Little Elvis had been so excited to be going out (an endeavor Loretta suspected was not undertaken very often) that it was impossible to settle him down enough to nap. He fell asleep on Loretta's lap on the way home, very much to Roxanne's delight. The nine year old spend the next hour talking about everything under the sun. Loretta didn't mind though. Not the questions Roxanne asked about her children and her upbringing, nor the stories about whatever had happened at school.
She knew these children better than most of her nieces and nephews by now. But what had she been expecting when she signed up to take care of somebody else's children for two whole weeks? Loretta was the type of person who would visit a school or a hospital and feel the urge to take half of the children there home with her. But despite everything, she never expected to care for the children as much as she did.
"Loretta," Roxanne drew out. "What are ya thinkin'?"
"Nothin', honey. What did you wanna say?"
"I wanna..." Roxanne trailed off.
"Go on, honey," Loretta said gently.
"Well, I...you know how Cilla lives here and she's my daddy's girlfriend?"
"Yes?"
"They're gonna get married." Roxanne did not sound at all pleased by the prospect. Or perhaps, she was merely projecting. Of course she did not know Priscilla but from what she had heard the woman did not sound at all like someone who wished to bring up children.
"Does that kinda...it don't mean that she's my mother, does it?"
Loretta hesitated. "Well, in a way it does but then again it don't. Your mother that's in heaven is always gonna be your mother but if Cilla marries your daddy she's gonna be doin' at least some things that a mother does.
Roxanne made a face. "I don't want her to be my mother."
"She wouldn't be your mother, she'd be your stepmother."
"If you was my stepmother, I wouldn't mind much at all. But I wouldn't call you mommy neither."
"You don't have to call her that," Loretta assured her, hoping that Elvis was in agreement. "Did you try being her friend before?"
"I don't wanna be her friend."
"You didn't wanna be my friend either."
"Yeah," Roxanne admitted, averting her eyes to the floor. "But Cilla don't like anything I like and she don't even like me."
"Well maybe if you..." Loretta trailed off, because the truth was that she was glad that Priscilla was no longer around her own children. It was wrong, so very wrong, to judge someone she hadn't even met. She could only hope that Priscilla wasn't anything like she envisioned.
"Maybe if I what?" Roxanne asked.
"You know how sometimes...sometimes you just gotta try and make the best outta somethin' even if things ain't the way you want em to be."
"I guess," Roxanne sighed. She looked down at the Huckleberry Hound wristwatch she had gotten herself at the thrift store. "My daddy's been asleep an awful long today."
"He mighta had a long night yesterday."
"You don't know when Daddy's gone to bed?"
"I went to bed too cause I had to get up to get you to school and look after your brother."
Roxanne's head fell against Loretta's shoulder. "I don't want Cilla to come home," she confessed in a hushed whisper. "Don't tell Daddy?"
"Alright, honey. I won't," Loretta promised, wrapping one arm around the little girl to pull her close. "You could talk to him though. Or to Cilla."
Roxanne scoffed. "Cilla won't listen to me or care or nothin' cause I'm just a kid anyway. And I ain't Daddy's real kid. Did you know that?"
"You look pretty real to me."
"You know what I mean," Roxanne exclaimed, exasperated. "My mommy loved this other man and then when she was gonna have me he went away and we was alone till I was five. Then we came to Graceland and my mommy loved Daddy for a while and had my brother. So he's really his daddy but not mine."
Loretta found herself amazed yet shocked by the fact that Roxanne was more enlightened at the age of nine than she herself had been at thirteen.
"You're no different than your brother to your daddy. And none of that means that you're not his anyhow."
"Yes, it does," Roxanne said, her stubborn streak shining through.
"You're still his only little girl, ain't you?"
Roxanne hesitated before reluctantly mumbling, "Guess so."
Loretta placed a kiss on Roxanne's head and then stood. "I better go check on Little Elvis. He should be waking up."
"I'm sure," Roxanne groaned, throwing her head back against the couch.
