Desert Discord Read online

  “Andy, they think you’re homosexual,” said Mrs. Kellogg. No bullshit.

  Andy swallowed hard and looked from face to face. Is this really happening?

  “I … I don’t know what to say …”

  “You know Dr. Dietz and I don’t feel that way,” said Mrs. Kellogg.

  “And neither do I!” said Mrs. Bozeman.

  “We’re all liberal people,” said Dr. Dietz. “But there is concern on the part of some of the older board members about how it looks to have a very long-haired man sitting in a first-chair position, right at the front of the stage. People talk.”

  “What people?” asked Andy.

  “The ones with the money, unfortunately. The ones who pay our salaries.”

  “I know, it’s ridiculous beyond words,” said Mrs. Kellogg, “but it’s also a really easy problem to solve, if you’d be willing.”

  “You want me to cut my hair,” said Andy.

  “You don’t have to cut it short, mind you,” said Dr. Dietz. “Hair that’s a little long is fine. Styles are changing. If it’s just down over the ears, that’s perfectly acceptable. Nobody would have any problem.”

  “If I don’t cut my hair, I can’t play in the orchestra,” said Andy. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “No, no!” said Dr. Dietz. “Not at all! It’s just that … well … we can’t consider you for first chair. Not at this time.”

  “I see,” said Andy.

  Dr. Dietz rose from his seat and extended his hand. “Andy, that’s all I wanted to say. I guess we’re done here. I just want you to think seriously about what we said. Nobody’s forcing you to do anything. We’re all adults.”

  “Okay.” Andy shook everybody’s hand and left the office. As he walked down the hall, he saw himself reflected in the glass of a trophy case. He tilted his head back and swished his hair back and forth. Really, he thought. My hair is great. What the fuck?

  Rehearsal went well enough. The orchestra worked hard on the Goodman classics. Most of the pieces were coming together nicely. “Memories of You” was proving problematic, but they would get it. The plan was to master ten Benny Goodman hits and supplement them with popular songs they already knew from previous summer programs.

  One ugly moment left quite an impression on the ensemble. Peter Mathern was late, typical for him, and then took his time tuning up and getting ready, making the conductor and the other performers wait. He was unusually irritable tonight and had cross words with Dr. Dietz concerning tempo. Mathern was one of the few players who was older than Dr. Dietz and had been with the orchestra longer. Even though he was a middle-grade musician at best, he thought of himself as the elder statesman.

  Mathern thought “Air Mail Special” should be played at a slower tempo, and said so, repeatedly. The conductor politely but firmly disagreed, and they kept practicing. Andy could tell that Mathern was deliberately dragging the tempo a little bit, just to send a message to Dietz. That was exactly the sort of junior high shit everybody hated. It made the whole orchestra sound sloppy, and wasted time.

  Consequently, and because they had a lot to get through, rehearsal ran longer than its allotted two hours. Peter Mathern pointedly looked at his watch several times and coughed, but Dietz kept them going. Then, about twenty minutes into overtime, Mathern stood up and announced he had things to do and was finished for the night. He would see everybody tomorrow. He took his music and his Cecilio violin and exited the stage, leaving the conductor open-mouthed and the symphony members aghast.

  Dr. Dietz stood at the podium for several long seconds, his face turning red. The musicians looked at each other. This was a serious breach of protocol, as well as downright rude. You just didn’t do that in orchestra, especially during a critical rehearsal. After a few more awkward seconds, the conductor cleared his throat. “Mr. Zamara, please take Mr. Mathern’s chair.”

  Andy got up and moved to the first chair.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to announce that Mr. Andy Zamara is now first chair of the second violins. Miss Fleming will now take the second chair.”

  Carol Fleming moved over into Andy’s old spot. The other second violins sat where they were, leaving a conspicuous empty seat.

  “Does anyone else have any obligations that I’m keeping them from?” asked Dr. Dietz. “Now would be the time to let me know.”

  Heads shook.

