Duane's Depressed (6 page)

“We’re not mean to Annette,” Duane said. “I like Annette a lot.”

“I like her too but it’s hard to give your full approval to a daughter-in-law who makes her living robbing convenience stores,” Karla said.

Annette did in fact have two convictions for armed robbery, but she was so appealing that the judge’s heart had melted both times, causing her to pile up twice as much probation time as Jack; but the good part was she had only served three or four nights in jail.

“Why do you always have to bring that up?” Julie asked. “She just took the petty cash, both times. Can’t I just ask her if she and the kids would like to come in and eat? I hate to think of the four of them sitting out in that trailer house eating junk food.”

“Bring ’em in, they can have gourmet cooking,” Rag said.

“Annette’s part of the family,” Duane said. “Of course you can go invite her to dinner.”

“But if she doesn’t want to come you hurry on back,” Karla said. “I don’t want you sitting out there half the night, smoking dope and watching porn.”

“Mom, we don’t watch porn,” Julie protested. “It’s just that on cable sometimes people are naked.”

“Naked,” Little Bascom said. His vocabulary was growing by leaps and bounds.

“Do you want a drink, Duane?” Karla asked. Annoyed as she was, it was hard to stay totally mad when Duane was sitting around with his grandkids, looking sweet.

“A splash of bourbon might taste good,” Duane said. “Little Bascom was poking his fist in the peanut butter when I got home.”

“That’s your fault, for not taking the ride I offered,” Karla said.

Duane let the remark float by. He was determined not to be goaded into some hasty retort that would just raise Karla’s temperature. He decided to wait for Annette and her kids to show up before making a statement announcing his intention to become a walker. He would explain calmly that at his age he needed lots of exercise and fresh air. Walking, by definition, was a beneficial activity that would keep him outdoors and reduce
his desire to smoke cigarettes or pursue any of the unhealthy desires that could overcome a man who spent too much time in the cab of a pickup. He wasn’t naive enough to suppose that his reasonableness would sway Karla, who was rarely swayable once she took a position. But he thought he could probably get most of the grandkids on his side, creating a lobbying force that would keep it from being such a him-against-them kind of thing.

While he sipped his bourbon, rehearsing in his mind a few of the points he meant to cover in his statement, Julie came back, trailed closely by Annette and the three kids she and Dickie had produced in ten years of an off-again, on-again union: Loni, Barbi, and Sami, it being Annette’s desire that all her kids’ names end with
i
. Loni was nine, Barbi six, and Sami four. Annette was a willowy brunette, the tallest woman in Thalia; she went through life wearing a dreamy smile that reflected her good nature, and also the fact that she smoked a lot of dope. Even the convenience store managers that Annette had robbed reported that she had continued to smile pleasantly and remain perfectly courteous while holding them at gunpoint.

Of the children, Loni and Sami were as good-natured as their mother, but Barbi, a dark midge of a child, was the opposite in all respects of the doll she had been named after. All the other grandkids thought Barbi was a witch, and the older three had only just been prevented from burning her at the stake. The UPS man, who was at the house virtually every day, delivering things Karla had ordered from various catalogues, noticed that something weird was going on and raced over and stopped it just before Bubbles and Willy could get the kindling to light. Barbi, silent and malevolent, had been tied to a fence post.

“Hi, Annette,” Duane said, when the group walked in. “Why, there’s my Sami.”

“And there’s my Loni and my Barbi,” Karla said. Grandparental favoritism, where Dickie’s children were concerned, had divided along the lines of gender.

“I think it’s stupid that that old rehab center won’t even let Dickie make a phone call,” Annette said. “I just miss him to pieces. What could one little phone call hurt?”

“Plenty, because he’d make it to the drug dealer, not to his
loving wife,” Karla reminded her. “That’s what he did last time he was in, remember?”

“Shut up talking about dope—here comes my gourmet cooking,” Rag informed them. Soon the large kitchen table was covered with all the things Rag liked to cook: platters of round steak for the masses, bowls of her signature cream gravy, hominy, black-eyed peas, sauerkraut—a personal passion of Rag’s not shared with much intensity by the people she fed—okra, a mound of baked potatoes, grilled onions, and hot rolls.

