THREE MARRIAGES

MRS. ROY TOLLERUD TO MR. AND MRS. FLOYD C. OLSON

Dear Floyd and Eleanor,

As you can see from the postmark, we got to Texas, though by the time you read this we’ll probably have left Brownsville and gone I don’t know where. We’re searching for that resort the Larsons recommended, on the Gulf. The ones we’ve seen don’t have weekly rates or else are not too clean, and the one the Larsons said was so nice, and half the price of what you’d pay in Florida, called Sea Drift or Sun Drift (or maybe it was Spend Thrift), we can’t find it where they said it would be. They said it was right on the ocean and a lot of seniors from Minnesota stay there, so Roy wants to keep looking. I’d be just as happy to stay at a Holiday Inn and just not stay so long but he’s set on finding this resort the Larsons liked, whether it exists or not. The weather is good along the coast and Roy is getting some color. We have met some very nice people in their own way, they are just like anyone else except for being Southern of course. It floors me the way they come right up to you the way they do and talk a blue streak. One minute it’s Hello, how are you, and the next thing they’re telling you about their daddy. I couldn’t tell my life story to complete strangers if you put a gun to my head but they think nothing of it.

You would get a kick out of seeing Roy down here when the waitress walks over and says, “What can I dew for yew, honey?”—he just turns to jelly and when he kids her a little she throws her head back and laughs like he was Red Skelton. I never saw anything so comical as him when his little remarks are laughed at by a young woman, and I’ve never seen him leave a twenty-five-percent tip before either. Oh well.

You know he was here in Houston during the war and then Corpus Christi. I came for a couple months after Richard was born. In fact we talked about staying in Texas because everyone said it was going to have a big boom as soon as the war was over, which of course happened. I reminded him of this the other morning and he didn’t remember it. I know that we talked about living here but he says no, that he would never’ve left Minnesota. But it was on the beach one afternoon, we had the baby with us, we were eating fried chicken, and he said, “How would you like to stay here?” or something very close to that, it was the fall of 1944. He says, nonsense, he wouldn’t have lived here for anything, but I remember. What happened was that we decided to stay here, and we’d both go to work, but then his dad was feeling bad and so Roy thought we should go back for a few years and help them out, and that was that. I’m not complaining, but I do know it was what we talked about. He said to me, “How can you even imagine us living here all these years? We wouldn’t have our friends, our church, nothing would be like what we got, who knows what it would’ve been like, we might not’ve had five kids. Is that what you want?” That is just ridiculous. If we had stayed we would have found something else. Anyone can see that. I think I could live here pretty well. There is a lot more to the world than what we have at home and a lot more perfectly good ways to live than what we’re familiar with, but it was a mistake to say so. He said, “Maybe you would have been happier with someone else. Go ahead. Say it.” Now he’ll be mad the rest of the day and half of tomorrow. Anyway don’t tell the Larsons we couldn’t find their resort. I am going to write to them and say it was beautiful all right but all booked up.

Love,
Gladys

MRS. RUTH LUGER TO MRS. JOANNE LIENENKRANZ

Dear Joanie,

This is being written Monday night outside of Bakersfield somewhere, a nice motel but right on the highway and the truck traffic sounds like the Russian army. Bob says to say hello. Tomorrow down to San Diego to Francine’s and Sunday we come home which I wouldn’t mind doing right now though I suppose we are having a pretty good time considering what has happened to us. We have spent practically the whole trip looking up Bob’s old buddies who he hasn’t seen for ten years and when we meet one of them I suddenly see why it’s been ten years but then it’s too late, we’re already there. Gruesome. His friends, they invite you to stay the night at their place and they just don’t stop to think that you might like a room with a door or a bed—they say, “We’ve got plenty of room, it’s no trouble,” and you don’t know what they mean until you get there and then all the trouble is yours. We were at his friend Dave’s in Rapid City and they (Dave and Sharon) gave us some cushions and two army blankets. Real South Dakota hospitality. Slept on the living-room floor and a clock ringing every hour and woke up at 6:00 and her two kids were sitting two inches away with messy pants watching the Flintstones on TV. They are her kids and Dave has some of his own somewhere and he and she aren’t married but I guess none of that bothers them. Dave says, “I’ve been meaning to go see my little girl for weeks now,” as if she was a movie he had read was supposed to be pretty good. I said to Bob, “I can’t stay two nights here,” but he said it had been ten years since he saw Dave and this was his only chance—Well, those are the ten years since we were married so it’s not like he’s been without company. But these are people I wouldn’t have around my house so I guess you got to travel if you want to see them.

