Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger

by Lee Smith

  “I can’t afford it.” Dar drinks her Rusty Nail. “Also, if I did that, then I’d have to pay for all the special ed, which he’s getting for free now. It’s sort of a Catch-22 situation.”

  The personage puts the tiramisu down in front of Jeffrey; it is nothing at all like a sundae. It’s like pudding, which he hates. The girl at the table behind them suddenly runs out by herself, creating a little breeze; the boy follows more slowly, looking harassed and disconsolate (words). Now there is a wide margin of empty tables around the loud men, no more regular diners except for Jeffrey and Dar and Lindsay.

  Jeffrey is interested in these men. He has never seen any men like them. They radiate a kind of vitality (word) that he finds enchanting. Though some appear to be a little younger, mostly they are great big middle-aged men with their hair still on. Men in the prime of life, Jeffrey thinks. This phrase just comes to him. They wear huge Hawaaian shirts in outrageous (word) colors and patterns. These shirts hang loosely over but don’t really hide their big tight bellies. They have baggy Bermuda shorts. They have white veiny muscled legs which end up in shiny loafers or maybe athletic shoes, new looking, as if they have just bought them for this trip.

  But it is their manner that Jeffrey especially likes. These are brash (word), confident, public men, happy men. Their cheeks are red, their eyes snap and sparkle, they throw back their heads to laugh, they laugh so hard they have to wipe their eyes with their big white napkins.

  Then the guy on the end jumps up and announces, “Okay! Showtime! Horse walks into a bar — “ All the other men groan in unison (word), drowning him out. This does not seem to bother the man one bit. “So a horse walks into a bar,” he shouts, striding back and forth, “and the bartender says, ‘Hey buddy, why the long face?’ “ When the other men whistle and boo and throw their napkins at him, he does a funny skedaddle walk, like a clown, back to his chair.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Dar rolls her eyes.

  “I don’t get it,” Lindsay says.

  “Horse,” Jeffrey explains. “Horses have long faces.”

  “Oh!” Lindsay starts giggling.

  A tall guy with curly blond hair and thick glasses takes the floor. His yellow shirt has red lobsters on it. “So a three-legged dog walks into a bar and climbs up on a stool and orders a beer, then another, then another, looking all around. Finally a cowboy says, ‘Okay, dog, what are you doing in this town?’ Dog says, ‘I’m looking for the fellow that shot my paw.’ “

  Everybody groans, but Jeffrey laughs so hard he starts choking. “Paw,” he explains to Lindsay. “See, it’s a dog . . .”

  “I got it,” she says, laughing too.

  Dar is not laughing. She does not like jokes and has only told one of them in her whole life, so far as Jeffrey can remember. He picks up a spoon and starts eating his tiramisu very slowly, so they won’t have to leave.

  “All right!” The fattest man hops up and does a funny duck waddle over to the open area which has now become a stage. The bar has emptied out, people moving their chairs into the dining area to watch. The fat man wipes his glistening face and puts his handkerchief back in his pocket. He has round blue eyes, like marbles, and fat hands with fingers like hot dogs.

  “It’s been a very busy morning at the police station,” he begins. “Two cops have gone out on a robbery call, two cops have gone out on a murder call, and another cop has just radioed in for additional help at a wreck when the phone rings again and the guy at the desk picks it up. ‘Hello?’ he says.

  “ ‘Help! Help!’ a woman screams into the receiver.

  “ ‘Whatsa matter, lady?’ the policeman asks.

  “ ‘Oh, please, you’ve got to help me!’ the woman cries. ‘I’ve got an elephant in my backyard.’

  “ ‘Oh, for Pete’s sake!’ the policeman says. ‘Look, lady, I’ve got a wreck, a robbery, and a murder to deal with this morning. Whaddya expect me to do about an elephant? Take him to the zoo!’ He slams down the phone.

  “But the next morning he’s feeling guilty about this, so he calls the woman back and says, ‘Okay, lady, what happened to the elephant?’

  “ ‘Oh, hi there,’ she says. ‘Thanks so much for the tip. He loved the zoo, so this afternoon, I’m going to take him to the movies!’ “

  The fat man duck-waddles back to the table, to great laughter and applause.

  “I think it’s time for us to go back to the hotel,” Dar says. “We’ve got another long day tomorrow.”

  “Just a minute, Mom,” says Jeffrey. He has almost finished his tiramisu.

