MEMOIR
Mr. Tarsdale’s Invitation
The awkwardness of acceptance
For any of you late engagers, you can catch all the previous installments here, on your own time. But since you’re on my dime now, let me give it to you in a nutshell … two guys leave California for San Antonio, the one (Howie) to unite with his girl, the other (me) to live the life of the starving artist.
When my unemployment checks — which had been transferred from California to Texas, ran out — I was coerced to accept an unlikely lifeguarding job that Howie finagled for me. I was stressed enough by my new boss (Mr. Tarsdale) who appeared to be flirting with me; but add to that, Jim, the departing lifeguard who indoctrinated me, hinted that I might be part of a huge, but as yet undisclosed, conspiracy. Of course, Howie was no help at all. He thought it was enormously funny.
Thursday, Sept. 27, 1962
God, this house was huge!
I’d all but cleaned Howie out of it. Not from a rush of anger, mind you, but from a need to begin afresh. That meant not discovering reminders of him at every turn.
I stripped his bed, washed, dried and folded his bedding and closeted them. I discovered a stray sock under the bed and tossed it. Howie’s scent still lingered in his closed bedroom. Not that he was unhygienic. I knew for a fact he showered more than I, because of his swimming and all, but he also had at least twice the body hair. That meant, as unscientific as it sounds, he had more places to attract the body odors that were unique to — oh, hell, I don’t know! But he did have a low-grade, but persistent odor to him.
I thrust my arm up to the elbow between the end cushions on the couch and searched for stray tissues, then did the same with the overstuffed chair. On the floor and counters and tables in every room, there were empty, wadded Pall Mall™ cigarette packs. I counted seven. I was, in subtle ways, proud there were only three of my Winston™ packs, and two of those were near the wastebasket in the corner, five feet from my desk, the result of bad bank shots.
Finally, the peanut butter jar in the kitchen cupboard revealed a thin scab of matter around the inside. Howie could scarcely have lived a day without his PB and J sandwiches, and I figured if he had a replacement jar in the cupboard he’d have wrapped it in his tee-shirt and packed it away with his shorts, socks, cigs, a picture of June, and other necessities for the trip to Austin.
Now it was just me and a thousand square feet of rented house.
I sat on the top step of the front porch and watched the gray evening start to settle over San Antonio. I took a final drag on my cigarette and flipped it out in the yard. Touching thumb to each fingertip of my left hand and continuing on with the first two of the right, I counted. Seven. Over seven. We’d been here over seven months.
Of course, we knew right from the start, that Howie’s reason for coming to San Antonio was to hook up with June. Mine was less defined. It had to do with rawness and life and suffering. And getting it all on paper. Reams and reams of paper. Like Tom Wolfe did it and the poet Rimbaud — he was the real model, at sixteen, or maybe seventeen — oh, and Baudelaire, and his pet duck he walked the streets of Paris with on a leash.
But over seven months here.
I lit another cigarette, blew out a wispy cone of smoke and thought again of beginnings. I was always fond of beginnings.
Seven, almost eight months ago, en route to San Antonio …
Across that long, night-time stretch of Arizona desert, when Howie and I started singing. The top was down on my MG Midget. The full moon hung dangerously low, the black arms of the Saguaro Cactus reaching up to it. Howie and I were immortal and we sang. Lord, how we sang.
You see, for the last two of my high school years, Howie and I performed in the Santa Maria High School Boy’s Octet. Howie sang bass, and at his lowest register, I swear you could feel its vibrato in your belly. I sang second tenor. We had some decent harmony back then.
So, now, with no radio reception, and watching the ribbon of interstate 10 slide beneath us, it was the most natural thing in the world for Howie and me to burst into song. It began with my humming a few bars of the one we’d performed in state competition, during my senior year. It was “Across the Alley From the Alamo,” originally done by the Mills Brothers. We lost that competition. But the song went like this:
Across the alley from the Alamo Lived a pinto pony and a Navajo Who sang a sort of Indian Hi-de-ho To the people passing by
The pinto spent his time a-swhishin’ flies And the Navajo watched the lazy skies And very rarely did they ever rest their eyes On the people passing by …
Just for squirts, I’ve included the Mills Brother’s Version at the end so you can get an idea of what the black-armed Saguaro cacti was listening to under the hovering moon that night.
But as I cast the net of my memory back all those years, I capture something more than two twenty-something guys blaring their song into the warm, fragrant desert night. No, woven around and through the lyrics and the melody, our voices carried an unrestrained driving force that was unfettered, innocent, reckless. It was youth. No matter that we had spent four years in the Air Force, that was supposed to make men of us. Life had a way of lifting us out of our nests as tender eaglets in the clutch of our mother eagle’s claws, bearing us away to another nest. We had faith in our mother. We had the faith of immortal youth.
And so we sang.
“Gordon tells me Howie’s gone,” Mr. Tarsdale said, peering over the tops of his glasses.”
“Gordon?” I brought my shoulders to my ears.
