Where the Kissing Never Stops (21 page)

“What’s he going to do?”

She shrugged and smiled. “What
can
he do, threaten to move?”

I drove home and paged through the closet until I found my only suit, the one I hadn’t worn since my father’s funeral. Peggy had cut my hair so that it stuck up stylishly, but I slicked it back and even tried to part it on the side like an adult. Or, anyway, like my idea of an adult. Okay, okay — the truth: like my father.

When the phone rang, it was Rachel. “Are you okay?”

“I got my pants on with the zipper in front — that’s a step in the right direction. How about you?”

“Dad’s on the other phone downstairs. Probably buying Asia. Call me when you get back, please.”

“Really? This could take a while.”

“For me, too. This is going to push all my father’s buttons. Call me on my phone, okay? We’ll talk about what we want to do tomorrow. I want to see the oats. I miss them.”

“They miss you. Every time I went out there, they asked about you.”

“Well, I think I hear the heavy tread of the professional parent.”

“Yeah, and I think I hear the music all the way from Love’s Park.”

A different blonde reading a paperback as big as a brick hardly looked up as I came in.

“Table or the bar?” she asked, holding out her hand for the admission.

The bar was farther away from the stage, so I chose that, slipping in beside a man with arms so hairy I thought he was wearing a sweater. In front of him were half a dozen tiny umbrellas, carefully folded. Another, opened, decorated his tall tropical drink.

“What’ll it be?” asked the bartender. “Three-drink minimum, you get ’em all now. When the show starts, I go on break.”

Everyone had glasses in front of him. A bald man had one in each hand, holding on like they were levers. Another guy arranged his into an arrowhead; a third made a long, even line; and a fourth filled his with ashes and bent filters.

If Sully had been there, he could have done a psychological profile on each one: heavy-equipment operator, cowboy, drill sergeant, slob.

“Uh, do you have a Diet Coke?”

“Three Diet Cokes comin’ up.”

A very tinny combo hidden behind sequined curtains at the far edge of the stage swung into “How High the Moon.” My father only owned a dozen albums; four of them were by Les Paul and Mary Ford; out of all the songs on all the albums, “How High the Moon” had been his favorite. I wondered if Mom was backstage listening and, if so, what was she thinking about?

Casually I turned to inspect the room. There were lots of women with their boyfriends or husbands, though why women would want to see other women take their clothes off was beyond me.

I was surprised at how well behaved everybody was; people chatted over their drinks, laughed those soundless laughs, and waited patiently, tapping an index finger in time to the music.

My worst fears were that the winners of some playoffs would show up, teams with names like the Drooling Cretins. And there were a few tables of rough-looking guys, but mostly the same kind of people you’d see in a doctor’s office, just more of them.

Ta-daah! The master of ceremonies was good-looking, if you like those marinated types, and he wore gold chains with links almost as big as the ones we used on our tires in the winter.

The show opened with a comedy sketch. There was a judge, a peeping Tom, and a French maid. I think it’s probably enough to say that the main joke was the misunderstanding between “Your Honor” and “You’re on her.”

Still, people laughed. The judge hit the peeping Tom with his gavel; the maid clutched her rouged cheeks in mock terror. I just got more and more nervous.

“And now,” boomed the MC, “here she is, wearing only beads… of perspiration — Wanda, the Wildcat of Burlesque.”

Wanda may have been onstage for ten minutes, and she was never one mile per hour below top speed. Those in front leaned back, and a few shielded their eyes like they were watching a fire. She sped around the stage with her teeth bared; she threw herself on a bear rug so hard that I was afraid she had broken something; and for a finale Wanda climbed the main curtain again, screaming all the time and slamming her pelvis into the air. She’d exploded onstage wearing very little to begin with — just a sort of hairy bra and panties — and this time she didn’t take off a stitch. When we applauded at the end, we applauded like physicists celebrating pure energy.

A tenor was next, piping to a stunned house about Ireland and mothers; then a skit with two beds, three doors, and four newlyweds.

Monique, direct from the Côte d’Azur, glided around the stage dragging a fur for what seemed like hours; then — as if to show us she had other skills — she twirled the tassels on her breasts clockwise and counterclockwise. Monique was a big woman, anyway, and with her arms straight out and her tassels going, she looked like a World War II bomber waiting for takeoff. To finish, she urged the crowd to count over the drum roll as she tried for three hundred, a personal best. Something went wrong in the two hundreds, but we gave her a hand anyway.

