Owning Jolene Read online

  When somebody did speak to me, I was surprised. But, when I looked him over, I was glad. He wasn’t tall and dark like most of the men, but sort of square, with sandy hair, which was more my type. “Hello,” he said, introducing himself right off. “I’m L. W. Dawson.”

  I noticed his big grin and his cowlick, and decided that at home he’d still be called Buddy by his folks. “Jolene Temple,” I told him.

  “My Spanish is not so hot,” he said, “but I’d have sworn that Zona Rosa is border Mexican for red-light district.”

  I liked his starting right out with that, even if it was something he’d picked up from someone else, which was likely, someone who had made a bilingual pun coming in the door. It wasn’t bad, for friendly openers, and besides, I was lonesome and here was someone being friendly.

  “Maybe the owners are playing a joke,” I said.

  He looked at me in a nice way. “You a poet?”

  That was good, his picking up on my cues. I gave him a big, warm smile for that, and asked, “How about you?”

  He looked at the floor, being modest. “I’m your slow student, I’m afraid. Just about the time I began to get the hang of the market and figure out that someone on his toes could make an unobtrusive dollar buying a little before the facts became common knowledge, the fat hit the fan and insider-trading became a dirty word. Right now I’m getting it the same place everyone else does, from the Wall Street Journal. If I don’t see it there, I don’t know it.” At that point he sort of opened up his big palms to indicate disclaimer. At the same time to suggest that maybe he knew a lot more than the bankers standing around us, dreaming of other people’s money.

  I made a half turn in my skirt, to show I liked his style. “Have you tried the food?”

  “It’s okay. Back home in Waxahachie, we didn’t eat out a lot. They expected me home for dinner every night.”

  That gave me a good opening, and I took it. “My mom and I,” I told him, stepping closer, “used to eat at this diner out on San Pedro. It was run by this big fat man named Pete, who made the best biscuits west of Natchez, and cheese grits with sausage that made your mouth water like a puppy in the summertime. Pete had a sign in his window that said EAT HERE OR WE’LL BOTH STARVE. I guess that sort of became a saying of ours.” I glanced around the crowded room, so he’d get the point. “I mean if all you investment people didn’t feed off one another—”

  L.W. liked that; I could tell he thought it was deep. “That’s good,” he said. “I see what you mean.” He moved in himself and reached for my hand.

  I pulled it away, but not in a hurry.

  “Maybe we could go somewhere for dinner? It’s getting kind of mobbed in here.” He slicked down his sandy hair and checked his rep tie.

  I was sorry that I couldn’t say yes, because I liked him right off and wished I’d met him maybe the second or third time out. But I wasn’t sure enough that I could pull it off. I mean, how was I supposed to act once I got to his broker’s condo? Was I supposed to know all about his stereo components and VCR and stuff like that? Was I supposed to act like this was something new for me, or that naturally poets did this all the time? Went home with somebody they just met? I couldn’t figure it out.

  “I have to go,” I told him.

  “You come to these often?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “This is my first Thirsty Thursday.”

  “Maybe I’ll see you next week?”

  “Maybe.” I looked around. “Are you really a Texas Ex?”

  “Class of ’84, BBA. But I don’t recognize anybody here. I guess at a school with forty thousand students, all of us could have been in the same class and not have known it.”

  “Maybe we were.”

  “Not you.” He stared at me in a way that made the color rise on my rice-white poet’s cheeks. “I’d have noticed you.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I mean you stand out.” He hesitated, then said what was on his mind. “Some people would be bothered by that.”

  I knew he meant him. “I’m actually invisible,” I told him, at the door.

  He laughed.

  But I was speaking the truth. It was Mom’s rule: the best way to hide is to be conspicuous.

  6

  OUR RELOCATIONS followed strict guidelines.

  First, Mom liked to pick a town on the state line so she could whip across and send misleading postcards home. That was because although we never left the state, Dad never tumbled to that, and was always fuming that she traipsed me all over the country like an Okie Cracker living out of a suitcase.

