White Leather and Flawed Pearls

by Susan Altstatt

  “—About certain things: such as liability—”

  “Okay,” I said. “Go on.”

  “As soon as you left, it occurred to him, if you were taking a girlfriend on a long drive, you’d probably share the driving—” (It would never have occurred to me. I love to drive; I hate to ride. I fear for my life. I also get carsick.) “So, to make it short, he called Sam Lyttle—” (Be advised: that splattering sound you hear is, without a doubt, the shit hitting the fan.) “—You’ll be relieved to know, Kaye’s lavishly insured whatever she drives, their car, our car. She’s also a summer assistant at a free vet’s clinic in Cabo San Lucas.”

  “Now you just wait; don’t jump to conclusions—”

  Click. The other extension coming off the hook.

  “Hello?”

  I felt Tom stir against me.

  “Listen, Papa, I’m not in any trouble.”

  “Doesn’t sound too likely. Why don’t you start at the beginning?” About that time Ma Bell required more money for her services. Papa said “Operator? Can you switch this to a collect call?” They dickered for a while. I took the simplest out, hung up and called him back collect. “Never mind the beginning. Start anywhere.”

  “I have been to the cabin.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ve also been to Nevada and gotten married.”

  A long silence. Tom listened intently. I could fairly plot Papa’s mental course past all the teenage guys I’d ever brought home to the family table for inspection. Most unlikely, any of ’em. Some of ’em downright bizarre.

  Finally he said, “Anyone we know?”

  “Tommi Rhymer.”

  “This is no joke!”

  “I’m not joking! You were always the one who told me to ‘form my own conscience’ and ‘keep my own counsel.’ Well this is what you get! A close-mouthed self-directed kid!”

  Gently, Tom removed the phone from my hand. “Professor Falconer, sir. Tom Rhymer here.” Minutes buzzed by like cars on the highway. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “She could hardly mount my head for a trophy on her wall, could she, if she’d enlisted your aid bagging it. Well, yeah. Not sporting. You got it.” He listened.

  “Three problems? Which three, sir? Aside from what you call your ‘credibility factor,’ which our arriving there in person should—”

  “But I do. Sunday’s our flight to London. We’re to be married at Westminster Cathedral, that’s the Roman Cathedral of London—Ah, you know—Saturday, September 27 at 11:00 in the morning—”

  Wait a minute. What if I’d never showed up at his hotel? So what if I hadn’t asked him to get married? Was he going to ask me? What if I’d said no?

  “Oh God,” he said suddenly. “What is this? How many hours? Eight? Eight weeks? Marriage Preparation Seminar. From the Diocese of San Jose. Approval of the bride’s diocese. God. Well, what are my options?” He listened.

  “Outside of joining another church. Now wait, Professor Falconer, they don’t want the likes of me in their little public classes. I assure you they don’t. Isn’t there some way y’could explain the matter?” He listened. “I would be most everlastingly grateful. Now you spoke of a third—”

  He listened, and silently handed me the phone.

  Papa said, “Unless you’ve been a whole lot swifter than I know, you don’t have a passport.”

  “ .”

  “All right, granted, you’ve obviously been swifter than I know, but do you have a passport?”

  “ .”

  “You can get one in 24 hours, that includes weekends, I think, if you demonstrate need. But the passport office is in San Francisco, the foot of Market, Market and Second, something like that. They’re open weekdays, nine to five.”

  “Yeah.”

  “This means they close at five o’clock.”

  “Yeah.”

  “They open again at nine o’clock, Monday morning.”

  “In other words, I’m not going to London Sunday unless I get my ass in gear.”

  “You got it. I trust we’ll be seeing you soon.”

  “Very.”

  “’Bye.”

  “’Bye.”

  We climbed back into the car. As we were hurtling around the cloverleaf to southbound 99 he said, “Some family.”

  “Yeah. Mine.”

  ———

  My stomach writhed sourly and sickeningly upward, arriving, a dead-heat photo finish with the elevator, on the thirty-second floor.

  Gotta lie down. Gonna be sick if I don’t lie down. Tom’s understanding was perfect. He ran me down the empty hall (no guards), had a key in his hand before we reached the door, rushed and cuddled me across the room (nobody there) into a dim bedroom and a clean fresh enormous hotel bed.

