The Cotton Queen (18 page)

“Sure,” I answered.

He chuckled. “That’s not very convincing,” he said. “The drugs and booze, that freaked you out, didn’t it?”

I shrugged and then nodded.

“They didn’t have drugs and booze in McKinney, I suppose.”

“Well, yeah, I guess they did,” I told him, thinking of my cousin Ned. “I just never got involved in that.”

“And that’s a good thing,” he said. “It’s easy to get all caught up in that and end up frying your brain and ruining you life.”

He ran one long finger along the line of buttons between my breasts.

“What about sex?” he asked. “Did they have that in McKinney? Did you get involved in that?”

Sex, not necessarily as a subject for discussion, had been coming up in our relationship more and more. I had always managed to scurry around it and go home safely. But I was becoming less and less interested in doing so.

“I’m sure that they must have sex in McKinney,” I told him. “Considering the number of children born there year after year. But I never got involved in it.”

“And since you’ve been here in Houston?” he asked as he ran his hands along my neck and down to my collarbone.

“No, I haven’t really gotten into it with anyone here, either,” I admitted.

He was stroking me underneath my blouse. My nipples were as hard and stiff as little buttons.

“And why was that?” His words were a hot whisper against my throat.

I didn’t really have a good answer and it was getting more and more difficult for me to think clearly.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t have a steady boyfriend or anything like that.”

His hand stopped abruptly and he pulled back to glare at me.

“Steady boyfriend,” he repeated with a generous amount of sarcastic disdain. “Is that what you’ve been waiting for? You want me to give you my class ring?”

“No, I...I didn’t mean that.”

“Babe, if that’s all it takes for you, I think it’s up in the top drawer of the chest. You can have it.”

“I wasn’t...I didn’t think that...”

“It just seems to me that if a woman’s going to put a price on it, that’s a pretty economical one.”

“I’m not putting a price.”

“Then what is it about?” he asked. “It’s not that you don’t want it.” He shoved his hand up my skirt and clasped me intimately. “I knew you’d be wet. I could smell it. So if you want it and I want it, what are you holding out for.”

“I’m not holding out,” I insisted.

“Well, you’re not putting out.”

“I just...I just haven’t ever done it,” I tried to explain. “I want it to be special.”

His face softened. His annoyance disappeared as quickly as it had come.

“I haven’t done a virgin since high school,” he told me. “But I promise you, babe, I can make it special.”

And he did.

B
ABS

T
HE
CITY
LIMITS
of McKinney, Texas, had been my world for most of my life. After everyone left me; Laney, off to college, Acee, tying himself to that low-class waitress, I found my area of comfort growing smaller and smaller. By 1979 I was no longer leaving my house. But then, I didn’t need to. I had no job, no activities, no friends, no one I wanted to see. Since I didn’t go anywhere, I didn’t need clothes. I spent most days in my bathrobe. Bird’s Supermarket delivered groceries to my door. Aunt Maxine or one of the twins occasionally dropped by to make sure that I was still alive.

It was a nice life, actually. I didn’t mind it at all. I had the new cable TV installed and thirty channels were suddenly available in my living room. I spent my day watching old reruns of
Donna Reed
and
Perry Mason, Make Room for Daddy
and
Father Knows Best.
It was so pleasant to just step back into those times. If I closed my eyes and just listened to the dialogue, I could almost put myself back there. Back when I was runner-up for Cotton Queen, Tom Hoffman’s steady girl, a happy, hopeful young woman, ready, eager for whatever the future might bring.

At night, however, with all the house lights off, I sat in the shadows beyond the dining room window and stared out into the darkness. It was the same darkness that I’d hidden in at the Shady Bend Motor Lodges. What I was watching for, what I was fearful of, was no longer as clear cut and definable as it had been. But it was still there. It was very much still there.

I might have lived out the rest of my life just like that, fantasy all day and fear all night. That was working perfectly until Laney called me in early June. After a few requisite inquiries about my health, she got right to her point.

“Robert, the guy I’ve been dating for a while, he got his M.B.A. a few weeks ago,” she told me.

“Oh, well, isn’t that nice,” I said. “When are you going to bring that young man home so I can meet him?”

“I don’t know. One of these days,” she answered. “Anyway, with Houston’s economy booming, he got offered some really great jobs. And he’s accepted one with an energy finance company.”

“Uh-huh,” I responded, already more or less bored with the personal details of some young man I didn’t even know.

“It’s a great job,” Laney told me. “And they paid him a big hiring bonus. So he’s made a down payment on a house in West University.”

“Really?” I said. “I suppose a home is a very good investment for a single man.”

“Well, Robert’s not exactly a
single
man, Babs,” Laney said. “He and I have been together for over a year now.”

There was something about the way she used the phrase “been together” that was disconcerting, but I ignored it.

