Western Swing Page 10

  On the one hand, Dryden said his girlfriend could raise the dead, which didn’t make sense unless he was personifying his prick, while on the other hand, the Captain beat Gilligan across the head and shoulders with a navy cap. Even high, I didn’t find this funny, but evidently I was supposed to because all these people in the TV audience were cracking up. This upset me on account of I’ve always been proud of my ability to see humor in any situation, and if most people thought one man beating another with a cap was funny, I was slipping away from most people. And on the third hand, if I had three hands, the joint had to be dealt with immediately. I spit on my finger and studied the joint carefully, working out a repair plan, when a woman carried a baby into my living room.

  “I knocked on the door, but you didn’t answer,” she said.

  What to do with the finger wad of spit? I must have looked peculiar, sitting there pointing a foamy noogie at the ceiling, but I couldn’t stick it back in my mouth or under the end table. The woman was kind of pretty, I didn’t want to disgust her in the first three seconds of our relationship.

  “I didn’t think you would mind if I came on in, it’s sort of an emergency.”

  The coal finally released into my lap, I jumped up, slapping at myself and stomping on the carpet. In the confusion of the moment, I stealthily scraped my finger clean on an empty Cheetos bag. I don’t think she noticed.

  Standing, I saw the woman was shorter than me by a couple of inches, and a little skinnier. Her dusty-blond hair hung straight across her shoulders to about the elbow level. The diapered boy sat perched on her right hip where he concentrated on pulling a dangly gold-colored earring out of her lobe. The baby looked especially clean.

  “My baby swallowed a tube of Krazy Glue and I’ve got to get him to a doctor.”

  “You need a ride?”

  “No, no, I have a car, but I run a day-care center in my place. Nine kids are waiting down there.”

  I set Dryden and the empty roach paper on the pile of books, notebooks, food wrappers, marijuana-smoking paraphernalia, and about a dozen dirty coffee cups that hid my end table. Here was something interesting. So long as the kid didn’t die from glue poisoning, this might turn into something fun to watch myself handle.

  The baby didn’t look on the edge of death. He leaned forward and reached for me, making a gurgling sound in his throat. I didn’t know whether babies gurgle as a rule, or that was glue eating his stomach, but he didn’t seem to be feeling any pain, and the woman stood there looking concerned and expectant, but certainly nowhere near panic.

  “What can I do to help?”

  “Would you watch the kids while we’re gone? Dr. Karnes is just a couple of blocks down Anders Street. It shouldn’t take long.”

  “An entire tube of Krazy Glue?”

  “The top was off. You don’t have to do anything, just be there and watch so they don’t hurt themselves.”

  The baby and I looked in each other’s eyes and he smiled. I was amazed. “Okay.”

  • • •

  That’s how I came to be sitting in a kitchen chair, more or less surrounded by nine little people: six boys, three Jesses, a Jason, Justin, and Jeremiah; and three girls, Heather, Heather, and Thamu Kamala. The kitchen was an exact copy of mine only clean and filled with cribs and baby beds. They were stacked on top of each other. Someone had tacked a picture of the Rocky Mountains over the sink and framed it with red curtains so it would look like a window instead of a picture. On top of the refrigerator I spotted Betty Crocker’s Cookbook, Be Here Now, and Joan Baez’s book about her husband the draft dodger.

  Six or seven of the little rug rats stood in a rough semicircle, sucking on thumbs and blankets and earless bears and staring at me. On the whole, they were a pretty cute bunch—all mammals are cute at the toddler stage, why should people be different—except most of their noses dripped and one of the Jesses was ugly as a hobbit.

  “Can any of you blink?” I asked.

  They all stared.

  “Watch this.” With both hands, I pointed at my eyes and blinked several times in succession.

  Justin sniffed, but no one else seemed to understand. How old does a kid have to be to learn blinking anyway?

  Deep from my memory came a game I remember my brother Patrick playing with Kathy when she was about this age. I pushed on my nose and popped out my tongue. Then I pulled on my left ear, sliding my tongue to the right corner of my mouth, then pulled on my right ear, sliding my tongue to the left corner. This trick makes for an interesting cause-and-effect illusion if you do it right.

