It WASN’T THAT I forgot when Cinco de Mayo was—the Fifth of May—because that was Drew’s birthday. The big Four-Oh that he’d feared enduring at Mary Virginia’s hands—doing something outrageous, something extravagant being an obligatory celebration in her crowd. Fly your original wedding party to Acapulco, have all the furniture moved to a new house, have an entire rodeo catered in the hill country. I knew because the younger Mrs. Dr. Croft, who had already crossed that bridge, used to talk about it, and because the papers there and here always carried features on the most novel parties.
What a relief that we were going to be together and out in public with all our kids instead. That was enough of a present, it seemed to me, although I tucked what I’d got him, courtesy of the girls, in a cotton shoulder bag. I was as excited as a girl on her first date, or at least her first date with both sets of children invited along.
Mine were at my house, which we’d christened the Gingerbread, the name pleasing the three of us. That probably came automatically to us, giving it a name, our having lived all their lives (and a lot of mine) in a house called the parsonage. We’d got used to that. The Gingerbread was coming along. I’d managed to go through Theo’s storage unit, with her blessing and key but not her presence, taking out twin beds, which she’d used in Austin so that her mother could come for her two-week annual visit (no wonder Shorty had looked good!), a love seat and two matching chairs with stuffed backs, wooden arms and legs. The kind of furniture that had parlor written all over it, in a ruby plush that was going to be right in keeping with the exterior colors of the house. The sort of furniture that Drew would doubtless label “old but not old.” No dining table. Theo had kept her small dropleaf (Mother hadn’t been much of an eater), was using it in their bedroom in Birdville. A couple of shaggy-shaded lamps, which were a help. That was about it, but it meant the girls could sleep in.
From the parsonage, I’d taken the blue willow pitchers and the stool where I always sat while Eben massaged his feet at night. It was used to me and I to it, and I put it in my bedroom until I got a chair. That and the desk and chair from the private room, aka computer center, that had been mine in school. I also took both cow pictures, the stand of black and white Holstein with the soulful eyes and doglike ears, and the nineteenth-century primitive from Lila Beth of the orangy Guernsey with both jutting horn and sagging udders. And because it was my house, I hung them both at once, not giving a thought to the nail holes left for future generations, the larger one by the local artist in the dining room, the smaller one, painted on wood, over the mantel of the closed-up fireplace. I’d need a rug to cover where the potbellied stove once sat.
The girls seemed excited also. Ruth had put the rose bows she’d worn Easter on her hair and had a long skirt of the same shade and a plain white T-shirt on her ample bosoms. She looked so grown-up, her deep-eyed beauty reminding me more and more of my mother. Martha had again braided the wide green ribbon into her hair and had put on a sleeveless green T and long baggy cotton pants. Her milk-fed cheeks were deep pink, whether from artifice or blush I couldn’t tell.
Would they be spending the summer here with me? That had not been decided. Were we closer or less close than we’d been under the same roof? That hadn’t, either.
“Soap, Momma,” Ruth called from upstairs, wanting to wash her hands before we left.
“Look in the tub.”
“Can I have some lemonade, Momma?” Martha asked, in the doorway to the kitchen, looking about, wondering where to find a glass.
“I made it for you.”
Tomorrow I ought to make a pot of potato soup, a pan of corn bread. I’d have to return them for church, get them in the afternoon. We hadn’t worked out the schedule. They’d forgot toothbrushes. Could they keep some here?
“How come Drew isn’t picking us up, Momma?” Martha had asked about a dozen questions already.
We were pacing around, ready to go, having run out of anything else to do. The sun had come out, in a dazed way, the rains were gone, the air had a very light white feel to it, as if it had been bleached by all the recent activity.
“We won’t all fit in the truck,” I said.
That was true. It was also true, which I didn’t mention, that he had yet to see my house, or even acknowledge it with anything but anger. This was building a storm center in my mind, but one I was resolved to keep banked on the horizon for tonight: his birthday, and our first appearance as a couple out with the kids, hers and his.