  Second, she liked a big city with a lot of little towns surrounding it, so she could drive Dad and Uncle Brogan nuts trying to decipher postmarks from Bug Tussle, Edhube, New Fulp, Sugar Bottom, when all the time we were in a ’burb in Texarkana, say.

  Last, or maybe first, she liked to settle in a nice huge tract with lots of look-alike houses, look-alike driveways, and (she usually managed to lease one, passing herself off as a Head of Household Avon lady) a look-alike car.

  So that if the rest of the area were pulling out every day in their Hondas, she was too. Or revving up their Camaros, okay, she liked a good zippy car. This was not for the other eyeballs on the street, of course, who would have accepted a piano teacher driving anything at all, even the sixties peace van she has pictures of herself climbing into. But to make it harder for us to be traced. For instance, if my dad or my uncle was acting on a slim clue, somebody got a postcard and got out the map, then he could hop to the vicinity, but it was a needle in a haystack to find which built-in-1971 ranch-style with the Pontiac in the drive could possibly be ours.

  If we’d accumulated a van of furniture (like she had waiting in Pass-of-the-Camels Park), she’d make a great display of moving day, so that the neighbors, peering through their windows, could get a leisurely view of a good sofa being carried in on Mayflower’s shoulders, or even a couple of mattresses from U-Haul on ours. When we didn’t (such as was the case in Beauregard Heights, where we settled after the airport escape), she rented enough to set up a piano teacher’s living room, used her Sears card for guest towels and scented soaps (all little girls who play the piano have to go to the bathroom the minute they walk in the door), and kept the bedroom doors closed.

  The next thing was to post notices in the elementary schools. Flyers announcing that those aspiring to be her students must audition as well as bring with them copies of the school’s hearing tests. Anyone, she reasoned, who the school thinks has a superior ear, plus who can sit down at the bench and locate the keys without asking half a dozen questions (“Where’s the rest of your furniture, Mrs. Temple?”), was going to be a fine student.

  From the start she made it clear that hers was not going to be a fly-by-night enterprise for the upwardly mobile, for mothers who wanted piano recitals with froufrou and printed programs (expense and public scrutiny to be at all times avoided). Midge Temple’s pupils didn’t perform; they studied.

  She liked it best when two little girls came to tryouts together, each clutching her credentials and a note from mama. She liked to eye them carefully, eliminate the one likely to tattle at home, choose the other. Thereby intimidating the former and elevating the latter to instant excellence. Thus, before the lessons even began, the contest was over.

  That was another of her rules: make your cut before the competition starts.

  7

  A COUPLE OF MONTHS after the Texas Exes party, I went to an opening at the Sun Dog gallery, still hoping to meet someone.

  The orange-painted, river-fronting space was packed with pink flowers and a flux of assorted artists. There were painters, all bearded and eager as greyhounds on a leash, dancers with their wonderful thick calves, but mostly the room was filled to overflowing with poets. Dressed in long skirts or un-ironed pants, gauzy shirts, sandals, all of them had dark eyes (rimmed with kohl or lack of sleep), and all of them had been published: some had done chapbooks, others had been semifinalists for Yale Young
er Poet.

  I drank white wine and listened to the litany of small magazines that had held their lines: Milkweed, Loonfeather, Runestone, Blue Unicorn.

  I wore a dark silk suit with a white crepe shirt and my blunt-cut dark hair shone. In my free hand, I carried a briefcase, and on the wrist of the same hand wore a large black watch, to indicate that I was a person who kept her appointments.

  Hearing the poets’ speech fall into rhymed lines or find its natural meter, I was also searching the crowd for a painter. I was longing for a man, and had decided that a painter might like someone willing to pick up the tab.

  I had narrowed my choice to two, having first ruled out the ones who’d been pressured to come—a friend’s brother, the owner’s nephew—those putting in an appearance, those clearly only passing through the klieg-lit, well-shadowed place. The pair who remained, both in faded blue work shirts, seemed to me equally attractive, likely to shed equal warmth in bed.