  The oldest girl, Thamu Kamala, said, “Jason pooped his pants.”

  “He should change them.”

  “He’s too little.”

  “Which one’s Jason?”

  She pointed to an oversize baby curled in the fetal position under a crib. Looked like crib death to me.

  “Is he dead?”

  “What’s dead?”

  I walked into the bathroom and found a hand mirror on a shelf above a line of five porta-potties. Back in the kitchen, I knelt and held the mirror in front of Jason’s little nose.

  “He’s alive.”

  “His diaper stinks.”

  “Do you know how to change it?”

  “Course not.”

  “Me either. Where’s the TV?”

  For three hours, the kids stared at me while I sat on the couch and watched reruns. Andy Griffith, Petticoat Junction, The Beverly Hillbillies, Dark Shadows, and I Love Lucy twice. A couple of the younger boys curled up next to me and slept with their fists in their mouths. Ugly Jesse looked much cuter asleep than he had awake, more like a troll doll than a hobbit. I considered putting him and the other sleeper in cribs—the living room was even more littered with cribs, baby beds, and bassinets than the kitchen—but the couch felt comfortable, and most of the cribs were crammed with toys, jackets, coloring books, all kinds of kiddie junk. Not stuff I’d want to sleep on.

  Thamu Kamala put her hands on her hips. “You aren’t going to change any diapers?”

  “Diapers are outside my frame of reference.”

  “Are you going to read stories and put the little ones down for naps?”

  “I only brought this one book.” I showed Thamu Kamala the Dryden volume. “Would you like a reading of Satire Upon the True-Blue Protestant Poet T.S.”?

  “That’s all you got?”

  “You have something against Dryden?”

  She considered a moment, pretending to review all the Dryden she knew. I say pretending because I don’t think Thamu Kamala knew any Dryden.

  “Okay, let’s try it.”

  “All human things are subject to decay,” I read.

  Another Jesse fell asleep around line 89, then I lost a Heather to Petticoat Junction on line 120. Thamu Kamala soon joined her and by the bitter end, all but one little Heather were asleep or lined up on the floor, staring openmouthed at the TV.

  “How did you like the poem?” I asked Heather. She would have been a regular-looking kid except Heather’s hair flew out in a mass of red curls, like Orphan Annie mated with Bozo the Clown.

  “Did you understand the part about Sir Formal’s oration?”

  Heather didn’t move and, of course, she didn’t blink.

  “Cat got your tongue? That sometimes happens to me too. Just toss away your inhibitions and speak what’s on your mind. Pop it right on out.”

  Thamu Kamala sat up and gave me a look of extreme disgust. I’ve been on the receiving end of looks of disgust from some of the finest women around, but who would have expected such intense disgust from a preschooler? Thamu Kamala was the youngest person yet to actively hate me.

  One hand went to her hip. I’d seen that gesture before. “Heather’s deaf, dummy.”

  “Oh.” She didn’t look deaf. “Can she read lips?”

>   “She’s two years old.”

  “Oh.” I slid Heather onto my lap and together we watched the end of Petticoat Junction. Three pretty girls named Betty Jo, Bobby Jo, and Billy Jo tried to pull Fred Ziffel’s pig, Arnold, out of a bathtub while Uncle Joe stalled a couple of city-slicker guests downstairs. I imagined I was in the tub and Billy Jo found me alluring.

  Just as I spun into a complex, group-sex fantasy, the woman and baby came through the apartment door. She was all apologies and reports on the baby’s condition.

  “Dr. Karnes says it’ll pass right through, no problem. They X-rayed and you should see it, a little metal tube floating around in Buggie’s tummy.”

  “He’ll dump a tube of Krazy Glue?”

  “Probably not till tomorrow.”

  Thamu Kamala ratted on me. “He let everyone sit in poop all afternoon.” I’d hate to marry Thamu Kamala someday.

  “I’m sure Loren did just fine.” The woman swept around the room tossing toys and rags and general kid clutter into the cribs. She seemed small and efficient at what she did, like someone who’d carried a heavy burden so long she didn’t know it was a burden and everyone else didn’t have to carry it. I liked her lips. They were thin and plum-colored.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  Her hand jumped to cover her mouth. “Oh God, I forgot, I mean, I told you the kids’ names, but not mine.”

