Fancy Pants

Chapter 18

Holly Grace looked up at the anniversary clock on the mantel and swore under her breath. Dallie was late as usual. He knew she was leaving for New York City in two days and that they wouldn't see each other for a while. Couldn't he be on time just once? She wondered if he had set out after that British girl. It would be just like him to go off without saying a word.

She had dressed for the evening in a silky peach-colored turtleneck, which she'd tucked into a pair of brand-new stretch jeans. The jeans had tight cigarette legs whose length she had accented with a pair of three-inch heels. She never wore jewelry because putting earrings and necklaces near her great mane of blond hair was, she felt, a clear case of gilding the lily.

"Holly Grace, honey," Winona remarked from her armchair on the other side of the living room. "Have you seen my crossword puzzle book? I had it right here, and now I can't seem to find it."

Holly Grace retrieved the book from beneath the evening newspaper and sat down on the arm of her mother's chair to offer her advice on twenty-three across. Not that her mother needed advice, any more than she had really lost her crossword puzzle book, but Holly Grace didn't begrudge her the attention she wanted. As they worked on the puzzle together, she put her arm around Winona's shoulders and leaned down to rest her cheek on top of her mother's faded blond curls, taking in the faint scent of Breck shampoo and Aqua Net hair spray. In the kitchen, Ed Graylock, Winona's husband of three years, was puttering with a broken toaster and singing "You Are So Beautiful" along with the radio. His voice kept fading out on the high notes, but he came on strong as soon as Joe Cocker slid back into his range. Holly Grace felt her heart swell with love for these two-big Ed Graylock, who had finally given Winona the happiness she deserved, and her pretty, flighty mother.

The anniversary clock chimed seven. Giving in to the vague nostalgia that had been plaguing her all day, Holly Grace stood up and gave Winona's cheek a peck. "If Dallie ever gets here, tell him I'll be at the high school. And don't wait up for me; I'll probably be late." She grabbed her purse and headed for the front door, calling out to Ed that she would invite Dallie for breakfast in the morning.

The high school was locked up for the night, but she banged on the door by the metal shop until the custodian let her in. Her heels clicked on the concrete ramp that led into the back hallway, and as the old smells assaulted her, her footsteps seemed to be tapping out the rhythm of "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" with the Queen of Soul wailing right in her ear. She started to hum the song softly under her breath, but before she knew it she was humming "Walk Away Renee" instead and she'd rounded the corner to the gym, and then the Young Rascals were singing "Good Lovin'" and it was homecoming 1966 all over again…

Holly Grace had barely said more than three words to Dallie Beaudine since he'd picked her up for the football game in a burgundy 1964 Cadillac El Dorado that she knew for certain didn't belong to him. It had deep velour seats, automatic windows and an AM/FM stereo radio blaring out, "Good love…" She wanted to ask him where he got the car, but she refused to be the one to talk first.

Leaning back into the velour seat, she crossed her legs and tried to look like she rode in El Dorados all the time, like maybe the El Dorado had been invented just for her to ride in. But it was hard to pretend something like that when she was so nervous and when her stomach was growling because all she'd had to eat for dinner was half a can of Campbell's chicken noodle soup. Not that she minded. Winona couldn't really cook anything more complicated on the illegal hot plate they kept in the small back room they'd rented from Agnes Clayton the day they'd left Billy T's house.

On the horizon in front of them, the night sky glowed with a patch of light. Wynette was proud of being the only high school in the county with a lighted stadium. Everybody from the surrounding towns drove over to see Wynette play on Friday nights after their own high school game had ended. Since tonight was homecoming and the Wynette Broncos were playing last year's regional champions, the crowd was even bigger than normal. Dallie parked the El Dorado on the street several blocks away from the stadium.

He didn't say anything as they walked along the sidewalk, but when they reached the high school, he slipped his hand into the pocket of a navy blazer that looked brand new and pulled out a pack of Marlboros. "Want a cigarette?"

"I don't smoke." Her voice came out tight with disapproval, like Miss Chandler's when she talked about double negatives. She wished she could speak the words all over again, say something like, "Sure, Dallie, I'd love a smoke. Why don't you light one up for me?"

