She tossed our bags and Ben’s little bed in the backseat. All of us Moynihans are strong, physically anyway. She kissed and hugged us both over and over. We got in and headed for the A & W across town. It was cold but the air was clean and dry, she kept the top down and the heater blasting, talked nonstop as she drove, one-handed since she waved at just about everybody we passed.
“First off I should tell you we’re short on yuletide joy out at our place. Uncle John gets here day after tomorrow, Christmas Eve, praise the Lord. Mary, your mama and my mama started drinking and fighting right off the bat. Mama went up on the garage roof and won’t come down. Your mother slit her wrists.”
“Oh, God.”
“Well you know, not bad or anything. She wrote a suicide note about how you had always ruined her life. Signed it Bloody Mary! She’s in Saint Joseph’s psych ward on a seventy-two-hour hold. At least your father isn’t coming, he’s furious about your D.I.V.O.R.C.E. My crazy grandma is there. Looney Tunes! And a passel of horrid relatives from Lubbock and Sweetwater. Daddy has them all put up at a motel and they drive over and eat all day and watch TV. They’re all born again so think you and me are just rotten to the core. Rex Kipp is here! He and Daddy are buying presents and stuff for poor people all day and hanging out in Daddy’s shop. So boy am I ever glad to see you…”
At the drive-in we ordered Papa burgers and fries and malts, like always. I told her Ben could have some of mine. He was just ten months old. But she ordered him a Papa burger and a banana split. Our whole family is extravagant. Well, no, my father isn’t like this at all. He is from New England, is thrifty and responsible. I turned out a Moynihan.
After Bella had filled me in on the reunion situation she told me about Cletis, her husband of only two months. Her folks had been as mad when she got married as mine had been with me. Cletis was a construction worker, rodeo rider, roughneck. Tears rolled down Bella’s lovely cheeks as she told me what happened.
“Lou, we were happy as clams. I swear nobody ever had such a sweet tender love. Why in heaven’s name are clams happy? We had a dear little trailer in the south valley, by the river. Our little blue heaven. I cleaned house and washed dishes! I cooked, made pineapple upside-down cake and macaroni, all kinds of things, and he was proud of me, and me of him. First bad thing that happened was Daddy forgave me for marrying him and he bought us a house. On Rim Road, you know, a mansion, columns on the porch, but we didn’t want his house so Cletis and Daddy had an awful fight. I tried to explain to Daddy we didn’t need his ol’ house, how I’d be happy living with Cletis on the back of a flatbed truck. And I had to explain it over and over to Cletis too, because even though I refused to move he took to sulking. Then one day I went to the Popular Dry Goods and bought some clothes and towels, just a few things, on my old charge account I’ve had my entire life long. Cletis had a fit, said I had spent more money in two hours than he made in six months. So I just took it all outside and poured kerosene on it, set fire to everything, and we kissed and made up. Oh, Little Lou, I love him so bad, so bad! Next darn fool thing I did and why I did it I’ll never know. Mama had come to call. I guess I was just feeling like a married lady, you know? A grown-up. I made coffee and served Oreos on a little dish. Blabbed my big mouth about S.E.X. I suppose I felt I was big enough to talk to her now about S.E.X. Oh God, well, and I didn’t know, either, so I asked her if I could get pregnant if I swallowed Cletis’s come. She tore out of the trailer and ran home to Daddy. All hell broke loose. That night Daddy and Rex came and beat the living daylights out of Cletis. Put him in the hospital with a broken collarbone and two broken ribs. Talking about he was a pervert, and putting him in jail for sodomy and annulling the marriage. Can you imagine, going down on your own lawful wedded husband is against the law? Anyways I wouldn’t go home with Daddy and just stayed at Cletis’s bedside until I could bring him home. And we were fine, happy as those old clams again, even though Cletis took to drinking a lot, account of he couldn’t go back to work for a while. Then last week I look out and see this brand-new Cadillac in our driveway, with a huge stuffed Santa sitting in it, and satin ribbons all around it. I laughed, you know, ’cause it was funny, but Cletis said, ‘Happy, huh? Well, I ain’t never going to make you happy like your precious Daddy does.’ And he left. I figured he’d just gone off on a tear and he’d be back. Oh, Lou. He’s not coming back. He’s gone! He went to work on an oil rig off Louisiana. He didn’t even call. His trashy mother told me when she came to get his clothes and his saddle.”
Little Ben had actually eaten all that burger and most of the banana split. He threw up all over himself and Bella Lynn’s jacket. She tossed the jacket in the backseat, washed him off with napkins dipped in water while I got him out some clean clothes and a diaper. He didn’t cry once though. He loved the rock and roll music and the hillbilly music, and Bella Lynn’s voice or her hair, never took his eyes off her.
I envied Bella and Cletis, being so in love. I had adored Joe, but had always been afraid of him, trying to please him. I don’t think he ever even liked me much. I was miserable not so much because I missed him but for the whole failure of things and how it all seemed like my fault.
I told her my short sad story. How Joe was a wonderful sculptor. He had been given a Guggenheim, got a patron and a villa and foundry in Italy, and he left. “Art is his life.” (I had taken to saying that, to everybody, dramatically.) No, no child support. I didn’t even know his address.
Bella Lynn and I hugged and cried for a while and then she sighed. “Well, at least you have his baby.”
“Babies.”
“What?”
“I’m almost four months pregnant. That was the last straw for Joe, me having another baby.”
“It’s the last darn straw for you, little fool! What are you going to do? No way those folks of yours are going to help. Your ma will just kill herself all over again when she hears this news.”
“I don’t know what to do. Another really dumb problem … I wanted to come so bad but they wouldn’t even give me Christmas Eve off at the escrow company. So I just quit, and came. Now I’m going to have to look for a job pregnant.”
“You need an abortion, Lou. That’s all there is to it.”
“Where would I do that? Anyway … it will be as easy to have two babies alone as one.”
“As hard. Besides, that’s not true. Reason Ben here is so sweet is because you were with him as a baby. He’s old enough now to go to somebody while you work although it’s a crying shame to leave him. But you can’t go leaving a newborn infant.”
“Well that’s the situation.”
“You’re talking like your father. The situation is that you’re nineteen and you’re pretty. You have to find yourself a good strong decent man who will be willing to love little Ben as his own. But you’ll have a hell of a time finding somebody who’d take on two of them. He’d have to be some kind of rescuer do-gooder saint type you’d marry out of gratitude and then you’d feel guilty and hate him so you’d fall madly in love with some fly-by-night saxophone player … Oh it would be tragic, tragic, Lou. Let’s think. This is serious. Just you listen to me now and let me take care of you. Haven’t I always had you do what’s best?”
Well, far from it, as a matter of fact, but I was so confused I didn’t say anything. I wished I hadn’t told her. I had wanted just to come to the reunion and be happy, forget all about my troubles. Now they were worse, with my mother killing herself again, and Daddy not even coming.