David Schwinghammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "creative-writing"

A lonely accountant bites off more than he can chew when he falls for a bowling partner.

Alpha Female

"Beer Frame, Blonigen," Adams said. "Got enough to cover it?"

"I don’t plan to lose," I said with false bravado.

I’d met Jack Adams, a tall bozo with Buddy Holly glasses, a few hours earlier; I was the newest member of the mixed bowling team.

Adams pushed his specs back on his nose. "I know one person who won’t have to pay. I’ve been bowling with Samantha ever since she came to Eau Claire, and she’s never had to buy a round."

"I’ve never seen a woman throw a hook like that," I said.

"If you want, I can pick you up Sunday and we can practice."

Adams was an assistant supermarket manager, apparently just as socially inept as I was.

I’d joined the bowling league for something to do. My accounting job at Eau Claire Machine wasn’t exactly what you’d call a chick magnet. "What’s Samantha like?" I asked.

Adams moved closer and hunched down so’s we were on the same level. "Kinda bossy," he said. "She’s always on me to improve my game, and I carry a 175 average."

The woman on the next lane dropped her ball behind her and everyone on her team began to razz her. "What does Samantha do for a living?" I said.

Adams took off his glasses, blew on them, wiped them off with a tissue. "She’s an elementary principal. Want me to line you up? She’s not married."

Samantha was certainly cute enough, with frosted blond hair combed down over eyes the color of a Wisconsin lake. She had the highest backswing I’d ever seen and was a left-hander to boot. She threw a hook that hung on the rim, then darted toward the pocket just as the ball arrived at the pins. This time she’d miscalculated a hair and the ball went in the channel.

Channel not gutter. "A gutter is a place dairy cows go poop," she said when I’d thrown one earlier, referring to it as such.

She stamped her foot and showed her dimples, then picked up nine pins on her next toss. The temperature at Don Carter Lanes went down a good ten degrees when she missed that spare.

I got my only strike of the night. Adams, Linda and Nora, two teachers who worked with Samantha, all marked as well, and Samantha had to pay. Linda and Nora went wild, giving each other the high-five, howling like coyotes, until Samantha gave them a look I hadn’t seen since The Godfather. She didn’t have enough money and I volunteered to loan it to her. That’s how I came to ask her out the first time.

Samantha showed up at my apartment the next morning, me still in my plaid bathrobe with my hair all mussed. She was wearing a blue jogging outfit and a red sweatband. I thought she was the cutest thing I’d seen since our spaniel had pups back home on the farm.

"I can’t stand to owe anybody money," she said.

I took the five dollars and put it in my Bulldog cookie jar where I kept all my loose change. "Would you like to come in?" I said. "I’ve got coffee brewing."

She sat on my ratty couch with the stuffing coming out of the cushions. The Benedetto twins in the apartment next door were banging on the wall again–-they play living room hockey whenever their mom goes to the corner grocery–-so I had to strain to hear what she said.

She said she only drank decaf; she had to watch her nerves, considering what she did for a living.

"Heard you were a principal; I’ll bet that’s an interesting job."

She stood, noticed the newspaper on the coffee table. She folded the paper over and began to read the front page. I couldn’t believe she was as old as Adams had said; she looked no more than nineteen to me.

"The job gets to be a hassle at times, but it’s better than teaching. I was a high school English teacher; the last straw was when the administration wouldn’t let me teach CATCHER IN THE RYE."

"I read that for freshman humanities. Don’t remember much about it, though. Holden Caulfield, he had pimples and used the "f" word a lot, right?"

She folded over a corner of the newspaper, picked up this scissor I had lying on the coffee table and cut something out without so much as a by-your-leave.

"I hope you don’t mind," she said. "I don’t get this paper and it has a pretty good crossword puzzle in it. What were you saying? Oh, yes, CATCHER IN THE RYE. They made you read it, right? I think a student should have some say-so in what she reads, don’t you? Don’t get me started, though; I’ll talk your ear off."

I gave her my last Dr. Pepper, decaffeinated of course. "No, this is very interesting. You’re so easy to talk to. I don’t mean to be forward or anything, but would you like to go out sometime. I haven’t met many people . . ."

She set the soda down and crossed her legs. "Isn’t Eau Claire the pits? Sure, I’d love to. Is tonight too soon? I’ve been wanting to see Fried Green Tomatoes."