Holly Grace spotted some of her friends as they headed into the parking lot and nodded at one of the boys she'd turned down for a date that evening. She noticed that the other girls wore new wool skirts or A-line dresses bought just for the occasion, along with low square-heeled pumps that had wide grosgrain bows stretched across the toes. Holly Grace had on the black corduroy skirt that she'd worn to school once a week since her junior year and a plaid cotton blouse. She also noticed that all the other boys held hands with their dates, but Dallie had shoved his hands in the pockets of his slacks. Not for long, she thought bitterly. Before the evening was through, those hands would be all over her.

They joined the crowd moving across the parking lot toward the stadium. Why had she said she would

go out with him? Why had she said yes when she knew what he wanted from her-a boy with Dallie Beaudine's reputation, who'd seen what he'd seen.

They drew up next to the table where the Pep Club was selling big yellow mums with little gold footballs dangling from the maroon and white ribbons. Dallie turned to her and asked grudgingly, "You want a flower?"

"No, thank you." Her voice echoed back at her, distant and haughty.

He stopped walking so suddenly the boy behind him bumped into his back. "Don't you think I can afford it?" he sneered at her under his breath. "Don't you think I've got enough money to buy you a goddamn three-dollar flower?" He pulled out an old brown wallet curled in the shape of his hip and slapped a five-dollar bill down on the table. "I'll take one of those," he said to Mrs. Good, the Pep Club adviser. "Keep the change." He shoved the mum at Holly Grace. Two yellow petals drifted down onto the cuff

of her blouse.

Something snapped inside her. She thrust the flower back at him and returned his attack in an angry whisper. "Why don't you pin it on! That's why you bought it, isn't it? So you can grab a feel right now instead of having to wait till the dance!"

She stopped, horrified by her outburst, and dug the fingernails of heT free hand into her palm. She found herself silently praying that he would understand how she felt and give her one of those melty looks she'd seen him give other girls, that he would say he was sorry and that sex wasn't what he'd asked her out for. That he would say he liked her as much as she liked him and that he didn't blame her for what he'd seen Billy T doing.

"I don't have to take this crap from you!" He knocked the flower out of her hand, turned his back on the stadium, and strode angrily away from her toward the street.

She looked down at the flower lying in the gravel, ribbons trailing in the dust. As she knelt to pick it up, Joanie Bradlow swept past her in a butterscotch jumper and dark brown Capezio flats. Joanie had practically thrown herself at Dallie the whole first month of school. Holly Grace had heard her giggling about him in the rest room: "I know he runs around with the wrong crowd, but, ohgod, he's so gorgeous. I dropped my pencil in Spanish and he picked it up and I thought, ohgod, I'm going to die!"

Misery formed a hard, tight lump inside her as she stood alone, the bedraggled mum clasped in her hand, while the crowd jostled past her toward the stadium. Some of her classmates called out a greeting and she gave them a bright smile and a cheery wave of her hand, as if her date had just left her for a minute to go to the rest room and she was waiting for him to come back any second now. Her old corduroy skirt hung like a lead curtain from her hips, and even knowing that she was the prettiest girl in the senior class didn't make her feel any better. What good was it to be pretty when you didn't have nice clothes and everybody in town knew that your mama had sat on a wooden bench most of yesterday afternoon at the county welfare office?

She knew she couldn't keep standing there with that stupid smile on her face, but she couldn't go into the bleachers, either, not by herself on homecoming night. And she couldn't start walking back to Agnes Clayton's board-inghouse until everybody was seated. While no one was looking, she slipped around the side of the building and then dashed inside through the door by the metal shop.

The gym was deserted. A caged ceiling light cast striped shadows through the canopy of maroon and white crepe paper streamers that hung limply from the girders, waiting for the dance to begin. Holly Grace stepped inside. Despite the decorations, the smell was the same as always-decades of gym classes and basketball games, reams of absence excuses and late passes, dust, old sneakers. She loved gym class. She was one of the best girl athletes in the school, the first to be chosen for a team. She loved gym. Everybody dressed the same.

A belligerent voice startled her. "You want me to take you home, is that what you want?"

