White Leather and Flawed Pearls

by Susan Altstatt

  He made it all sound so final.

  Competition left me a very dull kid in some ways. Isolated, too. Capable of being single-minded. I have the personality of a snapping turtle: grab on, and not let go till it thunders. The only coat I’d ever coveted, I was wearing. I had no apprehensions about getting it out of the cloth I was given. God wouldn’t almost give him to me, would he? An earthly treasure too far gone to wear? Just to prove I’d got my values on all backwards, a prize past mending?

  Prayer fails; it fibrillates: then it tumbles in upon itself, a black hole of the spirit contracting so fast under its own gravity, no sensible word escapes.

  My sister raised rabbits for a while, and my brother, age four, was forever grabbing and messing with the baby bunnies, in spite of threats and paddlings, until he managed to pull the tail off one.

  Here he came, holding the tiny lifeless tag of fur and bone in one hand and the ruined baby in the other, his face a mask of dirt and tears, crying, “Glue! Glue!” That was going to be me in a moment, weeping like a child at the insupportable ruin of things: broken things I didn’t know how to reassemble.

  Glue, glue. Cosmic glue.

  I had crawled—like the sinners up Dante’s mount of Purgatory, each heaving along a heavy boulder on his back—to the very summit ridge of the Sierras to the place John Muir called the Range of Light. Shows all he knew.

  I saw a sign for the old scenic route down to Donner Lake and Truckee, and took it. He really was beginning to sob. And so was I. Then it was “Vista Turn Off—¼ Mile.”

  “You can keep the rings—” he said, “—something decent to remember me by.”

  I slammed the van into the turnoff, into a parking slot against the vista rail, yanked his faery-canary diamond thing off my hand, and shoved it at him. It came off easy.

  “Don’t want your silly rings.”

  “Ah please, don’t make it worse and worse—”

  “Not without you, I don’t!”

  “I bought them for you—” He snuffled stubbornly.

  “You’ll find somebody else to give ’em to.”

  “No I won’t—” He started to work the gaudy cluster off his own ring finger. It stuck fast at the knuckle. His hands were bigger after all. “—I shan’t try this again—”

  “You must know hundreds who’d be likelier than I was.”

  “I wouldn’t say that: ones I do, I can think at least a hundred reasons each for my not marrying. Don’t know hundreds, anyway.”

  “You mean the magazines are wrong.”

  “What?”

  “Talking about your AIDS-risk people.”

  “What?”

  “Twelve hundred lifetime partners.”

  He looked absolutely aghast. He even stopped tugging at the ring. “What d’y’think? I haven’t spent my entire life on tour, y’know! See? You’ve begun on me already! I—I just don’t think this is going to work, that’s all. I’m afraid, plain terrified it isn’t going to work!”

  “I don’t give a shit if it works or not!”

  “I wouldn’t say that, either!”

  There was the view, rocky heights horizon to horizon, and Donner Lake dimpling and flashing in the trees below. Stout people in bright cotton clothes were using it for backdrop, taking snapshots of each other.

  A small breeze wandered whistling past the windows.

  “C’mon girl, what I’m trying to tell you: you can still get out. You don’t want to live with my problems?”

  I felt ready to explode.

  “What kind of shitty question you call that? Of course I don’t want to live with your problems!” He looked tearful and taken aback. “Do you?” I went on talking much too fast. “Listen, you know what all this reminds me of? A dumb story in a book back home, made a real dent in me when I was about fourteen: there’s a little coastal steamship going up the Irish Sea or someplace, and it’s coming a god-awful storm.

  “Well, this young sailor starts to freak, screaming, ‘Captain, Captain! We are going down!’

  “And the captain—you know what he says? He says, ‘Didn’t ye know that ships go down when ye first hired on?’

  “‘Yessir!’

  “‘Didn’t ye know some go down every year?’

  “‘Yessir!’

  “‘Weren’t ye hired to go down?’

  “‘Yessir!’

  “‘So go down like a man, and to hell wi’ye!’

  “That’s much the way I’ve felt about a lot of things. I always figured I was hired to go down.”

  Silence.

