Some Can Whistle (31 page)

“Your point?” I said. “Why is it your point? You never do anything. You’re a pampered guest. You enjoy total leisure. What makes you think you don’t have time to think?”

Instead of answering, Godwin rolled into the water and began to float face down again. He often did that when confronted by his own illogic. It was a very irritating habit. I found myself wishing his breath-control tactics would fail him suddenly
and that he’d just drown—or, if not actually drown, at least vomit for a few minutes.

I saw Pedro and Granny Lin walking across the hill, back to their hut. They were carrying a six-pack between them, each holding one of the little plastic loops that keep six-packs together. At a distance, at least, with the help of a lovely sunset, they seemed perfectly content. The sight of their contentment made me feel lonely and sad. I was already feeling sorry for myself because I didn’t understand fatherhood; at the sight of two evidently contented old people I plunged even deeper into self-pity. Would I ever have anyone to walk across the downward slope of life with at sunset? Or would the sun always set with me alone, brooding and miserable, as it had so many times?

“They seem happy,” I remarked to Gladys.

“Them two, they fight like tigers,” Gladys said. She kicked Bo’s beach ball into the water, hoping to hit Godwin with it, but she missed.

“I hate varicose veins,” she added. “Every time I see my own legs I wish I’d never been born.”

With that black comment she went into the house, leaving me to float in self-pity while Godwin floated in the pool. Pedro and Granny Lin fought like tigers? When did they fight like tigers? How did she know? What did they fight about? Of course, Gladys imagined things. In fact, she imagined hundreds of things. Perhaps she was imagining those tigerlike fights. Perhaps the old couple never fought; perhaps Gladys was confusing them with herself and Chuck. They certainly fought frequently, if more like humans than tigers.

I never liked fights, myself. The emotional benefits they were supposed to convey on healthy couples had always seemed overrated, at least insofar as I had ever been a part of a healthy couple, healthily fighting. The fights I had participated in, and there had been not a few, almost always signaled the demise of the couple-hood as the two of us then knew it.

Now, though, I began to see the absence of fights in my life as yet one more sign of my extreme detachment. Here I sat at fifty-one,
having lived, in theory at least, only about half my life, not even close enough to anyone even to have a fight with them, unless you counted Godwin and Gladys, with both of whom I had bitter fights practically every day. In that regard T.R.’s not-so-latent belligerence might prove a great blessing; she alone might be able to tug me back into a normally conflicted human relationship. She alone might reconnect me.

While I was contemplating that possibility, she and Muddy came racing across the patio, off the diving board, and into the pool. Both were naked. The shock waves of their dives sloshed Godwin around so vigorously that he was forced to abandon his breath-control exercises. For a moment he was rather confused, but when he saw that T.R. and Muddy were naked his eyes lit up. He immediately climbed out of the pool and began to take off his bathing trunks.

“Stop, what do you think you’re doing?” T.R. asked. She looked rosy and very cheerful.

“You’re skinny-dipping, I supposed I could, too,” Godwin said.

“Forget it, if there’s one thing I don’t want to see, it’s some old man’s old dick,” T.R. informed him merrily.

“My dear, what a harsh thing to say,” Godwin replied.

“Not from her, that’s almost a compliment,” Muddy said. T.R. whirled, wrapped her arms around Muddy, and ducked him. The two of them sank from sight.

“What a remarkably pretty girl she is,” Godwin said.

“When are we getting off to Europe?” T.R. asked the next morning. She and I and Godwin and Gladys were breakfasting on the patio. Jesse had been breakfasting too but had fallen asleep in her high chair in a puddle of Cheerios. Bo had gone off with Buddy to run the trotline they had set the night before.

“We have to apply for your passports,” I said. “We could go to Fort Worth and get the applications today. Then we can send them up to the Senator I know. He can probably get them
processed in two or three days. We could all go to Europe next week.”

“A whole week’s a long time to sit around out here on this hill thinking about how empty it is,” T.R. said morosely. “Some days I miss the Mr. Burger. At least there were people around to talk to at the Mr. Burger. And there was places to go dancing at night.”

Actually she and Muddy and Godwin had gone dancing the night before. They had driven all the way to Dallas, but failed to find a dance hall that came up to T.R.’s standards. Then they had come home and watched Fassbinder movies all night. Muddy was still inside, somewhere around the halfway point in
Berlin Alexanderplatz
. By all accounts—that is, by T.R.’s and Godwin’s accounts—he was completely engrossed.

