Tim Sandlin - Skipped Parts

Lydia’s bedroom-turned-closet smelled different from the rest of the house. I don’t know what it was—Lysol and woman odors or maybe a mouse died under the empty bureau or something—but it made me want to get in and get out without wasting any time.

The panty box sat right next to the bureau. Why didn’t she open a drawer and dump stuff in? I generally took care of the laundry—we had an ancient Whirlpool set off the kitchen—but I left her clothes in a pile for her to fold and put away. Our relationship wasn’t that sick. But why shovel them into a cardboard box instead of a drawer next to it? Maybe unpacking would be like admitting we live here. Heck, I don’t know. A person could waste weeks tracking down the motivation behind any move Lydia made.

She owned about sixty pairs of panties too. Digging through the box was like swimming. Swimming in panties is how I’d found the photographs in the first place, but I wasn’t about to expose that much to Maurey. Rules off or not, the walls had only been down one afternoon.

I took the photos to my room for a mirror comparison between the guys and me.

Two of the guys stood shoulder to shoulder with their hands on their hips. The other three were posed in fake running and passing shots. Their helmets were weird, like somebody had lacquered ear muffs across the top. Only one had a face mask and it was a single bar.

Numbers 72 , 56 , 81 , 11 , and 20 . Tackle, center, end, quarterback, and halfback, unless they’d numbered positions different back then. The tackle and center were the two-in-one picture. They had dark jerseys with horizontal stripes at the shoulders. Seventy-two was a big guy, a king-hell teenage giant. I hoped he was my father because that would mean I might grow one of these days.

The center had a square head and missing teeth, and the end wearing the same dark uniform was a thin character with glasses under the one-bar face mask. I didn’t wear glasses so that let him out.

Eleven wore a different uniform, lighter with a squirrelly black stripe around the belly. He had a flattop haircut—racy compared to the other guys’ burrs and crewcuts—and his mouth was skewed in a lewd smirk, as if he had recently laid the photographer’s sister. Lydia would go for that smirk. I studied his eyes, then my own in the mirror. Mine were wider, but so were Lydia’s. You couldn’t tell the color in the picture, but they were darker than the other white guys.

The Negro halfback in what looked like a gray sweatshirt and a dull, leather helmet was shorter than the others—great. A short daddy would be a lot harder to handle than black blood— and he was the only one smiling. Short, fast, and happy. None of those were particularly alluring to Lydia, yet I couldn’t just rule him out and go back to the leering quarterback. His blackness alone would cause no end of shame to Caspar, and Caspar’s shame was all the allure Lydia needed. There’d been a time when Lydia would have cut off her fingers if Caspar told her not to.

This child shrink Caspar slapped on me made a big deal over the Unknown Father. Her name was Dr. Eleanor and I never knew if that was a first name or last. She wore orange fingernail polish.

“Don’t you ever wonder about your father, Sam?”

“Lydia’s dad’s enough for anyone.”

“You aren’t intrigued? What if he’s rich or famous or a wanted outlaw?”

“What if he’s dead?”

“How would you feel if your father were dead?”

“About the way I feel now.”

“Where do you think a person goes when he dies, Sam?”

“France.” Why are people always asking me that question?

“What would you say to your father if you met him this afternoon?”

I thought about that one awhile, torn between my natural smartassness and a sudden urge to be cooperative. I was only ten when Caspar decided Lydia and I had an unhealthy relationship and we should both be dissected. My particular case was kicked off after I hid myself in the back of Lydia’s closet under a pile of her dirty clothes for two days and a night. Smelled nice and warm in there. Police combed the neighborhood while I played out the symbolic womb situation.

“I’d ask him if he can hit a curve ball.”

Dr. Eleanor took this as smartassness, but I’d meant it straight. She looked at me with her lips all prim, which made me feel mean to her, so I tried to explain.

“Lydia can do anything a real father can except teach me how to hit a curve. I can’t hit a curve worth crap.”

Caspar made Lydia go to a shrink too, but she seduced hers and they took off to Atlanta for a week.

The letter came Special Delivery on Sam Callahan’s fourteenth birthday. It was from Don Drysdale, the tallest and most powerful pitcher in major league baseball.

Dear Sam, it read,

Study the pitcher.

Divide the plate into thirds in your mind. Curvesbreak out and few young throwers can start a pitch inside.Only concern yourself with the outside third.

Keep your head down, your front toe closed, andswing through the ball.

Try only to make contact. Worry about home runslater.

By the way, I am your sperm father. Your mom and I thought you should have a normal childhood which I could never have given you. Come to L.A. and I’ll buy you a Ford Mustang and introduce you to some Hollywood babes.

Your Dad,

Don Drysdale

P.S. I love you, Son.

Someone pulled into the yard and revved their engine right up to the limit. I took off down the hall into Lydia’s room and stuffed the photos back under the panty pile. I wonder if there’s a psychological term for a person who owns sixty pairs of panties.

Lydia kicked snow through the front door as I came out of her room. She pulled off her coat, humming a song I’d never heard in my life. “You eat yet?”

She didn’t seem to wonder what I’d been up to in her room. I said, “I waited for you.” Lydia lit a cigarette. I don’t think she noticed the clean ashtrays either. Lydia never was much for noticing changes. She figured stuff just happened without anyone making it happen. “We had a steak in Dubois.”

What’s this we jive? She hadn’t used we about anyone other than me and her in a long time. I took a shot at sounding nonchalant. “Who’s we?”

“Ft. Worth and his friend Hank Elkrunner drove me over to Dubois this afternoon. Hank’s part Indian, Blackfoot or Black-feet, something about feet. He knows all this neat stuff about the forest. We found a badger track.”

“You went into the forest? There’s snow, and cold.”

“They had snowshoes. It was a hoot, Sam. I tried something new.”

“What did you try new?”

“Don’t look at me like that, honey bunny. I told you— snowshoeing. It was wholesome.” She kicked off her shoes and padded barefoot into the kitchen, then came back with a glass of water, which was really weird. The only time Lydia ever touched water was to wash down pills.

This time she drained the whole glass. “I thought I would never do anything new again the rest of my life, but now I did. How about that?”

“How about that.”

She came over and gave me a little motherly hug. “Don’t be such a grump, Sam. We’re in this place. Hell hole or not, we might as well admit it and see what there is to see.” I’d been giving her that rap for a month now, but you’d think Lydia was the first person in history to realize it’s more satisfying to live where you are than where you aren’t.

“Did you hear about President Kennedy?” I asked.

She broke the hug and went over to pat Les on the side of the head. “Isn’t it a shame.” Lydia stared off into space and I thought she was dwelling on the pitifulness of a national tragedy. Wrong again. “Did you know coyotes and badgers sometimes run together so they can eat whatever the other one kills?”