  “Aspirin.”

  “Right.”

  ———

  I drove and drove and drove, seventy-five in the fast lane, eyes fried by the sun, switching lanes, wriggling between enormous trucks, failure pop-riveted to the back of my neck. Three thirty. Three forty-five. Four o’clock. Four fifteen. A lane closed somewhere up ahead. Crawling traffic, Smog, sun, exhaustion. The VW thumped like a cripple over buckled pavement. Four-thirty. Four forty-five. Four-fifty.

  “Vitamin C. Tums.”

  “What?”

  “Antacid.”

  “Afraid I haven’t any.”

  “In my purse. Decongestant—sinus pills—pink jobs in foil. In the purse. Two of each. Water.”

  “Right.”

  Four fifty-five. The first signs for the Bay Bridge toll plaza. Five o’clock. Five after five. Five ten.

  He brought it all. I sat up long enough to gulp and swallow. My eyes squirmed in my head.

  ———

  Somebody said, “I got tickets to Bora Bora!”

  Altogether weird: unattached to anything. I felt around for Tom; no Tom. And the dimness of the room wasn’t thick drapes anymore; it was night.

  “Well y’can bloody cancel ’em!”

  That was Tom. The bedroom was dark but the door was open; light and noise wandered from the living room. Assessment of my condition. Meds have done the best they can. All I need now is the front of Tom’s shirt, and it is involved in a fight down the hall.

  “I’m takin’ a guest!” That was the man with tickets.

  “Bugger your guest!”

  “He intends to, love,” said somebody else, “in a little grass shack on the beach in Bora Bora.”

  A thud, knuckles on flesh. And a woman’s voice, really screaming: “Tom, she’s got a family, for God’s sake—”

  Tom, screaming back, “—First-time married for less than a week, and you’re asking me to pack her back to mother, is that what y’want?”

  She could yell right along with him. “What about us? How long did it take us to get the boys into that school? You think they’ll hold a place for trampy music-gypsies’ kids if we don’t show? They’ve got a waiting list as long as—”

  “—She is going to stay here at this fucking hotel, on my fucking money, and one or more of you are fucking staying with her!”

  There was a lull. Somebody else said, “Well you got pussy-whipped in a hurry, didn’t you?”

  All hell broke loose. A good heavy crash, breaking glass, a lot of swearing and demands that various people cut out various activities.

  I loved Tom. I loved his band. I didn’t know if they fought all the time, but fighting over me was bottom-line unacceptable. God help me. I got to the bedroom door. I got to the end of the hall. Tom was straddling a hassock on one side of the room, everybody else was on the other.

  I couldn’t bear to see him like that: slight and lost, no breeding, no education, off his balance, past his youth, and down to his fists as a last defense. I liked the man he was. I wanted to cover him, comfort him, give him back his glamour and his airs. He needed them and so did I.

  I stumbled toward him, head thumping like a drum machine, over the furniture and people’s feet, found the front of his s
hirt, and burrowed into it. If I was really flesh of his flesh, he could button his jacket over me and nobody would notice. Better than “seen and not heard”; not heard and not seen either. He wrapped his arms around me.

  Somebody said, “I’ll stay with her.”

  Silence. God. Maybe everyone was staring at me. Tommi Rhymer’s married this unknown chick, and there’s an enormous row, and she comes staggering out with a blind headache, looking like a refugee and curls up on his front.

  “What?”

  “I said I’d stay with her.”

  Real silence. Total. Tom’s heart beating, nothing else.

  I must be going back to sleep. Perhaps I’d never waked. His shirtfront smelled like cold sweat and other people’s cigarettes. This was a lousy dream. A wash and bed was what he needed. I was supposed to be his medicine, not part of the sickness. Medicine needs its eyes open. I opened my eyes.

  Tom (like nearly all the rest) was staring, not at me, but at an arm, a neat white sleeve, and a hand raised, orderly schoolboy fashion, on the far side of the room.

  “You were going home with me,” said Tom.

  “Why?” The hand was Harlan Parr’s. “I’ve nothing at all to do with the planning for your jig, until we play you off the steps at Norwich City Hall three weeks from tomorrow. I can play any set you want on twenty minutes’ call.”

  “You really mean it?”