  “Very well, let’s take it from measure sixty-one. Clarinets, give me a little more attack on the downbeat. Remember, this is a swing tune.” He raised his baton.

  “Two! … Three! …”

  – 4 –

  Ramona Keeps It Together

  Ramona Piedman was sick to death of The Glass Menagerie, but they had to get through three more held-over performances—Friday night, Saturday matinée, and Saturday night—before they could finally strike the set and be finished with a play that was supposed to have been over and done with two weeks ago. And good fucking riddance. It was a nightmare.

  Actually, Ramona loved the play itself, which she considered one of the twentieth century’s greatest literary achievements. She had pushed hard for the Duro Playhouse to stage it and had insisted that they bring in Sterling Ross, a professional journeyman actor from Mesa, Arizona, for the part of Tom Wingfield, the angry young socialist. She felt that the crucial character was beyond the reach of the available local talent, and Ross sported impressive stage credentials. He had owned the role easily during audition, which in his case was just a formality.

  However, once he had settled in and the play opened, Ross proved to be mediocre on his best nights, and terrible on his worst. During rehearsals in May, on several occasions Ramona caught a whiff of bourbon on Ross’s breath, but she’d put it out of her mind. Even some great actors needed a stiff shot of liquid courage before they took to the stage. But … for rehearsal?

  Most nights, Ross was only marginally better than the other male lead, a reliable local actor. On the other hand, the girl who played Laura Wingfield, a high school junior named Helen, was quite good, and saved the play on the nights Ross decided to mail it in. The rest of the company and crew, competent amateurs, gave it their best, but Sterling Ross was a trial to work with, not only ignoring Ramona’s directorial efforts, but also making sure the other actors knew he was in Actor’s Equity (a fact that was supposed to be secret, since the Playhouse was not an Equity house). He never missed an opportunity to critique the others in the most patronizing way possible and often contradicted Ramona in front of them.

  When the Playhouse Board of Governors decided to milk a couple more weekends out of the production and pay Ross for six more shows, Ramona had broken down in tears at home in front of her daughters. But, being a team player, she kept her misgivings away from the theater.

  Last Friday night was one of their poorest performances. Ross arrived late and even less sober than usual, then spent the evening blowing lines and missing cues. When, in the first act’s most dramatic moment, Tom Wingfield flies into a rage and hurls his jacket across the room, where it is supposed to accidentally strike the eponymous glass menagerie and shatter its tiny animals to pieces, Ross missed the menagerie completely. Anyone who hadn’t seen the play would be understandably confused when little sister Laura screams, “My glass menagerie!” and Tom drops to his knees and covers his face in shame.

  What … huh? Why?

  The Saturday matinée was an uninspired performance, but at least it was free of mishaps. But that night, after a four-hour break, Ross arrived for the evening show with barely ten minutes to spare before curtain, and noticeably drunk. He got through most of the first act without glaring errors, but when it came time for the dramatic destruction of the glass animals, he once again missed the target, and his jacket flew into the wings. Rather than accepting this and moving on as before, Ross strode across the set and disappeared offstage as young Helen screamed, “My glass menagerie!” He then returned with his jacket and hurled it against the menagerie at point-blank
range, scattering its tiny animals as far as the first row. (Fortunately, they were made of plastic.)

  This, of course, made absolutely no sense, and again the audience was baffled.

  What? He’s the hero. Why is he being such a dick?

  Backstage, Ramona put her face in her hands. Three more shows, she thought. Just let me get through it. Please.

  Thursday afternoons after school, Ramona taught a junior theater class at the Playhouse. She was preparing to cast and start rehearsals for an abbreviated juvenile version of Death Takes a Holiday. The play had four male parts, but Ramona had only two boys in the class, Johnny and Jimmy Spence, impossibly cute ten-year-old fraternal twins. The boys made up for their blond hair and adorable dimples by alternating between annoyance and pure evil. They tormented the girls in the class, disrupted whenever they could, and fought with each other constantly so that the teaching process was exhausting. But, unless Ramona wanted to direct an unprecedented all-girl production of Death, she would have to put up with the Spences.

