L.W.’s mom is ironing. She looks about as happy as some film star who is climbing into bed with her lover at the end of a big slash and splatter scene. She looks happy as a pig. I get a fleeting thought that if Mom had thought of ironing first, she might never have had to mess with piano teaching. But I guess ironing—if you charge money for it—isn’t an acceptable thing in the subdivisions. You couldn’t put out a sign IRONING DONE HERE in this neighborhood, even in the window, tucked in front of a tan shade. But here is Mrs. L.W. Senior looking as if she’s on some kind of heavenly fix, steam-ironing gores cut on the bias, gussets set into dolmans, jabots tacked onto plackets, zapping each garment with a jet of spray starch before bearing down with the hot iron.
And not the least bit embarrassed to be ironing right in the living room, with the TV set not even turned on for an excuse. (That opens another idea to me—that maybe people who pretend to get the ironing done while they’re watching the soaps are really getting the soaps done as a cover for doing the ironing. That maybe there are a lot of clean activities we’re ashamed to admit we like to do.)
The house is the vintage that has a dining room through an archway, one almost as big as the living room. There, L.W.’s dad, who is fat where Mrs. L.W. is skinny, is working away at the big table, working real hard over something, a bunch of papers. But he gets to his feet when I come in, to be properly introduced.
“Dad, this is my friend from acting class, Jolene Temple. She was in the neighborhood.”
It turns out his dad is a fanatic about something called the Perpetual Fixed Monthly Calendar. He tells me—and L.W. stands around trying to indicate that he has probably heard all this one million times—that names more famous than his have supported the PFMC: the presidents of General Motors and General Electric, the inventor of the camera and the Model T. He shows me a great green chart on the wall. “With thirteen months of twenty-eight days each,” he says, “every week and every month begins on Sunday. To know the date is to know the day: if it’s the second, it has to be Monday; all Saturdays are multiples of seven. We have to put to rest the wandering week. You get the idea, little lady?”
“Yes sir,” I say, amazed. Because of how simple it seems, and how easy that would be to use. I don’t stop to multiply thirteen times twenty-eight (sure they’ve done that and it comes out right), but wonder how we ever got mixed up with the system we have. That also gives me a feeling of awe, L.W. Senior does, at a man his age and size finding something so orderly to be interested in, so logical to be pursuing. I think how frustrated he must feel, this old man (who looks, both the Dawsons do, old enough to be my grandparents, as old as Hoyt and Cissy), that everybody doesn’t see the wisdom and want to adopt his calendar. He must feel that the rest of the world has decided to fall into chaos when there isn’t any need to.
L.W. asks me if I’d like to go get something to eat, and I say sure. I get the idea that we aren’t going to visit here in this wonderful, busy house. That he is a little embarrassed by his folks, and doesn’t know that I think they’re just about perfect.
I imagine the two of them getting up in the morning and beginning with their work—her sprinkling the ironing and him calculating dates—and them doing that all day long except when they stop to eat, in the kitchen so as not to bother Lenox Worth’s papers in the dining room. And then maybe allowing themselves just one more round before bedtime.
I smile at both the Dawsons and wait for L.W. by the tan divan.
He says, “Mom, we’re going to get something to eat,” as if she hasn’t heard him already say that.
“Be careful, Buddy,” she says, showing some very white false teeth. “Nice to meet you, Jolene.”
“Yes, indeed,” his dad calls after us as we exit the house through the lassoed door.
15
“LIFE FOLLOWS ART,” L.W. says, when we actually do find a diner out San Pedro, complete with even the sign in the window, a slick white printed plastic sign that says: EAT HERE OR WE’LL BOTH STARVE.
We sit in the back at the last of a narrow row of booths. Nobody else is there except at the front counter a couple of women—who look as if they work nearby, probably at one of the big franchises—are having coffee and a semi-private talk.
“What’ll it be, folks?”
“Do you have grits?” L.W. asks, giving me a sweet glance.
“Hash browns,” the big man in the apron says.
“Has to be grits.”
“You want grits we got grits.” He wanders to the front and reaches up over the grill, behind the individual Corn Flakes and Sugar Pops boxes, brushing away the swirl of dust around his head. He pulls out a little box of instant white cornmeal, opens it, pours hot water from a glass pot used for tea, and, with his other hand, refills the cups of the women at the counter. “What else, ladies,” he says.
It’s awkward, being with L.W. in the diner.
The two times we were together before, we were both acting. That was okay. We could do our parts. But here, now, in the booth, we’re supposed not to be acting any more. Here is the real us—and that’s the problem. I guess who we’re being is Buddy and the Niece, which is as close as we can probably get to being ourselves.
I’ve dressed, now that I think about it, as a niece, in a flowered skirt, long cotton sweater in bright green, orange socks, and Reeboks.
“What were you doing in the neighborhood?” L.W. asks, as nervous as I am.
Naturally, I can’t tell him that in my panic over Mom’s card and Dad’s letter to Brogan, I thought maybe I could come live with him. Somebody who I only met two times in public places. Somebody whose folks are always home, ironing flounces and calculating Wednesdays.
