Don't Sleep With a Bubba

by Susan Reinhardt

  Well, How Great Thou Art, I wanted to tell him. Must be nice being a man who hardly ever pees and who can wear the same outfits day in and day out. Must be nice being a man and having nobody pay much attention to your clothes unless you aren’t wearing any. No need for hot rollers, Estée Lauder, or six pairs of shoes. No use for wrinkle creams and Retin-A and a box of bran flakes in case they clog up our colons with all that European cheese.

  Oh, but isn’t he always happy when after his stomach bloats he notices I’ve packed raisins and prunes? You don’t hear him complaining then that the luggage was over the weight limit and he had to pay fifty extra bucks. You’d think he’d be thanking me, but no. Not your daddy. He decides via his church bulletin to tell me about his upcoming packing intentions because he knew I couldn’t talk back at church. Then he turned to me and whispered a bit too loud for my taste, “Peg, all tourists ever need are two wind suits! That’s all you need when you travel,” he writes.

  I informed him we were traveling in June and I didn’t intend to wear warm-ups or wind suits. The name doesn’t fit. Anyway, I don’t like to hear that rustling sound they make and they are for fat and frumpy women who’ve let themselves go to pot. They’re for women who can’t button or zip regular clothes. Can’t you just imagine the noise we would both make on our walking tours if we wore those ugly old whistley wind suits?

  Mama wrote that she sat quietly in church trying to sing, but all she could think about was what my father had said about packing and his attire. She spent the next few days giving it some deep thought.

  “We will be gone seventeen days,” she informed him. “I plan to take 81/2 outfits. I will wear 8 of them twice. Then, on the two dressy nights I will wear half an outfit.”

  He didn’t say another word.

  Once arriving in Spain, their vacation got off to a rocky start after a bunch of old codgers set the tone by saving seats at every turn. Mama thought that mess ended in junior high, but apparently it rekindles during the golden years.

  She looked around and was beginning to wonder as men doled out their 12-inch pill organizers and women clutched walkers and Kleenex tissues. She was thinking that this was some sort of last-fling trip the frail and dying had booked, and walked over to an enormous picture window and wondered, “When will the fun begin?”

  My dad found it fast. Gazing out the window, he pointed and nudged, trying to get my mom to look. His eyes had honed in on the topless bathing beauties all around the pool.

  “Peg, there’s tits galore down there, come here and look.”

  “Sam, I’m a good Baptist woman and don’t care to see poolside hussies greasing up their milking machines. You didn’t tell me the beach and pool would be topless. Is this why you wanted to come? So you could have a teat feast? Is that why the vacation was so cheap because we’re staying in a brothel?” She continued and Daddy couldn’t get a word in edgewise. “Why, all the people in this hotel are in their seventies. I bet the hotel paid those girls to sit out there and make all the poor widowers forget their dead wives. I’ll bet their dead wives are rolling around in their little coffins wishing they could come back and sock it to their horny old husbands daring to look at these harlots out here. I hope you’re not planning on actually going swimming in that pool. You might catch mange or worse…maybe those things Susan talks about…What does she call them? Crotch crickets. That’s it. I’m sure there’s not enough chlorine in the world to sanitize that bunch of—”

  “Come on and look, Peg,” Dad said. “Don’t be such a prude all the time. The Lord didn’t mean for Christians to be stiff old bores. Get over here now.” He yanked Mama to the window and there they were, glistening like greasy hot dogs on a grill.

  She caught her breath. “With this kind of operation going on in here, I doubt anybody will want to tour the cathedrals and the historic Great Mosque of Córdoba, don’t you reckon?”

  “Nothing like seeing a bit of God’s glory before checking out his churches,” Dad said, grinning and drinking red wine.

  “Close those drapes, Sam, I mean it. How did we end up on this upper floor right above these prostitutes? We’ve got a world out there God has decorated! Beautiful, high mountains with the Mediterranean Sea at their feet. We don’t need this pool filth going on below us, so I want you to call the management now and tell them we didn’t pay hard-earned American dollars to see a peep show.”

  Daddy grinned and drank. He knew that once she swallowed her horse pill of hormones she’d settle down. He had the decency to close the drapes and join his wife at the table as they discussed the activities that lay ahead. They decided to return to the hotel lobby to see if anyone had shown up worth talking to, someone besides grouches and seat savers.

  To my mother’s utter joy, a blessing arrived in the form of a spitfire from Cape Fear, North Carolina. This little lady had a penchant for multiple husbands and glasses of beer.

  Her name was Mary Elizabeth, and by her side was husband Number Three, Frank.

  “I’ve never had a divorce,” she said. “I just loved them all to death. After the second one died, I said, ‘No more.’ But Frank came along, and he was so hard to resist. We had so much in common. We both play golf, we both love God, and we both like to get all beered up and have fun.”

