by Tim Sandlin
He nodded. “After the two of you shouted at one another in Dot’s, I drove her home and she cried in the truck.”
I considered what this might mean. “Regret or manipulation?”
“It appeared as regret.”
“How would you know with Lydia?”
“She feels badly about what she did.”
“Then why doesn’t she say so?”
The outside door opened and Chet entered. He said, “It’s getting cold out there.”
Hank said, “Should be zero tonight.”
Great. Now I’m naked in front of a Blackfoot with a chain saw and a known homosexual. Chet sat on the changing bench and lit a cigarette, cool and calm as if he were waiting for a bus. I have this recurring dream where I’m in a crowd of well-dressed people and I’m nude but no one seems to notice. Must be a primal fear thing because the dream shrivels my penis.
“How’s Pete’s eulogy coming along?” Chet asked.
“What?”
“We truly appreciate you taking care of it. I know you and Pete didn’t always see eye to eye, but he respected your creative drive. Even though he never read one, I heard him say more than once that your novels are an achievement.”
I tried holding my hands, casually, so they covered me without it appearing that I was covering myself on purpose.
Chet lifted his face to look straight into my eyes. “I know you’ll do Pete right by your eulogy.”
Behind my back, the toilet flushed. The commode stall door opened and closed and Toinette said, “Can I tag along when you go to cut the Christmas tree?”
My manhood disappeared in a black forest of pubic hair.
***
“Looking at a woman as an object you can give pleasure to is just as bogus as looking at a woman as an object that can give pleasure to you. It’s still looking at the woman as an object.” Maurey downshifted on a grade, then hit the flats and punched the gears back into fourth. The woman was fearless in four-wheel drive. Ice meant nothing.
“But it makes me feel worthwhile when I save a woman.”
She rammed back into third for a corner. “You can’t save a woman by giving her an orgasm.”
Words to live by. “Even if she isn’t getting them in her normal life?”
“Right. Have you slept with this Gilia girl?”
“Of course not.”
“What ‘of course not’? You’ve slept with half the heifers in the Confederacy. It shouldn’t be unreasonable to ask if you’ve slept with someone you actually like.”
“Gilia’s a friend.”
“Since when are friends off limits?”
I looked out at the red willow wands sprouting from the snow crust and tried to come up with an explanation. “Friendship love is real; romantic love is conditional—don’t sleep with anyone else, don’t be a constant drunk, get a job, don’t commit social blunders in front of my parents, love me back—and romantic lovers are based on chemical attraction; to me that isn’t very important compared to real love.”
Maurey ripped back into fourth and shot around a snow plow. She said, “I can see now why your wife left you.”
“Me too.”
Far to the south, the sun was setting with all the power of a weak flashlight beam. The dash clock said 4:30 and I remembered from some book that this was the shortest day of the year. Across the valley, green lights flickered on as an outline for the runway. I said a small prayer to Whomever to bring my daughter safely out of the sky.
“Do you think it’s possible for people to change?” I asked.
Maurey glanced at me, then back at the road. In the soft pink light of the alpenglow her face was the same as I pictured it from twenty years past, when we were lovers.
“I did,” she said.
“But you had alcohol you could quit. People with concrete problems like alcoholism or obesity or an abusive husband can solve the problem and, ultimately, change themselves. What about us poor stooges who are vaguely miserable, but don’t have any real monsters to battle against?”
Maurey downshifted and hit the blinker behind a line of cars turning into the airport. “Everybody’s vaguely miserable sometimes,” she said, “and most people are vaguely miserable most of the time. The trick is to scrap your way from the most-of-the-time to the some-of-the-time category.”
“How?”
She ticked off on her fingers. “True love, kids, mountains, exercise, and work you think matters. If none of that does it, I’d consider antidepressants.”
Maurey flashed on her brights and pulled to within a car’s length of a new Ford pickup, seemingly intent on blinding its driver. She said, “Speaking of vaguely miserable, that’s Dothan ahead of us.”
