The Cotton Queen (17 page)

L
ANEY

R
ICE
U
NIVERSITY
is located just south of downtown Houston amid a parklike atmosphere of trees and secluded walkways. It was the quiet center of my new, very noisy life.

I loved Houston.

Yes, I noticed that it’s so hot and humid in summer that it’s hard to breathe. I am aware that people in Houston spend more time sitting in their cars trapped in freeway traffic than they do at all of the arts, music and cultural events of the city combined. I still liked it.

Everything about the place seemed new. Even the old staid halls of the university were all twentieth century. There was a building boom in every sector of the city. It was as if Houston, and everyone in it, were under construction.

I fit right in.

I arrived in September of 1976, alone and on my own. I drove down in my new red Chevy Chevette, a graduation gift from Aunt Maxine. My mother was furious about Aunt Maxine providing my getaway car, but there was nothing that she could do about it. Everyone had sided with me and Babs just had to lump it.

She and Acee were getting a divorce. That had come as a surprise to me, but I guess it shouldn’t have. Acee was a great guy. He was thoughtful and caring. He was always willing to listen. And he actually respected me. My opinion had value with him. My mother was cold and controlling. I could talk to her until I was blue in the face and she heard nothing. She was always in charge and things always went her way.

That is, until I left home.

My freedom was so new, so hard won, that I reveled in it. I dressed however I wanted. I stayed up late. I ate junk food. I drank beer.

I don’t suppose I was a wild child by any stretch of the imagination.

I never missed class. I turned in assignments. I wrote papers. I studied for tests. I was definitely not going to shortchange myself on my own investment.

Acee had offered to pay for college. I’d been banking most of my paycheck for years, so I had more money than anyone expected. I’d been offered scholarships at several small colleges, but I wanted a more prestigious school in a big town. So, I managed most of my own expenses. But my stepfather wrote my tuition checks.

Dorm life was great. I expected to experience a certain amount of claustrophobia among the crowd, having been an only child. But I took to large communal bathrooms, cafeteria lunching and the complete absence of privacy or quiet pretty well, I think.

I had an interesting roommate. Interesting in the sense of observing animals in the zoo. She was nothing like me, but I found her truly fascinating as an anthropological study. Her name was Carl Anne Coyle and she was from a tiny ranching community in west Texas. As a roommate she was perfect, neat, tidy and quiet. As a person, she was kind of a mess. She vacillated from being a serious Christian immersed in Bible reading and prayer and an in-your-face lesbian, out of the closet for the first time.

“I’m a homo, lesbo, in the know and on the go,” she’d announce in the singsong rhyme that made her a legend on campus. “I’m a gay gal. I’m butch, I’m dyke. If you’re not cool with that, then take a hike.”

The homo-lingo would accelerate through the week until Saturday night when she became completely absorbed in it and headed out for a long, wild night of partying.

Sunday morning, she’d be up early, her short brown hair twisted into hot rollered curls to go with her modest skirt and a smudge of pink lipstick. She’d take a bus across town to a distant church where nobody knew her to confess her sins and pray for forgiveness. All her friends from 4-H and rodeo had gone to A&M. They’d been surprised when she’d chosen Rice. She wasn’t ready for anyone back home to know.

Because we were good roommates, there was gossip that I was a homosexual, as well. Surprisingly I was not bothered by what other people thought—one of the advantages of growing up in a small town. When you’ve become accustomed to having your every move critiqued, you stop paying attention to it.

Carl Anne and I were great roommates because we both wanted the same thing, to stay in Houston and never see our families.

I was, more or less, able to do that. I never considered driving home for a long weekend. I took summer semester. I went to South Padre for spring breaks. I made excuses for Thanksgiving. And even for Christmases, drove home on the twenty-fourth and back to Houston the next day.

Of course, it wasn’t possible to completely shut McKinney out of my life. I had to come home for a long weekend in the autumn of 1978 for Acee’s mother’s funeral. I’d never felt very close to the woman. The answer why could probably be found in the fact that the highlights of her eulogy included her membership in the Daughters of the Republic of Texas and her forty years of service to the McKinney Owl Club.

