by Tim Sandlin
I stood there in my blue-striped pajamas, watching her. “Maybe I’ll go back to my room.”
Wrong thing to say. Lydia’s lower lip quivered and the tears came. I had to go through the arm-around-the-shoulders, patting-her-hair, apologizing-for-the-world deal. She blubbered. “You’re all I’ve got. If he takes you I’m all done.”
“He won’t take me.”
“I’m twenty-eight and everything good that’s ever going to happen to me has already happened.” She sniffed a couple times. “And I hate myself when I do it, but sometimes I blame that on you.”
“Lots of good things might happen to you.”
Her face turned to me. “Name one.”
I looked at the TV on the floor, then at the moose, Les, then back at Lydia’s tear-blotched face. “You might win a contest.”
She pouted. “I haven’t entered a contest.”
“Tomorrow, that’s what we’ll do, we’ll enter a contest. Now’s time for sleep.”
She jerked away. “No.” She held up her index finger, left hand, as if making a point. “I have a chip.”
How was I supposed to handle that? “In your nail?”
“Everyone says my hands are my finest feature and I have a chip.”
“We’ll fix it right up first thing in the morning.”
“To hell with you, Mr. Solicitatious to the Drunk. We’ll fix it now. I may be stuck in the hell hole of the West, but I will never let myself go.” This from a woman who was on the verge of sleeping in the same clothes she’d slept in last night.
Her head nodded at the book boxes spread across the floor. “I was looking for my nail kit.”
“And the TV?”
“It slipped.” She stood up too quickly and sat back down. Then she stood up again. “The bathroom.”
“I’m tired and sleepy, Lydia. Use verbs.”
“My nail kit that Mother Callahan gave me is in my overnight bag in the bathroom.” Getting out an entire proper sentence must have exhausted her because she sat back down again. “Help me to the John, honey bunny.” She held out both arms.
“Nope. If you can’t walk on your own you can’t play with scissors.”
“Bastard.”
“What’s that make you?”
Lydia bounced off both walls on her way down the hall, then through the open bathroom door. When I got there she was leaning over the sink with her forehead and nose propped against the mirror, staring into her own eyes a half-inch away. Lydia stuck out her tongue and touched the tip of it to the mirror.
I said, “You’re licking the mirror.”
“I’m making contact.”
“With who?”
“Myself.”
“You’re licking the mirror.”
The bathroom was actually the niftiest room in the house, although I tend to think that about any house. It had this claw-foot bathtub and a commode that sat about two inches higher than what I was used to. Made crapping feel awkward until I discovered The James Beard Cookbook turned into a footstool brought my body back to the right angle.
A big stump rested next to the toilet, acting as a table or counter space or some such, and Lydia’s overnight bag sat on the stump. While Lydia went into close-range self-hypnosis and connected with herself, I decided to sit on the side of the bathtub and watch.
She suddenly turned to me. “Sam, have you ever had a hard-on?”
“Mom.”
“I was thinking about the hooker’s twats on Les. Have you ever experienced a hooker?”
“I’m thirteen, Mom.” That twat talk was all bravado, like most of my off-color language. Women had twats, I was certain of that, but I wasn’t certain exactly to the inch where they were located or what they did.
“And I realized I hadn’t seen your little thing in years. It was so cute when you were a baby. We had this black speckled basin I used to wash you in, and you’d always pee straight up, then we’d both giggle and have the nicest time.” Her cheek was stuck to the mirror now, in the center of the fog circle left by her breath.
“Lydia, don’t you know how much it embarrasses kids when their mom talks about cute naked stuff they did as babies.”
Her head slid down a notch. “Then you went to grade school and came back a smartass.”
I didn’t know what to say. I just sat there, hoping this kind of crap wouldn’t warp me when I grew up.
Lydia kind of lunged-fell sideways into the overnight bag, and junk exploded all over the place—toothbrushes, combs, curlers, Vaseline, spray deodorant, my Clearasil, gum, pens, female hygiene objects I’d never seen before—and a bottle of Pepto-Bismol hit the floor and broke. Pink blood oozed under the tub.
Lydia said, “There,” and fell to her knees, bopping her forehead a good one on the edge of the sink.
I reach out, but she growled at me—like a cat. “Stay away.” She was crouched in sort of a cave under the sink with the toilet on one side and the tub up the wall on the other. By kneeling off to her left, I could see what dear old Mama was up to under there.
The leather fingernail kit lay against a drain pipe, zippered side to the wall. Carefully, Lydia reached out, picked it up, and turned it around counterclockwise. She seemed to take forever pulling the zipper, sliding out the scissors. I touched her shoulder but she growled again.
She bit her lower lip hard as she slow-motion trimmed the fingernail back the thinnest sliver, then slid the scissors back into their slot. File next. Right side first, working her way up the nail, tapering the top just right, then down the left. Pink Pepto-Bismol flowed into view from between her legs. Lydia ignored it.
Her voice was only a whisper. “I didn’t let myself go.” Then she slid the file back into the case and, as slowly as she’d opened it, zippered the kit shut. Lydia placed the leather case on the floor and, using it as a pillow, fell asleep.
