Sorrow Floats

by Tim Sandlin

  “I didn’t accuse you of anything, I just asked. Dot says she’s never seen you with a girl, so I wondered if you like boys.”

  “No, I don’t like boys.”

  “But you don’t like girls either.”

  “Girls smell bad; they make me sick.”

  “That leaves Mom.”

  He hung up on me again, although I deserved it. No one likes being accused of having the hots for a parent. Especially my mom.

  I went back to the window and looked at myself in it and tried to picture Petey and Mom kissing. It wouldn’t come. I’m usually good at picturing really disgusting sex acts. I can just see Dothan with all those Kiwanis wives, especially Sugar Cannelioski. He’d be on top; Dothan can’t deal with any other position. He’d stick his pointy Talbot chin in her right shoulder and grind. That’s the only way he knows how to do it. I’m in the grocery store and I see a Kiwanis wife rubbing her right shoulder, I figure Dothan’s been grinding again.

  He has a little brother, Pud, that everyone says does it with animals. I like to picture that. Pud’s kind of cute in a retarded sort of way. I picture him behind a calf with the back hooves tied to his boots and his arms around her belly. He has this look on his face like Tony Randall eating a bad lemon.

  The calf looks as if she’s had better.

  Sometimes at sporting events I like to picture men in bed with each other. The one I have the hardest time picturing in bed lately is me. After a semi-loose three years of college, then a real short rabbit period when I first married Dothan, I lost enthusiasm for sex as a personal experience. Since Auburn was born I’d only woken up with pain in my right shoulder twice, and at least one of those I think Dothan sleep-fucked.

  Yukon Jack was my kind of companion. Jack never lets you down, never comes and goes to sleep just as I’m getting started. He’s monogamous and predictable. A certain amount of Jack causes a certain amount of warmth. He’s always there and he never calls me cunt.

  The AA guys carried the harmonica player back up the steps. He grinned and nodded just like he didn’t care he was a crippled old alcoholic who had to go to meetings in the Mormon church. The men stood around with their hands in their back pockets and talked, but the women adjusted foundation garments and drove away. AA over meant I’d lost some time and was late picking up Auburn.

  Consistent as Tupperware, the phone went off again.

  “I am gravely ill.”

  “I’m sorry I’m late, Mrs. Talbot. The Bronco wouldn’t start, but I gave it a rest and it might now. How’s Auburn?”

  “Whenever I am late to the Great Books Club I get nervous, and when I get nervous I become ill. You know I become ill, Maurey. Why would you purposefully try to make me become ill?”

  Always lie to in-laws. “The Bronco flooded, Mrs. Talbot. I'll be there in ten minutes.”

  “It’s my day to deliver Lord Byron’s eulogy, which I wrote myself.”

  “I’d love to read the eulogy if you have a copy.”

  “A rash is breaking out on my back.”

  “Spray some benzocaine. I’ll be there.”

  I addressed the postcard to Buddy Pierce, General Delivery, San Francisco, and licked on a six-cent stamp.

  In the bedroom, I shrugged out of the blue fuzzy bathrobe and into crack-climber cutoffs and a T-shirt. No bra, it was only Grandmother Talbot. No shoes for the same reason. I put on my King Ropes red windbreaker, checked myself in the mirror a second, then slipped Charley into my pocket and checked myself again. A before and after comparison. Definitely better after. Charley’s blue barrel complemented the red nylon of the windbreaker.

  I counted from twenty to zero backward to prove I wasn’t drunk—I never drive Auburn when I’m drunk—took one more hit of Jack-Claude, stuffed a Hershey bar in the other pocket, and I’m on the way to Grandmother’s house.

  2

  Delilah Talbot’s feet hung over both sides of her sandals like oozing Silly Putty. She stood next to the television in her polyester slacks and matching jacket outfit, looking with distaste at Auburn on the floor.

  She said, “Greens.”

  Once you rose above the feet, the rest of Delilah wasn’t fat at all. In fact, from the knees up she looked kind of depleted. “Green what?”

  Auburn’s face took me in, and he crawled under the kitchen table where he turned around and stared through the legs of a chair. My nose said he needed changing.