A chick flick. Oh well, you couldn’t have everything.

I actually liked Fried Green Tomatoes, although I couldn’t figure out if the lady who ran the restaurant was a lesbian or not. Samantha, who’d read the book, assured me that she was.

The next evening, after she’d scoped out my cupboards and found them bare, she made us lasagna, the best I’d ever had. We saw each other every night for the next week.

There were warning signs galore. On Thursday I suggested we stay home and watch Cheers and she said, "I refuse to let you vegetate in front of the TV; you’ll help me with Meals on Wheels."

"Aren’t you happy you listened to me?" she said, when old Mrs. Swenson, a woman in a wheelchair, made us take a carrot cake she’d baked. "They’re all such darlings."

I couldn’t tell her those poor people gave me the willies.

That night she gave me a book to read. It was entitled LESS THAN ZERO. "It’s for our reading group. You’re coming with me. I’m going to make sure you get rid of that TV. I wouldn’t have one in my apartment. You’ll thank me for it later."

That book was the strangest I’d ever read; it was about bisexual, teenage druggies.

During the book discussion, I got involved in a heated argument with this blue-haired barracuda. I argued that the characters in LESS THAN ZERO were not representative of our nation’s young people, that most of them probably didn’t have sex until they were married. "The media has distorted reality," I said. "Are you denying the existence of the drug culture?" Blue Hair said. "No, but I think they slant those polls they’re always taking," I said.

"I was so proud of you," Samantha said, later that night after we’d had sex for the first time.

"I really hated that book," I said. "It made me feel bad."

"Poor baby. Mama will make you feel better."

I had been worried that she didn’t have any breasts because she always wore baggy clothes; I had also been apprehensive about our sexual compatibility; she didn’t exactly light my jets when we necked. Let it suffice to say that my worries were assuaged, although she did like to be on top and she did provide a running commentary about what I needed to do to turn her on.

A few days later she asked me if I planned to work for Eau Claire Machine all my life. I told her I’d always wanted to open my own accounting firm, but that I needed to pass my CPA test first. She made me start studying and set a date to take the test.

The next week the weather turned cold and she took me pheasant hunting. I’d never been hunting before; to be truthful I was afraid of guns; she bagged a couple of roosters. When I fired the gun, it kicked so hard I damn near lost control of my bowels. She thought that was awfully funny. In November we went deer hunting; she shot a twelve-point buck that she gutted herself.

One Saturday morning she brought me roses, two dozen; I was so flustered I didn’t know what to do with them. I didn’t even have a vase to put them in. Finally, I washed out a couple of old jelly jars from the back of my frig.

We were engaged to be married a week later. She asked me, and it was as big a surprise to me as the flowers had been.

"I don’t know what to say," I said. We were shopping for Christmas presents at the time, something else I’d never done the day after Thanksgiving with wall-to-wall people.

"Don’t you love me?" she said. I couldn’t believe she was asking me to marry her in the middle of the Target toy section with hundreds of people rubbernecking on our conversation.

Those blue eyes were getting all misty-looking and I thought she might actually start to cry. If she had, I would have surrendered immediately. "It’s just that I thought we might wait until I passed my CPA test and got settled in my new business."

She stalked out of the store and left me to find my own way back. I walked home; I needed to have a real heart-to-heart with myself anyway.

You’ll never find anybody better than Samantha, I told myself. She’s not only the best-looking girl you’ve ever gone with, but she’ll also most likely become the first female president of the United States.

But she’s so damn domineering, I argued. Now I know why all those guys develop impotency. Run for it, while you still have a chance.

When I got home, I had blisters on my feet from walking in my street shoes, but I called Samantha and told her I’d be the happiest man in the world if she’d marry me.

She sniffed, Kenny G. playing his clarinet on her radio in the background. "I think we’ve been seeing too much of each other," she said. "You’re tired of me and you don’t really love me or you never would have hesitated like you did."

I wasn’t tired of her; just a little afraid of her, but I didn’t dare tell her that. There really should be a class in high school to prepare a guy for situations like this.

The Benedetto twins came over after she hung up, and we played penny-ante poker. Ten years old and they were already drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. They took a $1.75 off of me; it just wasn’t my day.

All that week I sent flowers and candy, and on Saturday, she forgave me and we agreed to get married on Valentine’s Day. She had some news. She’d been offered a job in Minneapolis and she’d accepted.

