The Cotton Queen (29 page)

“Stan, stop, look at me.”

He did.

“I still don’t know what is going on? What’s happening here?”

For an instant I thought that he wasn’t going to tell me. He moved away from me again. But then he returned to face me. “As you’ve undoubtedly suspected I’m losing my company,” he said.

“What?”

“The
bigs
have quietly, unofficially gotten together and conspired to run the little guys out of the industry. You may have been too busy to notice, but the price of new computers has been falling dramatically for months. Businesses are out there spending lavishly, getting new equipment ahead of Y2K. But instead of profits, instead of supply and demand, the big computer makers have slashed prices and are taking losses. They have deep pockets and can afford to do that. It’s a strategy to increase market share. My pockets are not so deep. I never planned for my company to sell computers to every mom or high school kid. These machines weren’t designed to sit on the secretaries’ desks for checking e-mail. These are high-quality, high-function tools, primarily for engineers and scientists. What Vincent was to motorcycles, I wanted to be for computers. But apparently even geeks are not immune to pricing strategies.”

There was a sigh in his voice and a slump in his shoulders.

“If I’d gone public, they might have taken me over. The name might have survived, but I’m pretty sure the quality wouldn’t have. So I’m gone. And all this...” He spread his arms indicating all the controlled chaos around him. “Well, I’m making sure that every jiggle I’ve ever done to make my machine better, has my patent on it. It won’t stop them from pilfering what they want, but at least it will make it more complicated.”

“Why are you doing it here? Why aren’t you at your office and why don’t you have some help?”

“I’m not the only one who knows we’re going down,” he said. “I have seventy employees that realize they’re going to be looking for work very soon. They are good people, loyal and hardworking. But their families come first. I can’t put them completely in the know and then expect that they wouldn’t use their information to gain favor and employment with another firm.”

“So you’re doing it all yourself.”

He nodded. “Pretty much.”

“I’ll help,” I told him.

“I can’t ask you to do that,” he said.

“Why not? I hope you don’t think that I would steal your secrets.”

Stan shook his head. “I just know you’ve already got your hands full at your own job.”

I shrugged. “Pete will give me the time if I ask for it. The advantage of working for a family business. In the morning, I’ll ask for it.”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Never more sure of anything in my life.”

We worked the rest of that night and most of the morning. We collapsed into bed together just before noon. I got up to pick Rachel up from school. I took her with me back to Stan’s house. And she splashed around in his pool and built a fort of towels and lawn chairs in the backyard until Babs came to get her.

It took two more days like that before Stan felt comfortable about the patents and was ready to start deconstruction of the company.

“Instead of flooding the market with the last of my inventory,” he said, “I’m going to hold it back. I think there may be collectors, ultimately, that may be interested in it. And if I’m not relying on last-minute sales to pay off debt, then I can be up-front with the staff.”

I nodded, sad for him.

“You’d better go back to your own office,” he said. “Before one of my good employees convinces Pete to let them do your job.”

I laughed, threw my arms around his neck and stood on my tiptoes to give him a kiss.

His reaction was a bit less than enthusiastic, but I convinced myself that his mind was still completely engaged with business matters. We’d get our relationship back on track as soon as things began to calm down a little.

I went back to my own work as he made his official announcement, made financial arrangements to sever his employees, got his equipment and real estate on the market. Another company, down in Round Rock, was positioning itself to take on the
bigs.
They absorbed much of the Kuhl workforce. So although those people had to leave McKinney, they did, for the most part, find good jobs doing the work they’d been trained for.

The whole dismantle took less than six months. Kuhl Computers went the way of the Studebaker and the Moped.

Stan did a lot of traveling. I assumed on business. He didn’t talk much about the future or what his plans were. And he still seemed distant.

On a Saturday in early October, he returned from a trip. I knew he was home and I just kept pacing the floor.

Babs couldn’t ignore it. “What are you doing?” she asked me. “Trying to drive me crazy?”

“I’m...waiting on a phone call,” I said.

“Who from?”

“From Stan, if it’s any of your business,” I said.

“It’s not any of my business,” she agreed. “Of course, it’s hard not to notice that the man is never around much anymore.”