“Now he says he wants to go to Berlin,” T.R. said. “The little fucker never even heard of Berlin until last night.”

“That’s good, though,” I said. “It means he’s got some curiosity.”

I had stayed awake most of the night, too, buffeted by the high surf of a migraine. With morning, the surf had receded, though now and then I felt a departing wavelet. T.R. was not exactly sulky, but she was clearly restless.

“If it’s merely a matter of picking up passport forms in Fort Worth, then there’s obviously no need for everyone to go,” Godwin said. He had on one of his seersucker suits. After so many years of seeing him naked at breakfast, it was definitely an irritant to have him looking like a colonial administrator. His ill-concealed designs on my daughter were also irritating.

“T.R. and I could accomplish that task quite efficiently,” Godwin said. “There’s no reason for anyone else to be inconvenienced.’”

“It
is
just a matter of picking up passport forms, and if you’re volunteering your services I accept them—you can do it perfectly well alone. Why would T.R. need to go?”

“Shoot, I’d go just to see some people,” T.R. said, oblivious to the fact that I didn’t want her to be alone with Godwin.

“I ain’t workin’ out as a country girl,” she said without hostility.
“I’m starting to miss Houston. I wouldn’t even mind being in a traffic jam—at least there’d be other people around.”

“A nice trip to Fort Worth would be better than nothing,” Godwin said. “We wouldn’t need to take the children, necessarily.”

“Maybe I should call my friend the Senator,” I said. “Senators have amazing powers. His staff might facilitate this for us—we could be in France by the weekend.”

“Let’s go someplace real crowded,” T.R. said. “I’m getting itsy from sitting around here on this hill.”

“There are some very nice beaches on the French Riviera,” Godwin said. “Nudity is quite acceptable there.”

“Who cares?” T.R. said. “If there’s one thing I don’t need to see, it’s a bunch of dangling dicks. I’ve already told you that fifty times, so shut up about it. Jesse might hear you.”

“That precious thing,” Gladys said. “I’ll miss her so much I’ll probably just sit around here and cry the whole time you’re gone.”

“No you won’t, because you’re coming,” T.R. said. “I ain’t dragging my kids around a bunch of foreign countries without some help.”

The thought of Gladys in Europe had never occurred to me. Nor had it occurred to Godwin, or to Gladys herself. The thought was so novel that all three of us were paralyzed by it briefly.

“She’s coming, ain’t she, Daddy?” T.R. said firmly.

“Of course she can come if she wants to,” I said gamely, trying to imagine what Gladys and France would make of one another.

“I might go,” Gladys said tentatively. “On the other hand, what’ll I do about Chuck? If I run off to Europe he’ll head straight for that slut in Amarillo, and I’ll have that preying on my mind the whole time I’m gone. Then when we get back, the first thing he’ll do is ask for a divorce. That will be the end of that, and the kids will all blame me for running off to Europe and leaving Chuck to fend for himself. Not that he can’t fend. He’s probably off fending right now.”

At that she burst into tears and buried her head in her arms. Gladys cried heartily. Godwin and I, inured to these cloudbursts, went calmly on with our breakfast.

“Well, you two are mighty cool,” T.R. said. She herself seemed slightly awed by Gladys’s sobs.

“They are, they don’t never even stop eating while I’m sitting here brokenhearted,” Gladys said.

“If we didn’t occasionally eat while you were crying we’d both starve,” Godwin said. “Did it ever occur to you that you might be happier if you just divorced Chuck? After all, he’s not exactly Errol Flynn.”

The thought that Gladys’s lot in life might be improved if she were married to Errol Flynn struck me as funny, and I laughed. T.R., who had probably never heard of Errol Flynn, thought this was inappropriate. She slammed her fist on the table.

“Shut up, you two!” she demanded. “You’re just a couple of coldhearted old men. Gladys is having to get a divorce and you two sit there laughing.”

“Right, I should never even have mentioned Errol Flynn,” Godwin said. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

His new habit of apologizing three times every time T.R. got the least bit testy was beginning to irritate me.

“One apology’s enough, Godwin,” I said.

“L.J., I hate the name Godwin!” T.R. yelled. Her mood was not improving. “How many times have I told you to call him L.J.? Every time I hear the name Godwin I want to throw up.”

