Tim Sandlin - Skipped Parts

They hit and separated. Hank slid on his chest with his face pushing a great mound of snow before him. Lydia rolled end over end, then fell into a baseball hook slide. Neither one slowed down all that much as they went past Maurey and me. The really weird part was that Lydia went by laughing.

I’d never heard my mother laugh before.

Lydia mostly liked to comment on things. She didn’t really care to do anything and laughing requires some kind of doing. I didn’t know if I liked this turn of events or not.

When the slide finally petered out, she was lying on her back with both arms out in a crucifixion look. Hank slowly stood up and brushed off his face, but Lydia didn’t move a muscle. I flashed on paralysis and death. The three of us all made it to her at the same time. I knelt next to her head and touched her limp shoulder. “Can you move?”

Lydia smiled. “Isn’t the air pretty.”

“Where does it hurt?”

She sat up with her hands around her knees. “I was just admiring the sky. Do you mind?”

“You never admired the sky before. I thought you were crippled.”

“Why can’t a person admire the sky without their kid calling for an ambulance?”

I looked at Maurey who seemed to know what Lydia was talking about. They made eye contact. What I thought was the word: pregnant .

Lydia struggled to her feet. “That had a high entertainment value. Let’s do it again.”

I wish I could claim that I caught the historical significance of watching The Ed Sullivan Show in the Pierces’ family room that night. Kennedy day I knew we were involved in something bigger than us, but Beatles night I was considerably more wrapped up in me and the baby thing than any history-unfolding deal.

My brain was stuck on the first joke I ever memorized. Lord only knows how old I was, but I must have been young because I thought you could tell a joke five thousand times and it would still be funny. It’s a wonder Lydia and Casper didn’t slap me upside the head.

I would stand real straight and recite, “Mary had a little lamb,” then I’d hesitate a millisecond before screaming, “ and the doctor fainted .” I got the biggest kick out of that.

Buddy was home, sitting in his Stratolounger, taking apart the trigger doogie on a thirty-ought-six. He spread all the little pieces on a cloth on a TV tray. Petey played Candy Land and he cheated. I saw him. Maurey lay on her stomach on the floor with a pillow under her chest and her chin propped on both hands.

She raised one foot, then lowered it and raised the other one. I watched her instead of Topo Gigio, the Italian mechanical mouse. I pretended I was the baby in her. It would be dark and hot and wet. Really wet. I imagined the baby as a wet mouse. It would be a girl. We could name her Vanessa or Chadron; or maybe Nancy since we’d both read over thirty Nancy Drew books.

Maurey would marry me if we had a daughter. Buddy would make her.

Buddy dropped a tiny screwdriver and said “Shit,” just as Annabel came in the room with a tray of cocoa mugs. Maurey’s mother must have been a cocoa junkie and I think it affected Maurey’s outlook.

“Don’t talk like a cowboy in front of the children,” she said.

“I am a cowboy.”

Petey jumped to his feet, singing, “Shit-shit-shit, shit-shit-shit,” to the tune of “Jingle Bells.” He danced around the room in his pajamas, driving everyone right up the wall. If Maurey’s and my kid acted like that I would put him in Culver Military Academy.

Buddy raised his arm in a mock backhand and Petey ran screaming to hide behind Annabel’s legs. “Don’t let Daddy beat me. Don’t let Daddy beat me.”

“Now look what you’ve done,” Annabel said.

I was always intrigued by the flow of the Pierce family. I think the only way you can act cruddy to a family member is when you deep down inside care for them. Lydia and Caspar were formal and polite because they didn’t like each other. Anything approaching honesty at the manor house would have caused bloodshed.

“Shut up,” Maurey ordered.

Ed Sullivan is like the American role model. The guy couldn’t do anything—couldn’t act, sing, draw, throw a ball—absolutely talentless in every way, not to mention he had the posture of a train-station beggar. Yet he was a king-hell big deal. People sucked up to Ed like he was president of the world or something. No wonder kids grow up weird.

I was watching Maurey breathe, trying to see if there was a baby in there, so I missed the first part, but when she said, “Shut up,” I looked at Ed hunched over by a curtain.

He said, “And now…the Beatles.”

The audience went nuts—you had to be there—as four guys in wimp clothes with their hair combed forward broke into “All My Loving.” I didn’t know it was “All My Loving” at the time. Maurey told me the next day at school after Kim Schmidt told her.

“Sissies,” Buddy said through his bush of a beard.

“I think they’re cute,” Annabel said.

Petey threw a Candy Land marker at the screen.

The weird part was the screaming girls. No way could they hear the music; they were making too much noise. The camera blew off the Beatles to focus on these regular high school-looking girls with tears streaming away and their hands up in helpless supplication. I can’t stand seeing strong emotions. Makes me nervous.

Maurey’s right foot was up in the air going side to side with the song. She held the cocoa with both hands and blew steam toward the television. When the two Beatles on the left leaned into the same microphone, the scream intensity doubled.

“If they’re so hot why don’t they buy a separate microphone for each guy,” I said.

Buddy had an answer. “Cause they like to stand close to each other. England is all boys who like other boys. I was there in the war.”

Annabel did a tsk action with her tongue.

My mind said “Pregnant, pregnant, pregnant,” over and over. I hate that when you get a word in there and it won’t go away no matter what you’re doing on the outside.

They sang five songs. “She Loves You” was pretty good and the last one, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” was okay. The others were somewhat drippy for me, though it was hard to tell with all the screaming. For sure they were better than the Singing Nun.

The next act was some dogs who wore fu-fu clothes and rode bicycles. They reminded me of Otis, whose leg I shot off. I’d been in town six months and shot one dog and gotten one girl pregnant.

Maurey got a comb and stood behind me, combing my hair forward like a Beatle. Embarrassed me to no end.

“You’ll look cool at school,” she said.

“Being from the East causes me enough trash. If I look like an English wimp Coach Stebbins will hate me sure.”

“Coach Stebbins hates you?” Annabel asked.

“He thinks I’m an outsider.”

“You are,” Buddy said. “But you’ll get over it.” He held up the rifle barrel and sighted through the tube right at me. Gave me a funny feeling in the spine.

Maurey stood back to admire my hair. “This’ll drive Chuckette Morris crazy. She’ll be all over you in homeroom.”

“I don’t want Chuckette Morris all over me in homeroom.”

“Have to fight ’em off, huh?” Buddy said.

Maurey smiled at me. “With a stick.”

Sometime after midnight, I came wide awake. I lay there with my eyes open, trying to piece together the room, where I was, why, when. What had caused me to come to. A coal glowed bright over by my desk, then dimmed. Lydia’s head was silhouetted by the window. The coal moved down and she flicked a part of it into my trash can.

“I was so sick the day I found out I was pregnant with you. I’ve never been so sick. It was worse than I’d dreamed.” She inhaled on the cigarette. “The doctor told Caspar first and Caspar came into my room and hit me in the face. The only time he ever hit me. So far.”