Getting the Important Things Right

by Padgett Gerler

  Percy planned every detail of his open house and kept it secret until the day of the event. He sent invitations to all of his friends and customers and local government officials. Biker buddies were coming from as far away as Florida. Suzanne and Mary Sue said they wouldn’t miss it for the world. Percy had responses from city council members, two state legislators, and the mayor. The mayor even agreed to assist Lydia in unveiling the new name of Percy’s business.

  Percy hired a hot dog vendor to set up shop in the parking lot of the garage so that he could give hot dogs to all his guests. He also had a popcorn machine cranking out hot popcorn all afternoon. He had galvanized tubs of Yoo-hoo chocolate soda, Orange Crush, and Cheer Wine. And he filled two huge buckets with Moon Pies and Twinkies. And there were balloons—hundreds of helium-filled balloons for all the children who showed up.

  The garage parking lot filled with cars, and the overflow parked across the street in the lot by Mr. Sumner’s flower shop. Mayor Thorpe showed up and was making the rounds, shaking hands and kissing babies. I saw legislator Jerry Ralston deep in conversation with Snake; he wanted a bike and needed Snake’s expert opinion. Miss Marilee Truelove came roaring up on the back of Turtle’s bike. She was decked out in jeans, boots, and a helmet. She hopped off Turtle’s motorcycle, grabbed Percy in a bear hug, and planted a huge kiss right on his lips. Lydia saw her and ran through the crowd to give her a hug. Turtle’s affection had transformed Miss Marilee’s life.

  Oops, Vickie, and I had told Percy that we’d make sure the tubs stayed filled with drinks and the buckets stayed filled with Moon Pies and Twinkies. I was also charged with taking pictures. As guests arrived, I’d make them pose, like they were on the red carpet. I was snapping away when I saw The Colonel’s car pull into the lot across the street. Ma’am emerged, decked out as if she were going to a garden party. She had on a yellow sundress over crinolines, high heel sandals, and white gloves. Thank god she wasn’t carrying a parasol. The Colonel offered Ma’am his arm, and the two of them walked across the street and stood at the fringes of the crowd. Usually The Colonel is the life of the party, the center of attention; I guess the lack of alcohol and the presence of burly bikers prevented my father from filling his party role. Ma’am clung to The Colonel, her eyes darting from tattooed bicep to tattooed bicep. She clearly felt uncomfortable and out of place.

  Percy made the rounds of his guests, thanking them all for coming and basking in everyone’s praise and congratulations. When he got to Ma’am and The Colonel, he was too high on his happiness to notice their iciness. He put his arms around our mother and gave her a huge hug before she had a chance to say, “Don’t smudge Ma’am’s…” I snapped a picture, the only picture I have of Ma’am in the arms of any of her children. I love that picture, cherish that picture. I’m just glad her face is hidden in the photo; I don’t want to see the grimace that I’m sure she is wearing.

  When the hot dogs and drinks ran out, Percy hopped up on a make-shift stage that he had constructed just for the grand opening of his business. Lydia and Mayor Thorpe joined him. Lydia stood to one end of the drape that covered the name of Percy’s garage while Mayor Thorpe stood at the other.

  Percy raised his arms to silence the crowd and, once again, thanked everyone for coming. Someone yelled for Percy to sing us a song. I think it was Suzanne. Percy said we’d have to come to church to hear him sing, that this day was for motorcycles only. Then he asked Lydia and Mayor Thorpe to yank the drape and reveal the new name of Percy’s garage. There, arched high above Percy’s head in curlicue pink neon was

  Pussy’s

  The crowd erupted in cheers. Percy was riding the wave of excitement and didn’t notice when Ma’am and The Colonel gasped, turned, and retreated to their car.

  Forty-three

  We were gathered at The Colonel and Ma’am’s house for Thanksgiving dinner. No, Ma’am had not begun cooking all of a sudden. But as the family grew, we thought it would be a good idea to celebrate Thanksgiving together. For reasons we didn’t thoroughly examine, our parents’ house seemed like the right place to congregate.

