14

Way back in March of ’63 when Daddy and the Christian Detective Agency dragged me, uncomplaining, back to Bellaire High, it was as if I’d slept those three months. My friends treated me like I’d been ill, Ron acted as if I never left. One of Daddy’s doctor buddies checked me over and announced the family’s fears were true, I had violated the sacred trust of virginity.

The funny thing was that Daddy didn’t go into a week-long silence. I guess he wasted so much depression on my bad grades and minor disappointments that manic catatonia just wasn’t appropriate for something as big as being found naked in a motel room with five likewise naked country musicians. My sins were so outrageous it was either forgive and forget or send me to detention hall for life. So everyone forgot—or pretended to. Daddy even bought me a used Chevy. I almost forgot myself. The days turned hot and life focused down to the country club pool in the afternoons and Pizza Hut at night.

Between the two, I circled Houston’s fast-food strips endlessly in his Oldsmobile with Ron or my Chevy with Roxanne. Gas was cheap. We put on a couple hundred miles a day in a five-mile circuit, looking at other teenagers who looked at us. I remember honking the horn a lot.

Because of my long absence, they made me take two credits of summer school—which I couldn’t stand. Everyone in town but me got to sleep late and drink Pepsis in front of the soap operas until time to drive over to the pool. I spent my mornings daydreaming away Texan History and Home Ec. Who knows what I daydreamed about; not Mickey, and probably not Ron. Maybe I didn’t daydream at all but turned my brain into a white noise channel. That can happen when you’re bored in hot weather.

I know I worried more about my tan than the economic class of real people. I listened to Top 40 all summer—“Wipe Out,” “Tie Me Kangaroo Down,” “Frankie and Johnny.” Roxanne taught me breast development exercises, but I could still look down my nightgown and see my feet. It was as if Mickey and singing onstage and my discovery of dignified poverty were only dreams.

• • •

There was one element of my fling that I couldn’t forget and that was how relaxing and fun sex can be—Mickey’s Regular Orgasm theory of mental health. I fought the urge, tried to ignore the urge, self-abused myself through the urge, but the honest truth is that, as summer turned into what passes for fall in Houston, my frustration grew to the point of out of hand.

“So get laid,” Roxanne said.

“I don’t know.”

“It’s fun, you know it’s fun. Keep the fun you learned from Mickey and forget the stupid.”

“I promised Daddy I wouldn’t.”

Roxanne pretended to choke on her hamburger. We were in a booth at McDonald’s, waiting for Ron and Roxanne’s newest cowboy, who was really a drywall hanger faking it as a cowboy on weekends. “Why in hell did you promise not to get laid?”

I sipped Sprite through a straw. “When I first came back, Daddy was going to ship me to a psychiatrist. Then he said Mom would die if I ever had sex again. Then he said it would end his career.”

“You believed all of that?”

“Then he bought me the Chevy.”

Roxanne collapsed into hysteria. She shouted loud enough so all the customers and the girls behind the counter turned to stare at me. “Your father gave you a car if you promised not to fuck?” I tried to shush her, but she wouldn’t let it go. “A car for a pure ass, what kind of a deal is that?”

“It’s a used car.”

“Why drive around if you can’t fuck anybody?”

“Shut up, Roxanne. I promised for his peace of mind. And Mama’s. The Chevy was just a bonus.”

Roxanne laughed so much I got mad and decided to wait for Ron outside. As I slid from the booth she caught my arm. “You’re getting the crappy end of the deal,” she laughed. “That car doesn’t have a tape deck. Tell him you won’t give feel-ups for a tape deck.”

“To hell with you,” I said, though that made her laugh even more.

The truth is I made a stupid deal and I knew it was stupid at the time, but the Chevy (a ’61 Impala painted bright red) wasn’t the only reason I gave up sex—not that it was a bad reason. Somehow, though, from a distance of a few months, I suffered an antifling backlash. What I’d done with Mickey and the boys came to seem tacky and dumb. I mean, if Mickey loved me he should have done something to keep me around. Not that he ever said he loved me.

My mistake was I started comparing. I lined up Choosie and the black-toothed bartenders and all the truck-stop waitresses against Mom and Dad and their friends in their Grand Prix and Mercedes. I forgot how real and sincere I thought the waitresses were and only remembered that none of the women in Mom’s golf foursome had to work. If one of the neighbors got sick they could go to the doctor and be taken care of. If a car broke, it could be fixed. That didn’t seem to be giving up the sincere life for money.

So my values pendulum swung too far back the other way. I decided being rich was better than being poor and the symptoms I connected with poverty were whiskey, country music, and sex. For a few months anyway, I became a snotty teenager again. I reverted to typical.

However, once found, country music and regular sex aren’t something that can be walked away from. By fall, I was listening to Loretta Lynn again, and this new guy named Merle Haggard. I was following the steel breaks in Buck Owens and Ernest Tubb.

Late at night I slid into my white nightgown and turned off all the lights in my room, then, using the glow from the dial, I tuned WBAP Country on my portable Westinghouse radio. I waited for Kitty Wells or Sammi Smith to come on crooning a heartbreak song, then I ran my fingers across my stomach into the gap between my legs. I pretended my fingers were Mickey’s on his steel. I tried to remember what it was like to stand onstage next to him, closing my eyes and singing about sadness and pain, giving the customers part of myself. Then I pretended Mickey was in me.

The sound was so low I could hardly hear Sammi’s depression. I was afraid Daddy would wake up and bust through the door. I don’t know which would have upset him the most, me listening to country music or playing with myself.

• • •

Every Friday night through October and November, usually after a football game, Ron and I cruised his Oldsmobile out to a fresh housing development and parked along the newly laid-out streets. Houston neighborhoods sprung up so fast in those days we had to change tracts every few weeks to stay ahead of the houses.

Some Fridays after we parked, we argued so long over leaving the radio on Top 40 or country that nothing happened. Usually, though, one of us would give in and Ron would take his watch off and set it on the dash, then he’d slide his long arms over my shoulders and we’d put in an hour or so of adolescent window steaming. After maybe a month and a half of this, Ron realized—or became conditioned to the fact—that I went further and sweated steamier to country than I did to the Singing Nun. That put an end to the radio arguments.

Our frustration came about because Ron wanted to go “all the way”—he was desperate to go “all the way”—but he didn’t know squat about technique. I had sworn not to cross the forbidden line, but I knew how much fun even coming close could be with proper finger and tongue work.

I tried being patient with Ron and his social background. He really didn’t know much past basketball, Southern Baptist summer camps, and Pat Boone’s Twixt Twelve and Twenty. He kissed with too much pressure, groped like a blind baby, whined if things didn’t go his way; whenever he blundered into an erogenous zone, he poked at it with one fingernail.

One correct touch and I would have been so wet and frothy all the promises in Texas couldn’t hold me back, but my Daddy-induced code kept me from showing Ron how it was done. Sometimes I prayed his fingers would accidentally brush the right spots and I could lose control without guilt.

• • •

Thanksgiving night we parked out past Deer Park in a new luxury development along Galveston Bay. A norther had blown in and Ron wanted to run the engine and the heater, but I was afraid we’d asphyxiate from carbon monoxide like the kids in Beaumont did while they were screwing in her parents’ garage. Ron said we weren’t in a garage and we wouldn’t die if we got warm. I sat with my arms crossed and the window down all the way until he relented and turned off the engine. Then Ron sulked awhile. He was a big kid, not as tall as Mickey, but at least forty pounds heavier. Ron was an only child—his father worked sixteen hours a day so he would never have to hear his wife’s constant grating babble. As Ron’s mom talked, she scampered around like a squirrel, doing every conceivable suck-up task in the house. Ron had never washed dishes or made a bed or mowed a lawn. He never did anything he didn’t want to do, which is a great situation for an adult, but leads to sulkiness in children, especially sports heroes.

However, that night I felt friendly toward Ron. He’d given up watching the Texas-Texas A&M game on my parents’ TV to take me out for a Coke. That’s what kids all told their moms and dads back then when they wanted to go park for hours and whip themselves into a sexual frenzy.

“We’re going out for a Coke,” I told Mom.

“Don’t be late,” she trilled from her usual post in the bathroom. Daddy was studying a saffron catalog and didn’t look up.

I didn’t want Ron to sulk, I wanted him to be happy, I just didn’t care to die from necking in an Oldsmobile. Since Ron wouldn’t come to me, I slid across the plastic seat covers, reached across and pulled his watch off for him. Then I leaned up and swabbed his ear with my tongue. Ron played tough for about twenty seconds before he fell sideways on top of me. In the confusion of teeth, elbows, and my left foot in the ashtray, Ron slid his big hand down the front of my panties.

Of course, no one in church camp had told him it works better with the girl’s jeans unbuttoned, so Ron’s hand cramped up against my bladder and stuck. I waited awhile, kissed awhile, smelled the after-shave he’d sprinkled behind his ears, but Ron seemed satisfied with an abdomen grip.

What was I supposed to do, work on wrestling holds with the dunce? His hand pressed so hard it nearly made me pee. Leaning back against the door handle, I went into one of my internal conversations that always get me in trouble.

“God,” I said to myself, “I can’t expect him to know everything.”

“What about the Chevy?” I answered.

“Remember what Roxanne said, ‘You can’t fuck a car, Lana Sue.’”

So I reached down and unbuttoned my jeans—even slid the zipper down a ways.

Ron stopped in midkiss. His whole body went rigid. I think the sudden freedom shocked his hand into paralysis. Then his fingers plunged into what back then was called a “finger fuck.” Who knows what it’s called now, but in 1963 a high-school boy’s wildest ambition was a finger fuck.

I tingled some and was all set to tingle more, only Ron was way too low; and his fingers didn’t move, they froze as far in me as he could reach. I looked at his face up next to mine. The eyes were wide open and unsure of what was real—like a little kid seeing the ocean for the first time. His breath came in gasps. A picture flashed of Ron hyperventilating and passing out with his hand up my crotch. It wouldn’t have felt much different if he had fainted.

