Jacy studied Duane a moment, and then reached over and picked up Little Mike.
“I’m not telling you why, Duane,” she said. “If you want to catch a glimpse of your wife, you better run home and catch it while the catching is good.”
“Are the twins going home with you?” he asked.
“Sure they’re going home with me,” Jacy said.
He stood in the bleachers and watched them go. Julie came over and hooked arms with Jacy. At first he couldn’t spot Jack. Then he saw him. Jack was lying on top of a pickup. As Shorty passed underneath him, Jack bombed him with a strawberry Sno-Cone. Shorty yipped and tried to get red ice out of his eyes. Jack jumped off the pickup and began to chase him.
Duane waited until the inning was over and persuaded various members of both teams to throw baseballs at the screen until they managed to dislodge Jack’s glove. The fat boy, who had been stranded at third, caught it when it fell.
CHAPTER 62
DUANE CAME INTO HIS KITCHEN TO FIND MINERVA dealing blackjack to Jeanette and Casey.
“What a surprise,” he said. “I thought you’d moved off with the rest of the bunch.”
Minerva didn’t look up from the cards. “When you’ve got terminal stomach cancer you want to be with people your own age,” she said.
“I’m not your age but Casey is,” Jeanette reminded her.
“I thought you had terminal brain cancer,” Duane said.
“When I’m gone you’ll be sorry you made fun of me,” Minerva said.
“Is Karla here?” he asked.
“Yeah, she came with me,” Minerva said. “That flimsy little car of hers fell apart.”
Casey seemed to be pouting. He was a poor loser, and he was losing.
“I wish I was in Pecos, Texas,” he said. “I’ve done nothing but lose at cards ever since I let you bring me here.”
“You didn’t let me bring you here,” Jeanette said. “You let Karla bring you here. I told her she should have left you to rot.”
“I wish I could go back tonight,” Casey said.
“Hit the trail,” Jeanette said. “Hitchhike. We don’t need a sourpuss around here.”
Duane went in the bedroom. Karla, looking rather cheerful, was flopped on the bed watching a James Bond movie.
“What a surprise,” Duane said.
“Duane, don’t try to be witty, I’m watching a movie,” Karla said.
“I didn’t see Junior’s pickup,” he said. “Did he finally go home?”
“You sure don’t keep up very well,” Karla said. “He and Billie Anne ran off to Ruidoso. Dickie’s happy as a lark. He’s already filed divorce papers accusing her of desertion.”
“She might come back, if things don’t work out with Junior,” Duane said.
“Why wouldn’t they work out with Junior?” Karla asked. “Junior’s sweet. Everybody don’t have to be macho, like you.”
“I don’t think I’m macho,” he said.
“I didn’t used to think so, but Jacy explained all your problems to me,” Karla said.
Duane felt annoyed.
“I wish she’d explained them to me, then,” he said. “I just saw her at the ball game.”
“Did Jack do anything awful?” Karla asked.
“Yes,” he said, and waited, but Karla didn’t ask what. She was watching Roger Moore look sophisticated. He was in a ski lodge somewhere in the Alps.
Karla seemed to have a new hairdo. Her hair was cut shorter. She seemed to look younger. Her beautiful skin seemed even more beautiful. The more Duane looked at her the more confused he felt. She had only been gone a few days, and yet she looked a great deal better than she had when she left—and she had looked fine when she left.
“You look great,” he said.
Karla glanced at him, lifted an eyebrow and went on watching the movie.
“Why did Jacy have to explain my problems to you?” he asked. “She hasn’t seen me in thirty years. You’ve seen me every day for twenty-two years. Why didn’t you explain my problems to her?”
“Duane, she’s lived in Europe, don’t get uptight,” Karla said.
Not an hour before, Jacy had accused him of being uptight.
“I am uptight,” he said. “I can’t help it. I don’t know what’s going on. She says she’s taking you and the twins to Europe. And maybe Dickie too. I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Nellie wants to go too,” Karla informed him.
