Lydia Read online

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2011 by Tim Sandlin

  Cover and internal design © 2011 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design by Jessie Sayward-Bright

  Cover image © Getty Images

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

  Published by Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Sandlin, Tim.

  Lydia : a novel / Tim Sandlin.

  p. cm.

  1. Dysfunctional families—Fiction. 2. Mothers and sons—Fiction. 3. Older women—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3569.A517L93 2011

  813’.54—dc22

  2010043340

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  Loose Ends

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  I wrote this book for

  Steve Ashley

  Books will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no books.

  In memory of

  Karol Griffin Young

  Who knew my people better than I do. We miss you.

  And, of course,

  Carol

  I am that I am.

  —God, Exodus 3:14

  I yam what I yam.

  —Popeye, in his self-justification to Olive Oyl

  What’s time to a hog?

  What’s dynamite dope to the pope

  Or religion to a brown groundhog?

  —Dean Webb/Mitch Jayne

  Norwood DeGarmo sat perched on a canvas stool in a Venice Beach sidewalk curio shop, doing his best to ignore two guys in Property of Montana State Athletic Department T-shirts who wanted a dollar off on a five-dollar pair of wraparound sunglasses.

  “Look at the crack there.” The bigger one with a shaved head showing irregular skull plates shoved the glasses into Norwood’s face. There did seem to be a hairline fracture in the nosepiece, but Norwood wasn’t sure. The glasses were too close for him to focus.

  The other one—skinny, sneaky, probably a quarterback—said, “I don’t see how you can even sell cracked sunglasses. You ought to give ’em away.”

  Norwood closed his eyes. His brother Timmy was in charge of tourists from east of I-15. They had a deal, and Timmy would just have to handle it.

  Timmy said, “You put that crack there yourself. I watched you on the surveillance camera.”

  The big one looked around in faux disbelief. “What surveillance camera? You got a cigar box for a cash register, what would you be doing with a surveillance camera?”

  “Hell,” the quarterback said. “This sty don’t even have electricity.”

  Norwood wished Timmy would sell the sunglasses for whatever the idiots wanted to pay. The glasses were stolen anyway; it was pure profit. Besides, Norwood had taken three Ativans and a Librium, and he wasn’t in the mood for antagonism. Much more of this and he’d be forced into pulling pepper spray, which would cause a scene and destroy the point of the pills.

  “We got a hidden surveillance camera,” Timmy said. “Hidden means you can’t see it.”

  The big one stared at Timmy through the sunglasses in question. “Guy two booths down sells them for three.”

  The beaded curtain door rustled, and a deeply tanned and tattooed man stepped through. Norwood’s skin prickled as if the temperature had dropped ten degrees. The man wore no shirt or shoes—nothing but an unzipped pair of canvas shorts. His ribs stuck out like bones on a shark carcass.

  He murmured, “You boys have to leave now.”

  The big jock took off the cracked sunglasses. “I haven’t made my choice yet.”

  The shirtless man moved into the booth, close to the tourists. Norwood smelled bad shrimp. No, it was more like an overflowing outhouse, the plastic Port-A-Potty you hold your breath to go into at concerts.

  “Here’s the choice.” His voice was two shades above a whisper. “The glasses are free if you walk away in the next five seconds.”

  “And what if we don’t?” the quarterback asked, but his buddy was already heading for the door, with the cracked glasses. The big one had a fighter’s instinct; he knew when it was best to get out. The shirtless man stared at the quarterback, while Norwood wished he had a cell phone so he could call 911 and get this cleaned up before his drugs kicked in.

  The quarterback slid around the wall and started for the door. Before he left, he said, “If this was Montana, somebody would shoot your ass.” Then he scooted out the curtain.

  Norwood dropped his right hand into an LA Clippers gym bag at his feet. His fingers closed on the pepper canister. This wasn’t cheap spray designed for stunning ethnic minorities, this was grizzly bear repellent—not even legal in California. He said, “You owe us five dollars.”

  “Anything you bring out of that bag, you’re going to eat.”

  Norwood weighed the risks of five dollars versus what might happen if this guy was half as tough as he thought he was. His fingers groped below the pepper spray and came up with a package of Hostess Sno Balls. “You want one, Leroy. They’re kind of squished.”

  Timmy couldn’t take it anymore. He didn’t care how mean the son of a bitch was—this was Venice Beach, for Christ’s sake. He’d been raised on mean sons of bitches. “Who the hell you think you are, busting into our legitimate business and coming on like Sean Penn?”

  “It’s Leroy,” Norwood said. To Leroy himself, he said, “Ever’one thinks you’re dead.”

