Lydia

by Tim Sandlin

  Lydia snorted derision at Zelda. I was glad to see Mom had some scorn left. She said, “He plans to slice your zitty little throat later, honey.”

  “Does not,” Zelda said. “We haven’t even had sexual congress yet.”

  Roger spoke for the first time since he’d pulled me off the fence. “Does sexual congress with a maniac mean he’s more likely or less likely to kill a person?”

  Zelda tucked her towel in so tightly it gave her a hint of cleavage. I don’t think she’d considered Leroy’s plans for her future. The dangerous-man thing would be fun to throw in her father’s face, but she hadn’t spun the adventure out to its logical conclusion.

  Leroy focused on Lana Sue. “You there, hostess. Go inside and fetch nine pieces of paper and nine pencils. Zelda, go with her. You know the drill.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Zelda said. “If she tries to escape, shoot her. If she uses the phone, shoot her. I’d be more in the mood for shooting if you’d promise to take me home after we leave here.”

  “Just do what I say, you stupid weasel, or risk going back on the list.”

  ***

  I was at a loss as to what to do next. My hand throbbed, and the blood had soaked through my shirttail, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped. None of the women offered to help me wash or find a clean towel. Women in my life are like that.

  Maurey was on the patio having an intense yet quiet talk with Roger and Shannon. Something I didn’t understand was going on there. Shannon was staring at Roger, who had turned a flushed color. I can spot heightened emotionalism from afar and those two were deeply involved in a situation.

  Oly was taking a nap. His head had fallen back on the headrest of his chair. His mouth was open, revealing cracked gums.

  That left Leroy or Loren for conversation. I chose Loren.

  I said, “I’m pleased to meet a peer.”

  Loren was a bit taller than me, and maybe a year older, but he came across as much taller and much older. Literary respect improves a person’s impressions.

  “What do you mean by that?” he asked.

  “A fellow author. I write novels too.”

  “I haven’t written a novel in fifteen years.”

  “Yes, but Yeast Infection changed my life. That book is a twentieth-century classic. It defined a generation.”

  Loren said, “It’s out of print.”

  “American publishing is blind and tone deaf.” I have a give-away pen with that printed on the side. If anyone wants one, drop me an e-mail. “My books are out of print too. I’ve published eight novels so far, mostly young adult.”

  “I only put out four.”

  “Four masterpieces are better than eight hack jobs.” To be honest, Loren’s first two books before Disappearance and Yeast Infection were Westerns and not masterpieces, but it would have been rude to say so. “Your use of symbol and dynamic imagery is breathtaking.”

  “I wouldn’t touch symbol and dynamic imagery with a stick. I tell stories. I was successful enough to get myself kicked up to screenwriter, but not successful enough to circle back to novels. What’s your name again?”

  “Sam Callahan. I wrote the Bucky climbing series, and the RC Nash detective stories. I also penned a Plucky Woman in Jeopardy novel, but I had a pseudonym there.”

  Lana Sue banged her way out the back door followed by Zelda, who trailed along with the demeanor of a puppy packing a rifle. She’d put a men’s white dress shirt on over the bikini. The tails hung below her crotch, covering the thong some, but not much. She’d lost her sandals along the way.

  Loren said, “I never penned a book. I was more of a typist.”

  “Typist of what?” Lana Sue asked as she crossed the yard. “I found index cards and pens. We don’t have pencils, that I know of.”

  “Novels,” Loren said. “I felt more like a typer of novels than a penner.”

  “Look where literature got us,” Lana Sue said. “We’ve never had a killer in the hot tub over those tacky MTV reality shows you type.”

  I realized who Lana Sue was. The name should have tipped me off, but I don’t think her last name was Paul back when I’d seen her perform. I said, “I saw you sing once, at the Cowboy Bar in Jackson. You were with a band called Thunder Jug.”

  “Thunder Road.”

  “That’s right. You were remarkable, considering how drunk the musicians were. It was one of the finest nights I’ve spent in a watering hole.”

  Lydia said, “Hell, Sam, how many more asses are you planning to stick your tongue up?”