But except for those kinds of special circumstances, I stayed in Houston.

Aunt Maxine, who still thought long distance was only for emergencies, wrote me long newsy letters about all the goings-on in town. The place was booming. There were new housing developments and shopping centers going up everywhere. The courthouse, downtown’s center hub, was shut down and all of its offices and hearing rooms moved to new facilities on McDonald Street. The farmland all around the city was being snapped up and subdivided. And an industrial corridor had sprung up along the expressway between McKinney and Dallas, bringing in new jobs, new people and a lot of new money. One of those new companies was my cousin Pete’s new start-up. He’d gone out on his own to make advanced software for personal computers. The new little machines were mostly for playing games, but Pete was convinced that the future was more than Pac-Man.

What I didn’t hear from Aunt Maxine, I heard from my mother. Babs called often, too often, to cry and worry and complain. She’d gotten a great deal in the divorce. Acee had let her have the house, the car, a bank full of assets and a monthly income. Babs could only whine about the loss of her status in the community and her loneliness. In my sophomore year Acee remarried. Babs screamed over the phone like a crazy woman. Doris Walker, Acee’s new wife, was a two-time divorcée and former waitress with two teenage boys. I remembered her as a friendly, loud-talking, big-toothed, big-boobed, big-haired gal. My mother called her “common,” a serious insult from Babs. And somehow Acee’s ability to find happiness with such a person, when he didn’t find it with Babs, was the ultimate betrayal.

Acee called me, too, with the news.

“This doesn’t mean that you’re not still my favorite daughter,” he teased.

“I’m still your only daughter,” I pointed out.

“But a clear favorite,” he insisted. Then added more seriously. “I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want you to feel like there’s no place for you in my life.”

“I don’t,” I assured him. “If you’re happy, then I’m happy. You are happy, aren’t you?”

He chuckled lightly. “Amazingly so,” he told me. “Dorrie makes me laugh every day. We just have fun together. Who knew marriage could be fun? She says she’s been in love with me all her life. I never guessed.”

“Yeah, the guys are always the last to know,” I told him.

“What about you?” he asked. “Have you met anyone?”

That was one of the things I loved about Acee. No matter what was going on in his life, he was always interested in me. He always asked about me. What my life might be like, never crossed my mother’s mind.

“I have met a guy,” I told him.

“Oh, yeah?” No pressure to spill the beans, just a willingness to listen.

“His name is Robert Jerrod, not Bob, Robert.”

“Okay, where’d you meet this Robert.”

“He’s my teacher.”

“What?”

I laughed. “Not really,” I answered. “He’s a grad student that proctors in my Intro to Economic Theory class.”

“Ah, so he’s a little older than you.”

“Yeah, a few years,” I admitted. “But the guys my own age are such immature jerks.”

“Oh, I’m sure that’s always true,” he agreed, teasing.

“No, seriously,” I said. “I like it that he’s a little further along than me. I feel so far ahead of most of the other students. I’ve had a lot of work experience, kept accounts and done actual management. Most of these other kids have never held a job. Some of their preconceptions make me half-woozy.”

“Well, we can’t have that,” Acee said. “So how serious is it with this fellow?”

“Oh, moderately serious, I guess.”

“Serious enough to bring him to McKinney?” Acee asked.

I couldn’t imagine that I could ever get that serious with anyone.

Robert had been a complete surprise to me. I’d seen him in class. He was Dr. Vonderhaar’s assistant. I should have known I’d get noticed. I was a standout in discussions, I was very confident about my lessons.

I was less of a social success.

I dated. Guys were always asking me out. I went to movies and discos and parties of every type and description. The relationships always came up short. I either broke things off abruptly or we just naturally drifted apart.

I was sitting on the green, soaking up the sunshine of a sunny winter day when he plopped down beside me, leaning back on his book bag. He was very good-looking with green eyes and dark brown hair that was long enough to be fashionable without being unkempt.

“Ms. Hoffman, right?” he asked.

I nodded. “Mr. Jerrod,” I replied.

He offered a smile and a handshake. “Robert.”

