There was no prelude: “I don’t want them staying in this house.”
“Them. The children, you mean?”
“Yes. The nigger children. I don’t want them sleeping in my house.”
“When did you get to be this way?”
“What way? You didn’t tell me that you were bringing nigger children with you — the spawn of some heroin whore in the ghetto. Do you know who the father is?”
“Which father? R.J.’s was killed in Vietnam. And I don’t want you using that word again.”
“I don’t want them here, Clint. This is my house.”
Clint didn’t respond to what my sister-in-law had said — at least not right away. These were words that he’d never heard her say before — words that stabbed him, words that diminished her in his eyes. And the relationship between Clint and his half-sisters had been troubled for a long time anyway. He’d given them money — a lot of money — after his father died, to make up for the fact that Overell Dinkman had left his stepdaughters out in the cold. There hadn’t been even a whisper of a thank-you. Clint faulted himself for not doing a better job of maintaining communication, but then again, this was a two-way street — one avoided by both parties in equal measure.
Finally, after a long period of silence, Clint said, “I have one favor to ask of you. That you let me keep the trailer here until the morning. I’ll take Natalie and the kids to a motel tonight.”
“If that’s what you want, Clint,” said Gertrude. “But you could just as easily put the children in the trailer and you and Natalie can take the guest room. The bed is very comfortable. It has a new mattress.”
“We will eat with you. I’m sure that Gabby and Natalie are already well into preparations for the meal by now, but come tomorrow morning we’ll be on our way. What you’ve offered — to state the obvious — isn’t acceptable.”
“If that’s what you want,” Gertrude repeated. “I must say, though, that even if there isn’t something, I believe, very much the matter with two white adults gallivanting all over the place with a couple of ni — with a couple of Negro children — it’s still very odd, this thing you’re doing. Playing house. Is that what it’s called? It’s a children’s game that has no place being played by adults.”
“It makes Natalie happy.”
“Pretending to be a mother.”
“Being a mother. And she’s a very good one. And I happen to think that I’m a good father. Sometimes life deals you certain cards, Gertrude. But you don’t have to take them. You’re allowed to discard them for something better.”
“Are the two of you — are you molesting those children?”
We didn’t stay for dinner.
The kids loved Dawser. They didn’t understand why they couldn’t stay and play with him.
I hustled them into the car while Clint connected the rig. He didn’t like driving around with the trailer at night. Even with our expertly devised pilot/co-pilot navigation system, it wasn’t an easy thing changing lanes after the sun had gone down with that freight train behind us, and especially in a city that didn’t like to light up its streets at night.
We reached a trailer park just east of town at about 9:30. I boiled eggs and we all had egg and olive sandwiches. After tucking the kids into bed, Clint and I sat outside in lawn chairs and talked in low voices late into the night. Was it wrong, what we were doing? Was there something wrong with us? Gabby had been right about it being a game, but it was a game that we all bought into, that all four of us enjoyed, and who got hurt? For ten weeks out of the year — weeks that Clint and I looked forward to with enthusiastic, childlike anticipation — we played that game to the hilt. And for those two and a half months the children had something they hadn’t known for a long time, if ever: real, live, loving and giving parents.
In late November, Clint and I made it officiaclass="underline" next summer we’d be going to the Payette National Forest and the spectacularly scenic Salmon River in Idaho. And we’d be trading in our Avion Imperial for an Airstream. I’d always wanted an Airstream. I wasn’t sure, though, if R.J. and Lisha would be strong enough to make the trip. As it turned out, R.J. died in February. Lisha’s own battle with childhood leukemia ended in April.
We will have a new R.J. and Lisha when we set out in June — two new terminally ill orphans whom fate has dealt terrible blows.
We keep photo albums of all of our trips, of all the children we have parented, and loved, and lost. The albums keep me going until the arrival of blessed summer.
1970 SKIRTING THE ISSUE IN WEST VIRGINIA
Starkman’s a good listener. Hell, I tell him things I don’t even tell myself in the bathroom mirror. He has that father-confessor quality about him that opens me up just like a zippered garment bag. Sorry. I’ve got clothes transport on the brain. I work on the fashion floor at the Diamond. I’m a buyer in Misses Dresses, Daytime Dresses, and Furs. But on any given day you’ll find me all over that floor. And this week, with our big Samsonite sale, I’m like the gorilla in that TV ad, pounding all that hard-shell luggage and all but jumping up and down on it. I swear to the ever-lovin’ God of Retail that there are people who are actually buying those suitcases because of my antics, coupled with that saturation ad campaign on TV. And here’s the kicker, if you don’t know it already: those commercials aren’t even for Samsonite! They’re for “Strong Enough to Stand On” American Tourister! You’ve heard of collateral damage, right? This, brother, is what I call a collateral assist!
Speaking of monkeys, or rather monkey suits, Starkman works in the men’s store on street level. He’s been in men’s furnishings since he came here in the early fifties. He was a different sort of man back then. He kept things to himself. Now he tells me everything, and I’m not even — what’s the word the homosexuals are using now? — “gay.” I’m not gay, but I listen to the details of all of his little adventures — the quickies in the men’s washroom and the changing rooms and all his assignations with those bright-eyed and bushy-tailed hill-Billys and hill-Bobbys who come to the big city looking for Mr. Right. Why do I do this? I told you already: because he listens to me. (Let alone the fact that you’d have an easier time finding a John Bircher on college campuses these days than a heterosexual male in the retail clothing line. I’m one for Ripley’s.)
Starkman and I have lunch together two, three times a week — sometimes at Blossom Dairy over on Quarrier, sometimes in the Diamond’s cafeteria up on the fifth floor. Some days we even get a cheese ball and a box of crackers from the Hickory Farms Daisy Mays down in the basement and go alfresco.
We like the cafeteria, though. One of the assistant managers is a past boyfriend of Starkman’s (whom Starkman likes to keep close tabs on). And, on my side, there’s a cashier there that I’ve had my eye on for a few weeks now. I think she’s ready to move beyond the flirting stage, and I’m giving the prospect some consideration, but there’s the whole matter of Jillian. What to do about Jillian.
Jillian also works on the fashion floor. She’s in Bridal and Maternity, which I always thought was funny and Starkman thought was a royal hoot. “I hope she spends the first half of her day in Bridal and the second in Maternity. The other way around would be downright illegitimate, don’t you think?”
He’s a funny old fruit, and I love him.
Jillian is twenty-two. She’s married to, but presently separated from, a mountain galoot, who she says has the looks and muscular build of Willy Armitage on Mission Impossible, but the intellectual capacity of Sergeant Schultz on Hogan’s Heroes.