Between Heaven and Texas (27 page)

“Don't be silly,” Lydia Dale said. “I'll go see the lawyer. And you can leave Howard with me and Momma. It's just for one night. And you have plenty of pretty clothes. I'll help you pack your suitcase and the quilts. We'll do it first thing tomorrow.”

Mary Dell shook her head. “There's not enough time. And I hate big cities.”

“How would you know? You've never been to one.”

“That's not true,” Mary Dell said with a jerk of her chin. “I went to Dallas on my honeymoon. Didn't like it.”

Lydia Dale sighed impatiently. “As I recall, the only things you saw on your honeymoon were the emergency room at Parkland Memorial Hospital and the inside of your hotel room. I'm guessing that Dallas has a little more to offer than that.”

“No,” Mary Dell said. “It's too much. It's too soon. It's a waste of time. And who cares about C. J. Evard anyway? Who does she think she is? Sending me rejections for seven years and then thinking she can just snap her fingers and I'll come running up to Dallas on a minute's notice. As if I don't have more important things to do.”

“But you
don't
have more important things to do! Not the day after tomorrow, you don't.” Lydia Dale grabbed her sister by the shoulders. “Mary Dell, you've waited seven years for this moment. Don't let it slip through your fingers just because you're scared.”

Mary Dell swallowed hard, knowing that her sister had read her right. She was scared, scared that after so many years spent dreaming of exactly this, the dream might be too wonderful to come true. It would be terrible to come so close . . .

“What if she doesn't like me? Or my quilts? What if it's just another rejection, but this time she's planning to deliver it in person?”

Lydia Dale shrugged. “Well . . . then at least you'd know the truth. And at least you'd be able to look in the mirror and know you tried. That's got to be better than spending the rest of your life wondering what might have been, isn't it?”

“Maybe. I suppose,” Mary Dell said hesitantly. “But what if . . .”

“No,” Lydia Dale said stalwartly. “I'm not going to listen to any more of this. I was born three and a half minutes before you; that gives me seniority. So you listen to me, Mary Dell. I don't care if I have to beat your butt with a mesquite switch, or hogtie you and put you on the next bus to Dallas, you are going to that meeting. You can do this, Mary Dell. You hear me? You can!”

C
HAPTER 46

“S
top it, Jeb,” Cady said in a voice that was halfway between a giggle and whine. “Mom! Make Jeb stop!”

Lydia Dale turned around to face the backseat. “Jeb, stop throwing popcorn at your sister. And, Cady, you quit egging him on. Settle down and watch the movie.”

“She started it!”

“I did not!”

“I don't care who started it,” Lydia Dale said in that particular tone of voice the children knew signaled imminent punishment. “Both of you, stop it. You hear me?”

“Yes, ma'am,” they chorused glumly.

Lydia Dale turned back to the movie. Mr. Miyagi was showing Daniel how to “wax on” and “wax off” his car, and Daniel was questioning what this had to do with learning karate. Keeping her eyes glued to the screen, Lydia Dale's fingers crept across the front seat until they met Graydon's, and he took hold of her hand.

Graydon glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Cady stick her tongue out at her brother. Jeb quickly returned the sentiment.

“You know what would taste good right now? A cherry slushie.” Graydon reached into the back pocket of his jeans. “Hey, kids. Would you run to the concession stand and buy me a slushie? Get yourselves one too.”

The children broke into cheers.

“You already bought them popcorn,” Lydia Dale reminded him.

“Popcorn makes you thirsty,” Graydon said as he handed a bill over the backseat to Jeb. “Besides, it's the first day of summer vacation. We're celebrating.”

“Could be a long summer,” Lydia Dale mumbled. Graydon scratched his nose and grinned.

“Get your momma a drink too. Lime, right?”

Lydia Dale nodded, wondering how he'd remembered.

“Okay, lime slushie for your momma. Cherry for me. While you're at it, get some red licorice and Milk Duds, too. Got that, partner?”

“Yes, sir,” Jeb said. “Does Cady have to come?”

“Somebody's got to help you carry it.”

Jeb sighed and opened the back door of the sedan. “Come on, runt.”

“Don't call me runt. Mom!”

Lydia Dale turned around again. “Go!” she commanded.

The children got out of the car and scampered toward the concession stand at the back of the drive-in, weaving their way between the rows of parked cars, ducking their heads to avoid hitting the cables of the window speakers.

After they were gone, Graydon lifted his arm and rested it on the back of the seat. Lydia Dale slid a little closer.

“You know, when I told you I'd only go out with you if the kids could come too, I didn't figure you'd actually take me up on it.” She looked up at him with a little smile. “Guess I have to give you points for bravery.”