We saw Bob’s cousins Denny and Donny, they live outside Las Vegas where they race cars on weekends at a racetrack and the rest of the time I think they drink beer and say, “Hey, all right.” We had to drive like crazy to get there Friday night in time for the race and then Bob went down in the pits and left me up in the bleachers with some people whose names I didn’t get, a fat lady in a white jacket that said “Bad Girls Get To Go Everywhere” and her boyfriend who weighed three hundred and had a big beard with food stuck in it and a sad wispy woman who smoked up a storm, and afterward we had dinner at a drive-in with Denny and Donny and these people and they talked two hours without saying a single sentence I was interested in and never asked how I was (or who, either)—women out here are supposed to just sit outside in the dark and wait to go home, I guess. Denny’s girlfriend Luanne sat and looked at him like he was the world’s most wonderful man which you didn’t have to know him very well to see that he isn’t. I was glad they lost the race. It’s a terrible thing to say but I hoped they’d crash and maybe knock some sense into themselves. They are almost forty and still in their teens and I doubt they will know much more until the day they die, though the day after that they may find out a lot of things.

After dinner it was midnight and Bob and I went to go look at Las Vegas which, just as they say, it never stops, and 4:00 A.M. is the same to them as 4:00 P.M. I know because we stayed up until 4:00 A.M. gambling at the San Remo. Farmers are milking cows now, I thought, and I am playing cards and winning money. In fact, I am getting more money than they earn in a week. Bob wanted to go see Lola Mazola or somebody, some dancer, I said go ahead enjoy yourself. I was hot. I played Blackjack which was the only game I knew how to play (they didn’t have Hearts or Rook, ha ha) and I went along pretty well, Bob hanging around and offering dumb advice, and then about 3:30 I had a great feeling and put everything on the table, a bucket of chips, and he almost got a heart attack right there. I won $4,864. Bob was out of the room at the time, sulking in the bar. I cashed in my chips and went and sat down in the booth with him and had a rum and Coke. He just about went crazy when I told him I won and he wanted to know how much. I wouldn’t say. A lot. Well, then he wanted some of that to play with and I said, no. I said I had promised that it was going to the church. He didn’t believe me but I was telling the truth, but he said it was his money to start with. He said, you don’t earn no salary. Those were his exact words, spoken to his wife who keeps his house clean and raises up his children. “You don’t earn no salary.” It was the wrong thing to say to me at that time of the morning. I sailed out through the lobby and down the street. He said he didn’t care if I left because he knew I’d come right back but he was walking along behind me as he said it. I walked six blocks in a cold fury with him trotting along behind. I got on a bus, he got on, too, and we rode to the end of the line, out in a regular neighborhood with churches and a school and ranch houses with green lawns and gardens. We walked all the way back as the sun came up and had breakfast at a nice place and slept all day and drove last night and here we are.

The money is in my makeup bag wrapped up in a scarf. Bob says, “That’d completely pay for this trip and leave us plenty for the next trip and then some. It’s good luck, we’re supposed to enjoy it, not give it away. It’s for us, it’s like a big wave that comes and lifts us up and off we go to bigger and better things. It could change our whole marriage. ” He says to me, “Did you promise to God that it’d all go to the church or did you only promise yourself?” To him there’s a big difference.