I peered at the spotlessly clean truck with the bumper sticker I still didn’t get. “You think Dothan’s miserable?”
“Deep down inside, Dothan can’t stand himself.”
“He hides it well.”
“None of the valley women will touch him with a stick. Dot says he’s flying in some bimbo from Denver whose husband is in chemotherapy. Even you never sank that low.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
***
Dothan Talbot beat me up in the seventh grade. He rubbed my face in the snow and twisted my arm around my back, then he became Maurey’s boyfriend after I had already impregnated her. He knew I had impregnated her and I knew he was touching her with his grubby fingers, so it was only natural for us to evolve into lifelong enemies. Plus, Dothan was, and still is, a Class A jerk. He’d have been in the Mafia if he had come from a town of over five hundred people. As it is, he sells real estate.
I ran into him in the airport bathroom. Shannon’s plane was late, like they all are in winter here, and I was nervous about seeing her. Up until then, I’d been fairly numb over what a mess I’d made of life, but now with Shannon’s arrival I was going to have to start feeling again, and I wasn’t sure I was ready.
When I’m nervous I need to pee every five minutes, so I left Maurey in the terminal and went to the bathroom, where I found Dothan standing in front of a mirror, combing Brylcreem into his hair. He’s worn his hair the same way for as long as I’ve known him, which means he must have greased out ten thousand pillows since junior high.
He glanced at me in the mirror and grinned the way people will when they hate your guts. “Hello, Callahan.”
“Yeah, right.” I needed to go pretty bad but I wasn’t about to pull out my pecker in front of Dothan. Standing in the middle of the room doing nothing felt stupid. The only alternative was washing my hands at the sink next to him.
“Still Maurey’s puppy, I see,” Dothan said.
It was one of those water-saving sinks where you push a button to get water but the moment you let go of the button a spring or something pops it back up and the water flow stops. This works fine if only one hand is dirty.
“You know the whole town laughs at you behind your back,” Dothan said.
I pushed the button with my right hand and squeezed soap from the dispenser with my left. Dothan’s primping style also took two hands—one for combing and one for patting grease.
He said, “I’m telling you as a favor. No one else in the valley will tell you the truth but I can give it to you straight. They all know you slipped the meat to Maurey once twenty years ago and you’ve been following her around sniffing her panties and being pitiful ever since.”
I lathered my hands.
Dothan stared at me in the mirror. “Maurey’ll never let you have sloppy seconds. Everyone knows she takes your money and doesn’t give shit back.”
I held the button with my left hand and rinsed the right, then switched off the other way.
“If I paid for her queer brother’s funeral, I’d at least get a blow job,” Dothan said.
Holding my hands up, I walked to the hot-air dryer and punched it on with my elbow. Over the whir of blowing air, I said, “Dothan, you’re never going to have a friend in your whole life.”
; Dothan laughed heartily as he headed for the door. Halfway through, he turned back and said, “Maurey’s laughing at you, son. Just like me and everybody else.”
***
Dothan’s bimbo was first off the plane and across the runway. She had zit-red hair with black roots and wore a yellow halter thing and tight pants that were totally inappropriate for winter. The two of them kissed and rubbed against each other in a disgusting public display of affection made all the more poignant by the fact her husband was off in a hospital somewhere with cancer.
“Are we friends?” I asked Maurey.
She was watching Dothan and the tramp. “Of course we’re friends.”
“You aren’t laughing at me behind my back?”
Maurey touched my arm. “You’ve been listening to Dothan again. When are you going to learn he’s nothing but a dildo with ears.”
“You’re right.”
“There she is.”
Shannon came off the plane, wearing a yoked down jacket and some kind of jeans that weren’t Levi’s or Wranglers. As she made her way down the steps, she was talking to an older, gentlemanly type with a mustache and a cane. Shannon looked confident and composed, at home in her element. Nineteen-year-old women weren’t composed when I was nineteen.
