Onward Toward What We're Going Toward Page 4

  On their way to Geary Street, Buddy bought her a bouquet of roses from a flower stand. It was the first time a man had ever bought her flowers. Buddy insisted she cradle them like a baby, and she did. They caught the California Street Cable Car to Nob Hill. Lijy had never seen a place as gold and shiny as the Mark Hopkins. Neither had Buddy, but she didn’t know that. They took the elevator to the nineteenth floor. At the bar, he ordered himself a Gibson while she walked over to the wall of windows. The view was something that hit her right in the middle of the stomach. The panorama, the vista, the buildings, the people, all of it in motion and happening nineteen stories below her, just rolling the way it rolled forward, and she could do nothing except witness it. She felt her knees go slack. Buddy got her a seat and handed her a bowl of nuts, but she didn’t want any nuts. He sat down beside her, pointed to a spot where two windows met, and told her that was the Weeper’s Corner. When servicemen shipped out to the war, he explained, their wives and sweethearts would stand in that spot dabbing their eyes with hankies, watching as their lovers’ ships slipped out of the bay. He put his hand on her leg. She told him she wasn’t a weeper, and he told her he wasn’t in the service.

  Chic hadn’t put his shirt back on yet, hadn’t even stood up from the dining room chair. Lijy sat down on the sofa. Now that the back rub was done, she could talk. She complained about Buddy being gone all the time and told Chic that he had promised her a life in Middleville where it was quiet and she would be able to do, as he said, “her own thing.” It was true—Middleville was quiet, and she was doing her own thing. But she didn’t like it, none of it, not even a tiny piece of it. She hated it, to be honest. She felt like she was in a dark room and the entire town was shining a flashlight on her. It was worse than Stockton, actually, where at least there were other Indians. Here, she couldn’t even go to Stafford’s without kids peeking around the corners of the aisles to watch her. And most people wouldn’t talk to her and the ones who did talked very slowly, like she wasn’t able to understand what they were saying. She hoped that Chic was getting all of this. (He just sat there smiling, every once in a while furrowing his brow.) She needed Chic to sound the alarm for her, to let Buddy know she was drowning. She thought she’d get him, really get him, if she came to Middleville. But she wasn’t getting anything but a big, empty house and a lot of silence.

  After Lijy was done, Chic went into the bathroom. He knew what it was like to be an outcast. He’d help her fit in; he’d help her become a real Middlevillian. That’s more than Buddy was doing. He didn’t care, not really; he was too busy doing whatever he did with his damn gold coins. Chic cared, really, truly, and he was convinced that all he had to do was make the first move and she’d lead him to the bedroom and let him slowly take off her sari. Then, she would kiss him—not like Diane kissed, rough and aggressive, but gently—and the two of them would giggle shyly between kisses because both of them would be nervous, and since he’d be the more experienced one, he’d have to take the lead.

  Lijy was at the stove, her back to him. The teakettle was on.

  “Excuse me.”

  She turned around.

  Chic was wearing only his boxer shorts and black socks. His hips began moving back and forth, slowly, humping the air. He didn’t even realize he was doing it.

  “I could help you. Make it so people didn’t stare at you.”

  She looked like she was on the brink of something, a movement, a lunge toward him, and they’d grab each other’s cheeks and mash into a passionate kiss. Behind her, the teakettle began to whistle.

  “Chic, what are you doing?” she finally said and shut off the burner. “Will you quit moving your hips like that?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Chic, why are you in your underwear?”

  “You rubbed my back.”

  “You asked me to rub your back.”

  “Not at the reception. You just grabbed my arm.”

  “I’m sorry if you got the wrong idea. I love your brother. I do, but you looked so sad tonight. I thought I could help you. And I thought you could help me.”

  “Sad?” The accusation dropped on him like a heavy weight. “I’m not sad.”

  “I can feel it in your muscles. I can feel it in your brother’s muscles too.”

  “Feel what? What can you feel? What are you talking about? I’m not sad. Buddy’s not sad.”

  “It’s okay, Chic. You have Diane now, and your brother has me. It’s going to be okay.”

  On the way home he stopped at Gene’s Dairy Dream and bought Diane’s favorite—a chocolate ice cream cone with sprinkles. He was determined to make this a good night: ice cream and The Ruggles or Ed Sullivan on the television and maybe he’d put his arm around his wife, like he should, like a husband should. Sad? He wasn’t sad. He was the happiest man alive. He had a wife, and he was thinking about getting a dog and naming him Cody.

  At home, he heard Diane sloshing in the tub. He tried the bathroom knob, but it was locked. “Honey.”

  “I’ll be out in a second.”

  Then, he had an idea. “Unlock the door, honey.”

  “I’m in the bath.”

  “Open the door.”

  He heard her stand up out of the water. Her wet foot thudded on the linoleum.

  “I want to carry you upstairs and lay you out on the bed and kiss you on the belly and your legs and your neck and cheeks and ears.”

  She unlocked the door. A towel was wrapped around her, above her breasts. Her hair was dripping. Behind her, the bathroom mirror was fogged with steam.

  “You left the lamp by the couch on. I could see it when I pulled into the driveway.” He held out the ice cream cone to her. “I made a mistake.”

  “What are you talking about, Chic?”

  “I thought you were reckless, but now I see that you’re not. I’m not sad. I’m really not.”

  “Reckless?”

  “Wild is more like it. I want to hold you. That’s what I want. We’ll snuggle under a blanket and just be together.”

  She unwrapped her towel. She was about four months along, and her stomach was beginning to bulge, a little rise like a hill in the middle of flat land.

  His face turned white. “I . . . You’re . . . ” He swallowed hard. He thought about his father sitting in the living room staring out the window. He’d backed the family car down the gravel drive every morning and, at night, carefully pulled it back into the drive. He thought of his mother sweeping the farmhouse’s porch with so much force, the shushing of the broom’s bristles sounded like screaming.

  “Chic, are you OK?”

  He clenched the ice cream cone. It crumbled, and ice cream dripped over his hand and onto the hallway carpet. He started to waver.

  “Chic! Honey?”

  His eyes rolled back into his head, and he groaned a low, animal half sigh, half moan.

  Then, he passed out.

  Two

  Mary Norwood, another beginning

  1972–1990

  In 1972, Mary Norwood and her boyfriend, Lyle Crabtree (who went by Lyle Style because he wore butterfly collar shirts and skintight polyester pants he thought gave him a bulge), rented an apartment in San Jose, California, but spent most of their time in Lyle’s ’69 Ford LTD hustling up and down the West Coast so Mary could shoot pool in the West Coast Women’s Pool League, a semiprofessional pool league. Lyle didn’t work, but that didn’t mean he didn’t bring in an income. He had a triangle head like viper, and his tongue could snap with the best of them. Somehow he always had a belt buckle, a pair of dingo boots, a pool cue, a Zippo lighter, or whatever to sell. This was nickel-and-dime stuff, but Lyle could stretch a buck. It was nothing for him to kick the LTD’s seats back and sleep behind a movie theater. Mary, on the other hand, had big, blossoming dreams that didn’t include sleeping in a car. Every time she started talking about what she called a “normal life,” Lyle smiled through his mustache. “I’m with ya, babe. You think I like sleeping in my car?”

&n
bsp; By the time Elvis died in August 1977, Mary was finishing in the top two of almost every tournament. Payouts were getting bigger—five hundred bucks here, seven hundred there—but she was still rubbing her neck and cursing the LTD’s vinyl seats. Lyle didn’t seem to mind sleeping in the car. He certainly didn’t mind the increase in income. He bought himself new things, like a gold ring for his pinkie finger and a belt with his name stitched in back. He strutted around the pool halls striking a pose every few minutes—hip kicked out, cigarette dangling from his mouth. During her matches, Mary often spotted him off in a corner talking to some girl, a look in his eyes like he was going to swallow the girl whole. She asked Lyle about the girls, and he told her he was just doing his job, working the crowd, trying to build up her image. Mary couldn’t let herself believe he could be sneaking off with those girls. Even when she saw him one afternoon in Olympia, Washington, come back into the pool hall, a doe-eyed girl behind him carrying her high-heeled shoes, the girl’s hair a tornado of mess, Mary told herself he was probably helping her fix a flat on her car.