I could not believe she’d taken a new job without checking with her fiance first. Dump her, dump her, dump her a little voice said. But I didn’t want to go through another week like I’d just experienced, so I didn’t dump her.

Valentine’s Day drew closer and closer; I began to develop dandruff and a rash; I had difficulty breathing. I thought it was tuberculosis, so I went to a doctor who told me there was nothing wrong with me physically, that I was most likely having an anxiety attack.

Around the end of January, we were having dinner at her apartment, a two bedroom that she paid $450 a month for–-I paid $150 for mine–-when she suddenly got up, took out this needle and gave herself an injection. A frickin’ drug addict, too, the little voice screamed. That’s it, I’m outtahere!

"Diabetes is such a nuisance," she said. "It took me forever to get used to giving myself a shot." I didn’t know if I’d ever get used to seeing her give herself one. I needed to have another heart-to-heart with myself. The woman was giving me a nervous breakdown.

February 5 was my thirtieth birthday and Samantha threw me a little party at the Legion Club. All of the teachers at her school were there and she’d ordered a cake that looked like the Tower of Babel. The whole soiree must have cost us a fortune. And this pretty little brunette named Althea, who taught first grade at Samantha’s school, started giving me the eye. She had to know I belonged to Samantha–-and when Samantha was preoccupied, Althea swooped in for the kill. Now that I had an actual girlfriend, I was God’s gift to women.

When the party was over, that control freak Samantha had to hang around and supervise cleanup, which gave me and Althea time to go out to her car for a quickie. Subconsciously I had emancipated myself. When I confessed to Samantha about Althea, it would be over between us.

The next day at my apartment, after I’d told her what a cad I was, she said, "I don’t think I can forgive you for this, Donald. I haven’t even looked at another man since we started dating."

That was something else she did that irritated me; no matter how many times I told her I preferred to be called Don, she persisted in using that name I associated with a mushmouthed duck. "I don’t blame you," I said. "I don’t know what came over me. What is that perfume she wears?"

She left and I was so relieved that I went down to the corner liquor store and bought a bottle of Scotch. I was three sheets to the wind when she called.

"I think I know what’s going on with you," she said. "It’s called the New Cow syndrome. Men need more than one mate. Just look at the animal world; there’s one bull and a herd of cows; there’s one rooster and a chickenbarn full of hens. I understand, I really do."

I was as good as shackled to a whipping post.

She put preparations for the wedding into high gear, renting the Legion hall for the reception, ordering the flowers and the invitations, picking out patterns for our china and silverware, announcing the banns in the church, and ordering tickets to the Virgin Islands for our honeymoon, informing me that her mother was divorced and we had to foot the bill for the wedding.

One day we both took the day off to visit her new school in Minneapolis; she was also going to shop for some items for her trousseau, and we were going to try to catch a play at the Guthrie if we could get tickets.

I remember it was foggy that day and that we were passing one of those junkyards with a mound of bald tires; I was about to mention that I hadn’t seen a place with those stacks of tires lately and that I’d heard they shredded them and used them to fill potholes, when she brought up the subject of a name change. The car radio was playing an oldies tune, "I’m Your Puppet," an awful omen. She said, "I’ve always felt that when I got married I’d keep my name and Schell-Blonigen just doesn’t sound right. How do you feel about changing your name to Schell?"

She’d brought this hamper full of vegetables and fruit along–-one of her dictums was, "five vegetables and fruit per day to keep the doctor away." I choked on a banana when she mentioned the name change.

Samantha managed to slam me on the back and maintain control of her Maverick at the same time, despite the turbulence raised by a semi which chose this time to blow by doing ninety.

When I recovered, I said, "If it was only me . . . I have to think about what my parents would say about this. My older brother can’t have any kids; our name will die out if I agree to this."

My brother Nick, who still lives on the family farm, has nine children, five of whom are boys. I was surprised she didn’t sniff out the lie.

"How about you keep your name and I keep mine? That’s agreeable to me. We could call the boys Blonigen and the girls Schell."

She hunched over the steering wheel, increased the speed, caught up with the semi, giving him a honk on the way by. "You’re missing the point, Donald. For thousands of years the woman has given up her name. Why can’t you stand up and show you’re a real man? This is important to me and you’ve always said you hated your last name."

I couldn’t recall saying that. It was my first name I hated.

"But I’ll have to change all my credit cards and my driver’s license."