  Everyone was there except Garth. He had decided to go hunting that Thanksgiving, but that suited me just fine. Our marriage had deteriorated so badly that he could have been spending the holiday with his second family on the edge of town, and I wouldn’t have much cared. Also, if Garth weren’t the center of attention at every gathering, he pouted and took it out on me, and I could surely live without his brooding and childish behavior. What’s more, I was still waiting for that appointment with the marriage counselor.

  Ma’am and the girls, as Ma’am called us, were in the kitchen. Ma’am was sitting at the kitchen table nursing a glass of wine while Oops, Vickie, Lydia, and I prepared the Thanksgiving dinner. Colonel Tom and Percy were in the living room, watching some ball game on the television.

  When the kitchen started getting hot and crowded, I excused myself from the preparation to set the dining table. I was at the hall linen closet retrieving the napkins and tablecloth when I heard Colonel Tom say to Percy, “When in the hell are you going to grow up and get a respectable job?”

  I peered around the corner to find my brother and father in their usual sparring positions. The Colonel was reared back in his easy chair, chest puffed out, jaw set, and knuckles white from clutching the arms of his chair. Percy was sitting on the edge of the sofa, hunched over, elbows on knees, eyes on floor. They were ready to go at it.

  “Colonel Tom, I do have a respectable job. I own my own business.”

  “Yeah, right, the only reason you have that grease pit is because Old Man Peterson wanted out, and you were sucker enough to put out good money for it.”

  “Colonel, I’ve worked with Mr. Peterson since I was a kid, and I’ve wanted to own that place since I was thirteen and first stepped foot in it. You may not believe it, but I’ve worked very hard for my business.”

  “For what? So you can tinker with toys? What kind of man does that? Percy, I didn’t raise my son to be a mechanic!”

  “Colonel, I think you can bring respect and dignity to any job you do, just as long as you respect yourself for doing it. I respect the job I do and love my work. I look forward to opening my shop every morning. Not many people can say that.”

  “But you’re a goddamn grease monkey!”

  Exasperated because he wasn’t getting anywhere with his argument, Percy gave The Colonel an uncharacteristically flippant response: “Well, somebody’s got to do it, Pops!”

  “You little smartass, you watch how you’re talking to your father!”

  And Percy still trained his eyes on the floor as The Colonel continued his tirade.

  “And you’re raising my granddaughter in a matchbox over that grease pit.”

  “Colonel, my apartment is small, but it suits Lydia and me just fine. And it’s convenient. I can keep an eye on my business at all times and can leave home and be at work in thirty seconds. Can’t beat that!”

  “But, Percy, Lydia’s room is the size of a walk-in closet!”

  “She loves her room, Colonel Tom. She calls it her cocoon and decorates it any way she pleases. And she has just as much room as Sis, Oops, and I had when we shared a room. What’s more, are you forgetting that Lydia has another bedroom at Vickie’s house? How many kids can say they have two rooms all to themselves?”

  “And that’s another thing: you and Vickie should be raising that child together.”

  That remark nearly sent me hurtling with rage from the hallway into the living room. But, instead, I clenched my teeth and remained planted out of my father’s sight. Percy and Vickie were doing a much better job parenting apart than Colonel and Ma’am did together. I was sure that Percy was thinking the same thing, but he’d never say it to Colonel Tom.

  Our father probably knew that’s what Percy was thinking, as well, so before his son could get a chance to respond, The Colonel said, “And look at your arms, covered in vulgar tattoos. You look like a goddamn carnival bar
ker.”

  Percy took a deep breath, clenched his jaw, and said, “Colonel, I got my first tattoo because I loved Mr. Peterson, and he had a tattoo. I wanted to be like him—in every way. I got my second tattoo because my first pissed you off so badly. I’ve gotten all the rest to fit in with my customers. Colonel Tom, the business has quadrupled since I took over the garage, and I believe that’s happened because, in addition to offering good service, I’ve worked to fit in. My customers trust me because they see me as one of them.”

  “But why the hell did you go and name your business Pussy’s? Have you no shame, no pride in your name?”

  “Pride? For god’s sake, Colonel, you named me a pussy name like Percy just to show me that you were boss. I had no choice but to laugh at myself. Everybody else did.”

  With that remark The Colonel’s face turned scarlet, and he pounded his fist on the table beside his chair, catapulting his beer into the air, spewing it over Ma’am’s Oriental rug. The Colonel, though, was too irate to notice.