  All of this was about to change. Their—or rather Mary’s—ship was about to come in.

  In October 1978, after a tournament in Reno, Mary and Lyle were sitting at the bar having cocktails when they were approached by a slick-looking dude, his shirt unbuttoned showing gold necklaces. The guy had huge muttonchop sideburns that practically grew right into his mouth, and was built short and compact like a garbage can that fit under the kitchen sink. He introduced himself as Rod Alberhaskie, and he had a proposition. He talked to Lyle, looking at him directly, eyeball to eyeball like a high school principal. He and some folks were kicking off a professional women’s pool league, WPPA, Women’s Professional Pool Association. “Our league won’t be a weekly event like this here. But the purses will be ten times as much.”

  “Ten times as much,” Mary whispered.

  Rod didn’t even look at her.

  “That’s big bucks,” Lyle said.

  “The competition will be stiffer, so there’s no guarantee, but I’ve seen her play. She’s good.”

  Lyle turned an eye on her and smiled. “She’s a damn good pool player.”

  Mary liked that Lyle was taking care of the business side of things, so she could simply sit there and sip her drink through the little cocktail straw. Who cared about sleeping in the LTD. She wanted a man who could take care of business and Lyle was all about TCB.

  Rod took a card from his inside breast pocket. Mary tried to get a glimpse of it, but Lyle pulled it away so she couldn’t read it.

  “More importantly, the good players will get sponsorship.”

  “A steady paycheck,” Mary said.

  Rod glanced at her, then back to Lyle. “About two thousand dollars a month.” He snapped his fingers and motioned to a guy eating peanuts and watching them from across the bar.

  “Which means we can sleep in hotels,” Mary whispered, pretty much talking to her drink.

  The peanut guy, a younger version of Rod, came over to the bar. He looked like he was all of seventeen. His suit pants were too short, what the kids called “high-waters.” “I want you to meet Giles Alberhaskie. My son. He’s a representative of Viking Cues.”

  “She uses a Viking cue,” Lyle said.

  “I know she does,” Rod said.

  “She likes it,” Lyle said.

  Giles shook Lyle’s hand.

  Mary slid off her barstool. “I’m going to use the ladies’ room.” None of the men looked at her.

  Across the bar, she watched as Lyle’s tongue pretty much went dog when Rod pulled out a contract and smoothed it on the bar. He signed it, then held up his glass for the other two men to toast him.

  For the first few years Mary was a professional pool player, Giles Alberhaskie handed her a stipend check at every tournament. In fact, he picked Lyle and her up in his Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight and drove them to the tournaments. Mary usually rode in the backseat, watching the West Coast scenery blur by as Lyle rode shotgun and fiddled with the car’s eight-track, playing rock and roll songs that he sang along with. At the tournaments, Lyle signed her in and carried her pool cue and ordered her tomato juice that she sipped while she ran a couple racks to warm up. There was enough money to afford hotel rooms and steak dinners delivered to the room on a cart. Lyle took care of those, too, signing the room service bill. Of course, it was Mary’s money, but still, he kept a pen on him at all times.

  Since the tournaments were monthly, the couple spent a lot of time at their apartment in San Jose (no more LTD), a modest place with air conditioning and a television set that Lyle, sitting in his tank-top undershirt, put to good use while he drank beer. It was shaping up to be a pretty good life. Mary worked one weekend a month, and when something like a clogged toilet needed taking care of, Lyle got the plunger from the hall closet. If that didn’t work, he picked up the phone and called a plumber. All Mary had to do was sit on the couch.