She spun around to see Dallie standing just inside the gym doors leaning against the center post. His long arms were hanging stiffly at his side and he had a scowl on his face. She noticed that his slacks were too short and that she could see an inch or so of dark socks. The ill-fitting slacks made her feel a little better.

"Do you want to?" she asked.

He shifted his weight. "Do you want me to?"

"I don't know. Maybe. I guess."

"If you want me to take you home, just say so."

She gazed down at her hands where the dirty white ribbon on the mum was woven through her fingers. "Why did you ask me to go out with you?"

He didn't say anything, so she lifted her head and looked over at him. He shrugged.

"Yeah, okay," she replied briskly. "You can take me home."

"Why'd you say you'd go out with me?"

She shrugged.

He looked down at the toes of his loafers. After a moment's pause, he spoke so quietly she could barely hear him. "I'm sorry about the other day."

"What do you mean?"

"With Hank and Ritchie."

"Oh."

"I know it's not true about you and all those other guys."

"No, it's not."

"I know that. You made me mad."

A little flicker of hope flared inside her. "It's okay."

"It's not. I shouldn't have said what I did. I shouldn't have touched your leg like that. It was just that you made me mad."

"I didn't mean to-make you mad. You can be sort of scary."

His head shot up and for the first time all evening, he looked pleased. "I can?"

She couldn't help smiling. "You don't have to act so proud of yourself. You're not that scary."

He smiled, too, and it made his face so beautiful her mouth went dry.

They looked at each other like that for a while, and then she remembered about Billy T and what Dallie had seen and what he must expect of her. Her brief happiness faded. She walked over to the first row of bleachers and sat down. "I know what you think, but it's not true. I-I couldn't help what Billy T was doing to me."

He looked at her as if she'd grown horns. "I know that. Did you think I really thought you liked what he was doing?"

Her words came out in a rush. "But you made it seem like it was so easy to get him to stop. You say a few words to Mama and it's all over. But it wasn't easy for me. I was afraid. He kept hurting me, and I was afraid he'd hurt Mama like that before he sent her away. He said nobody'd believe me if I told, that Mama would hate me."

Dallie walked over and sat down next to her. She could see where the leather was scuffed on the toes of his loafers and he'd tried to polish over the marks. She wondered if he hated being poor as much as she did, if poverty gave him the same sense of helplessness.

Dallie cleared his throat. "Why'd you say that about me pinning the flower on you? About grabbing a feel? Do you think that's the way I am because of how I was talking the other day in front of Hank and Ritchie?"

"Not exactly."

"Then why?"

"I figured maybe-that after what you saw with Billy T, maybe you'd expect me to… you know, to maybe-have sex with you tonight."

Dallie's head shot up and he looked indignant. "Then why'd you say you'd go out with me? If you thought that was all I wanted from you, why the hell did you say you'd go out with me?"

"I guess because someplace inside me, I hoped I was wrong."

He stood up and glared at her. "Yeah? Well, you sure were wrong. You sure as hell were wrong! I don't know what's wrong with you. You're the prettiest girl at Wynette High. And you're smart. Don't you know I've liked you since the first day in English class?"

"How was I supposed to know that when you scowled every time you looked at me?"

He couldn't quite meet her eyes. "You just should have known, that's all."

They didn't say anything more. They left the building and walked back across the parking lot to the stadium. A big cheer went up from the bleachers and the loudspeaker announced, "First down. Wynette."

Dallie took her hand and tucked it, along with his own, into the pocket of his navy blazer.

"Are you mad at me for being late?"

Holly Grace spun around toward the door of the gym. For a fraction of a moment she felt disoriented as she gazed at the twenty-seven-year-old Dallie leaning against the center post, looking bigger and more solid, so much more handsome than the sullen seventeen-year-old kid she'd fallen in love with. She recovered quickly.

"Of course I'm mad. As a matter of fact, I just told Bobby Fritchie I'd go out with him tonight for surf and turf instead of waiting around for you." She pulled her purse off her shoulder and let it dangle from her fingers. "Did you find out anything about that little British girl?"