  “Pussy name? What in the hell are you talking about? My aeronautical engineering professor at West Point was General Percival Charbonneau. Everyone called him General Percy, and there was absolutely nothing pussy about him. He was a real man. He had more integrity in his little finger than you and I have in both our bodies put together. His course was a flaming bitch, but I was determined to pass his class because I wanted General Percy’s respect. I struggled my ass off in that class, and he respected me for my efforts. With his help I squeaked by with a C minus. My own father threw a shit fit over that C minus, but I was prouder of that grade than any other I earned at West Point. And I named my firstborn, my only son, after the finest man I’ve ever known.”

  After a lengthy stunned silence, Percy croaked, “Colonel Tom, why didn’t you ever tell me that?”

  And, in true Colonel fashion, our father replied, “You little shit, I’ve told you before that I am your father, and I don’t ever have to explain myself to you.”

  Without another word The Colonel turned his attention back to his ballgame.

  And Percy, shaking his head in confusion, wandered into the kitchen, wondering what other secrets The Colonel was hiding.

  Forty-four

  The Colonel would still be on campus overseeing his Turds and Oops was in Richmond at Mathletes state competition, but I was certain Ma’am would be at home. She would have had her bath and done her primping and would be into her preparing-the-drinks-and-washing-the-potatoes-for-baking phase of her day. Her car was in the driveway, but I didn’t hear the customary click of her heels down the hall when I knocked. I gave her plenty of time to get to the door from any point in the house, but there was only silence.

  Normally, I’d have barged on into my parents’ home without even knocking, but the homeowners bordering the University campus, including Ma’am and The Colonel, had ended their open-door policy. Drunken frat boys had begun wandering into their homes in the middle of the night, crashing, half naked, on their sofas, leaving a puddle of vomit on their Oriental rugs. Ma’am wasn’t too upset about the half-naked, drunken frat boys, but she couldn’t abide vomit on her family heirlooms. So she locked the doors and gave each of us kids a key to the house.

  I fished around in the bottom of my purse until I came up with mine. Once I had let myself in, I wandered down the hall, through the dining room, and into the kitchen. There I found the reason my mother had not answered the door when I had knocked.

  She was lying, face down, in a pool of her own blood. Her arms and legs were flung wide, and her dress was hiked up around her thighs. Lying in her own blood would not have bothered my mother as much as her unladylike pose and her exposed legs.

  I should have been in a panic at seeing my mother in that condition, but we had become so accustomed to her spells that we just cleaned her up, stood her up, and swept the episode under the heirloom Oriental. That rug was getting mighty lumpy. It hurt my heart to see my beautiful mother in such a state, but I had my own lumpy rug, and I had given up long ago trying to fix my mother’s life.

  I turned Ma’am over, and, without even opening her eyes, she slurred the word, “Clumsy.”

  I was weary of hearing that all-encompassing excuse.

  I examined her latest injury and decided that this was one I couldn’t handle alone. She had hit her eyebrow somewhere between standing and sprawling and had given herself a major gash—one that would require more than a band-aid. I ran to the linen closet for a few clean wash clothes and returned to the kitchen to soak them with cold water. I cleaned Ma’am up as best I could, pulled her skirt back to a ladylike position, and helped her over to a kitchen chair. I ordered her to steady herself by holding onto the table and to apply a cold, wet compress to her wound. Then I set about cleaning up the mess her accident had made on the kitchen floor.

  By the time I had the kitchen back to normal, Ma’am had regained her faculties—those faculties that weren’t permanently pickled. She kept mumbling her clumsy excuse, and I just ignored it as I had learned to do so long ago. I told her that we were headed to the emergency room to have her wound stitched, and she began to protest. I ignored her protests, too.

  Ma’am had gotten so frail, it was easy to herd her out of the house and into my car. As we drove to the hospital, she sat with her petite ankles crossed, her skirt smoothed wrinkleless, her free hand resting in her lap, and her other hand holding a bloody wet rag against her gashed brow. She looked as if she were made up of puzzle pieces from two different puzzles. The pieces just didn’t fit together—didn’t seem to make a true picture.