If I didn’t make a move, I knew Ron would lie there and not flex a muscle all night long. Placing my hand on his, I pulled it up to the fingertips on clitoris level and murmured something like, “There, now rub softly around and around.”

Ron rubbed a few seconds and I started feeling warm. I sighed once, then he stopped.

“Don’t quit now,” I mumbled.

Ron pulled his hand away. “Who taught you that?”

“What?”

Ron sniffed his fingers, then reached over to the dash and put on his watch. “How do you know where I’m supposed to touch?”

“I know where it feels best.”

“Did that steelworker touch you there?”

I pushed Ron and sat up straight, as close to my door as possible. “Of course he touched me there. I lived with him for three months.”

Ron held the foam-wrapped steering wheel with both hands. His whole face drooped like a little boy’s. “I never thought about you screwing him.”

“What did you think I did with him? Besides, Mickey is a steel player, not a steelworker, there’s a difference.”

Ron’s tongue pushed against his lower lip. “Not to me, there’s not.” His face turned from sulk to concern. “Was he a pervert, Lannie?”

I stared out the window at the bay. A silver moon was rising from Louisiana. I thought about Mickey’s sly little smile whenever he wanted to try something new. “Yes, I guess most people would call him a pervert.”

Teenage boys were a lot more naive before the common use of the pill and abortions and British rock and roll. I guess even “good” girls get laid in junior high now days. I’m sure little Marcie down the road saw pictures from Joy of Sex before she could even read—if she can read.

I go into that rap because of what Ron said next. He turned and picked up my hand and said, without irony or sarcasm, “You didn’t like it, did you?”

Didn’t like it? Didn’t like making love under the steel, in truckstop men’s rooms, in the van, tied down on a snooker table—I liked it so much I even amazed Mickey.

I looked into Ron’s concerned blue eyes. “Sometimes he hurt me, but mostly, I’d say I loved it and couldn’t get enough. Why do you ask?”

Ron’s big jaw sunk in his chest. He stared down at the plastic footprint he used as an accelerator pedal and mumbled, “I can’t stand the thought of some pervert doing nasty things to you, Lannie. You’re a princess to me. Why didn’t you leave?”

“I didn’t want to.”

Ron turned his head to look away out the driver’s side window. Blond curls on the back of his head fell over the edge of the collar on his Ban-Lon shirt. I touched the longest curl and said, “You need a haircut.”

Ron didn’t answer. I felt a swelling of sympathy for him. Poor kid, all the boys at school must know about my fling. I imagined the embarrassment of being a virgin with a girlfriend who was a known sleaze.

“If you let me,” I said, “I could show you some things that might make you feel real good.”

Ron turned, his face alight with hope.

• • •

It took work—Ron came if I so much as looked at the right spot—but by Christmas, he’d lost his virginity and I was pregnant with Cassie and Connie.

• • •

When Daddy found out in March, he sold my Chevy.

On Sunday afternoon, a grand council met in our den to decide Ron and Lana Sue’s future. The Pottses arrived dressed for church. Mom, in her yellow slacks suit and matching fluffy slippers, pushed refreshments. Dad wore his golf outfit, Haggar slacks, Arrow shirt, cleats. He twirled a putter throughout the meeting, using it sometimes as a gavel, sometimes as a pointer. I took it as a possible weapon.

They made me put on a dress, an innocent, teenybopper thing with the waist down around hip level and pleats in the skirt—the uptown cheerleader look.

Daddy sat, scowling from his recliner. First the putter turned horizontally clockwise, then vertically like a Ferris wheel. By watching his eyebrows, I could always gauge his irritation level. Right then, they were flat and spread past the sides of his eyes. Darkness showed over his glasses. This should have been Daddy’s take-charge hour, his finest patriarchal moment, but no one seemed to care whether Daddy took charge or not.

Neela Potts fluttered across the room, touching paintings and raving on about Mom’s suburban granola. Mom blew ten minutes explaining the recipe, which was nothing but Wheat Chex, Corn Chex, and salty peanuts. Mr. Potts and Ron discussed Houston’s chances against UCLA in some upcoming tournament. Mr. Potts’s fingers pulled at the cuffs of his brown suit. He looked uncomfortable. I think he resented being away from his print shop more than he resented my seduction of Ron.

The grown-ups had maneuvered seating arrangements so Ron was perched on a low stool as far from me as two people could possibly sit in our den—as if his closeness might make me even more pregnant. Or as if we’d each been sent to the corner. When I looked over at Ron, he smiled and nodded. The smile was cute and open. Marrying him might not be such a bad deal, I thought, even if it did mean giving up the country-western fantasy. Ron was such a kid, he was bound to make a good father.

When Daddy’s eyebrows showed completely above his horn-rims, his mouth twitched a couple times and I thought he might swat Neela Potts if she didn’t shut up about the snack stuff. Finally, he cleared his throat with a faraway thunder sound and bounced the putter head off the foot cushion. Everyone turned to hear what he’d decided we were going to do.

Daddy started the meeting by making a big deal out of accepting the blame. “I guess I wasn’t always the father I should have been,” he said, knowing we were all disagreeing in our minds, “but I got so caught up in providing a good home for my wife and children that sometimes I forgot to provide that which is just as important, my time.”

Neela said, “See there,” to Mr. Potts, who probably hadn’t eaten a meal with Ron in six years.

Daddy twirled the putter and frowned at Neela, then he launched into a long, boring explanation about why he failed and how “Grandma’s blood” would always be the family burden, how he hoped the next generation could avoid the taint. The whole spiel ended with “We cannot change the past, we can only learn from it.”

In the silence after Daddy’s speech, Mr. Potts looked at his watch. Mom asked if anyone wanted more Coca-Cola, and Ron held out his glass without a word. I think he was afraid of Daddy’s putter. Personally, I wanted to throw up—and not just because I always wanted to throw up that month. Daddy didn’t blame himself for my condition. He blamed me. And Mickey. In Daddy’s mind, nothing had been wrong before I ran away with Mickey and nothing had been right since. My morals were shot forever.

• • •

It was decided by Daddy, and everyone else agreed, that the day after our graduation, Ron and I would announce we’d been secretly married since a basketball trip to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, back in December. In the meantime, we’d keep our mouths shut. Which was silly because Roxanne knew I was pregnant and if Roxanne knew it might as well be published in the Bellaire High Three Penny Press.

After graduation, the women would throw me a bridal shower so no one would be suspicious, then Ron and I would pack a few bags and shuttle off to Europe for a summer-long honeymoon.

“People won’t gossip if they don’t see you carrying,” Mom said.

Neela patted my knee and murmured, “Maybe you’ll miscarry, dear.” No wonder Mr. Potts couldn’t be around her.

Right before the baby was due, Ron and I were to return to Houston, where we’d be set up in a nice, frugal apartment and Ron would start pre-med at Rice. I was to be allowed one night course a semester. Other than that, I would stay home and do whatever Mom and Neela Potts had been doing since they were my age. Dad offered to support us through the collegiate years, but Mr. Potts looked up from his watch long enough to insist he’d pay half. By constant labor, he’d turned the print shop into a money-maker. You wouldn’t think it by comparing family lifestyles, but the Pottses probably had more cash on hand than the Goodwins.

Neither Ron nor I spoke during the negotiations. Ron sat on the stool, his knees at elbow level, watching with interest. Whenever anyone looked his way, Ron smiled and nodded. I guess he wanted to be agreeable. I went into my nauseous resignation attitude, sighing quietly every time I heard “make the best of a bad situation.”

After our futures were decided, Mom offered cherry-chocolate cake, but Mr. Potts said they had to run, he was needed down at the plant. Mr. Potts called his print shop a plant.

Ron pecked me on the cheek and said he’d pick me up the next day at eight. We were skipping school to drive over to Baton Rouge for the real marriage. Mom would come with us.

After the Pottses filed out, Mom got all ruffled about the untouched cake. She said Mr. Potts wasn’t a very pleasant man, strong words for my mama, but that Neela seemed to have her head on straight. Daddy ignored her. He sat staring at me and twirling the putter slowly with his thumb and two inside fingers. I tried staring back, but I never was Daddy’s match in an eye-contact showdown. Soon I gave up and looked at the floor next to his feet.

After ten minutes or so, Daddy emitted a spine-wrenching, gut-sinking sigh that I can still feel today. Then he stood and walked into the study. I turned on The Carol Burnett Show.

• • •

I make this scene out like Mom and Dad and the Pottses came together old European clan style and decided the future of their children. It wasn’t that way at all. The next fifteen years of existing on automatic can’t be blamed on my parents. Too many neurotics of my generation—namely Loren Paul—go around blaming every damn ingrown toenail on the people who raised them. I don’t buy that.

The day after Loren introduced himself and I walked him into the stop sign, I took Ron to a bowling alley snack bar where we wouldn’t be bothered. None of that gang of social climbers we ran with would be caught dead in a bowling alley. Over Dr Peppers and Twizzlers, I laid out the one element of my sexual education Mickey had skipped—child prevention.

Ron took the news well. He said, “Okay, let’s get married.”

I was glad he said that. We held sticky hands while I explained what I figured Daddy’s reaction would be.

Marriage with honor was automatic, of course. Daddy couldn’t play golf with an unwed mother for a daughter. Mom would have to drop bridge club. The college part I was sure about because I knew Daddy would never let me settle for a man without a degree. His diploma snobbery wouldn’t allow it. I was even pretty certain he would insist on—and pay for—med school.

“Or we can elope and go live somewhere else,” I said to Ron.

“I don’t want to live anywhere else. Marriage and college sounds good to me. Wonder if he’d send me to Rice?” Ron’s only basketball scholarship offers had come from North Texas State and Oral Roberts. His feelings were hurt because Houston didn’t even call his coach.

I squeezed his palms. “If that’s how you want it, that’s how we’ll do it.”

“That’s how I want it.”

So before I drove the Chevy down to Daddy’s office, made an appointment, and broke the news to him—in front of his nurse, by the way—I knew what the repercussions would involve. I’d made my choice. The only detail I hadn’t counted on was the summer in Europe, but that was okay too.