  We sat in the car and looked out over the windy sliver of Donner Lake a mile below—the meadow at the far end, where the Donner Party sat, and starved, and cannibalized each other one whole winter long, because they hadn’t had the smarts to mark the snow drifts where their oxen froze. All around the lake are summer homes and boat docks now. A miniature ski boat with a pair of tiny skiers sliced its silver surface, soundless, effortless. On the far side, a train was hauling up the sheer eastern face of the Sierra, four big diesel engines pushing and four pulling, through the endless snow sheds. Chinese coolies died to build those sheds a hundred years ago.

  Tom got out his shades and put them on. “So who did y’say composed that little moral tale?”

  “I didn’t. It was Yeats, I think.”

  “William Butler Yeats?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Goddamn Irishman. You know, I don’t like that. In fact, I don’t like it at all. I never hired you on to go down. I hired you to float high. And if you don’t, what use are you to me? What the fuck: I never hired you anyway!

  “Turn the car back on. C’mon.”

  I drove the long, slow way round the vista parking lot, avoiding children and the overflow from litter cans, arriving at last, unavoidably, back at the highway entrance.

  “Which way?” I said, “San Francisco?”

  “Hell with that. I said you’re going to float. How far is ah—”

  “Reno?”

  “Right.”

  “’Bout half an hour that way. Are you floating too?”

  He shook his head. “I suppose I must, if I’m to keep an eye on you.”

  ———

  I scribbled a phone book list of wedding chapels at the gas station in Truckee. Really freaky for a California kid: the whole of Nevada fits inside one phone book.

  After Truckee, California goes away. Nevada comes on hot and heavy, fast enough to give your eyes rope burns.

  97.4% Guaranteed Payback!

  Nobody Turns It On Like Onslow!

  98.5% Payback!

  Winners Play Harrah’s!

  Reno’s Best Odds! 99% Video Poker!

  Next Exit For Fun!

  2000 Car Garage!

  Ham ’N’ Eggs 99¢ !

  Hospitality And All The Rest!

  The roadside hype goes up ten decibels with every elevation line you drop. Then California is a mile-high wall of shadow, gray stone, green forest, little fastnesses of August snow, all behind you. Simmering ahead, a tacky mirage in a shallow desert bowl, is Reno.

  The Reno chapels cluster on Virginia Street, from

  Sweetheart Chapel Of Love

  Corner Of N. Virginia St. And I-80 Exit 13!

  Open! Come In!

  complete weddings, Certified Legal!

  Flowers, Rings, Garters, Gowns!

  Visa And Mastercard!

  se habla español

  to

  Gold Rush Wedding Chapel

  in our Hotel–Casino

  Convenient location—Uniquely romantic

  2 Blocks from the courthouse

  Religious or civil ceremonies

  Indoor or Outdoor

  Free Video and Viewing

  Free Champagne! Free Transportation

  Tom was riding with his eyes shut. He opened them at the corner of Virginia Street and I-80 exit 13. On the right side stand a motel, a wedding chapel, an RV storage lot, and another wedding chapel. On the
left, a hair salon, a wedding chapel and a fast food joint.

  The two on the right are former storefronts painted sugar-frosting colors, strawberry, grape, vanilla, lemon-lime. In California they’d be card parlors, and the signs would say PAN-POKER-LO BALL. The windows of the first are masked in pointy plywood arches, cupcake pink: pure ghetto-fantasy Arabian Nights. The second’s windowless but wears the same kitsch arches all around: shadow boxes framing red plush hearts. The left-hand chapel’s in a bungalow. Between its windows and their lacy tiebacks interpose the arches, screaming yellow.

  It took a minute, but I figured it. They weren’t supposed to look Moslem: Moslem reads heavy sex in the harem. Gothic reads church. Church reads wedding. Ghetto gothic. Drive by slowly, people already honking at my rear. Quick, glance at Tom’s face and wish I hadn’t: it wore a look. Really betrayed disbelief.

  Drive on. Next block began the high-rises. Casinos. Lighted signs. Flashing lights. Harrah’s. Circus Circus. Signs hyping casino entertainment: that elephant graveyard where old ’50s TV luminaries in sequined caftans go to die.

