Social Blunders by Tim Sandlin Page A

sipped her tea. She was pretty in a Kmart kind of way. I’ll bet she’d never been gone down on in her life. “Then Skip told Babe if he took these blue pills he’d grow strong and be able to play football again.”
    “Steroids,” I said. “I didn’t know steroids existed back then.”
    “We didn’t know what they were,” Didi said. She gestured at the game. “Now all those players on TV take steroids and not a one of them will ever have children. Babe says if he sees Skip again, he’ll break his neck.”
    “I know where Skip lives.”
    I think Babe wanted to change the subject, because when he spoke it was louder than before. “Your mama was a pistol, boy. I have to admit, that girl was a pistol.”
    Seemed a weird thing to say about a girl you raped and urinated on. “She runs a feminist press in Wyoming,” I said.
    He frowned. “Lesbo?”
    “I don’t think so, she has a boyfriend.”
    “Lesbos scare me. They was one in Woolworth’s the other day buying shotgun shells. Said she was going to shoot her husband.”
    “You didn’t tell me that,” Didi said.
    “How did you know she was Lesbian if she had a husband?” I asked.
    “Short hair and a fuzzy mustache.”
    Didi protested. “Italian girls have mustaches and none of them are Lesbo.”
    “Wasn’t no Italian. I can tell Italian women.”
    Subject closed. We sat drinking tea and watching the game while the Redskins scored two more touchdowns. Babe didn’t seem to have any more to say about fatherhood. Partway through the third quarter he had Didi fetch his hand squeezer exercise coils so he could watch TV and build up his wrists simultaneously.
    “So, you’re sure you aren’t my father?” I said.
    He shrugged without looking away from the game. The Lions were finally mounting a drive. “Hell, anything’s possible. Maybe you’re just a runt.”
    “I think I’ll be leaving now,” I said.
    Babe ignored me. Didi took my glass. “Come back any time,” she said. “We always have plenty of tea. Babe won’t drink beer. Too many former athletes drink beer and let themselves go.”
    Babe sat in his recliner, flexing his wrists. Lord knows what he did for a living. What does a person whose life is his body do when the body lets him down?
    “Good-bye, Mr. Carnisek,” I said.
    His eyes brightened, as if he’d received an idea. “Tell you what, come Father’s Day, you can send me a card.”
    “I’ll do that.”
    “I always wanted a card on Father’s Day.”

7
    I stopped in my yard to watch a one-legged robin hop around the grass. She seemed as stable as the next robin—didn’t tilt to one side or wobble or anything. Reminded me of a three-legged dog a neighbor of ours owned back in GroVont. Next to my pecan tree, the robin pulled a worm out of the ground. It was a long wienie and it didn’t want to give up its grasp on the earth, but the robin kept pulling and hopping back on her one leg until the worm popped free. Then she flew off, south.
    Since the World Series when Wanda left, I hadn’t been seeing past myself. I hadn’t noticed how the maple leaves across the street were a deep Mogen David wine color, and the air smelled like refrigeration. The neighbor’s black cat lay curled on the hood of their Lincoln Town Car. I saw the girl Gilia in my mind and wondered where she might be swimming, so I could go there and watch. In Wyoming this was swimming temperature, but I figured the country club pool was drained by now. Maybe she was one of those people who takes swimming seriously, as opposed to a social tanning session. She had interesting eyes.
    Inside the garage, a Vicksburg golf cart hummed into the plug in the ceiling recharger. Five other models named after Civil War battles were lined up, facing the double doors. I sat on a bucket of pool-cleaning chemicals and stared at the gardening tools mounted on fiberboard on the back wall. Each hoe and hammer sat in brackets and fit into an outline of itself drawn in yellow paint