  Delilah expanded her first statement. “In Alabama we had green vegetables with every meal, but out west it’s meat and potatoes, meat and potatoes. Manners are a by-product of green vegetables. That’s why westerners don’t have any.”

  She stood with one finger on her chin, watching me load up his diaper bag, blanket, the stuffed Cowardly Lion, and a sponge cake she’d baked for Dothan. She made no move to help me chase down my child.

  Instead, the woman gazed into the air near my ear and said, “Manners.” Often Mrs. Talbot stripped the front half and back half out of sentences, leaving one word to fend for itself.

  I shrugged the load onto my shoulders. “You mind handing me Auburn?”

  “Are you feeding my son green vegetables? I don’t mean iceberg lettuce. Iceberg lettuce is not a green vegetable.”

  I bent on one knee to look under the table, hit my forehead on the metal strip that held the linoleum in place, and dropped the diaper bag.

  Mrs. Talbot didn’t notice. “Dothan was rude when he dropped Aubie off this morning; I suspect you of not serving green vegetables.”

  Auburn smiled and put some floor gunk in his mouth. I reached a finger in and dug out a dried piece of elbow macaroni.

  “I still don’t understand why you cut your hair, Maurey. You were so pretty as a little girl.”

  One thing about Delilah, she didn’t see anything she didn’t want to see. I could show up at her house toilet-hugging smashed and she’d say, “What a nice shirt. Did someone give it to you?” Right now she had no idea I was getting the whirlies under her kitchen table.

  She said, “Lord Byron.”

  I reached one hand around Auburn’s waist, and he frowned. If I moved too fast there’d be a scream scene, which had to be avoided at all costs. Scream scenes drove me to drink.

  I truly enjoy being a mother, only I’m not naturally suited to motherhood. I love Auburn and couldn’t live without him; it’s the motherhood itself—the smells, the lack of sleep, the humiliation. I’m not one of those women born to nurture.

  Mrs. Talbot droned on about Byron—Byron’s foot, Byron’s legacy, Byron’s death.

  I said, “I heard Byron slept around.”

  “I can’t gab all the livelong day. Toodles.” The door slammed, and after a moment, I heard Mrs. Talbot’s El Camino pulling out of the drive.

  “Thank God,” I said to Auburn.

  He put three fingers in his mouth.

  I lowered my cheek to the tile to look up at him through one eye. Auburn had Dad’s forehead and my blue eyes and skinny fingers. I couldn’t see any Dothan in my baby. I liked to pretend Dothan wasn’t related to him. Maybe Auburn’s father had been Frostbite’s spirit or God or Yukon Jack. This beautiful person couldn’t be connected to a man who sold real estate or a woman with fat feet who said “Toodles.”

  I lifted my head off the tile and crossed my eyes and cooed, “Boo boo be doop,” in my Betty Boop voice.

  Auburn laughed.

  I did Olive Oyl. “Oh, Popeye, you’re such a man.”

  And Wimpy. “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.”

  I would have tried any trick to make Auburn laugh because one smile from my baby was worth whatever other trouble my ridiculous life dished out. When he squeezed my nose I went into W. C. Fields. “Sure, I like children, I like them with whiskey for lunch. Speaking of whiskey…”

  Leaving Auburn under the table, I ba
ck-crawled out, then front-crawled over to Garth Talbot’s fake-maple liquor cabinet. I didn’t drink his liquor—at least not much. I poured a single shot of ouzo but left it on the floor. What I did was I mixed. I mixed Scotch with Jack Daniel’s and Jack Daniel’s with Scotch, then gin with vodka and vodka with gin. Everything color-coded.

  Auburn looked on solemnly.

  “Garth will never notice,” I said. Auburn took his fingers out of his mouth and crawled over to my lap. I held him with one hand and mixed with the other. One of my biggest fears, besides quitting Yukon Jack, was that Auburn would grow up to become a Talbot; that he’d obsess on TV football and South-shall-rise-again. Worse yet, he might grow into the Talbot chin. The Talbot men have this sharp, jutty chin you could plow with. According to Sam Callahan, every night at sunset all Talbot chins point to Alabama.