“Sit down and eat with us, Rag,” Duane said. “I hate to eat when somebody’s working.”

He said it every night; asking Rag to eat with them was a prelude to every meal, as grace had once been, but Rag had no interest in eating her gourmet cooking. Instead, she repaired to the little pantry, where she smoked and watched
I Love Lucy
reruns on a small TV, occasionally popping back in to pile more food on the table or check on the cobbler she held in readiness for dessert.

“In my day the help didn’t eat with the family,” she said, when Duane asked her to sit down and eat.

“What if we adopt you, would you eat with us then?” he once asked, out of curiosity.

“No, because if I start eating my gourmet cooking I’ll get fat and lose my figure,” Rag replied. The truth was that she preferred to stop by the Dairy Queen and pick up a cheeseburger and a few tacos to munch while watching the midnight reruns, her favorite being
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
, all one hundred and sixty-eight episodes of which she had seen at least once; she could recite whole episodes almost verbatim, and would, if asked. She could do passable imitations of Mary, Phyllis, Lou Grant, Rhoda, Ted, Georgette, and Murray. All the grandkids listened attentively but the one most won by Rag’s performances was Little Bascom, who would roll on the floor laughing hysterically, although he had never seen
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
and had no idea what Rag was doing.

Although both Julie and Annette were professing vegetarianism at the time, they each forgot their vows and ate several pieces of round steak, washing it down with beer.

“If either of you are pregnant you oughtn’t to be drinking that beer,” Karla informed them sternly. “We have enough addicts in this family without producing any little alcoholic fetuses.”

“Mom, don’t talk about things like that, it’s creepy,” Julie said. “I don’t even want my kids to know what a fetus is—they’re too young.”

“We already know. Don’t you ever watch the Discovery Channel?” Willy asked.

“A fetus grows in the uterus,” Barbi said, in her dark way. “And it’s sperm that makes them and sperm lives in the balls of the male.”

“That’s right—I think I’ve already got some in
my
balls,” Willy said.

“Balls,” Little Bascom said. “Balls, balls.”

“Now see what you started,” Annette said to Karla. They had never been close.

“Yes, but I started it for a good reason—so you won’t drink when you’re pregnant and produce some little baby that won’t never have good math skills,” Karla said. “Anyway, as soon as kids get big enough to watch television now they know all about the facts of life.”

“And penises and vaginas too,” Willy said.

“Daddy, stop him,” Julie said. “I don’t want him talking about dicks at the dinner table.”

“Okay, Julie’s right, everybody shut up about the facts of life,” Duane said. “Anyway I need to talk to all of you about a decision I made today.”

“Uh-oh, I knew this was coming,” Karla said. “I think we ought to get the children to bed before we get into this.”

“Not on your life,” Duane said. “I particularly want the children to hear what I have to say.”

“Oh sure, so you can brainwash them into believing that anything you do is just fine and dandy,” Karla said.

“There’s free speech in this country—I have the right to say what I want to say to my own children and grandchildren, don’t I?” Duane demanded to know.

Karla refused to answer, but there was a chorus from the crowd and the chorus was in favor of hearing what Duane had
to say. Rag, intrigued, turned down
I Love Lucy
and stuck her head out the pantry door so she could listen.

“You can talk,” Karla said, reluctantly. “But then I get the last word, okay?”

“Okay—but on condition you don’t interrupt me until I’ve finished,” Duane said. “I want you to shut up until I’ve said what I have to say. Then we can all talk it over.”

“If you go off the deep end and start brainwashing my grandkids I guess I have the right to interrupt,” Karla said. “What kind of democracy is this, anyway?”

“Shut up, Grandma, I want to hear what Grandpa has to say,” Willy said.

“As for that, you ain’t too big to spank, young man,” Karla said.

She looked severely at Willy, but then, noticing that everyone at the table was frowning at her, and realizing that Duane, with his gift for sweet reasonableness, was costing her whatever advantage she might have in the court of public opinion, Karla quickly shut up.

7

“I
GUESS SOME PEOPLE
in town and maybe one or two people in this house were a little upset with me today because I decided to take a walk,” Duane began.

“Right, Grandma freaked out,” Willy said.