“Why don’t I get to go?” Duane asked. “I’ve never been to Europe. Maybe I’d like to go.”
“And leave your oil well just when you finally got one?” Karla said.
She had a point. He didn’t want to leave his Mississippi. He wanted to drill another one, in fact. But for the sake of argument it was a point he chose to ignore.
“If all you have to do to understand people’s problems is live in Europe, then I want to move there,” he said. “I don’t understand anything. Everything around here is crazy. People run off with one another at the drop of a hat. One kiss and they’re gone.”
“Well, that’s just the the way life is, Duane,” Karla said. “Talk quieter or you’ll wake the baby.”
Duane didn’t feel like talking quieter. He felt like yelling. The fact that Billie Anne had run off with Junior was the last straw. It might appear to solve Dickie’s problem, and also Suzie’s, but he still didn’t care—it was still the last straw. Everybody was crazy. Nobody had any restraint. He himself had just had sex with a married woman in the middle of downtown Thalia.
It made him feel like throwing something. He looked around the room and noticed his leather hippo. Karla had bought it in Dallas to go with the new house. It sat in front of a fancy leather chair that was supposed to be his. The hippo was designed to be a footstool. He could sit in the leather chair, which had cost untold thousands, and put his feet on the hippo, which had only cost something like eighteen hundred. In fact, he had never sat in the chair, much less put his feet on the hippo.
He grabbed the hippo and flung it at the glass doors before noticing that they were open. The hippo sailed harmlessly outside and landed on the deck.
Karla raised an eyebrow again.
“Duane, you worry me,” she said. “There was no reason at all for you to throw your hippo outside.”
“I know that,” he said. “I just threw it outside for no reason at all.”
“Nothing happens for no reason at all,” Karla said. “Any psychiatrist will tell you that.”
He went down the hall and looked in on his grandaughter. To his surprise, she was awake. She was lying in her crib, her eyes wide-open, babbling and chortling to herself. She was happy to see him too. She began to kick her legs and wave her arms, chortling strenuously. Duane picked her up and walked outside with her. Barbette stopped chortling and stared at the stars. Duane sat down by the pool and in the space of a minute or two she went to sleep. Duane soon felt much calmer. He heard some coyotes yipping. They were having a party under the bluff.
When he got up to take Barbette in, he noticed the hippo. Not wanting it to escape unscathed, he addressed it as if it were a football and kicked it into the pool.
“I don’t understand what’s going on between you and Jacy,” he said, when he came back to the bedroom.
“That’s all right because it’s none of your business,” Karla said, without belligerence.
“Let’s go to a psychiatrist,” she added.
“Why?” he asked.
“Something new,” Karla said. “We don’t ever do anything new. A marriage can get stagnant if the husband and wife don’t ever do a single thing new.”
“I’m going bankrupt,” Duane said. “That’s new. And you just moved in with one of my old girlfriends. Doesn’t that count as new?”
“No, because it makes you uptight,” Karla said, “and there’s nothing new about you being uptight.”
“Okay, okay,” Duane said. “I’ll do anything to convince you I’m willing to do somethin
g new.”
“Duane, that’s sweet that you agreed,” Karla said.
CHAPTER 63
KARLA PROMPTLY MADE AN APPOINTMENT WITH A psychiatrist in Fort Worth. Unfortunately the appointment was on a Monday morning, the day the centennial was scheduled to officially begin. But the appointment was for 8 A.M. and the centennial didn’t kick off until noon, so they could easily make it back in time. The first event was a mini-marathon which would start at Aunt Jimmie’s Lounge and end at the red light. Duane was supposed to hand out ribbons to the winners.
During the night he had had a dream about Jacy. He had been ineffective in the dream. He and Jacy had been going somewhere and his pickup had run out of gas. Jacy hadn’t been angry. She had smiled tolerantly. But he still woke up feeling inept. He decided not to tell either Karla or the psychiatrist about the dream. They would just try to convince him that he was falling back in love with Jacy, and he didn’t think he was, although the dream left him feeling quite depressed.
