I pretended to pass out.
I got the wind knocked out of me one other time. In North Carolina, I was little, six or seven, and Lydia and I were playing seesaw. She had to scoot way up near the middle so our weights sort of balanced out. It was fun because the air was nice that day and Lydia didn’t play outdoors stuff with me too often. About all I could ever get out of her was an occasional game of crazy 8s.
So I’m going up and down, up and down, admiring to myself how pretty Lydia is down the board from me. She had on a gray sleeveless shirt and white shorts. She’d spread a magazine out on the board in front of her so she could amuse herself and me at the same time. Every now and then she’d raise her face to swipe the bangs off her forehead, and she smiled at me kind of absentmindedly, as if she’d forgotten I was there.
Then, while I’m way up a mile high on top of the world, the damn coach of some swim team walks up in his stretchy trunks and rubber thongs. Had a blue whistle on a cord around his neck. I hate coaches.
He cocked his head to one side and banged on the skull bone over his right ear. “Does your little brother know how to swim?”
Lydia marked her spot in the magazine with her finger and turned to stare at the bare-chested coach.
He switched sides of the head and banged some more. “Every young man should know how to swim. It is vital to his safety and the safety of his loved ones.”
Lydia looked up the board at me. “Sam, do you know how to swim?”
“No.” I wasn’t happy about being passed off as a little brother.
She turned to the coach. “No.”
“I could teach the little snapper. Maybe you and me should walk over to the ice cream stand and discuss it. My treat, I’ll even stand the boy a single cone.”
Lydia stared at him a few seconds more, just enough to cause him to stop banging on the sides of his head, then she said, “I do not receive gentlemen without the decency to cover their repellent chest mange,” and dignified as all get out, she swung her right leg across the board and got off the seesaw. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t breathe for five minutes or stop crying for an hour, not until the stupid swimmer went away.
I was depressed that fall. I’d never been depressed to the point where I knew it before. Depression is like a headache or true love or any of those indefinable concepts. If you’ve never been there, you don’t know what it’s like until you’re too far in to stop the process.
But I remember coming home from football practice to entire evenings on the couch next to Lydia, neither of us talking or reading or anything. We’d just sit with our eyes glazed, waiting for 10:30.
I figured out the stove deal so we ate frozen pizzas three nights a week and at the White Deck the other four. That’s something of an exaggeration. Lydia bought rib eyes every now and then, and I got good with Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in a box. Some Sundays we drove to Jackson for late breakfast at the Wort Hotel.
So far as I can tell, Lydia made good on the emotional catatonia threat. She went a good month without speaking to a human other than me and Dot. Even with Dot, Lydia took to pointing at things on the menu or going through me.
“Tell her this hamburger is overcooked. Your sneakers have more flavor.”
I turned to Dot and shrugged.
Dot laughed like we were perfectly pleasant folks making a joke. She had nifty dimples. I had a crush on her that wouldn’t let go, and Lydia’s attitude caused me some embarrassment.
Once when Lydia left me the money to pay and fluffed out the door, I explained things to Dot at the cash register.
“My mom’s kind of high-strung. She doesn’t mean anything personal.”
Dot looked sad for the first time. “No one should apologize for their mother,” she said. “All moms are doing the best they can.”
“Are you sure?”
A guy did try to talk to us once. Big, wide fella with a grin, he came slamming through the door and walked straight toward our table, pulled a chair over and straddled it backward with his hands across the top slat. The middle finger on his right hand was missing two joints.
He held the stub out to me. “Look.”
I looked but didn’t see anything other than a short finger. Lydia didn’t look. “It’s short,” I said.
“Look at the tip.”
I shrugged. Seemed like a fingertip to me.
“I lost it in a chain saw and at the hospital they took a skin graft off this arm,” he showed me a scar on his left arm, “and stuck it over the tip.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Look close and see.”
I finally figured out that he meant he didn’t have a fingerprint so he could commit crimes. I looked so I could say, “Gee, no fingerprint,” but then I saw all this wiry hair.
“Your fingertip’s hairy.”
The big lug’s grin showed a flashy gold tooth. “Never seen anything like it, huh? Look, ma’am.” He stuck the finger between Lydia’s face and her food. I couldn’t believe it, the guy had his hand in a pornographic position three inches from her nose, and she was speechless. Normally, Lydia practically spit at anyone who called her “ma’am.”
“They shaved the skin off my arm before grafting it, but the hair all grew back. Ever see anything like that?”
He turned his hand sideways into the handshake position. “Ft. Worth Jones, ma’am. I’m more than pleased to meet you.”
Lydia stared at the hand a moment, then up at the guy’s expansive face.
I said, “I heard your name at football practice.”
The gold tooth flashed in the fluorescent light. “Hope they said something good.”
“How do you spell
He looked perplexed by the question. “F-T period. Like the town.”
“Oh.”
He still had his hand out. “Saturday night’s movie night at the VFW, little lady.
I was sure “little lady” would spark a Lydia volcano, but nothing happened. She just sat there. My theory is Ft. Worth was so far from her frame of reference that Lydia couldn’t see him.
Ft. Worth looked at me. “Is she okay?”
“Medication.”
He stared intently at Lydia’s eyes. “Yeah. Would you tell her I dropped by.”
I nodded.