Maurey said, “Airport scenes are so much nicer when the passengers walk down the steps and across the runway. Those tunnels took the romance out of flight.”
Shannon said good-bye to the old man and came bouncing across the runway and I had that Jesus, shit, I created this feeling I always get when I see her for the first time after a separation. Shannon didn’t seem any less a miracle now than the day she was born.
Then she burst through the double doors, all smiles and laughs. I think for a moment she forgot she was here for a funeral. She gave me a two-handed hug and a kiss on the cheek, then she moved on to Maurey. They hadn’t seen each other since summer, and Shannon finally remembered Pete and the purpose of the trip, so the hugs were spirited and meaningful.
“I appreciate you coming,” Maurey said.
Shannon’s brown eyes went smoky. “Uncle Pete was always nice to me. When I was little he used to send me flowers on Valentine’s.”
I didn’t remember that. It seemed like something I should remember.
Maurey said, “More than once Pete told me you were the only thing I ever got right,” and they hugged again.
Shannon had brought two suitcases plus her carry-on, so we had to wait at the conveyor belt surrounded by skiers in off-colored clothes. They talked loudly about inches and runs. I glared at boys who were checking out my daughter. Maurey got as many looks as Shannon, but I figured I had no right to glare at Maurey’s bunch. She was old enough to handle oglers without my help.
As often as they talked on the telephone, you’d think Shannon and Maurey wouldn’t have that much left to catch up on, but the moment I finished the how-was-your-flight formalities they launched into mother-daughter gossip. Shannon gave a detailed description of a pair of boots she almost bought for the trip, Maurey talked about horses and how successful Pud was in the satellite dish repair business. Shannon gave a Eugene report.
“He wants us to date each other and other people at the same time. Says it would be values affirming. I said, ‘Fat chance.’”
“You can’t date a guy after you’ve lived with him,” Maurey said.
“At your age I think you should still be playing the field,” I said.
They both stared at me until I volunteered to go pluck her suitcases off the conveyor carrel. As I made my way through the skier jam, I heard Shannon say, “Play the field?”
Maurey said, “You’ll have to excuse your father. He learned his parenting skills from Leave It to Beaver.”
***
At the ranch, we found a Douglas fir lying on its side in the living room. Pud and Hank were crouched on the floor with a measuring tape. Toinette, Auburn, and Roger sat at a card table, stringing popcorn and chokecherries while Chet was off in Pete’s room, talking to New Yorkers on the telephone.
“Our tree’s too big!” Auburn shouted.
Hank and Pud studied the situation.
“We could cut a hole in the ceiling,” Hank said.
“Or the floor,” Pud said.
“Or take thirty inches off the middle and splice the tree together,” Hank added.
This is your typical example of Native American humor. As a kid, it drove me crazy, but now it was Auburn’s turn.
He crowed. “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”
Hank’s face was dead serious. “You got a better idea?”
Maurey introduced Shannon to Toinette and Roger. Toinette offered her supper, but Shannon said she had eaten on the plane. Shannon complimented Roger on his chokecherry necklace and asked him to show her how it was done.
“What’s Gus up to?” I asked.
“Gus is on a cleaning binge. She’s throwing out everything she doesn’t consider vital to survival.”
“My baseball cards?”
“They went the first day.”
Chet came from Pete’s room. “Our friends are coming in tomorrow.”
“Do they need a place to stay?” Maurey asked.
“I made reservations at Snow King Inn.”
Shannon and Chet shook hands and Shannon said she was sorry about Pete. Chet said Pete spoke of her often; Maurey went to the kitchen and brought back lemonade and these little crackers shaped like fish. Everything was going fine—I’d just taken my place at the popcorn-stringing station—when Shannon said, “I expected Grandma Lydia to be here.”
I stuck a needle through a popped kernel and the kernel broke in half, leaving me with nothing on my needle.