  Discount Souvenirs, World’s Largest

  Slots and Soda Works!

  99¢ T-Shirts!

  Novelty Slot Machines!

  Leather And Lace!

  Cash for Diamonds And Guns!

  Buy —Sell—Trade

  Beyond the crush of cars was a steady two-way flow along the sidewalk. Obese, permed women jostling by, and raddled, faded men, so many purposeful ants on their way to the garbage. Onto this swarming walk the casinos spilled directly, no formality of doors or walls, huge many-layered galleries a-whir with coins in machines, chicka chicka chicka chicka chicka. The buzz inside the hive.

  Ahead, a steel and neon message spanned the street with flashing stars: Dante’s inscription over Hell Gate wouldn’t have surprised me, the one that ends, “Abandon hope, all ye that enter here.” Just about everybody’s heard that end; but you know how it begins? It starts “Love made me—”

  All that this one really said was

  Reno! The Biggest Little City In The World!

  Casino Canyon isn’t long; it empties into hot sun, open space, wide stone walks, stone parapets. The Truckee River hustles through the middle of town, still singing to its stones about the California peaks they washed from.

  Here squats a big stone building, abashed and patient, very closed on Sunday. The Courthouse. Must be: the next alley is Court Street. I took a right into its dark mouth. The Courthouse bulk made up one side of it, the other was like big motels, lobbies on the street level, rooms on the next level, parking on top, and signs that said

  Queen Beds

  U set Temp

  Direct Dial Phone

  Color TV

  Marriage Service

  Licenses available 7 days a week/ 8am till midnight

  Small fee—very personal—simple fast service

  Civil Marriage Commitment

  No waiting.

  They didn’t actually advertise “Best odds in town” and 99-cent ham ’n’ eggs available with each and every wedding, but I bet you anything they had slot machines.

  Into the sun again, no waiting, and there, a block behind the Courthouse, sat a brick colonial building; in California it would have been a funeral home.

  Here it was a duplex; one half said Mortgage Insurance, the other Marriage Chapel. Parking lots at either side said Mortgage Parking / Marriage Parking. There was a wet green lawn out front, a sidewalk, and, gracing the curb, a ten-wheeled limousine forty feet long.

  “Wait!” said Tom.

  I put us on the Marriage Parking side.

  The back of the limo had a removable roof. Removed. And obvious why: closed up, it would have rained in there. The whole rear end was an eight-foot hot tub, bubbling away in gold-flecked fiberglass. Then came a pulpit (complete with reading light and fringy frontal), plush pews, a bar, refrigerators, and finally, a place for the band.

  Music stood open on the stands: if I went around the street side and shaded my eyes, I could just make out:

  “One Hand, One Heart”

  Tom had loped on down the sidewalk. Now he circled back along the gutter and met me next to the music.

  “What’s it for?”

  “I believe people get married in it.”

  “Drivin’ around?”

  Somebody guffawed.

  Chattering, Español habla-ing people cascaded from the marriage side of the building, down the steps, and onto the lawn. Big plushy people, two big families, lots of brown friends, and brothers in rented tuxedos, sisters in pink satin, an abundant fluffy bride in a veil.

  Tom hit the asphalt with the professional aplomb of a commando under fire. He let his back slide down the limo; I descended in his lap. He laughed until he cried.

  Thomas Peter Rhymer in the desolate Nevada street where I’d transported him: thin, frightened, desperately fragile. Working-class English. Thirty-two and aging. Wearing the plain scars of every kind of hard knock and tough scrape I could imagine. I wanted to put my arms around it all, bury my face in him until I couldn’t see anything else. So I did, down behind the limo. The side of his collar smelled like fresh bread.

  Very hot and private on the concrete. The people on the lawn couldn’t see us, and there weren’t too many driving by. Who cares what they thought anyway? Just one more weirded out couple embracing in the gutter. The limo’s shiny oyster flank collects the sun, flat black tire rubber gives off heat. I peep at grit and glitter, pebbles and glass bits on the pavement. Somebody’s marked-up Keno card.

  “So, girl,” he whispered, “I didn’t come up here to be your ninety-nine-cent souvenir. I know too much about that trade.”

