Same Kind of Different As Me (10 page)
But she couldn’t quite get her mind around the logic of that kind of philanthropy.
“We pay $2,000 to get in, and half of that goes to pay for the decorator,” she said. “And the
dress
I wore cost $2,000. Why don’t we just send in a check for $4,000 and stay home? The charity would make more money that way.”
“It’s good for business,” I said.
“Really? How much have you made?”
“Well . . . none, yet.”
During those years, I spent a week of every month in New York, where I eventually developed a strong partnership with a dealer named Michael Altman, who is still my partner today. About four times each year, I traveled to Paris, squeezing first-class, five-star jaunts to Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Florence in between. I bought and sold expensive art, met private clients, schmoozed gallery owners and museum buyers, and managed to sneak in skiing, wine-tasting, and chateau weekends.
We stayed in Fort Worth until 1986, when I thought I’d outgrown it, then moved to Dallas where I thought I could make even more money in art. We moved into a perfectly good million-dollar home in the Park Cities that we tore down to make it nicer, painting it a color that complemented the red Jaguar convertible I parked in the driveway. The Park Cities was a wealthy enclave where the local newspaper,
Park Cities People
, periodically published a list of best-dressed ladies, most of whom spent at least $200,000 a year on clothes. I didn’t mind that and would probably have been proud to appear on such a list. Deborah was, of course, appalled.
We put our children in public school. Regan spent her early years religious, pledging never to listen to rock music. Back then, she was a sharp dresser like her mom, but as a teenager, she shunned anything that smacked of wealth. At sixteen, she preferred clothes from the Salvation Army resale to anything from a mall and yearned to be a freedom fighter in South Africa.
Carson grew up a kid with a big heart, one always tuned toward God. We loved his little-boy sayings, like the one he used to describe feeling extra tired. “Mommy,” he’d say, “I ran out of strong.” In high school, he was an all-state wrestler at 103 pounds. In fact, he was a model child, except for the time when, after a little taste of liquor in his senior year, he nearly destroyed his room with his “Best Camper” paddle from Kanakuk Kamp, where all good Christian boys go.
In Dallas, I threw myself into my work, traveling more, striving for more international market share. I changed cars like I changed Armani suits and tired of each new toy I acquired as quickly as a toddler on Christmas morning.
Deborah, meanwhile, plugged into God. While I pursued the material, she plunged into the spiritual. While I dedicated my life to making money and spent a few minutes parked in a church pew on Sundays, she spent hours at Brian’s House, a ministry to homeless babies with AIDS. When I stormed Europe impressing billionaires with my art savvy, she stormed heaven, praying for the needy. My passion was recognition and success. Her passion was to know God.
And so we pursued our separate loves. It didn’t take long before our separate loves did not include each other.
Billy Graham has managed to maintain his integrity for decades by following a set of hard and fast rules designed to keep married men from doing something stupid. One of Billy’s rules is: Never allow yourself to be alone with a woman who is not your wife.
I should have listened to Billy.
In 1988, while on a business trip, I found myself sitting in the Hard Rock Cafe in Beverly Hills, across from the kind of woman who seems to grow indigenously in California, right alongside the palm trees: willowy blonde, blue-eyed, a painter, and much younger than I.
If the subject had come up over lunch, I probably would have pinned my reason for being there on a loveless marriage. Deborah and I had faked it pretty well for about five years: the affluent Christian couple still so in love. Deborah, I learned later, was sure I loved art and money, but not sure I still loved her. I was sure she loved God and our children, and fairly certain she could just barely stand the sight of me.
But the subject of Deborah or the kids or the fact that I was married-filing- jointly never came up over lunch. Instead, there was chilled wine—white, and too much of it . . . a meaningful pause . . . in the eyes, the sparkle of invitation. Dancing toward the edge of the cliff and sizing up the distance to the bottom.
I would have liked to have thought I swept this woman into a hotel room with my wit and rugged good looks. The truth was, she was more interested in what I could do for her art career. It is a sorry fact of my history that if it hadn’t been her, it would’ve been someone in Paris or Milan or New York City, anyone who gave me a second look, because I was looking, too—for a way out.
I remember for three or four years secretly wishing Deborah would divorce me because I didn’t have the guts to divorce her and corrupt the “Mr. Wonderful” image so many of our friends had layered over me like a holiday window cling.
In the end, I saw the artist only twice, once in California and once in New York, then confessed to Deborah—with a little help from my friends. I confided my conquest to a friend, who confided my confidence to his wife, who “encouraged” me to tell Deborah. If I didn’t, she said, she would.
Calculating that it was better to rat myself out than look like a weasel, I called the artist from the office one day and told her I couldn’t see her anymore. Then I went home and confessed to Deborah. My spin: Her disinterest had driven me into the arms of another woman, one who wanted me just the way I was—money and all.
“What!” she screamed, flying into a rage. “Nineteen years! Nineteen years! What were you thinking? How could you do this?”
Shoes, vases, and figurines flew through the air, some a direct hit. When nothing else presented itself as a weapon, Deborah pounded me with her bare fists until her arms wore out and hung limp at her sides.
The night spun by in a whirl of sleepless anger. The next morning we phoned our pastor, then drove to his office where we spent most of the day airing our garbage. In the end, we discovered that neither of us was quite ready to give up. We did still love each other, though in that vestigial way of couples who’ve worn each other out. We agreed to try to work things out.
Back at the house that night, we were sitting in our bedroom retreat, talking, when Deborah asked me something that nearly made me faint. “I want to talk to her. Will you give me her phone number?”
Deborah’s resolve at that moment was like a student skydiver who, once at altitude, strides straight to the plane’s open door and leaps without pausing to bat down the butterflies. She picked up the bedroom phone and punched each number as I recited it.