  Miss Piedman! He’s trying to mess me up! He’s looking at me!

  Am not!

  You are too! Stop looking at me or I’ll bust your face!

  Johnny, stop looking at him! Jimmy, project from the center of your chest. Remember, you’re a giant.

  I can’t! He’s still looking at me!

  By the end of the hour-long class, she was hoarse from yelling at them. She couldn’t help but compare them to Sterling Ross in her mind.

  Well, she thought, at least Ross isn’t twins. She gargled with warm saltwater and drove home.

  It was Apollo’s fiftieth birthday, and they were going out for dinner to celebrate. Her husband had not seemed happy for some time, and Ramona was concerned. He was brooding even more than usual and often disappeared into his room early in the evening.

  Maybe if he’d just get a girlfriend, he’ll feel like his old self again, she thought. Just let her be more or less his age.

  Ramona and Apollo had been married twenty years and had lived together for twenty-three. They were both from the West Coast, Ramona from Oregon and Apollo from California, but they had ended up in Duro, Texas, for reasons neither of them completely understood.

  In the early 1950s, Apollo Piedman was a handsome, bearded art professor at a small college in Santa Rosa, and Ramona Mitkin was one of his freshman students. She had fallen desperately in love with him, and their first daughter was conceived in the backseat of Apollo’s 1948 DeSoto.

  Ramona was just eighteen, and remained in denial for as long as possible, finally confessing her predicament to Apollo long after she could have done something about it. She didn’t ask anything of him, but he accepted responsibility, and they moved in together. Doing the honorable thing cost Apollo his job, and the two of them left California shortly after their daughter was born. They named the baby Saskia, after the first wife of Rembrandt, and headed east.

  For a couple of years in Milton, Massachusetts, Apollo taught painting and life drawing, while Ramona, despite the hefty impost of a small child, got a degree in theater direction. When she discovered that, despite their modest preventive efforts, she was pregnant once again, the two made an appearance at the courthouse and formalized their de facto marriage.

  Almost immediately, in a spectacular instance of bad timing, Apollo became the target of a complaint by the parents of a female undergraduate art student, who accused him of excessive individualized attention. He denied vigorously that his conduct had been inappropriate but chose not to fight the system, and at the end of the semester Apollo and his young family hit the road once again.

  Their second daughter, Erycca, was born in North Carolina, where Apollo held a series of short-term teaching positions at various small private colleges. There was even one forgettable stint at a high school in Raleigh. Despite the temporary nature of the assignments, which should have helped keep him out of trouble, Apollo’s general restlessness and zipper problems persisted. Ramona even left him for a short while, but with a small child and an infant to care for, she had few options. He begged her to return, and she did, with ground rules.

  Rule number one: No more lies. They would both be up front and honest with each other. They were partners in life, but the marriage would be open. Outside romantic relationships were permissible, within the boundaries of reasonable discretion. However …

  Rule number two: None of these outside relationships could be with students, adult or otherwise, nor with anyone with whom either of them worked. Also …

  Rule number three: Stop being a stupid jerk.

  After five years of travel, and with two children to support, they were both ready for a more settled life. They headed west to Texas, because they wanted more open space to pursue their artistic callings, new opportunities, and room to grow into a new life. Also, Apollo was starting to run out of places that hadn’t heard of him.

  The full-time opening in the Art Department at DCC came along at a time when they were both willing to try just about anything that would let them settle down and find some stability. They bought an enormous ranch-style house on a large, weedy lot in west Duro and moved in. Apollo kept his promises and mostly behaved himself. Their household was not the only one in West Texas based on an open marriage, but it was the only one that didn’t try to hide the fact. By the time it dawned on the moral forces of Duro that there was a family of libertines in their midst, the Piedmans had settled in for the long haul.