  Putting Mom’s rule into effect, I decided to make my cut before the fact.

  Both painters hovered. I kept my voice low, answering their questions about my work in a pleasant voice. “I’m your slow student, I’m afraid.” I looked at the floor. “Just about the time I began to get the hang of the market and figure that someone on her toes could make an unobtrusive dollar buying a little before the facts became common knowledge, the fat hit the fan and insider-trading became a dirty word. Right now I’m getting my information the same place everyone else does, the Wall Street Journal. If I don’t see it there, I don’t know it.”

  The one a little older, in the more weathered work shirt, with an interesting face and deep-set eyes, bent down slightly to look at my reptile shoes. Wondering if he was counting cost or had a sudden longing to see my foot out of its pump, I made my choice.

  Slipping a hand through his arm, I presented myself. “I’m Jolene Temple.”

  “Henry Wozencrantz.” His voice was expectant. He seemed to think I’d recognize the name.

  “My feet hurt,” I confessed. “Do you live nearby?”

  The other painter, not selected, wandered off across the orange-tile floor to get himself another drink.

  • • •

  At that precise moment, I heard a familiar voice. Turning halfway, in order not to shift my instep, I saw L.W., in un-pressed pants and an Indian shirt. He wore blue-tinted glasses and no socks.

  “All of us trying to sell our poems to one another,” he was saying, “reminds me of a story—”

  “Excuse me for a moment,” I said to the painter. “I think I was in school with that boy.”

  “Back home in Waxahachie,” L.W. told his semicircle of admirers, “my dad and I used to eat at this diner. It was run by a fat man named Pete who made the best biscuits west of Natchez, and cheese grits with sausage that made your mouth water like a puppy in the summertime. Pete had this sign in his window that said EAT HERE OR WE’LL BOTH STARVE.” He paused to let that sink in. Glancing up, his eyes tripped over my face. “If we don’t all read one another’s work—”

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Jolene. It’s you.” He pulled me off to one side.

  “The same.”

  “Not quite,” he observed.

  “You either.”

  “I guess you’re an actor, too.”

  I nodded, although without a lot of conviction.

  “You did a great poet at the Zona Rosa,” he said sincerely.

  “Thanks. You were good, too, your broker.”

  “I was nervous.”

  “It didn’t show.”

  “It was a new approach for me.” He looked admiring.

  “What was?”

  “The way you did, standing out from the crowd.”

  “It’s a lot harder your way, blending in.” There were a dozen things I wanted to ask him. Had he been in real plays? Did he take class? What was he doing at the opening of the Sun Dog? Did he really think my poet was good?… I looked at his broad face, his good Buddy disposition, and wished we had met some other way.

  “I thought I saw you,” he said, “over there. But I wasn’t sure.”

  “Do you really live in Waxahachie?”

  “No. I live right here in San Antonio with my folks, same house where I’ve lived all my life.”

  “Did you know Waxahachie is an Indian word meaning”—I grinned at him—“cow chip?”

  “You’re kidding.” He looked impressed at my knowledge. “Is there really a diner on San Pedro?”

  “I never looked.”

  “We could find out; I live near there.” He took my hand.

  I hesitated, because I liked him a lot. “I can’t.”

  “Are you going home with that painter?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Why?”

  “Why that one?” I was about to explain Mom’s rule.

  “You know—”

  “I’m lonesome.”

  “There’s me.”

  “But you aren’t you. I mean, don’t you see, I’m not me, either. The painter is the painter all the time.”

  “If you say so.” He looked doubtful.

  “Oh, L.W., don’t you see? Actors meet only on the stage.”

  8

  IN DECEMBER I go cold feet.

  Although my Reeboks were getting wet in an unexpected downpour, I admitted the real cause was an attack of stage fright in the jingle-bell, Salvation Army, Santa Claus time of year.

  During the first part of the semester when our wild-haired, old, and famous teacher had given us parts to read aloud, I’d liked acting class a lot. It had felt familiar, as if Mom had branched out into further efforts at disguise. As if, reading some other character’s part, I’d vanish before their eyes, become a four-year-old Sonny, and other designated roles.