“His boss — well, former boss. He’s my golf partner. He said Howie left for Austin, to go to college.” While not taking his eyes off me, Mr. Tarsdale puttered with his crystal swan paperweight, spinning it around by the wings atop various levels and angles of stacked paper. I kept glancing at it, feeling it needed rescuing. “So anyway … my ex is giving a little dinner party tomorrow night, and she’d love to have you attend.”
“Your ex?” I must have frowned. “But, why, Mr. Tarsdale? She doesn’t even know me. You’re not going?” I gasped, but it was too late to call my words back.
“Well, yes I’ll be there, thank you for asking.”
“That’s not really what …”
His head angled to the side. He removed his hand from the paperweight.
“Actually … you’re welcome,” I said, with a dry chuckle. Looking back, that had to exist as the most embarrassing gaffe I’d made in my fairly young life.
He smiled and his head squared. “You’ll enjoy yourself, Jay.”
“Mr. Tarsdale, I’m really sorry, but I don’t have anything suitable to wear. I’m just a poor immigrant from California,” I added, hoping to inject some humor. I felt uncomfortable enough sitting across from his desk in my trunks. He had called me in from the pool area, where I’d been rearranging plastic furniture from last night’s party, emptying ashtrays into a bucket, and gathering up used towels.
“What you wore to the interview’ll be just fine, Jay. You know, this ain’t a Boston or New Yawk City soiree we’re talkin’ ‘bout.” He adopted a twang I’d never heard him use before. “We’re just down-home folk from Texas.”
“I know, but — ”
“It’s a birthday dinner for my son, for Pete’s sake. Guess you’d say it’s a-comin’ of age party, with him turnin’ twenty-one.”
I laughed. “I can’t imagine why he’d want me there, Mr. Tarsdale?”
“I want you there, Jay.” The drawled emphasis was on the “I”.
It was a time I wished I had a shirt on. There’s no way he couldn’t see my heart pounding. “Mr. Tarsdale … ”
“Doggone it! That’s not how I wanted to say it. Listen, the Midtown Motor Hotel’s always looked upon its staff as family, Jay. Just family. We bought this business, Gloria and me when it was dyin’. I mean CPR wouldn’t start it breathin’. But you know, we brought it back to life — you’re wonderin’ how, right? — by focusing on the closeness of our employees.”
Oh, my God, don’t wink, don’t wink, don’t wink, I chanted under my breath, like a mantra. But it didn’t do any good.
He winked. “Do it for Gloria and me. Will you do that?”
“Well …” My goofy expression and the shrug I finished it off with must have been taken as indication of acceptance.
“I knew you’d come around, Jay. You’re part of the family. Oh, and all David’s friends’ll be there, scads of ’em, and they’re all about your age.”
“David?”
“That’s my son. The one turnin’ twenty-one. You’ll like David. Oh, and I can guaran — damn — tee ya the food’s gonna be good, or the dang kids’ would have us tarred and feathered.” He laughed and then winked again. After a moment, he wrote something on a piece of paper and shoved it across the desk to me. “There’s the time and the address.”
“So, Howie, I just want to thank you for that. I owe you big-time. You better watch your back.”
“C’mon. I can’t see if you’re smiling over the phone, Jay.”
“Trust me, I’m not smiling.”
“Now … tell me again …” A huge pause left me listening to scratchy static. “Tell me …” He cleared his throat. “He — he — he wants you there?” His last word slipped up an octave and he could hardly finish saying it before his voice soared into falsetto laughter that he couldn’t cover soon enough with the sandpapery sound of his palm over the phone.
I waited for him to finish, then jumped in with, “So how was your trip, ass hole? Lots of traffic?” Howie knew me pretty well, and that had to shock him. He knew an occasional “damn” or “hell” was all he could expect to hear coming from my mouth. Even as I said it, I heard the cranial echo of my Dad’s voice. “Son, if you have to resort to swearing, it just means you need to refine your communication skills.”
“C’mon, Jay, I know you didn’t encourage Mr. Tarsdale.”
“Listen. Howie. Just help me think of a way out of this. You got me this freakin’ job and continued to keep me Ill-prepared to function in it, and then you casually bail out of the sinking ship. I’m serious. You owe it to me. You need to help me out.”
“Jay, let’s face it — there’s not a lot you can do. You accepted, and he’s your boss. It’s politics. Besides, there’s another thing. Listen to me, Jay; let’s put the right spin on this. You said he told you there’d be a lot of David’s friends. There’s nothing that brings out the chicks like a birthday party.”
“Where’d you get that, you stupid — ass… scab?” It was getting easier.
“Everyone knows it, my friend, everyone. Listen, I’ve gotta go for a job interview. You have my number. You gotta tell me how it goes, okay? By the way, what kind of gift did you buy him?”
“Gift? Oh geez, Howie.”
“Bye-bye, killer.”
He broke the connection before I had a chance to listen to my Dad’s voice a second time today.
Thank you for reading. Enjoy.