  “I was just telling the Pauls that I admire their creative work. When I do admirable work, I want random strangers to tell me.”

  “Lucky for us, you’ve never done admirable work.”

  Lana Sue passed out pens and index cards. When she handed me mine, she said, “Is that woman really your mother? With this bunch, I can’t tell what’s real and what isn’t.”

  “I’m afraid so. She had me young.”

  “Is she always this negative?

  Okay. That was a little odd coming from Lana Sue. She might be the only woman I’ve met who could give Lydia competition at ironic negativity.

  Speaking of which, Lydia said, “You should talk to me when I’m in a bad mood.”

  See. Ironic negativity on parade.

  “Vote,” Leroy barked.

  Lana Sue poked Oly with the point of a pen. I could tell she didn’t want to touch him. “Wake up, Grandpa. Write your name here.”

  Oly came to with a long, whistling snort. He looked from the index card to Lana Sue. “You spell Lana Sue as one word or two?”

  Loren said, “I’d rather not choose. I don’t do well at making decisions.”

  Leroy said, “You know what’ll happen if you don’t write a name on the card.”

  A CD by a band called Yes was playing. I hadn’t heard Yes since college, and I wasn’t overly keen on them back then. I snuck a peek at Loren and Lana Sue, wondering which of those two was trapped in a bygone era. My money was on Loren. Lana Sue didn’t strike me as a stagnant woman.

  Shannon, Roger, Maurey, and Loren cut their eyes around the group, weighing probabilities. It was the old game of who do we throw off the life raft. Lana Sue, Lydia, and Zelda kept their heads down and pens scratching—no wishy-washiness as to who to kill there—although, at the end, after she’d placed her card facedown on the hot-tub ledge, Zelda looked at Shannon and smirked.

  I couldn’t come up with a justification for choosing. I mean, it mattered. A lot. Someone was likely to die here. Logically, it had to be the ninety-nine-year-old Oly. His life expectancy lacked the potential of the rest of us. But then, I’d known Oly thirty years, and I hated to sentence a man I’d known for so long to death.

  I was related to all the others, except Loren and Lana Sue. I figured the immediate family—Lydia, Shannon, Roger, and I counted Maurey, even though we weren’t technically related, because we shared a child—wouldn’t choose each other, which left only Oly or the new strangers. Lana Sue was the closest anyone came to innocent. She had no connection to Roger or Leroy, other than her husband had once been married to Ann. Loren was present at the original abduction. To read the book—and I had read the book, years ago—if Loren had been paying attention he might have stopped the kidnapping. If anyone should die for Ann, it was Loren. But then, how could I condemn him? He’d written literature. Society at large would be less without Loren Paul. The rest of us would be grieved by friends and family, but that was the extent of our reach. Loren mattered to people who didn’t know him.

  In the end, I wrote my own name, hoping no one else would think of me. What if everyone used the same thought process and wrote their own names? It could happen. Zelda had voted for Shannon. By the rules, Shannon couldn’t write Zelda, so if everyone who could named themselves, we’d all have one vote, except Shannon, who would h
ave two. And that would up the bloodbath factor, because Leroy could only kill my daughter over my dead body. I had no doubt Maurey would throw herself into the breach for Shannon also.

  That brought us back to Oly.

  Leroy said, “Zelda, collect the cards.”

  Lydia stepped forward. “That’s my job.”

  “Who died and made you boss?” Zelda asked.

  “I’m the oldest and wisest. It’s my responsibility.”

  Oly spit between his skinny legs. “What’s that?”

  “I’m the oldest who isn’t senile. It’s my fault we’re in this mess. I’ll collect the Goddamn cards.”

  So Lydia circled the yard, picking up votes. Roger took Shannon’s card, placed it with his, and passed them both over. Loren passed his face down, while Lana Sue passed hers face up. Zelda wouldn’t touch her card. She made Lydia take it off the tub ledge. When I gave Lydia mine, she brushed her fingers on mine, looked me in the eyes, and winked.

  Scared the holy beJesus out of me.

  “Read the names,” Leroy said.