I admit I was eager for them to see us together, to see Drew as someone other than Lila Beth’s grown son, to see him as someone dear to their momma. I’d let them help me get ready. I wore a skirt long to the ankles—I wanted a full circle for dancing—and a silk shirt, both a dusty lavender. Martha had tied a spare green ribbon around my waist, knotting it and tucking the ends in, and had smiled at the effect. They had such great amounts of nice thick hair, I think they’d have liked to do something more with mine, but I’d washed it and given it a rinse in steeped tea, and had finger-combed it dry. Plus I painted up a little, and they seemed pleased with that.
“We could walk,” Ruth said, standing outside while I locked up, looking at the washed-out blue sky.
“Let’s not. We’ll be fresher if we take the Firebird.” I didn’t know how late it would be when we started back, how tired we’d be. Hoping, maybe, that Drew would follow us home, come in and have a cup of coffee, all of us together in the Gingerbread.
We could hear music and crowd noise as soon as we turned onto Mulberry; by the time we were driving down Hackberry, the streets were filled with people hurrying to the Fairgrounds. We parked a block away, so that I didn’t have to maneuver the Pontiac into a line of cars going into the already-jammed parking lots.
“Where are we going to meet him?” Martha asked. She seemed to be holding her breath; her anticipation floated from her, like perfume.
“At Rosa’s Chalupas.”
“Where’s that?”
“I don’t know. I made it up; we were trying to pick a place.”
“You mean you’re just going to look around for him?” Martha looked crushed. “Maybe we won’t find him.”
“We’re going to meet at the nearest thing.”
“That is so dumb, Momma. That is really dumb.” Ruth scowled.
“It is?” We stepped onto the Fairgrounds, which had been transformed into a Mexican marketplace, with maybe a hundred booths selling food, every fifth one selling beer, every tenth, iced tea and cold drinks. Hundreds of people were in costume, looking like exhibition dancers, and maybe they were, with sombreros, serapes, gathered many-colored skirts, ruffled blouses. Clothes you never saw anymore on anyone in Texas, most of all not on Cen-Tex Latinos Incorporated. All the signs were in Spanish, the only English translations being BEER and RESTROOMS. I looked around, liking the smell of corn and chilis, liking the very loud canned polka music that was coming from a dozen loudspeakers high in the air. Here and there we saw strolling mariachi players, carrying their fiddles, having a cold draft beer, waiting for their turn. We were early, despite the mob; the place had the air of a carnival before the rides really get going, before the barkers start shouting you in, before the lights go on on the Ferris wheel, when there isn’t much to do but eat cotton candy and throw hoops over small-time prizes.
Then, right there, big as life, was ROSA’S CHIMICHANGAS. “That’s it,” I said.
“What if there’s a Consuela’s Chalupas?” Ruth had a wide smile on her face, as if she was suddenly getting a glimpse that this wasn’t the dumb idea it seemed, some glimmer of how her momma’s mind worked, or how her momma and this man talked to each other. It wouldn’t take a future Academy nester to figure out that Eben Tait and I were never going to work out a system like this.
“Rosa trumps Chalupas because it comes first,” I said.
“Does Drew know that?”
“If he has any sense.” I smiled back at her. Maybe the tone also wasn’t one she’d ever heard before, certainly not in reference to her dad.
“There he is, Momma,” Martha said, squealing slightly, waving before I had the chance.
Drew was leaning on the far side of Rosa’s, wolfing a huge messy chimichanga, which appeared to be a tortilla platter with about twenty things piled on it. By his side, waving back at us, were Trey and Jock, dressed in tennis whites, their hair freshly blown, and, strain though I might, I could not spot where exactly the hair in Jock’s dark pigtail had disappeared to or how Trey had managed to brush his to the front so his shaved sideburns didn’t show.
“Buenas dias, senoritas,” Drew said, and to my everlasting joy and gratitude, planted a big chimichanga kiss right on my mouth in front of our four big-eyed voyeurs. He then bent (not as far) and kissed the cheeks of both my daughters.
“Buenas dias,” I said, shooting him a look that said he could bark at me in public phone booths all he wanted, and that I’d keep his bikes oiled for life.
“Ring Around the Rosy,” Jock said, and he and Trey grabbed the girls’ hands and they made a circle around us, then awkwardly stepped apart.
