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They were both right, in their own way, though Mom was more right.
Lucky for me, both my mom and dad—and Mom’s father and her grandfather—all graduated from Purdue University. My great-granddad even had his name up on a plaque in the student union because he died in World War I. So I was grandfathered into Purdue. In other words, my family had such a history, and so many members in the Alumni Association, they couldn’t say no. I got my degree no matter how much time I spent at Harry’s Chocolate Shop, the bar at Purdue that I’m pretty sure my Mom, Dad, Gramps and great-granddad all spent a lot of time in as well.
* * *
I met Billy after I graduated from Purdue. I had a good job. I’d managed to get a couple of summer internships at website developing firms and one in Indianapolis hired me at graduation. I think this had more to do with the fact that I was office entertainment than anything else. I could be a little bit crazy (okay, maybe a lot crazy) and the two guys who owned the joint were hilarious, came to work in slogan T-shirts and ripped jeans and had to own stock in the local coffee chain, they drank so much coffee.
My colleague, Annette, also told me I got the job because of the way I looked. I knew I wasn’t anything to sneeze at because I’d won the Teen Miss Hendricks County Pageant. I didn’t go on to the state finals because of a bout with mono and because beauty pageants kind of sucked.
I look like my mom’s side of the family: tall, built like what my dad called a “brick shithouse” (I think this means all boobs and butt but I never really got the comparison) with dark-blonde hair and dark-blue eyes. In fact, all of us kids looked like the MacMillan side of the family, all tall, all dark blonde, all blue-eyed, and my brother had a russet beard like Grizzly Adams and like my mom’s brother, Tex.
* * *
I didn’t know Uncle Tex. I’d never met him. He was in Vietnam and he checked out (seriously checked out) when he got back. None of the family ever talked to him again, except me. Though, I didn’t really talk to him, just wrote to him and he wrote back.
I started writing letters when I was young. Don’t ask me how I started, I just did. I wrote to anyone whose address I could get my hands on. I loved putting stamps on letters and I loved getting mail through the post. I wrote so many letters Mom started to buy me monogrammed stationery when I was twelve, and she still buys me two boxes every birthday, deep lilac with an embossed RGL at the top and on the envelope flap.
Mom told me not to write Uncle Tex. She told me it was a waste of time, he’d never write back.
Talking about Uncle Tex made Mom’s face get sad, which didn’t happen very often. Usually only when she talked about Uncle Tex and sometimes when she saw me with Billy and thought I wasn’t paying attention.
Mom and Uncle Tex were super close growing up, but he went into the army on his eighteenth birthday and went to Vietnam close to the end of the war and that was all she’d heard from him.
Uncle Tex wrote back to me though, surprising everyone. He wouldn’t write back to Mom or Grams or Mom’s two sisters, but he wrote back to me. Even when he was in prison for messing up a drug dealer, he wrote back to me.
Once, when I was fourteen, I caught Mom going through my stash, reading Uncle Tex’s letters and crying. I didn’t let her know I caught her and I had the feeling it wasn’t the first time she did it either.
From his letters I could tell Uncle Tex was a hilarious guy, crazy, like me (maybe a wee bit crazier). I’d never met him, but I knew why Mom loved him so much, and through our letters I knew I loved him too.
* * *
I met Billy when I was twenty-four. I fell for him immediately and I fell for him hard.
He was good-looking. He had more energy than anyone I’d ever met. He made me laugh. He treated me like a princess. And he was really, really good with his mouth in a fast-talking kind of wayandother kinds of ways besides.
Everyone hated him, Mom, Dad, Gil, Mimi and all my friends. I played them the Cowboy Junkies song, “Misguided Angel” and told them to get over it.
A year into it, Billy was living with me in my apartment and we were having the time of our lives, good sex, lots of laughs, tons of partying. I had no idea what Billy did to make his money and I was so lost in him, I didn’t care.
Then one day, he said he had an opportunity in St. Louis that he couldn’t pass up. He said, in six months we’d retire and live in St. Tropez, and I’d spend my days sunbathing topless and he’d pour me champagne before our gourmet dinners every night. He told me he’d give me the life I deserved, the life I was meant to have—designer clothes, diamonds and pearls, champagne breakfasts, the lot.
I believed him (yes, I was twenty-five and yes, I was stupid). Even though everyone told me not to do it, even Uncle Tex. I quit my job, gave up my apartment and moved to St. Louis. I moved my shit there, got a job there and started over.
Six months later, Billy told me he had an even better opportunity and we moved to Pensacola.
Then to Charleston.
Then to Atlanta.
I should have seen this coming. Before he met me, Billy had gone from Boston (where he grew up), to Philly, to Cincinnati, to Louisville, to Indianapolis. I should have been pleased he spent a year in Indy with me.
By the time we made it to Chicago, three years into our travels, I was fed up. I had a blast in St. Louis, Pensacola, Charleston and Atlanta. I had good jobs in all those places and made friends. I hated leaving, I hated being on the road, packing, moving. Sometimes I had only a week to do it and in that week, Billy was long gone, telling me he was “scouting” our locations for the move. I was spending more and more time writing letters to all the people I left behind and was going to miss and I was done with being a nomad.
Furthermore, I was beginning to figure out why Billy was so cagey about how he spent his days and where he got his cash. It was always cash. He never brought home a paycheck. Sometimes it was a lot of cash, most of the time it was none.
At first, I believed in him, believed in his dreams and his fast-talk convinced me that the life I “deserved” was just around the corner. Then Iwantedto believe, so I didn’t ask too many questions. Then I couldn’t believe how stupid I was for believing in the first place and set myself firmly in denial, which was a good place to be…for a while.
“To hell with him, darlin’,” Uncle Tex wrote with his usual brutal honesty. “He sounds no good. Cut him loose and find yourself a real man.”