  “How about my ninety-nine-cent ham’n’eggs?” I asked his collar.

  “Now, I might just go for that. But isn’t there some other kind of place here, a town hall or the like, where men and women marry in a bit of dignity?”

  Every last desire, fantasy, hormone that I owned nuzzled up close to him and lay content. T.P. Rhymer, clinging smartly to the tag end of his dignity.

  I liked him, too.

  Well, I did know where there was a town hall, but it wasn’t Reno. Forty clean miles of desert south. And we’d have to pass that way to get back to the mountains. Describing Carson City to his collar I found far easier than looking him in the eye. Such a funky little place, state capital or no, that, as my grandmother would have said, “If there was a boxcar on the siding, you missed it.”

  Her father had run a mining company railroad, which left a certain railroad color to her vocabulary, like the gem she insisted was the company motto of the Southern Pacific: “Uphill slow, downhill fast; tonnage first, safety last.”

  That set him off again, laughing till he couldn’t breathe: “Oh God,” he gasped, “Oh God. The same as us. So—” (he got a first good breath) “—is it going to work out like the rings?”

  “What?”

  “This morning, you were having me believe God leaves treats around for you to find—”

  My faith lay damp and macerated as a tired pound of hamburger leaking through its paper. Nevertheless, if Grace (or similar entity) had led me safe this far, it did seem inconceivably senseless that Grace might not intend to lead us home. “Okay,” I said. “Okay, it’s like the rings.”

  “You promise?”

  “I promise.” But I wasn’t sure of anything.

  We got up, leaning on each other.

  As I cranked the van, his left hand slid across the hot vinyl till the back of it lay comforted under my thigh. I looked at him to find out how to take it; he wouldn’t raise his eyes. There were still tears in the lashes. But the hand stayed where it was for the rest of the ride.

  Chapter 3

  I-80 intersects 395. 395 South springs away mercifully fast at first across the top of Reno, as the big signs say

  We Have A Slot For You!

  No Lease Required:

  Washer, Dryer and Fireplace!

  We
’re The Cream: $435 A Month!

  For Sale, For Rent, Vacancy, Vacancy—

  Freeway Ends—1¼ Mile.

  And so it does, in a surly tangle of paving machinery, on an overpass to nowhere. Ground level now, still headed south from Reno, down the backside of the Sierra Nevada.

  In Nevada, there are no zoning regulations. Or it’s difficult to figure what they are. In Nevada, three quarters of the people live in trailer houses. In Nevada the ’60s never happened. There is no rock music, only star-spangled country western. In Nevada, all the highway signs are dimpled by shotgun pellets, and all the private signs say

  Steak, Lobster, Ribs, Drinks!

  Saloon, Slots, Trailer Park!

  Win Gold, Cars, Trips, Spas—plus CASH!

  Tahoe LAKESIDE—you have friends in high places!

  ZERO to $650,000 in 6 SECS!

  It’s what you come to Tahoe for—

  RIGHT LANE ENDS.

  Fleeing south now on a two-lane road. California’s mountain towers march along, a cool inviting presence of sanity on the right. Hype recedes to forlorn little messages: “For Sale by Owner—” But then, just as the desert seems about to win, and tumbleweeds begin to stack against the fences:

  Carson City 32 Miles!

  Be A Winner!

  Tom was riding with his eyes shut. “I don’t think there’s anybody,” he said suddenly, “if they had a choice, who wouldn’t want to be conceived in love.”

  Here we go again. In manus tuas Domine commendo spiritum meum. “Oh,” I said, “I bet you were.”

  “Like to think I was.” He was warming to his subject. “—But I can’t ever know. People lie to each other. They lie to you. Especially about—well, matters of that kind.”

  I couldn’t say a thing.

  “—You see so many couples, man and wife, spend their whole time in slagging and belittling,” he said. “Distaste. Disaffection. Disgust. Disrespect. Well, I suppose that God makes all, but still, if I knew my flesh had been made up of that, I’d have trouble holding up my head.

  “I decided, any kid of mine ought to know right off he was conceived in love. Never need to make up pretty stories to keep himself warm. And if I hadn’t that to give them, I’d have none. Have myself fixed so I couldn’t.