“If you’re going to make some snide comment about how badly I’ve handled our relationship and how stupid I’ve been to get involved so deeply without any commitment on his part, well...well just don’t. I know what a mess I’ve made of my life, I don’t need you to tell me.”

Babs was silent for a long moment.

“At the risk of being argumentative,” she said finally, “I don’t think you’ve made a mess of your life. You’re raising a wonderful daughter, you have an impressive career and you’ve found a lot of personal happiness. Most women never manage so much. But I think you’re being silly to sit around here waiting for him to make a move. Who taught you that you can’t just call him?”

“You did,” I pointed out.

“And what did I ever know about men?” she asked me.

I walked over, picked up the phone and dialed his number. He answered on the third ring.

“Hi,” I said. “Did you just get home?”

He made a few comments about the trip. Inquired politely about Rachel and things at my office.

I suggested that we have dinner.

“I’m really tired,” he said.

“Let me come over to cook something for you,” I suggested.

“No, no, that’s not necessary. I’ll just fix a bowl of soup and go to bed.”

I hesitated a second and then glancing over at Babs, seated at the kitchen table, I screwed up my courage.

“That sounds good to me, I’ll be right over.” I hung up before he had a chance to comment.

I ran upstairs, repaired my makeup and brushed my hair, assuring myself that I was as attractive as a thirty-four-year-old single mother and former McKinney Cotton Queen could be.

“Wish me luck,” I said to Babs on my way out.

“Laney, you don’t need luck,” she assured me. “You’re a bright, hardworking and determined individual. You’re also a caring, giving and empathetic woman. If a man can’t fall in love with that, then he’s simply unworthy of you. And if you’ll remember, I thought Stan was the right one, long before you ever got the idea.”

By the time I got to Stan’s house, I was determined. No more tiptoeing around things. This was going to be the showdown. He was swimming laps in the pool. I didn’t wait for him to get out and dry off. As soon as he pulled up to the side, I went directly to it.

“What is wrong with this relationship?” I asked him.

“Huh?”

“You’ve been pushing me aside for months now,” I said. “I thought it was someone else. Then I thought it was just the problems with the business. Now I don’t know what to think.”

At first it seemed as if he wasn’t even going to answer. He turned his back on me and went to the ladder. He climbed out and got a towel.

“Think what you want,” he said.

“What do you mean by that? What’s going on?”

“I guess I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop,” he said. “I lost the business, so I’m waiting for what comes next.”

I just stared at him, wondering what he was talking about.

“What comes next?” I asked him.

“Look, Laney,” he said. “I know that I’m a nice guy, but I’m not exactly hunk of the planet. When I was trotting around town with lots of cash in my pockets, women were interested in me. Not geeky women, like my ex-wife. Gorgeous women, like yourself. Those women who never gave me a second look when I was selling ice-cream cones at the drugstore. Now my fifteen minutes is over. I’m not in bad shape. I’ve still got this house, I’m not in debt and I think I’ve still got a few good ideas that I might be able to make a living on. But I’m not Daddy Warbucks anymore. I’m more like M. C. Hammer.”

“So? Do you think that makes a difference to me?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “Well, it sounds like you dumped your husband when he went bankrupt.”

“What?”

“That’s what Pete said,” he told me. “I didn’t want to believe that about you, but I kidded you about it once and you didn’t deny it. I’m...” He hesitated for a moment, then his chin came up, almost defiant. “I’m just as down now as he was then.”

I was hearing him, taking it in, finally getting it.

“You’re right,” I said. “This situation is much the same situation as what happened with Robert. You’ll be starting over with little or nothing. I’ve been used to nice gifts, fancy evenings and expensive weekend getaways. I have a child to support, a life to live, dreams I want to fulfill. All of that was true with Robert and with you. But you know, there is a big difference between the two relationships.”

He looked at me, a question in his eyes.

“I’m in love with you, Stan,” I told him. “And I don’t believe that I was ever in love with him. I know he wasn’t in love with me. But I’d kind of thought that you were.”

“I am,” he said. “I am in love with you.”

“Then prove it,” I said.

“Prove it? How?”

“Marry me. Live with me. Be a father to my daughter, give me more children to be her brothers and sisters. Make a life with me, Stan. A life for better or worse, richer or poorer, until death do us part.”