“Right, ’cause you went crazy,” Bubbles said.

“You should have taken me. I like to walk and nobody ever lets me,” Barbi said.

“I don’t walk, I run,” Sami said.

Loni, the shy one, who rarely spoke, as usual kept her own counsel.

“I didn’t go crazy, Bubbles,” Duane said. “You don’t have to be crazy just to want to take a walk.”

“Yes, you do,” Bubbles insisted. “You want to walk away and leave us all to starve, that’s what my momma said.”

“It was a joke, Bubbles,” Julie said, horrified that her own daughter would betray a casual comment she had happened to make.

“You kids shut up, and you too, Julie,” Karla said. “Let Pa-Pa finish.”

“Thanks,” Duane said. “It’s simple, really. Walking is very good exercise, and a man my age needs exercise. Walking keeps people from having strokes and heart attacks, whereas riding around in pickups smoking cigarettes is a good way to get lung cancer and keel over and die.”

“Don’t
die
, Pa-Pa!” Bubbles said, horrified at the prospect.

“Well, I won’t, honey, if everyone will just leave me alone to do my walking,” Duane assured her. “All of you are little right now, but I want to live a long time so I can see you grow up and meet who you marry and see what kind of kids you have. Don’t you think it would be nice if I could do that?”

All the children nodded, even Little Bascom and Baby Paul, neither of whom had any notion as to what was going on. Little Bascom and Baby Paul continued to nod, long after the others had stopped.

“Of course, nobody would really starve—not as long as I’m here to do my gourmet cooking,” Rag said.

She had taken the remark as a slight on her loyalty.

“I didn’t say anything about starving,” Duane assured her. “I just want everybody to think about this calmly. Just because walking isn’t a popular thing around Thalia doesn’t mean it’s crazy. Actually it’s a smart, healthy thing to do. It just means I have a good attitude and want to stay healthy and live a long life.”

He stopped and surveyed his audience.

“There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?” he asked.

“No, but you don’t have to stay alive to see what kind of kids I have because I hate girls and I’m not going to have any,” Willy informed him.

“I hated them too, when I was your age, but I changed my mind and you might change yours,” Duane said. “I’d just kind of like to stay alive to see what happens.”

“Okay,” Willy said. “I don’t mind, Pa-Pa.”

“If I just keep walking people will gradually get used to it and then they’ll notice that I’m losing weight and looking a little healthier—some of them might start walking too,” Duane said.

“That would be good,” Barbi said. “There are too many people with fat ugly butts in this town. They all need to get liposuction on their big fat asses.”

“My lord, where did you hear about liposuction?” Duane asked.

“From Grandma,” Barbi said.

“Duane, I was just discussing it in the abstract,” Karla said.

“All your friends are too fat, Grandma,” Barbi said, pressing on. “Bobbie is fat and Candy is fat and Jolene is the fattest of all.”

“That’s not a kind way to put it, Barbi,” Karla said. “But some of them
are
a little heavy, I’ll admit.”

“I know,” Bubbles said. “Pa-Pa can take all the fat people with him when he walks and pretty soon they won’t be fat anymore.”

“Fat chance of that,” Rag said, to Duane’s relief. He had no intention of leading a pack of fat walkers, but to say so directly would damage his case, just when he thought he pretty well had it made.

“So, does everybody understand now?” Duane said. “Walking doesn’t mean I’m crazy—it just means I want to be healthy and stay alive a long time.”

“What if it takes you too long and you get lost in the weeds?” Barbi asked. She was good at spotting possible flaws in whatever arguments came her way, particularly the arguments that came her way from her parents, when they wanted her to do something she didn’t want to do. Often she was able to convince them that for her to do what they wanted would mean almost certain death—of course, that worked best when both her parents were too stoned to think clearly.

“I’m taller than the weeds; I won’t get lost,” Duane said.

“Yes, but what if a bad witch made the weeds grow taller than the water tower, then you might get lost,” Barbi said.

“Well if that happened Grandma could just hire a helicopter to come and rescue me,” Duane said.

“Shut up, you’re the only witch around here, you little slut,” Willy said. Barbi was always talking about disasters bad witches could make and some of them sounded so real he had bad dreams about them.