“Sorry, I’ll learn,” I said. “I’ve been calling him Godwin for many years, it’s hard to switch overnight.”

“It wouldn’t be if you concentrated,” T.R. insisted. “All he concentrates on is pussy, and all you do is make fun of Gladys. Now that I know Earl Dee is still in jail I’m beginning to wish I’d stayed in Houston. If it don’t mean being murdered I’d rather be someplace where people kick up their heels once in a while.”

“Of course, you do have to be photographed to get a passport,” I said, desperately trying to come up with some diversions that might make T.R. less impatient. Passport photographs were the straw I grasped at. My impression was that T.R. checked few
impulses. If she got much more discontented she might just go away, a thought I couldn’t bear. I had quickly grown to love her so much that the thought of being without her again was intolerable. If I could get her to Fort Worth we could at least have a shopping spree, and that might divert her for a day or two until the passports came through and we could get safely off to France.

An hour later we were all crammed into the Cadillac, bound for Cowtown, as Fort Worth used to be called. Every inch of space in the car was thick with life, sound, smoke, cassettes, toys, bodies. Muddy and Godwin were quarrelsome and gloomy, Muddy because he hadn’t wanted to go at all, and Godwin because another scheme to isolate T.R. and seduce her had been thwarted. I knew how skillfully Godwin preyed on female impatience, and was determined to give him no chance in this instance.

“Hi, hi, hi,” Jesse said, many times. She stood by me, wildly excited to be going someplace. Bo had taken a dislike to Muddy; after trying to hit him in the face with a toy truck, he bit his wrist. Muddy grabbed him and shook him for a bit, and Bo burst into loud shrieks.

“Cut it out, that’s child abuse, dickhead!” T.R. yelled over her shoulder. She wore huge yellow shades and was listening to one of Godwin’s old Rolling Stones tapes. Gladys was chain-smoking furiously, intensely nervous at the thought of passport photographs, France, divorce, estrangement from her children, and varicose veins, her latest obsession. She had begun to work varicose veins into almost every conversation.

“It’s one thing that would be a problem for me on them nude beaches,” she said. “Do them French women have varicose veins?”

“Please, the nude beaches are not for elderly people,” Godwin said.

“Are you saying I’m elderly?” Gladys asked. “If I’m elderly, what does that make you?”

“Can’t you drive faster?” Godwin asked, skirting the question. “We’re merely creeping down the road.”

Bo leaned over the seat and got a stranglehold on Jesse. He tried to pull her back over the seat so he could strangle her at his leisure. Jesse made strangling noises. T.R., inscrutable behind her shades, paid this atrocity no attention; neither did anyone else. I remembered how necessary it was to maintain a constant flow of oxygen to the brain and became a little panicky at the thought that Jesse’s flow might be cut off. I tried to break Bo’s hold with my free hand and almost smacked into the rear of a gravel truck. T.R., more tuned in to what was going on around her than she appeared to be, screamed.

“We’ll all be killed, and I hope we are,” Muddy said. “I wanted to stay home and watch that all-day movie. Having your picture made’s a good way to get sent back to jail. They might get me and they might get you too.”

“Buddy, would you sit on Bo?” T.R. asked.

Buddy was horrified at the thought of having to go to a foreign country—Fort Worth was foreign enough for him—but I had insisted that he come along in case we decided to take him to France as a kind of male nanny.

“Aw, he’s just playing,” Buddy said, carefully releasing Jesse, while Bo shrieked. Jesse immediately crawled down into the floorboards, under her mother’s feet. She whimpered for a while.

We were several miles down the road before the import of Muddy’s last remark hit me. He had said the authorities might get him, and they also might get T.R.

“Why would they get T.R.?” I asked. Fort Worth’s modest skyline had just come into view.

“Because she’s a big criminal,” Muddy said. “Ain’t you even told your daddy about your crimes, T.R.?”

T.R. remained inscrutable, deep behind her shades.

“A criminal, really?” Godwin said. The thought that T.R. might be a criminal brought him out of his sulk. Criminals had always excited him.

“T.R., tell me what he means,” I said. I felt wrong, asking such a question in front of a crowd, but I also felt anxious, suddenly. I had been rather complacently congratulating myself for
handling the chaos in the car so casually—it seemed to me my ability to exist in close proximity to other humans was improving by leaps and bounds. But now, despite the proximity of a good many other humans, I became horribly anxious and couldn’t contain my anxiety. I had to know what Muddy meant.