Cotton Days
McKinney, Texas
2004

L
ANEY
WATCHED
as her beautiful daughter, Rachel, now seventeen, stared at the tea leaves in the bottom of her cup. She was so young and so sweet. She was smart as the dickens, but Laney worried that she was naive. It was so easy for any girl her age to be deluded by popularity and image. Laney felt compelled to impress upon her the importance of having her dreams rooted in reality.

“It’s tempting,” she said. “Very tempting, to get carried away with all the attention. As a young woman you want to believe that because you’re a nice person, a good person and attractive as well, that you’re special and that the world just falls at your feet,” Laney said. “You get chosen as Cotton Queen, you wear a crown on your head, people applaud and you live happily ever after. That’s not how it is. Life is not a fairy tale or a romance novel. If you start out believing that it is, you’re doomed to disappointment.”

Rachel rolled her eyes.

“Mom, I’m not an idiot,” she said. “I know it’s not that simple. Adversity, injustice, tragedy, I see those things—even in high school. I know they’re there. But I can’t see how walking around, anticipating them, is going to make living with them any easier.”

“No,” her mother agreed. “I suppose it’s not. I just worry about you buying into this outmoded queen image.”

Rachel chuckled and shook her head. “Believe me, Mom, I don’t feel much like a queen,” she admitted. “I feel like a gawky, awkward kid, pretending to be a queen.”

Her mother laughed. “Now that’s the most honest thing I’ve heard anybody say about this in weeks,” she said.

“Is this the way you felt?”

“Yes, I think it was,” Laney said.

“Mom, I’ve noticed that it’s a new millennium,” Rachel told her. “I’m not into some weird retro subset. I just think it’s kind of cool to get all dressed up and wear a crown and pretend to be royalty for a day. It’s fun. It’s like a part in a play. It doesn’t mean that I’m not going to college and become a scientist or a journalist or a photographer. I know I’m going to spend most of my life working on particle physics or accounting or practicing law. Someday I want to get married and have a family. I know that’s my real life, Mom. But this, this is just a day out of ordinary time. It’s just for giggles and a great page in my scrapbook. And I’d really like you to be there with me.”

Laney sat across the table from her daughter, wavering. This sweet, little child, her baby, that she’d brought into the world when she’d felt so very much alone had managed, almost in a whisper of time, to grow into a beautiful and wise young woman.

“We won!”
The screech came from the doorway as two rambunctious screaming boys tumbled out onto the deck. They both held up small trophies of faux-gilded plastic. The younger of the two, stuck his right in front of Laney’s face.

“Look, Mom, look,” he said. “Read it.”

Laney complied. “Cotton Days Soccer Tournament 2004, Eight to Ten Year Olds Division, First Place.”

“First Place!” he repeated.

“Very good, Connor,” she said.

“He sat on the bench most of the game,” his older brother related, unkindly. “He’s the worst player on the team. I scored two goals, Mom. Two.”

“That’s very good, Thomas,” she said. “I’m always proud when you do your best. And I’m sure Connor did his best, as well.”

The older brother snorted. “Too bad for him that a guy can’t
read
his way to a championship.”

“Stupid jock,” Connor shot back.

“Connor,” Laney said, firmly. “We do not use that word to each other in this house.”

“We can’t say jock?” Thomas asked, deliberately misunderstanding. “Don’t worry, Mom. I’d never say that about my kid brother.”

The two boys were very alike physically, Thomas just a taller version of Connor, but their personalities and interests were as different as night and day. Connor had all his father’s geeky brilliance. Thomas was, Laney suspected, a throwback to the Hoffmans. Athletic and good with his hands, he would protect his brother and sister against anything in the world. But he would also spend most of his time with them being a major annoyance.

Across the table Rachel sighed with impatience.

Thomas heard the sound and turned his attention to her.

“Hey, if it isn’t the Rotten Queen, all done up for the big day,” he said. “What’s with the hair? Are you trying to trap small animals in there?”

“Eat dirt,” she responded.

Thomas reached out and grabbed a curl of her carefully perfected updo and jerked it down from the elegant coiffure.

