Our Town (5 page)

Dale rolled down the window to ask two men directions, but, on second glance, decided otherwise. They didn’t look right. Hollow like the walls. He turned back around.

As he left the complex, he realized it must be on the other side of the highway. He got back on then and got back off on the right side.

A rectangular piece of whitewood was erected in the middle of the parking lot. At the top was an oval painting, surrounded by round white light bulbs like those on a vanity mirror, of a carriage being drawn by two horses in front of a cloudy white sky—a cowboy at the front steered the reins. Underneath was a lit-up square pink sign. The words
MADONNA INN
were electrified neon in turquoise. He pulled past and found a spot. The lot was near empty. He poked two fingers into Dorothy’s ribs and she woke up; she was sore there so she woke up.

“Hey,” she squeaked.

“You hungry, baby?” he asked.

“I’m tired,” she answered, rubbing her side and scratching her eyelids. “Really tired. But yeah, I guess so.”

They got out and walked toward the hammered-copper stairs. They didn’t hold hands.

“What’d you give me?” Dorothy asked.

“What do you mean? Nothing. Same as always.”

“I just really slept and now I’m groggy.”

“Good, baby. You were tired. And you’ll wake up with some coffee. I mean, if you want to, that is.”

They walked up the crimson carpet down the center of the coppered stairs—her to the right of the handrail, him to the left—and, as they pushed through a large, wooden saloon door with a heart cut out and filled in with pink stained glass in the center, a hostess greeted them. “Howdy!”

“Oh, hi,” Dale said, surprised. The woman stood close and shouted, her podium too near. Her stand was too close to the doorway.

“What can I do for y’all?” She wore a pink pilgrim dress with a muffled pink apron, a pink headband, and pigtails tied in pink bows. She was freckly. Pale-pink skin, tawny red hair, and an affected accent. Dale couldn’t tell whether that was part of the job description or something “cute” she’d picked up along her way.

“Table for two, I guess.”

“You got it, darlin’s,” and she grabbed two oversized wood menus. “Follow me.”

She led them to their table. Dale made sure to stand one step behind her. Do was by his side.

“This place is weird, right?”

“Yeah, very,” Do replied.

“Very, very,” Dale repeated and looked around.

“Should we just go with it? I’m suddenly starving.”

“Yeah. I mean, I guess we have to. I’m real hungry, too.”

They walked past a pink bar with pink and gold bar stools and a foamy-pink ledge. They walked over a pink-and-red carpet with pink roses blooming and splats of blue hyacinths growing from the pink
rose stems. Pink stucco pillars led the way—faux Greek classical—but fashioned to look as though they were really carved from one piece of pink stone. All from the same rock, like they used to be. They arrived at a red booth with a navy chandelier. Gold trim. Pink bulbs. And above them a portrait of frontiersmen. And a square wood table, which housed, on its center, six different types of mayonnaise. One of which was pink, with a label that read
Thousand Island.
And went on to say
Our Very Own.

“Y’all have a nice lunch now, would ya please?”

“Yeah, thanks. You got it.”

The hostess patted Do on the back, then winked at Dale, then spun as she walked away—knowing that her pink-pleated bell skirt would inflate and show the tips of her pink, ruffled panties.

DALE HAD A
BLT and Do had Caesar salad with grilled chicken. Dale didn’t request “no mayo” because he assumed you added the condiments yourself. But his rye bread was already soaked through. The bottles on the table were for if you wanted extra. It seemed most people wanted extra. Dale’s sandwich came with steak fries and coleslaw, extra-thick-white. Do’s Caesar was wilted and mayo-drenched with croutons. But their fat server was very attentive in refilling the happy couple’s coffee cups throughout. Dorothy liked unsweetened and skim. Dale liked half-and-half and white sugar. He liked to be able to drink a lot. He liked to feel it in his fillings. Made him feel alive.

