Social Blunders

by Tim Sandlin

  Shannon must have counted to ten also; it took that long before she answered. “Eugene dumped me.”

  I held the phone with both hands. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “No, you’re not.”

  The worst thing a parent can say at this point is I told you so, yet, “I told you he was a swine.”

  Her voice was flat. “Eugene is okay. He just can’t handle my family.”

  Hell—more guilt. “Eugene left because of me?”

  “You were part of it, but Lydia mailed him a thermos jug of buffalo balls.”

  Good for Lydia. She’d done the same thing to me after I married Wanda, and Hank told me she had him put together similar packages for Wyoming’s two Republican senators. The balls meant something symbolic to her. I never bothered to ask what.

  “Lydia scared off a few of my girlfriends too,” I said.

  “Eugene wants children someday; he said our family shouldn’t procreate.”

  The pompous bastard. “You’re better off without him,” I said, even though I shouldn’t have.

  “It still hurts.” I didn’t say anything. Shannon added, “He has impotency issues to deal with anyway. He’s almost thirty.”

  Wasn’t much I could say to that one.

  “Gilia’s here,” Shannon said.

  “Oh.”

  “You want to talk to her?”

  Gilia. Sweet, big-boned Gilia. The lifeline I had cut off. “I better not.”

  “C’mon, Daddy. If I can get her to talk to you will you talk back?”

  “It’s your mom’s turn. I’ll go find her.”

  “I’m right here,” Maurey said.

  “You were on the extension? Some might call that bad manners.”

  “Bad manners is not talking to the girl, Sam.”

  “I’m getting off now. You and Shannon can trash me in private.”

  ***

  Is it unnatural when your masturbation fantasy is a fictional character from the nineteenth century? Maurey says I waste time worrying about what is natural and what isn’t. At some point in my low twenties, I looked at myself as others see me and realized I’m odd, and since then I’ve held my actions and thoughts up to a normalcy standard. Normalcy is hard to standardize. I mean, is it abnormal to fantasize licking Madame Bovary between the thighs as we pass through the dark streets of Rouen in a carriage pulled by matching palomino stallions? And, when does abnormalcy become perversion? We all agree it would be perverted to go down on a 127-year-old woman in a public conveyance, but is it equally perverted to lie on your bunk in the mountain silence and fantasize to the point of holographic hallucination?

  While working on the Bucky books, I often dream about sex with Samantha Lindell. We do it the normal way—crotch to crotch. She lifts her feet onto my shoulders like the women in Chinese erotica. She whispers “My man” in my ear.

  Since Halloween, I was no longer part of my own dreams. Emma Bovary did it with some hairy-backed geek I never saw before. Or pioneers fought off waves of attacking Cubans. Guys in white suits murdered children. But I wasn’t the murderer or the one being murdered. I was a movie audience with access to varied camera angles and hidden microphones. What I couldn’t do was touch or be heard or influence actions. The effect was disassociative.

  The night Pete died I dreamed about Gilia Saunders, which is abnormal for me because I never dream about people I know. Maybe it’s normal for others. Gilia stood next to an Appomattox Courthouse, barefoot, wearing an old-time Cattle Kate dress. Her hair was clean, her eyes bright. She chose a five iron from the leather bag in the cart. She approached the ball and pulled her dress sleeves up above her wrists.

  Gilia swung and the ball soared into a faultless Wyoming sky. I kept the camera on her face a moment as she shaded her eyes with one hand, then I swung around to follow the ball. An osprey suddenly swooped down and snatched the ball in mid-flight. The osprey rose on an air current, flapped its wings three times, and, from a great altitude, dropped the golf ball on Gilia’s head. Gilia pitched forward onto the ladies’ tee and died.

  I awoke with an erection.

  3

  In the morning, Chet, Maurey, and I went to Mountain Mortuary to make what are called the final arrangements: Chet, as partner; Maurey, as next of kin; me, as the one paying the bill. Mountain Mortuary is a ranch-style log cabin with heavy double doors and abandoned swallow nests in the eaves. Abandoned for the winter, anyway, they hang like lairs of mutant wasps. Inside, the floor is oak, a right-hand door leads into the chapel and a left-hand door into an office, where a young man about Gilia’s age in a blue sweater, slacks, and sandals stood looking out the window with his hands clasped behind his back.