“This is Deborah Hall, Ron’s wife,” she said calmly into the phone.
I tried to imagine the shocked face on the other end of the line.
“I want you to know that I don’t blame you for the affair with my husband,” Deborah went on. “I know that I’ve not been the kind of wife Ron needed, and I take responsibility for that.”
She paused, listening.
Then: “I want you to know that I forgive you,” Deborah said. “I hope you find someone who will not only truly love you but honor you.”
Her grace stunned me. But not nearly so much as what she said next: “I intend to work on being the best wife Ron could ever want, and if I do my job right, you will not be hearing from my husband again.”
Deborah quietly placed the phone in its cradle, sighed with relief, and locked her eyes on mine. “You and I are now going to rewrite the future history of our marriage.”
She wanted to spend a couple of months in counseling, she said, so we could figure out what was broken, how it got that way, and how to fix it. “If you’ll do that,” she said, “I’ll forgive you. And I promise I will never bring this up, ever again.”
It was a gracious offer, considering that I, and not Deborah, had been the traitor. Faster than you can say “divorce court,” I said yes.
First
time the train stopped, we was in Dallas. I’d never even been outside Red River Parish; now here I was in a whole other state. The city was big and close. Intimidatin. Then the railroad police started messin with us, so me and that hobo fella hopped another boxcar outta there and rode the rails for a while. He showed me the ropes. After a while, I decided to see how I’d make out in Fort Worth. Stayed there a coupla years, then finally made it out to Los Angeles and stayed there another coupla years. Met a woman, stayed with her for a while. Me and the law didn’t get along too well out there, though. Seemed like I was always in trouble for somethin or other, so I went on back to Fort Worth.
I tried to find work here and there, odd jobs, that kinda thing, but I learned purty quick there wadn’t much call for cotton farmers in the city. Only reason I made out was ’cause Fort Worth was what the rail tramps called “hobo heaven.” Said anybody that was passin through could always get “three hots and a cot” from some different outfits that was tryin to help. And there was plenty a’ real nice Christian folks, too, who was willin to give you somethin when you ain’t even askin, maybe a cup a’ coffee or a dollar.
Now if you think the only way homeless folks gets money is by standin on the corner lookin pitiful, that ain’t true. Me and my partner met another fella that taught us how to turn nothin into somethin. First thing we was taught was the “hamburger drop,” a purty good trick for keepin a li’l money in our pockets.
First thing you had to do was get you a little grubstake, which usually meant scrapin up about a dollar. That don’t take long if you go to the part of downtown where the smart people work, the kind that wear a coat and tie. Some of them gentlemen’d give you a whole dollar right outta the gate if you just make like you hungry enough. Some of em’d give it to you quick, too, so you’d hurry up and get outta their face so they wouldn’t have to smell you too long. But other folks seemed like they really wanted to help—they’d look you in your eye and maybe even smile. I felt kinda bad hustlin a dollar off a person like that just so I could pull off the hamburger drop.
Anyhow, here’s how it worked. After I’d get my dollar for that day, I’d go on down to the McDonald’s and buy me a hamburger, take a coupla bites out of it, and wrap it back up. Then I’d pick me out one of them big, tall office buildins that’s got a trash can on the sidewalk out front. When nobody was lookin, I’d stick that wrapped-up burger down in the can and wait.
Soon as I saw somebody comin, I’d pretend like I was diggin in the trash. Then I’d come up with that hamburger and commence to eatin it. For sure somebody always gon’ stop and say, “Hey, don’t eat that!”—and they gon’ give you some money ’cause they think you eatin outta the garbage can. They feel real sorry for you, but they don’t know it’s your garbage that you done put in the can in the first place!
You can’t fool all the same people all the time, so you got to change locations. And you got to be on the lookout for folks you done fooled already and let em get on down the road ’fore you start hustlin some other fella.
At the end of the day, me and my partner’d put our hamburger-drop money together and go to some joint and eat us a decent meal. And if we done
real
good that day, we might have enough money left over for a half-pint a’ Jim Beam, what we called “antifreeze for the homeless.”
Next time you walkin around in Fort Worth and you see some homeless folks, you might notice that some of em’s filthy dirty and some of em ain’t. That’s ’cause some street people have done figured out ways to stay clean. Just ’cause you homeless don’t mean you got to live like a pig. Me and my partner kept on the same clothes all the time, just wore em till they wore out. But we figured out how to keep from smellin. That same fella that taught us the hamburger drop also taught us how we could get a good bath: at the Fort Worth Water Gardens.
The Water Gardens is a city park with a big ole fountain in it look kinda like a little stadium with walls made like steps or seats. The water flows down the sides of the fountain and makes a great big pool at the bottom, almost like a swimmin pool, ’cept it ain’t blue or nothin. There’s lots a’ trees all around it and back then, the workin folks would take their lunch and go down and sit in the shade around the edges, and listen to the water rush and sing.
There was lots of tourists, too, ’cause folks from outta town just loved to sit and watch that water dance down the walls. Me and my partner learned how to act like tourists. We’d wait till afternoon when there wadn’t too many folks around, and we’d walk up to the Water Gardens with our shirts unbuttoned halfway, and some soap and a towel in our pockets. Then, when the coast was mostly clear, one of us would act like the other one was pushin him in the water. Then the one in the water pulled the other one in, laughin and jokin like we was just friends horsin around on vacation.
We wadn’t supposed to be in that water, and we sure wadn’t supposed to take our clothes off. So we soaped up under the water where nobody could see, soapin our clothes and our socks just like you would your body. When we’d get through washin up and rinsin off, we’d climb up on a high wall that was part of the park and sleep till the sun baked us dry. We’d laugh and laugh while we was in that water, but it wadn’t no fun. We was like animals livin in the woods, just tryin to survive.