  “You were in a hurry.”

  She stepped forward with her hand out. “I’m Ann Smith and this is Buggie.”

  “I’m Loren Paul.”

  “I know, it’s on your mailbox.” She looked straight at my eyes. “You’re a student, aren’t you? I’ve seen you come and go with big piles of books.”

  I nodded. “I never met anyone really named Smith before.”

  Ann laughed, a nice laugh—gentle, subdued. “There’s plenty of us.” She broke the handshake. “I’m throwing together spaghetti later, you want some? The least I can do is feed you.”

  I watched Buggie climb an orange baby bed. “Are you married?”

  “No, what’s that got to do with spaghetti?”

  “I don’t know. Sure, I’ll come down. What time?”

  We talked a couple of minutes, exchanging livelihoods and hometowns. Every now and then she pulled Buggie off something he was climbing or kept one of the little girls from beating up one of the little boys. Thamu Kamala kept interrupting to tell her about somebody’s diaper. Ugly Jesse woke up and crawled into her lap and fell back asleep. I can’t claim I was swept away by instant, undying love for Ann. I liked her, I liked her voice and the easy way she handled the kids. I liked her hands, but the liking was more on a possible-sex-object level than as a future partner.

  Ann wasn’t the kind of woman who knocks a man over and possesses his soul on the first meeting. She took her life seriously and expected more good to come of it than bad. I could see that much. Realistic optimism might be the term for Ann’s attitude. I never believed much in realism or optimism myself, but I was depressed and Ann wasn’t, so who was I to go judging attitudes?

  When I stood to leave, Buggie crawled across the rug and looked up at me. He raised one hand to shoulder level and made a fist, then opened it, then made a fist again, gurgling something that might have been words.

  Ann smiled proudly. “That’s bye-bye in Buggie talk.”

  I waved down to the little person on the floor. “Bye-bye, Buggie.”

  • • •

  You can always tell what a man expects from a relationship by the kind of condom he buys before the first date. Take a guy who sneaks into a PATRONS ONLY bathroom at a gas station and drops a quarter in the rainbow-colors, for-prevention-of-disease-only machine; that guy isn’t expecting a whole lot. Mostly, he’s arming himself against an “I can’t go through with this, I have no protection” defense. Then there’s the one who goes to a well-lit pharmacy and buys a box of three moderately priced, individually tested, rolled, and sealed, lubricated with a non-petroleum jelly condoms—which is what I did between the wineshop and Ann’s apartment that night—this guy is thoughtful, yet practical, expectant, yet experienced. He doesn’t run into the drugstore screaming, “I’ve got a hot date tonight. Gimme some insurance.” He cares about the woman and he cares about himself.

  At the top extreme we have the overkill joker who gets himself fitted and pays eight dollars for two dozen all-natural lambskins with extra-large end reservoirs. He’s probably gay.

  Most men, of course, don’t buy anything. They either don’t care or don’t dream. Or else they use the same superstitious logic that makes a fisherman go fishing without a stringer and women stop wearing underwear when their period is overdue.

  Nineteen out of twenty rubbers I ever bought stayed in the sterile packets. Broken down statistically: Eighteen times I struck out, my one winner was with a woman on the pill, and the last date before Ann, this young-to-the-point-of-statutory girl begged me to unroll it on my finger because she said she’d never seen one. When I did, she laughed hysterically, jumped from the car, and disappeared out of my life forever.

  I kept walking into drugstores and buying the things anyway. No one can call me an irresponsible lay.

  • • •

  Ann met me at the door with Buggie propped in his usual right hip position. Buggie had on blue overalls buttoned up the inseam and a red pullover jersey. Ann wore a long flowered skirt with a rose-colored ruffly top. She looked dressed up, as if she’d thought about what to wear and decided on something nice. Her hair was pulled back behind her ears.

  “How’s Buggie?” I asked.

