Me and My Baby View the Eclipse by Lee Smith Page B

walking through the Montgomery Ward TV section, about two hundred of those TVs were on and there was a bowl game with Bear Bryant in full color on every one, wearing his hat. Lonnie loved TV football, he loved the Bear. I used to get mad at him for watching and try to make him look at educational things on Channel 6. I wanted to expand his horizons, as Lucie said when she ran off with the disc jockey. But Lord, it made me cry, I had to tear out of Montgomery Ward and over to The Green Thumb and hide behind the ferns to collect myself. I lost eleven pounds the first two weeks.
    Meanwhile Richie and Darnell were shooting down spaceships on the Atari that Lonnie had given them for Christmas, shooting down ship after ship. Lonnie just spoiled them to death, he always did, gave them everything they wanted and then some. They did that for one week solid, while they were out of school for Christmas; then they started skating their new skateboards straight through the family room, where Lonnie had taken the rug and the E-Z Boy recliner, and I never said one word. This was not like me, you can be sure. It’s not the way I am about a house.
    Lonnie took the rug and the E-Z Boy and his clothes and six pieces of Tupperware, that’s all, and moved in with a nurse from the hospital, Sharon Ledbetter, into her one-bedroom apartment at Colony Courts. He met her at the hospital, I found out later, last year when Richie had his tonsils out. So I guess it had gone on since then, and I never knew a thing.
    Sharon Ledbetter is twenty-three years old.
It is trite,
I thought of saying, but Lonnie would not have even known what that meant, so why bother?
Why bother?
I asked myself. You can subscribe to the
National Geographic
for ten years straight, but there are some people who won’t do a thing except look at the naked pictures.
    Richie and Darnell went over to visit the apartment at Colony Courts and came back saying that Sharon Ledbetter had a cat named Ms. Pacman and a whole lot of terrific rock albums which she was going to tape for them. They had a real good time. Now right after this was when my first cousin Lucie called from Alexandria where she lives and said why didn’t I and the children come up to Washington and sightsee, it would be good for all of us to get away. She knew what a hard time I was having, Lucie said.
    â€œThanks but no thanks,” I told her. “I’m too busy trying to put my life in order again,” I said, and Lucie said she knew I was good at
that,
she wished me the best, but I ought to remember that sometimes it just isn’t possible to do it right away. At this point I started to cry. I have never approved of Lucie and the way she left her own little boy down here with her mama to raise, in fact for years Lucie has made me real nervous.
    â€œCome on, Mama, let’s go to Washington,” Richie said. Richie is always right there at your elbow when you think he’s not, he never misses a trick. He’s a redhead like his daddy, into something every minute of the day.
    â€œI want to go to Washington,” Darnell whined. She says everything Richie does. “Come on, Mama, we never go anywhere.”
    â€œSharon has a sky-blue LTD,” Richie said, “with a tape deck.”
    â€œLucie,” I said into the phone, “thank you so much for asking, I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate it, but I just have too much to contend with here. Why, there’s not even a recliner in the family room. I have so much to do, and the children of course are in school.”
    â€œWell, just take them out for a couple of days.” This is exactly the kind of thing you’d expect Lucie to say.
    â€œChildren need a routine,” I told her, “and thank you so much for calling.”
    â€œBut how are
you?
” Lucie simply refused to get off the phone. Her voice, sweet and serious, came clear as a bell across West Virginia and down through all these