Rachel screamed. Thomas laughed and tried to run away. Stan arrived just in time to catch everybody in midargument and sorted out crime and punishment. Thomas was sent to his room. Connor grabbed a book and made himself scarce. Rachel and Laney went upstairs to repair the damage.

When Laney returned to the deck to collect the dishes, Stan was seated where Laney had been. She sat down across from him with a heavy sigh.

“Her royal highness is not completely damaged,” she reported. “Though her supply of brotherly love may have been bruised.”

“They say eleven is the hardest year,” he said to her.

“Yeah, if we can just hold on until he’s sixteen then we can stop worrying,” she teased.

Stan chuckled.

“Rachel looks wonderful,” he said. “She’s going to be the prettiest queen since...well since I was driving in the parade.”

“Flatterer.”

“Just being honest,” Stan said. “About both my wife and my daughter. Rachel has turned out to be a very pretty girl. And she’s got a good head on her shoulders, with or without the fancy hairdo.”

“Yes, I think she does,” Laney admitted.

“And she has excellent taste,” he added. “Wait until you see the dress she and I picked out. It’s going to look fabulous.”

“Dress? What dress?”

“Your dress.”

“Stanley?”

“Truth is, I just couldn’t see you turning her down,” he said. “You’re going to love the dress. It’s your color, a kind of deep scarlet, the exact shade of red roses.”

“Stan, I have made it absolutely clear from the beginning that I was not going to be in this parade.”

“They need you for the float.”

“Why do they have to have a float?” she asked. “In my day riding in a convertible was elegant enough.”

“Well, time marches on,” he said. “Now there’s a big float and if you’re not on it, there’ll be a big empty spot.”

“I don’t want to,” Laney said stubbornly.

Stan shook his head. “Just because it was your mother’s idea doesn’t mean you’re allowed to disappoint your daughter.”

“You know how I feel about this entire queen extravaganza,” she said.

“I do,” he said. “And I know how much you want to protect Rachel from it. Just like Babs tried to protect you from things that she didn’t care for. You are so much like your mother.”

Laney’s eyes narrowed dangerously.

Stan laughed.

And so it was that two hours later, Laney stood on a sidewalk near downtown dressed in a vivid red dress that was a bit too loose in the top and a bit too tight in the hips.

“You’ll be sitting down,” Rachel said. “Nobody will notice.”

The float, made of white pom-pom bows on the top of sticks was meant to represent a cotton field ready for harvest. It had waves of hills, each higher than the other and three chairs. Around the lowest one the sign read,
Barbara Quarles, 1956.
The one in the middle,
Alana Hoffman, 1975.
And at the top a huge, glorious-looking throne that read,
Rachel Jerrod, McKinney Cotton Queen, 2004.
Rising up from the back of the throne was a huge banner that ran the width of the float.
Three Generations of Cotton Days Royalty.

“I feel like an idiot,” Laney said under her breath.

“Well, you look fabulous,” Babs said beside her.

She looked over at her mother. “Thanks,” she said. “You look very nice yourself.”

Babs was gowned in royal purple, a small tiara on her head. “I brought one of these for you,” she said.

Laney shook her head. “I don’t want to wear a crown,” she said.

“Please?” Babs asked. “It will look silly if I wear one and you don’t. And I need the accoutrement. There are bound to be some people in this crowd old enough to remember that I wasn’t actually the Cotton Queen in 1956.”

“Aunt LaVeida passed away three years ago,” Rachel said. “I think that clause about when the queen can’t fulfil her duties definitely comes into effect.”

“Wear it,” Babs pleaded.

Laney hesitated.

“Come on, Mom,” Rachel said, overruling whatever deliberations her mother was still making. “Scrunch down.”

Laney allowed her daughter to secure the rhinestone decorated circle upon her head.

“There,” Rachel said. “You really look like a queen.”

“She always did,” Babs piped in behind her.

“Okay beautiful ladies,” Acee said as he came up beside them carrying a stepladder. “Time to load up. The queen goes first.”

Rachel scampered up the steps and then held up her acres of pale pink organza as she carefully climbed the hills to her seat at the top. Under the voluminous feminine skirt she had on well-worn sneakers.

