Jane Two (25 page)

I just stared at her. I wanted to ask why she chose to overfeed her son and why Baxter chose to eat fat sticks in front of the TV. He might have told me to fuck off or he might have said he was perfectly happy leading a sedentary life, despite his wheezing and lack of mobility. Maybe if we had all known then what we know now—maybe then, Baxter would have bothered. But back then, we didn't know. I just knew Baxter was a lazy, cheating turd.

“Y'know I was a teen bride when I had Baxter. That makes me old enough to be your big sister.” I had no idea where Mrs. Parsifal was going. “So you let me know, boy, anytime ya wanna dahn at the country club. Baxter's so bored there. He'd rather sit home on my bisque suede Henredon eatin' Velveeta outta them new squirt cans writin' his college application essays than anything else. So diligent, ain't ya, baby boy. You look like you're goldurn diligent, too, boy.” The harpy squeezed my bicep again and let her hand slide down to my waist. I took a step back, and then another. I knew if only Baxter would join swim team, Coach Randall would whip that tub of shit into shape. Coach would make Baxter learn The Oath. But hell, I didn't really feel it was my place to be preaching the gospel while Mrs. Parsifal was cougaring me outta my Sears layaway jeans, up and down with her false eyelashes lined in bright blue.

“And it gets so frightfully lonely sometimes dahnin' all alone at the club. Y'know, with Baxter's daddy an airline pilot and all. He's gone fer days on end, especially when he flies t'places like Japan. You know they got geishas there in Japan…” I despised this family. So, with all the politeness I could muster, I excused myself. “Unless you'd rather dahn at our home, boy. Right over there by Jane's house at hole eighteen. Hole in one, boy!” Mrs. Parsifal winked a cluster of mascara talons at me. There was no misunderstanding here, and I certainly did not let it go unchallenged.

“Y'know what, ma'am, I don't think I belong here, in your company.” I was sickened to hear Jane's name come out of that harridan's mouth.

“Well, course y'do, darlin'.” I felt sorry for Baxter, with a mother “like my big sister.” Like Baxter's malodorous bus vomit, her acrid words clung as I jogged away toward the wrought iron fence to climb through it to the pool.

“No. I don't,” I hollered over my shoulder.

“Perhaps, y'could mow my lawn, boy? Pay you double overtime.” That unrelenting pig of a woman was Baxter's fish puke incarnate. I ignored Mrs. Parsifal and waved to Coach Randall in his Speedo talking to the Titly-est waitress at the Snack Shack. The second I was a few strides away from Baxter's mother, she motioned flirtatiously to Coach Randall.

“Other side of the fence!” I heard someone yell, as I arrived at the barrier.

It was not till I noticed the fat Santa manager of the Green Beans Yard Crew eyeballing me from his red Rolls-Royce golf cart that I felt an odd kind of relief. He was always there, turning up at my swim team meets, and other moments in my life. Maybe I was paranoid? But he was always tracking me with his laser gaze. His lock'n'load look was like an intervention as if I were a drug user. Like I didn't belong near that crowd going into the country club, and I didn't belong near those fancy houses, even if I was there mowing lawns. I didn't belong. But that was
fine
. I was done there. I was going someplace
nice
.

“Seedlin', out on the porch!” So out I went. “What could be
nicer
'n here, Seed?” My Grandaddy was sitting in his lawn chair on our porch and looking out over the horizon right next to James when I got home that night after swim practice. “I know you wanna start thinkin' 'bout college and ya own life, but just know that most folks born the way you was is gonna look out from they porch at all the land and silence and say, man, one'a these days I'm gon' get outta here and move to the city and make a fortune. But make no mistake, dees same people, when they older, gon' be lookin' down from they big office with all they money and say, man, one day I'm gon' buy me a little place away from it all with a porch, just looking out over God's green land…and I'm just gon' sit there and enjoy the silence. So, you know what, son? I'll meet you right back here.”