God must’ve set this trip up so I could learn something. He sure didn’t intend it to be fun because it isn’t. I found out that I love my husband but I don’t really like him very much right now but I’m sticking with him. You look at Sharon and Luanne and you see what happens to people whose word doesn’t matter, their lives are a mess. I don’t like Bob because he’s so weak I think he’d even steal money out of my makeup kit so when he goes to sleep tonight I’ll sew it into my dress, forty crisp new hundred-dollar bills, and carry it home and slip it into the collection plate. That’ll be nice. Tomorrow we see the zoo and visit one last long-lost friend and then back home to our own house. I hope the kids are behaving themselves.

Love,
your sister Ruth.

CLARENCE BUNSEN TO HIS WIFE, ARLENE

My darling Arlene,

You were right, it is nuts to come to Saskatchewan to go ice fishing. Forty-six below zero today (minus a zillion windchill), and when you spit on the ground, it sounds like you dropped your car keys. But we aren’t alone so there must be a reason for being here. Four in our party, plus four optometrists from Kansas City, and believe it or not, two California guys. Plus the Canadians. Twenty-seven fish houses all told here on the ice on Moose Tail Lake, like a regular little village, and for all I know they could issue bonds for long-term street improvements, it’s that cold.

Fishing is lousy but then it wasn’t good last year either so it’s not a big surprise. It’s nice to sit in a warm fish house and think. A person could probably do this in his living room, sit and hold the end of a string, but then you couldn’t spit. I’m trying out a plug of Day’s Work which makes me lightheaded as perhaps you can ascertain. Cully is talking a blue streak, all about himself and the war and the price of gas and whatnot, says he lost twenty pounds by only eating things he doesn’t like. Still drinks a pint of whiskey a day. I asked him why and he said: my wife is angry at me no matter what and why would I want to listen to her sober? He has turned in for the night, he’s had enough for this trip. He’s a fly fisherman at heart and it goes against his nature to sit, back to the wall, and watch a drop line in a hole in the floor. It eliminates the skill and judgment and only leaves the religious aspect of fishing, but that is enough for me. A man needs to contemplate his sins and decide which ones to repent of and which to be more patient with and see if they might not cure themselves. Women don’t need this because women are better than men.

It’s midnight now and toasty warm in here and I can smell Bernie’s bait, which he is secretive about but I believe it involves rancidized chicken parts, anyway it reminds me of when all the kids had stomach flu. Remember you called me at the garage and said Quote Come home, the kids are throwing up Unquote. Well, I didn’t drive as fast as I could’ve.

That’s one sin I want to get off my chest, and another is that Christmas about 1971 when the squirrel got in the bird-feeder. The one I made with a system of counterweights so if a squirrel got aboard it’d collapse under his weight, like the dropleaves on a dining-room table, which took me two weeks to design and the squirrel figured out in 8.2 seconds. And it was such a jerk squirrel, a real loudmouth.