  Sam Callahan is Shannon’s father and my best friend. My only friend. We were never lovers except in the loosest definition. At thirteen, Sam and I lost our virginities together. We would play Red Rover, Red Rover and Red Light, Green Light, then go inside and play sex—Sam gave me killer orgasms back then—then go back outside and play Kick the Can. It was like Paul Harvey on canning jars, cantaloupe, and Watergate—none of the games meant any more or less than the others. Our lost virginities had nothing to do with lost innocence, at least until I landed pregnant.

  Sam had all the maternal instincts I lacked. After the birth, I went back to cheerleading practice, cutout magazine photos of Sal Mineo, and Coke dates, and Sam went on to changing diapers and two o’clock feedings. He always volunteered to baby-sit, then to keep Shannon for the weekend, then the week. Pretty soon she was with him and Lydia all the time, and I’d washed out as a mom. Hell, I still hadn’t had a period yet, how was I supposed to have instincts?

  Sam did. He was born to mother. Sometimes I wish I’d fallen for him on a nonbuddy level, but you can’t fake that stuff. He was too considerate to get the hots for.

  You know how whenever boys squirt, first thing afterward when you’re feeling warmish and post-passion affectionate, they jump up and bolt to the bathroom? They go off and pee like horses and come back to bed with one urine drop hanging off the end. That’s when the boy feels like cuddling, but he hops under the sheets and pulls you close and that wet piss-head pokes right in your thigh. Talk about killing romanticism. That’s when I go home.

  Well, at thirteen, Sam always toilet paper-blotted the end dry before he came back to bed so that wouldn’t happen. Who taught him that kind of consideration? The kid was weird.

  As I changed Auburn he gurgled and made little fists with his hands. I put my face in his and he pulled my ears. I blew on his belly and he laughed like an angel. He had the teeniest penis. I couldn’t conceive of it growing up and getting hard and being used as a weapon against women. Or maybe I could since that’s what I thought about.

  “You better not act like a man,” I said. Auburn burped.

  Since Mrs. Talbot hadn’t bothered to change him, I left the stinky diaper in the trash sack under her sink. The smell would remind her of what she didn’t do.

  Thinking of Sam brought back a certain warmness that I usually kept covered with Yukon Jack. Sam drinks ouzo. I chugged my glass and left it on the floor while I regathered the pile of stuff. I stood up too fast, and the room separated itself from me. Took a moment for the black spots to settle out. Auburn sat on one hip, balancing the pile of mother stuff on the other side. At the front door, I turned to look for lost squeeze toys and saw Dothan’s cake on the table. To hell with it.

  The deal is that Sam was, and is, just a pal, but those carefree young lays were technically the most dynamite sex I’ve ever had. Sam paid attention. And he was easy to boss around. I could say higher, lower, harder, no-you-can’t-stop-now; give directions you can’t give a lover. God, did that boy have a golden tongue. I bet he’s popular down there in North Carolina.

  I’d never gotten off, not once, with Dothan, and he never went down. Why did you marry the bum, you asked? I take a drink and change the subject.

  The spring before I dropped out twelve credits short of graduation and came home to marry Dothan, my boyfriend was named Leon. Leon the Moron. I tried for weeks to get him down there, then when he finally went, he dropped way too low, all the way to the hole, and he like chewed as if I were gum or something. He lasted about ninety seconds before he whined, “Did you get off yet?” I said yes just to move him off my crotch. Leon couldn’t find a clitoris with a map. Then, he jumped up like they all do and headed for the can. Only instead of peeing, Leon brushed his teeth. I caught him. Chewed me for a minute and a half, then practically ran for his toothbrush.

  At the Bronco the diaper bag strap broke and stuff fell all over the curb. Clean diapers, dirty diapers, a plastic Indian, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Auburn’s pacifier—a jar of Gerber strained fruit cocktail hit the concrete and broke. When I leaned over, Charley came out of my pocket and bounced under the car.

  Auburn laughed. I put him and his blanket on the roof and dropped to my knees to reach under for Charley. I leaned my left hand on a can opener.

  “Shit. Why me? Everything happens to me.”