  At the sound of me setting the suitcase full of Pete’s clothes on the floor, the young man turned to face us and shake hands.

  “Ron Mildren,” he said. “You must be the family and friends of Pete Pierce.”

  Maurey and I nodded.

  “Have a seat. You’ll find us more informal and personal than your city funeral homes. Can I bring anyone coffee?”

  Maurey said “No,” I said “Yes,” and Chet didn’t say anything. While Ron went for coffee, Maurey and I flipped through a three-spiral binder marked Cremation Options. It was divided into “Showing and Service,” “Service Only,” and “No Showing, No Service,” with two more chapters at the back filled with photographs of special-order caskets and urns.

  The urns were mostly either boxes or vases, but they had a few ceramic statues—leaping dolphins and a Greek woman without arms. One was five books that looked real but were hollow, so you could hide your loved one on a shelf. I studied an urn shaped like Cowboy Joe, the squatty University of Wyoming mascot I always thought was ripped off from Yosemite Sam.

  Ron put my coffee on a coaster. “Did Peter go to UW?” he asked.

  I said, “No.”

  Maurey said, “Pete. Not Peter.”

  “Sorry.” He handed her a clipboard with a questionnaire on birthdate, parents’ names, length of time in the armed forces, that sort of thing. As Ron outlined our options, his hands touched his earlobes and hair, nervously, and his left dimple twitched. We told him no showing, services at the Episcopal Church in Jackson, and Chet was to receive the ashes.

  Maurey looked up from the form. “Why does it want to know if Pete had a pacemaker?”

  A cloud crossed Ron’s face. “They run on a nuclear battery. You cremate a pacemaker and blooey”—his hands flew—“you can level a city block.” He nodded quickly. “It happened in St. Augustine, Florida.”

  Chet spoke for the first time. “Is it just me, or does this strike anyone else as bizarre?”

  Ron cracked. He’d held it together while everyone played their parts, but as soon as Chet vocalized the ironic weirdness of death, Ron’s face collapsed and his shoulders dropped as if he’d taken a blow in the back from a baseball bat.

  His voice shook. “My wife was raised in the funeral business. She loves it, but I married in.”

  Maurey glanced at me. I shrugged.

  “It’s not the cadavers,” Ron went on. “I don’t want you thinking I’m squeamish over dead bodies.” His eyes begged us to believe him.

  “I don’t think you’re squeamish,” I said.

  “It’s dealing with the bereaved. I can’t help feeling what they feel.”

  “You’re in the wrong job,” Maurey said.

  “People come to me at the saddest moment of their lives and, instead of offering comfort, I’m expected to make retail sales. ‘That’ll be ten thousand dollars, ma’am. I know you’re penniless and your husband left you all alone, but we do take Visa and MasterCard.’” Tears dribbled down his cheeks. He made no move to stop the flow.

  “We’re not penniless,” I said.

  “And I’m not really alone,” Chet said. “I have friends.”
>
  Ron sniffed. “You’re just trying to make me feel better.”

  Maurey stood and went to a Kleenex box on the desk. She handed him a tissue and said, “Buck up. You don’t want your wife to see you like this.”

  He stared at her. “How did you know?”

  ***

  We met Gloria Mildren herself downstairs in the showroom. Urns filled a shelf on the left with caskets in the middle of the room and on the right. Each casket had a card giving the price and number of years on the warranty. Naturally, I drifted right over to the children’s casket. They only had one on hand, sized for about a six-year-old. It sold for eighteen hundred dollars and had a twelve-year warranty. I was afraid to ask what the warranty covered. I immediately imagined the child in the box, her little arms crossed over her chest, her hair brushed till it glowed. I could see the expression on her mother’s face. I knew her father’s helplessness. Sometimes being a novelist is a curse.