“I wonder what he’ll want to talk to us about?” Karla asked, as they parked in the gloomy underground parking garage beneath the building where the psychiatrist had his office.
“I hate underground garages,” Duane said.
“Duane, don’t always be a fault finder,” Karla said.
“A lot of people get mugged in these big-city garages,” Duane said.
“There’s no law saying you couldn’t park on the street,” Karla said.
“Sure there is,” Duane said. “Every sign in downtown Fort Worth says ‘No parking.’ “
“I hope you tell the psychiatrist how you can’t stop exaggerating,” Karla said.
“I will, if we don’t get mugged going into his office,” Duane said.
They didn’t get mugged, or even noticed.
“I hope we don’t have to describe our sex life,” Karla said. “I don’t like to describe mine.”
“That’s news,” Duane said. “You used to describe it on T-shirts all the time.”
“Duane, I did not,” Karla said.
Their psychiatrist turned out to be a handsome, cheerful young Hispanic named Carillo. That he was Hispanic took Duane by surprise. He had been under the impression that most psychiatrists were Jewish. Karla seemed surprised too, though mostly by the man’s youth.
“Have you been out of psychiatry school long?” she asked.
Dr. Carillo chuckled. “We’re here to talk about you folks,” he said. “We’re not here to talk about me. Mr. Moore, I find it very interesting that you choose to wear a heavy beard.”
“Well, that’s because our county centennial starts today,” he said. “We’re all supposed to look like pioneers. Any man that don’t grow a beard can be ducked in a horse trough, if the people who catch him are strong enough to duck him.”
“Do you fear drowning?” Dr. Carillo asked, scribbling on a pad.
“No,” Duane said. “I don’t much fear being ducked. But I’m the head of the Centennial Committee, so I couldn’t really refuse to grow a beard. Everybody would have said I wasn’t patriotic.”
“A beard can be a mask,” Dr. Carillo said enigmatically. “With a heavy beard like that it is harder for people to detect your feelings.”
“I just grew it because of the centennial,” Duane said. “I don’t like beards. They itch too much.”
“Your age is forty-eight?”
“That’s right.”
“Beards can be a symbol of virility,” Dr. Carillo said. “Men sometimes grow them who aren’t feeling too young anymore. If they have doubts about their potency they may grow a nice beard to reassure themselves. You know, a nice beard looks virile.”
Duane said nothing. He had already stated plainly that he had grown the beard because of the centennial, and saw no reason to say it again.
“He’s got one of the nicest beards in the whole county,” Karla said, trying to be helpful. “A lot of the men just look scruffy.”
Dr. Carillo seemed to be extremely cheerful. He stopped asking questions about the beard and merely sat and beamed at them. Silence grew. Dr. Carillo seemed in no hurry to ask questions. He just sat behind his desk and smiled.
Duane looked at Karla. She had been to psychiatrists before and should know what to do. Perhaps they were supposed to be talking, describing their problems, asking advice.
But Karla seemed uncertain. She didn’t say a word. Minutes passed—perhaps four of five of them. Duane kept glancing at his watch. It seemed like hours were passing, but in fact the silence had only lasted a few minutes.
“You folks aren’t very forthcoming,” Dr. Carillo said. “I think we have to look more deeply into the matter of the beard. Often things appear to have simple causes. We think we do them for a simple reason. But underneath lurks the real reason. We may not want to admit to ourselves what the real reason is. We may want to mask this reason from ourselves because we feel uneasy about it.”
“I think that’s true,” Karla said, grateful for any comment.
“That beard may help you mask your true feelings from your wife,” Dr. Carillo said. “That’s one use of a mask. But then you mention this centennial. You say you grew the beard because of the centennial. But stop and think, Mr. Moore. The centennial may only have provided you with an excuse. If you didn’t want a beard, you didn’t have to grow one just because of a little peer pressure. What’s a little ducking, anyway? In this heat we all ought to jump in a horse trough. It’s a cheap way of getting cool. So if the centennial was just an excuse, we ought to ask ourselves what was the real reason you grew the beard.”
