Frances

Frances had once been a beauty queen, they said.  She wasn't anything to look at now.  Alcohol and bad living had taken their toll.  But she had had four kids by the time I met her, and had been divorced and had gotten married to Chet.  Now they lived in a ten-foot wide trailer with three of her kids.

She loved to get drunk.  For most of the year, she and Chet limited it to weekends, but during the summer, Chet wasn't working and the trailer had no air conditioning and it was miserable hot inside.  So summer nights, they ended up drinking cold beers.  Not to the extent that they did on weekends when they really let themselves go, but sometimes a little too much.  It could get dangerous.

Frances liked to sing when she was drinking, but only one song: "Since You Left Me, Baby."  That's how she sang it, anyway.  Her version was a little off.  And when Tommy and I were playing guitars, she'd stagger over and say, "Play it for me, honey.  Play 'Since You Left Me, Baby.'" And so we'd strum the opening chord, and Frances would sit down and screw up her face in twisted, painful passion, tilt her head upward and to the right, then shake it a little.  On summer nights, she'd always be wearing these gypsy-looking low cut blouses, and when she bent over, you could see the wrinkled tops of her breasts push together, and you'd have to look away.  After a few minutes of us strumming the chord, she'd begin to sing.  The song was simple, a three chord progression, but I don't remember ever making it through the entire song.  I guess Tommy and I were evil little shits, and after awhile, we began to play the third chord shift as a minor to mess with her.  She'd furrow her brow and try to bend the note downward painfully, getting pissed off, saying, "No, no, no, that's not right."  For me, it was funny every time.  And it dissuaded her from singing along with us which was the point.  Maybe we shouldn't have done it.  Maybe it ruined things for her, some bittersweet memory.  Whether it was that or the drinking, though, she'd usually end up in a fight with Chet and finish by saying, "I don't care, fuck all of you, you hear me?"  And then she'd walk the forty feet to the end of the trailer where she would close the tiny bedroom door and pass out in bed.

She was different when she was sober, of course, but I don't remember as much of that.  It was those summer nights when it was hot and everyone was drinking that things would go wrong and everything became vivid.  Those are the nights that were branded into my memory.