Supper: Fried chicken, scalloped corn, chocolate pudding.
Camp
50¢
Gasoline
44¢
Chicken
72¢
Wrenches, set of 5
$1.45
Spark plugs
47¢
Tire iron
59¢
Tire
$7.95
Inner tube
$1.50
Tire jack
$1.55
American Junior pump
$4.00
Johnson’s Hastee Patch tape
50¢
Tire pressure gauge
$1.25
Valve caps
40¢
Postage stamp
2¢
APRIL 22, 1926
Into the best-laid plans, a wrench appears. In this instance, a literal wrench—and chicken wire and a pump and jack and tire tape, as I’ve had to buy all of those today. This morning, as we drove, eating our breakfast, we heard a loud bang. The car jolted and lurched off the road. E gave a little shriek and I dropped my biscuit clear down my blouse.
We figured out soon enough what the problem was (apart from crumbs in my brassiere). We’d had a blowout, our very first. Three boys driving a “bug” pulled off to help. They were amazed that we’d made it all the way from N.J. with no tire troubles. To hear them talk, they patch a tire at least every other day. They ticked off a terrifying list of things that could (and would) go wrong with our flivver. Tire punctures or blowouts, blown spark plugs, dead batteries, burned-out brake bands and bearings. They took us to task for not maintaining our poor Lizzie. I was in a cold sweat, thinking of all those lonely roads we could have been stranded on.
They gave us a lift to the next town. While I went with them to the hardware store to ferret out wrenches and mallets and whatnot, E went to the grocery for a fryer chicken. Back at the car, the boys helped us fix up the tire. They also cleaned out our spark plugs, tightened our brake bands, and generally gave the flivver a once-over. They followed us ahead to the next campground and E made fried chicken and corn by way of a thank you.
E seems fine as apple pie, but I couldn’t go to sleep. The whole thing’s shaken me so much. I don’t know what it was. Being stranded. Being at a loss. Being beholden to someone else. I’ve gone through so many years without once owing a man anything. Even a chicken dinner. And yet, today, a whole carful of them needed to swoop in and save us. White knights in a jalopy. It’s infuriating, yet more infuriating to see E standing on the side of the road, not knowing when I could get her to a campground. As much as it galls me, as much as it’ll keep me up, am glad we limped on ahead. Am glad I know how to keep it from happening again.
Friday
Hard driving today and we made it to Kansas City. F. has been nervous as a fawn since yesterday’s mishap and wanted to find a garage to give the Lizzie a sound checkup. In the meantime I replenished our larder.
She came back with a pint of hothouse strawberries, the name of a good campground outside of town, and two letters from A.L. One has a crayon drawing of a spotted pony. If I hold the letters just so, I swear I can see her little fingerprints.
Supper: Salmon croquettes (slightly charred), creamed peas, strawberries with sweet cream.
Camp Hickory Grove
35¢
Gasoline
$1.61
Celery!
18¢
Onions
17¢
Peas, four No. 2 cans
40¢
Corn, four No. 2 cans
64¢
Tomatoes, four No. 2 cans
28¢
Salmon, two cans
64¢
Postage stamp
2¢
April 23, 1926
Made it to Kansas City today. I told E that I wanted to stop at a garage (true), but really I wanted to stop at the post office (truer) before she did (the truest).
The whole drive here today I kept arguing with myself. No, I shouldn’t have hidden that letter from Carl back in St. Louis. No, I shouldn’t keep it in my duffel. No, I definitely shouldn’t do it again.
But then, there I was in the Kansas City post office, asking for general delivery for Mrs. Carl Wild, and not feeling nearly as awful as I should. There were two each from C and AL. The ones from AL went straight into my pocket, but I stood a moment looking at the two from Carl. He’d learned the same Spencerian script that Ethel and I had in school, but these were addressed in block handwriting, like the sort a butcher would use in lettering signs and price lists. I stared at the envelopes, at the black-inked name and address, and wondered what else was there. Did he pen her name with a sense of wistfulness? Think of her as he formed each E and L? Or were they written with determination, resolve, finality? Hoping that it would be the last time he’d ever write that name again?
When she’d gotten that first letter from him, the one that set her fluttering with hopefulness, I knew she was reading them with rose-colored glasses perched on her nose. I’d read Carl’s letter. E was infusing it with a promise not warranted.
What if these were the same? These two in Kansas City and the one I’d pocketed in St. Louis. What if they were blunt enough to shatter her illusions? Or, worse, vague enough that she held on to that hope for the next thousand and a half miles, only to have it punctured the moment she stepped onto that Nevada ranch? Holding on to these letters, keeping her from whatever was inside, it was the only way I knew to protect her. It was the only way I knew to keep her heart from breaking, again, all in a rush.
After all, being gradually forgotten was kinder than one grand rejection. It was. I knew it. That’s why I let myself drift from Ethel’s life all those years ago. It’s why I was always “too booked up” when she wanted to make plans. Why I took ages to reply (if at all) to her cheery little postcards. Why I stopped coming by as often and, eventually, stopped coming by altogether.