~*~
As of late, Elvis worried a lot. He worried when he found Loretta rocking his son in her arms and tell him, quite apologetically, that Little Elvis fell but wasn't hurt. He worried when Roxanne said something that would have Priscilla in a uproar- and all Loretta did was laugh and tell her to watch herself. He worried when the guys made an inappropriate joke but Loretta acted as though she didn't even notice.
All day he compared the way Loretta reacted to anything around her to the way Priscilla would likely react in the same situation. And then he worried whether anyone would want Priscilla back at all now that they had seen what they could have instead. Of course they couldn't have Loretta, who had already been claimed when Elvis wasn't even in high school yet. It wasn't as though he looked at Loretta in that way anyway- at least he didn't think so. Maybe the fact that she was a married woman was stopping him from engaging in thoughts of that sort at all. But he without a doubt wanted someone like her in his children's lives.
Once the children were fast asleep in their beds and the guys congregated in the basement, his legs carried him toward Loretta's room. He rapped on the door a few times before she called, "Come in."
Elvis greeted her with a mile wide grin. "Writing yourself a new hit?"
She frowned down at the paper. "Oh no, that's just- that's nothin'."
"I wish that I could write songs."
"Did you ever try?"
"No." Elvis chuckled. "I just told you that I can't."
"Well, how'd you know that you can't if you never even tried? I never thought I could. But then I decided I would and I was leanin' up against a toilet-"
"Wait what?" Elvis cut her off with a laugh.
"That's how I wrote my first song, leanin' up against a toilet. If you got somethin' to tell you pro'bly could write a song too. Same thing I said to your daughter earlier today."
"You got the patience of a saint with those kids, you know that?"
Loretta waved her hand. "I wouldn't say that now. I'm just doing what I'd do for my own. And there's only two of them so I couldn't get too mad. Not when I got six of em at home."
"I still won't believe that till I saw all six of em."
"Oh, you'll get to see em alright." Loretta crumpled up the paper and tossed it in the trash. "What are you and the guys up to then?"
"Nothin' really."
"Roxanne was talkin' to me about Priscilla today."
"Oh?" Elvis' eyes snapped toward hers.
"I think she's a little jealous."
"Yeah, she is. Cilla and Roxy they're...I don't know."
"Did Priscilla ever try to bond with her or..."
Elvis stared into space momentarily, trying to think back through the years. "I guess she did at first but she just wasn't that patient and...I don't know. I guess they don't have nothin' in common. You know the type of stuff Roxy likes. Music and talkin' and runnin' around bein' wild-"
Loretta found herself smiling. "That's what I was like when I was a little girl. Loud and wild."
Elvis snickered. "Nah."
"Oh yeah. I'd climb trees and jump fences and not care one bit that my daddy was gonna spank me if I got myself hurt."
"But he didn't if you didn't get hurt?"
"Not that I remember."
"Parents sure had crazy ideas in our day. My daddy whooped me once cause I took an empty coke bottle from our neighbor. And our neighbor said that I could have it too."
"When you're with Roxanne, it reminds me of myself and my daddy when I was little. My daddy never called me Loretta like you never call her Roxanne either."
"I do when she's in trouble."
"She don't get in trouble with you a lot I'm sure."
Elvis quirked a brow. "Why'd you say that?"
"Cause she's your little girl," Loretta said simply. "If you're gonna be in here any longer why don't you sit."
"You want me to get outta here and leave you to..." he trailed off.
"We can talk with you sittin' down, honey. I reckon I could use a little bit of company too."
"I keep tellin' you that you can come downstairs and hang with me and the guys anytime you want."
"Ah, they don't want no woman down there."
"Even if that was so, they don't get to decide. It's my house and not theirs, ain't it?" Elvis plopped down on the bed, bouncing slightly. Loretta turned in the chair in order to continue facing him. "Do you wonder if all this...what we're doin'...if it's just a big mistake?"
"The swap?"
"My kids really love you. They're really...Little Elvis is not gonna understand why you gotta go away. I just keep on thinkin' that what we did here didn't do nothin' but make our kids hurt."
"Yeah," Loretta drew out with a sigh. "I was thinkin' of that too. I know at least one of mine's angry at me for it and Doo is too. And your babies...this mornin' your little boy come in my room real early and just crawled into bed with me. Like I was his mommy."
