[Posted February 11, 2018]
It was the trailing
edge of the Steamy Seventies when I wandered into The Pit Stop on that
cold, blustery March day, figurative hat in hand. Three months out of the
Army, I was getting hungry for a job. (The first "Will Work 4 Food" sign hadn't yet been scrawled on creased cardboard, and I still wasn't quite that desperate. Or that inventive.)
The Pit Stop was a
foreign car dealership, at the time, a somewhat eclectic -- exotic? -- business. This was the Seventies after all; the Urge to Merge had yet to overcome the American automotive industry. (Hell, the
Japanese were kicking our asses in car sales. It would be
another decade before we'd discover the only way we could lick 'em
was to buy 'em. But I digress.) This particular dealership sold Saabs, Fiats and Lancias.
At that point, I didn't
care if they sold Barsoomian Trundle Buses; they had an ad in the
paper for an assistant parts manager, and I had some background. And
hunger; did I mention hunger?
I walked into the
bright, clean, glass-walled reception area. I wish I could say my
heart stopped, or went pitty-pat, or that cherubim appeared in the air
over her head and blew trumpets or something, but no. I was so
nervous I wouldn't have heard 'em anyway. See, there was a girl
sitting at the desk. She was beautiful, with auburn tresses and a
sweet, sweet face and piercing hazel eyes. She was so pretty that this Army-toned-but-still-fat-kid-inside man would
never have had the self-anything to risk something more personal than
"Uh, hi. I'm...er.. I'm here about the...um...job in the
paper?" Which I said.
She smiled up at me.
My heart didn't pound like a trip-hammer or throw itself against my
ribs like a trapped birdie or anything naratively useful like that. I just gaped, then smiled back
crookedly, then went over and sat down to read the paper while she
called her boss.
Besides, I was already still
married.
It was a
take-no-prisoners interview, but my hair was short, my hunger-driven
demeanor was earnest and pathetically eager to please and I'd already
slung car parts at people for three years before my long-term visit
with Uncle Sugar.
"So, you want
the job?"
"Yes. Please,"
I answered, proud at how well I'd kept the whine out of my voice.
"Okay. It's
yours."
Hey. It was a
different time.
So it came to pass
that the next day I was unboxing and checking-in
doubled-net-list-priced, foreign-language-labeled, grease-smelling
shiny guts of Swedish and Italian cars. I was also meeting and
greeting mechanics and generally getting the feel of the place and of
civilian life once again. Soon, money was flowing in as well as out.
Hunger was drubbed severely about the head and neck with blunt
macaroni and cheese. Life was good.
Well, sorta.
My then-current
marriage might have used some work. I'm not going too deep, to our
mutual relief, Gentle Reader, so let's just leave it at this: the
fabric of that particular nuptial arrangement had been badly frayed during my
military years, and neither of us knew how to sew. Needless to say,
it wouldn't be long
before we finally accepted what had been obvious to the most casual
observer for years.
In the meantime, the
GI Bill was burning a hole in my pocket. After sweating through the
Viet Nam draft lottery in '73 (my number was 248, which to the
uninitiated was very, very good), I had turned around and joined The
Green Machine in '74 for said tuition resource. I was still standing
in front of the candy store window as far as career plans went, so
rather than do anything intelligent like thinking about it or
researching my possibilities - hard things, both - I just picked
something. Electronics was cool, what with all those neat
science-fiction switches and blinky lights and things that went beep and teletypes
clack-clack-clacking in the background.
Yeah, that was the
ticket. I'd learn that.
So I did. I signed
up for a night course at the Southwest School of Electronics in
(believe it or not) southwest Austin. By then, all the shredded
marital cloth had been swept up at home and my ex-car was once again living in
Michigan, so every night after work I'd wander out onto the
road and ride my thumb south. Believe it or not, people would stop in the
middle of traffic on South Lamar to give me a ride. But then, people being nice was one of the
reasons I chose Austin in the first place, wasn't it? (Just nod. It's
the right answer. Thank you.)
I'd done this for a while when, one day, the car that stopped looked familiar. I'd
been working at The Pits (as we lovingly called the ol' place) for
maybe four months now, and had gotten to know everyone there pretty well.
It was a nice kind of family atmosphere - if you're used to your
entire family working on cars and being stoned or drunk all the time
and your dad being a tightwad asshole. It was fun. Really.
Of all the
interesting people there, I'd had the fewest interactions with the
lady in the office. I'd gained a little background, though. She was
nice and kind and beautiful. She had three kids, all daughters, all
very young. She had a live-in boyfriend who gave rednecks a bad name.
And she had just
stopped to pick me up.