“Not really. I always go to the drive-in on first dates,” Graydon said and reached into the popcorn bucket that sat on Lydia Dale's lap.

“Oh, you do, do you?”

He tossed a few kernels of popcorn into his mouth. “Uh-huh. Of course, this is the first date I've been on in . . . let me think now . . . thirteen years.”

Graydon laughed. Lydia Dale slapped him playfully before taking a handful of popcorn for herself and settling back into the crook of his arm. He smelled good, like leather and new rope and shaving cream.

Jack Benny had smelled of shaving cream too, but also of cigarettes and beer. Or worse, of cigarettes and whiskey. Whenever she'd gotten that whiff of whiskey on his breath, she knew they were in for a bumpy night. And back in their dating days, whenever Jack Benny had got her alone, his arms coiled immediately around her, groping and searching, and he whispered in her ear, pleading with her to “be sweet” to him. It was like trying to fight off an octopus. Sometimes, she'd lost the fight. Not that he'd ever forced himself on her, but sometimes, just to keep him from crossing the line, she'd ended up doing things she'd rather not have done. It always made her feel so cheap. Why had she allowed it? Because she was young, she guessed, and because she didn't know how to stand up for herself or to say no.

Thank heaven she'd outgrown that.

A lot had happened to her in the last year: She'd been betrayed, humiliated, abandoned, divorced, and left to fend for herself and her children. None of it had been easy or fun. But she'd learned from it, by gosh she had. And she was never going to let somebody mistreat her or her children again. She knew how to say no now.

But she didn't have to say no to Graydon. He didn't push. She didn't feel manipulated or out of control when she was with him. She liked the way his arm felt around her shoulder, strong and solid and safe. She knew that he would like to kiss her if she'd let him, that all she had to do was lift her chin, look up at him with invitation in her eyes, and he would lower his lips to meet hers. She knew that he wanted to do just that. But that wasn't all he wanted. He liked to talk to her too.

Jack Benny had never been much of a talker. Well, no, that wasn't quite right. He talked plenty, and he was always joking around. At first, she'd liked that. He seemed so energetic, and it was flattering, the way he pursued her. But before long, she realized that he never talked about things that mattered, never discussed his thoughts, or feelings, or plans with her. And he never listened to her. It was a one-way conversation. No, not even that. It was a monologue.

Now that she thought about it, if you measured on word count alone, Graydon talked considerably less than Jack Benny ever had. But he managed to say a whole lot more.

“You know,” Graydon said, looking out the windshield toward the bottom of the movie screen where a gang of kids were playing on a swing set, “we used to go to the drive-in when I was little.

“We didn't have much money. But every now and again, the drive-in would have carload night, your whole car could get in for the price of one ticket.”

Graydon scratched his neck and smiled, remembering.

“We'd throw a bunch of blankets and pillows in the back of the pickup. Mom would mix up a pitcher of red Kool-Aid and pour it into mason jars, pop some corn, and put it into brown paper sacks. Best popcorn in the world,” he said wistfully. “She poured on so much butter it left grease stains on the paper. Donny and I, and sometimes some of the neighbor kids, would pile in the back and off we'd go. We'd swing on the swings, just like this bunch,” he said, nodding toward the playground beneath the big screen, “and we'd run back and forth to the bathrooms, and have fights with the pillows, just about everything but watch the movie. Sometimes Mom would get so mad she'd get out and spank whichever one of us she could catch hold of, not hard, just hard enough to get our attention. In the end, we'd all fall asleep in the back, curled up like a pack of pups.”

“Your mom sounds nice.”

“She was,” Graydon said slowly. “But those nights at the drive-in were some of the best memories I have of her. She was sweet but tired. Life just beat down on her. We were so poor, so busy working to survive that we barely had a chance to live.

“That's why I started working the rodeo circuit. I entered a breakaway roping competition when I was eleven and won. The prize was ten dollars. More money than I'd ever seen in my life, so I got the crazy idea that rodeo work was the way to make money fast.”

“Why didn't you go back to it when you got back from Vietnam?”

Graydon shook his head. “Partly because I was too old and out of shape by then. But mostly because I was too busy feeling sorry for myself. I gave up.”

“You still feel sorry for yourself?” she asked

He reached up his hand and stroked her hair. “Not very. Not now.”

She twisted toward him, lifted her eyes to his. His lips were soft and his kisses were sweet, just like she remembered. Better than she remembered. She pulled away. The kids might come back any moment, and if she didn't stop now . . .

Lydia Dale scooted back across the seat a few inches, to a safe distance. “Mary Dell said that you're staying until Christmas.”

He nodded and took another handful of popcorn from the bucket. “Maybe longer. If you want me to.”

