Bee Dogge

Lalage and Early’s origin story comes from one source, Lalage. As much as I loved her (at least, at her best), she was an unreliable narrator. She could and did invent stuff that she would then fully believe, and when she believed something that became iron-clad fact. And even when I knew she was dead wrong about something, I STILL believed her. And she and dad were both facile and habitual liars — cognitive dissonance was a way of life on our family. I don’t think they were wholly awful people, and I don’t begrudge them the minor (or even major) dishonesties necessary to make it through day (or week or year). But it does make for a lot more questions than answers.

Be that as it may, the broad strokes of Lalage’s version of events: She pretty much fell in love with dad at first sight. That first sight was in the Houston VA hospital psyche ward where he had been committed during a binge, and where she was a nurse. (I’ve always assumed she was the head nurse of her shift, at least, since she was an RN with military field nurse experience as an officer, and anyway was not well suited to being anyone’s subordinate — I just can’t imagine her taking orders well.)

So, her first sight of dad as she recalled was him slinking around the edge of a doorway, pitiful and cowed in a hospital-issued robe, and then she saw his blue eyes and she was instantly pierced to her heart. She might not have used these exact words, but certainly some of them, and this was the general impression I got. Of course she was telling this in answer to questions from three children. I was maybe seven or eight I think, so Bill and Lalage would have been eleven or twelve. I don’t remember the specific questions we had, but I do remember our general curiosity — really the crucial curiosity — was why the hell was she, and we, trapped with this frightening angry man she had married, and what was this other family he had?

So she meets this shell of a man in the psyche ward and is inspired by instant love and the certainty that she can save him to do just that — save him. From himself? From his circumstances? For his own good? I doubt that even she thought she had no skin in the game, because we both know how charming Dad could be, and, well, he looked like Alan Ladd. But I also think she did believe she could save him. She was a big believer in the ability of will and determination and elbow grease to overcome any obstacle (because, I think, she had an abundance of will, determination, and elbow grease herself). And I think she thought if she could save him then she could have him for herself.

From what though? To us kids, she boiled it down to saving him from his mother. But I’m getting ahead of the story, because there is a lot left out. Such as, how did they get from that first meeting in the psyche ward to her diagnosis. There must have been some courtship, yes? Details of that were left out of the story, but my understanding is that they “saw each other” for some months at least. During this time there would have been stories exchanged, and I imagine some very intimate times — Lalage was a woman of uncommon beauty when she was young (uncommon in that she did not by any means possess conventional American “good looks”), and Early was a man of great persuasion when it came to his appetites.

And then there was the uncomfortable fact that he was still married, a detail she didn’t dive to deeply into other than that she laid a lot of the blame for his failed marriage on his mother. And, as a side note, I don’t recall her ever saying a bad word about Ann.

And, I just remembered that what occasioned the conversation with mom was that I had been snooping through Dad’s office files and had found divorce correspondence including the mention of two children. It was summer, mom and dad were at work and Bill and Lalage were ignoring me — idle hands and all, and my inability to keep yet another secret.

Ok, way more than I started to write,and still just a start — haven’t even gotten to Denver and El Paso and wedded bliss yet.