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*

Dale and Dorothy took two years off acting when their first child was born. They’d saved some money, Dorothy more than Dale.
Crossing Robertson
hadn’t hit its stride, yet, but Dorothy continued to get side work. Some TV. A few B movies. Something with Elvis. Something else with Nevada Smith. Dale continued wading downriver—his role on the show slowly, but exponentially, grew—while Dorothy fought upstream. Against the current she swam hard at first, but fairly soon
relaxed her muscles, and eventually she made her way to the shore. Dale, though, was beautiful but maybe not angry enough. Not yet, anyway. He needed some time to figure it out. So when they were going to have a baby—between seasons—he took a break. It was getting harder—he’d become unsure—and being a daddy seemed like a good excuse. It seemed, to him, quite masculine. So he smoked all day and grew a beard for the first—and only—time in his life. He liked his few months off, and he was happy, then. They were happy, then. She was twenty-four and he was twenty-three. He wished to be a good daddy. And, although that never quite came true, he tried. At least until he stopped trying. A lot of the time he got in his own way. But again they were happy still, for the most part. They loved each other. They only ever wanted to be close.

AFTER THIS BREAK
, though, their careers took perpendicular paths. Dale’s face was discovered, and Dorothy’s quickly forgotten.
Crossing Robertson
finally struck a chord with audiences in its third season, its first without Dorothy—given her relative fringe status, and the fact that she never tested well with the flyover states, they felt she’d become expendable—and propelled Dale to relative TV stardom. Not so much for Do, but she was a mama, so that didn’t matter. She considered their finances shared—this wouldn’t become a problem ’til later. Critics said it was something in Dale’s dimples and his candor. His passion and his eyes. And, with all that new attention, he couldn’t really muster the spirit to be home anymore. It just didn’t seem that important. And all the smoking and drinking didn’t help. And then later all the coke.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. As I said earlier, when Dorothy was pregnant, they were happy. Dorothy only ever just wanted a family. A family’s all it took to make her whole.

“I love you, babyskins,” he said, high—red-eyed—in a holey, having-had-it-since-high-school, threadbare, loose, white, sleeveless track tank.

“I love you more, babyskees,” she replied with a smile. Such a genuine smile.

She’d let her dyed blonde hair go dark—sandy, and natural—during the pregnancy. She’d read that the chemicals weren’t good for the baby. When she was pregnant nobody forced her to do anything. She could eat whatever she wanted. And she was doted on. Whatever she needed, she got. She loved that. She loved it all. She was an actress, but she didn’t need acting anymore. She didn’t need anyone to tell her that she was the prettiest. She got brave. She loved Dale, and she believed in him, and that was enough for her. What woman needs anything more than a man who loves you? You find a man with a big wallet—or at least a wallet with big potential. And she believed he’d make it to the top. Straight to the top. Even with the beard, he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen. And she didn’t need to be more than a good mama. They’d rented a place in Malibu on the beach and spent much of the time in the cabana, where Dale kept red-labeled bottles of Budweiser—
Budweiser Lager Beer
—on ice in a plastic bucket. Sometimes he’d blend up frozen margaritas. She didn’t drink much during those nine months. For the first time in her life, she cared. She watched Dale fiddle with his bathing suit drawstring underneath his guitar and then go back to playing. He couldn’t really play, but he tried. His beard made him look like a foreigner, but she didn’t mind foreigners. Not if they looked like Dale, anyway. He got up and went to the bathroom. She could see him unzip his pants through the window. Everyone in Malibu has a bathroom outside. A bathroom outside, she found, in her experience, to be a problem for the poor and a luxury for the rich. Low-high. She liked low-high. But she preferred the latter.

Dorothy grabbed her big stomach in one hand and her horn-rimmed, green wayfarers in the other and got up and walked toward and then slid open the cabana door. She stepped down the two wooden steps and across the flat-brick path through their yard and past their peach tree. Green-tiled, with Mexican shingles falling from the roof, and gray stone siding. Having a family—just being a wife—was growing on Dorothy. She couldn’t imagine much better. Couldn’t imagine much better at all.

She was hungry and in the mood for tortilla chips and spice. Everything nice. She’d read that salsa was good for the baby. Kept her humors clear. Kept the baby on its toes. As she stepped over the hot red bricks they burned her feet. The Jacuzzi was on; it didn’t need to be, but it didn’t matter. Worry about the heating bill? Please. Dale left for the beach to jump in the ocean—which he liked after a sauna—but now he was coming back. He wore a towel over his trunks and carried a half a beer in his hand and his sunglasses on his head. His body hadn’t started aging, yet. He felt strong. He put his sunglasses back on and then watched her open the door as he dried himself.