Then it was time. “Her name’s Virginia,” said old oil-and-chains, “but she’s no virgin.”

I turned on my stool and hung my head, like a kid in class who doesn’t know the answer.

“And she came to us via Las Vegas from Gay Paree. Let’s have a big hand for the cleanest act in burlesque — the Virgin Queen, Virginia LaRue.”

So far all the dancers except Wanda had been from France; according to this guy, there was nobody in France but strippers, all standing at the coast in their high heels and feather boas waiting for the next boat to Kansas City.

The music was playing; the lights were down; the spot was on. Everybody was watching but me. I just stared at the ceiling.

“Nice,” said the man next to me, so I sneaked a look.

My mother sat in a bogus bedroom with her back to the audience, jauntily slipping off leg warmers, headband, and sweatshirt.

When she stood up from the flimsy vanity table and turned around, there was her K.C. Royals T-shirt, which drew some scattered applause from the sportsmen in the crowd.

I was fascinated and appalled. I struggled to look at the stage. Involuntarily my hands leaped up and clamped themselves over my eyes. All I could hear were the shouts and whistles; all I could feel was the place coming alive.

I peeked out from between my fingers; my heart was beating like crazy and I was short of breath. I could just see the headline —
STRIPPER’S SON DIES AT LATE SHOW
.

Then she slipped off her T-shirt, holding it against her coyly. Someone actually shouted, “C’mon, honey. Take it all off.” I wanted to storm over there and ask how
he
would like it if somebody talked about
his
mother that way.

Suddenly the lights went down, the music slowed, and out of the wings came half a plastic globe seething with soapsuds.

So that was her gimmick. No snakes, hula hoops, or tassels, but a tub: the cleanest act in show business. I put my head in my hands. Oh, my God, oh, my God. Taking a bath in front of a hundred strangers. Her legs emerged from the foam and her fingers tiptoed down them.

“I hope her bubble bath is like what my wife buys at Thrifty’s,” my neighbor said. “It goes flat in about two seconds.”

I guess I was about to faint, because I remember feeling flushed and lightheaded. Then I had the weirdest experience. I’ve never told it to anybody, even Sully, up until now.

What happened was that all of a sudden it was like I could see everything from the upper left-hand corner of the room. There I was, my face nearly on the bar from embarrassment. There was everybody else — all the bald heads, all the perms and sets, all the good clothes and the bad. I could see the band, professionally bored; I could see the bartender idly wiping a glass, and I could see a waitress sitting near the jukebox rubbing her feet.

And I felt such tenderness for everybody who had brought his mortality out of the house and into this silly club. I knew that I was suffering needlessly. I looked at my mother, half buried in suds, and I loved her so much; but then I loved the bartender, too, and the woman with the artificial pearls, and her husband with the worst hairpiece in the world; I loved the thugs with their scruffy beards and the waitress whose feet I could have kissed. I saw my hands fall away from my eyes. I saw myself smile and applaud.

Then, just like I had evaporated through the ceiling, I was outside, hovering above the broken shingles, just to one side of my car parked by the side door.

Slowly I floated upward. There was Kansas City and the land I had worked on; beyond was the Mississippi, dividing the republic; there were the Great Plains, the Rockies, the two oceans sloping toward the east and west just like the blue globe at school.

Then there was the earth itself, resting in space; and I knew if I wanted to, I could open my arms and somehow embrace everything: all the weirdness and folly and beauty and bliss.

So I did. I opened my arms and the earth came rushing at me, eager as a pup.

“She’s great,” someone shouted, getting to his feet to applaud. “God, she’s great.”

Mom came out of the wings wrapped in a plushy towel, and took a few bows. She looked terrific: flushed and happy. She opened her arms just like I’d done, welcoming it all; then giving it back, blowing kisses everywhere.

Then it was over. Everyone sat down, pleased and exhilarated. The MC urged us to wait through the intermission. There was a triple finale, three dancers from France.

“Excuse me,” I said to the blond cashier, who was, unbelievably, nearly finished with her book. “I’d like to see Virginia LaRue.”