“Laney.”

Once we began talking, we couldn’t stop.

He was a Houstonian, or as much of one as anyone I’d met. His parents had moved to the city in the early 1960s when his dad went to work for NASA. Robert had grown up in town and around in the suburbs. He was a city boy. I really liked that.

I told him about my life, growing up in McKinney and my desperation to get away from the place. He seemed fascinated by everything I said and interested in everything I’d done.

On our first real date, he met Carl Anne. She looked him over on my behalf. He was charming, but not patronizing. After we left he turned to me.

“She’s a lesbian?” he said.

“Is that a statement or a question?” I asked back. “Because if it’s a question, it’s none of your business.”

“It’s a statement,” he said. “You don’t mind having her as your roommate?”

“We get along great,” I told him, truthfully. “The only time it ever comes up is when people ask me about it.”

“You’re pretty sophisticated for growing up in McKinney,” he said.

I laughed. “I don’t think McKinney had anything to do with it,” I told him. “There aren’t any homosexuals in McKinney. Or if there are, I never knew about them.”

“I suspect the latter,” he said.

“Yeah, I guess I do, too,” I admitted.

Our first dates were ordinary, traditional. We went out dancing and to movies. Slowly we began to graduate to less typical dating spots. He took me to art exhibits, smoky blues clubs and to the opera.

One Saturday night, between the end of the semester and summer session, we went to a party. It was at the home of friends. Everyone was older, closer to Robert’s age than my own. They were graduate students or newly working. They all seemed nice, welcoming. They also all seemed very smashed. There was drinking, plenty of drinking. There were also joints of marijuana and little pipes of hashish being passed around. There was even a mirror on the living room coffee table with little lines of cocaine snorted up through a straw.

None of this slowed the conversation, which was all about money. Buys and deals, speculations and margins, were on everyone’s lips. With the price of gasoline having gone straight through the roof, there was money, a tremendous amount of money in Houston. And everyone at the party had a personal plan for getting a little more than their fair share. Somehow I’d imagined the world of business to be staid and serious, gray flanneled and buttoned down. These people were wild. A new generation, more groupie than hippies. They were not flower children putting daisies in rifle barrels, but entrepreneurial nonconformists into free markets as much as free love, eager to take their chance at putting dollar bills in Wall Street’s G-string.

Greg, a guy who was introduced to me as Robert’s best friend, grabbed my hand.

“Come with me, we’ve got to talk,” he said.

We wandered through the house for a few minutes. All the rooms were noisy and were occupied. Finally he pulled me into the tiny front bathroom. It was hardly larger than a good-size coat closet and decorated with black and pink wallpaper, like some Victorian bordello.

“You look good, Linda,” he said, his voice somewhat slurred. “You look real good.”

“Laney,” I corrected. “My name is Laney.”

“Yeah, whatever,” he answered. “Robert is my best buddy. We’ve been together since high school and we’re headed to the top.”

“That’s great. That’s really great.”

“You see, Linda, there are two kinds of people in the world, there are winners and there are losers. Robert and I, we’re going to be winners. If you hang with us, then you can be, too.”

I didn’t like the narrow confines or the stench of expensive bourbon on his breath. I made as hasty a retreat as I could manage. And later, back at Robert’s apartment, repeated the conversation to him word for word.

He laughed.

“Greg was way too drunk to talk to,” he said. “I’m sorry that was your first exposure to him. He’s really an okay guy. I think you’ll learn to like him later.”

“I hope so,” I told him.

Robert’s apartment was pretty nice for a grad student, most of whom lived in a near slum environment. His little efficiency was modestly decorated by bookshelves and interesting pieces of household staples, arranged like art. He had a television and a nice stereo. There was a rug on the floor and a wine rack atop the refrigerator. It was not anything like a dorm—it felt like a real home. And it made me feel, somehow, that Robert was all grown-up, an adult. While I was still a kid.

He put in a Barry White cassette and a low, sexy love song began to play. He snuggled down beside me on the Hide-A-Bed couch and we shared a few sweet kisses.

“Did you have fun tonight?” he asked after a few minutes.