Elvis nodded in slow motion. "What did we do, huh?"
"I reckon there's nothin' we can do about it now. I didn't mean to...there's only one way I know to take care of children."
"Your babies are lucky to have you."
"I ain't exactly mother of the year when it comes to my own kids. Can't be when you're always gone. I feel like I should be taking two weeks to just spend with my own kids but I gotta go back on that dagum Wilburn show as soon as I get home. You had two pictures out this year already, you would know."
"Oh, I do know. We just finished another before the swap and another we already finished is gonna be out in the summer. And then I have to go and work on one this summer too. And they're all sh-" Elvis stopped abruptly, as if just realizing that he was speaking to a lady. "They're not very good. None of em."
"I didn't see many of the pictures you're in."
"Which ones did you see?" Elvis asked with great interest.
"I got no idea, really. It was a couple years back."
"You sure didn't like Casino Royale too much."
"It was alright. I didn't hear most of it anyhow." She chuckled, her mind drifting back to that moment. "I liked bein' there with you."
Elvis quirked an eyebrow. "Are you just sayin' now?"
"No, I ain't just sayin'."
"Well, think about which ones of my movies you mighta seen."
"That was pro'bly all the way back in Washington."
"Warshington," he repeated the way she'd pronounced it, a wide grin on his face. "That's cute."
"I can't help the way I talk."
"I know. I said it was cute. Just like it's cute when my son comes to me and says to warsh him cause I know where he got that from."
A bumpy laugh tumbled free at his words. "I guess I been warshin' him quite a few times by now."
"He don't get as dirty as Roxy does. She's the one that attracts dirt like nothing else. She don't wanna wear dresses or skirts to school no more cause the boys might see her underwear when she goes climbing on the monkey bars."
They shared a laugh before Loretta asked, "That's why she don't wanna wear dresses?"
"Sure is. It drives Cilla nuts. She thinks a girl should be wearing a dress to school."
"That's what it was like in our day but it don't matter now, does it?"
"Not to her school it doesn't. Cilla's just...she gets stuck on the silliest stuff sometimes. I guess that's what you're like at twenty one."
"My Doo does that too, get real upset about something I don't think matters. That's what being married is like."
Elvis swallowed hard. "Cilla and I ain't married."
Of course Loretta would know that much but somehow he felt the need to vocalize it.
"That's not for me to judge," Loretta said. "I'm not the one who decides how you do things."
"I don't know what I'm doing half the time." He bent down, rubbing a hand through his hair, tousling it in the process.
"Neither do I."
"But you know that you love your husband, right?"
"Yes." Not an ounce of hesitation.
"Well you see I-" He blew out a sigh. "I shouldn't be talkin' to you about that stuff."
"Ain't we friends now?"
"Yes..."
"So why not? I don't know her but I'm gettin' to know you."
"The thing is...when I first met her she was...a child...I shouldn't say that to you cause so were you when you met your husband too. I needed someone at that time. In 1963 she came to live with me and I met Maxine not long after that."
"The kids mother?"
"Yeah. She'd work for me at first and we became friends of sorts. Just before Christmas that year their apartment complex burned down."
"Roxanne didn't tell me about that," Loretta said sympathetically. "That poor little thing."
"She was...it was a very hard time. She's still having nightmares about that, and about her mother dyin'. So anyway, Maxine and Roxanne started staying at Graceland December 17th of 63. Cilla- she was real young then, just outta school- she didn't like that at all. She'd be so nasty about it. So one day I made Roxanne and Maxine go shopping for some clothes cause they lost everything in that fire. Once they left Cilla came and asked me if they were gone now. She had a fit about them spendin' Christmas at Graceland so I told her that she could go to her parents over the holidays if it bothered her so much. She went on runnin' upstairs to pack, then comes downstairs just trying to...manipulate me I guess. Make me throw Maxine and Roxanne out over Christmas. We start having that fight and she-"
Elvis' heart skipped a beat as the memory of said event really hit him. "She called Roxanne a little bastard."
Loretta was trying not to show a negative reaction, but failed as her face contorted in shock and disgust.