“I wanted to see you,” I tell him. “I liked meeting you and then we didn’t run into each other any more.”
“That was something, switching parts.”
“Are you really an actor?” I look at L.W. with a lot of interest, at his good worn-out jeans and his good really used T-shirt. His Buddy sort of face that is very close to mine at the moment.
He explains that he’s a drama student at Trinity, graduate level. Then says proudly, “I’m writing a play.”
“No kidding?”
“It’s not my first,” he says. “I had another, back in high school, that got a prize in a one-act contest. It was called Under Brown Umbrella.”
I repeat the name, Under Brown Umbrella, because I can tell he is half in love with the words. Naturally, I assume it’s about the oil bust and that brown means crude oil. I give him a big smile, pleased with myself for figuring it out.
L.W. takes time out to thank the man for our bowls of lukewarm grits and to find out that his name is not Pete but Al—but that’s okay, the idea is the same. The diner seems like a high school set, with its plastic sign, its instant cornmeal, and Al himself, who is trying to do his big-bellied best, but who keeps forgetting and looking at the clock, wishing the scene was over and done for the day and him home with a long-neck Lone Star.
“I’m getting more through-action in the new play.” L.W. brings us back to his subject. “The Second Peloponnesian War.”
Again, I repeat the name, so he can enjoy hearing it. Although this time I can’t figure out the point—but then my history isn’t very good. “What’s it about?” I ask, not wanting to show my ignorance and hoping I’m not supposed to figure out some obvious classical connection.
“They’re both about the big thing that’s happening today in Texas: bilingual education. One of those issues that the state is always getting mixed up on. The liberals—who ought to be the ones saying that we should all speak a common language if we’re going to be equal—are the ones fighting for it. And the conservatives—who you’d think would be the ones arguing that a separate language will keep the Mexicans in their place—are the ones against it. They’ve got it backwards.” He looks to see if I’m following his reasoning. “So I got the idea of showing that on the stage. Of showing, I mean, that each side is supporting it
s own worst case.”
Bilingual education? I am totally surprised. I thought that what was happening in Texas right this minute was Aunt Glenna Rose and her MasterCards, and Uncle Brogan worrying about Chapter Eleven. I can’t think of anything to say to L.W.
Bilingual education, I want to tell him, is one of those things like unisex bathrooms that politicians and the press talk about all the time but nobody listens to. Because if you need to pee all you want is some place right then and there, and it doesn’t matter what it says on the door (EMPLOYEES, ONLY, DAMES, GENTS). The same if you’re trying to find your way to the gate in the airport or across the border. It doesn’t matter what the sign says or which language it says it in; somebody points the way to you. Nobody in public places has much of a language anyway—they just grunt and point and scratch their heads. You know if you were playing the part of somebody in a public transportation place or voting place or eating place, you’d have maybe six lines in the whole script.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed it”—L.W. leans over—“but most people quit listening the very minute you say anything about educational issues.”
“Is that right?”
“That’s what you can do with a play, get past that resistance. I mean, you can reach the audience in a way that you never could if you were running around carrying a signboard that said BILINGUAL EDUCATION IS UNILATERAL DISARMAMENT.”
“You’re right about that.”
“California has already passed a law declaring English the state language, and you’ll see, Jolene. One of these days there’ll be a governor out there or a senator whose family came from Mexico. And he’ll be in office because he speaks English.” Here L.W. realizes what he’s said and looks at me, embarrassed. “Or she.”
But that doesn’t bother me. I’m not sitting in the booth at this plastic imitation of Pete’s diner (which is really Al’s) worrying whether I’m getting insulted by L.W.’s not thinking that the state of California is going to elect a woman governor one day. Or a Mexican either. Or another old Hollywood actor with a wrinkled neck.
“Actually,” he says, changing the topic slightly, “it’s a collaboration, the new one. This other actor and I, Archie Leach, are doing it together. The actual writing.”
“I’ve heard that name.”
He laughs. “Everybody is going to think that. It’s a great stage name. It’s Cary Grant’s real name. When he died it was in all the magazines and papers, so everybody has heard it and seen it, but they won’t remember where.”
“The way everybody knows who Norma Jean was?”
“The exact same thing. Somebody would have been smart about ten years ago to use that name. Somebody wanting to get into films.”
I have a minute, just a minute, of wishing that he wasn’t working on his play with someone else, but that doesn’t last long. I guess my real fear is that if somebody is with him all the time, then what with the ironing board and perpetual weeks, that doesn’t leave much of L.W. for me.
“I’d like to see the play when you finish,” I tell him.
“Maybe you’ll come when we put it on.”
“Maybe.”
He hesitates. “I really was surprised to see you standing on the porch at home.”
“I couldn’t get up my nerve to phone. I was afraid you wouldn’t remember my name.”
“Sure I did. But Jolene Temple wasn’t listed in the phone book.”
“I live with my aunt and uncle.”
“Where are your parents?”
“They’re separated, and both of them move around a lot in their jobs, so, you know, it was more stable to live with my uncle and his wife. I moved here in ninth grade. I guess one of these days I ought to be looking for a place of my own. It’s hard to make yourself leave, when you’ve got a room and all.”