"Nobody's seen her. I don't think she's still in Wynette. Miss Sybil gave her the money I left, so she should be on her way back to London by now."

Holly Grace could see he was still worried. "I think you care more about her than you're letting on. Although to tell you the truth-other than the fact that she's knockout gorgeous-I don't see exactly why."

"She's different, is all. I'll tell you one thing. I never in all my life got involved with a woman so different from me. Opposites may attract in the beginning, but they don't stick together too well."

She looked at him, a brief sadness in her eyes. "Sometimes people who are the same don't do too good a job of it, either."

He walked over to her, moving in that slow, sexy way that used to melt her bones. He pulled her into his arms to dance, humming "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" into her ear. Even with improvised music, their bodies moved together perfectly, as if they'd been dancing with each other for a million years. "Damn, you're tall when you wear those shoes," he complained.

"Kinda makes you nervous, doesn't it? Having to look at me straight on."

"If Bobby walks in here and sees you wearing those high heels on his new basketball floor, you're on

your own."

"It's still hard for me to think of Bobby Fritchie as Wynette's basketball coach. I remember hanging around the office door while the two of you served morning detention."

"You're a liar, Holly Grace Beaudine. I never served a morning detention in my life. I used to take swats instead."

"You did, too, and you know it. Miss Sybil raised so much hell every time any of the teachers gave you swats that they got tired of tangling with her."

"You remember it your way, and I'll remember it mine." Dallie rested his cheek against hers. "Seeing you here reminds me of that homecoming dance. I don't think I ever sweat so much in my life. All the time we were dancing, I kept having to put more space between us because of the effect you were having on me. All I could think about was getting you alone in that El Dorado I'd borrowed, except I knew that even after I had you alone, I couldn't touch you because of the way we'd talked. Most miserable night I ever spent in my life."

"As I remember, your miserable nights didn't last too long. I must have been the easiest girl in the county. Damn, I got so I couldn't think about anything except having sex with you. I needed to wash the feel of Billy T off me so bad I was willing to go to hell for it…"

Holly Grace lay back on the narrow bed in Dallie's shabby room, her eyes pressed shut as he pushed his finger up inside her. He groaned and rubbed himself against her thigh. The denim of his jeans felt rough against the bare skin of her leg. Her panties lay on the linoleum floor next to the bed along with her shoes, but other than that she was still more or less dressed-white blouse unbuttoned to the waist, bra unfastened and pushed to the side, wool skirt modestly covering Dallie's hand while it explored between her legs.

"Please…" she whispered. She arched against his palm. His breathing sounded heavy and strangled in her ear, his hips moved rhythmically against her thigh. She didn't think she could stand it any longer. Over the past two months, their petting sessions had grown heavier and heavier until they could think of nothing else. But still they held back- Holly Grace because she didn't want him to think she was fast, Dallie because he didn't want her to think he was like Billy T.

Suddenly she crumpled her hand into a fist and hit him behind the shoulder. He jerked away, his lips wet and swollen from kissing her, his chin red. "Why'd you do that?"

"Because I can't stand this anymore!" she exclaimed. "I want to do it! I know it's wrong. I know I shouldn't let you, but I just can't stand it anymore. I feel like I'm on fire." She tried to make him understand. "All those months, Billy T made me do it. All those months he hurt me. Don't I have the right, just once, to choose for myself?"

Dallie looked at her for a long time to make sure she was serious. "I don't want you to think- I love you, Holly Grace. I love you more than I ever loved anybody in my entire life. I'll still love you even if you say no."

Sitting up, she pulled off her blouse and slipped her bra straps down over her shoulders. "I'm tired of saying no."

Even though they had touched each other everywhere, they'd made it a rule to keep most of their clothes on, so it was the first time he'd seen her bare from the waist up. He looked at her with awe and then reached out and stroked a gentle finger down over her breast. "You're so beautiful, baby," he said, his voice choked.