“Yer Grandaddy know, boy. Listen up,” said James, without ever taking his eyes off of my Grandaddy's horizon. My Grandaddy was the first to make me see, even before going out on my own into the world to see it for myself, that most people spend their twenties, thirties and forties trying to make money. And once in their fifties and sixties, these same people inevitably end up spending the majority of their acquired earnings trying to prolong that same life that they exchanged for that money in the first place. My Grandaddy might have never heard the term “rat race,” but
damn
, did he sure know what it was. And yet, it was Grandaddy and Mamau who drove me to scout college campuses because Dad was working so much and Mom was dealing with Lilyth, who had gotten weirder and meaner since she came back from the nuns. Driving to see college campuses, Mamau would jabber and Grandaddy kept saying, “Goldie, woman, you're dingy, quit flappin' y'jaws and waggin' y'tongue.” But she just kept on in the backseat, smiling at me driving and waving at me in the rearview mirror and holding Grandaddy's hand sitting right beside her. I loved driving Grandaddy's car. Every three to four years Grandaddy would get a new Cadillac to drive to church, though he and Mamau lived in a shack. The foot pedal to change the radio station was on the floor, right by the dimmer switch, but Mamau didn't know. So when I was driving them, I'd change the station and pull Mamau's leg. “I have these special powers,” I'd say as I pointed to the radio while pressing that button with my foot on the floorboard…and the station would change. “Oh my God, Mickey, tell your Mamau, how you done magic, electronifyin' this vehicle's radio,” my Mamau would exclaim. And Grandaddy would bellow, “Goddammit woman, it's the car's own
elec
tronification system. Seedlin' ain't got no powers, 'cept his own God-given self. Now, hush it and let him pull over an' get out. Leave the air on, boy, for y'Mamau so she don't dampen.” And with that, I pulled over to the curb and met my Grandaddy's outstretched fist in the blistering heat on the sidewalk where he dropped a small matchbox in my palm.

“Listen, Seedlin'. You see how y'Mamau think you 'lectric and I know you ain't? I know you always understand me. Hell, even on the football field that day that devil-pussy crack you in tha head with his helmet back when you was a tiny. I also know y'momma hollered at you about the same thing you know I was proud of. Well, they's some truth in the both of us. I give you this 'cause I want you to put it in my great-great-granbabbies. This is the stuff I want the future to see, so make sure the future hear it. Your wife gonna disagree, and sometime you gonna disagree with her on what a child need to hear to be raised up right, but it's important that your baby hear both sides. You got a wife who agree with you all the time, then you choose the wrong one. Choose correct, goddammit. Let the mirror tell ya. Look at ya mouth. Where them corners pointin'? You pick tha one that give you a smile you tryin' ta hide, 'cause the love smile the only one that tryin' its best not to. All the other smiles don't give a shit, 'cause they ain't scary. I seen it on you before and you best go get it. Don't lead with the trouser worm, least not for a wife. You pick a good momma for my great-granbabbies, and then you fill in all the holes of the stuff she leave out. Can only come from a man. Ain't no other way. These lessons got a long way to travel, and it's important that they path don't get interrupted by somebody that don't give a goddamn. So, you give a goddamn, and you keep giving a goddamn. I knew someone once who didn't, and I ain't cared for him much. My daddy gave me these and I want the future to see 'em, so I gotta hand 'em off to you. Seeds in that little box I wanna keep alive. Daddy was the best man I know. He was James's daddy, but mine, too. It's complicated, but someday I'll 'splain to ya, that Almond Tree. And your daddy's the best, too, I saw to it. You gonna be next, so pay attention. Sometime ya baby need ta hear that he 'lectric…and sometime he need ta know he ain't. I love you. You got a tree an' a nice bowl of gumbo with big chunks'a Boudin, so don't take a crap in it.”

And with that nice bowl of gumbo, I prepared to go off to college—a period of intense work punctuated by fewer and fewer Jane sightings, and more than a few returned letters from The Dancing Mailbox. So I set off into a new world with the hope that if I went someplace nicer it would be fine for Jane to join me. The last time I saw Jane before I went off to college was senior year at prom—well, actually, I saw her as she was on her way into the country club where her school's prom was being held. I was plugged into my Walkman's earphones, listening to “Only You” by Yaz and skimming the pool for Coach Randall, but all I could hear in my head was a frustrating cacophony of “I'm Not in Love” by 10cc blaring from the country club, mixed with the static AM radio rendition of “Love Hurts” by Nazareth pouring out of what looked like Jonathan's BMW as he quickly rolled up the tinted window and sharked past. I loved each one of those songs, but they each required their own solar system, and not being able to separate them frustrated the hell out of me.

