Social Blunders g-3

by Tim Sandlin

  “I don’t understand why Clark was at your house,” she said.

  Billy and I stared at the tile floor. He was still in shock at having a son who’d attempted suicide. He hadn’t gotten around to blame yet.

  Skip had. And Cameron. My fathers had hated me from the start and now they hated me with good reason, which made them more confident in their hatred. Cameron still wore the three-piece suit he’d been in when he came to threaten me earlier in the day. Skip had on the tennis shorts uniform. It was hard to see anything the two had in common besides Skip’s sister and my mother.

  Hart to Hart ended and the news came on and went off while we sat in silence. Every now and then an orderly or a nurse came through and everyone looked up expectantly. The nurses were professional at ignoring people in the waiting room. Billy cleaned his glasses. Twice he asked Daphne if she wanted a Coca-Cola and both times she said “No.” Skip smoked a cigarette.

  I thought about how I would feel if Shannon killed herself. That’s what fiction writers do—see someone in trouble and try to feel what they feel. If Shannon committed suicide, I couldn’t conceive of ever recovering. People do live through it, but I don’t know how. Maybe they have no choice.

  I watched the side of Billy’s face as he blinked, his attention on Daphne. His face wasn’t sneaky or complicated; it accepted, like an animal. Innocent. I got in a fight once to stop a kid from killing kittens, but what I’d done to Billy was so much worse than killing kittens. All that pride I took in knowing right from wrong and refusing to do wrong had turned out nothing but hooey. Accidental cruelty is just as evil as doing it on purpose.

  ***

  The emergency room doctor was Egyptian, I think. He looked Egyptian and wore a name tag that said Dr. Faroub. He walked with that straight-up way you never see in Americans.

  He came toward me, fingering the stethoscope in his jacket pocket. “Your son, he will live.”

  My stomach unclenched. “Not my son. His.”

  Dr. Faroub turned to Billy. “The boy suffered a grand mal seizure, which brought on heart failure. He should lose weight and receive counseling. Counseling is a help for the children.”

  Billy shook the doctor’s hand. “Thank you for saving him.”

  “Suicide is illegal, you know.”

  “How can you tell he did it on purpose?” Daphne asked, which might have been a meaningless question if anyone but Clark had stepped in a wired bucket of water and stuck their finger in a light socket.

  Dr. Faroub looked from Daphne to Billy. “The boy had a note in his pocket saying he wanted his body going to the Duke Medical School…so his father couldn’t touch him.”

  Daphne raised her hand to her cheek. Of all my extended family members, she was the one who’d been left in the dark. “Clark idolizes his father,” she said.

  Dr. Faroub shrugged and repeated, “Counseling is a help for the children. Will you proceed to the front, there are forms.”

  “I already gave them my insurance card,” Daphne said.

  “There are always more forms.”

  After the doctor clicked away, Billy’s legs kind of went out from under him and he sat down quickly.

  “It’s my fault,” he said.

  Cameron looked at me. “No, it isn’t.”

  “Why would Clark be mad at you, William?” Daphne asked.

  Cameron stood up. “The doctor said something about forms, Daphne. Don’t you think you should take care of that?”

  Daphne’s eyes traveled from Cameron to Billy to me, where they stayed a long time. The woman may have been dressed by Wal-Mart, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew a story lay beneath the facts, only she was Southern enough not to demand explanations in public.

  “Okay,” she said. “Billy, you want a Coke?”

  He shook his head, no.

  ***

  I don’t know if they’d been waiting for word on Clark or for Daphne to leave the room, but as soon as she left, Skip and Cameron turned nasty.

  “I hope you’re happy,” Skip said.

  Women use that sentence when they’re pissed. Generally, men only say it when they mean it.

  “Why should I be happy?” I said.

  Cameron turned sideways, away from me. He seemed to be addressing the television. “You wanted to place our lives in upheaval and now you have. Your goals are met, but I promise you, the price will be heavy.”

  “I never wanted to place your lives in upheaval.”