* * *
For the next six
months, I rode with Susan to class. That first day she decided it was
silly to have me hitching rides when she was driving to within a mile
or so of my school every day. I didn't argue. My momma didn't raise
no fools. It did however take me some time to get over the facts that a) I was sitting next to her
and that b) she was beautiful.
For those of you
looking startled, you may have never encountered this affliction, and I
feel I must explain. I became a gibbering idiot around beautiful
women. It was like Loki was lurking somewhere in the murky depths of
my psyche, stealing selected words out of my speech queue. My IQ
suddenly dropped by a factor of ten, and given its lowly average to begin with, this is truly a spectacle. Imagine the cast of Quest for Fire
on Quaaludes and you're getting close.
It was therefore
nothing short of miraculous that by the time we stopped to pick up
her youngest from daycare, we were chatting like old friends. After the wee blonde had clambered into the back seat, Susan proceeded to quiz
her on her day. This did not take the generic form of, "How was
your day, dear?" It was, "What did you have for lunch?"
and "What did you learn today?" and a number of other
queries that required specific, detailed answers.
Having sprung from
how-was-your-day-dear-that's-nice-dear roots, I found it fascinating
to hear a four-year-old rattle off a list of all the foods in her
lunch, what she drew and colored, and the names of the friends (and
enemies) she'd encountered. "We had thalad peath [pea salad] and
thelery and tuna thandwiches," she told us in a matter-of-fact
tone through a missing-front-toothed,
curious-about-the-big-hairy-guy-with-mommy smile. "I dropped my
fork and had to get a clean one. And at playtime, Billy Hernandeth
told Mrs. Sthtapleton that I pulled hith hair, but I really didn't."
I turned a wondering
gaze on the driver, and she beamed - we're not talking smiled broadly
here, but rather lit up spotlight-like. "It helps her memory
develop," she said quietly.
I was intrigued.
Over the course of
these six months, a friendship grew. We were both too busy in our
separate worlds for anything more, and while it wasn't something we
had the luxury to ponder, we were both walking wounded, emotionally.
As the weeks and the Austin landscape rolled by, unseen and unnoticed
tendrils of trust began to break through the hardscrabble of
emotional scars and the detritus of failed relationships. The
spiritual environment that emerged and grew around us was just what
we both needed: no demands, no give and take, no stupid, hurtful
games. What we each contributed was what we could afford and would
give willingly - and no more.
In my experience,
our relationship was unique. And it was enough.
By this time, I was
sharing an apartment with the Pit Stop porter, another name for
"gopher." He was easy to get along with, the finances worked out handily, and he had friends that all liked to party. Many a night I would stumble in with my
head full of ohms and amps and joules, only to be handed a fat bit of
doobage and a glass of something dark and reeking of alcohol. Under
most circumstances, my appearance was brief; I would
briefly self-anesthetize, listen to some tunes and then excuse myself for
bed. It was good. Until one night...
When I crawled up out of the wobbly darkness, Susan was bending
over me. The room was much too
bright, and even my breathing was painfully loud. It seems I'd
forgotten the moderation part the night before and had eventually
collapsed across my bed, still fully clothed. This is how she found
me.
She had called the
apartment when the assistant parts manager and the porter had not
shown up for work. No one had answered the phone, and this worried
her. She had excused herself and driven south ... and into what looked
like a crime scene.
There were bodies in
open-doored cars out in front of the duplex. The front door was
standing open. There were bodies on the couch and the floor of the
living room. Like a triage doctor, she analyzed the situation, made
sure everyone was still breathing, and then helped me to her car.
She took me to the
emergency room of Dunkin' Doughnuts, forced on her patient per opus
two cups of hot, dark fluids and three toroidal doses of complex
carbohydrates, all the while reminding me that everything would be
all right. She was wonderful. She spoke softly. She was a goddess of
light and doughnuts. When she took me the rest of the way to work,
I didn't throw up even once.
I thought she was
dropping me at the door of The Pits so I wouldn't fall down as many
times as I would from the parking lot. But as I closed the door, she
said, "I'll see you tomorrow."
Two of my surviving
brain cells had stretched and yawned and puked by this time, so they
were awake enough to be mildly curious. "You're leaving?" I
asked. It probably didn't sound like that exactly, but that's what I
meant to say.
"I have to go
talk to my ex," she said quietly.
Ex, I thought. Ex.
Ex.
I grew puzzled. Why
would she want to visit with the twenty-fourth letter of the alphabet? For
that matter, where would she go to do this?
"He's asked me
if we could get back together."
Oh?
"I'm having a
lot of trouble making ends meet..."
Oh. That kind of ex.
