Tim Sandlin - Social Blunders

I turned jealous jerk and gave her grief over noodling another Talbot and we went eight months without speaking before we had an emotional best-friends-in-spite-of-you-being-an-idiot reunion where we hugged and cried and pledged eternal trust. Eternal trust or not, Maurey still hasn’t told me what happened during the missing month. Sometimes I daydream that I was the one who went after her instead of Pud.

Trolling town looking for someone to talk to. Manic-depressives have all the luck; they soar between crashes. The best us regular depressives can do is battle our way up to normal every now and then. Talking about Alice had left me bummed and flat, and while you’d think the new friendship with Gilia would pep me up, I was in one of those states where even when something good happens you dwell on the fact that it can’t last. After bitter experience, I’d found the black states can be lightened somewhat by massive exercise, being around cheerful strangers, or seeing I Was a Male War Bride , starring Cary Grant and Ann Sheridan.

Which is why I trolled Battleground to the Baskin-Robbins corner in search of the happy, pregnant girls. My hope was they went for ice cream about the same time every day and their giggles would improve my outlook.

Fat chance.

Babs sat alone on the bench, tears dripping from her pink chin onto a rocky road sugar cone. She whimpered, “I’m never telling my baby his father’s name.”

I wished she’d said that earlier. “Why?”

Babs made an effort to smile, but failed, which only made me sadder. “Guess what?” she said. “Lynette run off with Rory Paseneaux.”

“Your husband?”

“I’m gonna get him annulled. He took my best friend and my grandmother’s afghan and run off to Charlotte. Says he’s gonna drive stock cars.”

“Let me get you a napkin.”

I went inside to find a napkin and collect myself. I hate it when people other than me get hurt. Somehow, pain is worse for happy people and puppies because they don’t expect it; they’re not mentally prepared.

Back outside, I asked, “When did this happen?”

“Last night Rory ordered pizza and him and Lynette went to pick it up on account of my feet being swollen. They knew my feet would be swollen, they planned it all out.”

“They leave a note?”

Babs cried with one hand on her belly and the other holding the cone. Her eye makeup left a single black trail down her face. She nodded to my question. “In the refrigerator, but I knew before that they’d snuck off. Lynette’s overnight case was gone. She don’t need a toothbrush to pick up a pizza.”

When Wanda left me she didn’t sneak off at all. She announced her plans during The Yellow Rose , when I was in the midst of a tremendous Cybill Shepherd fantasy involving an electric piano and yards of Saran Wrap.

Wanda stepped between me and the TV and said, “You have driven away the only good thing that will ever happen in your life.”

I said, “What’s that?”

She had me carry her baggage out to the 240Z, where Manny the pool boy sat with the engine running. Knowing Wanda’s convoluted sense of honor, sneaking off would have been dishonest. Sleeping with the neighborhood was allowed, but sneaking away wasn’t.

Babs sniffled. “Me and Lynette have been best friends since second grade. If we have girls, we was going to name them Babs and Lynette, after each other.”

Even though friendship is more important than romance, there’s no depths to what friends can do to each other in the name of romantic love. “Maybe she’ll come back,” I said.

“I wouldn’t speak to her if she did. She stole my Rory.” Babs dropped the ice cream; her chest shook like she was hyperventilating. I put my arm over her shoulders and rocked her gently while she pressed her wet face against my shirt.

“What am I gonna do now?” she asked.

“Have your baby.”

“Rory took our half of the rent. The other half is Lynette’s and she’s gone too. And I was on his insurance at the plant, only now he don’t have a job. Who’ll pay the doctor?”

“Don’t worry about the money,” I said. “I’ll take care of that. You just take care of your baby.”

Most of my heroes committed suicide. That thought came to me late Monday night when I should have been asleep, but, as usual, wasn’t. I’d ridden the Exercycle 6000 twenty miles at high tension, but stopped because I couldn’t concentrate on Wanda. Gilia’s face kept getting in the way.

I lay in the bed with three pillows next to me for the arm and leg that had to be draped over someone before I felt okay enough to sleep. No help. I didn’t feel okay and I wasn’t asleep. Buttons in the mattress poked into my ribs. Why do mattresses have buttons? I got to thinking about Alan Watts and his views on sleep, which led to a local poet named Randall Jarrell, then Sylvia Plath and Marilyn Monroe, who Maurey says slept naked, and it dawned on me that these four people had two things in common: They were all my role models and they all killed themselves. And my heroes who didn’t kill themselves on purpose—Gram Parsons and Hank Williams—killed themselves accidentally. Were these people I wanted to model my life after?

Baseball heroes don’t commit suicide. Sandy Koufax, Moose Skowron, Vin Scully, I could think of a dozen admirable baseball people who hadn’t killed themselves, but let’s face it, at thirty-three, you can’t sign on as disciple to a baseball player.

The door cracked open and a form slithered into the room. My first thought was, Skip’s hired a hit man.

“Who’s there?”

“Who do you think, darlin’?”

“Oh, shit.”

“You don’t sound happy to see me. I can’t believe it, you must be covering up your true delight at my arrival so I won’t become overconfident.” She was wearing a nightgown, a filmy, flowing number with ruffles. She floated through the dim moonlight like a short ghost.

“Katrina, this isn’t a good time. I have someone with me.”

“No, you don’t.”

I sat up in bed. “How can you tell?”

“Those’re pillows. Anybody can tell the difference between pillows and women, ’cept maybe a horny man.” Katrina slid across the room. “I was lying there next to old Skippy, tingling from head to toe on account of what you did this morning.”

“You don’t have to thank me.”

She sat on the edge of the bed. Her fingertips brushed my arm. “I decided once wasn’t enough.”

“Katrina, that’s not fair. I do you a favor and now you want more. How did you get in, anyway? The door’s locked.”

“The side door isn’t.” She ran her fingernails up and down the inside of my elbow. I swear, she purred like Alice.

“We don’t have a side door.”

“Behind the weeping willow.”

“That’s the servants’ entrance. Nobody’s used that door in twenty years.”

She leaned so close her lips grazed my ear and said, “It still works.”

“Am I wrong or did you pick up a French accent since this morning?”

Her tongue flicked in and out of my ear. In my experience, women who are into tongue flicking all read Danielle Steel.

“My grandmama was French. It comes out whenever I’m crazed with lust.” She lifted the sheet and slipped under. I slipped right out the other side—stood there feeling foolish in plaid boxer shorts.

“Sam.” Katrina blinked seductively. “If you reject me there will be repercussions.”

Veiled threats are a sure sign that a relationship is fixing to wash down the tubes.

“I’m not rejecting you, Katrina. I just can’t have sex in my own home. What if my daughter hears us?”

Katrina giggled. “Does your daughter sleep three doors that way?”