“It’s certainly nice then that he’ll be staying in town and living so near the campus,” I said.

“I’ve moved in with him,” Laney stated.

“What?”

“I’ve moved in with him,” she repeated. “We’re living together. There’s no reason for me to pay expensive room and board at the dorm when I can live with him and still ride my bike to classes.”

“Honey, you can’t do that,” I told her.

“Of course I can.”

“What must people think?”

“They think whatever they think,” Laney answered. “I don’t really care.”

We continued to argue for several minutes. I got angry and slammed down the phone. Then I called her back and we wrangled even more. I couldn’t budge her. I couldn’t make her listen to reason. I was furious. I was frustrated. And I was frightened. I was frightened for my daughter. I had never wanted her out there where men could hurt her, misuse her, take advantage of her. I had tried to keep her safe, but she seemed determined to run headlong into danger.

After walking the floor with worry all night, I called Aunt Maxine for help. I decided that the only way to handle the situation was to have Aunt Maxine go down to Houston and shame Laney out of such a terrible decision. I thought that if they laid it on thick enough, they might even be able to get her to give up her last year at college and move home immediately. In my own mind I was convinced that the only thing that would be required was the sight of some member of her family. That would bring Laney to her senses and cause her to realize that she was being duped by this Robert person.

Aunt Maxine hurried over as soon as I called her. She came in, rather out of breath and looking pale and tired.

“Are you ill?” I asked her.

“Not any more than usual,” she answered.

“Well, you look terrible,” I told her.

A ghost of a smile flittered across her face. “Trust me, Babs, I’m perfectly capable of returning the compliment.”

I glanced down to see that I was still wearing my bathrobe. That it was frayed and worn and had a dribble of unidentified food stain down the front.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized hurriedly. “I was just worried.”

“I’m worried myself,” she said. “Renny’s wife is divorcing him.”

“The new wife?”

“She’s not all that new anymore,” Aunt Maxine said. “She’s keeping the house and the kids and virtually throwing my son out on the street.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Apparently that’s how it’s done,” she said. “I don’t know what to do. I called Pete to see if he could help. He said that Renny would never take anything from him. And he’s probably right about that. It just breaks my heart that those two boys can’t get along.”

Aunt Maxine was so upset, so distracted that I just couldn’t tell her what Laney had done.

After she left, I decided that if she couldn’t help me, maybe I could help her. I picked up the phone and called Renny’s home. His wife answered. I was extremely gracious and friendly, using all those social skills honed in community service. She gave me a number where I could reach Renny. I tried it on and off all day. Finally late that evening, I lit a lamp in the darkness and called again. He picked up on the second ring.

“Renny, it’s Babs,” I said.

“You heard, I guess.”

“Yes, Aunt Maxine was here this morning.”

“So now you know it all,” he said. “You know I’m a lousy husband, a bad father, I can’t hold a job, I can’t keep a wife.”

“Your mother needs you, Renny, come home.”

“I’ve heard all this before,” he said.

“Yes, you have. And it’s more true now than ever.”

“She has Pete.”

“Yes, and she loves Pete,” I said. “But she loves you, too. And she wants you back.”

“I can’t come back there,” he said.

“Why not?”

He hesitated.

“I’m scared,” he said, finally. “I’m just flat-footed scared of the place. It holds a lot of bad memories for me.”

“Sometimes we have to do the thing that scares us,” I told him. “Sometimes that’s the only way. Come back. It doesn’t have to be permanent. Stay in McKinney until you get on your feet, until you figure out which way to go from here.”

“Is that what you’re doing?” he said. “I heard you don’t step a foot out your front door anymore. Are you trying to figure out which way to go from there?”

The conversation continued on for some time, but we never got much beyond that.

After I hung up, my own words kept replaying in my head. I knew that I was right about Renny. He needed to come home and face what frightened him here. He was never going to be a whole person again until he did.

I flipped on the light as I went in to use the toilet. I caught sight of myself in the mirror and was startled. I stopped to stare in near disbelief. Looking back at me was a wild, haggard old woman. Her lifeless hair was graying at the temples and hung like a mop down past her shoulders. Her face was pudgy, lined and splotched, her teeth were yellow. Her clothes were ragged, worn and dirty. She looked like one of those homeless women they showed on the TV news. Except she had my eyes.

“My God!” the startled whisper escaped my lips.

No wonder my daughter was throwing away her life. She had a mother who was throwing away hers.

I stood there for a moment, thinking about the enormity of the hilltop I needed to scale. Trying not to be daunted by the task ahead of me. I remembered the words I’d told Renny. He needed to face the thing that frightened him. I apparently needed to do the same. With a trembling hand, I rifled through the top drawer of the vanity until I found a pair of scissors. I took a deep breath and started cutting my hair.

