Free Social Blunders by Tim Sandlin Page B

leaned toward me. “Don’t you understand, Sam. You’re my wake-up call.”
    ***
    Some people, especially women, put tremendous stock in eye contact. These people, especially women, have the strange notion that by locking their eyes to yours and staring deep into your soul via the cornea and pupil they can detect a mistruth. Or even the smallest hint of insincerity.
    Personally, I don’t buy the gig. It may work on amateurs and children, but the pros are well aware of the eyeball-to-eyeball test. When she bullshits, Lydia is the queen of sincerity. She’ll get up breath-smelling close, gaze solemnly into the sucker’s eyes, sometimes even touch his hand with hers, and lie like a dog. Conversely, honesty makes her so uncomfortable that she disguises it behind glib patter. I learned at an early age to distrust her when she tries to tell the truth and believe her when she doesn’t.
    Hank Elkrunner says the Blackfeet consider it rude to look at a person you are speaking to or a person who is speaking to you. Beyond rude, it just isn’t done. I asked him if all Indians practice this custom and received a short but direct diatribe on the white’s stupid belief that all Indian tribes are the same.
    “I don’t know anyone but Blackfeet,” Hank said. “You want Apache taboos, call Hollywood.”
    Gilia obviously did not follow Blackfeet tradition. Her blue eyes bored into me with the intensity of a lunch whistle. Made my stomach flutter and my brain feel like I was inhaling pure oxygen from a tank. She had a way of cocking her head to one side, as if to give herself a new angle on the truth. Suddenly it became very important that she not find me wanting.
    When Gilia finally looked away and I was once again able to see the world around us, the two children had disappeared along with the woman in the red Volkswagen bus. A healthy couple rode down the street on bicycles. An older woman in a tweed sweater walked a cat on a leash. It seemed like a long time had passed since Gilia got into my car. I imagined the autumn leaves were redder than they’d been before we locked eyes.
    “Why choose today to start popping in on your possible fathers?” she asked.
    Why choose today? It’d been twenty years since I learned they existed. I couldn’t recall why I hadn’t acted earlier.
    “My wife left me last week. She ran off with the pool man.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that.”
    I shrugged, keeping up a brave front. “I don’t handle grief well, so my daughter stole these old yearbook photos Lydia cut out of the boys who did her.”
    “Your mother knew who raped her?”
    “She never told me. Shannon—that’s my daughter—went to the library and researched the names and addresses. She thought I would cope better if I had something to do.”
    Gilia’s mouth opened slightly and her pink tongue pressed against her upper front teeth in one of those gestures people do when they’re thinking. She said, “You’re turning the lives of five men and their families upside down because your daughter thinks you need something to do?”
    “That’s a harsh way to put it.”
    “How would you put it?”
    I didn’t answer. The truth was I hadn’t given much thought to the men or their families. I hadn’t given much thought to anything. The search for an unknown father seems to be a primal drive. An instinct.
    “How do the men react when you appear on their front porch dredging up old sins and claiming to be a son?”
    “Billy Gaines wants to do lunch.”
    “Billy Gaines works for Dad. It’s hard to picture him raping a flea.”
    “Babe Carnisek denies the possibility.”
    Her head did the cock thing again. “He denies what he did to your mother?”
    “No, Babe seems kind of proud of that, which is odd. What he denies is that anyone who looks like me could possibly be related to him. Says I’m too scrawny for his son.”
    I paused in case Gilia wanted to disagree with scrawny. “Your father threatened legal action and Skip