“You and twenty other guys.”

“It’s not like that,” I assured her. “I’m her son.” I smiled proudly.

“You’re kidding.”

“No.”

“She said she had a kid. So you’re the farmer.”

“Just forty acres. It’s not like —”

“I was brought up on a farm. I hated it. I could never keep my shoes clean.”

She swung one silver pump out from behind the counter. I tried to picture her anywhere but Ye Olde Burlesque and failed.

“So could I see my mom?”

“Sure, cutie. But go around the side, okay?”

I guess I half expected a crusty old watchman in braces to ask me what I wanted, but there was nobody inside the back door at all, just a water cooler, a small bathroom, and of all things, a bowling ball inside an alligator bag. Which one, I wondered, tassels packed away safely for the night, relaxed with a cold beer at the nearest alley?

Down the narrow hall was a half-open door, and when I knocked, it swung open. A woman dressed in three leaves was hauling her boa constrictor out of its box.

“Whadayawant?” she asked, beginning to wipe the snake down with a paper towel.

“To see Virginia if I can, Virginia LaRue.”

“Yeah? Who shall I say is calling, Matt Damon?”

“Just say a fan.”

She didn’t go “Harumph,” but she looked it. “Hey, Virginia, there’s some kid here who looks like an undertaker’s apprentice.”

I heard chairs shift and squeak, a muttered “Watch it,” and then, “Walker?” She reached for the top buttons of her robe. “What are you doing here?”

I leaned in the doorway. “Seeing the show. I thought it’d be a shame to never see you dance.”

“Well.” She looked around helplessly. “Well. I don’t know what to say.”

“You were pretty good. Really.”

“Thanks.” She began to blush. “I mean it, thanks.” She gestured behind her, a modified umpire’s
Yer out!
“Listen, come in for a minute. I want you to meet everybody.”

It was probably a cruddy little room with peeling paint and no toilet, but the prospect of half a dozen women with most of their clothes off seemed like heaven to me.

“Listen up,” she said, tapping on a steam pipe with a nail polish bottle. “This is my son.”

Most of them gave me the once-over, then returned to their toes or nails or eyes or whatever part of their bodies they were polishing.

“Uh, this is Eve,” Mom said, pointing to the woman with the snake. “I mean it’s Doris, but —”

“Whoever heard of Adam and Doris?” She squinted at me through her cigarette smoke.

“Yes, ma’am.”

I nodded or said hello to everyone, even Wanda, who was sitting in a corner with a ball of yarn in her lap.

“If she knits as fast as she dances,” I said, “we’re all liable to be swallowed up in a sweater.”

Wanda didn’t laugh, but Mom did. She put her hand up to my forehead like she was checking for fever, then let it slide down to my cheek in a caress.

“I’m very glad to see you, Walker.”

“Hi.” It was a man’s voice and it came from behind me.

“Oh, hi.” Mom got a little flustered as Porter squeezed past. “You remember —”

“Walker, sure. Hi. You saw the show?”

“Yeah, I uh…”

“Got in and everything?”

Eve put some of her snake in my hands. “Hold this for a minute, will ya, kid?”

“Look,” Porter began, “we were going…”

But my mom began, too, “Look, we were…”

They both laughed; Mom put her arm around his waist. That got me a little. I’d never seen her do that except with Dad, and then only when they were having their picture taken.

I handed my part of the snake to Porter. “I better get home,” I said.

“We were going out to eat,” he said. “Come along.”

“No, really.” I started to back away.

“Pizza,” he said seductively, holding out about a yard of boa constrictor.

“Thanks,” I said, waving from the safety of the hall. “Really, thanks.”

Outside I leaned my forehead against the cool plastic of the steering wheel. Just then Mom tapped on the window and I rolled it all the way down.

“Are you okay?”

I said that I was. “Things got a little weird there for a minute.”

“Porter just wants you to like him, that’s all.”

“I know. He’s okay.”

“Why don’t you come along, then? We both want you to.”

“I would, honest, but I want to call Rachel. I saw her before and…”

“Everything’s okay?” she said hopefully.

“A lot better.”

She leaned into the car then and kissed me twice. Once on each cheek, like a French hero. “You go on. I’ll see you at home.”