A C&W Song in the Key of Life Pt. 05

Five years later

Nothing has happened to dim our delight that Shelley picked up that errant roofing nail and the following fortuitous flat (whenever I wonder what would have happened if she hadn't, I think about the poems and aphorisms that start "For the want of a nail...").

Our reconciliation rutting was followed by another hour of making sweet love and cuddling. We both sniffled a bit, but tears of joy have a short half-life. Neither one of us said anything about her and Rob, quite content to let lying dogs sleep. We dozed off briefly, woke up, made sweet love again, then fell asleep until almost 7:00 the next morning, which occasioned yet another lusty coupling. Our new BFFs left after breakfast with lots of hugs and kisses and promises to stay in touch. These weren't the hollow vows that are hardly ever sincere; we five had been part of a traumatic experience, an evening of deceit and powerful emotions that left us bonded and forever changed.

Shelley and I sat down with cups of coffee after they left and made small talk, but it was obvious to both of us that we were holding back bigger talk. I suggested we take our coffee out on the deck, then excused my self to hit the head and made a brief side trip to my bedroom. I sat down next to Shelley, took a couple of sips of coffee, took a couple of deep breaths, then finally started to speak. "Shelley..."

She turned to me with tears in her eyes. "Are you sure, Tom?"

I figured I was going to have to start wearing an aluminum-foil beanie (tried to find tinfoil lately?) to make it tougher for her to read my mind. "As sure as I was the first time, girl. Even if sometimes you make a mule look open-minded and trusting." I took her left hand with my right and opened my left, revealing the rings I had fetched from my dresser, the rings she had returned to me when the final decree was issued. "Shelley, will you marry me? Again? This time for good?"

No sniffles this time, her eyes overflowed with tears. "Oh yes, Tom, even though I don't deserve it." I picked the rings from my left hand, put the wedding ring back in my pocket, and held the engagement ring at the tip of her left ring finger.

"Then I'm going to put this ring back where it belongs, but if you ever..." I emphasized "ever" so strongly she flinched. "...ever again say you don't deserve it, I'll turn you over my knee and tan your bottom." I slid the ring home. "Your incredibly bootylicious bottom."

She squealed, shimmied in the chair, batted her eyes, and tried out her best schoolgirl voice. "Then I'd better not ever say that, huh, Mister Tom? Not unless I want you to tan my incredibly bootylicious bottom, and why would I ever want that?" She emphasized "ever" as strongly as I had, and it was my turn to flinch. Well, part of me twitched, it didn't flinch. I stood up and pulled her up against me, making obvious my reaction to her vamping.

"We need to take a shower and make some phone calls. I think some folks in Round Rock and Helotes are going to be pretty excited to hear our news." Shelley did a little bump and grind into me, then waved her index finger back and forth in a nuh-uh sign.

"There's something I want to do before we shower, mister, and I've got a feeling you might want to do it, too, if you know what's good for you. Then yeah, by all means phone calls. And maybe some travel plans."

_________

Once again we tried to make up our one-year deficit in conjugal breeding practices, then showered off the residue and got dressed. The phone calls were met, as we expected, with great cries of delight and congratulations; both our families had been devastated by our divorce. We decided to re-marry at the same church in Round Rock where we first married; it seemed only fittin'. We didn't send out invitations, so the only people there were her folks and mine, Jess, my sister and brother and their families, and a few people from Round Rock who knew what had happened.

I wore my only remaining suit (no, it wasn't Armani, but looked presentable), Shelley wore a really pretty blue frilly number that her mother picked out. Jess was my best man, Shelley asked her BFF from high school to be maid of honor. My brother took the pictures, Shelley got her bouquet and the boutonnieres at HEB. The reception was a barbecue in her folks' back yard with washtubs filled with ice and lots of Shiner (and Cokes). It was definitely an example of been there-done that event planning. Everybody was already filled with so much happiness and relief, it would have been pointless to pay for another expensive blowout.

Shelley and I had driven down from Plano in her Camaro, and I asked Jess to drive my pickup so I could show off his handiwork. A couple of days after the wedding, we drove down to Helotes to spend a few days with my family. We had to hit Floore's Country Store, of course, and who should be playing but Ray Wylie Hubbard. That was not only fittin', it was downright spooky, because Jess lives in Wylie, on the north end of Lake Ray Hubbard.