  “Of course.” Harlan sat up out of the couch. “My pleasure.” He took his shades off and stuck them into a pocket. “I’ll catch up on my writing.”

  A warm spot started under my nose, in the middle of Tom’s shirt. I felt it grow and grow, routing the fear smells and exhaustion smells, till it filled his chest and flooded down his arms. “Thanks, old man.” He said it so softly, I could barely hear him.

  Sudden cheers. Hampers of turkey sandwiches had made the scene from room service. I ate half of one and nearly heaved. Tom ate my other half. People oohed and aahed over me. I heard a lot of names and remembered few. The woman with kids was the tall blonde in the “Love is Blind” shirt. Not a groupie after all, but Shan McInery, Rollo’s wife of ten years. Sim Garfein had the tickets to Bora Bora. Nicki Cavanaugh had a fat lip where Tom slugged him one. He was filling his face with sandwiches and beer, perfectly placid. Everybody’s problem seemed to have blown away except mine.

  My last sight of the tribe, as Tom led his dried tears and my green flourishing headache off to bath and bed: Rollo McInery cackling and elbowing Harlan in the ribs. Harlan, grinning, elbowed back.

  Saturday, August 23

  The Diocese of San Jose did not want Tommi Rhymer in its Marriage Preparation Seminar. Papa explained it to them all right. Scared to know just what he said, I didn’t ask. Things seemed to be out of my hands.

  After noon, Tom had me climb back into the old VW and drive him south. He slid his nice warm hand between my leg and the seat. I wore the white cotton knit mini. Most of the cabin floor had shaken off it. The rest of the band and hangers-on followed, pulling onto the shady rear of the Stanford campus, filling the end of Salvatierra Street, a royal progress in three limousines.

  My brother opened the door. My brother weighs all of fifty pounds. Opening the door and coming face to face with Tommi Rhymer, and being always one for subtlety, he hollered, “Chee-ee-eez Lou-ee-ze!” and ran.

  Papa’s turn. Papa is a well-built man; he was stocky facing Tom. Stocky and speechless. His glasses mirrored. His beard stuck out. Who Tom was was so unquestionable, I felt with a pang, my own identity might be the only thing in doubt. At last he shook his head.

  “I don’t know what I could possibly say.”

  Tom gave him the shy, sideways grin. His red hair fell in his eyes. “‘Well hello, son,’ might cover it.”

  He was in like a burglar.

  Mama was too dressed up, and was running around making too much food. All he had to do was hug her.

  Izzy was there too, my sister Isabel the pre-vet major, all sun-bleached, freckled, and strong-armed from wrestling stud horses around the vet school barns at Davis.

  And Russell of course, her Aggie boyfriend, the rancher’s kid from Likely, California, who says almost nothing and sees almost everything with quick brown eyes. Those two are into ’fifties movies, and le Jazz Hot.

  And Skye Milligan. Where the carrion is, there will the eagles be gathered. Still bitter as hell she had to help me kidnap Tommi Rhymer, and worse yet, had to keep her mouth shut afterwards. She’s taking feminist journalism or equivalent at Mills, dressing for success, and is, at present, a Laurie Anderson fanatic.

  I’m the only one who’s stayed where I was. Same place. Arrested development. In love with the same frayed and torn man and his sweet loud music since I was twelve.

  The house is full, the yard is full, I’m wandering around. The dining room. Papa’s talking to Tom. “—Got somebody, Monsignor Shanty Irish, on the phone: he said what the Diocese usually counsels, you know, where the kids have run off and had a civil ceremony, is that they wait a year before they even consider marriage in the Church—”

  “Meaning,” says Tom slowly, “if it’s a bad business they can still get out of it?”

  “Affirmative. Garbage in, garbage out.”

  “This is the Roman Diocese?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “God. And what’d y’say to that?”

  My room. Mama’s in there, looking with new eyes. “Okay,” I said. “All right, the signatures on the posters and photos are all real, done in pen, take a look. That red fly swish thing on the wall behind the door, with the end bound in silk thread and sealing wax? When Tom cut the long part of his hair for Drake, I was where he sent it—”

  She said: “Why couldn’t you have told us?”

  When she was halfway down the hall I said, “I guess because, if I’d been you, I’d never have let me do it—”

  I’ve got no place to land in my own house, doomed to keep moving, like the Flying Dutchman.

