Lucky me, to have been loved by a man as gentle as Lloyd.
It was cool and dark there below the surface of the earth and dim celebratory sounds drifted down from the wedding, making me vulnerable to certain recollections.
Such as:
Lloyd’s “broad hand” on my back, and “alarm” goes off, set to “country station” (“WJJD,” our “favorite”), and Lloyd “springs up” all cheerful and “hopping on one foot,” gets “pants on” (coins “jingle” in the pockets) and for a moment in the “half-light” stands “shirtless,” hair a mess, raring to go, and says aloud, “David Houston,” which is: name of the man now singing.
Ack, no.
I must not—
Such as:
April, “Stanley, Indiana,” “rental house” of Ada and Todd Sinclair (“real dump” on edge of “FarmHill Estates”), all of us “medium-soused” and the men “cook up” the “bright idea” of slicing up, with “box cutters,” the “cardboard crate” from the Sinclairs’ “new fridge,” to use to “sled” down “mudhill” behind“rental,” and after “first run,” Lloyd takes “shot of Cuervo” and makes “playful grab” for me, Jill “Doll” Blaine, and honestly? I just drop into his arms and fleck/flick at his ear with my tongue, because, to me? Lloyd being so handsome and all? It was (swear to God) like Christmas morning whenever he’d flirt with me, especially here, in front of this crowd, because of me being a former big nobody and Lloyd being seen, in Stanley, by these popular gals, as this, like, I don’t know, big catch or something?
And that was, I gotta tell you, dynamite.
Dy-no-mite.
Oh gosh.
“Dy-no-mite” was, I recalled, “from TV.”
TV, goodness, “TV,” “television,” wow, yes: the bright-colored, balloon-lettered MarcusWelbyBandstandLaugh-InFlipWilsonBobHopeShindig thrill of it all! Ours (our TV, our “set”), in my childhood, sat “just so” on a “cute Asian table” Dad’d brought back “duty-free” from “Manila.”
So cool and all.
Hey, hello, the old lady said. You in there?
Yes, I said.
I remembered that second thing I’m to ask, she said.
On Sunday nights: three TV dinners on three TV trays just in time for “Bonanza.”
Your old feller dead yet? she said. Up yonder?
No, I said. Still alive.
There you go, missy! she said. That weren’t so hard, was it? In that case, that foreign feller’ll be here shortly. With a guest in tow. A real doozy. Who’ll get the job done. No use them coming if your feller’s done kicked it already. Y’all have been serving weak tea. So that foreign fellow said. When what’s needed is:hard whiskey. As he hopes you done figured out by now: this one’s a tough nut. Who’s gotta get cracked open. Stand back, now. I’m a-going.
The chair began to vibrate and disintegrated beneath her and she was remade into a young woman: lithe, almost liquid, hair hanging down long: a country girl about to hit the town, because Joe, cruel Joe, was gone for a spell, up to Little Rock, and so: happy days.
She dashed up the steps to meet her friends down to the Pines Hotel, they’d be waiting for her under the overhang, as it was supposed to rain like the dickens.
I stood there, far beneath the surface of the earth, recalling Lloyd:
“Tattoo of boat” on one arm.
Slight “touch of gray” on “sideburns” though “not yet thirty.”
Girl, careful, I counseled myself.
The more I indulged in such recollections, I knew, the more inclined I would be to indulge in other such recollections, until indulging would come to seem not like indulging at all but, rather, like a simple, joyful return to who I reallywas.Do you know what I mean? A return to the person I had been, the person I was most comfortable being, the person it had always been so natural and easy and (hey, guess what?) fun to be:
Jill “Doll” Blaine.
And we mustn’t have that.