This was Christmas Eve day. I got out the nozzle and garden hose and rigged it up on a two-by-four frame by the garage, aimed dead at the feeder, and I sat by the damn faucet in the laundry room and waited for a half-hour and finally nailed the bugger. A laser beam of ice water right smack beneath the tail, and he exploded into mid-air ... flew across the snow, leaving a trail of turds ... and sure enough, came back an hour later and I got him again! The second time you could see that squirrel yell “Oh shit!” and took off with his wheels spinning and tore up a tree and sat and wept for the plight of the Irish people. I had a glass of whiskey and sat and felt pretty smug and after a while Barbara Ann came in, tears running down her cheeks, saying that something was wrong with Chuckie, he was hurt. Well, you know who Chuckie turned out to be. Her favorite squirrel. (I’d thought of him as Nick, but never mind.) He was in the yard under her bedroom window, limping around on the crusted snow. A fake limp, meant to win sympathy from a child. A cynical squirrel. “He’s hurt,” she said. “Can’t we bring him in? It’s cold, Daddy.” My little girl. I explained why it’d be bad for Chuckie to remove him from his natural habitat. Big tears in her little brown eyes, pools of tears with Christmas lights reflected in them. I carried her up to our bed and tucked her in and told her a story, “The Squirrel Family’s Christmas,” which was pretty listless because as I began it I noticed, on your bedside table, a Christmas card that you’d stuck halfway into a book. I wondered why hadn’t you put it on the mantel with the others so I looked at it (still telling about Mr. and Mrs. Bushy Tail and their kids) and it was postmarked San Francisco, and when I saw a letter inside the card and saw David Danielson’s name, I felt sick inside. My stomach turned to stone. I felt betrayed. But she lay there, all awake, smiling, and Sammy and Sylvester and Sandy Squirrel all were waiting for Santa Squirrel to come shinnying down their old hickory tree with some walnuts and candy for Christmas, so the story droned on, and with one hand I held the letter down below bed level and quietly unfolded it. Jealousy!

You knew him as a good-looking boy who squired you to dances and drove you around in his daddy’s Pontiac, but I knew him from football team, where he was the left halfback and I was a tackle. He was light and strong, built like a swimmer, graceful, the golden boy, and I was a squat little guy with stumpy legs, too small for the line really but they didn’t know where else to put me, so in I went. I got the stuffing knocked out of me, my hands walked on, my face scratched, just so Dave could lope around end and into the end zone without anyone touching him, while I lay in the mud spitting up turf. You dated him for most of our junior and senior years and then he went to Stanford and you went with me. We were sitting in my car one night, I asked you about him, my heart pounding, and you thought for a long time and said, “I liked talking to him. He was smart. He was good to talk to.” So for years, whenever you and I didn’t have much to say, I’d look at you and imagine that you were thinking about him. Maybe writing letters to him. All the times I felt I wasn’t much fun to be with, which was about half the time, Dave was there in the shadows, a handsome man who was good to talk to. I guess I wished you would say what a terrible person he was, which is crazy—why would I wish that a woman I love had spent all that time being miserable? but there you are.

I read the letter. It wasn’t about joy in our hearts at this joyous season. It was about feelings from the past becoming stronger with the passage of time and closeness between old friends getting deeper and richer even though far apart—a real California Christmas letter. I could imagine a guy with slim hips and big shoulders in a blue pinstripe suit and red bowtie, a very youthful forty-year-old, not like your old tackle. I put Barbara Ann in her bed. I went to bed. You came up after a while. We lay in the dark. I wished that I could extend my influence out into the joyous world and find David and kill him. I got up and prowled around and looked out and saw Chuckie ensconced on the feeder, feasting on sunflower seeds without a worry in the world. I felt like something was eating my heart. We went to church in the morning and I imagined that Dave Ingqvist was winking at you from the pulpit. Why was he talking so much about love?

I am sorry! It was a miserable Christmas and you kept asking what was wrong, I should’ve said. I know you could’ve straightened it all out so well as you’ve straightened out so many things, but I let it eat at me. We had been talking about taking a vacation trip to California in June and I announced over Christmas dinner that we couldn’t go, we’d spent too much money this year already. The look of pain on your faces, the blank uncomprehending pain.

It’s years later. I’m still jealous. I still worry that if he’d asked you maybe you’d have chosen him. I imagine that one day you walk out the front door and there he is parked in a blue Thunderbird in the driveway and you have a choice, to stick with me and be yourself or go with him and be seventeen and get to live your youth over again.

Well, that will be your choice, of course. I want you to choose me. Nothing makes me feel emptier than the thought of losing you. I would wish you were here right now except that it wouldn’t be nearly so wonderful as it will be when I come back to you tomorrow night.

Your loving husband,
Clarence