Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: Installment #16

Miss Orange County

I have always found it somewhat odd that when I think of my ex-wife, I think of Peggy. I never think of my marriage to Ellen. Perhaps this is because Ellen and I were together for barely a year, and only six months into our marriage we both realized neither of us would ever be sober or sane enough to survive much longer sharing the same life. Ellen was closer to the bottom of things than I was at that point, but somewhere in our respective doldrums we recognized how bad things were.

“You’ll find someone else,” Peggy said as she packed her final box. I watched her hesitate as she considered taking a picture of the two of us standing on the Golden Gate Bridge. When she finally decided to leave it behind, I was more sad than angry.

“I don’t think I will,” I said. But I did. I had been working as a waiter in a small restaurant in Winnemucca, Nevada, and Ellen was a regular who always came in with a group of people who always seemed to be having fun. When Mario, my boss, told me that Ellen was a prostitute, I wasn’t bothered. I had stopped judging people years earlier.

Ellen and I started slowly, casually. After a six months of mutual flirtation, we took advantage of Nevada’s casual requirements for marriage and were married by one of her former clients, a married man who said he was sad to see Ellen trade lying on her back for less-honest work. Ellen got a job at the Ace Hardware store that was owned by another of her former clients who said he’d gotten too old for sex but still appreciated all Ellen had done for him over the years. “It’s not just sex men are looking for when they come to see me,” Ellen told me once.

Ellen was also a former Miss Orange County. “I thought I’d end up being Miss America,” she told me. It was her claim to fame, she said, since she’d won fair and square. “I’m not stupid, and it wasn’t easy. I worked hard for that title.” Ellen was the only person I had ever known who had even come that close to anything famous, even fame in a place as small as Orange County. "The closest thing to reality in that place is Disneyland. There were a lot of girls who wanted that title. Most of them were too blonde and too conservative in a year when the judges were looking for someone different, and being someone different isn't easy in Orange County. I was lucky—it was my year.” I felt special being with her knowing how hard she had worked to achieve something,

Then, though, during a quest for Miss California, she found out she was easier manipulated than she thought possible. “I slept with a couple of people involved with the pageant,” she said, “and I found that I liked sex and cocaine more than I liked winning beauty pageants. One thing led to another, and on a morning in September I found myself buying a house in Winnemucca. I gave up most of the cocaine but kind of enjoyed the sex.”

Our first couple of months together were great fun. Ellen stayed in touch with old friends and former clients, and we allowed each other to be more self-destructive than we might have been alone. Peggy and I had been down some bad roads, but we also found ways to say stop. But Ellen and I couldn’t do that, and it wasn’t long until we were both out of work when my restaurant closed and the Ace Hardware had enough of Ellen’s lack of dependability. If Ellen hadn’t had a bought-and-paid-for house, we would’ve been homeless. Somewhere in the middle of everything, though, we found the strength to divorce as easily as we’d gotten married. Ellen sold the house and moved to Colorado, and I went back to California. She left a message on my answering machine one night saying she was fine, that she had re-married and now had two step-children and had found God. She said she would pray for me, but that I was not to call her back.

The only person I did call after that was Peggy, who was working as a pre-school teacher in Port Angeles, Washington. She was single and going to college, and I told her I was proud of her. “I still miss you,” I said. I didn’t know if I should’ve have been proud of my two wives that they had worked their way back to their feet, or if I should be disappointed that I had not.

“It’s been a long time,” Peggy said.

“I never even told my family about Ellen,” I told her.

“Why are you telling me?” She sounded distracted.

“I thought you would be interested,” I said. “You were always interested in me, weren’t you?”

She was silent for a moment. “Yes,” she said. “Have you changed?”

“I like to think I have.”

“Ellen doesn’t like someone you would be involved with if you had changed.”

“Ellen’s gone now.”

“But she was there,” Peggy said. “You were married to her.”

“I’m not sure what you want me to say, Peggy.”

She was quiet again, and I did not know if she was even breathing. “I’m not sure, either. I don’t know if I should say anything. I’ve got a good life here now. Are you happy for me?”

“I have always been happy for you, Peggy.”

I wanted the train to move. More people had come into the observation car, and they all seemed anxious, perturbed. We all wanted to be moving, or at least to know why we were not. The air in the train seemed different—more stale and close. I didn’t like sitting still like this because without movement, I tended to dwell upon mistakes I had made or memories of people I had either (or both) loved or hurt. Part of me knew that I should be happy about being so close to my family, even my dead aunt and uncle.

When a group of small children pushed into the observation car and took seats around me, I left and returned to where my brother and I had been seated. My father, though, had taken my brother’s place. “Where’s Steven?” I asked as I sat beside my father.

“He went to talk to your cousin somewhere,” my father said. “I told him I’d keep his seat warm.”

“Any idea why we’re stuck here?” I asked.

“You didn’t have to come.”

“I mean, stuck wherever were stuck—why the train’s not moving.”

My father shook his head. “Nope.”

“We’ve got to get moving,” I said.

“We’ll probably stop again in Helper.” He had pulled out the route map. “That’s our next stop. Helper, Utah.”

“I know,” I said.