• • •

The process came about basically the way Daddy planned, the only surprise being that I spawned twins. Then, one year into med school, Ron decided he didn’t like death and sickness and he didn’t want to be a doctor. As well as I knew Ron’s every thought, he still blew my socks out the window when he came home and announced he’d chosen dentistry.

“Dentist,” I shrieked quietly so as not to awaken the girls.

Ron gave me his defiant look. “What’s the matter with being a dentist?”

“You’ll smell like spit.”

Daddy didn’t buy the change of plans. He led Ron into the study and closed the door. An hour and a half later they reached a compromise. Ron would become an oral surgeon and I would be a good mother.

• • •

Let’s face it, I don’t thrive on being the object of dependency. Parasites make me nervous. There’s no quicker way for a man to bring on the Crack than by turning all clutchy-needy on me. Knowing that, and looking back, I’m amazed at how much I enjoyed motherhood. Cassie and Connie were my darlings. Still are.

In the hospital, I thought something awful was wrong with me. I couldn’t make a connection between my life and these two sucking, crying, sleeping, shitting objects. I was afraid they would break if I touched them. I thought I was an emotional freak with no maternal instincts, a spider woman.

Then one afternoon when they were a couple of weeks old, Ron drove over to Rice to talk with his faculty adviser and, in something I took as a miracle, both girls fell asleep at the same time. Up until then, I was sure they were taking shifts at keeping me on my feet.

Two blessed hours of rest later, I grogged back to consciousness. Shuffling into the kitchen, I poured a cup of coffee, lit a cigarette, and walked into the girls’ room to see why they weren’t howling. I had on my blue terry-cloth bathrobe and no shoes. The smoke burned my eyes. I’d only taken up the habit the week before and hadn’t quite mastered cigarette technique. Roxanne tried to coach me on blowing it out one corner of my mouth or up at the ceiling, but my exhalations tended to hiss a cloud that floated into my face and stuck.

The girls’ window was open and fuzzy Houston light washed over the room, reflecting off the butterfly mobile Ron’s mother had hung over the cradle. Cassie slept on her side with a fist bunched at her mouth. Wispy auburn hair lay against her cheek. Connie’s eyes were open, maybe focused on the nearest plastic butterfly. I imagined they were anyway.

Connie’s eyes showed a deep, intense green, the same green as on a pack of Doublemint gum. Her hair was white and short, more fuzz than hair. She didn’t have Cassie’s cheekbones and her forehead was wider. Her lips were thicker.

The longer I stood looking down at my babies, the more I realized how different they were from each other. And how different they were from me. For the first time, I saw them as little people, not pets or dolls or even a piece of me that broke loose and escaped. I’d created them, but now I would never be able to think or feel or act for them again. The helpless little creatures were on their own against one hell of a rough world.

“Holy Christ,” I said to Connie and the sleeping Cassie. “This is neat.” And—Bingo—I learned to love.

• • •

Ron wasn’t home much the first ten years. Premed, med, dental school, residency, the process for mounting the ladder of financial security took most of every day. He kissed his women good-bye in the mornings and hello at night. Other than that, the three of us grew up pretty much on our own.

I mean, I was only eighteen and, except for that one three months of glory, I’d never slept away from my parents’ house. I’d never been alone more than a couple of hours in a row and I didn’t know what to do with myself while Ron was out learning to perform root canals.

The girls became my buddies. For the first couple of years, our talks were mostly one-sided.

“Do you think I should smoke pot?” I asked, holding them both upright in the bath basin. “Roxanne says it’s fun. She says all the Volkswagen microbuses on the freeways are full of drug fiends having orgies. I think about that whenever I pass one.”

Cassie cooed and splashed water with her palms. Connie stuck a bar of soap in her mouth.

Soon, however, they learned to give advice and criticism—lots of criticism. Connie was only four years old the first time she told me my shoes didn’t match my earrings.

The girls sure were different from each other. For maybe five years, Connie was crazy about me. As a baby she cried whenever I left her sight. Later, Connie crawled, then skipped from room to room in the apartment, following me as I sorted the clutter, babbling all the while about her dolls and pretend evening gowns, asking me questions I never had answers to. Her curiosity-about-body-parts stage lasted considerably longer than I thought it was supposed to.

Early in her fifth year, Connie suddenly latched onto her daddy. Whatever he said was truth and whatever I said was suspect. Maybe she thought their blondness and large jaws set them apart from Cassie and me, or maybe it was the female version of Oedipalism. Almost overnight I moved from being the rock at the center of her world to the status of hired help.

“Mama was bad to me today,” she said to Ron once. “I think we should fire her.”

She stopped confiding and came to believe I wasn’t as smart as she was. By the time she hit thirteen, Connie was convinced she knew more about makeup and clothes than I did. She was probably right.

All that’s normal in a girl, I guess. At her age I thought my mom was a naive ninny. It hurts, but motherhood always has been a bum rap. I guess it always will be.

Cassie was quieter. We never had any trouble with Cassie. I don’t remember swatting her bottom or making her sit in her room. I must have sometimes, she wasn’t a freak or anything, but I just can’t recall any need for discipline.

Cassie mostly played by herself. She was polite and friendly, more a cooperative little guest than part of a family unit.

She looks like me, dark, thick hair that she kept long way after Connie and all her friends cut back to the short and sassy look. She has high cheekbones and a long neck, almost Indian features. I don’t remember her hands ever moving without a reason. Connie’s hands were always twitching—twisting hair, scratching at itches, drumming rhythms on the table. In all the years I lived with Cassie, I don’t remember her ever scratching herself. Isn’t that odd?

It seemed to take forever, but all the schooling finally started paying off for Ron. We moved from the apartment to a town house and from the town house to a split level. We joined a couple of clubs for rich white people. Ron bought a Buick and a Volvo station wagon. Since I left, he’s moved into an even bigger house and drives an Audi. He bought Wanda a Cadillac.

I look on those last four years we were together as our lessons period. Why can’t upper-middle Americans learn how to do anything without paying someone to teach them? We bought Connie lessons in swimming, tennis, and coming out—whatever that was. Cassie took horseback riding and guitar, a combination I should have been suspicious of right from the start. Ron peer-pressured me into golf, cooking, and bridge, of all things. I should have left Houston after the first session when an old toucheefeelee guy in a woolen bow tie explained how to count points. Mickey would laugh himself into the hospital if I ever told him I took bridge lessons.

Between lessons and driving girls to or from lessons, I drank coffee, beer, or Bloody Marys, depending on the time of day, with Roxanne. The years never much mellowed cousin Roxy. She’d married a crooked state senator and dyed her hair twelve times. Cowboys still called my house and left obscure messages for her like Amarillo Sunday night or Next time I’ll use more rope. Whenever I passed the messages on to Rox, she would laugh that vamp laugh of hers and look pleased.

• • •

We met at the Space Center Mall right after New Year’s for lunch and drinks. Roxanne wore a leather vest with big silver buttons and nothing underneath, a calf-length rayon crepe skirt—royal blue—and cowgirl boots. When she swept through the door, a roomful of expense account bankers and brokerage consultant types choked on their carrot curls. Leading the hostess, Roxanne found us an octagon-shaped table next to three of the squirreliest-looking bankers in the place. The balding three-piece-suit must have been the manager and the other two suck-ups were junior loan officers. When Roxanne laughed the first time, old baldy drained his martini glass and turned the same red as a Coca-Cola can. She has that effect on a lot of businessmen. That’s why she still prefers cowboy butt.

Rox waved across the dining room to the bartender and yoo-hooed. “Tanqueray on ice with a Pearl back, Biff honey.” She turned to me. “What you drinking, Lannie?”

“Double gin gimlet.”

She shouted this as I sat almost alongside the red-domed bank manager. He moved his chair as far from Roxanne and me as he could. Rox twirled as she sat so the audience and I could appreciate the total style.

“You look like a San Antonio hooker,” I said.

Rox threw back her hair, which was a blue-blond that week, and yodeled a laugh that would make a Roto-Rooter man squeamish. “Hail, honey, I’m what San Antonio hookers wish they could look like.”

“How many threatened species died for those boots?”

She lifted her left foot up to tabletop level. “You like ’em? Claibourne bought ’em for me. Tops are coral snake and he claims the toes here to be foreskins off southern sea otters.” She flew into another gale of laughter. “You think they’d git bigger if I squeezed ’em hard?”

“I always knew you’d end up sucking pointy-toed boots.”

The next table was reflected in Roxanne’s vest buttons. Those bankers looked entertained as all hell. One of the junior loan officers pulled his chair around for a better view.

Roxanne rubbed one pale blue fingernail along the ankle stitching. “Claibourne bought ’em ’cause I caught him coming out a whorehouse down on Ladybird Avenue.”

“What were you doing on Ladybird?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she winked. I had no idea what that meant.

With the arrival of alcohol, we cut the spiffy patter and got down to business. I ordered crab crepes, Roxanne had a chicken fried steak, hold the gravy. We both drank what we could. Roxanne topped her lunch off with a sticky, dark dessert called a Stairway to Heaven.

She studied the chocolate gob from several angles, debating between an attack by spoon or fork. Then, all set for the first bite, Roxanne seemed to lose concentration. “We bought a sterling silver saddle yesterday,” she said. “Sucker must weigh in at two-fifty.”

I blew cigarette smoke on her uneaten bite of Stairway to Heaven. “What does a person do with a sterling silver saddle?”

“I’m gonna ride on it in the rodeo parade, if I can find a stud it won’t bow back. We’ll be the hit of the show.”

“Sometimes you two work at being eccentric,” I said.

“Do not.”

“Hasn’t anyone ever told you faking weird is just as pretentious as faking rich?” I think I got her with that one.

“Who you calling pretentious, Miss Racquetball-court-in-the-basement, Miss Swimming-pool-with-Muzak-you-can-hear-underwater? How many Princess phones do those girls of yours need? They only got two ears and one mouth apiece.”

“The swimming pool’s not ours, it’s Daddy’s. And the girls only have one phone each.”

“How about them buttons they push to stick their hairless-balled boyfriends on hold?”

Our bankers about fell off their billfolds from leaning my way, and I was near sick of it. “Roxanne, you’re not being fair. There’s no buttons and there’s no boyfriends. Cassie and Connie are too young for boyfriends.”

She snorted and finally crammed some chocolate goo into her mouth. Roxanne talked as she chewed. “My golden taco was split at their age. Yours would have been too if you weren’t so scared of your daddy.”

She washed the chocolate down with a shot of Tanqueray. “Eccentric my ass, eccentric’s a damn sight better than what you got with the dentist. He pull any fun teeth lately?”

Many conversations with Roxanne wound up with me defending Ron. Come to think of it, many conversations with Ron wound up with me defending Roxanne. None of my loved ones ever could stand each other.

“Ron’s not so boring,” I said. “He just works hard.”

“Radio bingo without a card is more fun than a night out with your husband. He could put the Coast Guard to sleep.”

“I happen to like him.”

“You like stopping at red lights. Tell me, did he discover your right tit yet?”

I’d made the mistake at a luncheon somewhat similar to this one of confessing to Roxanne that Ron had reverted back to the old high-school pattern of necking—all interest in the left breast and none in the right.

Roxanne thought that was a riot. She wanted to buy him a girlie magazine with all the right boobs cut out.

In the reflection of one of the buttons on Roxanne’s vest, I noticed our neighboring-table eavesdroppers frozen over their T-bones, awaiting my answer. Something had to be done.

I said, “He hasn’t touched me since the mastectomy.” Counting one, two, I whirled—caught all three copping tit stares. “What the hell are you looking at?” I shouted.

An intense interest suddenly developed in home fries and cole slaw. Baldy raised his lap napkin to his lips and hid.

I put my head on the table and sobbed. Roxanne, bless her heart, jumped right in and ran with it. Standing, she advanced on Baldy.

“The first time my cousin has the courage to go in public since the operation and you insensitive jackbutts ogle her mangled breasts.” “Mangled breasts” came out as a near scream. “You should be ashamed.”

I faked a stifled cry.

One of them stammered. I couldn’t see which one but I imagined it to be Baldy, as he looked like team leader. “We’re sorry, ma’am. We didn’t mean anything.”

“Sorry don’t pick cotton, buster.”

Pick cotton? All buzz of conversation died around us. I could hear dishes rattling in the kitchen and a slight wheeze from the table in front of Roxanne.

“What are you waterheads going to do about it?” she demanded.

In the silence, I figured the lechers had been punished enough and it was about time to bounce up, singing, “Fooled you, assholes,” but Roxanne held my head down with three of her fingers. Evidently, she had something else in mind.

“Would it be helpful if we paid for your lunch?”

Rox appealed to her audience. “Isn’t this just like a Texas stud? Destroys an innocent woman and thinks he can make it all hunky-dory by throwing money at her.”

The silence was ugly. Finally the first voice said, “What can we do?”

Roxanne tapped my head. “Trot off to the ladies’ room, honey, and gather your shattered pride while I have a talk with these dildos.”

I ran from the room. It’s a good thing fighting laughter looks the same as fighting tears.

When I returned ten minutes later, the bankers were long gone. Roxanne sat in front of two fresh drinks and three hundred dollars in twenties.

“Now we know the price of insulting a woman in Houston,” she said. “Plus I made them promise to send their wives a dozen roses before supper. They better do it too.”

I picked up a stack of twenties. “Didn’t know I was worth that much.”

“Hell, honey, you’re worth way too much to live with a dentist.”

“Somebody else said those exact same words to me this week.”

Roxanne demanded to know who and even offered her half of the three hundred, but, although she pestered me through two more drinks, I kept my mouth shut.

• • •

The who was my old flame, Mickey Thunder. Ever since Patsy Cline died and I lost my virginity, picture postcards had taken to appearing in our mailbox. Once in six months or so, a card arrived from some exotic nightspot like Kamloops, Alberta, or Tin Cup, Mississippi. The pictures were mostly large mockups of local crops with a banner cutline running diagonally across the card declaring whatever town this was as the capital of something—RUSH SPRINGS, OKLAHOMA, WATERMELON CAPITAL OF THE WORLD. PARSONS, KANSAS, BUCKLE OF THE BIBLE BELT. On the backs of these cards, pithy little country-western sayings had been scrawled in Mickey’s drunken handwriting: Never take a rattlesnake by its tail or a woman by her word. Or: When high on LSD, one should not look in a mirror. Or: Fucking with a rubber is like taking a shower in a raincoat.

Less often, maybe once in two years, the phone rang in the middle of the night, always on the hour at one, two, or three, whatever closing time happened to be in whatever state the band was playing that night. The calls began with ridiculous, raving nonsense and ended in a fairly serious come-on.

“Run away from the dentist and meet me at the Holiday Inn in Fairbanks.”

“Is this a marriage proposal?”

“Fuck no, Lannie, I wanta see if you can still suck a golf ball through a garden hose.”

Ron didn’t mind the calls. Mickey was so far beyond belief to him he never dreamed I might hop a flight to Fairbanks and show Mickey what I could still do. Ron took Mickey as wacko comic relief from my distant past that embarrassed me no end. He would tease me at breakfast the next day.

“Can your steelworker still drink beer through a straw up his nose?” Which always disgusted Connie. She couldn’t understand why I didn’t hang up or call the police. Cassie seemed more interested. She would ask where the band was playing and if Lacy had any new albums coming out.

A couple of years after I left Thunder Road, Mickey hooked the band up as backup to a second-level Nashville star named Lacy Rasher. She never was any Patsy Cline, or even Sammi Smith, but every now and then, Lacy cut a catchy tune that managed to place a bullet on the country chart. Her biggest hits were “Raisin’ Cain or Raisin’ Children,” and “Pocatello on My Mind.” Pocatello was a hit mostly because Willie Nelson sang a verse and played a double guitar break with Mickey.

What Ron didn’t know was I secretly bought all Lacy’s albums and played them when no one was around. I’d sprawl across the sofa-love seat combination and listen real close to the steel leads, imagining how Mickey’s face looked as he fingered this run or that riff, how he might chew his gum quicker on the last chorus. I pretended I was the one to his left, closing my eyes and putting words to his beautiful music.

It should have been me. Some might call this jealousy, even though I always denied the emotion, but I thought Lacy wasn’t all that hot. Her low notes came out as big-breasted gravelly groans. Also, I spotted an affected I-Was-Country-When-Country-Wasn’t-Cool attitude flaw in her song selection.

I don’t know why Mickey stayed with her all those years. I would bet, however, that it had something to do with booze and pussy. Mickey’s last call came the week before Roxanne and I kicked butt on the bankers at Space Center Mall.

• • •

“Give me four lines of ‘Wine Over Matter.’”

“Huh.” I glanced at Ron. He’d rolled over on his back at the first ring, but hadn’t quite come conscious.

“Just the chorus, Lannie, Choosie does the verses.”

“Who is this?”

From the other end, his voice rose in a flat tenor, “My mind’s lost all feelin’, the wine keeps it reelin’.”

“Mickey, it’s four o’clock in the morning.”

“Put your teeth in, I’m on the phone.”

“I’m married to an oral surgeon, remember. My teeth are in.”

The sound of a scuffle came over the line, followed by a clonk as if Mickey dropped the phone. “I was talking to someone here. A few people came up to the room after last call and stayed for breakfast. Pretend it’s in harmony, Lana Sue.”

“I’m not singing over the phone to you, Mickey. I’m going to hang up and fall back asleep and tomorrow this’ll be a bad dream.”

For a moment there was silence. Mickey was pouting. “You’re so beautiful when you sing, Lana Sue. It’s when you talk that you turn into a pain.”

“Mickey, don’t be unreasonable. You’re drunk and I’m not. On top of which, my husband is asleep right here next to me. What would he think if he woke up and I was crooning into the telephone.”

“Leave him, Lana Sue. You’re worth too much to live with a dentist.” His voice rose. “Don’t drink that. Felipe Bob pissed in it.” Behind Mickey I heard the sound of glass breaking. Then Mickey’s voice again. “You were snorting on the can and he couldn’t wait.” Then more glass broke.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“The motel room.”

“I know that. What city is the motel room in?”

“Hold on. What’s the name of this place? Look in the tank on the back of the toilet, honey. I bought you a present. Spain.”

“There’s a town named Spain?”

“A country. Lacy’s on a world tour, opening for Charley Pride and Minnie Pearl. We learned ‘Kawliga was a wooden Indian’ in Spanish. You know Spanish for Indian?”

“Indio.”

“Charley and Lacy are going over real good, but there’s a language problem with some of Minnie’s material. You belong to a country club yet, Lannie?”

“I resent that question.”

“Do your car windows go down when you push a button?”

“We have air conditioning. I don’t do windows.”

“You get your hair done by a male fairy hairdresser?”

“I don’t have to put up with this, Mickey. Just because you haven’t changed in sixteen years doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to grow up.” Mickey’s end was silent except for someone coughing her lungs out in the background.

“What’s that?” I asked.

Mickey talked like he was holding his breath. “Moroccan sticky.”

“Oh.”

“Listen, I’m sorry I gave you a hard time. Things have been tough lately and I thought hearing you sing might help me feel better.” I wondered what could possibly happen in Mickey’s life to make things tough.

“Please,” he said.

Ron was asleep on his side, facing me. His mouth was open and one elbow drooped over his head, exposing a blond armpit. He looked like he would sleep through a hurricane.

I sang it as a lullaby:

“My mind’s lost all feelin’

The wine keeps it reelin’

Helpin’ my heart take the fall

And I’m mad as a hatter

It’s wine over matter

But it’s better than nothin’ at all.

How’s that?”

Mickey said, “We’re playing the Houston rodeo next month.”

I don’t know what I expected. “Sounds great,” maybe, or “You haven’t lost a thing.” At least “Thanks.” No comment at all pissed me off.

“You’ve played Houston before.”

“You oughta come out this time. We’ll be at the Bowie Knife all week.”

“My husband doesn’t like country music. I doubt if he’d go.”

“Fuck the dentist and drive yourself over, Lannie.”

“Don’t hold your breath.”

Mickey’s voice came louder again. “You got it on backwards,” he said. “That way gets come in the guy’s ear.”

The phone went dead.

• • •

Hearing Mickey always brought on a certain wistfulness. I don’t really care for wistfulness. It smacks too close to regret and regret is an emotion I don’t abide. After his call, I held the phone in my lap and watched Ron sleep until the off-the-hook helicopter noise sounded. Gently laying the phone in its cradle, I slid from the bed, shrugged on my blue robe, and wandered downstairs to the family room.

Security lights from the street filtered through the humidity and windows to cast an unreal orangish glow on Ron’s tuner. I sat on the carpet cross-legged, moving the dial until Suzie Burkburnett and “Mama” came through the speakers, filling me with that old warm feeling. God, I love country music.

Expecting and alone—again

Mama, please let me come home—again.

My wistfulness wasn’t so much for Mickey himself. Mickey was just an old lover, the first, admittedly, who taught me some fanciful positions, but whose memory had faded into fuzzy mythology. What I missed was the music, the singing.

Onstage with everyone watching, I’d felt like somebody. I could make sad people feel better and lonely people understand they weren’t really alone.

What I did back then mattered. I couldn’t convince myself that Houston mattered. I mean, dozens of people tell you that motherhood is the most important job on earth. And I bought the line the first ten years. I truly believed I was forming future grown-ups. Only now, with the girls impatiently charging into adolescence, my part in the formation process seemed over. I found myself shifted into a nothing-but-a-job stance—maid, cook, chauffeur and, on Saturday nights after the news, weather, and sports, whore. I’d become the woman I made fun of. A thought surfaced: I goddamn wasn’t born to be a stereotype.

For the first time in years—at least since I saw the M*A*S*H where Colonel Blake got killed—tears welled up on the inside corners of my eyes. No one needed me anymore. I felt like eating a candy bar. Squeezing both eyes shut, I doubled my fists and said, “Shit.”

“Mama,” droned to an end, and, after a Midas Muffler commercial, Emmylou came on singing “Play Pretend.” Her voice rose so pure and holy, like running water in the mountains. Eyes still closed, I leaned back on both hands and straightened my legs. I sang quietly, just above a whisper.

“Let’s play pretend, that you still love me

I’ll act as though you will always be here

The kids will believe that we are still happy

If you play pretend, that you always will care.”

In some three-two bar, I think it was Okmulgee, Oklahoma, I remember a boy at the first table behind the dance floor. He looked fourteen or fifteen, I don’t know how he got in the bar so young, but I was sixteen and too young myself so maybe no one cared. This boy had real short, dark hair and blue eyes that never left me the whole first set.

I sang a few Patsy songs, “Walkin’ After Midnight,” “I Fall to Pieces,” “A Poor Man’s Roses,” and did some backups on Choosie’s “My-Wife-Done-Left-and-I’m-Gonna-Get-Drunk” standards. With each song, this boy flashed deeper and deeper into what must have been one hell of a religious experience. His face glowed like lit neon, his eyes practically shot sparks at me, I swear he didn’t breathe for forty-five minutes.

Who knows what really happened? Maybe someone slipped him some redneck version of LSD and the kid saw me as Mother Nature reborn with a microphone in her hand. I was somewhat embarrassed and somewhat flattered. I mean, the whole place was watching this kid watch me.

We finished the set with “Tennessee Waltz” and, as Choosie went into “Pause for the cause, don’t forget your bartenders and waitresses,” I looked over at the boy. Tears streamed like when a rubber washer on an old faucet busts loose. His hairless chin dribbled. The boy’s blue eyes shimmered in a saved-at-the-revival, basking-in-the-Promised-Land look of lost focus.

Mickey came up beside me. “What the hell did you do to that one?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’d think he never saw a twat before.”

“Maybe he likes the way I sing.”

Mickey laughed and spit onstage. We went out to the van for Johnnie Walker Red and when we came back in, the boy had disappeared.

• • •

“What’re you doing, Mama?” Cassie stood by the door in her white flannel nightgown and long hair. For just a moment, I thought I was looking at myself.

“I’m thinking about the old days.”

“When you were in the band?”

“Yes.”

Cassie came in and sat on the edge of the end table with both hands folded in her lap. “Do you miss being in the band?”

“It was a hard life.” I reached over and switched off the radio.

“Do you ever wish you’d stayed on the road?”

“No.” I got off the floor and Cassie and I went to the kitchen in search of ice cream.

• • •

Closer to two months than one later, Roxanne called on a Saturday morning. I was drinking coffee at the breakfast nook, trying to schedule my day. The problem lay in dry cleaning. Cassie’s riding lesson ran from noon to two-thirty, with Connie’s tennis class from two to three. That left me with time for my Cambodian cooking school at twelve-thirty, but only if I drove the south side loop like an amphetamine-crazed astronaut.

However, it didn’t leave time to buy groceries and pick up Ron’s lucky cardigan at the dry cleaners. Ron was supposed to play golf in the morning and I knew both our days would be shot if I didn’t bring home his lucky sweater. It was a sky-blue button-up with a reindeer on the back. Ron wore it because he’d once lucked in an eagle with it on. Also, he thought the sweater looked nonpretentious. Ron spent a lot of time and money on not looking pretentious at the country club.

The phone rang and Roxanne started right in. “He’s in town. What’re you going to do, Lannie?”

“I think I’ll skip cooking class and pick up the dry cleaning. Who’s in town?”

“It’s rodeo week and I drank T’n’Ts at the Bowie Knife last night. Who do you think is in town?”

“Mickey?”

“The old pill popper himself. He wants to see you. I think the boy still carries a lump for you, Lannie, after all these years.”

“Hides it pretty well if he does. I didn’t realize you even knew the Mick.”

Roxanne laughed—a sound like cutting cardboard with a butter knife. “Hell, me and Mickey Thunder go way back. How you figure he knew your address and phone number ever’ time you and the dentist moved?”

“I thought he looked in the phone book.”

“Wrong, my little housewife. Me and Galen drove over in his pickup to two-step last night and during the break, old Mickey walked up, sat at our table—pissed Galen off no end—and asked all about you. Seemed real interested in what the years have done to your body.”

“How dare you call me a housewife?”

Roxanne shrieked again. “Which one of us is nursing a hangover and swollen thighs and which one of us can’t decide if she ought to skip cooking class to pick up the dry cleaning?”

“Fuck yourself, Roxanne.”

• • •

Roxanne’s housewife crack pissed me off so much I didn’t pick up the dry cleaning or make Cambodian cooking school. Instead, I pulled into a Tex-Mex drive-in on Hanover Boulevard and ate three of the greasiest enchiladas in Houston. The carhop had a pimple on her neck as big as Ron’s class ring.

On the way to the stables, I daydreamed about hot fudge and creamed marshmallows on graham crackers. My sugar binges often begin as dessert fantasies. The daydream should have sounded a Look out, Lana Sue alarm in my head, but I doubt if it did.

Cassie stood by the driveway in her riding boots and Western wear jacket. Her hair was pulled back in a pony tail so she looked like a fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet.

“A man was looking for you,” Cassie said.

“What man?”

“There he is.”

Mickey Thunder stepped from behind a hand-painted blue-panel truck with Tennessee plates. “Hi, Lana Sue.”

It’s odd to go around expecting something every day for years and then all of a sudden it happens. I didn’t feel anything. “Hi, Mick.” I opened the door but didn’t get out.

He held out his hands. “Aren’t you going to give your old buddy a squeeze?”

“I don’t know.” We stared at each other a moment. The years hadn’t changed Mickey a bit. Same gray skin stretched over the same knobby skull. Same straight, combed-over-his-ears hair. If Mickey had gained any weight, I couldn’t see where. He was still the boy who all that lifetime ago had asked me if I was a cocktease.

“Your cousin told me you’d be here.”

“Sweet of her to do that.” I looked at Cassie. She stood by the front bumper, watching with no expression on her face—as if Mickey and I were on a television set.

I motioned in her direction. “This is my daughter, Cassie. Cassie, this is Michael Rossitelli.”

“Call me Mickey.”

“Mom’s told me about you.”

Mickey’s eyes stayed on mine. “Don’t believe anything she said.”

I sat with both hands on the wheel, considering a way to deal with events. There didn’t seem to be any middle ground between ignoring him and hustling him into the nearest motel. I wasn’t sure which I wanted, but Cassie standing next to the car appeared to pre-answer the question.

Mickey came up a step and rested one hand on top of my door. “Lacy’s got throat cancer.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Too many cigarettes, I guess. Tonight’s her last gig. Monday, the doctors take her voice box out.”

“Poor woman.” I wasn’t thinking poor woman. I was thinking, What in hell does this have to do with me?

“She’ll be okay. A senator over in Louisiana’s been after her to marry him for years. Now’s his chance.”

“It’s still awful.”

Mickey nodded a couple of times. He put his other hand on my door and stared down at me. “We need us a singer, Lana Sue.”

My heart did a four-inch drop. The unfaced dilemma of my married life was about to be faced. “So?”

There it was. I looked at Cassie, trying to guess what she thought of the situation. “I’m too old for Nashville.”

“We’re not going back to Nashville. Choosie and me’re gonna stick with Western honky-tonks from now on. No more rhinestones and record contracts bullshit, Lana Sue. It’ll be just like it was when you were with us before.”

I thought about before, the six bodies in a bed and the diet of soft drinks and candy bars. That might have been fine for a high-school junior, but I was a grown-up now. I’d become accustomed to clean bathrooms and sleep every night.

“You didn’t need a girl singer before me. Why not go all the way back to the old days?”

Mickey shook his head. “Choosie’s about whiskied his voice to death, and none of the new Bobs can sing for shit. You know how I am with a microphone. Besides, all our material goes with a girl singer. I kind of got used to it after you.”

I didn’t say anything for a while. The only ambition I’d ever had was to sing country music. But the idea of running out on Ron and the girls was ridiculous. I’d never for a moment thought of leaving Ron. Who’d fix his after-work Cape Cods? Not to mention what Daddy’d do if I took off with Mickey again. And it probably wouldn’t last any longer this time than it had in 1963. Did I want to give up everything we’d worked to build for another three-month fling at the grubby life?