“There were two chalupa stands,” Drew said. “Chico’s and Carmen’s.”
“Rosa’s was it.”
“I know it.” He took a sip of foamy beer from the paper cup in his left hand. “What if there hadn’t been a Rosa’s anything?”
Ruth answered before I could. “Then we’d have met you at Carmen’s Chalupas.”
“This person has a future.” Drew looked impressed.
“We lost,” Trey said, slapping his brother’s hand. “We said food was the point; anybody’s chalupas beat Rosa’s anything.”
“Naw,” Drew said, sounding just like Jock. He looked around. “Where’s the band?”
“First,” Ruth said, “there’s the pageant in which they reenact the Battle of Puebla.”
“Then,” she recited, as if reading, “there are performances by El Folklórico Juvenil and Las Hispanas.”
“You reading from a TV monitor or what?” Drew asked her.
“There were posters all over school.”
Trey and Jock looked at one another, tickled. “Good graphics, huh?”
“I guess. I remembered all that stuff. Did you make them or something?”
“We made them, and something.” Jock was rocking up and down, whether because of my presence or the strain of being with his dad all decked out in his center court clothes.
“Let’s rank the tacos,” Drew said. “Serious study. No messy halfway stuff. A scale of one to ten. Every booth.”
“We can’t eat that many tacos, Drew,” Martha said, her face dimpling and blushing at saying his name.
He noted both and slipped his free hand down her French braid, giving it a tug. “Says who?”
“We’ll get sick.” She had an attack of the giggles. This was a daughter I’d not seen before.
“Suffer for the sake of science,” he said. “Just a nibble, honey. One nibble per stall. Winner will be notified.”
My youngest moved as close to Drew as she could get without straight out touching him. Something like the way a puppy wags around a stranger. A new TAIT offense; or maybe it was defense. TAIT à TAIT with a new daddy.
Jock bounced in my direction. “Sun’s out again,” he said.
“I noticed.”
“Consultation,” he said loudly.
“Consultation.” We went off to one side, where they couldn’t hear us. “What’d you do with your pigtail?” I said.
He shrugged. “You just blow it out.”
“I liked your other shirt better.”
“Me, too.” He squirmed. “You still want us to rip that crud off your house?”
“I do. How about next weekend?”
“If it stays clear.” He looked over at Trey and they nodded at each other.
Drew had three paper cups of beer and I had one. The kids had two iced teas each, plus the boys split a beer while no one looked. We tasted every taco at the fair, or every one we spotted anyway. Until just the sight of one made me queasy. The winner was the one we all ate every bite of. It was a great idea and lasted us until finally the blaring canned music abruptly died, the stars came out and the evening began.
We suffered through all the exhibition dancers, all of us locating, cursing and using the white portapotties in their unsteady plastic cubicles. We ate our way through pralines—chewy, crisp and sugary, studded with toasted pecans.
Finally, when the pageant was over, and we were fed and watered out, Drew asked, “Can we dance now?”
At which moment, as if on cue, a bandstand was scooted into place at the far end of the tent, on whose floorboards the Mexican hat dance and the flamencos had taken place. From the dark area behind the tent we could see musicians approaching with a shout going up around them as they walked by, young and handsome Latins, hair slicked back, gleaming black skintight tank tops and pants, with wide silver concho belts and high-heeled boots. The crowd, mostly young, those still there, began to chant and stomp, “Las Bambas, Las Bambas.”
Drew and I stood and watched as two hundred people crowded out onto the floor.
“They must call that dance the Dog at the Fire Hydrant,” I said.
“That’s Las Bambas playing the lambada: heavy kettle.” He looked the way I felt.
“Wanta dance?” Trey came up to me, extending a freckled arm.
I was touched beyond belief, although I wasn’t sure what we were supposed to do.
I didn’t need to have worried. He led me out, dropped my hand, and moved around two feet away, shaking his arms and legs in an agitated rhythm that I imitated without a lot of trouble. The music had its definite beat and we watched each other’s feet.
“My turn,” Jock said, shoving his brother out of the way. He got into it with vigor, flailing up and down, lifting his feet off the ground, flinging his arms. A natural.