I went back to bed.
4
Caspar looked like a short Mark Twain, which is maybe why I don’t care for Huckleberry Finn. He did a lot of things I hated to Lydia on purpose and a lot of things I hated to me accidentally, but his one unforgivable sin was being short. That stuff is hereditary as hell.
Caspar had a gray hearing aid that he kept turned down except for when he was talking, and he wore a white suit year round, Southern as all get out. Every day, he stuck a fresh yellow mum in his lapel. I used to think the mum had something to do with Me Maw and he’d once had a heart, but Lydia said it was part of some spiffy self-image thing, and if Caspar ever had a heart, he sure wouldn’t advertise the fact.
The day we left Greensboro, after these ape-men-redneck movers piled all our stuff in a truck and went away, Caspar came out on the porch to deliver some sort of farewell to the family. Lydia was sitting sideways in the porch swing, reading Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers, and painting her fingernails black. I read the book on the drive west and decided not to ride any horses. The black fingernail polish was a Lydia statement to Caspar, but he missed it.
I was on the plank floor sorting baseball cards. It was late in the summer and there’d been a rash of trades before the final pennant drive, which meant I had all kinds of guys in the wrong place. Willie Mays had collapsed in the batter’s box the day before we left so his card was out on top.
Caspar drew himself up into what passed for posture. He fingered his hearing aid and gave out a little snort. “The purest treasure mortal times afford is spotless reputation.”
I looked at Lydia who shrugged. “You been in the library again, Daddy?”
He hovered over me, looking like an old man pretending to be an even older man. “Do you know why I’m sending you to northwest Wyoming?”
I stared up into his permanently black fingernails. No matter how much Caspar played at Southern gentility, carbon in the cuticles would forever show his roots. “Because Lydia messed
up again.”
Lydia coughed real ladylike into her hand. Casper wasted a glare on her before going on. “Because I measured in the Rand Atlas and Jackson Hole is farther from a major baseball team than any other spot in the country.”
“Oh.”
“And you are leaving those cards here.”
“Caspar.”
“There will be no discussion. In Wyoming you are to mature into a gentleman. You will think carbon paper, not baseball.”
Lydia almost stood up to him. “Daddy, don’t take it out on Sam. He’s innocent.”
The old goat actually hooked his thumbs under his suspenders. “Nothing you touch is innocent. One mistake out there and he goes to Culver Military Academy. Are the implications clear?”
“Yes, your daddyship.”
Caspar stared down at me. “Carbon paper, Sam. The country turns on carbon paper. Nothing else matters to you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Bring your cards to the basement.”
When Caspar opened the screen door, I snuck Willie Mays and Gil Hodges into my socks. They’re the only two I saved. Caspar incinerated every other player from 1958 through 1963 in the basement coal stove. And he made me watch.
***
“Gentlemen, on punts we have two men we pop free for the block. First one’s the outside rusher, that’s you, Callahan. Line up on the side of the line that the kicker’s kicking foot is on. Got that?”
I nodded. No reason to go into the Yes Sir mentality until I had to.
“You have a second and a half to move from here to a spot two feet in front of the kicker, and you’re being blocked one-on-one so there’s no time for anything fancy. Just get around the guy and fly.”
Practice hadn’t been the irritating grunt I’d expected, mainly due to the pleasant temp. My one shot at September football in Carolina came to drippy sweat and stomach cramps followed by heat prostration and first aid from the student trainer. Here, I did the jumping jacks, touch the toes, ran through a few old tires, and did okay.
Thank God nobody had loads of gung-hohood. I figure Stebbins recruited the whole team the way he got me. We were hundreds of miles from a decent college team and, what with limited TV exposure, there was little instilled pigskin fanaticism. A couple guys tried rolling blocks, but I stepped aside and they ate dirt. Neither one seemed to take it personally.
“Our other punt blocker will be Schmidt here. You line up at middle linebacker. Talbot, you cross-block their guard, blow his ass down the line. Then Schmidt comes through the hole.”
Why is it coaches use first names in class like normal teachers and last names on the field? And who started this gentlemen jive? Coaches and cops love to call people they don’t like gentlemen.
We lined up and shuffled through four or five punts without using the ball. A kid named Skipper O’Brien stood across the line with his elbows up. I let him bump me a time or two, figuring the poor schlock’s ego needed a buildup. He had red hair and an overbite you could open a can with. Red-headed children tend to feel inferior.
When it came to the real drill, our punter was so awful that Stebbins did the kicking himself. He said, “Yup, yup, yup,” and everybody took off. I faked O’Brien’s jock to the outside and zipped right up the middle. The punt boomed off Stebbins’s left foot, traveled maybe nine inches and caught me dead in the lungs.
I rolled over and over, wound up armadilloed on my back. Try breathing when you can’t. It’s a panic deal. I couldn’t see squat, but I could hear, and I felt someone pull me off the ground an inch by a belt loop, then lower me again. God knows why.
Stebbins’s voice floated in. “Nice block, Callahan. Get up, we’ll try it again.”
My mouth and nose felt sealed in Saran Wrap. The thing lasted forever.
More voices. “Think he’ll die?”