  Only problem was that Lyle had a knack for spending money, and he wasn’t bashful about it. He bought a Ford Mustang Mach 1, seven polyester suits, a dozen silk shirts, a pair of Italian loafers, a ten-speed Schwinn bicycle, tennis lessons, a color television, golf clubs, a waterbed, a mustache comb, a hi-fi stereo, three lava lamps, two hundred rock and roll records, Chicago Cutlery steak knives, a bearskin rug, and a white leather couch. Mary said nothing about the purchases. She just kept collecting the checks and watched the new things make their way into her life.

  Then, it was 1982, and Mary was attending most of the tournaments by herself. Giles Alberhaskie had moved to Los Angeles to represent television stars like Bernie Kopell and Jon Cypher, while Lyle stayed home to “keep an eye on things.” The WPPA was on the decline; not many fans were showing up, even though the league sponsored promotional gimmicks like Kiss Your Favorite Pool Hustler. Mary hated those stunts—kissing a sweaty, fat guy for a dollar. Many of the women in the league had left and gone on to start families. This was what Mary wanted—her and Lyle and some little bambino and a house with a garage and a tree in the front yard.

  Mary was jealous when a former WPPA player, Allison Whitman, showed up at a tournament in Reno with her seven-month-old son. The women cooed over the little guy, and it was right then that Mary made up her mind. She was going to downshift out of this life. She was almost forty. What did she have to show for all these years? Sure, they had the Mustang Mach 1 and a white leather couch. But what were they doing? When she’d left the apartment earlier that afternoon, Lyle was sitting in front of the television playing Atari.

  She didn’t stick around to play her first match that day. She checked out of her hotel, leaving the key on the bed and not even bothering to get her money back. It was a five-hour drive back to San Jose. Mary did the drive in four hours and twenty-six minutes. At the apartment door, she could hear Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” blaring on the hi-fi. It was only 9:00 p.m. She’d burst in and lay it all out: “Lyle, we gotta make a change . . . ” She dug in her purse for her keys. When she got the door open, her stomach turned inside out and a wave of shock spiraled through her body. A naked black woman with a huge, helmet afro was on top of Lyle. They were on the floor in front of the television, and Mary had a full-on frontal shot of this woman. Her eyes were closed, and she was pinching her own nipples while making a high-pitched whimper. Mary stood in the open door taking in the scene—the woman, Lyle, and the whimpering crescendo of Neal Schon’s guitar solo.

  She quietly closed the door and went down the stairs and out into the parking lot. It was a warm night. The traffic flew by on Saratoga Avenue, the busy street lined with fast food restaurants and dry cleaners that ran in front of the apartment complex. Mary found Lyle’s Mustang Mach 1 in the parking lot. As she sat behind the wheel, her mind flashed to that afternoon when Lyle signed her contract to play professional pool. On the way out of the bar, he held the door open for her. In the car, he leaned over and grabbed both her cheeks with his hands and mashed his mouth onto hers. She
loved it, the power, the aggression. Lyle was her man, and he was taking care of her.

  During the next few months, Mary tried to get her mind off Lyle, but she couldn’t; she loved him. Honestly, she did, but when she thought about going back to the apartment, her mind seized on the image of opening the apartment door and finding him fucking that woman. One afternoon she went inside a gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes. All she had to do was ask for cigarettes, but she couldn’t move her mouth. “Lady, there’s like four people behind you.” She looked over her shoulder at a longhaired kid with a skateboard and a pregnant woman.

  She wrote Lyle a letter. It was short and to the point and told him that she never ever wanted to see him again. He could have all their stuff, she didn’t care, but he needed to get out of the apartment. In fact, he needed to get out of California. He should move to Virginia. Or New Hampshire. Somewhere. Anywhere but California or Las Vegas or Reno. She couldn’t take the risk of bumping into him at a movie theater or grocery store. If she did, she didn’t know what she’d do—most likely break down in tears.