  That’s when the CD player ran out of CDs. The timing is hard to believe, I admit, but sometimes timing in life is hard to believe. All I know is the backyard was suddenly quiet. A bird—sounded like a magpie, but then, what do I know about Santa Barbara birds—called from the far side of the fence. Water gurgled from the pool pump. I could hear Oly’s wheeze, but the absence of music made the yard feel eerie.

  Lydia stood in front of Leroy, cards in hand. One by one, she flipped them over and read.

  “Shannon.”

  Zelda giggled.

  “Maurey.”

  I looked at Maurey, who gave me a weak smile. She’d voted for herself. I could tell.

  “Oly.”

  Oly blinked. He was trying to pull of his absent-from-reality act, but it wasn’t playing, this time. He came across more as a toddler, spoiling for a fight.

  “Oly.”

  Lydia glanced at Oly and turned another card.

  “Oly.”

  She stopped and faced him. Their eyes locked in a long stare-down. I hadn’t been around for the recording of his oral history, but I can imagine the link that is formed when one person hears another person’s life story. Something crucial passes between them.

  Lydia said, “You don’t want to die, do you, old man? That’s why you keep going when anyone with any sense would have called it quits long ago.”

  Oly nodded. The bone plates under his temple rubbed against each other. His goiter turned splotchy.

  Lydia said, “You don’t want people to say”—her voice changed ever so slightly—“‘He had a good life. It was his time to go.’”

  Oly’s lips moved like chewing his tongue. He said, “Fuck that.”

  Lydia stood frozen, staring at the old man until Leroy grew impatient. “Move it or lose it, woman.”

  Lydia turned over the next card. “Lydia.”

  She moved on quickly. “Lydia.”

  “Lydia.”

  One card was left, with Lydia and Oly tied, and I’d voted for me. I didn’t know what Leroy planned in case of a tie—kill them both, I supposed, unless that screwed up his balance of nature as much as not killing anyone. Leroy’s spiritual logic was so convoluted, you’d have to be as nuts as he was to predict it. I scanned the pool area for a decorative rock or a loose brick. Anything blunt. The Paul’s backyard was clear of all weapons bigger than a coffee cup. There was an aluminum pole with a net on one end suitable for fishing leaves out of the pool. I didn’t see what good that could do me, even if I got hold of it before Leroy commenced firing.

  Lydia looked around at Shannon and Roger. They were standing by the back door, Shannon’s hand clutching Roger’s arm like an anchor. Loren and Lana Sue were on my right, between the stone table and the pool. Zelda was up close to Leroy. Oly hadn’t moved from the edge of the pool. No one seemed on the verge of rushing the hot tub.

  Lydia flipped over the last card. She studied a moment and said, “Lydia.” Then she folded all the cards together and slipped them into her back pocket.

  “Wait a minute,” Loren said, at the same moment I said, “Bullshit!”

  Roger said, “Let me see those cards.”

  Lydia faced Leroy. “Your turn, asswipe.”

  He shot her.

  Shannon screamed, Maurey yelled, “No!” I caught Lydia as she fell, and Lana Sue threw the CD player into the hot tub. There was a hard electrical Pop. Leroy started to rise. His face twisted into a grin, and he died.

  ***

  I lowered Lydia to the ground and held her head against my chest with her body across my lap and her legs sprawled on the grass. I’m not sure if I’d ever held her before, other than a quick, awkward hug. She seemed too light to be my mother. Leroy’d hit her in the sternum. There was a lot of blood. I clamped my cut hand over the hole in her chest, but it didn’t do any good.

  Her eyes looked up at me, or past me—I couldn’t tell which. Her eyelids fluttered.

  I said, “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I did.” She coughed a wad of blood. “I’m too vain to age with grace.”

  I held her and cried. Maurey knelt down beside us. Then Shannon and Roger came in on the other side. Shannon arranged Lydia’s legs so they weren’t crumpled, but Lydia didn’t notice.

  Maurey said, “Hold on. The ambulance is coming. You’ll be okay.”

  Lydia almost laughed, but the laugh turned to a spasm of pain. After it passed, she said, “Maurey, you always were such a liar.”