“Doubt it.”
“He don’t look like a nigger.”
“His mom tried to pick up Ft. Worth at the White Deck last night.”
“I heard it other way around.”
A toe poked me in the ribs. “He’s turning blue.”
“Maybe the nigger comes out when he’s hurt.”
Stebbins’s voice again: “He’s no nigger, he’s not fast enough.”
I pretended to pass out.
***
I got the wind knocked out of me one other time. In North Carolina, I was little, six or seven, and Lydia and I were playing seesaw. She had to scoot way up near the middle so our weights sort of balanced out. It was fun because the air was nice that day and Lydia didn’t play outdoors stuff with me too often. About all I could ever get out of her was an occasional game of crazy 8s.
So I’m going up and down, up and down, admiring to myself how pretty Lydia is down the board from me. She had on a gray sleeveless shirt and white shorts. She’d spread a magazine out on the board in front of her so she could amuse herself and me at the same time. Every now and then she’d raise her face to swipe the bangs off her forehead, and she smiled at me kind of absentmindedly, as if she’d forgotten I was there.
Then, while I’m way up a mile high on top of the world, the damn coach of some swim team walks up in his stretchy trunks and rubber thongs. Had a blue whistle on a cord around his neck. I hate coaches.
He cocked his head to one side and banged on the skull bone over his right ear. “Does your little brother know how to swim?”
Lydia marked her spot in the magazine with her finger and turned to stare at the bare-chested coach.
He switched sides of the head and banged some more. “Every young man should know how to swim. It is vital to his safety and the safety of his loved ones.”
Lydia looked up the board at me. “Sam, do you know how to swim?”
“No.” I wasn’t happy about being passed off as a little brother.
She turned to the coach. “No.”
“I could teach the little snapper. Maybe you and me should walk over to the ice cream stand and discuss it. My treat, I’ll even stand the boy a single cone.”
Lydia stared at him a few seconds more, just enough to cause him to stop banging on the sides of his head, then she said, “I do not receive gentlemen without the decency to cover their repellent chest mange,” and dignified as all get out, she swung her right leg across the board and got off the seesaw. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t breathe for five minutes or stop crying for an hour, not until the stupid swimmer went away.
***
I was depressed that fall. I’d never been depressed to the point where I knew it before. Depression is like a headache or true love or any of those indefinable concepts. If you’ve never been there, you don’t know what it’s like until you’re too far in to stop the process.
But I remember coming home from football practice to entire evenings on the couch next to Lydia, neither of us talking or reading or anything. We’d just sit with our eyes glazed, waiting for 10:30.
I figured out the stove deal so we ate frozen pizzas three nights a week and at the White Deck the other four. That’s something of an exaggeration. Lydia bought rib eyes every now and then, and I got good with Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in a box. Some Sundays we drove to Jackson for late breakfast at the Wort Hotel.
So far as I can tell, Lydia made good on the emotional catatonia threat. She went a good month without speaking to a human other than me and Dot. Even with Dot, Lydia took to pointing at things on the menu or going through me.
“Tell her this hamburger is overcooked. Your sneakers have more flavor.”
I turned to Dot and shrugged.
Dot laughed like we were perfectly pleasant folks making a joke. She had nifty dimples. I had a crush on her that wouldn’t let go, and Lydia’s attitude caused me some embarrassment.
Once when Lydia left me the money to pay and fluffed out the door, I explained things to Dot at
the cash register.
“My mom’s kind of high-strung. She doesn’t mean anything personal.”
Dot looked sad for the first time. “No one should apologize for their mother,” she said. “All moms are doing the best they can.”
“Are you sure?”
***
A guy did try to talk to us once. Big, wide fella with a grin, he came slamming through the door and walked straight toward our table, pulled a chair over and straddled it backward with his hands across the top slat. The middle finger on his right hand was missing two joints.
He held the stub out to me. “Look.”
I looked but didn’t see anything other than a short finger. Lydia didn’t look. “It’s short,” I said.
“Look at the tip.”
I shrugged. Seemed like a fingertip to me.
“I lost it in a chain saw and at the hospital they took a skin graft off this arm,” he showed me a scar on his left arm, “and stuck it over the tip.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Look close and see.”
I finally figured out that he meant he didn’t have a fingerprint so he could commit crimes. I looked so I could say, “Gee, no fingerprint,” but then I saw all this wiry hair.
“Your fingertip’s hairy.”
The big lug’s grin showed a flashy gold tooth. “Never seen anything like it, huh? Look, ma’am.” He stuck the finger between Lydia’s face and her food. I couldn’t believe it, the guy had his hand in a pornographic position three inches from her nose, and she was speechless. Normally, Lydia practically spit at anyone who called her “ma’am.”
“They shaved the skin off my arm before grafting it, but the hair all grew back. Ever see anything like that?”
He turned his hand sideways into the handshake position. “Ft. Worth Jones, ma’am. I’m more than pleased to meet you.”
Lydia stared at the hand a moment, then up at the guy’s expansive face.
I said, “I heard your name at football practice.”
The gold tooth flashed in the fluorescent light. “Hope they said something good.”