What we were really doing, the boys and I, was the descendant of the minuet, although I’m sure that wasn’t likely to cross their minds. Same distance between dancers, same nods and turns to your partner, same conventionalized movements, performed before an audience. Not like the waltz, which came later, where men and women touched in a sexual way, losing themselves as they turned round and round and round together. It might be that “heavy kettle” would become acceptable in this church town, that the Baptists could see their way clear to voting in social no-touch dancing the way these kids were practicing it.
When Jock took me back to our place on the edge of the dance floor, Ruth was standing there alone, looking busily at the crowd, while out on the boards Drew was shaking himself somewhat like a hound just coming out of a swimming hole. Martha was rolling back and forth, her chest heaving, her color high, her eyes closed. Oh my.
Then they were back, and he held out his hand to Ruth. “This one’s for us,” he said, and took my tall serious daughter by the elbow, then dropped his arms and began to move. An athlete, she was incredibly graceful, as loose and tight, as precise as when she was shooting baskets. She didn’t smile and she didn’t flirt, but the vibrations she was sending, by the very fact of being so controlled, registered on his face. He looked across at me and shook his head. Some girl, his look said.
“Now the old folks get their turn,” he told the kids when he was back.
“Nice kids,” he said.
“Our fault.”
He held me so tight, his hand down on my hips, I could hardly move my feet. “The music of their generation is called hard listening,” he said.
“This dance is hip coupling.” I moved to him, with him, but was aware of the spectators on the sidelines.
“I’d like to get out of here,” he said, “and do what this is a miserable imitation of. This isn’t dancing.”
“Think we could slip off and polish the side of your pickup?”
“It’ll take me an hour to locate row 36B in the dark.” He glanced over at his sons. “They took the lead, didn’t they?”
“They did.”
We quit after one number. At the edge of the tent, in the grass, but still in the light, I said, “I brought you a birthday present.”
“Hey, that’s right.” He looked pleased. “This is what they mean by plowing the back forty.”
I gave him the STOP TOPSOIL DESTRUCTION T-shirt and the birthday card I’d made with grassroots pasted front and back, and YOURS UNTIL THE COWS COME HOME hand-printed inside where only he could see it.
He turned his back, took off his white shirt, and pulled on the T. Black with bright green letters and a picture of a stand of grass, it looked fine with his jeans and boots. He turned around to show it off.
“We saw it already,” Ruth said.
“We got it for you, Drew,” Martha told him, starry-eyed.
The boys glanced at each other, at me, at their dad, looking stricken. “We’re saving ours for tomorrow,” Trey said, his words sounding slightly frantic.
“Happy Birthday,” Jock sang, leading us at top volume.
The boys walked us to our car, that is the four kids walked ahead, more or less talking to each other, or at least all together going through the motions so that we could walk behind in the dark, holding hands.
“What’ll we do with them when school’s out?” Drew asked.
“What’re we going to do with us, this week?”
“Circleburgers, Monday.”
“This time you get to walk out.” I leaned against him; he’d been so swell with the girls.
“This time I get to play the box. Twenty quarters, all on ‘Let’s Fall Apart Together.’ ”
“Eleven o’clock?”
“Ten-thirty. We can lean against the truck until they open.”
“Hey, uh, just a minute,” Jock said when we got to the car. “Consultation. I forgot, Cile, you know—” He made gestures in the air which I took to mean tearing off siding but which might have been just semaphores for help.
“Consultation,” I said, walking him away from the others while Drew helped the girls into the car. I could see him looking up and down the dark street, seeing uncountable dangers lurking everywhere in the Berries.
“Listen,” Jock said, “cross your heart.”
“Cross my heart.”
“Don’t you ever tell I told, swear, I’ll get murdered.”
He looked back at Trey, nodded. Leaning his head way over he said, “Mom and the grandmoms and Aunt Bitsy and Uncle John are all of them having a big surprise party for Dad in the morning. They all drove down tonight and are staying at Grandmom Lila’s. They’ve been planning this since before the rains. They brought all the stuff with them, from Dallas.”
“Lord,” I whispered. “Have mercy.”