  A trim little white-haired guy, maybe the oldest, steps up smartly. He salutes the table of men, then bows to Dar and Lindsay, which seems to disconcert (word) them, though it does not disconcert Jeffrey, who waves his spoon and grins right back at him.

  “Military,” Lindsay whispers to Dar.

  Sure enough, “You guys may not know I was once in the army,” the little man begins. “The first day, they gave me a comb. Then they cut off all my hair. The second day, they gave me a toothbrush. Then they pulled seven of my teeth. The third day, they gave me a jockstrap . . . and now they’ve been looking for me for forty-seven years!” He marches back to his place.

  Even Dar laughs at this one. But she picks up her purse just as the personage arrives with a tray of fresh drinks, two Rusty Nails and another Coke. “We didn’t order these,” she says in her professor voice. “In fact, I’d like the check now, please.”

  “The check has already been taken care of by those gentlemen over there. They send you their compliments, and hope very much that they haven’t spoiled your dinner.”

  Dar looks over at the men, who raise their glasses as one. “To the ladies!” they shout. Dar blushes, smiles, and raises her own glass in their direction. “Thank you,” she calls.

  A younger guy with a buzz cut gets up next, he looks like he’s about dad age, though Jeffrey cannot imagine any dad at his school ever acting like this.

  “Waal, old Farmer Jones raises pigs,” the dad-type guy begins in a fake country accent, “and one time he had this special baby pig he just fell in love with, see, that had a wonderful personality. So he was just spoiling this little pig to death. The little pig especially loved apples, see, so every day old Farmer Jones would pick him up and hold him up in the apple tree, so he could eat an apple. But then the little pig started getting big, and then he started getting bigger and bigger, and it was all that old Farmer Jones could do to hold him up there while he ate his apple. So his friend comes along, and he says, ‘Wouldn’t it be a lot quicker if you just picked an apple off the tree, and put it down on the ground for the pig?’ Waal, old Farmer Jones stared at his friend for a while, and then he said, ‘Lester, time don’t mean nothing to a pig.’ “

  Though the men laugh and pound on the table, ordering more beer, Jeffrey thinks this is a stupid joke. In fact, it’s the worst joke he’s ever heard in his life. But then suddenly, Jeffrey thinks of a joke himself. This joke simply comes to him, just like that. Before he has time to think about it, before he even knows what he’s doing, he’s on his feet, he’s dodging his mother’s outstretched hand, he’s in the center of the floor. Everybody is looking at him.

  “Okay! Showtime! Dyslexic horse walks into a bra!” Silence. Jeffrey looks around the restaurant at all their still white faces, like so many moons. What were they thinking? he will wonder years later. What in the world were they thinking, to see this skinny knock-kneed child, this pale, unlikely little boy come forward in such a place to tell his joke? Jeffrey swallows hard. “Okay! I said, dyslexic horse walks into a bra . . .” The laughter rises with a roar like a freight train, as the men at the table leap to their feet and everybody in the restaurant claps and whistles and cheers for him. For him, Jeffrey, the formerly Invisible Boy.

  More jokes follow, many more jokes, doctor jokes and psychiatrist jokes and yo’ mama jokes and sex jokes about Bill Clinton. They took a poll of American women, and they asked, “Would you have an aff
air with Bill Clinton?” and 70 percent said, “Never again.” More drinks follow too. Dar and Lindsay and Jeffrey stay until the very end of the evening, Dar firmly refusing all offers of a ride back to their hotel with the large men, who finally give up and pile into their rented vans.

  “Hey!” Jeffrey yells as the last van pulls out of the parking lot. “Hey! Who are you guys, anyway?”

  “Toastmasters!” the fat man, driving, yells back. “From Cincinnati!”

  “What are toastmasters?” Lindsay asks.

  “Some kind of a club, I think. Oh God, I feel terrible.” Dar sinks down on the curb, her long skirt dragging in the sand.

  “Mom,” Jeffrey says. “What are you doing? You’ve got to drive us back.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t possibly drive,” Dar says. “Lindsay?”

  “Are you kidding? I’m not even sure I can walk.” Lindsay grabs Jeffrey’s shoulder for support.

  Jeffrey looks around. Their rental car, a white Ford Escort, is the last one left in the parking lot. Somebody has already turned off the pink neon salute sign and all those little twinkling lights. The restaurant sits like a dark square box on the beach with the glistening sea stretched out beyond it,as far as the eye can see. This phrase just comes to Jeffrey. A little breeze comes up. And there they are, Jeffrey and Dar and Lindsay, all alone in the Salute parking lot, out in the breezy, starry night.

