Tim Sandlin: Social Blunders

“Touch the kid again and I’ll make it my business.”

Now the kid was staring like I was a Martian.

The coach’s face wrinkled up. “Are you in administration?”

“I’m in humanity and you’re impolite. You’re an ape.”

The fat kid made it upright. “Don’t call my dad an ape.”

“Your dad?”

“He yells because I deserve it.”

My eyes passed between the two. There was a nasal resemblance. “You’re his father?” I asked.

The coach beamed with pride. “I don’t show no favoritism.”

A funeral procession blocked the intersection at Battleground Avenue, so I turned off my engine and waited. The cars were all big, new, and American, except for a couple of Mercedes being driven by women. I have a religious belief that dead people can read nearby minds for four days after they die, which means I’m careful at funerals. If this dead person was reading my mind as the hearse drove by, he or she, or by now it, I suppose, overheard some pretty confusing thought processes.

I was parked next to a Christian bookstore with a Kinko’s copy shop on one side and a Baskin-Robbins ice-cream parlor on the other. Two pregnant teenagers sat on a bench in front of Baskin-Robbins, eating goop out of banana split boats. We’re talking third trimester here—beached whales.

I turned right into the Baskin-Robbins parking lot but missed the drive and jumped the curb and knocked off my muffler, which caused the girls to burst into spontaneous giggles and the Dart to roar like a sick lawn mower.

As I retrieved the bent muffler, one of the girls said, “We oughtta call the Mothers Against Drunk Driving hot line.”

The other one stopped her spoon in midair to check me for signs of drunkenness. “We’re not mothers yet.”

“I’m still against drunk driving. Have been for over four months.”

They were both short and gave the impression they had been chubby well before pregnancy. They had silver hair with black roots and dimples at the elbows that winked as they spooned triple sundaes. The only difference was complexion—the girl against drunk driving was pink and the other one came off as a dull bamboo color.

“I’m not drunk,” I said.

This made the girls laugh, and I liked them immediately. For being so large, they seemed in remarkably good moods.

“If you’re not drunk, you got no excuse,” the pink one said.

I walked over to the guardrail Baskin-Robbins had put up to keep people from driving through their plate-glass window. “I don’t have any excuse.”

“What if I’d been standing on that curb,” the pale one said. “You’d have hit me and I might have gone into premature labor.”

“Shoot, Lynette, I don’t know about you, but I’d be happy as a peach to go into premature labor.”

“Babs.”

“I’m tired of being pregnant.”

I sat on the rail with the muffler in my lap. “Can I ask you a question?”

The girls spooned ice cream and considered how to deal with me. Lynette was eating hot fudge on three various forms of chocolate while Babs had separate toppings—butterscotch, caramel, and something red—on what appeared to be strawberry, butter pecan, and creme de menthe. I immediately critiqued their personalities based on ice-cream choices and decided I’d rather be involved in Babs’s problems over Lynette’s, but they were both interesting.

“I’ll give you each fifty dollars to help me with an ethical dilemma.”

“Cash or check?” Babs asked.

“Check, but it’s good. Here, look at this.”

I talked while they studied my check guarantee card, then me. “You see, there’s this decision I have to make where I must choose right over wrong and not doing anything is a decision unto itself. I’m usually real firm about right and wrong, but this time I can’t figure out which is which. I’m lost.”

“Are you selling insurance?” Babs asked.

“Good Lord, no.”

Lynette said, “Insurance agents always start off with that innocent question stuff and before you know it they’re in your kitchen.”

“Insurance agents don’t pay fifty dollars for an answer,” I said.

That gave them cause to think. An ambulance blew by on Battleground going the opposite direction the funeral procession had taken.

“Just don’t tell Rory,” Babs said. I had no idea what that meant, but it seemed like agreement.

I folded both hands on the muffler and tried to figure a way to word the problem. “Let’s pretend the fathers of your babies did something awful. They’re both no good sons of bitches.”

Lynette could relate. “That don’t take no pretending. B. B. Swain is the evilest snake in Broward County.”

“Great. Now pretend he doesn’t know you’re pregnant.”

That’s when I lost Babs. “But Rory knows I’m pregnant. He married me in church.”

“Just pretend.”

“That’s easy for Lynette, but my Rory is an angel. He rubs my feet when I’m tired.”

Lynette’s lower lip swelled up. “She’s so smug about her having a husband and I don’t, it makes me want to throw up.” She turned on Babs. “It’s your fault I’m preggers in the first place.”

“Don’t blame me. You’re the one sold yourself cheap.”

“B. B. would have been perfectly happy with a hand job till he heard you going at it like a cat.” Lynette made her voice high and truly. “More, more, I’m ready. I’ll do anything for you, Rory.”

“You should have used protection,” I said. I’m big on protection. Some call me promiscuous, but no one calls me a thoughtless lay.

Lynette blinked real fast. “B. B. told me he was impotent.”

Babs made a gesture like waving flies off her ice cream. “Never believe anything a boy with a hard-on says.”

“That’s God’s own truth,” I said.

Lynette started to sniffle and her eyes glistened up. “Now you got me so sad I’ll have to buy another sundae.” She stared accusingly at me. “We were having a perfectly nice time till you had to jump the curb.”

Babs said, “Yeah.”

“Let’s make it an even hundred. Each.”

Babs put her arm around Lynette. It took a minute, but Lynette finally made a sound like sucking tears back into herself and said, “Okay. We’re pretending our babies have rotten fathers.”

“And the fathers don’t know about the babies.”

“Why not?” Babs asked.

“’Cause you never told them.”

“That don’t make no sense.”

“Just pretend.”

“This is easier for me than Babs,” Lynette said. “I have an imagination.”

“I have an imagination too.”

“No, you don’t.”

Trying to talk to two women at once is exponentially harder than trying to talk to one. The nuances go on forever.

I interrupted. “Now pretend your baby has grown up.”

“How old?” Babs asked.

“Thirty-three.”

“That’s how old Jesus was when he died.”

“Hank Williams was thirty.”

“Your baby is thirty-three.”

They stopped and looked at me funny. “No need to raise your voice,” Babs said.

“I’m sorry.”

“We’re pregnant. Not deaf.” I’d heard that before.

“Here’s the question.”

Lynette tipped her boat so the melted chocolate slop ran to one end. “I thought we’d never get round to the question.”

“Should your baby who is thirty-three reveal himself or herself to his or her father?”

Lynette slurped down the goop while Babs screwed her mouth into a thoughtful line. I was charmed by them both.

“That is a question,” Babs said.

Lynette spoke with a chocolate mustache. “I’d want my baby to beat the tar out of B. B. Swain.”