"Back then I said I wouldn't have nothin' of that. And I invited that woman, who called my kid somethin' like that back into my house and I have her takin' care of both of them. It ain't right. What kind of dad am I?"
"Some of the sitters we had was awful with my kids and I was in some motel room not knowin' if they been to school or had a good meal to eat. We fired so many sitters you wouldn't believe it."
"You had to go and provide for em cause someone had to. And at least you fired them. If someone called your kid a name you'd fire them and never let em be around em again."
"I wasn't never datin' none of those sitters."
"So that makes it right? That I'm dating a woman who don't like my kids? Cause she really don't. I thought maybe it's just cause they're not hers but...you've been here two weeks and they've grown on you more than they did on her in two years."
"Well, I got kids of my own and that makes you see it different. I mean, I went from being a kid to being a mommy so I wasn't never in her place."
"Do you want her looking after your kids? Now be honest." Loretta hesitated before admitting that she did not. Elvis took the answer in, his carved features bland.
"Roxanne never heard it. She doesn't know that...what Cilla said. Maxine, she knew. And I promised that Cilla wasn't never gonna come back." He let out a mirthless laugh.
"You don't have to let her come back," Loretta said carefully. "If you ain't in love and you don't trust her with your babies-"
"I just...I had a girl I might've been in love with back in the day. I screwed that up by makin' her wait cause my management said I should. Then Maxine- we got engaged and...it wasn't like they said. That engagement was off by the time she died. She was gonna take Roxanne and run, leave Little Elvis with me." Elvis looked at Loretta closely to gauge her reaction. "Man, you gotta think that I'm some kind of...you've been with one man and I..."
"...don't have no luck with the ladies," Loretta finished for him.
Elvis laughed despite the seriousness of the issue. "That's about right. I don't wanna be alone and I want...I guess I want somethin' like a mother for my kids."
"There's more women than Priscilla," Loretta said, then backtracked, "I shouldn't be tellin' you what to do but you could find someone else who'll love the three of you."
"That's something that's hard to find, honey. Women wanna have their own kids, not take care of mine. Not those women anyway, the ones that want me. I wouldn't find no girl like you."
"Why, what would you want with a country girl like me?"
Elvis frowned. "Don't you act like you ain't a pretty lady. I won't have a good woman talkin' like that about herself."
"Well, I'm not as pretty as them women. I know that."
"What women?"
"You know the ones that- it don't matter, does it? I shouldn't be sayin' much anyhow cause I never met Priscilla a day in my life. I talked to her once on the phone for-"
"What?" Elvis cut her off, eyes growing wide. "You talked to her when?"
"Last Wednesday or Thursday, there about. You know how my housekeeper was callin' every day while Priscilla was still at the house?" She paused, waiting for Elvis to respond with a nod before going on. "So the phone was ringing and I think it's Gloria so I answered which I hope was alright."
"What did she say to you?" Elvis asked with trepidation.
"She didn't know who I was at first but once she figured that out she said for me to go home cause this ain't doin' anything for any of us."
"And what else?"
"Hung up."
Elvis let out a groan. "Go figure."
"I'm guessin' Doo walked in and she had to so he wouldn't know what she was doin'. Cause we only got one phone that's right where everyone can hear your conversation."
"Why do you have just one phone?"
"Cause that's how Doo wants it."
Elvis swallowed the response that lingered on his tongue. He after all did not know Doolittle either- and he couldn't even claim to have spoken to the man. The only person he knew who knew the man was Loretta herself.
Maybe he had said too much today. Maybe they both had. But the words already spoken could not be taken back. Because it felt so good to talk to someone who had to raised her children the way he was forced to raise his. Someone who understood how guilt ate you alive but there was no other way. Because there were million dollar contracts, people who would be glad to see you lose every dime and even more people who depended on you to make a living.
"Loretta," Elvis broke the lingering silence between them. "I'm glad that we could talk a bit."
"I'll sure miss you all when it's time to go."
"Yeah." Elvis rose to his feet, the dread over the end of the swap engulfing him. "Me too."
~*~
I thought this would be a really short chapter but Loretta and Elvis wanted to have a decent length conversation. Suits me right.