  “Ever’one’s wrong.” Leroy strolled to the sunglasses rack and pulled off a pair of wireless silver lenses. Sunglasses were all the DeGarmo brothers sold, except one card table full of two-dollar T-shirts they’d found in a Dumpster behind the Third Street Promenade.

  “That’s not Leroy,” Timmy said.

  Norwood tore cellophane off the cupcakes. “Check out the tattoo.” Leroy had a tattoo across his chest showing a Green Beret firing a flamethrower. The flames looked like wings until you looked close and saw the tattoo wasn’t angels;
it was burning babies.

  Leroy’s odor wafted ahead of him like a cirrus cloud of stink as he crossed the booth and took a Sno Ball from Norwood’s hand. “Where’s my boy?” Leroy said.

  Norwood tried to hide his disgust. “What boy?”

  “The boy I left with you two short peckers. The boy you said you’d hang on to till I got back.”

  “Jesus, Leroy, that was ten years ago.”

  Timmy said, “Twelve.”

  “It was ten,” Norwood said. “We were in Tucson, and Leroy said he had to run over to Bogotá for a week.”

  Leroy popped the Sno Ball into this mouth and talked through a wad of pink paste. “I told you it might be more than a week but I’d be back for the boy.”

  Timmy said, “We couldn’t hold the boy for twelve years.”

  “Ten,” Norwood said.

  “Besides, you were dead.”

  “I wasn’t dead.” He took the other cupcake and shoved it in whole also. Norwood shuddered. Leroy hadn’t even finished swallowing the first one.

  “Where were you?” Norwood asked.

  “Where do you think?”

  “Jail,” Norwood said.

  Timmy stared hard at Leroy. “No wonder you don’t look like yourself. I’ve heard those Colombian jails are worse than state pens down South.”

  Leroy barked a laugh that held no humor. “Timmy, you don’t have enough imagination to dream what I been through. Now, where’s my boy?”

  Norwood said, “Gone.”

  “Don’t tell me that.”

  Timmy’s voice rose to a whine. “But you were dead. We couldn’t raise a boy.”

  “I told you to hang on to him.” The tan drained from Leroy’s face. His rope muscles drew in on themselves, and a drop of saliva appeared at the corner of his mouth.

  Norwood nodded toward the canvas walls of the booth. “There’s lots of people outside. Don’t go Branch Davidian on us, Leroy.”

  To Norwood, the struggle for control was visible on Leroy’s face. It was as if his brain flipped a coin—heads, I kill everybody in sight; tails, I wait till later. The coin came up tails.

  “How long after I left did you keep him?”

  The DeGarmos looked at each other and shrugged. Timmy said, “Couple of weeks.”

  Norwood jumped in before Leroy’s brain decided to go for two out of three flips. “We took him to Mary Beth.”

  “Who?”

  “Mary Beth. Your Mary Beth.”

  “In Boulder?”

  Norwood nodded. “She was living outside Nederland. Little cabin by a creek there. Looked real pretty.”

  “I didn’t tell you to take the boy to Mary Beth.”

  “You were dead. Wouldn’t you rather her raise him than us?” Norwood said. “We’re not responsible parties.”

  “She still have him?”

  “We haven’t talked to Mary Beth since the night we dumped the kid, but I wouldn’t think so. He’d be grown by now.”

  Leroy took off the silver-lens sunglasses and turned them by the earpiece, thinking. He said, “Corporal balance says if someone brings harm to another human being, such as me, the balance must be refit for Earth to maintain a proper axis. Until the world-state is brought back into corporal balance, there will be earthquakes, typhoons, and plagues upon the people. That boy owes me a life. Until the debt is paid, the planet will be out of whack. Nothing will fit.”

  Norwood said, “The whole planet? That’s a bit harsh.”

  Leroy stared at Norwood. “If I do not find my boy and bring chaos to order, I promise you two I will come back here and slice your livers out and eat them.” He stood so close that the smell triggered Norwood’s gag reflex. “Do you believe I will do that?”

  Norwood said, “Yes.”

  “How about you, smart fella?”

  Timmy said, “Yes.”

  Nobody blinked for a full five seconds. Then Leroy dug into his pocket and pulled out the filthiest five-dollar bill Norwood had ever seen. “I’ll buy these,” he said.

  “They’re yours,” Norwood said. “Complimentary. You can keep your money there.”

  Leroy looked at the bill in his hand.

  Timmy said, “Complimentary means free.”

  “I know what complimentary means. Bogotá jails don’t make you stupid.”

  “I wasn’t sure,” Timmy said.

  Leroy stuffed the bill back into his pocket, put on the sunglasses, checked himself in the mirror, and left. The stench, however, stayed behind. Norwood desperately wanted to run to fresh air, but he was afraid Leroy might be standing out front on the boardwalk. Instead he pulled a cardboard box out from under the table and started packing T-shirts.