  “Well, come on, then,” he says, pulling his mother’s hand.

  In the middle, Jeffrey escorts the women back to the hotel, walking them all the way down Duval Street where he sees more sights than you can possibly imagine, weirder people than he has seen in the National Enquirer or the Midnight Sun, while sitting in the chair with Mrs. Hamster. Men dressed as women and women dressed as men and one woman wearing almost nothing at all except black boots and a studded dog collar around her neck with the leash trailing down along the sidewalk behind her. “Hi honey,” this one says. “Hi there,” says Jeffrey. An old man wearing a name tag throws up in an alley where six-toed cats forage (word) among the garbage cans.

  Finally they reach their hotel and take the elevator up together, dropping Lindsay off at her room on the third floor. Luckily Jeffrey remembers their own room number, which Dar has forgotten. “I’m going to rest for just a minute,” she says, lying down on her double bed without even brushing her teeth. She falls asleep instantly, mouth open. She is heavily intoxicated (word), Jeffrey knows.

  But he has never felt more awake in his life. He slides open the door of the balcony and goes outside to lean over the rail and look out over the shining water. The warm wind makes a clattering sound in the palm trees. It caresses Jeffrey’s face. He stands out there for a long time, he’s not even tired. A little curved moon like a comma (simile) rides in the sky among all those stars. “Hey Rick,” Jeffrey says, looking up.

  “Hey Jeff,” Rick answers. His voice comes from nowhere and everywhere all at once, it fills the entire enchanted evening. Knock, knock. — Who’s there? — Sam ‘n’ Janet. — Sam ‘n’ Janet who? — Sam ‘n’ Janet Evening. Jeffrey will learn this joke later, from a book.

  As soon as he gets back to Washington, he will go to the library and check out three joke books, and then three more, as many as they will loan him at a time. He will learn them all: knock-knock jokes, chicken jokes, lightbulb jokes, yo’ mama jokes. He practices telling them in front of the full-length mirror in the bathroom. He gets so he can tell them real fast, rat-a-tat-tat. He practices walking in funny ways. Dar begs him to stop, but he won’t. He signs up for the Moriarty Middle School Talent Show. He works up routines, trying them out on Dennis Levering, who cracks up, and the Hamsters, who titter and shake uncontrollably. But Dar can’t even watch. “Honey, this makes me so nervous,” she says. He makes her buy him a shiny black suit and a red bow tie, which he will wear in the talent show, with his old Keds and his shirttails hanging out. Dar talks to his teacher. “You don’t have to do this,” she tells him right before the show. But just then the doorbell rings and it is Mr. Hamster, bringing Jeffrey an old felt hat. “Who in the world was that little man?” Dar asks, closing the door. Jeffrey tries the hat on in front of the hall mirror, bending the brim first this way, then that. The hat is perfect.Showtime!

  On the way into the auditorium, he sees Sean Robertson and Max Gruenwald and tells them a mean joke, meaner than they are. Why did Helen Keller have a burn on the right side of her face? — She answered the iron. — Why did Helen Keller have a burn on the left side of her face? — They called back. Sean and Max have white, startled, pimply faces. Jeffrey sweeps past them down the aisle to the front, where he is directed backstage into the greenroom. There are a dozen contestants. He goes on ninth, following Rob Acton’s band and Tiffany Bell doing acrobatics and Lydia Wang who is widely considered a child prodigy on the violin. Lydia wins, of course, but Jeffrey will take second place, and he is the one who will get a standing ovation and be hugged by the voluptuous Miss Hanratty to the envy of all as she smashes his face into her huge breasts so hard he sees stars in front of his eyes, a harbinger (word) of things to come.

  Big Girl

  How did this happen?” the woman asks me so soft I have to lean up in the chair to hear. “When did it start?” A good question. But when does anything start? How far back do you have to go? I was a big girl, now I’m a big woman. My life has been different because of it. Many avenues of opportunity are closed off to a big girl. You can’t be a majorette, for instance. You can’t be a cheerleader. You dress and undress in the shower stall at gym class. You stand in the back for group pictures. If you ever get elected to anything, it’s always treasurer. I never had a date in high school. Boys didn’t even notice my big breasts because I was big all over, like the Pillsbury Doughboy, remember him? On the packages of pizza mix and cake mix? I have opened a number of those packages in my time, I might as well admit it. Obviously I’m not a picky eater. Everybody has to be something, I reckon, and I’m a great cook. I tell you that in all honesty. I’m known far and wide for my cakes, my three-cheese lasagna, my chicken and biscuits, and especially my chocolate pecan pie — Billy’s favorite.

