Tim Sandlin - Social Blunders

“Thank you,” Pete said.

“We’re family,” I said. “Family sticks together.”

Pete continued staring at me, like he used to when he was ten and wanted to drive me crazy. I tried to look back at him, but it was difficult. He breathed with his mouth open and his gums were swollen to the point of cracking. His skin was a translucent yellow green, like zucchini pulp, and he’d lost so much weight the bones around his temples stood out from his face.

Chet slapped the deck on the table. “Cut.”

Pete said, “Sam, you and I have never liked each other.” It was a quiet statement of fact, not an accusation.

I said, “You were God’s own brat as a child, but since you turned fifteen or so, I’ve liked you.”

Maurey swabbed Pete’s upper arm with rubbing alcohol. The smell filled the room.

“But I haven’t liked you,” Pete said.

“That’s too bad. Why not?”

“To start with, you’re homophobic.”

“I like gay guys as much as the other kind.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Maurey said.

“What else?” I asked.

“Your mother was a snob to my mother.”

“My mother is a snob to everyone—even me. Especially me. It’s not fair to turn on a person because they have snotty parents. What else?”

He blinked twice, thinking. “You knocked up my sister when she was thirteen.”

I held up one hand like a cop stopping traffic. “She made me do it. Have you ever tried saying no to Maurey?”

Maurey pinched loose skin on Pete’s upper arm. “He’s right, Pete. I seduced him. Poor little Sam didn’t know the first thing about sex.”

“That’s not exactly true,” I said.

“You thought you could make a girl pregnant with a French kiss.”

No one ever got anywhere correcting Maurey’s view of history, so I went back to Pete. “There’s enough people in the world with good reason to dislike me, Pete, but you’re not one of them. I’d be real happy if I could call myself your friend.”

He smiled, showing much more of his swollen, bleeding gums. “Okay,” he said, “let’s kiss and make up.”

My face must have shown terror because Chet and Maurey went into hoots of glee. Even Pete laughed. I don’t mind being the butt of a joke if it relieves tension.

“Instead of kissing, how about if I deal you in,” Chet said.

“Great.”

But it never happened. As Chet dealt, Maurey sank the needle into what was left of Pete’s muscle. He picked up his cards and studied them a moment, then his eyes turned dull, his chin dropped to his chest, and the cards in his hand fluttered to the floor. Gently Chet helped Pete walk into the bedroom.

Over the weeks, I got to know Chet fairly well. While Pete rested in the afternoons, Chet would come into the kitchen, sit at the block table, and smoke cigarettes while I cooked. Chet was tall with reddish blond hair. You could tell from how he smiled sometimes that he was basically a pretty happy person, or would have been if his partner hadn’t got sick. He and Pete had met working lights at some theater in New York, Off Broadway, and Chet liked to talk about plays and who was hot and who was gliding on their past glory. He gave me the scoop on which actors were gay. A couple amazed me.

The only visible difference between Chet and the hetero males on the ranch was Chet tucked in his shirttail.

Hank and Maurey both hassled me for refusing to see Lydia.

“She’s your mother,” Maurey said.

“I’ve heard her deny that, many a time.”

“She was young then. Now, she’ll admit she has a child to almost anyone.”

“She ruined my life.”

“Everybody’s mother ruins their life. That doesn’t mean you can blow her off.”

“Watch me.”

Hank said Lydia wanted to apologize and reconcile our differences.

“Did she say that?”

“Not in words, but I know your mother. She never says what she feels in words.”

“You mean she lies.”

He shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Lydia doesn’t lie, exactly. She expects you to see behind what she says.”

A letter came from Gilia.

Sam Callahan,

You did a rotten thing. It hurt. I don’t know which is worse, screwing Mrs. Prescott or running away. You could have at least given me the satisfaction of telling you to go to hell.

Dad gave me a set of the photographs of you and Katrina. I told him he is as despicable as you are, which is a lot. I haven’t had much luck with men in my life.

Speaking of Katrina, she and Skip are now the lovey-dovey couple of the South. They neck in public. She compares their love to that of Prince Charles and Lady Di. Yesterday, I heard Katrina telling a table full of trust fund widows at the club that you date-raped her. It made me so mad, I walked over and threw the photo of you and her on the table—you know the one where you have a pom-pom on your penis and she has you tied to the wall. I said, “Does that look like date rape?”

Sam, you’re the only person who ever let me act like myself. I wish you hadn’t turned out to be such a dip-shit.

Sincerely,

Gilia

Paper-clipped to the letter was the Greensboro Record “Births and Deaths” column from November 1, 1983. Midway down the births, Gilia had highlighted in yellow Magic Marker:

Sam Lynn Paseneaux, a boy, 8 lbs., 1 oz., born to Babs

Paseneaux and Sam Callahan.

Sammi Babs Norloff, a girl, 6 lbs., 5 oz., born to Lynette

Norloff and Sam Callahan.

In the margin, she had drawn a yellow exclamation point followed by a question mark— !?

I had no contact with Callahan Magic Golf Carts. They didn’t need me. I called my lawyer to set up rent payments for Babs and Lynette and to get started hurling counter injunctions at Wanda.

“I’ll pay ten thousand dollars to make certain she doesn’t get a penny.”

“We can do that,” my lawyer said.

Maurey overheard the conversation. Her comment was “Getting vindictive in our old age, aren’t we?”

“I’m a man of principles.”

“That’s the nice word for it.”

My only other conversation with anyone in North Carolina came after Thanksgiving dinner, when Shannon telephoned.

She asked, “Are you well yet?”

“No.”

“Are you better?”

“I don’t think in qualitative terms.”

“Wanda tried to move in the other day.”

“Good Lord.”

“She brought two guys with tattoos and a pickup truck full of stuff. Gus blocked the door and wouldn’t let them in.”

“How’d Wanda handle it?”

“She cussed worse than I ever heard anyone cuss. She waved a tire iron in Gus’s face and screamed, ‘Nigger!’ Then she ordered the two guys to beat her up.”

“Two guys with tattoos are no match for Gus.”

“I sure am glad I never called Wanda Mama.”

I looked over at Maurey, who was making cowboy cappuccino. She would enjoy this story. “What’d you and Eugene do?”

“I ran around and locked the other doors and windows. Eugene took notes. He wants to write his thesis on my family.”

We chitchatted a few minutes, or Shannon chitchatted while I counted the number of holes in Maurey’s phone mouthpiece—eighteen.

Shannon said, “Gilia and her parents aren’t speaking to each other, so she spends the night here sometimes. We have a lot in common.”

There was a long silence while I searched for a detail to study.

“Gilia Saunders,” she said.

I guess she wanted a comment. I couldn’t even breathe, much less comment.

“She and I are going to New York City over Spring Break. She wants to take me shopping and to art galleries and all that stuff you never would do with me.”