The cool air from the icebox stuck to her and she lifted her stomach and rested it on the fruit shelf. She wasn’t hungry anymore. She thought she heard the garden door open, and she grabbed a half-gallon jug of wine from the sauce rack.

“You good, baby? You need anything? I’m having some chips. I’m hungry.”

Dorothy thought she heard Dale coming, but as she looked over the icebox door no one was there. Then suddenly, below her knees, their new dog Butchie stretched straight up on his hind legs and reached for her like he was attempting to catch a bouquet.

“Oh, my little,” she said, and she scooped up Butchie and his ears went back like a rabbit’s. She pet back the wiry gray fur from his bangs and he smiled. And she smiled. They were happy. Then he tucked into her chest and balled up. He was happy to be with his mama. When Dorothy bought him, a month before, the store clerk told her they looked just alike. Like twins, almost. She kissed him, and she liked his breath, and she thought it’d be good for the baby to have a friend. And she could raise them together, and love them together, and she was sold. And Butchie was sold. He’d just come now from pissing on their rented teal sofa bed, but when Dorothy found out she didn’t care. She let him get away with everything. And, anyway, they could afford it. She just loved his face. She gripped Butchie from under his pink stomach and poured some wine into a water glass with her other hand. She was pregnant, and she had a
dog, a tan, wine, freckles, real hair, and a beach house. And that all seemed like more than enough.

DOROTHY AND DALE
spent much of that summer—and the rest of the next eighteen months—in each other’s arms. With the new baby, and the dog, and each other, she’d made a family of her own. And she’d always, more than anything, just wanted a family. Only wanted a family. And even when Dale got angry, or jealous, or resentful, and then more angry still, Dorothy tried to be there for him. A man needs his woman’s support, no matter. That’s just the rules. When she was a little girl in Americus, she remembered her father driving a car, with her mama in the passenger seat and her sister and her in the back. Mama opened the windshield, when you could still open windshields, and let in some fresh air. It was hot, that day. But when they opened the windshield, even from the backseat she felt the breeze.

*
  
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*

Now, a year later, Dorothy and Dale still get on, for the most part. Again, for the most part. Their baby, Clover, had just started walking, and Dorothy was pregnant again. Almost Irish twins. Dale was still working his way up, and soon he’d be bigger and better than ever. He began to go back to the gym. He thought if he got big and strong it would help his career. He remembered the confidence he used to have when he boxed as a teenager, and it helped. It made him strong and kept him scary. The girls always liked that. And he liked the way he felt after sweating. A good sweat and a liter of water? Brand-new man.

MASTER BRUCE!

D
ale bought Dorothy jewelry sometimes because he knew it would help their sex. This time he bought her a Native American—Iroquois—arrowhead on a long silver chain from a gypsy jeweler—well, gypsy-looking, anyway—at the mall—Dorothy liked things with “character”—and, as he pulled it off a mannequin’s hairless foam head, he thought of what he’d tell his wife as he hung it from her neck. He’d say, he thought, “It’s for your protection, baby,” and he’d brush her hair from her face and hold her head by her ears. “An Indian carved it outta rock to keep ’emselves safe. And now you’ll be safe, too, baby. When I’m not here, ’cause I can’t always be here, you’ll be safe, too.” And he squeezed it in his fist as he walked it to the cashier. He attempted to talk her down—gypsies love a haggle—but eventually a hundred was decided. All twenties, no change. Most likely stolen—again, gypsies, you know?—she didn’t bother with sales tax. And when he gave it to his wife she said she loved it once he performed the lines that he’d rehearsed. Lines that he’d run with himself in his rearview while he drove it back home. And she loved it so much that she’d wear it that night to dinner. They’d planned a fancy dinner. She said she wanted to look pretty tonight. She said she wanted to look pretty for him. And this’ll go swell with my purple dress. I just know it. The one with the ruffles. Lined down the fringe.