“No,” I said.

“Lana Sue.”

“No. Get in the car, Cassie.”

“You want to grow old eating lunch at the country club and picking new drapes for the den? This is your chance not to die bored.”

“Get in the car, Cassie.” I stared into Mickey’s eyes. His irises had picked up some gray flecks over the years. “Having a home and family and some money doesn’t make a person bored.”

“Does you.”

“Let loose of my door. Cassie, are you getting in the car or not?” She shrugged and moved around to the passenger side.

“At least come hear us tonight. You owe yourself to see what you’re giving up.”

“I’m giving up lice, hunger, alcoholism, and sex with a child seducer.”

“Who said anything about sex. I’m offering you a job.”

“Bullshit.”

Our eyes locked in a battle of furies. I was pissed. The bastard didn’t want me. He wanted to save the band the trouble of finding a new singer. There’d be sex all right. I knew Mickey well enough to count on us sleeping together as a fringe benefit, but to Mickey, I was an interchangeable clit. He’d sleep with whatever female singer the band hired.

“I’m going home to fix Ron’s supper.”

Mickey released my door. “I’ll leave your name with the guy up front. They’ll let you in without a cover.”

“I can pay the damn cover charge.”

• • •

The part about fixing Ron’s supper was a lie. He ate dinner that night at the Holiday Inn with three other doctors who wanted him to invest in a Biscuitville franchise in Beaumont. They told him it was a colored gold mine. After dinner, Ron called to say he was watching a basketball game in the lounge and I shouldn’t wait up.

“Did you pick up my sweater?”

“Sorry. I’ll drive over as soon as I feed the girls.”

“You know I need my sweater.”

“I’ll have it tonight.”

A little after eight, I knocked on the girls’ doors to tell them I was going after the dry cleaning and I might stop by Roxanne’s for a visit. Connie ignored me, an attitude she’d adopted for almost a week since I told her she couldn’t sail on a boat with a college kid. As soon as I said no and we went through the “all the other girls get to” routine, Connie ran to Ron, who gave me half-assed backup.

“I don’t see why you shouldn’t but your mom said no and she’s the boss.”

At Cassie’s door, I hesitated a moment before knocking. She’d know what I was really up to, and I’d know she knew. What if Cassie called me a liar to my face? I sure as hell couldn’t deny it.

Cassie lay sprawled across her bed, watching a portable TV and reading a Judy Blume book during the commercials. She had on a black T-shirt that said BUY A HORSE across the back in red letters.

On the television, a woman with two heads and four arms spoke to an effeminate robot. “What’s this?” I asked.

“New show called Quark. It’s not very good.” The robot scooted across the room, bumped into a doorframe, and fell on its side, beeping. The laugh track thought this was hilarious.

“I’m going out for a while. To pick up Dad’s sweater and see Roxanne. Can I bring you anything?”

Cassie looked up at me and smiled. “No, thanks, tell Roxie I said hey.”

“Sure.”

As I left the room, Cassie spoke again. “Mom. You’re going to be okay.”

I turned back. Cassie’s eyes were on the woman with two heads, not watching me. “Thanks,” I said.

“No sweat.”

• • •

I paid the cover on the notion that it wouldn’t do to let anyone know I’d been there in case I changed my mind and fled. Might as well have used my connections, though, because Choosie spotted me before my eyes even adjusted to the bar light. He came scrambling over, hugging and leering, carrying on in the been-too-long vein.

“My God, Lannie, you’re beautiful as ever.” He stuck a finger in my ribs. “See you’ve filled out some. You was too skinny before.”

“Didn’t you have teeth the last time we met?”

Choosie grinned, showing off two banks of brown, liver-spotted gums. “Yep. I sing better without ’em. Gives me resonance.” Choosie had lost more than his teeth. If Mickey hadn’t aged a day in sixteen years, Choosie’d grown old for the both of them. By my figuring, he couldn’t have been much over forty, but sagging, bleached-out skin and a gray to balding head made him look sixty. His posture was more in the eighty range.

“You must have processed a lot of Dr Pepper and Jack Black since I left the band, Choosie. You look pickled.”

He laughed and launched into a “same old Lana Sue” routine. I think he was under orders to be lovable so I’d rejoin the band. In the old days, a crack like that would have been answered with spit down my jeans leg.

“Not a big crowd,” I said, checking out the general mill of cowboys and beauty-operator types grouped around two pool tables and a Space Invaders game.

“Early yet,” Choosie said. “Rodeo ain’t done for an hour. They’ll be crammed in the rafters by midnight.”

He led me by the hand up front to a round table surrounded by band members and two or three Houston snuff queens. An enormous woman with chins to her chest and boobs to her belt buckle scowled as if I’d been committing unnatural acts with her boyfriend.

I leaned to Choosie. “You always liked ’em big, but this is bizarre.”

He grinned, showing gums again. “You should see her naked.”

Mickey stood and pulled a chair over for me. “Real glad you made it, Lana Sue. I was afraid we lost out. What you drinking?” He had on a white T-shirt with a picture of Patsy on the front.

“I’ll take a rusty nail.”

A cocktail waitress who’d appeared at my elbow laughed at me. “Honey, we sell whiskey, scotch, or gin, on the rocks, with water, or Coca-Cola. Or beer. We don’t serve pansy drinks.”

“You got Jim Beam?”

“You bet.”

“Pour me some in a glass.”

I sat between Mickey and Choosie’s fat queen. Lacy Rasher slumped on Mickey’s other side with her head down on her folded arms.

“Is she drunk or crying?” I asked Mickey.

“Which would you be in her situation?”

He introduced me around to the band members, none of whose names fit the Bob game very well. “Warren Bob, Charlie Bob, and Felipe Bob, meet Lana Sue. She might be our singer next week.”

At that, Lacy’s head came up and she stared through unfocused eyes and stringy hair. “Already replaced me, you bastard.”

Mickey put his hands over hers. “Life’s gotta go on for the band, Lacy. You know that.”

“Bastard.” She leaned across Mickey and brought her face six inches from mine. Her breath was awful, her eyes frightening. Lacy studied me for thirty seconds. I didn’t know how to come on. Normally, I would have said, “You push and I’ll shove, bitch,” but the woman had cancer. I could hardly blame her for hating me.

Finally she twisted to look up at Mickey. “She’s a dog. An old woman. What you replacing me with an old woman for?”

“There’s no call to take your problem out on Lana Sue.”

Lacy shook her head wildly. “I don’t have no problem. You got the problem.” She hiccuped. “You guys’ll fall apart without me. I can do fine without you.”

Lacy fell back in her chair. “Whole damn band’ll starve six weeks after I’m dead.”

“You aren’t gonna die.”

She shook her head again. Her long hair swung like ropes. “Might as well. Gimme another drink.”

Mickey held her glass under the table and poured a couple inches of Yukon Jack from a bottle. She sucked it down like a baby on a nipple. No one at the table except me would look at her. The guys mostly stared into their drinks, embarrassed. The women faked oblivion. Or maybe they weren’t faking. Hell, I don’t know.

When my Beam came, Mickey paid the waitress. So many names and stupid sayings were carved on the table that I had trouble finding a flat place to set my glass. The tables nearest the stage began to fill as people filtered down from the long bar. I had no trouble separating the construction workers turned Saturday night cowboy from the authentic rodeo circuit followers. The rodeo cowboys showed more confidence in their cowboyism. They didn’t look at each other. Most limped and the inseams of their Levi’s didn’t rub. No one in the place looked like he actually worked with cows.

I felt shy around Mickey all of a sudden and he seemed to feel the same way about me. I don’t know what we expected, the years not to matter or something along those lines, I guess. But things had changed. I was playing at being real folks now. My cowgirl shirt came from Neiman-Marcus. I bought my jeans prefaded.

“Can Lacy still sing?” I asked.

Mickey raised a Lone Star to his thin lips. “Sure, why not?”

“How can she perform in her condition?”

“Voice box don’t come out till Monday. She’ll do fine tonight.”

“She’s too drunk to walk.”

Mickey glanced at Lacy next to him. Her head was back and tears dribbed down her cheekbones, leaving little trails of mascara. “She don’t have to walk to sing. Lacy’s a pro. She’s not gonna screw up her last gig.”

Lacy mumbled something I didn’t hear as her head fell to one side. She didn’t look anything like the beautiful, peppy woman in tight pants and the sequined top who stood next to Mickey on her last album cover.

“’Bout time,” Felipe Bob said. Nobody moved.

Mickey finished off his beer and reached over for a swig off Lacy’s Yukon. “You coming to Lubbock?”

“What’s in Lubbock?”

“Next job. We open Monday in a county-line club out in the boonies somewhere. Won’t be much fun without you.”

“That’s a nice thing to say.”

Mickey’s skull face turned to me. “You coming?”

“No.”

His long fingers tightened on Lacy’s glass. She moaned once and burped like she was fixing to dry-heave. “Why come here tonight?” Mickey asked.

“I was curious. All those years I’ve remembered our time together in a certain way, and I wondered if that way was real or I’d built up a romantic sham.”

“So which is it?”

My eyes circled the table from Lacy to the big woman on my left. “Seems kind of desperate to me.”

One of Lacy’s eyes opened. She muttered, “You can’t take my place in his pants either.”

Mickey touched one of her hands. “Time to work, hon. Go find the can and make yourself pretty.”

Choosie’s friend helped Lacy out of her chair and led her off to the bathroom. As Lacy stumbled away from the table, the fat queen looked back at me and snarled. I stuck out my tongue.

Mickey play-poked me in the shoulder. “Coulda been great,” he said. “We could of blazed a country-western trail they’d sing about for a hundred years.

I blinked a couple of times. “I know, Mickey. But I’d rather be happy and secure than famous and wasted.”

“Your choice.” He stood up. I’d forgotten how much taller Mickey was than Ron. “Mount up, boys. Let’s take her out with class.”