A surge of wonder shot through her at the emotion in his expression and she found that she wanted to give everything she had to this boy who treated her with so much tenderness. She leaned forward, thrust her thumbs into the tops of her knee socks, and stripped them off. Then she unfastened the waistband of her skirt, lifting up her hips to slip it down. He pulled off his T-shirt and his jeans, then slid down his briefs. She drank in the beauty of his thin young body as he lay down beside her and tenderly wound his fingers through her hair. She lifted her head off the crumpled pillow to kiss him and slid her tongue into his mouth. He groaned and accepted it. Their kisses grew deeper until they were moaning and sucking on each other's lips and tongues, their long legs twisting together, their blond hair dampened with sweat.

"I don't want you to get pregnant," he whispered into her mouth. "I'll just-I'll just put it in a little bit."

But of course he didn't, and it was the best thing she'd ever felt. She uttered a low moan deep in her throat as she came, and he quickly followed, shuddering in her arms as if he'd been shot through with a bullet. The whole thing was over in less than a minute.

By graduation day they were using rubbers, but by that time, she was already pregnant and he refused to help her find the money for an abortion. "Abortion is wrong when two people love each other," he shouted, pointing his finger at her. And then his voice had softened. "I know we planned to wait until I graduated from A &M, but we'll get married now. Except for Skeet, you're the only good thing that's ever happened to me in my life."

"I can't have a baby now," she cried. "I'm seventeen! I'm going to San Antonio to get a job. I want to make something of myself. Having a baby now will ruin my whole life."

"How can you say that? Don't you love me, Holly Grace?"

"Of course I do. But loving's not always enough."

As she saw the agony in his eyes, that familiar helpless feeling closed around her. It stayed with her right through the wedding in Pastor Leary's study.

Dallie quit humming in the middle of the chorus to "Good Vibrations" and came to a stop on the free-throw line. "Did you really tell Bobby Fritchie you'd go out with him tonight?"

Holly Grace had been performing an intricate harmony, and she continued singing for a few measures without him. "Not exactly. But I thought about it. I get so aggravated when you're late."

Dallie let her go and gave her a long look. "If you really want a divorce, you know I'll go along with it."

"I know." She walked over to the bleachers and sat down, stretching out her legs in front of her and putting a small scratch in Coach Fritchie's new varnish with the heel of her shoe. "Since I don't have any plans to get married again, I'm happy with things just like they are."

Dallie smiled and walked forward along the center court line to sit on the bleachers beside her. "I hope New York City works out for you, baby. I really do. You know I want to see you happy about more

than I want anything in the world."

"I know you do. Same goes for me."

She began to talk about Winona and Ed, about Miss Sybil and the other things they usually discussed whenever they were together in Wynette. He only listened with half his mind. The other half was remembering two teenagers with troubled pasts, a baby, and no money. Now he realized that they hadn't had a chance, but they had loved each other, and they had put up a good fight…

Skeet took a construction job in Austin to help out as much as he could, but it wasn't union work so it didn't pay too well. Dallie worked for a roofer when he wasn't in class or trying to pick up some extra cash on the golf course. They had to send Winona money, and there was never enough.

Dallie had lived with poverty for so long it didn't bother him too much, but it was different for Holly Grace. She got this helpless, panicked look in her eyes that sank right into his veins and froze his blood. It made him feel that he was failing her, and he started arguments-bitter fights where he accused her of not doing her share. He said she didn't keep the house clean enough, or he told her she was too lazy to cook him a good meal. She countered by accusing him of not providing for his family, insisting that he should quit playing golf and study engineering instead.

"I don't want to be an engineer," he retorted during an especially fierce argument. Banging one of his books down on the scratched surface of the kitchen table, he added, "I want to study literature, and I want to play golf!"

She threw the dish towel at him. "If you want to play golf so bad, why are you wasting money studying literature?"

He threw the towel right back. "Nobody in my family ever graduated from college! I'm going to be the first." Danny started to cry at the angry sound of his father's voice. Dallie picked him up, buried his face in the baby's blond curls, and refused to look at Holly Grace. How could he explain that he had something to prove when even he didn't know what it was?

As similar as they were in so many ways, they wanted different things from life. Their fights began to escalate until they attacked each other's most vulnerable spots, and then they felt sick inside because of the way they hurt each other. Skeet said they fought because they were both so young that they were pretty much raising each other right along with Danny. It was true.