  And throughout the ride my mother practiced her doctor speech, that long, involved foolish story about what happened to cause her to cut her head. Of course, the word clumsy would find its way into the scenario, as well as heel catching on tile, grabbing, toppling, twirling, spinning, and what a silly sight she must have been. Naturally, she never mentioned the fact that she reeked of alcohol.

  Once we arrived at the emergency room, we sat for hours in orange plastic chairs. For all those hours I listened to my soft-spoken, gentle little mother tell anyone who glanced her way how her silly accident had happened. Each and every one of them looked at her with pity in their eyes. I hated them all for their pity. Just when I thought I had heard her story as many times as I could possibly stand without telling my own mother to shut up, someone called her name. We followed the voice and ended up in a curtained examining cubicle.

  A pretty young woman the color of coffee with lots of cream was waiting for us. She smiled sweetly and gently stroked my mother’s back as she told her to slip into her hospital gown so the doctor could take a look at her. She disappeared before my mother could explain that she really didn’t need to put on a hospital gown just to have a doctor look at her eyebrow, but since there was no one left to hear my mother’s protests, she decided she’d best just put on the tacky gown. I turned my back so that my modest mother could disrobe and re-cover herself in private. When I once again faced her, I found her gowned and perched on the gurney, ready for some attention.

  After another lengthy wait, in walked a kid I could have sworn I’d seen on the little league field on our drive over to the hospital. He introduced himself as Dr. Withers. His voice hadn’t changed, and I’m pretty sure he hadn’t started shaving. But he was smiley and chatty and seemed to know what he was talking about.

  When he asked what had happened, my mother, who had insisted upon telling everyone in the waiting room the details of her fall, suddenly became shy and just mumbled something unintelligible under her breath. Dr. Withers did not press but just smiled and began examining her. He had Ma’am sit on the edge of the gurney with her legs dangling over the side as he listened to her chest with a stethoscope. I was standing at her back as the doctor joined me so that he could press his stethoscope to her back. As he parted Ma’am’s gown, he and I both froze. Across my frail, soft-spoken mother’s back were bright purple stripes, stripes she could have gotten in only one
way. Dr. Withers looked at me with fear and a very large question mark in his eyes.

  All I could do was stare back at our little league player and shake my head, “No,” telling him in code that it just wasn’t safe to go there. My eyes could not tell him, though, that my back bore twin stripes. Once Dr. Withers realized that this visit was way too small to tackle all of Ma’am’s issues, he concentrated on stitching her brow. When he had completed the task, he disappeared without making eye contact with either of us.

  All the way home Ma’am honed her speech until it sounded somewhat plausible. When we arrived at the house, we found The Colonel sitting in front of the TV, watching the news. Ma’am skipped through the front door as if we girls had just spent the afternoon shopping and having watercress sandwiches at The Tea Room. She showed The Colonel her bandage and recited her story that she had been practicing on our ride home. She peppered her speech with clumsy and silly and twirl and told Colonel Tom every detail of her trip to the ER.

  Once she finished her tale, The Colonel said, “I found some really nice looking steaks at the market this afternoon—marbled just the way we like them. Do you want me to fire up the grill?”

  Ma’am said, “Sure, I’ll run throw the potatoes in the oven.”

  And then they headed toward the kitchen, arm in arm, without glancing my way.

  I walked out the front door, leaving it wide open. I didn’t give a shit if the entire Sigma Nu fraternity moved in and puked on the goddamn Oriental.

  And, for the life of me, I couldn’t remember why I had gone to Ma’am and Colonel Tom’s house in the first place.

  Forty-five

  A few months after the pregnancy scare, Oops showed up at my house with a geek in tow. And when I say geek, I mean the pocket-protector variety of geek. He wore his khakis hiked up to his armpits, creating high-water britches that exposed the white socks that he wore with his Bass Weejuns. He had on a button-down shirt, but he took button-down way too seriously. He had fastened it all the way to his chin, and his skinny neck was swimming in the ring that his collar made. He had also buttoned his cuffs, rather than rolling them up a few times like all the other high school boys. And he had on the requisite geek glasses—heavy black, square frames. Fortunately, he had no electrical tape holding them together on the bridge of his nose.