  Papa still. “—Every other rock personality I read of getting married makes this spectacle of bashing cameras, shouting ‘I am a very private person!’ You seem to be operating in a different mode—”

  Tom grinned at him. “Ever seen those T-shirts that say ‘Life’s not a cabaret—’”

  So they were getting along. Wasn’t that all I wanted?

  “Right. ‘—It’s a fucking circus.’”

  I moved on fast, but Tom’s voice carried: “You’re looking at the Singing Ringmaster. If there’s any part of me is private, it’s so private that I haven’t found it yet.”

  He was lying. There was always the thing he didn’t mention, Tommi Rhymer was a fictional address. Of course it wasn’t private, nobody really lived there. Tom’s heart beat invulnerable in Harlan’s chest, a private place indeed.

  I went out into the yard.

  Izzy’s holding forth on horse breeding, as usual, and ignores me: “—Nobody wants their million-dollar stud all gashed up by some twitchy filly, so they’ve got these, like, sex surrogate stallions they call ‘teasers.’ Can be anything, pony studs are hornier ’n hell, and they cut ’em some way so they can’t do anything really, but not enough so they won’t be sexy, and let them work the fillies over till they get all warm and runny; then they bring the real stud in, and his job’s easy.”

  Skye says “Hey, I know some real studs use rock singers for the same thing.” They all three pulled these big, wry “OhmyGod I didn’say that” faces.

  I just walked away. It occurs to me for the first time, looking at them, lined up shoulder to shoulder on the wall under the pear tree: I may very well have done the unpardonable. I’ve made fantasy flesh, and dwelt among it. A voice of pure fantasy rises in song from the kitchen. Rude as old stone, sinuous as wind across the hillside.

  A sailor courted

  a farmer’s daughter

  Who lived contagious

  to the Isle of Mann,

  Wi’ warblin’ melodies he

  did besoug
ht her

  To marry him

  before she should marryanyothersortofaman!

  That brings a whoop of raw delight from Mama: a scholar’s infatuation for a newfound species. Well I wanted her to be delighted, didn’t I? She has a doctorate in the legendary ballads of the British Isles. Tom’s grandfather was a famous singer; the name of Thomas Rhymer figures in her sources more than once.

  I round the corner. Tom’s sitting at her table, eyes closed, hand cupped behind his ear, a spirit medium giving substance to a dead man’s voice.

  The farmer’s daughter

  had grand possessions,

  a silver teapot

  an’ two-pound-ten in gold—

  Harlan was there too, competent and witty in the kitchen, quietly helping Mama with the coffee, the white wine, the little quiches, little meatballs, lemonade, and cookies—I wanted to rush in shrieking, “No! Don’t let him! He’s contaminated!” which wasn’t true, and, “How does he get off being so damn domestic?” which wasn’t kind, and left holding a lemonade instead.

  Some colleague had given Papa this set of tumblers with the Seven Deadly Sins etched on in Churchy Gothic letters. Cute. Only old sins come in sets of seven; glassware comes in eights. We were wondering, as he unwrapped, what minor vice they’d elevated to the list with Pride, Lust, Envy etc. It was the one I’ve got, VIII: Choosing the Wrong Side.

  My all-time favorite.

  The garage. Papa’s out there now, enlightening the McInerys about the lack of rust on California vehicles. “—This is where your British collectors come to buy old British cars—” Somebody’s under the gray Porsche on the mechanic’s creeper, making first-hand acquaintance of its rust-free pan. I recognized the shoes and left. Harlan is a black magician. Harlan has the power of bilocation. Harlan is all over my house, like a swarm of bees.

  I put on my own running shoes. Nobody saw me go. I jogged the whole circuit of Campus Drive in the hot still Saturday afternoon. Quail in the thickets by the Stanford tomb. Lovers on the grass. Oak moths fluttering. Girls playing radios. Guys playing Frisbee. I didn’t get home until the limousines were leaving.

  Only Tom remained, with his sterile little suitcase, slender and battered as he was. Papa put Tom in his old Porsche—before he could shut the door I jumped in like a dog—and drove him out where Redwood Priory perches secretively on a canyon side among the dark trunks of its namesakes. I huddled against Tom’s seat back, arms around his shoulders, indulging myself while I could. He held my hands down warm against his chest.