I was protecting my heart, but I was also protecting hers. How quickly everything would’ve changed if I’d said to her what I always did in my imagination. If she then said to me what I was sure she would. For our friendship to break in two in one single instant, that would have been more than I could bear.
Later
E was tickled at the letters from AL. About the lack from C, she said nothing.
Mail is cause to celebrate, she said. That, and being in a city with a real grocery store. After we set up camp, she walked to the nearest with a bag and shopping list. And I was left back in the tent with the three letters and not nearly enough guilt.
I stared at them, at that blocky handwriting on the envelope, thinking it looked far too casual for a letter ending one’s marriage. Surely that required cursive. Handwriting was for shopping lists and score pads and notes passed across the aisle in school. Was he finally writing something real and intimate? Were these letters exactly what Ethel hoped they were?
Later
I broke down and did it. I couldn’t sit there staring at those envelopes, wondering whether or not I was justified in keeping them, wondering whether or not there was really something to protect E from.
So I filled the coffeepot and moved it over the fire. In all the good spy novels, someone always steams an envelope open. It never sounded tricky. In fact, steaming open envelopes—to discover a secret, to stem a betrayal, to intercept a forbidden love affair—always sounded rather romantic on the page.
But it wasn’t. It took forever to get the pot boiling, with me holding this sorry little envelope up the whole time. When it did roll to a boil, I burned myself. I had to go and dig through my duffel for a glove, and then both glove and envelope got somewhat sodden with steam and sputtering water. But it did loosen. The envelope opened.
I didn’t know what I expected. Dismissals and denials. Apologies. Outpourings of love and regret. Pages of something. But the three letters, lined up damp on my plaid blanket, they weren’t anything. They were even shorter t
han his first, if that was possible. Three notes that, I knew, wouldn’t be any kind of salve to her heart.
But I didn’t read them, not then, because she burst into my tent with her bag of groceries and excited chatter about all of the astounding deals she’d found (Tomatoes, two cans for twenty-eight cents! I’ve never seen prices like that in Newark. And, Flor, celery! I’ve only ever read about it!). I threw myself onto the blanket, across the wet letters, and hoped that the envelopes were kicked far enough under the cot.
I wondered if she’d seen, the way she froze and stopped her babble. The way she just looked at me. But I didn’t mean to wake you, she said. And, Why’s the kettle going?
I stretched, I yawned, I tried to make it look like, yes, she did just wake me. I was going to surprise you with coffee, I said, and hoped she believed me.
She pushed hair off her eyes. Somewhere in her walk, she’d lost a hairpin. You’re always watching out for me, she said. Thank you.
April 16, 1926
Prickly Pear Ranch
Nevada
Dear Ethel,
I wish you’d stop writing so often. Write to Al, by all means, but to me? Eth, hey, it can’t be good.
We never were much for letters anyway, the two of us. Remember the time you passed me that note in class, the one with a line of Xs straight across the bottom? We were in eighth grade, I remember, because it was right before I left school. I’d never once gotten a note before then and didn’t again. Did you know how I wrestled with my reply? I never did give it to you. In the end, it wasn’t worth much.
You wrote a few times when I was overseas. Heartsick soldiers welcome anything. But maybe, even then, we didn’t have a thing to say to each other.
Carl
April 19, 1926
Prickly Pear Ranch
Nevada
Dear Ethel,
Five more letters came from you this morning. Has it really been that long or have you been writing two a day?
You may not think so, but Al hasn’t forgotten you these past couple of weeks. She talks a blue streak to the dude wranglers here about anything and everything, including you. She’s been learning how to cook, if you can believe that. Fried fish, hash, slumgullion, creamed chipped beef on toast. The kinds of things a bunch of old army vets and cowboys can whip up in a wiped-out fry pan. You’d have kittens at our “kitchen.”
Yours is still the best, though. Some days, I wake up thinking of your doughnuts. But, Eth, we have to have more than that. Doughnuts aren’t enough. A marriage license isn’t enough. I thought it would be. I thought Al would be. But seven years down the road and you dropped the mashed potatoes and I just knew it wasn’t.
Carl
April 20, 1926
Prickly Pear Ranch
Nevada
Dear Ethel,
You keep writing and I don’t know what you want me to say. If I knew it, I’d say it. Do you want me to say that I’ve changed my mind? Do you want me to say that I’m coming home? I’m not. I can’t. I don’t want that and I know you really don’t either. That one day, I watched you picking up all the broken pieces of that bowl and, Eth, I knew if I stayed I’d leave your heart in just as many pieces on the floor. You may not believe me, but I care too much to do that.
You can have anything you want. The house on Elm. Everything in the tin bank. My bicycle. My Army Wound Ribbon. The painting we got on the boardwalk. The piano. After all, you bought the piano. You can have anything. Except, can I ask? Of everything we’ve ever shared, can I keep Al?
I know you must’ve been in a lather when you saw that I’d left and taken Al. You could’ve gone to the police with cries of kidnapping. But you didn’t. You know me and you know Al. You know I couldn’t be apart from her even for a day. And I’m not saying that you could either. But, Eth, hear me out. If mothers can have their children to raise all alone, why not fathers? Aren’t we allowed to love them full-to-the-top? Can’t we have the chance to hold them close as long as they’ll let us?