The guys straggled onstage, picking up guitars and drumsticks, flipping on amps. They’d changed the order since my days. Mickey and Choosie still held down the sides, but Lacy’s vocal mike was in the center between the bass and lead guitars. Mickey looked right at home behind his steel, stuffing his mouth with gum. He’d mounted a circular whiskey-glass holder off the tuning end of the board. Other than that, he was doing things exactly as he’d done them that New Year’s Eve so long ago. I could have walked onstage and been sixteen again.

I thought about how it would feel to be sixteen again—to stand up there and sing through the smoke and barroom odors of sweat and beer. I thought about my girls. They didn’t really need me anymore. Lord knows, Ron could get by fine without me, but if I jumped ship and abandoned Cassie and Connie now, wouldn’t that be just cause for long-term mother hatred? I’d been through way too much trouble the last fourteen years to grow old hated by my own children.

Connie was on the edge already. I hoped she might outgrow the resentment someday, but leaving her daddy would pretty much seal off that idea. What would Cassie think? I never knew what Cassie was going to think about anything.

Choosie’s girlfriend flopped back into her chair.

“How’s she doing?” someone asked.

“She’ll be fine.”

The band broke into a fast four-beat rhythm as Choosie stepped up to his microphone. “I’d like to welcome you-all here to the Bowie Knife Saloon and thank you for coming out. I know we’re all gonna have an ass-kicking, gut-ripping good time tonight.”

A couple of construction-worker cowboys whooped. I saw Lacy moving through the crowd. Her hair had been brushed and her makeup fixed. She appeared to be bouncing off the balls of her feet.

Choosie continued as the music wound behind him. “Right now, I’d like you all to put your hands together and give a big Houston welcome to Nashville recording artist Lacy Rasher!”

Lacy hopped onstage, grabbed the microphone with her right hand, and pulled it off the mike stand. “Let’s party.”

More cowboys, real and drugstore, hollered back as Lacy kicked into “Setting the Woods on Fire.”

She was beautiful. Energetic, alive, her eyes gleamed with excitement. She grinned at Mickey, clowned with Choosie on his breaks, directed the drummer by dancing. Leaning out from the stage, she winked at a star-struck kid at the next table over from us.

Lacy was a true professional. I played at being a singer—dreamed, pretended. I knew just how I would handle the adoration, how I would keep my down-home simple roots and not lose touch with the little people, what I would say when I accepted the Female Country Singer of the Year Award. But Lacy knew the job.

The fat girl nudged me with the mouth of a Lone Star. “Let’s see you do that, cunt.”

I drained my Beam and left.

• • •

The drive home found me enmeshed in one of those soul-searching self-examinations that I hate so much. Poets, artists, and Loren types love to hang around and wonder at themselves. Once a week Loren and I drive to town for breakfast and he’ll order something like French toast. Then the rest of the morning while I’m buying groceries and returning library books, he clams up inside himself and explores the motivation behind choosing French toast instead of eggs.

“Mom always served eggs for breakfast. Could this be a reaction against her influence?”

I’ll answer, “Zip your fly and decide what you want for dinner tomorrow,” which brings on a whole new round of choice appraisals. The weeks before Loren staggered into the mountains in search of his pal, God, I could hardly get him dressed in the morning.

“Do you think people will realize my white socks symbolize a purity of spirit, or should I wear black? The black ones are clean.”

“Jesus Christ, Loren, nobody cares.”

The night I drove across Houston after leaving Mickey at the Bowie Knife, I found myself facing all kinds of disgusting truths, such as—was I capable of sacrificing my own potential for the good of my family? Or was this entire personal growth crisis nothing but an excuse for getting hold of Mickey’s dick again?

The future loomed as a fork in the freeway with terrible as the exit and boring as the straightaway. I could do something remarkably stupid and immature—run away to the honky-tonks—or I could resign myself to a predictable existence—stay home. Both choices turned my stomach.

What was this predictable existence anyway? Four or five years of fighting with the girls, then the heartbreak of losing them. God knows how many years of being Ron’s support system—unappreciated, unfulfilled, the whole feminist group therapy rap. Maybe I’d numb myself eventually. I could ease into more frequent drunks, go off on more sugar binges. The pain fucks might increase to semiannual, then seasonal. Maybe someday I’d get so bored I’d have an affair with a young hell-raiser. I could follow in Roxanne’s footsteps.

Tawdry…trite…depressing…a fucking mess of a future. How had I got myself into a neglected housewife syndrome? Why hadn’t I faced it before?

This story isn’t even close to original. I think Grandma Moses wrote the first autobiographical novel of a woman screaming for her identity in an unhearing family. Finally she breaks loose, “I must find myself,” and shocks the shit out of Hubby and the thoughtless children. The kids moan in terror, “If only we’d given her room to grow.” The husband cries, “I should have bought her that kiln,” and the wife goes off to a series of bad love affairs with raunchy yet vibrant men and finally finds happiness with a rock who cares.

Or doesn’t find happiness. The plot changed about 1979.

• • •

Somewhere in here I ran a red light on Buzz Aldrin Drive and almost died when a black Cadillac with pimp windows barreled through and missed my front end. Scared the pee out of myself. A crash would have solved the immediate quandary, but I enjoyed being alive. Either one of my bad choices beat catatonic or dead.

Time to pay attention, I thought, turning on the radio and rolling down the windows. The night air was cool and smelled like bad milk. Running away might at least get me to a place where mold didn’t grow on the bedroom walls.

That sounded nice for a second until I remembered there were no bedrooms where Mickey traveled. Only motel rooms and Howard Johnson food. I wondered if Ron and the girls would let me come home between gigs. Maybe there was no such thing as between gigs. Maybe the band never left the road. Did Mickey travel with everything he owned, or was there an apartment somewhere? Maybe even a house? Maybe even a wife?

I was contemplating leaving my family for this man and I didn’t even know whether or not he was married. Sorry damn state of affairs if you asked me.

• • •

Ron’s car sat parked in the driveway when I pulled up to the house. That wasn’t a good sign. He might ask questions. Roxanne could have called while I was supposedly with her and blown my cover, although, at the moment, I didn’t particularly care if my cover was blown. Many years of accounting for my whereabouts was beginning to chafe my so-called free spirit.

To hell with him. If Ron gave me any sass, I decided to turn snitty. No man—not even Daddy—has ever out self-righteoused Lana Sue Potts.

All three were in the den when I came through from the kitchen. At the sight of me, Connie turned off the TV and flounced from the room. I pretended not to notice.

“So, do we own a Biscuitville?”

Ron stood at his portable Sears Roebuck bar, mixing himself a vodka and cranberry juice. His big jaw jutted in that stubborn look that came over him whenever the team he bet on lost a ball game. “Maybe. Where have you been?”

“Out.” I moved over and kissed Cassie on the cheek. She glanced up from her book and smiled, then looked back down.

Ron held his drink under the automatic ice dispenser until a couple of cubes plopped out and splashed cranberry on his hand. “Hope you didn’t go anywhere public dressed like that.”

I looked down at my Neiman-Marcus cowgirl shirt and designer blue jeans. At the Bowie Knife, I’d felt overdressed, and now I was being called slobby. “What’s the matter with the way I’m dressed?”

“You look like a shitkicker.”

Stomach muscles tightened, my scalp itched. Something was on the edge of happening and I was powerless to slow it down—even if I wanted to. “Maybe I am a shitkicker. Want to try me?”

Cassie’s head came back up, her eyes studying my face. She knew Ron and I were courting disaster. I knew it also. Only Ron seemed lost in left field, oblivious to the possibilities.

“I didn’t mean anything negative,” he said. “I just wouldn’t want you running into any of your friends dressed in your cowgirl costume.”

It would be easy here to claim that I walked through the door and Ron came on nasty with no instigation. I could, with some success, blame his timing for our outcome, but that would be the easy way out. I know earlier I said leaving a man is ninety percent timing. However, in the case of Ron, timing doesn’t answer all the riddles. What I think is, subconsciously, unconsciously, whatever the shrinks call it these days, I made my choice back on Buzz Aldrin Drive in one of those value-system-crystallization-in-the-face-of-death numbers. The Cadillac missed me, I cheated death, saw the way of the future, and went home looking for an excuse to do what I wanted.

Who knows if I would have pulled things off without Ron’s help? I have no idea what the outcome would have been if he hadn’t insulted me, but would-have-beens don’t mean shit because he did.

“You get my sweater?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“I forgot. Mind if I fix a drink?” Ron stared at me while I poured an inch of Jim Beam into a brandy snifter.

“You forgot my golf sweater?”

“Guess you’ll have to wear another one.”

“How could you forget it?”

I looked him in the eye. “It wasn’t important to me.”

Ron watched while I slugged down my Beam. Then he spit out the only real insult he’d leveled at me since junior high. “You aren’t worth much these days, are you?”

I said, “Crack.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Means I’m driving to Lubbock.”

• • •

Three and a half, going on four, years later I was living in Nashville when Ron called. It must have been early fall because I remember leaves in our backyard. Sycamore, oak, and a few elms ran down the hill to a little ditch creek with a fence and a cemetery on the other side. I remember standing on the back screened porch, chain smoking and watching the leaves most of the afternoon. They were pretty. I liked the way the flatness of the reds and yellows gave the yard a balanced, artsy look.

After a couple of scotches, the scene struck me as beautifully ironic in an American dream sort of way—that all these thousands of slick scammers and cynical pragmatists had chosen such a beautiful setting to work their cash flow magic.

Ace and I had been married over two years. He’d called earlier that afternoon to say he would be working late at the studio. I didn’t believe him, but what depressed me was that I didn’t care whether I believed him or not. At some point since our marriage, I’d adopted the Nashville attitude that the sex organs are nothing but business tools like the telephone and the Visa card, and I could hardly expect Ace to penalize his career for my security.

After I left Mickey in Utah things turned out about the way he predicted—which pisses me off. I can’t stand Mickey thinking he knows everything about everything. Loren’s the same way. I always seem to wind up with smartasses.

