly unanchored, apt to take off for anywhere, at any time, with anybody.
Several times I was on the verge of calling my machine, but each time I drew back, given pause by a certain tight, low-barometer feeling in my head. I knew that getting re-involved in the distant swirl of life was exactly what the migraine wanted me to do. We were playing a kind of cat-and-mouse game, the migraine and I, and the headache was the cat. I had to be a very cautious, very devious mouse if I were to outwit it and make my way back into life again.
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