Ed Gorman: Wake Up Little Susie

I sat down. He didn’t seem to see me.

Just stared at his beer. His head was bobbing. He’d had enough to start losing muscular control.

“Jeff?”

He looked up. “Hi.”

“You all right?”

“Pretty drunk, actually.”

“Yeah. I kind of noticed that.”

Jeff Cronin was a big guy. Everybody always said he should have played football but he was slow and clumsy. His father bred horses, and horses were Jeff’s love. He was one of four local veterinarians. He wore a blue sweatshirt. His blond hair was ragged. He hadn’t shaved. “Marriage is off, buddy.”

“What?”

“Off. O-f-f.”

“Off? What the hell’re you talking about?”

“Off. That so hard to understand? Off.”

“But why?”

“Because I said so, that’s why.”

It was one of those moments of unreality we all have once in a while. The people and the place look familiar, but something makes you think you’re in a parallel universe where everything is subtly different.

Eight-nine years Cronin had been going out with Linda Granger, and three-four years they’d been engaged, and now the wedding was suddenly off?

The dating possibilities in Black River Falls are limited. In our high school class, for instance, there were twenty-two boys and eighteen girls. That isn’t a huge base to pick a mate from, especially when you eliminate the ones who find you obnoxious, the ones who find you ugly, the ones who find you boring, and the ones who find you embarrassing. In my case, that left with me a six-girl potential, Pamela and Mary included. The alternative, to increase the mate pool, was to date someone younger or older. Boys tended to date someone younger, girls someone older.

Or you could date someone from Crowley, which was twenty miles away, who we beat the shit out of every year in basketball, making it all right for us to date them. Or Nashburn, which was thirty miles away, who beat us every year in basketball, making it not all right to date them.

Cronin, the drunk guy in front of me, the guy who kept reeling around even though he was sitting down, had accomplished the most amazing feat of all: right in our very own class he’d discovered a girl who was (a) nice, (but) smart, and (can) very pretty. And who also just happened to have a pair of knockers that should be enshrined somewhere, the Boobs Hall of Fame, perhaps, which I believe, if I’m not mistaken, is somewhere in Pennsylvania.

And here was Cronin, that very same ungrateful drunk guy, sitting in front of me telling me the marriage was off and giving me the impression that he was the one who’d called it off.

“What the hell’s going on, Jeff?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“The hell it doesn’t.”

He stared some more at his glass. “Only friends a man should have are animals. They never let you down.”

“Linda’s never let you down. She’s a good woman.”

Glaring at me. “She is, huh? You know that for a fact?”

“Yeah. I do. I’ve known her all my life. She’s a good woman, just like I said.”

“Well, old buddy, I guess there’s good and there’s good, isn’t there?”

When you’re drunk, you think you’re just full of profundities.

“What the hell’s that mean, Jeff?”

“It means what it means.”

“Thanks for clearing it up.”

“Wedding’s off.”

“Yeah, you said that.”

As big a guy as he was, and a pretty good drinker too, he must have been putting them away a long time. He was about ready to pass out. I doubted he’d had breakfast.

“You can’t drive like this.”

“Hell if I can’t.”

“You’ll wake up in the drunk tank if you d. And you might kill somebody in the process.”

“I wouldn’t mind killing somebody about now.”

Tears came without any warning. No big sob scene, just the tears of a guy unskilled in the ways of letting go with the gentler emotions. “And right now the person I’d like to kill is myself.”

Those were his last words for a while.

His face hit the table pretty hard, knocking over his beer glass. It was empty.

I leaned out of the booth. “Elmer?”

“Yeah?”

“You give me a hand?”

“Passed out, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“I shoulda cut him off.”

“Yeah, you shoulda.”

He came over.

It was hell getting Jeff into my car.

My office is a single room on the side of the local dime store. You reach it by climbing three untrustworthy wooden steps.

On the tiny porch was a small white box with a white envelope Scotch-taped to it: Mr.

McCain. I carried it inside.

The reason I work for Judge Whitney is so I can afford such luxuries as indoor plumbing, electric lights, and a mattress. In a town with too many lawyers already, a tyro doesn’t exactly get the highest-paying clients.

Take this little box. Helen Reynolds, a sweet weary woman who cleans rooms out at the Sunset Motel, has a fifteen-year-old son who has been in and out of trouble with the law since he was twelve. Mostly minor offenses: toilet-papering the trees of girls he has crushes on, overturning garbage cans in alleys, and writing dirty words on the sides of buildings. Buggsy Siegel he’s not. But he seems to be in court every month or so. Maybe if his dad hadn’t died in Korea the kid would’ve turned out better. You never know about those things and you can make an argument either way.

Anyway, none of the other lawyers will take his cases. No money in them. Helen lives in a two-room apartment and drives a

Hudson, one of the big ones that looks like an overturned bathtub. So I take his cases.

And in lieu of pay she makes me angel food cakes with a lot of nice frosting on them. Every three-four weeks I get one. This was my payment on account.

The mail was three overdue bills, an invitation to a s@eance Halloween party (Maybe Bridey Murphy will be there!) thrown by a very successful tort lawyer, and a note folded in half.

Hi McCain-I need to talk to you. Called and stopped by.

Mary

Mary Travers is the girl I should marry.

She’s smart, sweet, sensible, and as good-looking in her dark-haired way as Pamela Forrest is in her blond-haired way. She had a straight-A average in high school and had hopes for college, but then her dad got sick so she had to stay home and help support the family. She works the lunch counter down at the Rexall. A couple of nights, especially on high school graduation night, we came close to going all the way. She’d caught the McCain virus in junior high just as I’d caught the Pamela virus in fourth grade. And neither of us could find a cure. There was a time, right after high school, when she pursued me actively. But no more. I ate lunch at the Rexall a few times a week, and those were the only times I’d see her.

The way she looked at me, I knew she still loved me. And the way I looked at her, she knew I was still in love with Pamela. We were miserable.

I had just sliced myself a piece of cake with my letter opener when the phone rang.

“Hi, McCain.”

“Hi, Mary. I got your note.”

“I knew Susan Squires really well.”

“That’s right. You did.”

“I wondered if we could get together and talk.”

A ruse for a sort of date?

“Sure.”

“You could stop by the house.”

The house she referred to was the one she’d grown up in in the Knolls. My dad had gotten a good job after the war and we’d moved to a new house in one of the thousands of Levittown-style developments that had spread across the country. Washers and dryers. A new car every couple of years. A Tv antenna on the roof. Steak once a week. The Gi Bill.

A chance for your kids to go to college. Uncle Miltie. Howdy Doody. Ed Sullivan.