  But then last week she had sprung improvisation on us. And suddenly there were all the rest of the kids wrestling their smiles to the floor, acting out the color blue, turning into a biscuit rising.

  The famous teacher got mad at me. First she’d been disappointed, then surprised, and then she got mad. “Loosen up, Jolene,” she commanded, but her words only hastened me into a state of panic.

  This week, I got to class early, me and half a dozen other students. We were in leotards, with cotton sweaters and slightly sweaty faces from all our outside vests and jackets. Standing around like extras in the big San Antonio College studio, we looked as if we’d all tried out for the role of beginning student and hadn’t yet heard who’d got the part.

  Every time the door opened, letting in chill wet air and fresh eager actors, I caught my breath and turned to stare. But that was just wishful thinking; L.W. wouldn’t be showing up, or else he’d have been coming all along.

  As the teacher began to talk, I tensed my legs, pulled up on my toes, let my shoulders go limp. Trying to stay calm, I stretched and attended. “Thespians on the boards,” she told us, “must produce a chemistry between them. They must master the Theater of the Impromptu.”

  She looked straight at me. “Jolene? Show us,” she demanded. “Be something with wheels.”

  I stared at her but couldn’t move. My mouth went dry as sawdust.

  All around me everyone was itching to perform, rotating with longing to be a bicycle, a motorcycle, a velocipede.

  But not I. I froze up solid as a block of ice. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get up there in front of them and make it up by myself—turn it on from the inside out. I kept looking around, panicked, waiting for instructions. Waiting for someone to say, “Jolene, are you listening?” to say, “Now here’s what we’re going to do,” but nobody did.

  Grabbing my sweater I bolted for the door.

  Outside in the cold, I warmed myself by imagining a family around a table in some place like Beauregard Heights, a family with grandparents whose feet barely touched the floor, presiding over their daughters and sons and the children of their daughters and sons. There was a pine tree in the parlor of the house, and another tree, a spre
ading spruce, in the kitchen. Both hung heavy with ornaments and icicles, their branches hiding packages wrapped and stacked.

  I imagined another family up the road in Waxahachie, gathered around a fir with that just-cut smell, while a grandfather said the blessing and a grandmother added up who was there.

  I felt an instant relief; I had other options.

  I didn’t have to stay in class. I could be a painter’s model.

  9

  THE FIRST TIME I showed up to pose for Henry, I was scared. The way you would be if you were going to take your clothes off for a centerfold spread or something. I could imagine somebody in the oil business, jerking off in his motel room, seeing me and calling up Uncle Brogan. “Hey, Brog, I don’t know how to mention this, buddy, but I’m holding here in my left hand …” The worst.

  But that first afternoon, while I still had on my jeans, Henry made me see that it was not going to be like that. He got out some slides of his work show me, because he said that naturally artists never kept their pictures around the studio. That that was inviting theft, and anyway, his agent always wanted them the minute he finished to place in galleries or whatever he did with them. That what artists had around were slides of their work, in case they needed to send a museum something to look at, for a show or a jury prize or something like that.

  I was nervous about his showing them to me, that he was going to want me to say something about his pictures. I was afraid he was going to expect me to know the art words to use, maybe ask him something like, Isn’t that impressionism? or Don’t they call that abstract art? I was afraid he was going to want me to make the comments that somebody who knew what they were seeing would make. And I wished I’d taken an art history course, so I could say that his pictures reminded me of, and give a name, which, even if it wasn’t the right thing to be reminded of, was at least having some idea. But I didn’t know anything. Art is not a major concern of Brogan and Glenna’s. Or Mom’s either. So I was scared and about ready to say, Don’t go to all that trouble, really, never mind, when he said, “Look here, Jolene. Take a look.” And he held these slides up to the light so I could see them. (They were in color, meaning the photos, since naturally the paintings were, if that’s what you call it.)