“Graydon, I . . . I was married to Jack Benny for a long time. And I'm still trying to figure out . . .”

“It's okay,” he said casually. “I'm in no hurry. I can wait till you're ready.”

She looked down at her lap. She didn't want to hurt his feelings, but she didn't want to give him false hope either. For his sake and her own, she had to be honest.

“I might never be ready. You should know that. I don't want to waste your time.”

He munched his popcorn. “I was living in a shed in Kansas. You're not wasting my time.”

“And now you're living in a tack room in Texas. What's the difference?”

He took her hand. “Everything. Before, I had nobody. Now I've got friends. I've got family. People who need me,” he said. “Mary Dell, Howard . . .”

And me,
she thought but didn't say so.

“And Jeb. He's a different boy now,” she said.

“He's a good boy.”

“You're good with him.”

“Well, I like kids. Always did. In fact,” he said, “next time we go on a date, let's bring the babies too.”

Lydia Dale laughed. “I think they're better off at home with Momma and Daddy. Besides, you don't think Mary Dell is going to let Howard go to the movies without her, do you? It's only for one night, but we practically had to pry him out of her arms when she left.”

Outside, they heard the sound of two childish voices approaching, hissing and arguing about who was going to get the first crack at the Milk Duds. Graydon removed his arm from the back of the seat.

“Do you think she's having fun in Dallas?”

Lydia Dale scooted all the way back to the passenger side of the seat as the kids clambered inside, handing off drink cups and candy boxes to Graydon.

“I don't know. She hasn't called yet. But I doubt it,” she said. “Mary Dell doesn't like big cities.”

C
HAPTER 47

M
ary Dell thought the Dallas traffic was bad enough during her honeymoon trip, but Big D had added a number of newer, wider, faster freeways in the thirteen years since then, and a whole lot more residents. One second, cars and trucks and semis would fly past her at twenty or thirty miles above the speed limit, and in the next everything would come to a screeching halt and she'd find herself sitting in the middle of a vast sea of gridlocked vehicles.

The air-conditioning on Dutch's pickup was broken, but after a couple of minutes of sucking in the exhaust of idling cars, she decided that death from heat exhaustion was preferable to death by asphyxiation, and she rolled up the window.

“I don't care how bad the tread was on my tires,” she muttered to herself, “I shouldn't have let Daddy talk me into taking the truck. As long as I'm stuck here, I might as well figure out where I'm going.”

She had thought she knew exactly where she was headed, but everything looked so different than she remembered. Keeping one hand on the wheel and one eye on the traffic, she pulled a road map out of the glove compartment and spread it out across the steering wheel. She'd almost figured out where she was when the truck driver stopped behind her let out a blast that made her lose her place. She jumped in fright and then glared into her rearview mirror. The angry trucker pointed at her, then to the road ahead, signaling that the traffic was moving again and Mary Dell was blocking it.

Feeling like a bumpkin, she blushed and tried to put the pickup in gear, but she was so nervous that she let the clutch out too quick and stalled. She fired up the engine again and shifted into gear as fast as she could, but by the time she did, a half dozen other drivers were honking at her. By the time she finally got moving, her nerves were so jangled that she missed her exit but didn't realize it for a good three miles. She took the first exit she could find and stuck to regular surface streets from then on. Eventually, she found her way downtown.

Commerce was a long street, but Mary Dell figured that if she just stayed on it she'd find the address eventually, so she drove slowly along the curbside, searching for address numbers, so pleased when she finally found the 1300 block that she didn't notice the grandeur of her surroundings until she pulled in front of the hotel, got out of the pickup, and looked up.

She had to hinge her neck back as far as it would go to see the place where building gave way to skyline.

“Holy cow! If you stacked every building in downtown Too Much one on top of the other, I bet you could fit them all inside with space to spare.”

She stood there, open-mouthed, mentally trying to count the stories, when a fresh-faced young man in a blue suit came up to her and said, “May I take your car, ma'am?”

Mary Dell scowled at him. “Now, why would I let you do that?”

“Are you checking into the hotel? If so, I can park your car for you.”

“Oh . . . yes. Of course,” she stammered, feeling like an idiot.

She'd seen parking valets in movies and television programs, but she'd never actually been in a hotel that had one. Her previous experiences with overnight accommodations were limited to the cheap motels and tourist cabins she had shared with Taffy and Lydia Dale during her brief career on the pageant circuit and those few nights in the Belmont during her honeymoon.

At the time, the Belmont had seemed very elegant, but as she fell in step behind the uniformed bellman who carried the battered, borrowed suitcases that held her clothes, cosmetics, and quilts, following him across carpets so thick her feet sank into them as if she were walking barefoot on a sandy beach through a two-storied lobby paneled in gleaming wood, she realized it was possible she hadn't truly understood what the word “elegant” meant, not until now.