Laney, in heels, stepped more carefully and settled into her place.

Acee offered his hand to Babs.

“You are more beautiful today than you were all those years ago,” he told her.

To the surprise of everyone, including Acee, she wrapped her arms around her ex-husband’s neck and kissed him.

Laney’s jaw dropped open at the unprecedented display of affection. When her mother shot a glance toward Rachel, Laney turned as well, just in time to see her daughter give Babs an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

In the distance they could hear the high school band begin to play.

“We’re starting,” someone called out.

But it was still several, nervous minutes before the huge float began to inch its way down the street.

It had been so many years and so much had happened, so many things had changed. The population was twice the size of what it had been the last time Laney paraded through the streets. Downtown McKinney once abuzz with hardware stores, shoe shops, banks and butchers was now an antiques Mecca, the preferred shopping day-trip for affluent Dallasites. The quaint old buildings and cute lunch counters were now more familiar to tourists than the locals. But amongst the applauding throngs of strangers in the square were faces well-known to the women riding the float.

Renny had cordoned a full section in front of one of his buildings for the seniors from Aunt Maxine’s center. Maxine sat in the middle of them. She was still in her wheelchair since her fall last spring, but she was excited and waving eagerly as they passed. Renny and Judy had been happily married for ten years. They were now pillars of the local business community. If anyone remembered their rocky start, it was never mentioned. Home from college for the summer was their son, “Big” Bykowski, a former McKinney High School basketball star, now on athletic scholarship at St. John’s. Laney always had a soft spot for the cheerful, well-adjusted kid who was a taller, more muscular version of the faded photo of Laney’s dad.

Halfway up the block, she spotted Pete. He was all alone and looking gray and older than his years, but he was smiling. That was good to see. When the dot-com bubble burst, his business had been forced to restructure and downsize. He managed to hang on to a small niche market that he’d kept in operation, but he lost a lot, more than just money and power. He and Sadie had finally called it quits. They were both still in town, neither dating, but everyone expected imminent divorce.

In front of the old Ritz theater Laney saw Nicie and Cheryl. She’d expected to see Nicie today, who was now remarried and helping her husband run a restaurant out on the lake. She was still Laney’s best friend and the two tried to have lunch together every week. But Cheryl was someone who folks in McKinney rarely saw. In fact, Laney suspected that those who were seeing her now probably didn’t recognize her. Pumped up, with a mannish haircut and an armful of hunky tattoos, she looked more like her brother, Ned, than the young woman they’d gone to school with. Ned had drowned a decade earlier. Out fishing on the lake and stoned on methamphetamine, he’d apparently become disoriented and jumped out of the boat to swim to shore.

As they rounded the corner near the old bank building, Laney spied her husband, Stan, and their two young sons. The boys were hooting and hollering, as was their nature. Stan was busy snapping photos with the digital camera. She waved and she smiled. He lowered the shiny metal box from his view and just gazed at her for a long moment. Laney felt the love and tenderness in that look spread over her like warm molasses.

He turned then, prompting the boys. The two grabbed up something behind them and came running into the street. As if on cue, the driver stopped the procession and waited as the two young Kuhl brothers delivered a long-stemmed yellow rose to each of the three women on the float. Thomas sort of tossed his up to Rachel whose clean catch was probably due to summer softball. Connor was so short that Babs got up from her seat and went over to retrieve the flowers he carried. She kissed her grandson on the top of his head, embarrassing him completely. Then as she returned to her throne, she handed the second rose to Laney.

“Thank you for doing this,” Babs said to her.

“Thank you for making me,” Laney replied.

Babs took her seat and the giant crepe-paper barge began sailing down the street once more.

In the distance the band played, the twirlers tossed batons, the soldiers marched with flags, the clowns rode on go-carts, the cowboys on horseback, onlookers ate sno-cones and the queens waved and smiled. Laney had never felt like a queen. That’s what she’d told her daughter. And she didn’t feel like one now. Maybe that’s what this was all about. Coming to the realization and appreciation that, after all the rush of celebration, the excitement of being the center of attention, the glamour of an elegant gown, the fantasy of reigning over friends and neighbors, after all that, you’re able to recognize yourself as just an ordinary woman with a crown on your head.