  “No Krazy Glue tube yet,” she said. “I wonder if it’ll hurt when he poops it.” How about that? I was on a date with a woman who called shit poop.

  We stood around the doorway a moment, imagining what it would feel like to pass a tube. I imagined it coming out sideways and she imagined it coming out end to end, which shows a basic difference between the ways Ann and I planned our futures.

  “The spaghetti’s about ready,” she said. “Can I get you something to drink? Buggie has apple juice and I’m sipping wine in the kitchen.”

  I held out my bottle of Blue Nun. I know wine connoisseurs think you’re a tasteless chump for drinking white wine with spaghetti, but I generally bought Blue Nun no matter what was for dinner because it complemented pot so well.

  “Let’s finish my bottle first, then go on to yours,” Ann said.

  “Sounds fine to me.”

  She disappeared into the kitchen, then came back with a glass of rosé. Tasted like Mateus, but I’m not certain.

  “You and Buggie get acquainted while I work on supper. There’s appetizers on the TV table.” Ann’s eyes held a gleam I hadn’t noticed in the afternoon. They sparkled with little brown flecks that seemed to travel around the center of the whitest eye-whites I’ve ever seen. She looked cheerful and pretty. I was almost certain Ann had expectations of the evening—you don’t look cheerful without expectations—but I wasn’t sure what the expectations involved.

  Buggie sat next to me on the couch while I looked over a plate of bite-sized chunks of cauliflower, broccoli, and fresh mushrooms. I dunked a cauliflower into the creamy dip and held it for Buggie to lick. Instead, he reached for my glasses and almost pulled them off before I caught his little hand.

  Buggie’s brow puckered up, his eyes watered, and he let out a howl.

  Ann’s voice came from the kitchen. “Throw him in a crib if he bothers you.”

  “We’re just playing. He’s having a great time.” Buggie howled louder. “Which crib is his?”

  “Any that you can find the bottom.”

  Facing Buggie, I made a duck sound I’d learned in grade school and hadn’t practiced since. The sound involves loading saliva under your tongue and then squishing it out the sides while you talk. This takes some skill and no
t everyone can do it.

  With one sniff, Buggie stopped crying. He grabbed my lower lip and pulled.

  “Awoww.” Buggie pulled me down to his level and stared into my eyes. His pupils were darker and deeper than Ann’s—fiercer. He stared at me with this look, I swear it was a threat. A mess-with-my-mama-and-you’ll-answer-to-me threat. He meant it too.

  Possibly Buggie didn’t threaten me at all. He was only a kid. Possibly I saw in his eyes what I thought I deserved. Every time a new woman enters my life, my first reaction is confusion and guilt. I doubt my motives. Do I really like the woman or have I staked her out as someone to sleep with? Am I okay or a selfish jerk? Would I want to get involved with me if I was her? The answer to that last one is, hell, no.

  Looking up, I saw Ann watching us from the kitchen doorway. She held a large wooden bowl with both hands. I doubt if Ann saw the threat or the guilt, whichever it was, because her face still glowed with cheerful expectations. I decided right then to love her.

  “You mind Roquefort dressing?” she asked.

  “It’s my favorite, that or blue cheese,” I said as best I could with Buggie pulling on my lip. “How do I get him to let go?”

  “You say, ‘Let go, Buggie.’ I did and it worked. Ann set the salad down. “He can be a nuisance if you let him, but we get along, don’t we, shortcake?” She poked him in the belly and Buggie gurgled again, just like in the afternoon.

  I looked in his eyes one last time. The kid and I understood each other, we’d made a connection.

  The spaghetti turned out great. Ann had tossed some sliced mushrooms into the sauce right before pulling it off the heat, so they weren’t quite soft. That impressed me. The spaghetti itself was a touch overboiled, but, Lord knows, the dinner beat the oranges, grapes, Cheetos, and coffee diet I was used to.

  Ann bounced up and down about eight times while we ate, going after Parmesan and more wine and napkins to wipe Buggie’s face. She anticipated everything either one of us wanted, and some things I didn’t want. I doubt if Ann was accustomed to adult company, so she tried especially hard to please me. Someone wishing to please me was a new concept, but I adjusted in about three minutes.