Ace wooed me away from Mickey and took me off to Nashville, where we fooled around a few months and came out with an album. The album zoomed to number sixty-four on the Billboard Country 100 and stayed there for two weeks, stuck between George Jones on the backside and Jerry Reed on the front. I did a couple guest shots on Pop! Goes the Country and the Hank Thompson Ranch Show, then my album sank into the Kmart cut-rate bin and no one called anymore.

Somewhere in there, for stability or legitimacy or something—hell, I’ll never figure out why I pulled this one—I married Ace Roe. This was after he’d started that epileptic-fit-when-I-didn’t-feel-like-sucking-him-off-business. Maybe Daddy’s disease got me, or Grandma’s blood. Maybe I just screwed up. Anyway, I was right back where I started—married, ignored, and frustrated.

I increased my scotch drinking and took four hot baths a day. I gained fifteen pounds hanging around the Kroger’s bakery. Worst of all, I initiated a number of pain fucks with studio steel players. Nothing to compare with Ace’s scorecard, but plenty enough to trash out my self-regard.

Along about the time Ron called, the idea was dawning that I’d messed up my life. The experiment of living the future for myself had lost its charm.

• • •

I answered on the second ring.

“Fucking yourself and me up is one thing, but you’ve gone too far this time.”

“Hi, Ron, how’s my babies?”

“Your voice sounds different, have you been drinking?”

“Of course I’ve been drinking. Did you call for a reason or simply to tell me I’ve fucked up our lives?”

I listened to his breathing a moment, then Ron said, “Your friend kidnapped Cassie.”

Pictures of baby rapers and white slave traders flashed through my mind. “What do you mean, kidnapped?”

“Lana Sue, you are poison, you know that? And your lover Mickey is poison also. I can’t believe what the two of you do to people.”

“Back up. Mickey kidnapped my daughter? Is that what you’re saying?”

“You know damn well that’s what I’m saying. I’d bet everything I own you were in on it.” He was crying.

I thought a minute. I hadn’t talked to Cassie since her birthday in August. Back then she’d sounded fine. She was excited about enrolling at SMU. She told me she’d learned some new songs on her guitar.

“Ron, did Mickey really kidnap her or did Cassie run away?”

“What’s the difference? My insides crawl when I think about that slime with my baby girl. And she dropped out of school. Your daddy’s going to have your hide for this one, Lana Sue.”

I shouted at the phone. “I didn’t do anything!”

“You left.”

I reached for the scotch bottle, but changed my mind. “Details, Ron. How long’s she been gone?”

Audibly, Ron pulled himself together. “I got a letter today postmarked Denver, Colorado. Says she dropped out of school last week and joined the band. She says the school will refund part of her tuition and dorm fees back to me.” Ron’s voice was bitter. “She says she has to find herself.”

How often had I used finding myself as an excuse to hurt people who loved me? “I wonder if Cassie’s doing this to get back at me for leaving her?”

“More likely Mickey’s doing it to get back at you for leaving him.” That thought caused some grief. Mickey could be a mean fucker if he got his ass up, and ravaging my daughter would be just his idea of perfect revenge.

“Did she say anything to Connie before she left?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Connie’s so disgusted she pretends neither one of you exists. I can’t get her to talk about anything.”

I looked through the window at the softening late afternoon sky and the dying leaves. Outside was so pretty and inside was such a disappointment. I considered the people I had loved so far in my life. One daughter hates me, the other is ruining herself by following in my footsteps, my first husband blames me for every problem anyone has, my one true friend and lover is screwing my baby daughter to spite me, my present husband is sticking it to every would-be singer in Nashville—all of this caused by my good intentions. Shit, all of a sudden life was ugly.

“Are they still in Denver?” I asked.

“How the hell should I know? You traveled that circuit, you tell me.”

“If they’re in Denver, they’ll be playing at the Powder Keg. It’s not bad compared to some of Mickey’s dives.”

“I’m glad our daughter’s being gang-banged in a clean bar.”

“Ron, there’s no call for that. I’ll fly out tonight and get her. You’ll have your daughter back by tomorrow afternoon.”

Ron made a growl-laugh angry sound. “Don’t fuck up again, Lana Sue.”

• • •

The Powder Keg in Denver is the junction where the country in country-western connects with the western. The dancers make the difference. From the Powder Keg to northern California, you mainly see western swing dancing. The couples twirl and dip like jitterbuggers with spot-welded hips. East of Denver, it’s all two-step—a never-ending, never-varying circle of shufflers with their hands placed in wrestling holds. For me, most two-step has all the spontaneity of a McDonald’s hamburger, but that may just be another anti-East Coast prejudice I picked up from Mickey.

The place is definitely big. It used to be a National Guard armory or something. The walls are made from large stones mortared together like in a rock fireplace. A long bar stretches across the back and doglegs down the east side to a dance floor about half the size of a basketball court. Strains of “San Antonio Rose” drifted from the stage as I came through the door and made a beeline for the back bar. I could hear Choosie’s voice crackling on the high notes.

Cassie stood dead center in Lacy’s old position. They had her dressed up real nice—a calf-length skirt that showed off her tan boots and a white ruffled blouse with a jacket that matched the skirt. Her hair hung down on both sides of her shoulders, giving Cassie this pure-ranch-girl-come-to-Sunday-school look. She held her Martin kind of high and straight parallel to the stage. I was surprised how good the band sounded with an extra rhythm guitar. The mix was deeper, fuller, her chording set Choosie’s fiddle free to soar in and out of the melody line.

I ordered a double scotch with a shot of Drambuie on the side. The plan was to hang back, mix myself rusty nails, and listen awhile—work on my position in the upcoming confrontation. The counterkidnapping would not be easy. My best bet was to act ungodly angry at somebody, but who? I could hardly come on self-righteously outraged at Cassie because I’d committed the same crime myself. Twice. At least she had the sense to wait until after her eighteenth birthday. I was still statutory when Mickey ripped up my hymen. Daddy could have made things ugly if he hadn’t been too embarrassed to haul me into court.

It struck me that if anyone involved was behaving like a shit, it had to be my old pal Mickey Thunder. Hiring and sleeping with my own daughter was a dirty trick, reeking of ulterior, vengeful motives. I knew what a pervert Mickey could be in bed and he knew I knew. That was what rankled. He was using and abusing my baby daughter just to goose my imagination and screw me up—the asshole.

“San Antonio Rose” ended and after a few seconds of guitar tuning, Cassie began the first line of “Echo of an Old Man’s Last Ride.”

I’m gonna ride me a moonbeam, someday, gonna take it to places and scenes faraway.

Her voice startled me. When had it gotten so mature?

Gonna rope me a comet and shoot me a star

Gonna ride me a moonbeam someday.

Cassie’s voice was a little deeper than mine, not so strong on the high notes, but her midrange rang out true and perfect, damn remarkable for a girl her age.

More than her beautiful voice, I was amazed by Cassie’s face as she sang. Her face was alert, flushed with excitement. Her eyes bubbled with life-force.

She had always been such a calm little girl. Even at three or four years old, Cassie’s self-control frightened me. All her childhood, she gave the impression of peacefully waiting for something. Never unhappy, yet never happy, she didn’t seem involved in her life. Now she was transformed. Whatever she’d been waiting for had come.

Joy practically exploded from Cassie’s face. Not only was she involved in the moment, she was also damn good. I couldn’t believe that was my daughter on the stage, my little girl. She was five times better than I’d been at her age and twice as good as I was now. How had Mickey known? Or had he known?

At the end of the first verse, Cassie looked over at Mickey and smiled. He smiled back and nodded.

Now the next morning they found him, sitting under a tree

With his saddle and his rope by his side

His Colt .45 in his big gnarled hand

Was the echo of an old man’s last ride.

So much for dragging Cassie back to Texas. She was complete, fulfilled, her face when she smiled at Mickey glowed with smitten softness. She had, at least for the moment, pulled off what I’d been scrambling after for nearly twenty years—meaningful happiness. The pleasant life. I had no right, in fact, no desire, to threaten that.

Neither Ron nor Daddy would ever understand. For them, sucking Mickey’s crank and performing in smoky honky-tonks was a terrible fate no matter how much joy it brought. I’d taken my shot at that route and failed, but I sure couldn’t hold it against my daughter for wanting her own chance.

As the song ended, the crowd applauded and whistled. Cassie blushed and smiled and looked eighteen again. She said, “Thank you,” into the microphone. I knew just how she felt.

Mickey leaned toward her, saying something. Cassie covered the mike with one hand and said something back to him. She turned to the drummer, then back to the audience.

“This next song is an old classic the boys had a hit with years ago, but I just learned it yesterday, so ya’ll will have to bear with me.” A few people called encouragement. Cassie smiled and shook her hair back. “I’d like to dedicate this song to my dear old mama, wherever she may be and whoever she may be with. It’s called ‘Raising Cain or Raising Babies.’”

If I could prove that Mickey saw me back at the bar and put her up to that one, I’d shoot the bastard. Wherever she may be and whoever she may be with. Jesus. The words are even worse than the title.

I turned to the bar in disgust. Cassie could outsing her mother and look more beautiful and sleep with my old boyfriend, but she didn’t have to be so damn honest about the whole thing.

“You look dejected,” the guy sitting next to me said.

I hadn’t noticed him before. He was skinny and wore glasses. His clothes looked slept in.

“I am dejected. That’s my daughter singing that song.”

He squinted at the stage. “You should be proud of her.”

“She ran away from home. The tall sucker on the pedal steel is my old boyfriend and her new one. You ever hear anything so sick?”

“My son disappeared and my wife killed herself.”

I turned from my drink and stared at him. The guy looked vaguely familiar, like someone I’d known long ago. I liked his curly hair. “That’s awful. I’m so sorry, I must sound terrible complaining about my daughter.”

He watched me in the mirror behind the bar. “I finished a book about them today. I don’t know what to do next.”

I felt almost embarrassed. My pain over Ace and Cassie and Mickey had me so worked up I’d forgotten that I still had them on some level or another. “Raising Cain or Raising Babies” might be an insult, but Cassie’s voice was beautiful and Cassie was beautiful. I was proud of her.

“Listen,” I said to the guy, “you want to go somewhere quieter and have a drink?”