"I wish you'd stop walking around with that surly look on your face all the time," Holly Grace said one day as she dabbed Clearasil on one of the pimples that still occasionally popped out on Dallie's chin. "Don't you understand that the first step toward being a man is to stop pretending to be one."

"What do you know about being a man?" he replied, grabbing her around the waist and pulling her down on his lap. They made love, but a few hours later he was scolding her for not standing up straight.

"You walk around with your shoulders hunched over just because you think your breasts are too big."

"I do not," Holly Grace retorted hotly.

"Yes, you do and you know it." He tilted up her chin so she was looking him straight in the eye. "Baby, when are you going to stop blaming yourself for what ol' Billy T did to you?"

Eventually, Dallie's words took hold and Holly Grace let go of the past.

Unfortunately, all of their confrontations didn't end as well. "You've got an attitude problem," Dallie accused her at the end of several days of arguing about money. "Nothing is ever good enough for you."

"I want to be somebody!" she countered. "I'm the one stuck here with a baby while you go to college."

"As soon as I'm done, you can go. We've talked about it a hundred times."

"It'll be too late by then," she said. "My life will be half over."

Their marriage was already rocky, and then Danny died.

Dallie's guilt after Danny's death was like a fast-growing cancer. Right away they moved from the house where it happened, but night after night he dreamed about the cistern cover. In his dreams he saw the broken hinge and he turned away toward the old wooden garage to get his tools so he could fix it. But he never made it to the garage. Instead, he found himself back in Wynette or standing next to the trailer outside Houston where he had lived while he was growing up. He knew he had to get back to that cistern cover, had to get it fixed, but something kept stopping him.

He would wake up covered with sweat, the sheets tangled around him. Sometimes Holly Grace was already awake, her shoulders shaking, her face turned into the pillow to muffle the sound of her crying. In all the time he'd known her nothing had ever made her cry. Not when Billy T hit her in the stomach with his fist; not when she was scared because they were just kids and they didn't have any money; not even at Danny's funeral where she had sat as if she was carved out of stone while he cried like a baby. But now that she was crying, he knew it was the worst sound he had ever heard.

His guilt was a disease, eating away at him. Every time he shut his eyes, he saw Danny running toward him on chubby legs, one strap of his denim coveralls falling down off his shoulder, bright blond curls alight in the sun. He saw those blue eyes wide with wonder and the long lashes that curled on his cheeks when he slept. He heard Danny's squeal of laughter, remembered the way he had sucked his fingers when he got tired. He saw Danny in his mind, and then he heard Holly Grace crying, and as her shoulders quaked helplessly, his guilt intensified until he thought he might die right along with Danny.

Eventually, she said she was going to leave him, that she still loved him but she'd gotten a job on the sales staff of a sports equipment company and she was leaving for Fort Worth in the morning. That night, the sound of her muffled crying awakened him again. He lay there for a while with his eyes open, and then he jerked her up out of the pillow and hit her across the face. He slapped her once, and then he slapped her again. After that, he pulled on his pants and ran right out of the house so that in years to come, Holly Grace Beaudine would remember she had a son of a bitch husband who hit her, not some stupid kid who had made her cry because he'd killed her baby.

After she left, he spent several months so drunk that he couldn't play golf, even though he was supposed to be getting ready for qualifying school for the pro tour. Skeet eventually called Holly Grace, and she came to see Dallie.

"I'm happy for the first time in a long time," she told him. "Why can't you be happy, too?"

It had taken years for them to learn to love each other in a new way. At first they had tumbled back into bed together, only to find themselves caught up in old arguments. Occasionally they had tried to live with each other for a few months, but they wanted different things from life and it never worked out. The first time he saw her with another man, Dallie wanted to kill him. But a cute little secretary had caught his eye, so he kept his fists to himself.

Over the years they talked about divorce, but neither of them did anything about it. Skeet meant everything in the world to Dallie. Holly Grace loved Winona with all her heart. But the two of them together-Dallie and Holly Grace-they were each other's real family, and people with childhoods as troubled as theirs didn't give up family easily.

Tempest-Tossed