  As she drove to the Trawler Restaurant to meet Apollo and the three girls for the birthday dinner, Ramona cheered herself up by thinking about the upcoming new play. It would be the first world premiere in Duro Playhouse history, and she was eager to direct it. Oscar’s Wallpaper was a story about the young Oscar Wilde written by a Fort Worth playwright named Carter James. Carter was an acquaintance she knew through her theater circles, and she was flattered he had sent her the script to consider in the first place. When she agreed to try and stage it, he drove out to Duro and wowed the Board of Governors with his energy and enthusiasm, and they scheduled the production for fall 1970.

  It was exciting, and there was so much to do! One thing she was particularly anxious and hopeful about, something she hadn’t told anyone—she had found her Oscar. At least she hoped she had. It was a friend of Saskia’s named Andy Zamara, and he was Oscar Wilde. He just didn’t know it yet.

  Ramona had spotted him onstage at a Duro Symphony Orchestra performance in March and was struck by his uncanny resemblance to photographs of Wilde when the playwright was in his twenties. When Saskia met him backstage after the show, Ramona had tagged along and was thrilled to discover that the young man was smart and erudite, with a lovely timbre to his voice, and had some theater experience from high school and college. But, most of all, his hair! Ramona found herself falling a little bit in love.

  But most of all, she needed to persuade him to audition. He had to. She hatched a plan, and tonight, at dinner, she would recruit Saskia to help.

  – 5 –

  Punchy and Pug Move to the Front of the Alphabet

  Jesus was deeply disappointed in his sons.

  It wasn’t just their spurning of his business, which he had built from scratch, intending to pass it down to his oldest boy Punchy—or to his middle son Pug, if that’s how things worked out. (Not both of them, however. He couldn’t imagine them cooperating long enough to run anything together.)

  Two years ago, when Punchy announced he was starting his own competing salvage and equipment business to go head-to-head with his father, Jesus Zamara was philosophical. For one thing, he wasn’t convinced that his son could make a go of it. What did he know about salvage, about buying and selling, about spotting a good deal and knowing how to negotiate? Jesus had done this sort of thing since he was sixteen, and knew the ins and outs better than anybody in Duro. He had tried to teach the trade to his three sons, but they all had other ideas. Punchy worked for his father only three years before leaving in anger over some stupid dis
agreement and going to work as a salesman for an oilfield supply company. Pug worked for Jesus for a couple of summers, but never seemed to have the heart or head for it.

  But then, wonder of wonders, not only did Punchy turn around and start his own business, but he also brought his brother Pug into the venture with him. His two older sons were trying to break his heart. How could they?

  And then there was Andy …

  His youngest son should have been his pride and joy. The smartest one by far, and handsome to boot. Not particularly athletic, though he did play two seasons of Little League baseball for the Lennox Real Estate White Sox and was a pretty good catcher. Jesus had felt a sharp stab when Andy announced he was quitting baseball because it “got in the way of music,” though the normally effusive father kept his disappointment to himself. His wife Peggy had defended her son’s choice zealously, and she was proven right when the young man won UIL competitions throughout high school, and then got a full-ride music scholarship to Texas Tech. He went on to become the first Zamara to graduate from college.

  Jesus was proud of Andy, he really was. But why did the Lord have to make him … so … you know. Actually, Jesus couldn’t blame God. It’s the father who provides the model for the son. Jesus worked hard, but he was out of the house so much when Andy was small that he never gave him the attention a boy needs to grow up tough and masculine. He was Peggy’s baby, and she mothered him way too much, Jesus thought, and look how that turned out.

  But at least Andy never betrayed his father or insulted the family name.

  Jesus sat at his desk with the afternoon edition of the Duro American-Post, where he saw a large square ad in the business section. It had been placed by his eldest son Gray, who had been called “Punchy” ever since his days in the Golden Gloves. (“Pug” was a nickname derived from three-year-old Andy’s hilarious attempts to say “Paul.”) The ad was headed in huge bold type: