Tim Sandlin: Social Blunders

Shannon came off the plane, wearing a yoked down jacket and some kind of jeans that weren’t Levi’s or Wranglers. As she made her way down the steps, she was talking to an older, gentlemanly type with a mustache and a cane. Shannon looked confident and composed, at home in her element. Nineteen-year-old women weren’t composed when I was nineteen.

Maurey said, “Airport scenes are so much nicer when the passengers walk down the steps and across the runway. Those tunnels took the romance out of flight.”

Shannon said good-bye to the old man and came bouncing across the runway and I had that Jesus, shit, I created this feeling I always get when I see her for the first time after a separation. Shannon didn’t seem any less a miracle now than the day she was born.

Then she burst through the double doors, all smiles and laughs. I think for a moment she forgot she was here for a funeral. She gave me a two-handed hug and a kiss on the cheek, then she moved on to Maurey. They hadn’t seen each other since summer, and Shannon finally remembered Pete and the purpose of the trip, so the hugs were spirited and meaningful.

“I appreciate you coming,” Maurey said.

Shannon’s brown eyes went smoky. “Uncle Pete was always nice to me. When I was little he used to send me flowers on Valentine’s.”

I didn’t remember that. It seemed like something I should remember.

Maurey said, “More than once Pete told me you were the only thing I ever got right,” and they hugged again.

Shannon had brought two suitcases plus her carry-on, so we had to wait at the conveyor belt surrounded by skiers in off-colored clothes. They talked loudly about inches and runs. I glared at boys who were checking out my daughter. Maurey got as many looks as Shannon, but I figured I had no right to glare at Maurey’s bunch. She was old enough to handle oglers without my help.

As often as they talked on the telephone, you’d think Shannon and Maurey wouldn’t have that much left to catch up on, but the moment I finished the how-was-your-flight formalities they launched into mother-daughter gossip. Shannon gave a detailed description of a pair of boots she almost bought for the trip, Maurey talked about horses and how successful Pud was in the satellite dish repair business. Shannon gave a Eugene report.

“He wants us to date each other and other people at the same time. Says it would be values affirming. I said, ‘Fat chance.’”

“You can’t date a guy after you’ve lived with him,” Maurey said.

“At your age I think you should still be playing the field,” I said.

They both stared at me until I volunteered to go pluck her suitcases off the conveyor carrel. As I made my way through the skier jam, I heard Shannon say, “Play the field?”

Maurey said, “You’ll have to excuse your father. He learned his parenting skills from Leave It to Beaver .”

At the ranch, we found a Douglas fir lying on its side in the living room. Pud and Hank were crouched on the floor with a measuring tape. Toinette, Auburn, and Roger sat at a card table, stringing popcorn and chokecherries while Chet was off in Pete’s room, talking to New Yorkers on the telephone.

“Our tree’s too big!” Auburn shouted.

Hank and Pud studied the situation.

“We could cut a hole in the ceiling,” Hank said.

“Or the floor,” Pud said.

“Or take thirty inches off the middle and splice the tree together,” Hank added.

This is your typical example of Native American humor. As a kid, it drove me crazy, but now it was Auburn’s turn.

He crowed. “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”

Hank’s face was dead serious. “You got a better idea?”

Maurey introduced Shannon to Toinette and Roger. Toinette offered her supper, but Shannon said she had eaten on the plane. Shannon complimented Roger on his chokecherry necklace and asked him to show her how it was done.

“What’s Gus up to?” I asked.

“Gus is on a cleaning binge. She’s throwing out everything she doesn’t consider vital to survival.”

“My baseball cards?”

“They went the first day.”

Chet came from Pete’s room. “Our friends are coming in tomorrow.”

“Do they need a place to stay?” Maurey asked.

“I made reservations at Snow King Inn.”

Shannon and Chet shook hands and Shannon said she was sorry about Pete. Chet said Pete spoke of her often; Maurey went to the kitchen and brought back lemonade and these little crackers shaped like fish. Everything was going fine—I’d just taken my place at the popcorn-stringing station—when Shannon said, “I expected Grandma Lydia to be here.”

I stuck a needle through a popped kernel and the kernel broke in half, leaving me with nothing on my needle.

“Your father and grandmother aren’t speaking,” Maurey said.

Shannon looked at me. “Why not?”

Maurey answered. “He says she ruined his life.”

I set the needle next to my lemonade and gave up on Christmas decorating. There’s no use trying to be constructive when you’re ganged up on by women.

“That was weeks ago,” Shannon said. “You be nice to your mother.”

“She’s not nice to me.”

“Jeeze, Louise, who’s the grown-up around here? Dad, I want you to march down to her house and make up. Right now.”

“No.”

Maurey said, “Forgive your mother, Sam.”

Hank said, “You have the power to make her Christmas bright.”

“I won’t do it.”

No one would look at me, except Roger who had an expression on his face like I’d stolen his teddy bear.

The silence didn’t last long. Shannon laid down an ultimatum. “Forgive Lydia or I won’t forgive you.”

I hate ultimatums. “For what?”

“For hurting my friend Gilia. For messing up Halloween by making that boy try to kill himself on our front porch.”

“Don’t forget he was creepy to your boyfriend,” Maurey said.

“That too.”

I stood up. All day I’d been looking forward to my daughter’s arrival, and now this.

“I’m being persecuted,” I said.

Chet’s face was the saddest thing I’d ever seen. He said, “People you love die. Don’t waste precious time holding grudges.”

I searched the room for an ally—Chet to Roger to Auburn to Hank to Shannon to Maurey. They were all accusing me and they were all wrong.

I said, “I’m going to bed.”

She threw back her white neck, swelling with a sigh, and faltering, in tears, with a long shudder and hiding her face, she gave herself to him.

Ah, Madame Bovary. If only someone would throw back her white neck for me. Emma was so happy there for a moment, not knowing that she, like Anna Karenina and Oedipus’s mother and so many other lovely yet loose women created by male novelists, would soon die a cruel death at her own hand.

On Lydia’s fortieth birthday, Shannon and I flew up from North Carolina to surprise her. Hank arranged for us and practically everyone else who knew Lydia to meet at this hoity-toity restaurant in Teton Village. Surprise birthday parties carry a high risk. Take Katrina’s as an example. Anyway, Hank told Lydia the two of them were going out to eat, and when she walked into the dining room we all yelled “Surprise!” and broke into that awful song. Lydia’s face turned to wax, she looked at the massive cake Dot had baked, and she looked at me; then, calmly, she left. I didn’t see her again for two years.

They—my family and friends—were probably right about Lydia. I’ve found there are few instances where I’m right and everybody else is wrong. In the morning I would drive into GroVont and do whatever it took to reestablish a relationship with my mother.