Jane's long brown-black hair hung straight down around her bare shoulders, and she wore a flowy purple and gem green paisley-print hippie dress and a new pair of 95s. There she stood, radiating at me, my flower with a tinsel heart. But she was with a Brooks Brothers tuxedo who sounded like he had come down from the North, maybe New England. Christ, besides Mr. Pink Pants, I had only ever heard people talk like that on fuckin'
Masterpiece Theatre
. I stared at Jane and Jane stared at me. She took a step back, then forward, but stopped after the first step when that guy—probably the honking, non-door-opening 911 douche—handed her a cup of punch. I really hated Jane's preppy little escort. But I hadn't a hope in hell of competing with his social economics. He had a 911 and punch, and I had a dirty pool skimmer in my hands. As the line of gussied-up teenagers gradually filed into the club, Jane glanced back at me a couple times, smiling like always and forever at me, then turned that generous smile and tinkling tinsel-bell laughter to her date. He obviously knew how to make Jane laugh. The entitled asshole turned to see what Jane was smiling at. He looked right at me. Then he turned to Jane with a nod, and I couldn't tell if he said something to her or not, but she nodded back. Again, the son of a bitch turned toward me, this time looking squarely at me, and he fucking smiled. He didn't smile wickedly like Jonathan would have. The fucker smiled broadly at me, like there wasn't a question in the world that I was not a threat to him, because there wasn't a question in the world as to what side of the fence I belonged. I felt like I was a fire hydrant and he had just lifted his leg. He had simply planted his flag on the moon and I'd always just be a cosmonaut. As they filed in, I forced my attention to skimming the pool. Jane smiled back at me over her shoulder as she was propelled inside the country club by the tide of teenagers in line behind her. “I'm Not in Love” blasted louder from the country club with its open doors, but I could turn up “Only You” on my Walkman even louder, and drown that shit right out. Because, it wasn't just a silly phase I was going through.

A
fter college, I came home for a short time to regroup and pack my dad's old green Gran Torino he was letting me use for my trip out west. Mandy, my Irish setter, leapt to follow on my bike over to Quail Valley and down the golf course path where I needed to stop by Jane's one last time before I left town again for good. I'd heard she had moved to another part of Houston, down near the arts district, but I hoped if I went in person she might be visiting her parents, or at least they might tell me where she had gone. As I wheeled past the ninth hole Halfway Food Hut, I noticed the red Rolls-Royce, but that fat man was nowhere to be seen. In a strange way, I missed that man. I inhaled the newly freed chlorophyll. The place I recalled so vividly with gemstone colors was washed out to pastel. My childhood color palette had been through a hyper-realistic lens of a Fuji Velvia, but now it had faded to old-school Kodachrome. Vibrant memories. But it was like a red filter had turned all my blues to black.

When I reached hole eighteen, I rode all the way around to the front of the butter yellow house, but it was quiet. I propped that old Schwinn Sting-Ray against Jane's forest green mailbox curbside, and I never once looked back to see if it looked impressive. I knew it looked impressive. I still loved that bike. And even having already been out of college, I hadn't a concern in the world about riding that old Sting-Ray over to Jane's. I no longer cared about all the things that had nothing to do with who I was. That day was only the second time I had ever rung her doorbell, but this time no one answered. The trampoline was completely rusted. My WD-40 from the card shark's suitcase in The Ditch was still tucked in between Jane's springs, with my initials I'd scratched into its painted surface still there. I tried to give the springs a squirt but the can was beyond use. I biked home and passed her old house on Sandpiper Drive, with a herd of kids in the yard, and on past the Milans', overgrown and in need of care, and absent of one aluminum lawn chair. I ran into my dad's garage and fired up the push mower one last time before I left town for California.

I never did learn what became of Mr. Milan after his wife died, but I never saw him again. I swept up the husks under my giant bean tree so Mom wouldn't have to do it, busy as she was raising Lilyth's little one. I was finishing packing the Gran Torino for LA when my sister stumbled by.

“I shoulda killed you when I had the chance,” slurred Lilyth before she passed out in just about the same spot where Lew Hoagie had lost it the night of the yard sale.

