Tim Sandlin - Social Blunders

“Chipper?”

“Mama suspects the tennis pro.”

That afternoon a thin man in an extremely cheap suit showed up on my doorstep. I’ll wear a sports jacket now and then, but I stopped wearing suits after Lydia told me the neck tie is a phallic symbol. I’m not ashamed of having a phallus, but I sure as heck don’t brag about it.

The man called me Mr. Callahan.

“My name is Sam. I don’t like being called mister; it’s too male.”

“Here, Sam.” He handed me some official papers.

“This is a legal document,” I said.

“You think fast,” the thin man said.

The papers were from Wanda by way of a lawyer and signed by a judge.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Vernon Scharp.”

“Do you enjoy process serving?”

He looked at me to see if I was condescending or interested.

He must have decided I was interested. “I could tell you stories that would straighten your hair,” he said.

“I imagine you run into a lot of shoot-the-messenger mentality.”

“Shoot, knife, and beat with a baseball bat.”

“I’m asking because I own a golf cart manufacturing company, and I’m certain we could find a job for you at the plant.” I gave him the address and told him to speak to Gaylene. “Work for us and you won’t have to wear that suit.”

“What’s wrong with my suit?”

The papers said I was not to dispose of any assets; piddly amounts were okay, but big ticket items were out of the question. I read the papers carefully, then filed them in a jack-o’-lantern.

Thursday, I did lunch with Billy Gaines. We met at Tijuana Fats where he asked if I had any plans for the future and was I seeing anybody—Dad kind of stuff. I was touched that at least he tried. He even wrote my birth date and shirt size in his pocket calendar.

I didn’t tell him about the two death threats I’d received in the mail. They were written in purple ink on the title pages of L’Idiot de la Famille by Jean-Paul Sartre and Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. If I had Clark for a son, I would probably take my supposititious heir to lunch myself.

Supposititious is my new word of the month. Say it slowly— supposititious . It means a person you’ve never seen before who shows up out of nowhere, claiming to be your child. Imagine: a special word for people in my situation. Supposititious comes from the same word as suppository . Don’t ask me why.

Bastard is another special word for people in my situation. Fatherless. Born of an unwed mother.

The disgrace of being a bastard never bothered me much, growing up. For a long time, I didn’t know it meant anything specific. Bastard was simply another insult, like squirrel or douche bag, that children yelled at each other. Dothan Talbot was the one who taunted me with bastard most. He was the one who explained in detail exactly what the term meant and exactly why I was one. I didn’t care. I had impregnated Dothan Talbot’s girlfriend and everyone knew calling me names was nothing but lame sour grapes.

The single practical skill Lydia taught me as a boy was not to give a hoot what anyone thought of us. That’s a rare attribute in junior high, but with the town character for a mother and a daughter by the eighth grade, I’d have been in big trouble without it.

I telephoned Lydia to see how the poison chew toy saga came out.

“Wire me five thousand dollars,” she said. “I need it today, tomorrow may be too late.”

“For bail or lawyers?”

“The Politics of Pudenda is the most important treatise written in this country since Female Eunuch . It will change the very foundation of society.”

“I’m more interested in whether you murdered the President’s dog.”

She made the exhaled sound of impatience. “Hank did one of his chants and buried an antelope liver next to the warm springs. FedEx lost the package.”

“Is this cause and effect?”

“Sam. Listen when I talk. We’re in a bidding war with Simon and Schuster, I must have five thousand dollars today. This afternoon.”

“Oothoon Press is in a bidding war with Simon and Schuster?”

“Are you so pussy-whipped by the harlot you can no longer fathom the English language?”

“Are radical feminists allowed to say pussy-whipped ?”

“In Politics of Pudenda Muriel Blackwell has a plan to end all wars and injustice. She calls for an international ban on the male gender owning private property. Once the greed motive is removed from men, women can stabilize society.”

“Her theory sounds fascinating, Lydia, but I can’t send any cash right now.”

“Sam.” Her voice was loud, on the edge of frantic. “Oothoon can’t change society without that money.”

Oothoon Press got its name from a poem by William Blake. Blake’s Oothoon is raped—“Bromion rent her with his thunders”—then her husband accuses her of asking for it; says she enjoyed being raped. So he seals her in a cave. Lydia calls this the Every-Woman story.

“Don’t most publishers make a profit on books and use that to buy more books?”

“Spoken like a true anal-aggressive. Where would the world be if Virginia Woolf’s publisher thought about profits?”

“My life wouldn’t be any different.”

There was a moment of silence. “Wire the money, Sam.”

“Wanda slapped a temporary restraining order on my assets.”

“So?”

“So if I give you five thousand dollars they might put me in jail.”

“I am not giving up Politics of Pudenda for that cow. You can just go to jail for your mama; my work is more important than yours anyway.”

Interesting leap of logic. I decided to change the subject. “How’s Maurey?”

“Here’s an idea. Transfer all the family funds into my name. That way Wanda can’t rob you blind and I’ll send out whatever you need to get by, just like you do for me.”

I didn’t say anything. The only way to handle a conversation with Lydia is to shut up and frustrate her. Hank Elkrunner learned that long ago, but I never quite caught on.

Lydia said, “Pete drug in this week. Hank says there’s something wrong with him.”

“There’s always been something wrong with Pete.”

“I can’t believe I raised a homophobe.”

“What’s wrong with Pete has nothing to do with him being gay. He was a weird kid years before he turned to men for comfort.”

“Pete brought his lover home with him. Chet is a polite boy who supports my campaign to re-educate America.”

“Shannon moved a man into her room.”

“Good for Shannon.”

“They pant and grunt all night and he sits in Caspar’s rocker.”

“You should have burned that chair when the old goat died.”

“Things aren’t going well here, Lydia. I could use some motherly compassion.”

“For five grand I’ll ship you all the compassion I’ve got to spare.”

I looked pudenda up in my Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary . It’s the plural of pudendum—the external sexual organs of a woman, which is roughly what I had figured. Pudenda is Latin for something to be ashamed of. Chew on that fact awhile.

I wrapped a towel around my waist and stepped from the bathroom of room 247 at the Ramada Inn to find Katrina Prescott sitting on the edge of the bed in her bra and panties, crying.

“What’s the matter?”

“You don’t love me.”