Roseborough - Rilegato

Chapter One

1

MARY LOU works at the Dairy Queen. Maudie is the manager and she said it was a computer course that made her marketable. She took it on Monday and Wednesday nights at the Lone Oak Community College right here in Lone Oak, Texas. Well, what with Gundren dead and Echo run away, Mary Lou is just about crazy, but the way Maudie talks about college makes it seem like something to hold to. So on her next day off (she has Mondays), Mary Lou takes the pickup, stained with the blood of the horse that killed Gundren, out to the Lone Oak Community College to sign up for CIS-I.

The Lone Oak Community College is big. All of it's in two huge buildings that are separated by a creek. Mary Lou parks on the wrong side of the creek, and she has to walk through a glass-enclosed walkway over the creek to get to the right building. It's a nice walk because the middle of August is hot. The registration is in a big gymnasium with basketball hoops at each end. There are tables all around and people behind the tables and lines in front of the tables and people moving around like they're lost. There are all kinds of people, like everybody at the Lone Oak Mall just picked up and decided to go to college-fat and thin, high school students and grandmothers, and some not even speaking English-all looking lost. Somebody needs to get it organized. This is what Mary Lou thinks.

She finds a registration line, A through G, and gets in it. While she is in the line she reads the fall schedule. She has always loved to read, and she reads all the courses they have there, courses in stress management and family relationships, and then she sees Single Parenting and she says to herself, "Well, now. Here's the answer for Echo and me," and she writes it down. When she stops at the table marked Counseling a lady asks, "Are you a single parent?"

Mary Lou says, "Yes, since Gundren is dead." A slight frown appears on her forehead. "Well, most of the time he doesn't seem dead. It just seems like he's off somewhere, driving his truck," she adds.

The lady-thick glasses, a purple swatch of hair on one side, eyes like a grasshopper's-laces her fingers together and stares at Mary Lou. Then she glances at the table next to hers, which has a longer line in front of it than her table has.

"I'm not a counselor," she says and blinks. She blinks, maybe ten or twenty times. Then she says, "Are you aware that this is a noncredit course?"

"I don't need credit," Mary Lou says. "I've got the money for it."

The lady frowns down at the card in her hand, looks at Mary Lou, and blinks. Then the lady coughs and takes a tissue from her green purse and dabs at her nose and puts the tissue back. She snaps her purse shut.

Taking Single Parenting is not going to be easy. Mary Lou can see that. Maybe she's already failed some kind of a test.

"Is your husband dead or not?"

Mary Lou leans forward. "Dead," she whispers.

"Well, I'm just filling in here," the lady says. "But I guess you know what you're doing." Then she puts initials by Mary Lou's name and nods toward the table that is registering the single parents. A man signs her up quick and easy.

So on a Monday evening in late August here she is in a classroom with three windows and a green chalkboard and six single parents, not looking at anything or anybody. Despite her blue jeans and yellow shirt, Mary Lou has the look of an old-fashioned girl. The cloud of hair pulled loosely up on top of her head is reminiscent, perhaps, of a Gibson girl, and, too, there are those green eyes, their gaze direct yet dreamy, like a cat's. She sits straight, her hands carefully folded on the desk. Her hair is gold or brown or russet, a blend so fine that at any given moment the color depends on the light. At this moment her hair is a fiery russet. A wash of freckles over her nose and a mouth inclined toward a smile give the impression she has known joy.

Now the teacher strides into the room bringing with her the sharp sweet scent of mint. She puts her books on her desk and stands in front of the room and smiles. "Good evening!" she says. Her voice has a throaty lilt. She is tall, her body unfashionably generous. Sensing her energy (or is it the scent of mint?), the single parents move restlessly in their seats, uncrossing their legs or crossing them, before settling back into their former positions. The teacher is wearing a short black skirt and opaque black stockings. She has long legs and a soft mouth and shiny black hair swirled carelessly on top of her head. Her eyes are tilted at the outside corners. Her eyebrows are dark, the left a little higher than the right, giving her a perpetual look of inquiry. Her blue eyes that suggest fields of bluebonnets are fringed by short black eyelashes. Her skin is good, a creamy ivory. Because of her smile and her voice she is most often described by casual acquaintances as "happy" or "carefree." In fact she is notoriously neurotic, given to impulse and vivid fantasy.