  Mama was instantly drawn to this 78-year-old charmer who talked with her entire body, muscles in sync and motion with every word from her mouth. She seemed to have a permanent smile, and her eyes flickered in tears of mirth and booze. Mama knew she’d met a true friend in Mary Elizabeth when the conversation at dinner turned to her favorite subject: funeral preparations and death.

  “Well now, Mary Elizabeth,” my mother said, “I’ll tell you, I really was afraid to fly and just knew that our plane would be hijacked and we would be killed. Sam said we shouldn’t let those terrorists scare us, so we decided not to cancel and to be brave. I did prepare, though, just in case I didn’t survive.” She explained how she’d gathered up a stack of Post-it notes and a pen and sneaked from chair to cabinet, from dish to diamond, tagging items with names so everyone would know who got what in the event of an untimely demise.

  “I put them where Sam couldn’t see them because he would laugh at me,” Mama told her new best friend. “I told my oldest that if we died, to make sure my flowers were red to match the flag on her dad’s coffin. I mean, if our caskets are beside each other, pink flowers would clash with the red, white and blue flag on his casket.”

  Mary Elizabeth smiled and sipped her second or third beer. “I did all of that, too. I put names on all my furniture. My kids know about my wishes, too. I’m to be buried in a teddy.”

  “A teddy?” My mother thought she meant a stuffed bear.

  “I got three teddies,” said this woman nearing 80.

  Her husband just sat there nonplussed, as if accustomed to his wife’s wild escapades and notions. My mother, realizing a teddy was skimpy lingerie, soared into sheer heaven, having met someone else with whom to discuss “arrangements.”

  “Mary Elizabeth,” Mom said, “are you going to wear a teddy underneath your funeral dress?”

  “The teddy,” she said, “will be the only thing I have on.”

  “Do what?”

  “That’s it. At least I didn’t pick the crotchless kind Frank prefers. My teddy is lime green and I’m having an open casket.”

  After that trip ended, I was hoping their European travels were over and their jetsetting thirsts had been quenched, but I was wrong. They signed up again a year later and returned with more wild stori
es.

  Germany and Austria

  My mama finally returned from her three-week riverboat ride through Europe, but not without fatigue and a hint of too much pampering in her voice.

  She sighed and grouched up while talking on the phone one night, compliments of jet lag and the full-service life she’s more accustomed to giving than getting. I was happy she had enjoyed such an indulgent trip and that she wasn’t too terribly busy to send postcards, some of which I’ll never throw away.

  Postcards from the edge

  Here is one she sent my 2-year-old daughter, featuring a huge yellow duck on the front.

  Dear Lindsey:

  Mama Peg and Sampy are in Austria today. We are having a wonderful time. The ship is beautiful and everyone is old. The lounge looks like a nursing home with a bar. Lots of wheelchairs and canes. One woman’s hair has not moved since we’ve been here. We love you.

  Mama Peg and Sampy.

  Next came the postcard from Germany.

  Hi! We love this trip. The ship, food, and people are wonderful. Lots of old codgers aboard. Our room is great. We have a large wide window and the scenery is outstanding. We toured this monastery before leaving the Danube that has 365 windows, one for each day of the year. We love you.

  Then came the final correspondence, a real doozy from Bamberg:

  Hi! We still love our trip. They keep us so busy. Not much time to write cards. There is a lady on this boat who thinks she KNOWS EVERYTHING! She loves to complain and fuss. I call her “Mad Dog.” One man came to high tea in a bathrobe and bare feet. He did remember to insert his teeth, but only after I told him I couldn’t eat pancakes while staring at his big black hole.

  Your dad enjoyed his birthday on the boat. They all sang “Happy Birthday” to him and gave him a cake with a firecracker for a candle.

  As for the lady whose hair hasn’t moved, she let me take a picture of it today.

  Miss You, Mama.

  I called my mother to further investigate her obsession with the woman whose hair was like a mannequin’s and never so much as let loose a single wisp.

  “It was the most beautiful French twist,” Mama exclaimed as if critiquing fine art. “She said she’d gone to her hairdresser and said, ‘Fix my hair so that it won’t budge for nineteen days.’ I kept waiting for her hair to collapse. Each day I looked it over for signs of defeat, but it just stayed put. I told her I wanted to be there with my camera when it came apart.

  “It never did fall, but by the end of the cruise, it had started catching debris. Little fuzzballs were hanging off the back. I guess she couldn’t see them because there weren’t any in front where she could pick those out.”

  I formed a mental picture of a woman’s hair like a spiderweb, sticky and sturdy, a variety of items trapped in her Aqua Net.

  “Were there gum wrappers back there, too?” I asked mother, who was still tired, still spoiled and snappish.

  “I told you what was back there. Fuzzballs. And maybe a few specks of lint.”

  France

  The next year, when they signed up with the same tour company to do a riverboat through France, I knew Mama would again get a fixation. She chose as her target of interest a man named Paul, whom she kept calling Bill, which I’ll explain later.