  Used to be his favorite, I should say! During the first six years of our marriage, Billy gained forty pounds, which he complained about, but he didn’t really mean it. He needed to beef up some. He looked better than ever, in my opinion. Maybe I should have paid more attention last spring when he went out and bought that diet stuff at the Whole Earth Store in the mall and said he was going to get back in shape, but I just thought, isn’t that nice? A man has got to do something, after all, even a man that has got hurt and laid off, and they say walking is good for anybody, though it makes me short of breath, personally. I worked overtime while Billy walked. He walked all summer long.

  It never occurred to me to wonder if he had a destination.

  “Mrs. Sims, when did you start doing this?” the woman asks again. Her name tag says “Lois Rubin.” She’s one of those skinny, flat-chested women who wear turtleshell glasses and pull their hair straight back with a barrette and go around writing on clipboards. She’s not from around here. I bet she grew up rich. She’s rich now, big square-cut diamond ring plus a nice chip-diamond wedding band on her left hand. She’s just another do-good rich lady down here at the jailhouse occupying herself while her surgeon husband screws a nurse. Oh Lord! Now where did that come from? As a big girl, I’m used to hanging back and not just saying whatever pops into my head, the way I keep doing ever since they brought me in here. I swear, I don’t know what has got into me!

  Billy always said he was going to get me a diamond but he never did. Though he had the best intentions in the world, poor thing, I still believe this. But life can snatch you up and mess with you in many different ways. Sweet, sweet Billy Sims. None of this is his fault, you can count on that.

  I take full responsibility for everything.

  “Mrs. Sims. Dee Ann.” Lois Rubin looks down at her clipboard. “High school graduate, good grades, s
tudent government, excellent work record in a number of positions. What happened to you?”

  This is the same question asked earlier in the day by my preacher, Rev. Buford Long. Then he laid his hand on my forehead like Jesus and announced he has revved up the prayer chain for me. “Thanks but no thanks,” I said. “Get him out of here,” I told the deputy, who did it, grinning. This deputy’s name is Sam Hicks. Rev. Buford Long was just sputtering and spewing all the way out the door. “Now Dee Ann Sims, I know you are a good girl,” he said, working his neck like a chicken. “Why, you are one of my own! I know you don’t mean that.” He had on this powder blue suit. I knew his wife, Ruth, would be waiting outside in the car, just primed to get the story so she could spread it all over town. All she ever brings to church suppers is three-bean salad.

  “Mrs. Sims, let’s go back to the beginning,” Lois Rubin says so soft her voice is like a voice in my own head. “How did this start?”

  THE TRUTH IS THAT most times, you don’t even know something has started until you’re right in the middle of it, and even then, you don’t necessarily recognize what it is. It creeps up on you, like weight.

  You wouldn’t believe it to look at me now, but I started out as a beanpole. Then they sent Sissy and me to the mission school, where my job was to work in the kitchen. By the time I started working for Mrs. Hawthorne and switched over to regular school, I was about like I am now. I always felt like there was another girl, a little bird girl, trapped inside me. She is quick and fast. She dips and soars. She is everything I’m not. I walked around with her wings beating, beating, beating inside my chest to get out.

  I was not a thing like my mama who was movie-star, drop-dead gorgeous, she looked like Elizabeth Taylor. I have a picture of her in my pocket book right now, which of course they have locked away someplace. I remember being with Mama one time on the street, in Knoxville, downtown, and a man came up and put his hand on her arm. “Who are you?” he said. “Who are you?” I don’t remember what she said or what happened after that, whether she went off with him or not. I do remember holding Sissy’s hand on the street. I always took good care of Sissy when Mama went off “seeking a better association” as she said. And I was glad for Sissy when she got adopted, though she won’t hardly give me the time of day now that she has married rich and lives in Boca Raton, Florida. I haven’t heard a word from her since last Christmas when we got a basket full of fruit and a card with a picture of their house on it and “Cecelia and Lyman Petersen” in fancy printing. It’s a big house too. Pink stucco with palm trees. And I don’t care for fruit.