Tim Sandlin: Social Blunders

“Why should Skip Prescott not like this any more than the rest of you?”

Billy turned to face outdoors. It was a nice backyard—magnolia tree, wicker swing, brick barbecue. He took good care of his stuff.

“What do you expect me to do now?” he asked.

“I don’t know. How do you feel?”

“How am I supposed to feel?”

“A possible son has appeared from nowhere. That should make you feel something.”

He blinked twice more. “I already have a son.”

“I met him. He seems interesting.”

“Clark is a sensitive boy.” He let it go at that. “What’s your name?”

“Sam Callahan.”

“What do you do?”

Interesting question. “I make golf carts.”

We fell back into silence and mutual staring at the melted meat in the freezer instead of each other.

“Maybe we should have lunch or something,” Billy said.

“Or something.”

“How is your mother?”

“Lydia runs a feminist press in Wyoming.”

He blinked some more. I tried to picture Billy Gaines battering his dick into Lydia, but the image wouldn’t come. I wasn’t angry at this man. I’d expected to feel wrath or revulsion, maybe even honest hatred, but all I felt was sorry to have bothered him.

“If I was you I’d throw out the fish and pack ice around the rest,” I said.

Billy seemed to wake up. He put his glasses back on and turned to look at me. “I suppose you’re right.”

I walked back around the house, past the screened-in porch, and on to the Dart. At the Dart I turned to see Clark, standing behind the screen with his arms crossed over his chest. I couldn’t see his face, but I imagined he was thinking about death.

The Prescott house was this fairly large, white monstrosity loaded with balconies and gables and triangular windows way up on the third floor. If they gave a test measuring tastes of the well-to-do, I guess we’d all fail, but at least I know I have bad tastes and don’t buy anything without the counsel of women. Skip must have designed his house after a tour of Southern train stations.

I went up the steps, rang the doorbell, and waited, watching the automatic sprinkler system drench the lawn; but no footsteps sounded inside. No imposing butler laid open the door. I rang some more, and after a while a severe black woman in a white uniform came out on the second-floor balcony to glare down at me. I asked a couple of questions on the lines of “Is anyone home?” but she wouldn’t speak. Normally when I see a new woman I imagine how she would taste and how she would sound when she came, but this woman had a posture that nipped fiction right in the bud.

The house next door was also Deep South gaudy, but at least the place looked lived in. A volleyball net was stretched across the freshly mowed lawn, and a kid’s Sting-ray bicycle leaned against a flower box with some late violets or pansies or something in it. Purple flowers anyway.

The door was answered by a short person in an Extra Terrestrial costume.

“Get lost,” he said.

“Phone home,” I said. I knew he was E.T. and E.T. said “Phone home” because the last night Wanda and I made love was the night we drove to Carolina Circle Mall and saw E.T. , the movie. That was two months before she ran off with the pool man, my 240Z, and Me Maw’s jewelry. I, personally, had been sexually dormant the full two months before and six days after she left. I should have known Wanda couldn’t go that long without a salami.

The boy looked behind me at the Dart. “You’re a Jehovah’s Witness,” he said.

“No, I’m not.”

He yelled “ Mom ,” then ran down a hall and disappeared, leaving me at the open door. Taking this as an invitation, I walked on in and followed down the hall. One door opened on a formal parlor, the kind of room no one enters except to dust once a month. In the Old South, when you died they stuck the open casket up on sawhorses in rooms like this and left you overnight while the women and darkies cried and the men drank whiskey.

The other door opened on two women sitting on a couch, drinking General Foods International instant coffee.

“You’re not a Jehovah’s Witness.”

“No, ma’am.”

“Don’t call us ma’am , darlin’,” the other woman said. “If you’re not a Witness, who are you?”

“Sam Callahan.” The women were dressed country club casual—expensive golf shirts, white shorts, and tennis shoes. The one who’d spoken first had red painted fingernails. The little one who’d called me darlin’ had a big diamond on a chain around her neck and her hair in a ponytail.

She had the challenging steel-gray eyes of a woman who rates herself by her allure. “Are you the mystery boy Billy Gaines telephoned all in a dither about? He described you as much younger.”

“I’m surprised to hear he was in a dither.”

She leaned her compact body toward me. “Billy said not to talk to you until Skip has a go, but Skippy and I live next door, so why come here if you want Skippy?”

She would probably talk through the entire orgasm— No. Yes. Oh, God. Yes. Yes. I don’t care much for women who talk and come at the same time.

“You’re Mrs. Prescott?”

“Katrina to you. This is Mimi Saunders.”

Mimi said, “Katrina, I see no call to flirt with the young man.” Mimi had a really long neck and her hair in a bun. I hate to be mean, but she didn’t strike me as a woman who has orgasms.

“I’m not flirting.” Katrina drilled in with the eye contact. “Am I flirting with you?”

“I’m not good at recognizing flirting when it happens.”

“Well, this isn’t flirting. I’ll tell you when I start to flirt.”

Both my hands slid into my pockets. “Thank you.”

“Now sit and tell us why we can’t talk to you until Skippy gets first go.”

Mimi set her coffee cup down with a click. “He didn’t even present his card. If we’re not supposed to talk to him, I don’t think we should.”

“Oh, hogwash, Mimi. If it’s something Billy Gaines doesn’t want us to know, of course we’ve got to find out. It’s our job.”

I sat on an ottoman footrest with my hands still in my pockets. The women watched, relaxed in their upper-crust lives. Mimi wasn’t certain she wanted me rocking the boat, but Katrina was bored silly by the privileged life and dying for anything to happen. You can tell these things if you’ve spent any sober time around men’s wives.

Katrina studied me. “I don’t suppose you’re a Mafia debt collector out to break Skippy’s legs?”

“No.” I stopped myself on the edge of ma’am .

“One can only hope.” She looked disappointed and reached for the coffee box on the glass-topped table, through which I could see her legs crossed demurely at the ankles. A lot of time and money had gone into those legs.

She stared at the box. “Must be a dark, disgusting secret from the past then. I always knew Skippy was hiding his shame.”

“Yes.”

Mimi inhaled and raised one hand while Katrina held her breath and lowered both hands. I clarified. “Except I doubt Skippy is hiding the shame from you because I doubt he knows.”

Katrina’s face broke into a smile. “This is great.”

“It is no such thing,” Mimi said. “He’s a shyster, Katrina. Look at that silly grin. Pretty soon he’s going to ask for money.”

“No, I’m not,” I said.

Katrina slid toward me on the couch, which made her shorts ride up. “Tell us the secret this minute or Mimi and I shall take you down on the floor and torture you.”

I decided she was a fireball. Certain somewhat small women are fireballs and they make me nervous. Being tortured by this particular fireball might be interesting—or if she was my stepmother it could spill over into weird—but I didn’t see any reason to keep secrets. I mean, the men raped Lydia. If fallout came from exposure, I sure wasn’t the one to stop it.