Pieces of My Life

Chapter 9

As Elvis grew stronger and spent more time in physical therapy (which he declared "The worst"), Loretta and Lisa began to spend more time away from the hospital.

But they only went to Loretta's hotel room, where she cooked something up on the hot plate while Lisa took long baths and blasted Madonna on her tape recorder. She was much like her twins, with similar interests and the spirit of their generation, but yet so different.

Toward the end of January, Kathy Westmoreland came to visit. She sauntered into the room with an air of confidence, kissed Elvis on the cheek and let her fingers linger on his forehead.

Loretta held a smile on her face and said very little. She didn't want to be unreasonable but she and Elvis were dating and she knew very well that he'd once been with Kathy Westmoreland, even made love to her.

She made herself look at Lisa, reminding herself over and over again that this almost-grown girl wasn't even in Kindergarten when Elvis and Kathy had their affair. Or was she? Everything Elvis told her was vague. There was never enough time to talk about things such as this. And even if there had been, it didn't seem important at the time. She had a past with someone else too, and Elvis didn't ask her about Doolittle.

But unreasonable jealousy flared within her desptite her valiant attemps to suppress such feelings.

All Loretta could do was tell herself that it wasn't important now either. Elvis and Lisa Marie cared for this woman, who had been a part of their lives long before Loretta.

Loretta tuned their conversation out until Kathy asked, "How is school, Lisa?" and Lisa turned pale.

"I haven't been back yet," she whispered.

Loretta sat up straight, ready to defend Lisa unless her father did so first.

Kathy epitomized hesitation for a fraction of a moment. "Okay."

And then she went back to talking about the 'good old days'. At least until she asked, "How did you two meet, anyway?"

"You tell her, Loretta," Elvis said. "It's a real interesting story."

"I wanna hear," squealed Lisa. "All I know about is the press-on nails. Well, and that it was at Farm Aid."

"What?" Kathy asked with a strange chuckle that irritated Loretta.

"Do you want me to tell her?" Elvis asked. He'd likely sensed her discomfort and wanted to help her out but for some inexplicable reason, Loretta saw it as a challenge now.

"Well," she began. "We was both at Farm Aid and I was havin' a lot of trouble with the backup band 'cause they wasn't my usual band and we just didn't get along. Elvis comes up and starts speakin' up for me in front of 'em. I thought that was real sweet. His guys were there and kinda messin' around. Then Elvis pulled me aside and told me that they pulled the names of all the female singers at Farm Aid out of a hat and had to try to get close to the one whose name they pulled. Now Elvis got me, soI kissed him."

"Is that true?" Kathy asked Elvis, as if Loretta couldn't be trusted to tell the truth.

"It is," he said.

Kathy looked directly at Loretta. "So you kissed him after that?" Turning back to Elvis she murmured, "I thought that you would've been the one to instigate things."

Loretta held her head up high. Kathy didn't think that she had it in her, but she was dead wrong. "These days you don't gotta wait for the man to make the first move, do ya?"

"I wouldn't," supplied Lisa, who didn't seem to be aware of the tension radiating through the room.

Loretta offered her a weak smile. "That's my girl."