  I found my Ortho-Novum pill wheel, which I’d lost during the green tablet section. Greens were blanks and peach pills stopped whatever had to be stopped so I wouldn’t get pregnant again. The pill companies thought women were such idiots they had to take blanks because they couldn’t be trusted to count to seven. I was three days late starting peach, not because I couldn’t count, but because I’d lost the wheel and wasn’t about to get nailed anytime soon anyhow.

  I didn’t care much for the Novum wheel—the wheel of misconception, Lydia called it. She liked Novums because they made her breasts bigger and she cared about stuff like that. My fantasy form of birth control would be to cut off all the peckers around the world. Stack them in a big pile next to Old Faithful in Yellowstone Park for men to sit around and mourn over. That’d teach the ingrates to use their tongues.

  Diaper rash medicine and dental floss had landed on Auburn’s spare pants, next to Cowardly Lion. When I picked them up, the stuffed lion clanked against the medicine. I unzipped his back and pulled out a half pint of tequila.

  “Whoa, how’d you get here?”

  The fact he was in Cowardly Lion wasn’t so odd; sometimes I hid bottles and forgot them. The odd thing was that he was tequila. I was monogamous with Yukon Jack. I tested his weight in my hand, read his label, then squinted at the sun. Tequila and sun go together. Has something to do with Mexico.

  I look for signs everywhere, and a bottle of tequila suddenly appearing under my car was a definite sign I should enjoy the sun. I’d had a hard day; no one was around to gossip.

  ***

  The tequila didn’t make me drunk at all. Driving the GroVont Highway, I noticed how sharp the houses looked, how alive the aspens. For the first time since Dad’s funeral I felt alert, on top of the situation. The weather sparkled. I sparkled. There was the Killdeer Cafe, then a minute later the Tastee-Freez sailed by on the left, and the Forest Service headquarters on the right. Behind it floated the Sagebrush Lounge in the old Talbot Taxidermy building. I wasn’t even driving, I was on a magic carpet rippling through my hometown.

  I used to drink tequila in college, before I met Jack, but had quit for some reason I couldn’t recall. The bottle in the stuffed lion was a message from the past. College days. Life had been so simple and easy then. We all loved each other. People didn’t carry mean thoughts behind their eyes.

  Today would be the day to drive up to the ranch. I owned it now, I guess. Or Mom did, but she didn’t care. Jenny Lind had foaled, and I loved Jenny Lind. I loved all horses.

  A man yelled at me: “Maurey, pull over.”

  I looked to the left through my open window at Mangum Potter in his white policeman’s car. Someone had made Mangum a deputy sheriff a few y
ears ago, and it went to his head.

  “Leave me alone, Mangum.”

  “Pull over.”

  “Suck a bull.”

  “Please, pull over, Maurey. I won’t arrest you.”

  A tourist car came in Mangum’s lane and he had to drop back, but just as I thought he’d gone away, there he was again back in my window. “It’s important, Maurey.”

  I stopped the car and looked at myself in the rearview mirror. I looked okay. Nobody could tell I’d been drinking. If I spoke clearly and didn’t come off meek or anything, he couldn’t bother me. The last thing I needed was a raft of crap from Mangum Potter.

  “Mangum, you got a lot of nerve stopping me. Dothan can get your badge pulled if I tell him to.”

  His eyes wouldn’t look at me. He said, ‘‘Don’t be scared.”

  “I’m not scared of you.”

  Mangum’s hands went to the top of the Bronco and came down with Auburn. Auburn looked in the window at me and started whimpering.

  Mangum’s eyes were not friendly. “You forgot something, Mrs. Talbot.”

  My stomach went knot and my face drained. It had to be a dream.

  “We got calls on you through town. You frightened people.”

  My baby squirmed in Mangum’s hands. The hands were dirty with burned-off wart scars on both thumbs. “Give him to me.”

  Mangum settled Auburn against his chest with its badge. “I can’t do that, Mrs. Talbot.”

  “He’s my child.”

  “You drove with your baby on the roof. You can’t be responsible for him.”

  “Don’t take my baby.”

  “If you were a tourist you’d be in jail, Mrs. Talbot.”

  “I’ll go to jail, just give me my son.”

  Mangum stepped back from my door. “Don’t do anything crazy now. I’ll take him to Dothan at the office. You go home and get some sleep.”

  “Sleep?”