Social Blunders

That’s when I lost Babs. “But Rory knows I’m pregnant. He married me in church.”

“Just pretend.”

“That’s easy for Lynette, but my Rory is an angel. He rubs my feet when I’m tired.”

Lynette’s lower lip swelled up. “She’s so smug about her having a husband and I don’t, it makes me want to throw up.” She turned on Babs. “It’s your fault I’m preggers in the first place.”

“Don’t blame me. You’re the one sold yourself cheap.”

“B. B. would have been perfectly happy with a hand job till he heard you going at it like a cat.” Lynette made her voice high and truly. “More, more, I’m ready. I’ll do anything for you, Rory.”

“You should have used protection,” I said. I’m big on protection. Some call me promiscuous, but no one calls me a thoughtless lay.

Lynette blinked real fast. “B. B. told me he was impotent.”

Babs made a gesture like waving flies off her ice cream. “Never believe anything a boy with a hard-on says.”

“That’s God’s own truth,” I said.

Lynette started to sniffle and her eyes glistened up. “Now you got me so sad I’ll have to buy another sundae.” She stared accusingly at me. “We were having a perfectly nice time till you had to jump the curb.”

Babs said, “Yeah.”

“Let’s make it an even hundred. Each.”

Babs put her arm around Lynette. It took a minute, but Lynette finally made a sound like sucking tears back into herself and said, “Okay. We’re pretending our babies have rotten fathers.”

“And the fathers don’t know about the babies.”

“Why not?” Babs asked.

“’Cause you never told them.”

“That don’t make no sense.”

“Just pretend.”

“This is easier for me than Babs,” Lynette said. “I have an imagination.”

“I have an imagination too.”

“No, you don’t.”

Trying to talk to two women at once is exponentially harder than trying to talk to one. The nuances go on forever.

I interrupted. “Now pretend your baby has grown up.”

“How old?” Babs asked.

“Thirty-three.”

“That’s how old Jesus was when he died.”

“Hank Williams was thirty.”

“Your baby is thirty-three.”

They stopped and looked at me funny. “No need to raise your voice,” Babs said.

“I’m sorry.”

“We’re pregnant. Not deaf.” I’d heard that before.

“Here’s the question.”

Lynette tipped her boat so the melted chocolate slop ran to one end. “I thought we’d never get round to the question.”

“Should your baby who is thirty-three reveal himself or herself to his or her father?”

Lynette slurped down the goop while Babs screwed her mouth into a thoughtful line. I was charmed by them both.

“That is a question,” Babs said.

Lynette spoke with a chocolate mustache. “I’d want my baby to beat the tar out of B. B. Swain.”

“How about you, Babs?”

“Is your father rich?”

“It’s not for me. It’s an imaginary person.”

That got the girls back into a good mood. Women love to catch a man in a lie.

“Okay, it is me and I don’t know if my father is rich or not. The whole deal is complicated.”

A light came on in Babs’s face. She’d found a way to relate to the problem. “On One Life to Live a boy got hit by a race car and he needed a transfusion and the only person he could get it from was his real daddy.” She turned to Lynette. “Remember?”

“He was a blood type only one in a million people have.”

“Only his mama had never told anyone, not even his real daddy, who he was.”

Lynette jumped in. “So she had to tell and everyone got totally PO’ed and the real daddy’s real wife ran off to France with the man who up till that day thought he was the real daddy.”

“They were having an affair beforehand,” Babs said.

“But the boy died anyway.”

“Does that answer your question?”

“Yes.”

***

The drive home was so loud I had to roll up my windows, but then fumes seeped in from under the Dodge and I rolled them down again. People pointed at me. Children stuck fingers in their ears.

I found Gus in the kitchen, listening to the phone. From her benignly amused expression, I knew who was on the other end.

“Lydia?”

Gus nodded.

“Is she out of jail?”

Gus flared her nostrils, which is a trick I’ve tried and failed to learn for years. “You be nice to your mama.”

“I’m always nice to my mama.”

Lydia doesn’t say hello. Her way of starting a conversation is to dive in like a hawk on roadkill. “They’ll be breaking down the door soon,” she said. “Why aren’t you here to defend your mother’s honor?”

Mother’s honor—the classic oxymoron. “Did you tell me everything you know about my fathers?”

“You’d have been so proud, sugar booger. I stood up for women’s rights and the male-dominated hierarchy capitulated.”

“The TV thing?”

“How’d you know about that?”

“The reason I’m asking about the fathers is Shannon found those photographs you kept hidden in the panty box when I was a kid.”

“Sam, you are not listening. Your mother is on the lam. I expect federal agents will crash through the door at any instant.”

“Hank said they let you out on your own recognizance.”

“That was before they heard about my little social blunder.”

I waited. Lydia’s social blunders range from minor affronts to major felonies, but what they all have in common is sooner or later they cost me money.

“It’s your friend Maurey’s fault. Right from the start I said ‘Do not trust that Maurey Pierce.’ Instability runs in her family.”

“Pot calling the kettle black. What’d Maurey do?”

“She tattletaled.”

“People over twenty-one don’t tattletale. They rat.”

“She ratted. I’m an innocent victim, trying in my own meek way to transform the Earth into a better, more feminine planet.”

I changed the phone to the other ear. “Are you going to tell me what you did that was so innocent?”

“Nothing. I did nothing.”

“Okay, don’t tell me.” Lydia generally won’t release information until someone tells her not to.