  Timmy hadn’t moved. “How can he possibly find Mary Beth? She’s more than likely moved three, four times since then.”

  “He found us, didn’t he?”

  Timmy considered this. “What’re we going to do?”

  “You can do what you want, I’m out of the retail business.”

  “Where you going to go?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  1

  My mother, Lydia Callahan, walked out of the Dublin, California, federal women’s penitentiary at noon on Mother’s Day 1993, a free woman, with nothing but the clothes on her back and a Lands’ End fanny pack full of credit cards. She took a taxi to the Holiday Inn in Walnut Creek, where she checked in as Lydia Elkrunner and gave her address as hell. Then she washed her hair in complimentary Pert and fell asleep. Lydia was fifty-eight years old; in her dreams, she was twenty.

  The next night, she telephoned my daughter Shannon in Greensboro, North Carolina.

  Lydia said, “I’m out of stir.”

  Shannon said, “Stir?”

  “Prison. They let me go.”

  “That’s wonderful, Lydia. I can’t wait to see you.”

  “I want you to pick me up at the airport Thursday afternoon. I don’t know what flight I’ll be on, so you’ll have to meet them all.”

  “Which airport is this where you want me to meet every flight?”

  “Jackson Hole. I want you to be the one waiting when I come home. No one else.”

  “Lydia, Dad lives right there, almost next door to that airport, and I live two thousand miles away.”

  “Are you going to do this for me or not?”

  Shannon said, “I was being practical.” Then there was silence. In the past, before going underground, Lydia would have flown into a tirade at the suggestion that practicality might take precedence over her will. But prison had taught her the power of silence. Noisy intimidation works on men; women respond to a quieter approach.

  After twenty seconds, Shannon said, “I’ll be there.”

  Lydia said, “I would also like you to organize a community get-together. No use sneaking back into town.”

  “You want a welcome home party?”

  “Put up a notice at the GroVont post office. Tell them chicken wings and shitty beer for all. That’ll bring the yokels out.”

  “Anything else, Grandma?”

  “What?”

  “Lydia.”

  “Dress nice. This is my triumphant return. I don’t need to come off the airplane and see a slob.”

  ***

  Lydia’s phone call came while Shannon was in the process of breaking up with her tenth boyfriend in ten years. This one’s name was Tanner. They had made love with a device Tanner bought for seventy-five cents from a machine in the truckers-only washroom at the Dixie Land service center near High Point. Tanner was proud of his device, and in his mind, he had just given Shannon the sensual experience of the epoch.

  Tanner kissed her left breast and said, “My God, that was great.”

  Shannon rolled over on her back to face the ceiling. “I don’t feel the
way you’re supposed to feel when you’re in love.”

  Tanner said, “Yeah, but the orgasm makes up the difference.”

  “There’s more to love than orgasms.”

  Tanner was confused. His belief system was based on the concept that sexual prowess and popularity go hand in hand. “What the hell does that have to do with us?”

  “I do not love you, Tanner. You’re interchangeable with others.”

  “But I’m here now.”

  Shannon rolled back to look at Tanner, who had a little scar on his chin she was fond of. She realized the scar was why she had chosen him in the first place. It lent Tanner a sense of fragile danger, but fragile danger is not enough in the long haul. “Tonight was fun,” she said. “I want you to move out tomorrow.”

  He said, “No.”

  At that point, the phone rang.

  ***

  Tanner pouted throughout Shannon’s conversation with Lydia. After they said their good-byes and hung up, he said he was sorry he wasted his youth on a woman with the emotional capacity of a mud flap. He asked her if their time together meant nothing to her, and she said, “That’s right.” He asked her if she was made of stone. Shannon realized Tanner would not leave her until tears flowed and glass shattered. She would have to make him believe the breakup was his idea, and at the moment she simply didn’t have the energy. Instead she telephoned her father, Sam. This is where I enter the story.

  ***

  I answered midway through the first ring.

  Shannon said, “Grandma’s out of the slammer.”

  There followed a moment of silence as I adjusted to the idea of a free mother. It’s not as easy as you would think. “I knew it was happening this month; I wasn’t sure when.”

  “They let her go yesterday. Seems strange to do it on a Sunday.”

  “We express mailed her a loaf of pumpkin bread for Mother’s Day. Do you know if she got it?”

  “Lydia didn’t say.” Tanner flounced off to the bathroom and slammed the door. Shannon knew he was angry, but it was hard to take him seriously with a condom dangling between his legs. “She did say I’m supposed to pick her up at the Jackson Hole airport Thursday afternoon.”

  I said, “I can be there.”