  After that, we were quiet. Lana Sue was talking on her cell phone. Oly rolled up to Lydia’s feet and looked down at her.

  Lydia raised a hand to touch my face. She said, “Tell Hank.”

  “What?”

  Her eyes grew cloudy. Her hand lowered back to her side. She said again, “Tell Hank.”

  Oly said, “I’ll take care of it.”

  Then Lydia left me.

  No one spoke for a while. Loren came up and touched my shoulder. He said, “Can I do anything?”

  I said, “No.”

  From the outer edge of the circle, I heard Zelda’s voice. “Would somebody take me home?”

  Loose Ends

  Why do we treat those we love so much worse than those we don’t like? Lydia would starve before not tipping a waitress. She’d go back home if the alternative was parking in a handicapped slot, yet she lied to and browbeat the family she loved. The truth I can’t get around is this: Lydia slept with a stranger the night before seeing the husband she would rather die than live without. Maurey may know why. Or Oly. I cannot find a way of understanding the last day of my mother’s life.

  For the past twenty-five years, whenever I’ve had a question I couldn’t answer, I’d write a hundred-thousand-word novel in which people acted out my problem, and by the finish of the book, the question was either answered, or it had vanished into the pages. But this time I’m way over my one hundred thousand words, and I’m no closer to understanding than I was back when I typed I am that I am. I still do not know the answer, and I still wish I did.

  ***

  Hank’s parole came two months after Lydia died. He took a bus to Idaho Falls and I drove the van over to get him. He had no luggage. We drove back over Teton Pass, mostly in silence. He asked about a horse I wasn’t familiar with. He commented on how early the fireweed was out.

  Hank had me drop him off at Haven House. He went in and talked to Oly for a couple of hours. Even as a novelist creating the parts where I wasn’t there, I can’t conceive of what they said to each other. Later that week, Hank disappeared up into the Bitterroots. The next spring, eight months later, Maurey went out at dawn to check on a foal, and Hank was in the pasture, fixing a head gate. He’s worked and lived at the TM Ranch since then.

  A year after her
death—Memorial Day 1994—Hank and I took Lydia’s ashes to the top of Miner Creek and turned her loose. Human ashes aren’t what you’d think, if you haven’t spread them before. They’re crunchy, with bits of bone mixed into the ash pack. I hadn’t expected to see pieces of Lydia when we dropped her into the creek. It brought her back all in a rush. I could hear her telling us we were doing it wrong.

  You spread ashes downwind, you idiots, she would have said. You dickwads don’t piss against the wind. What makes you think you can scatter me that way?

  Hank said this was the place he’d brought her on their first date. Lydia climbed off the snowmobile and fell through the ice rime, ankle-deep into the creek. He had to pull off her boots and warm her feet between his thighs. He’d been embarrassed no end to have the white city girl’s bare toes up against his crotch. Lydia laughed till tears froze to her cheeks.

  I said, “You should have known she’d be trouble.”

  Hank and I watched her ashes swirl in an eddy, and then gradually, they spread and disappeared downstream like sugar in a glass of iced tea.

  He said, “I knew.”

  ***

  Mary Beth and her family drove up from Albuquerque last summer so she could beg forgiveness for the kidnapping all those years ago. Lonnie and the girls went into Jackson to see the shoot-out while Mary Beth stayed at the ranch and wept. Maurey hugged her and said she wasn’t to blame for the awful trauma of Roger’s childhood; Roger patted her on the shoulder and assured her she didn’t cause his mother’s suicide.

  I’m glad she didn’t ask me. I wouldn’t have been so nice.

  ***

  Roger and Shannon moved into Lydia’s house in GroVont. He commutes up the river to Madonnaville five days a week. The Home for Unweds couldn’t make it without him. Shannon has discovered ceramics. Her dream is to own a tourist trap where she can sell pots and authentic Indian goods.

  Three months after Shannon and Roger moved in together, Shannon announced to Maurey that the waiting period closed with a crash. Maurey asked me if I wanted to know what that meant and I said, “No.”