Social Blunders

“I won’t do it.”

No one would look at me, except Roger who had an expression on his face like I’d stolen his teddy bear.

The silence didn’t last long. Shannon laid down an ultimatum. “Forgive Lydia or I won’t forgive you.”

I hate ultimatums. “For what?”

“For hurting my friend Gilia. For messing up Halloween by making that boy try to kill himself on our front porch.”

“Don’t forget he was creepy to your boyfriend,” Maurey said.

“That too.”

I stood up. All day I’d been looking forward to my daughter’s arrival, and now this.

“I’m being persecuted,” I said.

Chet’s face was the saddest thing I’d ever seen. He said, “People you love die. Don’t waste precious time holding grudges.”

I searched the room for an ally—Chet to Roger to Auburn to Hank to Shannon to Maurey. They were all accusing me and they were all wrong.

I said, “I’m going to bed.”

***

She threw back her white neck, swelling with a sigh, and faltering, in tears, with a long shudder and hiding her face, she gave herself to him.

Ah, Madame Bovary. If only someone would throw back her white neck for me. Emma was so happy there for a moment, not knowing that she, like Anna Karenina and Oedipus’s mother and so many other lovely yet loose women created by male novelists, would soon die a cruel death at her own hand.

On Lydia’s fortieth birthday, Shannon and I flew up from North Carolina to surprise her. Hank arranged for us and practically everyone else who knew Lydia to meet at this hoity-toity restaurant in Teton Village. Surprise birthday parties carry a high risk. Take Katrina’s as an example. Anyway, Hank told Lydia the two of them were going out to eat, and when she walked into the dining room we all yelled “Surprise!” and broke into that awful song. Lydia’s face turned to wax, she looked at the massive cake Dot had baked, and she looked at me; then, calmly, she left. I didn’t see her again for two years.

They—my family and friends—were probably right about Lydia. I’ve found there are few instances where I’m right and everybody else is wrong. In the morning I would drive into GroVont and do whatever it took to reestablish a relationship with my mother.

A knock came at the door, which is always interesting in the middle of the night. I welcome late night knocks. I marked my place in Madame Bovary with a Kleenex strip as Shannon walked through the door wearing her pac boots without socks and her cold weather flannel nightgown.

She held out two wrapped Fudgsicles. “You hungry?”

I nodded even though I wasn’t, particularly.

She gave me a Fudgsicle, then pushed my feet over under the blanket, clearing a spot so she could sit on the end of the bed. I could see her looking around at my living situation, critically. Even though the room had been home for over six weeks, it wasn’t much more personal than a monk’s cell. I had a bedside stump for my Kleenex box and Madame Bovary and a length of clothesline between two nails for a closet. Five or six dirty coffee cups sat mired in dust bunnies under the bed.

“I’m planning to fix the place up after Christmas,” I said.

Shannon said, “Don’t go out of your way on my account.” From somewhere in the flannel nightgown she produced a baby blue envelope. “Gilia sent you a letter.”

She must have originally planned to mail it because the letter had been addressed and stamped. It was one of those personalized stationery envelopes women give each other as gifts, the kind with the return address embossed in white. The uncanceled stamp was a painting of a Baltimore oriole—it said so under the picture—but best of all the envelope smelled ever so lightly of Gilia.

“What did you do to her?” Shannon asked.

“How do you mean that?”

Shannon tore the top off her Fudgsicle wrapper and pulled the paper down over the stick. I don’t do it that way. I pull the wrap up over the top, like a sweater.

“Gilia’s been moping around ever since you dumped on her. I asked what was the matter and she said you two connected intellectually and emotionally.” Shannon did this arch thing with her right eyebrow. “You didn’t screw her, did you?”

“Of course not.”

I turned the letter over and looked at the back. It didn’t have any of those Xs and Os most women put on letters.

“She’d be nuts to give you another chance.” Shannon sucked the curved tip of her Fudgsicle. “But if she does, you better not blow it again, Daddy.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want a parade of Wandas in and out of my life.”

“Me either.”

We each slurped our ice cream bars in silence for a while. I poked my fingertips with the sharp corners of the envelope and hefted it for weight—didn’t feel like more than one page. I wondered if it would be rude to read it in front of Shannon. She seemed lost in thought. She was staring at her Fudgsicle the way I stare into coffee when I’ve got something intense on my mind.

Suddenly, with no warning, Shannon raised her head and hit me with the full force of her brown eyes. “Dad, we need to talk.”

I bit off a chunk of chocolate ice and waited, in no hurry. Whenever a woman says “We need to talk,” it means she’s reached a decision and it’s already too late for you to talk back.

She said, “A couple of girls from UNC-G have an apartment on Carr Street, there across from the school. They needed a roommate and I applied and they took me.”

I didn’t understand at first. “But that would mean moving out of the Manor House.”

“Yes, moving in with them means moving out on you.”

“All your stuff is at home.”

She reached over and patted my shin under the blanket. “I’m getting a new home.”

Pretend your sacred daughter sticks a knife between your ribs into your heart and twists it and you’ll get an inkling of how I felt. “Why would you want to leave our house? You need more space? I’ll give you more space.”

“I’m nineteen, Daddy. I’ll be twenty next summer. It’s time I got out on my own.”

“You can be on your own at home. Ask the girls to move in with us. There’s plenty of room and they won’t even have to pay rent.”

“Living with girls isn’t the point. It’s a matter of independence. I’m leaving the nest and you have to let me.”

“I do?”

“Yes.”

Melted chocolate ran down the stick onto my fingers. Shannon was staring at me hard, the way Gilia used to. It’s not fair women can do that and men can’t.

“Will you be living with Eugene?” I asked. “Is this an excuse for unbridled sex?”

When I said unbridled, Shannon smiled. She knew in my imagination I was picturing her as a debauched harlot. “I’m done with Eugene, and this doesn’t have anything to do with sex. It’s my freedom.”

She was too young to talk about freedom. Only yesterday, she’d held my hand when we crossed the street. She used to run all the way home from first grade because she missed me. Hell, I used to run all the way home from eighth grade because I missed her.

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked.

“We’ll see each other.” Shannon’s laugh was a clear bell. “I’m bound to be over with dirty laundry.”

Maurey was right: Life is the shits. “But all I’ve ever done is take care of you.”