Skipped Parts

I opened both bottles with a church key from under the sink. “Look at those nostrils. Each one’s big as a hooker’s twat.”

Lydia reached for her pop. “That’s another matter we should speak of. This is Wyoming. Thirteen-year-old boys do not compare objects to a hooker’s twat.”

“You’d rather me laugh at pain?”

“And how do you know what a hooker’s twat looks like?”

“Jesse told me they’re like a big, black, chocolate eclair.”

Lydia glanced down at herself. “I certainly don’t look like a chocolate eclair.”

“You’re not a hooker.”

Lydia propped her feet up on a pile of old Field & Streams. Cigarette in left hand, Dr Pepper in right, she looked considerably more like a bad baby-sitter than anyone’s mother. She had the toes of a child. “We must be normal here,” she said. “I’m tired of trouble. If these kids are morons, just wonder where Caspar will banish us if we mess this one.”

The thought was inconceivable. I plopped into a straight chair with elk gut or something stretched across the back. “Damn, Lydia, what did you do to hack him off so much?”

She waved her hand like brushing away flies. Lydia had the longest, thinnest fingers I had ever seen. “Nothing. I didn’t do a thing.”

“Look at it from my point of view. You told me about the Cuban guy and the dancer and the strip show on the diving board. If this one’s so horrible you can’t tell me, think what my imagination is going to imagine.”

Lydia smiled. “Oh, fuck you.”

I propped my feet up next to hers and drank from the bottle. “Normal, remember. Wyoming women don’t use that word in front of their baby boys.”

“Fuck Wyoming women too.”

I went back to the kitchen, opened the freezer, and pulled out a frozen pizza. “You know how to light the oven?”

“Are you kidding?”

The apprentices’ eyes widened in fear. “Chef Callahan,” they cried. “The hollandaise sauce is separating.”

Sam smiled mysteriously to himself and tapped his two-foot-high chef’s hat to a rakish angle. “Let’s see the problem, boys.”

The apprentices, both of whom were shorter than Chef Callahan, stepped aside as Sam peered into the stainless-steel bowl. “Boys, bring me two egg yolks, a half lemon, and a tennis racket.”

“Sam, something’s wrong with the television.”

I put the pizza back in the freezer and found a pound can of cashews and a half-full jar of pickles. Caspar’s doctor friend was big on Mexican condiments. The shelves were packed with four-alarm sauce stuff, dried peppers, and boxes of prefab taco shells, nothing you could make a meal of. Back in the living room, Lydia was sitting up, squinting at a snowy picture on the TV screen.

She slapped the side of the set. “Can you believe this, one channel, if you find this a picture.”

I set the cashews and pickles on the end table that had elk horns for legs. “Hope you don’t mind a light dinner.”

“I thought maybe PBS wouldn’t come through, but this is modern America. Everybody gets at least three stations.”

We chewed cashews and watched My Three Sons as Mike, Rob, and Chip pushed their dad’s busted Buick up the street. I wondered what it would be like to have brothers. Or a dad. “Maybe if we put in an antenna.”

“I doubt it. We’ve fallen off the edge of the Earth. My destruction is complete. You want the last pickle?”

I settled into my end of the couch with my knees over Lydia’s legs and A Farewell to Arms and the Hardy Boys Mystery of the Haunted Swamp on my leg. The guy in Farewell talked like an idiot, but the war parts were neat. Every time Frederic and Catherine started doing a Punch and Judy act—I love you, Catherine, I love you, Frederic—I switched to a half-hour of the Hardy brothers wholesomely sniffing out clues.

The red phone rang twice. Sam answered, “Yes, Mr. President.”

“Callahan, we’ve got a problem.”

“That’s what I’m here for, sir.”

“The Ruskies are filling Cuba with missiles and I just don’t know what to do.”

“Blockade them, sir.”

“That sounds awfully drastic, Callahan.”

“We must be firm, sir. The Red Menace doesn’t respect wimps.”

There was a long silence. “All right, by golly, we’ll try it. You’ve never let me down yet. Callahan, I have one other question.”

“My time is yours, sir.”

“Why don’t you let your mother and school chums know that you are the principal advisor to the President? Why let them go on believing you’re just another kid?”

“It’s my way of keeping in touch with the little people, sir.”

***

The cabin was so quiet it was noisy. The toilet ran, the refrigerator kicked on and off like a lawn mower, I opened the back door twice before figuring out the water heater knocked. By 9:30 I knew who was hiding in the swamp and what kind of wine went down in an Italian pool hall.

“Mom?”

Lydia ignored me.

“Lydia?”

“Yes, dear.”

“How can you go so long without peeing?”

“It’s a sign of the upper class.”

“You haven’t moved except to play with the TV in four hours that I know of. Why don’t you go to the bathroom like other people?”

Lydia lit another cigarette, a Lucky Strike this time. “Honey bunny, you read like a guy chasing whiskey with beer.”

Both books lay propped open, face up on my chest. “I like reading two books at once.”

She blew smoke at the moose. “You’re dead,” she said.

The moose stayed cool.

Lydia made her version of a sigh, which is more like the sound you get when you stick a knife in a full can of pop. “I’ve made a decision about this banishment deal, Sam.”

“Should I be told?”

“The way I conducted life back home didn’t work.”

“I’ll say.”

“I’m calling time out. No more connections for a while. I’m declaring myself a temporary emotional catatonic.”

I thought about this. “How’s a catatonic supposed to raise a son?”

Lydia looked down at her long fingers. “We’ll negotiate an arrangement.”

At 10:00 the news came on and we sat watching stories about people in east Idaho. Potatoes were important. Rangers in Grand Teton Park—which GroVont is smack in the middle of—were being plagued by elk poachers. Vice President Johnson was in Vietnam complaining about the food. During the sports, I didn’t recognize the names of any of the teams.

“It’s ten-thirty.”

Lydia smiled. “You mind?”

I went into the kitchen and brought back a pint of Gilbey’s gin and a two-ounce shot glass.

“You be all right?”

“Sure, I’m fine. I think I’ll sleep out here tonight and start unpacking in the morning.”