  “Then why seduce Skip’s wife? Why drive Billy’s son to suicide? There can be no motivation other than harming us.”

  “Skip’s wife seduced me.”

  Skip doubled his fists and took a step toward me. “Katrina told us how you got her stinking drunk and had your way with her, then you blackmailed her into an affair.”

  “She made me eat her in the sauna.”

  Cameron turned to stare in my direction. “Your relationship with Gilia stops now.”

  “I’m afraid so,” I said.

  Billy suddenly let out a sob. “Why does Clark hate me?”

  “Simple,” Cameron said. “This…person turned him against you.”

  “I hope you’re happy,” Skip said. The evening had cut off his ability to vocalize bile.

  I felt terrible about Clark and Gilia and everyone else who suffered because of my existence, but these men were persecuting me for events they had set in motion.

  I said, “I’m not the only one to blame. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t raped Lydia in the first place.”

  There was silence, then Billy said, “Raped?”

  “Why can’t any of you take responsibility for your actions? I’m nothing but the product of this crime, you’re the cause.”

  “Nobody raped your mother,” Cameron said.

  “She was a slut,” Skip said.

  “Bullshit. You got her drunk on vodka shot into oranges with a hypodermic needle, then the five of you raped her over and over and when you were done you stood in a circle and urinated on her body.”

  Billy’s face was twisted in pain. His voice came in a choke. “That’s a lie.”

  “My mother wouldn’t lie about something so important.” A Whitewater roar started in my ears. My mouth tasted of tin.

  “Your mother was a slut,” Skip repeated.

  “Babe Carnisek admitted you all raped her.”

  Had he? I couldn’t remember if the word rape was used or not. Cameron was watching me like an owl on a mouse. When he spoke, his voice was deliberate. “Your mother gave us each some fudge and a tumbler of her daddy’s scotch. After we drank, she offered us two dollars apiece to have sex with her.”

  “No.”

  “We were sixteen- and seventeen-year-old boys. What did you expect us to do?”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “We were all virgins,” Billy said.

  Skip said, “I wasn’t.”

  Billy went on. “We were all virgins and scared to death, but she insisted. I was so frightened I couldn’t get erect. She called me a ‘worm’ and made me give back the two dollars.”

  This didn’t make sense. All the relationships of my life had been shaped by Lydia’s rape. “Why didn’t you tell me that when I came to your house?”

  Billy looked down at his hands. “I couldn’t admit I’m a worm.”

  “Your mother was a slut,” Skip said for the third time.

  “Face it,” Cameron said. “You’ve been had.”

  “I need to use the telephone.”

  ***

  Didi answered on the eighth ring.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “Is Babe home?”

  “Whenever the phone rings at midnight, somebody’s died.”

  “No one died, Mrs. Carnisek. This is Sam Callahan, I need to ask Babe a question.”

  “He goes to sleep after the weather and sports.”

  “Could you wake him up? It’s important.”

  The phone was silent a long time. A sh
ort black man in a white uniform came down the hall, sliding a floor buffer from side to side in rhythm to music only he could hear over a pair of earphones. He was smoking a cigarette, but instead of using the sand ashtrays at either end of the hall, he let the ash get long until it fell from its own weight and was swept under the floor buffer. I concentrated on breathing.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry to wake you, Babe, but I have to know what happened on Christmas Eve 1949.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Sam Callahan. I was at your house the Saturday before last during the Washington-Detroit game. You might be my father.”

  “I remember.”

  “I need to know what happened the night I was conceived.”

  He hesitated a moment, then said, “A bunch of us screwed your mother.”

  “I was hoping for details.”

  “Let me think.” The black guy came close to the pay phone and I put a finger in my ear to cover the whish of his buffer.

  “I was at Skip Prescott’s house listening to colored music on the record player,” Babe said, “and a friend of his sister telephoned and asked us to a party.”

  “Yes.”

  “Your mom was mad at her daddy about something, so she screwed us.”

  I inhaled deeply. “Whose idea was it?”

  “Was what?”