Oh. Back together.
Oh, shit. "Are
you sure you want to do that?" I asked her, leaning in the car
window.
Susan stared over
the steering wheel and shrugged. "I don't know anymore."
"I can help
with the bills if you'd like," I blurted. Our friendship was
shifting wildly in my head, and the changes were far from subtle.
Feelings seemed to be sorting themselves into groups. If only I
hadn't killed so many brain cells the night before. My head throbbed
and pounded.
She smiled over at
me. "I couldn't let you do that."
"I could at
least pay for gas."
She sighed and
looked back out the windshield. "Let me think about it, okay? We
can talk later."
I can't begin to
describe the panic that hit me then. She was going to leave, to go
see a man she'd lived with before, that she'd had a baby with, for
chrissakes. And suddenly all that was important.
She looked back over
at me. "I'm a little late..."
Aaarrrgghhh! What
should I do? "If I got a vote, I'd say don't do it," I
said. Brilliantly.
Susan gave me a hard
stare. I couldn't read the look, but I knew there was a lot going on
behind those hazel eyes.
I wasn't exactly
stumbling into unknown territory here. Twelve miles a day in rush
hour traffic - even late-Seventies Austin rush hour - left a lot of
time for conversing, and that's what we did. (Now that I think back
on those days, the story of this part of my life could have been
titled A Conversation With Susan; the rest of my hours were nothing
more than a sepia-tinted dream I woke up from for half an hour after
work each day.) It was only natural that the rubble of our individual
love lives would take center stage for much of the discussion.
The ex Susan was
going to see was Number Two. Number One had been physically abusive
in the extreme. Number Two's violations were "only" mental
- to include bailing when he found out she was pregnant. Little
wonder she had decided marriage was a game she couldn't afford to
play any more.
Except maybe to feed
her kids.
She smiled sadly.
"Thanks. I'll keep that in mind." I was out of answers, so
I backed out of the car window. She drove off.
Watching Ol' Betsy (her
old Chevy) disappear into the traffic gelled the feelings that had
boiled up all around her announcement.
Gods save me, I'd
done it again. No matter how many times or how vehemently I'd agreed
with Susan's assessment of the prohibitive price of love, I was
there. Downtown center. City hall.
The next hour was
one of the most miserable I'd ever spent.
Then someone came to
the parts window. I made the standard show of busy-ness, filing
inventory cards, not glancing up. My heart wasn't really in it, but
tradition is important, y'know?
"I changed my
mind," she said from the window. This time, my heart did go
pity-pat. And it took me weeks to
get all the damn cherubim chased out of the Parts Department.
We dated. We found
eclectic little restaurants and ate vast quantities of Italian food.
I think we saw every movie the town had to offer. We picnicked. We
danced. We camped. We sang. Together.
The five of us.
And I just kept
falling deeper and deeper in love.
I'll not bore you
with any more details, Gentle Reader, except for one.
The 11th day of
February, 1978 found us gathered together with a small group of
friends and family at the house of Jan and Dave, our Austin "parents"
and bestest friends in the whole wide world - after each other, of
course. Nervous, bemused smiles and wobbly knees were the uniform of
the day for the happy couple. The friends were full of bubbly, the
girls were full of giggles and the Judge was full of finger
sandwiches by the time the music started.
While our
"photographer" "hid behind" a potted plant to
snap pictures, we joined hands and repeated-after-me'd. Then, after
one timeless kiss, tears and laughter and flying garters and bouquets
ensued.
And happiness, both
general and specific. Mustn't forget the happiness.
This story isn't
over: we'll celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary today. It's been
the best of times and the worst of times. Love doesn't make life
smooth. But in those bests of times, it makes it indescribably sweet.
In the worst, it makes it bearable.
I can't think of
that day without remembering a conversation I had with Dave just
before the ceremony. I was getting unfamiliar clothing details --
suits and ties and such -- worked out when he walked into the bedroom looking
grumpy.
"I've changed
my mind. I'm not giving her away," he said. Dave was, as his
statement suggests, planning to give Susan away. This was an
Unexpected Event.
My
post-bachelor-party mind tried to seethe, but simply slumped. "Huh?"
"Nope. Not
gonna do it."
"Can I ask why
the hell not?"
"You can't have
my Sweet Girl for free."
"Aw, jeeze,
Dave..."
"Gimme a
quarter."
Luckily, I had one
in the pocket of my jeans on the bed. I threw him a curious grin as I
handed it over. "And I don't do refunds," he growled. "No
exceptions."
Bless his wise,
gruff, heathen soul for eternity, it was the best damn' quarter I
ever spent.