Today she wears no makeup. No rings. No earrings. Nothing. And that's a real shame, Mary Lou tells herself. But even dressed so plain, if she came in the Dairy Queen, you'd notice her.

"I'm glad you're here," she says and smiles so widely the braces on her teeth glisten. Mary Lou has never seen anyone that old, maybe forty, wearing braces. The students silently, tentatively, smile back at her. When she turns and writes Single Parenting, 5162 on the green blackboard, the movement of her arm jingles two thin silver bracelets. Without turning around she says, "This is the text we'll be using," and writes Fisher, Barnes and Bean, Eds., Single Parenting.

Now, while the teacher is writing with her right hand, with her left hand she checks to be sure her black and white silk blouse is tucked into her black skirt, scratches the same place, and then she puts that hand on her hip, still writing.

Mary Lou knows she feels the class watching. She looks out the window. The mesquite down along the creek and the coolness in the classroom make it seem like spring. Spring. She says it again, feels nothing. The word has lost its meaning.

The teacher puts down the chalk, turns around and smiles again. Leaning against the desk, she crosses her ankles. "I'm pleased you decided to take the course. This is the first semester it's been offered, and I'm excited about teaching it. Oh, by the way, call me whatever you're comfortable with," she says. "I'm comfortable with Anne."

Mary Lou thinks about that. But before she can decide whether she'd be comfortable calling a lady knowing that much Anne, she-Anne-is asking them to put their chairs in a circle.

And then a heavyset lady comes in smiling and saying how sorry she is to be late, but she's just heard about the class and, since she is not in a traditional marriage, she would really like to take it. "Can I just squeeze in here?" she asks and a man wearing fancy boots widens the circle and puts a chair for the lady right next to his.

"My name's Rosie," she says, "short for Rosemary," and smiles around the circle.

The lady doesn't look fat. She just looks solid and sure with her soft brown hair and dimples in her arms.

Then the teacher, Anne, tells them to say one thing about themselves following two rules: Whatever they say has to be positive and it has to be true. Mary Lou thinks of a million things to say. She can say Gundren took Plumb Easy to Mineral Wells for a free breeding. But then if she goes ahead with it and says he was killed on the way it would ruin it. Or she can say she has a fourteen-year-old daughter she loves more than anything else in the whole world. But then she would have to tell that she has run away. So now it is getting close to her turn. A woman with black hair streaked with gray and a round face and a dimple in her chin says she has already done her Christmas shopping. Everybody but Mary Lou laughs. Then the woman, Maggie, next to her says she has invited her ex-mother-in-law over for Sunday dinner. More laughing. Now it is her turn and she doesn't know what she is going to say. She takes a deep breath and opens her mouth. "I love the Lord," she says, wondering as soon as she'd said it, why she said it.

Everybody just looks at her, everybody but Anne, who just nods and goes right on to a man with dark circles under his eyes. After a minute he says softly, "When the circus comes to town, I'm going to take my little boy. He wants an elephant for Christmas," he says, shaking his head in wonderment. The man's face is thin, but when he grins it fills out some.

"I make the best yeast rolls in Lone Oak, and I'll bring you all some," says Rosie.

"All right!" Maggie says.

Well, now if they're talking about cooking, Mary Lou can brag some, too. She is a good cook. Even Gundren says so. She almost hopes they go round again. But they don't.

Driving home that day she begins to worry. What will Anne ask the next time? What if she asks, "What does your husband do?" Lots of people come right out and ask that. Or on forms, it is "Spouse's Occupation." Same thing. Suppose she asks that. In Single Parenting, would she? And if she did, would Mary Lou say, "Deceased?" But that's not an occupation. Or she could say, "He was king of the road." That is true. That's what he was. She loved to see Gundren, wearing his starched blue jeans and wide-brimmed hat and boots, walk out the door. He'd swing into his truck and start it, and then, just before he pulled away, he'd look at her and wink and touch the brim of his hat with his first two fingers. Watching him drive off always reminded her of that old movie where John Wayne sits up high in his saddle and says, "Move 'em out!" But if Anne asks the question, what she'd really like to say is, "He was a Gypsy and he loved horses. Only horses."

Quite honestly Gundren was fair about it. He told her before they got married, "I'm a Gypsy."

"What does that mean?" she'd asked.

He was silent, thinking about it, and then he said, "I don't know." And she was sure he didn't. But then Echo was born, and the Family came, the Family, filling u...