  “Having sex. The five of you having sex with Lydia.”

  “Hell, we were such young punks none of us even knew what hole to go in.”

  “So the sex was her idea?”

  “She paid us money to do her.”

  Everything that had happened in my life up to that point suddenly became void. I closed my eyes to block the nausea and leaned my head against the wall next to the phone.

  Babe’s voice was hesitant. “After you left the other day, I got to thinking, and I don’t believe I was quite honest while you were here.”

  “You lied?”

  “Didn’t lie so much as forgot the whole truth. You can ask Didi, that’s not like me.”

  “What’s the truth?”

  “I’m probably not your father after all.”

  I didn’t say anything. I was beyond the ability to react.

  “The truth is I squirted so quick I don’t think I ever got far enough in to make her pregnant.”

  “Oh.”

  “She cussed me out for messing on her belly.”

  ***

  I walked all night. It must have been raining, but I don’t remember. I don’t remember feeling anything, inside or out. The police stopped me down by the interstate. I must have answered enough questions not to be taken in as a drunk, but I don’t see how.

  Dawn found me lying on Atalanta Williams’ couch with my head in her lap, sobbing. Fingers ran through my hair. Her other hand rested on my shoulder.

  She said, “I knew all along my Jake couldn’t have done what your mama said.”

  Her bathrobe smelled like flowers. I could easily have stayed on that couch for years. Another day at home—waking up, looking out at the weather, deciding what to wear—was more than I could face. Going on was too much responsibility.

  “I wish you were my mother,” I said.

  Atalanta gave me a squeeze on the shoulder and said, “So do I.”

  Part Two

  WYOMING

  1

  Rule Number One of Being Sam Callahan: In times of torment, fly to Maurey. The evening after Halloween, All Souls’ Night itself, I landed in the Jackson Hole Airport during the first real snowstorm of the year. Because the flight attendant thought I was handicapped, she helped me down the airplane steps and across the runway to the terminal where Hank Elkrunner awaited. I did feel arthritic, especially in the knees and feet. The world looked the way I imagine it would if you’d just survived a plane crash where other people were killed. Objects appeared brand new; I couldn’t come up with the word that went along with the thing.

  Hank said, “Welcome home.”

  I said, “Oh.”

  He drove to the ranch through blowing snow and no heat in his pickup. On the radio, Jimmy Buffett sang “Peanut Butter Conspiracy”—a song glorifying shoplifting. At the ranch, Hank led me to my private cell in the barracks he and Pud built years ago for Maurey’s recovering legions. Without undressing, I crawled between the sheets of a twin bed and lay on my back, neither awake nor asleep. The plywood ceiling had knot whorls in the wood grain that stared down at me like eyes. Pissed-off, judgmental eyes. Female eyes.

  Maurey came through the door. She felt my forehead and took off my shoes. “You look like a wreck,” she said.

  “I am a wreck.”

  “You’re in the right place, I’m a tow truck.”

  I closed my eyes, too tired for metaphors.

  ***

  Every now and then I got up to pee, which meant going outside in the snow and around the building. Twice each day a pregnant teenager who told me her name was Toinette brought food. You can take it as a gauge of how far into my hole I’d sunk that I felt no curiosity as to how and when Toinette became pregnant.

  On the third day, Maurey showed up at my bedside, straddling a chair backward, like a cowboy.

  She said, “My brother is dying, his lover is losing a lover. I’ve got a pregnant girl disowned by her family and a little boy so traumatized he can’t speak.”

  I pulled the sheet over my mouth; she reached across and yanked it back down.

  “And you,” she said, “are the only person on the ranch who feels sorry for yourself.”

  “Auburn can’t talk?”

  “Auburn’s fine.” She knocked wood on the chair. “Roger can’t talk.”

  “Who’s Roger?”

  “Long story. Are you going to get up or waste away?”

  “What about the recovering junkie?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “When we talked on the phone you had a recovering junkie.”

