Tim Sandlin: Social Blunders

I popped boots off bindings and planted my skis upright in the snow, then I sat on the clover and waited. I didn’t touch the water. When you first start visiting a warm springs on a regular basis, you check the temperature each time you return to see if the water really is as warm as you remember it. The TM spring was a tad cooler than I like bath water, warm enough to melt the surrounding snow but not so hot as to scald the tropical fish Maurey and other kids had released into it over the years. Back in early high school Maurey talked me into a full-moon skinny dip at twenty below zero. The water itself was cozy, warm and foggy as a Jacuzzi, but the seconds between leaving the water and drying off were among the most painful of my childhood. Seeing her naked was not worth hypothermia.

I came to the warm springs mainly for the dirt. Winter in Jackson Hole may be beautiful and spare beyond the Eastern Time Zone conception of beauty, but several months with no sight of dirt leaves me weird.

So I sat on the clover with my fingers in the dirt, watching tiny goldfish dart around the shallows’ muck, my energy at an all-time low. I was too exhausted to be depressed. The truth is I’m only good for one intense, spine-wrenching emotional blowout a year, and when the scenes come stacked up on one another some sort of morphine response kicks in. My brain goes numb; my muscles fill up with lactic acid.

The high whine of a snowmobile wafted in from back along the fenceline, and I realized I’d been holding my breath, waiting for it. Maurey arrived in a powder blue snowsuit, gold metal-flake helmet, and her father’s old Mickey Mouse boots. I averted my eyes as she dismounted. I heard her shake out her hair and wade down the snowbank, then felt her sit beside me. Neither of us spoke for a while. I underhand tossed a pebble into the water and we both took what life lessons we could from the concentric, spreading ripples.

“You knew I would come,” she said.

“Yes.”

Our shoulders were a half-inch apart. I sat cross-legged while Maurey stretched her legs in a V. She leaned back on her hands and said, “Remember the day I fell in the creek and went into labor?”

“I’ve never been that scared since.” Maurey broke her leg, Shannon was born, and I became a father three weeks before my fourteenth birthday.

Maurey exhaled a sigh. The fog from her breath looked like punctuation. “Sam, it’s time we got a divorce.”

I said, “I know. It’s a pain in the ass.”

Maurey pulled off her left glove and laced her fingers into mine. “You think you’re incapable of loving a woman, and you blame Lydia, but maybe the problem isn’t her, maybe it’s my fault.”

“You’re honest with me, I’m honest with you. How could there be a problem?”

“There’s worse things than dishonesty, Sam.”

My automatic response was cynical, but I clamped down before it got out.

Maurey said, “Ever since we were kids, we’ve had each other, so neither of us has had to learn how to take care of ourselves.”

A flock of small black birds twittered through the willows across the creek, making the bushes seem to crawl in a DT effect. I looked from the birds to the fish to Maurey’s hand in mine.

“I have this test I give myself,” I said, “whenever I fall for a new woman. I pretend she and I are about to be married. The families are there in their best clothes, the minister stands with his back to the cross, the organist breaks into the ‘Wedding March,’ and you telephone to ask if I want to go out for coffee.”

“Why wasn’t I invited to the wedding?”

“If I say no to you, I don’t want to go for coffee right now, it proves I’m serious about the woman. Falling for her is for real.”

There was a moment’s quiet, then Maurey said, “That’s either silly or sick. Give me a minute to decide which.” She used her right hand, the hand I wasn’t holding, to brush hair behind her ear. “Tell me, how many have you married in this fantasy?”

“None. Not even the two I married in reality.”

“That is not silly. It is definitely sick.”

A face appeared in the steam over the spring—a face with high cheekbones and a freckle between the bridge of the nose and her right eye. I said, “Gilia.”

“What?”

“I’d rather marry Gilia than go to coffee with you.” I tossed a handful of pebbles, many concentric and overlapping circles. “But I blew that one.”

Maurey and I went into our respective funks. It seemed to me that we were embarking on something inordinately stupid. We were chopping up our one dependable crutch. Friendship is so much healthier than other crutches—alcohol or TV or religious fanaticism. One healthy crutch shouldn’t be against the rules.

“What exactly does this divorce mean?” I asked. “Are we still friends?”

She squeezed my hand hard, then let go. “Of course we’re still friends. It just means we’re no longer next of kin. We no longer save each other every time there’s a crisis. The next woman breaks your heart, you have to handle it without me.”

“There won’t be a next woman.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I’m finished with romance.”

“You could no more do without romance than air.”

I decided not to fight with her. This would be a conversation to dwell on in my old age. I didn’t want to dwell on a fight.

“What else?” I asked.

Maurey leaned toward the warm springs. “I can’t accept any more of your money.”

Dothan’s ugly taunts ran through my mind. The gossip I’d heard and ignored. The fears I’d been afraid to think.

I looked at her. “Is money all you used me for?”

Maurey swung her right arm and punched me in the face.

“Ow!”

“How dare you say that, you snot. When Daddy died and Dothan took Auburn, I’d never have survived without you.”

“I didn’t mean it.”

“This split-up is just as hard on me as it is on you, you stupid jerk.”

I held both hands over my nose. “You hurt me.”

“I meant to hurt you.”

“Is my nose bleeding?”

She tipped my face to view the damage. “Six stitches should do it. Maybe seven.”

I looked down at my hands. No blood. “Before we go apart, would you do me one last favor?” I asked.

“It better have nothing to do with sex.”

“Let me pay Pete’s bills, the doctors and funeral.”

She frowned. “Wouldn’t that be hypocritical? To say ‘No more—after this last time’?”

“It’s as much for Pete and Chet as it is for you.”

She regarded me with her blue eyes. The first time I saw Maurey I was amazed at her blue eyes and black hair—like Hitler. Twenty years of history passed between us as we stared at one another. Twenty years of shared parenthood. I couldn’t believe it was over, we would be casual from now on.

Maurey nodded once, to herself, and smiled. She said, “Okay.”

A letter arrived the next morning:

Dear Mr. Callahan,

Rory Paseneaux returned to claim his position as head of the household and he is PO’ed because me and Babs named you as the father of our babies. He went so far as to talk to the woman at the hospital and she told him it is too late to change the papers.

Rory has said we can not have any more to do with you, even me, and if you come around he will kick your butt.

We also can not cover for you with your girlfriends any more. We have to call Sam and Sammi by their middle names which are Lynn and Babs.

So that is that. I thank you for what you did for us and I know Babs would too if she was allowed.

With respects,

Lynette Norloff

P.S. Rory Paseneaux did allow one thing. He says your lawyer can keep paying our rent.