“The same with me. I’m twenty-five. That’s too old to be living at home. But I took a year off to work, year and a half, really, to get the tuition. Trinity costs an arm and leg. So it made sense to stay home, save money. Mom and Dad don’t want me moving anyway. They wouldn’t have anybody to talk to but each other. Both of them there all day—my dad’s retired, he’s on a pension; my mom took early retirement—they don’t have a lot to say to each other.” He looks as if he thinks he’s confiding something personal. As if having parents content to be in the same room all day every day with each other was something to be ashamed about.
“What I was really doing in the neighborhood”—I look at him and then look away, having just come up with a great idea—“was coming to see if you’d like to go to a party with me.”
“Sure I would.”
“My uncle and aunt are giving a party for his clients, he sells car phones, at the La Fonda Sur Rosa in a couple of weeks.”
“The Sub Rosa.”
“That’s right. I was thinking, you and I have been to two parties together already, in a way.” This is where the hard part comes in, so I slow down. I wait a minute, wanting him to get the drift of what I’m asking.
“That was coincidence, wasn’t it?”
“I thought, since you did the broker at Zona Rosa—”
He gets the idea right away, and looks like he doesn’t mind at all, which makes me weak in the knees, or would, if I were standing up. Because it means he’s going to think it’s okay to be acting a part at my folks’ party.
“You want me to do that again?” he asks.
“That’d be just swell. Just swell. I could tell them that I’ve been dating this investment banker.”
That reminds him of something, I can tell by his face. “You still seeing that painter?”
I hold my head up to show I’m not embarrassed. “I pose for him regularly. He pays a lot. I’m saving up so I can move out.”
“What’s his name?”
“Henry Wozencrantz.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Why would I be kidding?”
“Around here that’s like saying his name is Van Gogh. I mean, he’s the most famous painter in San Antonio. In the Southwest. He’s like Whistler or something. You know what I mean. I mean he’s really famous. He gets written up every time he has a show. Or they’ll do a feature on something like Southwest Art, I’m talking about Life or Time, and there’ll be the usual stuff with big Indians and red mountains, and then there’ll be Wozencrantz, with his brown-toned paintings that look like daguerreotypes.”
Henry, famous? The boy whose uncle had a mistress with a china hand? I try to think if that can be so. I remember that he acted like I should recognize his name at the Sun Dog, but then that was a gathering of artists and he was an artist.
For a minute I get an uneasy feeling, but then it goes away. For one thing, what L.W. says doesn’t sound like the slides that Henry showed me, the beautiful shapes that turned out to be shoulders and knees. For another, I figure L.W. is just repeating what he’s heard, dropping in at openings, picking up the language for later use.
“What about you, if I’m the broker?” L.W. gets back to the topic of the party.
“I told Aunt Glenna I was working as a model. She took that to mean fashion. Me, a fashion model?” I make it a sort of joke, to see if he thinks I can get away with that.
“You’d be great.” He sounds like he means it. “The new trend. Calvin Klein. Perry Ellis.” He looks me over. “You’ve got the cool look.”
“You think so?”
“Sure,” he says. “It’s not much of a variation on your poet.”
And I say, like I was picking up on a cue, “These are the best grits west of Natchez,” and we smile, safe into our parts again.
16
“ACCORDING TO HOYT, they lost their hotels on Baltic and Mediterranean last night.” Over breakfast, Brogan is giving Glenna an update on his folks.
I’m there between them, the interested third party they like, finishing my buttered toast.
“Oh, shit.” Glenna has her hair rolled up and is in an old pair of Brogan’s pajamas that she li
kes to wear to sit around and have juice when they’re not doing business. “Oh, damn. How can they do it again? You tell me. Don’t they know there’s nobody to bail them out any more?”
“Hoyt was cased on coverall.”
“Don’t speak to me in that foreign language.”
“Cissy was cased on B 17.”
“Bingo. They were playing bingo.”
“You got it.”
“How in this wide world is it possible to lose the mortgage on your house in a bingo game?”
“Easy. That’s when they always do it. It’s never craps. It’s never blackjack. Those are too rich for their blood.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Blackjack you got to have money to stay in the game. Craps you got sharks watching every move. Bingo, down there in the bingo parlors, you got a running total and you got all these old folks playing with their social security, looking like they’re at a church social, and first thing you know you’re down five hundred, and there goes the house payment. And then if you’re already two months behind, the bank can decide that it especially wants, right now in the squeeze, to own that little frame doodad with the sweet gum in the backyard. Bankers start sitting around getting nostalgic to own Lot 4, Block 48 one more time. Like in the good old days.”
“Why wouldn’t the bank just look the other way? They got houses out the kazoo they can’t sell right this minute.”
“Repossessed house goes in Column B. Moves from Column A. Moves from accounts receivable to assets. Looks good on paper. They got nothing but accounts receivable, they got nothing but uncollected debts, an examiner could say. See here, they can tell him, we got this two bedroom, eat-in kitchen, all the extras, Lot 4, Block 48. We’re fixing to have a couple more. This is your solvent bank, with assets.”
Owning Jolene Page 6