  “He stopped recovering and left.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Win some, lose some. The deal is, you’re the lone refugee out here not pulling your weight in the cheerfulness department.”

  “Are you cheerful?” She looked worn out. The veins showed in her arms and her eyes crinkled like she’d been outside too much without sunglasses.

  “Fuck, no, I’m not cheerful. Helping family die is hard work, but I’m faking it like a champ, and I can’t do this unless you fake it too.”

  I sat up. “You want me to fake being cheerful?”

  Maurey’s blue eyes glistened, but she didn’t cry. “I need you, Sam. You’ve got to get up and help me.”

  So I did. All I needed was someone to need me.

  ***

  Mornings, Maurey drove or snowmobiled the boys six miles down to their bus stop while Hank hitched a team of half-breed draft horses to the hay sled, which he skidded around the pasture with Pud and me on back, throwing hay to a herd of forty horses and a half dozen semi-tame elk. I couldn’t help but wonder what Gaylene and Shirley would say if they saw me feeding horses with horses. The TM Ranch was a long way from Callahan Golf Carts, in more than distance.

  After feeding, I went back to bed with a carafe of coffee and Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert. Emma Bovary was the sort of woman I once would have found ripe for adultery—bored silly. So desperate for attention that she’ll risk all for one interesting night. I have now sworn off the Emma Bovarys of the world.

  I generally took a short nap after lunch, then strapped on the cross-country skis and shuffled up Miner Creek to the warm springs and back. This time segment was set aside for self-flagellation. Going up the hill I pined for Gilia, at the warm springs itself I dwelt on my shameful conduct toward Clark and Atalanta, and coming down I mourned my wasted talent as a novelist—the theory being the best way of coming to terms with guilt is to wallow in it.

  Maurey gave me a choice between cooking supper and the daily cleaning of the stud stall. Food won’t stomp you to death, so I chose supper. Coo
king can be quite pleasant when it’s cold outside and you’re in a warm place that smells good. As I chopped and blended, Toinette sat in the family room or den or whatever it was called and played her viola. She warmed up with scales and finger exercises, then she practiced Irish Rhapsody by Victor Herbert—“We Roam Through the World” and “My Lodgings on the Cold Ground.” The viola parts weren’t something you’d whistle along with, but they made the day nicer.

  Toinette had come from Belgium to Jackson Hole to play in our summer symphony. Under the full moon in the Tetons, she surrendered to love—Maurey suspects a percussionist—and a child was conceived. I can relate to that. When Toinette telephoned Papa he called her a whore in Flemish, French, and English and told her not to come home. He said, From this day forward my daughter is dead. The jerk.

  Dinner was a sitcom written by Edgar Allan Poe.

  Afterward, Pud and the boys cleaned up. I carried my decaf into the family room and looked through catalogs or read Zane Grey by the wood-burning heater while Chet and Pete played Scrabble and Toinette watched French-language TV off the Canadian satellite. Some nights, during old movies, I watched with her. The strange language wasn’t nearly as disconcerting as seeing Jimmy Stewart open his mouth and speak in a totally non-Jimmy Stewart voice.

  By ten-thirty I was back in bed with Madame Bovary.

  ***

  The third day after I got out of bed, I came in from my afternoon ski and guilt orgy to find Maurey in the kitchen, aiming a hypodermic syringe at the ceiling. Pete sat on a stool beside the wood-block table, playing gin rummy with Chet. I checked out the score; Pete was way ahead.

  “Where’d you learn to give shots?” I asked Maurey.

  She tapped the syringe barrel with her index fingernail. “You’d be amazed how many doctors are alcoholic.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “They come here to start recovery and I make them teach me things. Who you think will deliver Toinette’s baby if it comes during a blizzard?”

  I opened the refrigerator to pull out a bottle of cranberry juice and perused the options for supper—leftover corned beef and applesauce.

  Pete said, “Gin.”

  Chet said, “Hell.” He gathered in the loose cards and shuffled. Chet was an adept card shuffler, which is a skill I’ve never been able to pick up. My shuffles tend to explode across the table.