I kept right on packing till little Charlotte came out of the house followed by my mom, looking worried and trying to keep Lilyth's daughter from seeing her own mother that way. I saw the look of desperation on my mom's face, and I hoisted Lilyth off the lawn and slumped her in her bed. That night, I counted 143 unopened letters stamped
RETURN TO SENDER
sent to the wrong address and postmarked as early as 1973. I had kept sending letters to the same wrong address, as it had become a sort of therapy for me. The next day I left Houston, car packed to the gills, and drove by the art supply store where I had heard, quite by accident, that Jane worked. And sure enough, I saw her through the art shop plateglass window, way in the back where she was smiling, gorgeous, heart-stopping, helping a customer. I mailed a good-bye letter to her in the freshly painted mailbox right in front of the art store. This box had a dent right in its gut, and a jagged ring of rust bled through the new federal blue paint job. I wondered if that dent, like the leg of The Dancing Mailbox, had been Kevin's handiwork.

And you know I couldn't bring myself to go inside that art supply store. Hell, what would I say?
I'm leaving. Come to LA?
Too much time had passed. I had let too much time lapse between us. Maybe the fat groundskeeper was right. Maybe I didn't belong in her world. We had shared a ditch between two fences is all, and she was from somewhere else. With Mandy riding up front with me, lolling her tongue out the window, I drove away; still, I was hoping Jane might see me, come out of the art store, and tell me exactly what she wanted in life. As I kept on driving and got on the interstate for LA, “Wild World” ignited that Torino's old speakers, and I wondered if Jane preferred Cat Stevens's or Harry Chapin's version. I wondered, too, how long my letter would sit in the mailbox in front of Jane's art store. And if she had seen me out there. Or if she even cared. Or if she'd somehow get the letter and come find me.

My memory of Jane remained my driving force. I still hoped maybe, someday, we would run into each other somewhere. I got a good job in LA and I loved it, but I never really fell in love with another person. I always hoped Jane would track me down somehow, but she never did. I just couldn't cut Jane's siren anchor loose. Work kept me busy, but I felt there were few people I could truly connect with. I had grown up in a time and place where people greeted you with “good morning,” courtesy was built in, bred in, compared to the Hollywood Hills, where even after a decade I had met only two neighbors on my street, one of which was the housekeeper to the first. I knew it was the transient nature of city life and industry, but I still wished for a place and a home like I'd known.

Grandaddy came to visit me one time in LA, Mamau at his side. Mandy and I picked them up from LAX in my dad's vintage '77 BMW 530i, Dad's trophy when his small business finally took off. I had restored the Bimmer's original silver paint, red leather interior, and even the meditating groan of that 3.0 liter in-line 6 that sounded like no other car on the road. Yelling over the throaty engine as we worked our way down La Cienega toward the famous Sunset Strip, I pointed out sights until we were forced to stop at a blockade at Santa Monica Boulevard. I had completely forgotten that it was parade weekend. As all the rainbows and dress—and lack of dress—passed in front of the car, I could see my Grandaddy's face in the rearview mirror taking it all in. My Grandaddy just chuckled and shook his head as my Mamau got more and more excited by all the festivity that she clearly misunderstood. We all watched as a group of about five men in white boots, white Speedos, chef hats, and nothing else slowly approached holding giant silver platters of food that random paraders would occasionally approach and grab a snack.

“LGBT,” remarked Mamau, noticing a few paraders' T-shirts. “Is that a type of sandwich they's advertisin'?”

I explained to her what LGBT stood for, and Mamau gasped and clung to her large bosoms. My Grandaddy just watched as it all passed before him.

“Hell, every man like his own sandwich how he like it. And I reckon they can throw they trouser worm wherever they wanna, long as whoever where they's throwin' want ta get throwed at. Don't know if it require a goddamn parade, though. BLT, that's my favorite. Just plain old BLT,” said Grandaddy wryly, and he gave Mamau's hand a squeeze. I could see he was thinking, but there was no familiar horizon for his gaze to rest on here. “All them official titles…and they offended if ya call 'em somethin' different. Hell, I don't wanna hurt no feelin's. I'd call 'em nickel if they want, but then we gotta come up with somethin' new for five cent. Ain't nobody can live they life proper these days without worryin' 'bout who they gon' piss off. I tell ya, ya cain't take a shit these days without people worryin' 'bout hurtin' the goddamn feelin's of folks born without assholes, and when they feelin's get hurt y'cain't even tell 'em to go fuck theyselves 'cause then you's offendin' the goddamn self-sexuals!”