The bellman took her to the check-in desk, where a row of clerks with matching uniforms and matching smiles awaited her. She picked the clerk in the middle, a young blond woman with a name tag that said “Stacy.” Stacy handed her a key to room 1708 and said that Bobby, the bellman, would show her the way and bring up the luggage, then wished her a pleasant stay.

The room was elegant too. The honey-colored carpet wasn't quite as thick as the carpet in the lobby, but almost, and the dark cherrywood furniture was polished to a shine. Gold brocade curtains hung from the ceiling to the floor, framing the big picture window. The bedspread and shams matched the curtains. Mary Dell had never seen a bed with so many pillows.

Bobby brought in her suitcases, placing them on a stand he pulled out of the closet, showed her the minibar filled with candy bars, jars of nuts, cans of soda and beer, and teeny-tiny bottles of liquor, then asked her if she wanted anything else.

“What else
could
I want?”

Bobby smiled, hesitated a moment, then said, “Well, if anything comes to mind, just dial zero and ask the operator.”

He started toward the door when Mary Dell realized that his hesitation had been in anticipation of a tip. She'd seen that on television too, just like the parking valets. Wait . . . was she supposed to have tipped the parking man too? Maybe the desk clerk? Well, it was too late.

“Hold on. Just give me a second,” she said, scrounging through her purse in search of a dollar bill. “Here you go.”

Bobby smiled. “Thank you, ma'am.”

When he left she investigated the rest of the room. The closet held a collection of hangers made from the same color of wood as the furniture, as well as a half dozen padded lingerie hangers covered with cream-colored satin. There was a black metal box on the upper shelf, a safe, with a sign reminding guests to lock up their jewelry and valuables.

“Well, la-di-da!” She shook her head in amazement and muttered, “If I'd known there was a safe, I'd have brought my diamond bracelet and emerald tiara.”

The bathroom had tiny bottles of shampoo, conditioner, body lotion, shower gel, bubble bath, mouthwash, and a box containing an emery board, shower cap, and sewing kit, plus two bars of gardenia-scented soap wrapped in cream-colored paper with gold lettering that said “The Adolphus.”

There was marble on the floor, a heat lamp in the ceiling, a towel warmer on the wall, which Mary Dell mistakenly believed was for drying laundry, and a bathtub big enough to take a swim in. There was a toilet, of course, with a gold handle that matched the faucets on the tub and sink. Standing next to it was something she'd never seen before, not even on television, not quite a toilet and not quite a sink. Later, she would learn it was a bidet and would blush as she recalled thinking it might be a place to wash out stockings.

When she closed the door to the bathroom, she discovered a plush, white terry-cloth robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door. A little tag on the hanger said the robe was for the use of guests during their stay. It looked new. She wondered if they put out a brand-new robe for every guest. If so, it seemed like an awfully extravagant arrangement, but she was starting to think that anything might be possible in such surroundings.

She would have dearly loved to fill up the tub and have a good soak, but there wasn't time for that. She had to get ready for her meeting with C. J. Evard.

The sudden reminder of the purpose of her visit made her pulse rush and her stomach lurch. For a moment, she thought she was going to be sick, but she closed her eyes and pushed past the urge.

After she'd changed her clothes, brushed her teeth, freshened her makeup, then curled, teased, and sprayed her hair, Mary Dell stood in front of the mirror to give herself a final once-over. The hot-pink satin blouse matched her lipstick perfectly, but the white jacket and slacks Lydia Dale had picked out for her were a little boring. Surely an important meeting in a big city demanded something more elegant.

She went back to the suitcase and pulled out a ballerina skirt she'd sewn from layers and layers of black and pink tulle, fixed to a waistband of pink satin ribbon and trimmed with rhinestones along the hem. When they were packing, Lydia Dale had rejected the skirt, but Mary Dell snuck it into the suitcase when she wasn't looking. Mary Dell kept the jacket and blouse, but exchanged the slacks for the skirt and changed her shoes as well, opting for a pair of black-and-white spectator pumps with a peekaboo toe and three-inch heels that she'd bought at the Methodist yard sale, and replacing the pearl studs Lydia Dale had chosen in favor of her favorite drop earrings, featuring a pair of pink mother-of-pearl half-moons hung with strings of pink glass and finished with smaller pink stars, also in mother-of-pearl.

Mary Dell stood in front of the mirror and smiled at her reflection, feeling beautiful. She shook her head, admiring the way the pink stars barely brushed her shoulders, then spun around in a circle to see how the rhinestones on the hem of the ballet skirt caught the light.

“Elegant,” she declared. “Very elegant.”