Free Spoken from the Heart by Laura Bush Page B

fifth of her seven marriages. She married and divorced Regan's dad two times. Indeed, Wanda believed in divorce almost as much as marriage, and she moved with each tying or untying of the knot. By the time Regan was in junior high, Wanda was married to Jerry Cooper, whom she would marry and divorce three times. We thought Jerry was the perfect stepfather. Jerry and Wanda had bought a red Thunderbird convertible for Jan, Regan's older sister, in the hope of persuading Jan to annul her hasty marriage to Mike Morse, who in the infinitely small world of Midland, was the son of Ann and Joe Morse, our next-door neighbors on Princeton Avenue. Jan ignored the car and stayed married to Mike, and Regan was given the keys to the Thunderbird. Regan had that Thunderbird longer than Jan had Mike. Regan first took it for a spin when we were still thirteen years old and in the eighth grade, before we got our official licenses. We used to drive around in that or in her mother's pink Nash Rambler, a stubby car that we nicknamed "the pink pig."
    After we got our licenses, all of my friends went out driving. We drove to the three drive-in movie theaters that ringed Midland. Whoever was behind the wheel would pull over before we reached the entrance, and half of the crowd in the car would squeeze into the trunk to avoid paying the admission fee. After we parked, one of us would have to sneak out and open the trunk to release the stowaways. We drove to the drive-in restaurants, like Agnes's or A & W. Sometimes Regan and I headed out alone to Mr. X's, on the dicier south side of town, where they served taquitos, steak fingers, and fried chicken livers and where, as we grew older, we could smoke without being seen.
    But if we wanted to be seen in Midland, we went to Agnes's. Friday and Saturday nights now consisted of trips to the movies and Cokes at Agnes's. Agnes herself was a strong, stocky West Texas woman with a broad back from bending over hot stoves and steel gray hair wrapped in a knot on top of her head. Once I watched her raise her hand and slap a boy across the cheek in the parking lot because she thought he was being smart-alecky. But every night Agnes's would fill with cars. No one ever got out; we sat in our seats and waited for the carhops and eased the wheels forward or back as new cars pulled up and old ones drove off. Sometimes we went twice in one night. When couples left, it was usually to go out in the country, to the dark, flat stretches of unpaved road past the city loop, to park and then head back, so they could tell their parents the truth, that they had just come from Agnes's.
    We were lucky in Midland to have so many places to drive. In other, smaller West Texas towns, there were no drive-ins or movies. Night after night, restless kids cruised the town square, making endless loops around the local city hall and the courthouse.
    No one ever thought we were too young to drive. At age thirteen, we attended driver's education classes in the San Jacinto Junior High auditorium to prepare for the written test. Some boys got cars when they turned fourteen, not because their parents were wealthy but because they worked at jobs after school. They had '57 Chevys and old Fords, whatever they found cheap or used. The rest of us simply borrowed from the garages of our parents.
    Around Easter of my fourteenth year, my mother lost the last of her babies, another boy, this one too early even to name.
    When he took my mother to the hospital, my father left her car keys for me. One evening, I carefully backed Mother's Ford Fairlane out of our driveway and drove down the side streets to Agnes's. I pulled in, placed my order, and then I had to move. That part I was not prepared for. I managed to get the car into reverse, only to back straight into a pole in the parking lot.
    Chastened, I studied for my written test, making notes with my No. 2 pencils, and I practiced in the car with my mother. She took me to the one place near our house where