Early afternoon the need to pee overcame the need to be in a coma, so I padded barefoot across the house and came back by way of the kitchen where Lydia sat in her white nightgown, working a crossword puzzle.
She had a blue spot on the edge of her mouth where she’d been sucking on an ink pen. She held the pen in her hand like a cigarette with her long, thin fingers pointed at the ceiling.
“Ten-letter word for lampoon.”
I opened the refrigerator and looked in at a stick of butter, a jar of dill pickles, a bottle of French salad dressing, and five Dr Peppers.
She counted out letters on boxes. “Too short.”
“Lydia, would you explain to me about women.”
She glanced up at me, then back at the puzzle. “Cold enough in here without the fridge open.”
I took the pickles over to the table and sat across from her. I could see the puzzle upside down. Lots of answers had been written in and scribbled out so it was hard to figure what was what.
Lydia filled in a couple of letters. “I thought I already told you about girls.”
“I don’t mean dicks and tunnels and babies. I want to know why they do what they do.”
“Come on, Sam. Nobody knows why anybody does anything. Give me one of those.”
“Maurey and I perform sex and I feel something odd for her but she keeps telling me we’re just friends and nothing mushy is going on.”
Lydia took one of my pickles. “So?”
“Isn’t sex the definition of mushy?”
“Four-letter word for dessert.
“But what if I like her and get my heart broke anyway?”
She looked back up at me for a second. “Then you’re a sucker.”
“Maurey’s looking forward to going on dates.”
“Aren’t you?”
“She thinks she can go to the movies with some guy and flirt and neck, then come back here and get in bed with me and tell me about it.”
“Wish I had a deal like that.”
“I think it’s bizarre, even for us.”
“What?”
“Ten-letter word for lampoon—
“Is Hank a lover or a friend?”
“Don’t be impertinent.” She switched pen for pickle.
“Impertinent? Lydia, we passed that six years ago when I started fetching your Gilbey’s. You can’t be a buddy when it’s convenient and a mother when it’s not.”
“You’ve been reading too many books.”
I sat there scarfing pickles and watching her concentrate on something other than me. Even upside down, I knew several of the answers, but I wasn’t about to help her.
“Hank is a suitor,” Lydia said.
“That’s awfully Southern of him.”
“He’s kind of a Southern boy. You know he feels terrible about yesterday.”
“When are we going back to the South, Mom?”
Lydia crunched on her pickle and ignored me.
New Year’s Day I went over to the Pierces’ to watch the Cotton Bowl on their TV. Buddy was home, leaned back in the recliner, sipping on a beer with a plate of Annabel’s snickerdoodles on a tray next to his hand. Maurey and I sat on the couch but she didn’t watch the game. She pulled a cushion up against the arm and sat sideways, reading a book in the old lounging position of bare feet up against my leg.
I felt a little strange, what with her touching me in front of her dad—I’ve never done well with other people’s dads—only he didn’t seem to care. It was hard to tell since his face was mostly hair, beard, and two black eyes like periods at the end of a sentence nobody could read. I wondered if that was an outdoorsman deal they developed to stalk game or if Buddy was the only one with marble eyes. When Hank’s face shut down, it was like a stone slid over his face and he was untouchable, but Buddy’s emotionless look was softer, more like Pushmi and Pullyu over my bed at home.
He talked some about a mule deer that scored a 186 on the Boone and Crockette and a shed roof that caved under the snow, a weasel that had crawled into a generator to get warm and fried itself—not much conversation for the three hours I watched the game. Maurey hung on his every word.
It was Navy against Texas for the national championship. Navy had a king-hell hot-stuff quarterback named Roger Staubach. He zipped passes all over the field, kind of the football equivalent of classical guitar. Magic fingers. Even I could spot style.
Unfortunately, Navy’s defensive line was outweighed about thirty-five pounds a head, and by the middle of the fourth quarter Texas pretty much had a wrap.
Petey spread a ton of Christmas toys around the floor so whenever Annabel brought in another round of food and drink she had to lift her feet and titter. She said, “Go play in your room, Petey,” in a tone of voice that wouldn’t move a rabbit off a road.
One of Petey’s games looked like fun. It was a table soccer deal with knobs you turned to kick the ball at the goalie. I wanted to get on the floor and play it with him, only Maurey would take that as a sign of immaturity.
The book she was reading was
“It’s about a girl our age coming to terms with her emerging sensuality,” she told me before she borrowed it back. She told Annabel it was by the same author who wrote Peter Pan.
My Christmas present to Maurey was a Pro-Line Frisbee. I found an ad for it in the back of the
“We had a boy from North Carolina in my company on Iwo Jima,” Buddy said, apropos to diddley. “Had a thick accent the guys made fun of. Lost his leg to a mine. Why don’t you have a thick accent?”
“My grandfather was from New York. I guess you talk more like your family than your neighbors.”
He eyed me over a snickerdoodle. “Kid’s name was Martin Symons. Said his grandmother could heal by faith, she smoothed over scabs with Coca-Cola. Is that something people talk about down there?”
“Not that I’ve heard.”
“I thought Symons’s accent was fake until he stepped on a mine he’d set out only ten minutes earlier. He was screaming, ‘M’laig, m’laig.’”
“Daddy got a Bronze Star,” Maurey said.
“What for?”
Buddy popped the cookie in his mouth and chewed as he talked. “Killing folks. Army put a lot of stock in that talent.”
“Oh.”
“Lot of things they send you to prison for are considered heroic in the right circumstances.”
“Like murder?”
“I’d never let a son of mine join the army.”
Petey rolled on his back and did a “