The first steps were only tiny. I went into the hairdresser’s to get some style for my sheared locks. I bought a new outfit, casual but clearly fashionable in vivid red to give me courage and picked up some fresh makeup. I called Ritters Garage and they sent a couple of men to try to get the car started, tuned up and in shape for a drive. I packed my overnight bag and set it by the back door. Long days and house-darkened nights followed while I succumbed to fear once more.

Then one morning dawned with a brilliantly lit blue-and-pink sky on the eastern horizon. I knew I should go. I walked past the suitcase a half-dozen times before I finally picked it up and carried it outside to the car. I was trembling as I started the engine. I kept telling myself how foolish and silly I was behaving. But no rational arguments could override the genuine terror that gripped me as I set out that Saturday morning on an all-day drive.

I’d planned my route carefully. It was very circuitous. I would head north to catch Highway 69 to Greenville. From there I’d go south through Tyler and Lufkin. For any other person, the trip would have been straightforward. Due south through Dallas and Huntsville, arriving in Houston in about five hours. My way meant an additional two hours, minimum, but I didn’t mind. I was determined to see my daughter, but I was willing to do a great deal to avoid driving through Dallas again.

Even bypassing it, I was still afraid. But as always, I couldn’t say of what. I tried to rationalize it, intellectualize it. What’s the worst that could happen? I’d ask myself. I could be involved in a deadly accident. I could get a flat and be stuck by the side of the road until a stranger/serial killer stopped to abduct me. Either of those outcomes would involve pain, suffering, terror. But they’d be over soon enough. My heart would surely give out early if I were injured. And a killer would dispatch me within days when he realized how useless I’d be at fighting him.

If that was what I was afraid of, why was I so afraid?

As I drove I recognized my own answer. That wasn’t what scared me. At every small-town stop sign, every station selling gasoline, every car that passed me, I glanced at the faces. I was looking for Burl. After all these years, I knew he was still out here and I feared that he still stalked me.

I arrived in Houston in late afternoon. I found my exit easily enough and drove into the part of town near Rice known as West University. It had a sweet, small-town feel with cute little cottages and bungalows, many under renovation. I had expected Houston to be big, urban, frightening, like the
Streets of San Francisco.
But the residential area seemed not so different from McKinney after all.

I got lost a couple of times before finding the address. Even then I might have missed it if I hadn’t seen Laney’s little red car. I pulled my aging Buick to the curb and turned off the ignition. I hadn’t realized how tightly I’d been holding my body until I relaxed it. I was exhausted already and my mission was just beginning.

I mentally toyed with the idea of driving away, finding a nice hotel and getting a good night’s sleep before facing my daughter. But the thought of getting out on the road again was almost as daunting as carrying forward. With a determination born of maternal love and absolute necessity, I got out of my car and headed to the front door of the slightly shabby 1920s home that had a childlike quality about it. Perfect, I thought, for a couple who weren’t really a couple, only playing house.

There was a piece of tape over the doorbell with a note in Laney’s handwriting that read Broken, Please Knock, so I did. I waited for what seemed like a long time and then knocked again.

“Coming!” I heard an annoyed voice call from inside.

An instant later I was standing face-to-face with a young man. He was sweaty and his clothes paint splattered. He was handsome, I suppose. His dark brown hair was a little long for my taste and although his features were regular enough, I didn’t find them particularly pleasing. Perhaps I was predisposed to dislike him. Whatever the reason, I detested him on sight.

“Yeah?” he said, by way of greeting. And then added, “If you’re collecting for some charity, we’re not interested.”

“I’d like to speak to Alana Hoffman,” I said, as haughtily as I could manage.

For a moment I thought he might refuse and try to chase me from the porch. Of course, he did no such thing. Instead he turned back into the room and yelled out her name.

“There’s some woman at the door,” he explained when she’d hollered back.

“Just a sec,” I heard Laney say.

I waited.

Robert walked away from the door, but left it ajar. Inside I could see a bland, boring living room with lots of drab walls, books and black plastic. It was completely a man’s room. I was pleased and relieved to see nothing of Laney in it. I wouldn’t be asking her to give up so much.

The door opened wider and there she was, my Laney. She hadn’t come home at Christmas. It had been over a year since I’d seen her pretty face. It was smeared with yellow paint. Her hair, that she’d allowed to grow back in its natural brown color, was now twisted into an untidy ponytail at the crown of her head.

“Yes, ma’am?” she said, before recognition dawned on her. When it did, an instant later, her jaw dropped open in complete shock. “Mama?”

Her use of that word was almost equally as startling to me.

“Babs,” she corrected herself. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you,” I said. “I came to meet your young man.”

She glanced out at the car at the curb.

“You drove yourself here?”

“Yes.”

“I...I don’t know what to say,” she sputtered. “You should have called us, let us know you were coming.”