  “One day I was walking on a tour and all of a sudden a man whisked in front of me and fell down to his knees,” Mama said, a thick pack of photos from the trip in her plastic Louvre bag. “His name was Paul, but we’ll just call him Bill because that’s what I called all the men, since from behind, with their gray hair and their blue jackets and khakis, they all looked like a man I’d met named Bill earlier in the cruise.”

  “She called everybody Bill,” Dad said, accustomed to his wife’s quirks. “Anytime we ran into someone she’d smile and say, ‘Hi there, Bill.”’

  Anyway, Paul (Bill) was down on his knees in front of my mother picking up empty Marlboro cigarette packs.

  “He brought them up,” Mama said, “and would proclaim: ‘I have to pick these up. It’s a sheer necessity.’”

  “Why’s that?” I asked her.

  “Because, Susan, and he said this to everyone listening: ‘The first wife takes it all. Just up and takes it all. That woman over there is my second wife. Now I pick up empty cans and Marlboro packs.’”

  My mother thought he was telling a whopper. How could he afford this trip if he was some kind of nickel-this-and-dime-that kind of man? Soon as he got his words out he called over to his wife to verify his habit of getting trash.

  “He summoned this absolutely beautiful woman up to him,” Mama said. “She was striking, with this silver hair and blue eyes. He brings her on over and says, ‘Look at this fine jacket Joyce’s wearing. I got it with these Marlboro coupons.’”

  “Well, I just love it,” Mama said. “It’s just perfect for the French Riviera.”

  “She’s got the pants at home to match,” he said proudly as he scanned the countryside. “What I’d like for you to do while we’re here in France is help me. I’m trying hard to save enough to buy the rubber raft, so I’ll train you how to spot them.”

  “Spot what?” Mama asked.

  “The spent Marlboro packs. Once you get them I show you how to cut the coupons off the back.”

  My mother was intrigued. She could not believe this Country Club type with the glamorous wife was hunting crinkled cig packets and soda cans.

  While they viewed the Eiffel Tower, he viewed the ground below.

  “By the time I have you trained, you can go back to the USA and start collecting and mailing them to us,” he said. “I really do want that rubber raft.”

  One night at dinner, everyone dressed for the Captain’s table and the two couples sat together. As a side note, I’ll explain. Kooks tend to migrate toward one another. No further explanation needed.

  My father, after sipping several native wines, dared ask how Paul (Bill) had met such a lovely woman as Joyce. Paul sat up taller and said in a voice meant for everyone in earshot to hear: “We met at a rape and sodomy trial.”

  My parents continued to eat. These are people accustomed to craziness. “Well,” my daddy said to Joyce, the wine and wit pinkening his cheeks, “I hope he was found not guilty.”

  By then the sweet, glamorous wife in the Marlboro jacket spoke up. “Oh, no,” she said. “We were on the jury. He asked me to lunch during the recess. I should have known what I was getting into because all he did while we were out was look down at the ground and pick up old cigarette packages and sticky cans.”

  Paul (Bill) said the Marlboro people would call him periodically, to see how he was enjoying his smokes. He’d tell them how wonderful they were, though he’d never smoked a cigarette in his life.

  For the remainder of the trip, as my mother continued calling all the men Bill and my father bandaged his fatigue with wine, this geriatric Marlboro man kept his nose to the ground.

  “He picked the whole time,” Mama said, showing me pictures of the picker and his lovely second wife. “One night I was coming down the gangplank, the ramp or whatever that thing is that leads you off the boat, and I heard a swish and looked down to see a spent pack of Marlboros right in front of me
. I reached down to pick it up and heard someone laughing. I looked over to the side and Paul was right there, sort of hiding. He’d thrown them at me as part of the training.”

  “I just wanted to make sure you knew to pick them up,” he said. “I’ll teach you how to cut them later on.”

  My mother stood there smiling.

  “First wives,” he said again. “They get it all.”

  Holland

  Last year Mom and Dad decided to hit Amsterdam on another seventeen-day riverboat cruise. If she thought the tits in Spain were shocking, that was nothing compared to what she would soon see in the Red Light District.

  As much as she feared hussies, this was the smuttiest place on earth, and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud thinking how my mom, The Hussy-Prevention Specialist, would, of all people, soon be in Amsterdam’s Red Light District. For all I knew, Daddy probably told her it was an area of art and lots of beautiful lights like the kind put up at Christmas.

  She and my father, a randy Baptist who doesn’t mind the occasional brush with a hussy, were on the fourteenth day of their European cruise when the ship drew closer to decadence. All the fine people on the boat were in the lounge, propped up by wheelchairs, canes and wineglasses. The tour director bounded forth with great exuberance and announced:

  “Tonight, we will sail all night, out of Germany and into Holland. We will be in Amsterdam when you wake up.”

  The guide rattled tamely about the wooden shoe shop they’d visit, then said, “And later, we’ll have something a little different in store. We will be touring the Red Light District.”

  At that point, men sprung from their wheelchairs, jumping up and down in thunderous claps and whoops.