Carl
The car is stopped—dead stopped—in the middle of the road.
BERYL
Why is the expression “stubborn as a mule”?
Both women stare out through the windshield at something in the road.
FRANCIE
You’re right. It should be “stubborn as a turkey.”
BERYL
They’re not even moving. Blow the horn again.
They simultaneously raise up in their seats to get a better look, then sit back down.
FRANCIE
I don’t think they even care.
BERYL
Isn’t that just stubbornness? Not giving one whit what anyone else thinks.
FRANCIE
You used to be stubborn like that.
BERYL
Are you calling me a turkey?
FRANCIE
Gobble, gobble.
—Excerpt from the unproduced screenplay When She Was King
Chapter Ten
1952
Since leaving Newark on that one-way bus ticket all those years ago (one-way left no room for cold feet or instant regret), Louise hadn’t been far out of Los Angeles. San Diego, once. Bakersfield for a shoot. That single trip across the ocean and back during the last war. That one brief, ecstatic weekend when she and Arnie ran off to Palm Springs with a pocketful of cash and a marriage license.
They’d just finished up Betsey Barnes, College Girl. Flush with a big paycheck, Arnie had popped the question. Flush with a renewed contract, she’d kissed him in reply. She borrowed the dress she’d worn in Betsey’s last number, a mauve silk ensemble with a swingable chiffon skirt and matching beaded jacket. It was ridiculously inappropriate for a courthouse wedding, even for California, but Louise didn’t care. She felt like a princess and, besides, she knew no one was going to check the costume room over the weekend.
They stayed in their hotel room, living off room service. When they finally emerged, on their last day at El Mirador, it was to a rare rainstorm. They were the only ones walking barefoot across the puddled lawn, draped on soaked canvas lounge chairs, kissing beneath the dripping archways around the pool.
She wonders why they never went back.
But the Grand Canyon is unlike anything she’s seen. It’s not California beach, Nevada desert, Palm Springs resort. It’s certainly not New Jersey. She’s always had little more than a friendly acquaintance with the Director Up There, but standing on the rim of the canyon, she sees an artistry she never knew existed. She understands the beauty that only eons of patience can bring.
Patience is something she feels short on these days.
The next day, as promised, Duane takes her to see the canyon. While she eats a broiled grapefruit half, beautifully garnished with a maraschino cherry in the center, he arranges for two places on a mule string down Bright Angel Trail.
“They say it’s the best way to see it,” he tells her. “Even in the winter.”
She doesn’t ask who “they” are. They probably had brochures.
He leaves her to finish her grapefruit and goes to change. It seems that Duane, ever the soldier, ever prepared, has a pair of cowboy boots for just this occasion. Louise isn’t sure what she has in the wicker suitcase for a mule ride in December. Everything she packed is light and gauzy, California pastel, desert airy. She finally settles on a slim pair of black pants and a fitted black jersey top. It has a scoop neck, modest enough while still showing a hint of collarbone. Long-sleeved, which she hopes is warm enough.
She considers her white Keds, but they feel too sporty for her spare ensemble, too suburban for her urban chic. Instead she puts on her flats, bright red against the black of her pants. Her hair, she ties up in a ponytail. She hasn’t worn a ponytail in years, at least not since her Betsey Barnes days, but it seems appropriate, somehow. Maybe it’s because she’s still pretending to be Anna. Maybe it’s because she’s far from home. Maybe it’s because here, where the air stretches for miles, she feels light
and young and as hopeful as she did when she was eighteen.
She keeps her makeup light. Powder, rouge, pale lipstick. Eyebrows and lashes dark and neat. A dab of Evening in Paris behind each ear. No accessories but her turquoise bracelet. No hat, no gloves, no handbag. She checks her reflection one last time in the bathroom mirror. Not a frill, not a petticoat, not a feather or bead. She looks simple and fresh. She looks as ready as she’ll ever be for a National Park.
When she meets Duane out at the corral, she suddenly sees how wrong she is. The few other women waiting for their tour are wearing riding pants or men’s blue jeans. They have canvas jackets over their blouses and thick-soled shoes. Plaid. Lots of plaid.
With her trim black pants and tortoiseshell sunglasses, Louise probably looks like she’s headed for a jazz club or a poetry reading. She probably looks like what she is—a frivolous movie star unsuccessfully slumming it for the day. A modern Marie Antoinette. She steps back, to the safety outside the corral, and drops a hand on the wooden rail.
And she’s not warm enough. As ugly as they are, she almost envies the plaid flannel and canvas hunting jackets. The back of her neck is cold. The little hint of bare ankle above her flats white and icy. She considers, for half a silly second, going back to the room for her mink.
She doesn’t think anyone’s noticed her—at least she hopes no one has, this girl who doesn’t know how to dress for a mule ride—but Duane spots her from across the corral and waves. He’s sitting on a wooden bench changing into his cowboy boots. They’re magnificently tooled, with silver studs dotting the sides. He even has on a wide-brimmed hat, just like a real dude wrangler. Maybe he bought it at the park’s souvenir shop. Maybe she should’ve bought one too.
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