Clancy Martin - How to Sell

“This is your grandfather, Claire.”

“Yup, she’s a girl, all right,” he said, and sat down. “Did you order for me, son?”

Claire hid her face in my neck. I hugged her closer.

“Hello there, Claire. She has her mother’s eyes,” he said, and smiled at Wendy. You can’t even see Claire’s eyes, Dad, I thought. But Wendy looked encouraged already. He was crazy, but he was sure the same good old Dad, too.

“Are you two doing all right? Are you better?” he asked my wife. She looked at her pancakes. She had ordered the chocolate chip pancakes and split them with Claire.

“Always take care of your family, son,” he said. “A man takes care of his family.”

I felt Wendy eyeing me, so I did not look over there.

“Let’s talk about you, Dad,” I said.

Over dinner he told us about his travels and his plans. He was going to open a church in Las Vegas or buy a motel in the mountains near Carmel. “I think Shirley is interested in investing, son,” he said. “I’ll ask her about jewelry if you like. But I think she prefers natural stuff. She’s not into the material thing, you know. She’s well beyond that.”

“What’s he like? John Denver. In person, I mean. You guys have been friends for years, right? Didn’t you first meet at Ananda?”

I gave Wendy a look to say, Please don’t encourage him. But that started him off. Claire and I sat back and played until he was done.

After Wendy and Claire left the pancake house my dad tried to extract the whole story from me.

“Fess up, son. I can see what’s going on here with my own two eyes. Your old man’s not an ass.”

I did not tell him about the separation. I explained that business was booming.

“Not the way your brother tells it. He says you guys are in serious shit with one of your big investors.”

I was surprised that Jim had told him that. We had two one-year notes coming due for nearly a million bucks and our line of credit at our other bank was maxed out. And even Granddad was in no mood to float us. He said he wanted to see some green coming the other direction, for a change. But we had made it through the summer. Everybody was hurting in the summer.

“Dindy says you guys spend more time playing backgammon than you do balancing your books. He says you’re three months behind on your P and Ls. That’s no way to run a business, son.”

“So where are you headed next, Dad? A new church, huh? That’s the plan? What are you going to call it?”

“We are talking about your marriage, Robby. Your brother tells me things are on the rocks for you two. You can’t afford a divorce, son. Emotionally, I mean. You can’t do that to that beautiful little girl. That’s what your mother did to me and look at the problems it’s given you boys. Your mother’s the reason you’re in this mess right now.”

Was Jim on drugs? Surely all of this wasn’t coming from my big brother.

“This is not about Mom, Dad. And Wendy and I are fine. Jim doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Are you sure you got this from Jim?”

“How’s your sex life, son? How are things in the sack with you two? Marriage can cool things down. You know the old saying. It’s a great institution, if you want to live in an institution.”

“It’s fine, Dad.”

“You can tell me, son. Does she have orgasms?”

“Dad, I do not want to talk about this.”

“I understand. That can take time. That may be the heart of the problem. It can take years to learn how to make a woman come. But it’s important, son. I can give you a book. If you need a little help, I mean.” He gave me that sideways glance.

•

W hy did you get married at all?”

Lisa came up with that question from nowhere I could see. We were lying in the sun with our eyes closed and our sunglasses on, side by side, holding hands between the deck chairs. I had thought she was asleep. Even with my new Persols on, the sun was as red as grapefruit through my eyelids. We were drinking those fresh-squeezed lime juice margaritas they have at the Four Seasons that are the best in Texas. The best north of the Rio Grande Valley.

I didn’t mind telling her the truth.

“It was after you left me. Dumped me, I mean.”

“Hey,” she said. I lifted my glasses and saw that she was smiling. She wasn’t looking at me, she was just lying there smiling. She looks so nice, I thought.

I should have gone ahead and said that to her.

“Anyway. I went back to Calgary. I got a job selling encyclopedias. Then my dad offered me eight grand to fly down to Florida and drive across the country with him. Even if he hadn’t offered me the money I couldn’t really say no. I had turned down a trip to India and a monastery in the Himalayas so I could hang out with Wendy. I still felt guilty about it. He called the Himalayas the Himahooleeyas. ‘This summer me and my son here are going to the Himahooleeyas,’ he would tell the checkout girl at the drugstore, ‘want to come along?’ So I flew down to Florida. We spent a few days in New Orleans and then we came across on I-10 to visit Jim and see his new store.”

I took her hand and put it on my stomach. I was getting fatter, lately. I was sweating in the sun. We should get in the water, I thought. Cold water sounds nice right about now.

“If we would start doing drugs again I could lose this weight,” I said.

“That is not funny, Bobby,” she said.

“There was this cocktail waitress. I told my dad, ‘That’s the kind of girl I would ask out on a date if I had the balls to ask any girl out on a date.’

“‘So ask her out,’ he said, and I said, ‘That girl is way out of my league.’”

“You really do not get women at all,” Lisa said.

“That’s what my dad said. He was always telling me when I was a teenager, ‘If you want to get laid, son, you have to learn to think like a woman.’ And I would ask him if we could talk about something else. Anyway, when our waitress came back to the table my dad said, ‘My son here thinks you are out of his league but I am betting you would go out with him. What do you think?’”

“That’s a dad for you,” Lisa said. She smiled. My dad and Lisa could have been friends, I bet, if I weren’t in the middle of them. But because she was my lover my dad would not think of her with his usual generosity. He would treat her like I imagine he treated his own lovers, when he was married to my mother. He would treat her like she was only invited to join our civil company because she was providing a married man with his necessary recreational sex. For him she’d be one step up from a porno magazine on a newspaper stand. Or maybe even one step down.

“So what did she say? She didn’t say okay.”

“No. She said, ‘I like both of you. I think you’re both nice. Either one of you might ask me out and I might go.’”

“Well, that was honest of her. She was a friendly girl, wasn’t she?”

“So he asked her,” I said. “He asked me if it was okay when she left the table.”

“I do not even believe you,” she said.

“I know. That’s how charming he is. He does it without even trying. It’s like some old nurse who was a witch taught him the secret smile to use when he was born. I bet he got even more girls when he was drinking.”

“I meant, for you,” Lisa said. She sipped her margarita. I could tell her eyes were frowning behind her sunglasses and I felt like I was telling the story wrong. It wasn’t anything against my dad, I wanted to tell her.

“It wasn’t hurtful. It was just one of those things. He was teaching me something. Like hitting me on the head with a stick.” Like a Zen master. He was helping me. To get free of him, maybe. Of trying to be like him.