“Your father and grandmother aren’t speaking,” Maurey said.
Shannon looked at me. “Why not?”
Maurey answered. “He says she ruined his life.”
I set the needle next to my lemonade and gave up on Christmas decorating. There’s no use trying to be constructive when you’re ganged up on by women.
“That was weeks ago,” Shannon said. “You be nice to your mother.”
“She’s not nice to me.”
“Jeeze, Louise, who’s the grown-up around here? Dad, I want you to march down to her house and make up. Right now.”
“No.”
Maurey said, “Forgive your mother, Sam.”
Hank said, “You have the power to make her Christmas bright.”
“I won’t do it.”
No one would look at me, except Roger who had an expression on his face like I’d stolen his teddy bear.
The silence didn’t last long. Shannon laid down an ultimatum. “Forgive Lydia or I won’t forgive you.”
I hate ultimatums. “For what?”
“For hurting my friend Gilia. For messing up Halloween by making that boy try to kill himself on our front porch.”
“Don’t forget he was creepy to your boyfriend,” Maurey said.
“That too.”
I stood up. All day I’d been looking forward to my daughter’s arrival, and now this.
“I’m being persecuted,” I said.
Chet’s face was the saddest thing I’d ever seen. He said, “People you love die. Don’t waste precious time holding grudges.”
I searched the room for an ally—Chet to Roger to Auburn to Hank to Shannon to Maurey. They were all accusing me and they were all wrong.
I said, “I’m going to bed.”
***
She threw back her white neck, swelling with a sigh, and faltering, in tears, with a long shudder and hiding her face, she gave herself to him.
Ah, Madame Bovary. If only someone would throw back her white neck for me. Emma was so happy there for a moment, not knowing that she, like Anna Karenina and Oedipus’s mother and so many other lovely yet loose women created by male novelists, would soon die a cruel death at her own hand.
On Lydia’s fortieth birthday, Shannon and I flew up from North
Carolina to surprise her. Hank arranged for us and practically everyone else who knew Lydia to meet at this hoity-toity restaurant in Teton Village. Surprise birthday parties carry a high risk. Take Katrina’s as an example. Anyway, Hank told Lydia the two of them were going out to eat, and when she walked into the dining room we all yelled “Surprise!” and broke into that awful song. Lydia’s face turned to wax, she looked at the massive cake Dot had baked, and she looked at me; then, calmly, she left. I didn’t see her again for two years.
They—my family and friends—were probably right about Lydia. I’ve found there are few instances where I’m right and everybody else is wrong. In the morning I would drive into GroVont and do whatever it took to reestablish a relationship with my mother.
A knock came at the door, which is always interesting in the middle of the night. I welcome late night knocks. I marked my place in Madame Bovary with a Kleenex strip as Shannon walked through the door wearing her pac boots without socks and her cold weather flannel nightgown.
She held out two wrapped Fudgsicles. “You hungry?”
I nodded even though I wasn’t, particularly.
She gave me a Fudgsicle, then pushed my feet over under the blanket, clearing a spot so she could sit on the end of the bed. I could see her looking around at my living situation, critically. Even though the room had been home for over six weeks, it wasn’t much more personal than a monk’s cell. I had a bedside stump for my Kleenex box and Madame Bovary and a length of clothesline between two nails for a closet. Five or six dirty coffee cups sat mired in dust bunnies under the bed.
“I’m planning to fix the place up after Christmas,” I said.
Shannon said, “Don’t go out of your way on my account.” From somewhere in the flannel nightgown she produced a baby blue envelope. “Gilia sent you a letter.”
She must have originally planned to mail it because the letter had been addressed and stamped. It was one of those personalized stationery envelopes women give each other as gifts, the kind with the return address embossed in white. The uncanceled stamp was a painting of a Baltimore oriole—it said so under the picture—but best of all the envelope smelled ever so lightly of Gilia.
“What did you do to her?” Shannon asked.