She gave me a quizzical look. "Think about what you’re saying, Donald. Why should I have to change my cards?"

We went by a billboard advertising Virginia slims. It said, "You’ve come a long way, Baby!" The fates were conspiring against me.

When I broached the name change at the office during a coffee break, Bill Koontz, the other accountant at Eau Claire Machine was adamantly against it.

"If my wife had suggested something like that," he said, "I never would have married her. I can’t let you do this. If one guy does it, the rest of us will be expected to follow suit, and before you know it, they’ll have us all wearing bikini underwear." Bill was a roly-poly sort of guy, bald with hair growing out of his ears. His wife, Patricia, had brought him dinner once when he and I were working late. They looked so much alike I was convinced they’d been separated at birth and were carrying on an incestuous relationship.

"If you let her get away with this, she’ll get rid of your truck, confiscate your season tickets to the Brewers, and move her mother in with you. And when she gets sick of bullying you, she’ll run off with some lounge lizard and all your money."

"I don’t know," I said. "I rather like the sound of Don Schell."

"Nuts grow in shells," Bill said.

When I woke up the morning of February 14, my left arm and right leg were paralyzed. I decided I had to make a break for it, whether she sued me for breach of promise or not. My arm and leg loosened up when I made the decision. When I changed my mind, I developed a severe stomach cramp. I threw up; I threw up again; then I got the dry heaves. I couldn’t go through with it. The symptoms let up when I decided to go downstairs and tell my landlady there’d been an emergency in the family, that my father had had a heart attack and I was the only one who could run the farm. She could keep all my furniture if she’d let me out of my lease. I threw some clothes in a suitcase and put the rest in a garbage bag and I was out of there like a shot. I drove all day and wound up in Rapid City, South Dakota, where I took a job working for H&R Block.

A few years later, still unmarried, loneliness having drawn me to the Mall of America, I saw her again. I would have run, but I didn’t recognize her. She knew me though, and miracle of all miracles, she wasn’t mad at me. "You haven’t changed a bit," she said. "I was sure you’d at least have the decency to get a few gray hairs. This is my daughter, Donna. She’ll be four years old in September." I immediately began to count backwards. No, it couldn’t be.

Samantha was a good twenty pounds heavier and had let her hair go brown, which is why I didn’t recognize her at first.

"I’m not teaching anymore," she said. "Armand and I agreed that I should stay home with Donna. Children need their mother."

"Armand?" I said.

"I met him at a diversity workshop; it was love at first sight. He’s an executive for Cargill and Company, the big grain outfit. We live in Edina."

What a coincidence. I’d applied for a job at Cargill once and was turned down. She was telling me she was as rich as Midas, that she hadn’t run the poor beggar to the poor house, that I was a big ninny.

I had an eerie sense of deja vu until I realized that Dan Fogelberg had written a song similar to this once; "Auld Lang Syne."

"How are things with you?" she said. I was taking a closer look at Donna. She had my pug nose, my upraised eyebrows, even my Elvis sneer; And her name was Donna! Could Samantha have been saving that little tidbit to spring on me after we were married?

"I’m still a wage slave," I said. "I never did get around to taking my CPA test. Look, Sam, I want to apologize for what–-"

She put her arms around the little girl and hugged her up against her thighs. "Oh that. I will admit that I hated you at the time, but you really did do me a favor, didn’t you?" She turned around, with the little girl in tow, and disappeared into the crowd. Donna was looking back at me as if she should know me but couldn’t quite place me.

I felt as though I’d been post-mauled, the humane method my dad had used to dispatch a steer before butchering. I did several aimless turns of the immediate area, looking in the window of a woman’s apparel store, a topless mannequin looking back at me. The sounds of the Camp Snoopy Roller Coaster were pounding in my head. I gawked at a fat man and his skinny wife, ordered a hot dog I didn’t eat.

And then I went to B. Dalton’s and picked up a study guide for the CPA test. Maybe I’d take another whack at the thing; I already had a set of study materials some place, in one of the many unopened boxes I’d collected moving around so much, but I didn’t have the energy to look for them. Maybe I’d take a class in ballroom dancing, too; I’d always been light on my feet, and maybe I’d volunteer to tutor math at one of the locals schools—-I’d always been good with kids; I still got Christmas cards from the Benedetto twins, who were at the Lake Geneva Home for Wayward Boys.