  Chet and Maurey chose a bois d’arc box with ivory inlay for the ashes and a simple pine cremation casket. Cremation caskets are much like the burial kind, only they don’t have handles.

  A woman’s voice came from a back hallway. “Orifices plugged up tight.” She walked into the showroom wearing a yoked shirt and 701 jeans, drying her hands on a Motel 6 towel. On seeing us, she had a moment’s embarrassment, but she recovered nicely. “Gloria Mildren,” she said, shaking hands all around. “My prayers are with you.”

  We pretty much looked at the floor on that one.

  Gloria’s eyes traveled the circle from us to her husband’s face. “Has Ronny been crying in front of the mourners again?”

  I said, “No.”

  “He cried in front of some folks from Pennsylvania last week. Their son skied into a tree and, if that wasn’t enough, when they came to view the body their funeral director bawled like a baby.” She turned to me. “How would you like it if that happened to you?”

  “Ron was totally professional with us.” I looked to Chet and Maurey for confirmation.

  Maurey nodded and said, “Totally,” but I don’t think Chet heard.

  The woman put her hands on her hips. She had the classic Western body of a barrel racer—wide shoulders, small breasts, tiny waist, strong thighs. “Do you want to see him?”

  I said, “Pete didn’t want a showing.”

  She seemed disappointed. “Are you the lover?”

  “What?”

  “We heard he had a male lover.”

  “I’m…that’s me,” Chet said.

  “Oh.” She studied him a moment. “Anything we can do to make your time of grief easier, let us know. I lost a lover once. I know how rough it can be.”

  “Thank you,” Chet said.

  “You two weren’t married? I suppose not.”

  “No.”

  “Being married makes it more bearable. Everyone admits you’re worthy of sympathy. My lover’s wife got the condolences, the money, and the name, and I had to keep up the act.”

  “I’m sorry,” Chet said.

  “I know what you’re going through. Believe me.”

  “I do.”

  ***

  Maurey blew across the surface of her coffee. “There’s nothing worse than a shallow person trying to be thoughtful,” she said.

  “Pete and I are used to it.” Chet inhaled on his cigarette. “She meant well.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about. Artificially deep people are worse when they mean well than when they don’t.”

  We were sitting in a window booth at Dot’s Dine Out and I was nervous because when we walked in Hank waved at us from the far booth by the jukebox, where he sat facing Lydia. All I could see was the back of her head, but that was enough to pull my trigger.

  Maurey continued. “Take ‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.’ Whoever wrote that was actually trying to be profound.”

  “‘Listen to the Warm,’” Chet said.

  “There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark.”

  I figured it was my turn. “Never take a rattlesnake by its tail or a woman by her word.”

  Maurey poured creamer and stirred. “Doesn’t count. The author knew he was being cynical. We’re talking about sincere froth.”

  “How about ‘Have a nice day’?”

  Maurey smiled. “I can just hear Gloria Mildren chirping that as the hearse pulls away.”

  Chet stared out the window. “Jesus loves me, this I know.”

  Maurey and I glanced at each other, then down at our cups. I wondered if Lydia could hear us. I couldn’t hear her, but that didn’t mean anything.

  Dot’s Dine Out may be the closest I have to a place that feels like home. It had a different name back then, but throughout junior high and high school I spent at least part of each day swilling coffee and trying to flirt with Dot Pollard, who was considerably more a mom than Lydia. Whenever the defeats and heartaches of puberty got me down, Dot was the woman I ran to, and I’d probably have starved to death if I had to depend on my own mother to feed me. That’s why when the owner, Max, died of hardened arteries, I loaned Dot the money to buy the cafe.

  “Isn’t that your former husband?” Chet nodded toward Dothan Talbot coming from his real estate office across the street. “Pete pointed him out to me once.”

  “I wish Pete wouldn’t go around exposing my shameful past,” Maurey said.

  Dothan wore a camouflage jacket and light blue cowboy boots. He got into a new Ford pickup truck that sported an NRA decal and a bumper sticker reading

  ***

  I didn’t get it.

  “What’s the bumper sticker mean?” I asked.

  “Filth,” Maurey said.