“The centennial was the real reason I grew the beard,” Duane said. “The real reason and the only reason.”
“I hear belligerence in your voice now,” Dr. Carillo said. “Maybe we are making progress. You don’t like me asking these questions. You don’t want to discover the real reason you grew the beard.”
“I told you the real reason,” Duane insisted.
“Then why do you sound belligerent?”
“Because you won’t believe me,” Duane said. “I’ve told you several times but you won’t believe me. I didn’t grow the damn beard because I was impotent. I’ve been impotent off and on for years. I grew the beard because of the centennial.”
Dr. Carillo kept beaming.
“I think you’re lying about this impotence,” Dr. Carillo said. “You look like a virile man to me. You have a fine beard and that in itself is a sign of virility. You are probably just trying to distract me. As a psychiatrist I have to deal with many patients who try to distract me. A patient might casually admit to impotence in order to keep me from questioning him about what is really disturbing him.”
“His impotence really disturbs me,” Karla said. She was getting tired of being left out of the discussion.
“I wouldn’t mind it so much,” she added, “except that I hear all over town that he has girlfriends and nobody ever claims he’s impotent with them.”
“One person at a time,” Dr. Carillo said. “I’m just beginning to make some progress with Mr. Moore. The ladies will have to wait.”
“What ladies?” Karla asked. “I’m the only woman here.”
“Keep quiet, woman!” Dr. Carillo said. “It’s very important that I discover your husband’s true feelings. Don’t interrupt when the doctor is talking.”
“What about my true feelings?” Karla said. “You wouldn’t have to poke around for an hour to discover mine. I could tell you my true feelings in about two minutes.”
“Go on, Mr. Moore,” Dr. Carillo said. “Ignore her. Aren’t you lying about this impotence?”
“No,” Duane said.
“He better not ignore me, either,” Karla said. “I’m his wife. We came here to get healed together and all you’ve done is ask him stupid questions about his beard. You haven’t even looked at me.”
“Shut up, you hysterical bitch,” Dr. Carillo said. He suddenly jumped up, seized his wastebasket and flung its contents willy-nilly ab
out the room. He seemed to have eaten lots of oranges. Several carefully pared rolls of orange peel got scattered around.
“Hysterical? I’m just sitting here with my hands in my lap,” Karla said.
“You don’t obey!” Dr. Carillo said. “You should be put in a straitjacket and shot full of mood drugs. Those mood drugs would fix you.”
He began to pull drawers out of his desk and fling their contents around the room. Papers and file cards mixed with orange peels on his carpet.
“If I had a straitjacket I’d put it on you myself,” Dr. Carillo said. “I’d shoot you full of mood drugs. We’d see how you like being a vegetable.”
Duane and Karla looked at one another.
“Win a few, lose a few,” Karla said. “Let’s go home.”
Duane looked at his watch. They had only used up half their hour, but it was obviously no time to count pennies. Dr. Carillo ran over to a file cabinet and yanked open a drawer. He began to fling files in the air.
“I wonder if psychiatrists go to psychiatrists?” Karla asked, as they were driving out of Fort Worth. Dr. Carillo, busy flinging his files around the room, had not appeared to notice their departure. He seemed intent on flinging every single file.
“I don’t know why, but I feel better,” Duane said.
“I don’t,” Karla said. “It’s unfair if you do. Why do you?”
“Because we got out of that garage without being mugged,” he said.
“Oh, Duane, it’s broad daylight,” Karla said.
She was studying a questionnaire Dr. Carillo had handed them at the beginning of the interview. They were supposed to fill them out before the next visit.
“There’s a question about frequency of sexual intercourse,” Karla said.
“Don’t answer it,” Duane said. “We’re not going back, anyway.”
“I know, but just reading these questions makes me feel depressed,” Karla said. “I was feeling real cheerful this morning, but now I feel like I don’t know which way to turn.”
“You don’t have to turn anywhere,” Duane said. “The centennial’s about to start, and when that’s over you’re going to Europe with Jacy. By the time you get back things might look completely different.”