My Grandaddy never could come to understand what all the fuss was about what with the new distinctions publicly explaining sexual orientation. Just then the platter group in white passed right in front of my Mamau's window, and I saw my Grandaddy's face lose all hope for the future when he could clearly see that the platter that each of those chefs carried down by their groin displayed numerous sausages, the closest to them being their own. They had cut out holes in their Speedos and laid their own genitalia next to an assortment of wurst for all to see. Grandaddy quickly took my Mamau's face in his hands and turned it toward his and away from the parade.

A year later, when I arrived at my Grandaddy's wake in the Louisiana bayou where he had grown up, I was not surprised to see over a thousand people lined up to pay their respects. There I saw a rough-hewn wooden cross in the backyard out by the bayou that had been split in half by a pink-blossomed tree coming out of the ground beneath. Two men's names were carved in it, but one was too scratched out to be legible, the other was James's father. At Grandaddy's wake, I saw a middle-aged black man crying his eyes out off to the side of my Grandaddy up in the front. After the service, as the sun was setting, the man approached me and asked me to take a ride with him. I recognized him from somewhere and he seemed to know everything about me, and my Mamau seemed to know his whole family, wife, kids, granbabbies and all. So I climbed into his brand-new Lincoln Town Car, and he drove me away. That man's eyes wept the entire time we drove, until we arrived at a huge Ford dealership. He took another tissue out of a little plastic pouch, wiped his eyes one final time, and said, “C'mere, gotta show ya somethin'.” He got out and walked me up to the front door of that display room with a fleet of new Ford and Lincoln and Mercury cars, took a key out of his pocket, inserted it, and spun the lock what seemed like five full rotations until the giant glass door was free and he swung it open, motioning me in.

“Yer Grandaddy gimme somethin' long time ago. Kept it in my pocket for years. He gone, and can't see…so I wanna show it to you. Ain't gonna live in my pocket no more.”

A huge white wall served as a backdrop for all the display cars in that front room. And when he switched on the lights they seemed to flicker on, one by one, all the way down the line until the very last one at the end of that wall. But when that wall lit up, I knew exactly who that man was.

“You was there when he give me this, but don't know if you remember.”

But I remembered everything from that day. On that giant wall behind those brand-new cars was painted:

And sure enough, there was the climber, as my Grandaddy had called it:

“You must be Mr. Frank, sir. Lenny, I believe. I met you a long time ago at The Piccadilly Cafeteria.”

And with that he broke, and hugged me with enough tears for the both of us. It was Lenny who had sent all the Ford LTDs for Grandaddy's cortege at no expense to the family. I thanked him—for everything. And I thanked him for having kept my Grandaddy alive in his dealership showroom. My Grandaddy was one of the best people I ever knew, and I miss him every single day. And that advice worked wonders for me. But I had no answer for Jane. The rules of love seemed to be different from anything I understood.

There's no glamour in grief. While I never forgot Jane in LA, I found myself embedded in an industry in which a large majority of my coworkers credited misspent youth, absentee parents, drug abuse, child abuse, sexual abuse, and various other types of childhood turmoil to explain the brilliant origins of their craft. Some even wore these experiences like badges of honor, as if tragedy were necessary for the creation of any type of art. Grief is a hurdle to be leapt over, not bragged about.

I had absolutely every opportunity provided to me by a loving, caring, doting family, but was taught to leap, just in case. I owed everything I have ever achieved in my life to my mom and dad, Grandaddy and Mamau. Looking around me in LA, I realized that nothing of any value in my life could have been obtained without my family. Nothing. In Texas, growing up, I always thought it was my “right” to have good parents. I expected it, and thought everyone had a pair. But it's not a right at all. And some just say it's a kind of genetic luck of the draw. But rattlesnakes breed rattlesnakes, so there's really no luck involved at all. My Grandaddy showed me that hard work, discipline, and good parenting is what promotes children who expect more of their parents, just as it promotes parents who expect more of their children. Well, I was given the world from my family. They all taught me that life was a continual demonstration of value to yourself and to the world around you, and I did not expect it to be some arbitrary definition of fairness. My family wanted me to have an unfair advantage by
their
definition. Their main objective was making sure that I was sent out into the world with an almost certain chance of survival and ultimately procreation, or at the very least
creation
. They put this in me, and unless there had been a design flaw, it would always be permanently encoded in my DNA. I did not want to let myself or them down. And I hoped I wouldn't. But I knew I had a Boudin recipe.