  “Perhaps you should sue him,” Chet said.

  “Oh, it’s okay. There’s been two ex-wives since me. Besides, it’s not considered cowboy to sue people in Wyoming. If he offends me bad enough, I’ll shoot his gas tank.”

  “I still don’t get it,” I said.

  Dot approached, carrying my chicken strip platter and Maurey’s chocolate malt. Chet was sticking to coffee. As far as I knew, he’d had nothing but coffee for two days, and it was starting to show on his face. Yesterday’s shock was being overwhelmed by today’s grief.

  Dot watched with us as the truck pulled out of a handicapped parking space. She laughed and said, “Dothan tried to sell me a time share the other day. Took a lot of nerve, considering the grapevine says he’s bringing in a Roy Rogers roast beef franchise.” Except for adding twenty pounds, Dot hasn’t changed in two decades. She’s the only consistently cheerful person in my life.

  “Where’d you hear that?” I asked.

  “Where I hear ever’thing. Right here.”

  “GroVont doesn’t need another restaurant. We’ve already got too many,” Maurey said. Dot’s Dine Out—under various names and disguises—and the Dairy Queen next to the Forest Service headquarters had been the only eating establishments in GroVont since the Second World War, until last summer, when a couple from Santa Barbara opened The Whole Grain out on the Jackson Highway. The Whole Grain specialized in hummus paninis and vinaigrettes.

  “Hear from Jacob lately?” I asked. Dot’s son, Jacob, tends to go off on tangents, so it’s always risky to ask about him. You never know what you’re going to get. But if you haven’t seen Dot in a while, not asking about him is a pointed comment in itself.

  Dot slid into the booth beside me and stole a French fry. “Jacob wrote a letter, said I was pedestrian and ruled by temporal lust and he’s chosen a new mother. Says she nurtures his inner spirit.”

  Maurey stared me down. “Don’t you hate kids who turn on their mother?”

  Dot dipped my fry in ketchup and went on, unaware of the arrow I’d just taken in the chest. “Ft. Worth Jones saw him in the Salt Lake Airport last month. Jacob was wearing a sheet
and passing out free flowers. His head is shaved.”

  If anyone deserves to be treated right by their son, it’s Dot. Had she been my mother, I’d buy her chocolates every day and a condo when she retires.

  “Maybe we ought to drive down there and drag his cosmic butt home,” I said.

  Dot laughed like I was kidding. “Lydia says it’s nothing but a phase they all go through and he’ll outgrow it.”

  “I never went through an airport beggar phase.”

  Dot popped the fry into her mouth. “Speaking of Lydia.”

  “We weren’t,” I said.

  “She’s sitting over there at Hank’s table. Maybe you should go visit with her.”

  “Not likely.”

  Maurey pointed her straw at my face. “When a loved one dies, all grudges are called off, Sam. That’s the rules.”

  “Lydia doesn’t play by the rules.”

  “If I can forgive her for mailing poison to Ronald Reagan’s dog, you can forgive her for faking rape.”

  “The two sins aren’t equal.”

  “How would you feel if Shannon refused to speak to you? Lord knows you’ve pulled stunts not everybody’s child would forgive.”

  I considered this carefully. “At least if I ruin my daughter’s life, I won’t do it on purpose.”

  “Nobody’s ruined your life on purpose.”

  I stared down at my plate on the table. “Could of fooled me.”

  At the top of my line of vision, Maurey’s hands doubled into fists. “You got a lot of nerve sitting in the same room with me and Chet and saying your life is ruined.”

  “You guys are capable of a loving partnership. I’m not.”

  ***

  Everybody ate or looked out the window in silence. I felt bad about saying my life was more ruined than Chet’s. It obviously wasn’t. He’d lost someone close and I hadn’t because I didn’t seem capable of having someone close. Up until Halloween, my purpose had been to give pleasure to women, and I’d been fairly good at it, but while I was busy giving women pleasure, I’d been unable to fall in love with one. I could love women I wasn’t romantically linked with—Shannon, Gus, Maurey as an adult—but the moment I found a clitoris I forgot the person it went with.