Nine months plus 14 hours of labor after that wedding, Shelley gave birth to Brian Jesse Becket and Philip William Becket (Shelley's dad is Phil, mine is Bill). They are universally acknowledged to be the cutest, smartest, and least spoiled boys in the Republic of Texas. Now she's five months pregnant with their sister; we haven't decided on a name yet, but Lissa and Terri are definitely ruled out. I favor Gussie Nell, but Shelley keeps threatening to turn me over her knee and tan my backside (which apparently ain't bootylicious) the next time I suggest it. She also says that after the boys get their sister, the baby store is closing.

_________

We still see Alice and Grace and Alec as often as we can—although now that we know him much better, as often as not we call him Slick, too. Thanks to the bibulous camaraderie that followed the great revelation of Rob's treachery, we five have fostered a friendship that may last forever. I suppose the fact that Shelley and I were still in the grip of our unearthly orgasmic afterglow as we put together a breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage, grits, and home fries cemented the bonds (we only had two slices of bread, so no toast).

Their comedy troupe gave up trying to get noticed a few months after the tell-all about their command performance at the Plano Hilton. Alec's mother's health was fading, so he went back to Conejos to help with her taqueria. Puzzling the bejeezus out of all of us, Grace went back to school and got her MBA (which took three years, since she still had to work at her day job, and the title of her BFA final project had been "Cartoons, Doodles, and Other ad hoc Graphics in Medieval Manuscripts").

We learned, however, that there was method to Grace's madness. When Shelley and I drove to Houston for her graduation, we were delighted to discover Slick there, too. Almost a year earlier, his mother's health had deteriorated so badly that she sold the taqueria, then died shortly thereafter, leaving the proceeds to him. By that time, he had become quite skilled at creating imaginative and tasty variations on the theme of anglicized Hispanic cuisine known as Tex-Mex.

He stayed in touch with Grace, and via emails and Skype sessions they discovered mutual interests in food, business, and each other. He returned to Houston and found a job as sous chef at a mid-scale Mexican restaurant—although the place didn't affect such grandiose job descriptions so the title was de facto but not de jure). Meanwhile, for her final MBA case study, Grace had written a business plan for designing, promoting, opening, and successfully operating a Texas/Mexican fusion restaurant (please, "Tex-Mex" is so...plebian).

Upon her graduation, they combined Slick's inherited capital with some guilt-tripped loans from her family, and joined forces to open La Coneja Blanca, a carniceria y taqueria con panaderia in Jefferson. The piney woods proved a fertile marketplace; the place was a roaring success from the day it opened. They insist they're going to get married any day now, just as soon as they get two days off in a row. Fat chance. We're hoping they get careless and he knocks her up, forcing the issue.

Alice went back to school, too. With her BS in biochemistry, it would have taken her only two additional years to get her PharmD at UH, but after the first year she decided she was more interested in research than counting and bottling pills. She was accepted into the dual Pharm.D./Ph.D. program in pharmacology. She's in her final year, but has already accepted a post-doc at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. She leaves Houston the week after she receives her doctorate.

Her area of emphasis was made pretty clear by the presence of her name on the list of authors of a recent paper in a peer-reviewed journal: The Effect of Different Media Composition and Temperatures on the Production of Recombinant Human Growth Hormone (hGH), With Additional Considerations to the Ethics of Growth Promotion and Challenges to hGH-for-Height Therapy.

Like Grace, she has worked throughout her academic years. After a year of working nights as a waitress, she was offered one and sometimes two research internships each semester and summer term. The stipends, plus significant financial aid she had been awarded, means she won't have to repay the crippling student loans faced by so many students.

But like Slick and Grace, the long hours of study and work have made pursuing any sort of romantic relationship problematic. She managed the occasional stress-relieving shag, but never anything with longer-term possibilities. She did, however, discover that Costco alkaline batteries are a helluva lot cheaper than the nationally advertised brands, but nonetheless keep going and going and going.

She hopes to find better hunting among the unattached population in Hotlanta.

_________

Oh, and what do we call our beloved Lab? Well, when Shelley picked him up on that Valentine's Day she came home, she was in too much of a rush to pay any attention to the envelope full of stuff the breeder handed her. Turned out that he's AKC registered as Bulverde's Rudolph Valentino (poor fella). Everyone thought we should call him Rudy, or maybe Val. Nobody's ever figured out why we call him Fittin' (the apostrophe's silent, of course). Every Valentine's Day he gets his very own rib-eye and lots of loving.

Shakespeare may not have gotten it quite right about thankless children and serpents' teeth, but he sure called it when he titled a romantic comedy All's Well That Ends Well.

Boy howdy!