Gabby_ A Story of Courage and Hope - Alison Hanson [26]
“Hey, Dad,” she said. “Mom says she needs a buck.”
Spencer dutifully reached into his wallet to give her the money. He didn’t ask any questions.
When Gloria discovered what Gabby had done, she wasn’t happy. But she also noticed how carefully Gabby had worded her request. Though Gabby certainly was conniving, she hadn’t lied. Gloria had indeed said she needed a dollar. If Gabby wasn’t stuck in first grade, she could have gotten a gig as a politician’s speechwriter.
“Gabby was always so agreeable, so cute, and she was cunning in this charming way,” Gloria says. Melissa says that throughout her childhood, she watched Gabby’s ability to win over people and felt a mix of awe and envy.
Melissa, now a preschool teacher, is two years, two months, and two days older than Gabby. The sisters always have been very different. “When I was young, I was a nerd, playing Dungeons and Dragons,” Melissa says. “Gabby was highly social and gregarious. We had a lot of sibling rivalry, and we came to identify each other as opposites. For a while, she was a preppy. Later, I was a Goth. She was into horses and pop music and musical theater, so I wasn’t. I was into books.”
Melissa admits that she was jealous of Gabby’s social life. “I didn’t have a lot of friends, and when a friend of mine would be at the house, and Gabby played with us, it bothered me. I’d think: ‘You have so many of your own friends. Let me have my one friend, OK?’”
Gabby could be boy-crazy, too. In middle school, she and a friend made a list of the cutest boys in descending order. She was thrilled when number 3 accompanied her to a school dance. She was always very feminine, too, and very clothes conscious. Her morning would begin with a call to her best friend. “What are you wearing?” she’d ask. Gabby developed a fondness for leather jackets, vests, and long sweaters in the winter.
Though Gabby was mostly a Goody Two-shoes, she had her moments of quiet rebellion. After she entered her teens, there were nights when she’d dutifully kiss her parents good night, head into her bedroom, and close the door. Then she’d climb out her bedroom window—luckily it was on the ground floor—to meet a boyfriend. One night, someone Gloria knew saw Gabby and a girlfriend walking through the desert on their way to a convenience store, no doubt to meet boys. Gloria was informed, and from then on she kept better tabs on Gabby’s sweet-talking good-night routine.
In addition to boys, Gabby had a great appreciation for horses. She paid for her saddle and riding lessons by mucking out stalls, and when she was a teen, Spencer and Gloria helped her buy a horse, named Dink. Later she’d have another horse, Gus, which she nicknamed Buck-Stretcher, the slogan of El Campo Tire. She’d end up taking Buckstretcher with her to college. (“I learned a lot cleaning out those stalls,” Gabby would later say on the campaign stump. “It was good training, all of that manure-shoveling, for when I entered politics.”)
Looking back, Melissa says, “I think the reason my parents got Gabby that horse was so she’d be too tired and too busy to go after boys.” Gloria doesn’t dispute that. She says that plan worked “most of the time.”
But not always. When Gabby was fourteen, she and some other girls who rode together went to a weeklong horse show in Flagstaff. A young woman who worked at the stables served as their chaperone. One night, Gabby called Gloria. “Hey, Mom, I’m having a problem with my contact lenses,” she said.
Gloria recalls hearing loud music and what sounded like women whooping it up in the background. “Gabby, where are you?” Gloria asked.
“We’re in a bar,” Gabby said.
“A bar?” Gloria said. “And what’s all that screaming?”
“Well, it’s a male strip show,” Gabby told