Me and My Baby View the Eclipse

1.

Lee Smith’s “Me and My Baby Watch the Eclipse” is a short story, not a novel. But how could I resist a post with that title with everyone agog about the total eclipse about to happen in Indianapolis? Something like 125,000 people are here, waiting for the big moment. They’re already gathering for the eclipse party at the Speedway, which could be as crazy as the infield on Race Day. Among the other official events are those at at White River State Park (Lunacy! Solar Eclipse Festival), Butler University, the Kurt Vonnegut Library and Museum, and the State Fairgrounds. The event I will be attending is at my sister’s condo which overlooks a pretty little lake. A pontoon boat and excellent snacks will be involved.

Right now the sky is blue, the temperature nearly balmy.

Come on, cosmos, let it hold.

2.

There was an eclipse here in August, 2017 and I sprung my grandson Jake from school and drove to Butler University to watch it. From my journal:

We didn’t have any glasses and I figured we might get some there, or, at least, people might share theirs.) Very festive, people dotted the lawn in front of the observatory (which, ironically, was closed because the staff had gone to view the eclipse in a prime spot.) People did share, then a girl showed up with a bunch of them so we got our own.

There were Butler kids, freshmen in blue Freshman Week tee-shirts, whole families. Some lay on the grass, glasses in place; some had brought blankets and lawn chairs. There was a young, scruffy guy who paced around, worrying loudly every time a cloud came by and briefly covered up the sun, counting off the minutes until the peak. His grandma lay next to me, glasses on. “Yes, dear,” she responded every time he addressed her with his various concerns.

It was nice to hang out with Jake, to share the eclipse. There’s another one in 2024, he told me—marveling that this was the year he’d graduate from college. And one in 2044.

“I’m likely to miss that one,” I said.

“Yeah. I wasn’t going to say that,” he said. “But I’ll be alive.”

How strange and sad that I won’t know who he will be then. 

3.

The story. “Me and My Baby View the Eclipse” begins, “Sharon Shaw first met her lover, Raymond Stewart, in an incident that took place in broad daylight at the Xerox machine in Stewart’s Pharmacy three years ago—it can’t be that long!”

Now, every time she thinks of him, she feels like she’s going to die or throw up. 

Sharon is living a perfectly nice life in a small southern town with her husband, and former high school sweetheart, Leonard, who works for the coal company, though Sharon has no idea what he does there; her two sons Leonard Lee and Alister; and Margaret, the baby. She has the same friends she’s had since high school, “…Leonard is the same, only older, heavier.” She can’t “…figure out where in the world [the years] went, or tell much difference between them.”

Then one day she goes to the pharmacy to consult with Raymond about printing a little cookbook to raise funds for the Shady Mountain Elementary School PTA. “… wearing baggy, pleated tan pants—an old man’s pants…a Hawaiian shirt with blue parrots on it, and red rubber flip-flops,” he helps her choose just the right colors, talks her into calling the book “Home on the Range, and draws a cover for on the spot: “a woman in a cowboy hat and an apron tending to a whole stovetop full of wildly bubbling pans.”

Sharon tells Raymond that, as a kid, she used to sit on the porch after supper drawing “…tree after tree with huge flowing branches that reached for God.”

She could tell him anything, she realizes.

When he hands her the envelope with sample copies of the cookbook to show the committee a few days later, she cuts her hand on the flap. “Oh, my God!” he says—and kisses the cut, leaving a bloodstain on his cheek. Sharon can’t stop thinking about him—and when he comes to deliver the cookbooks, she goes to bed with him.

Raymond could not be more different from Leonard, whom Sharon also loves. He’s dramatic. He gives her little presents. He uses a wise-guy voice, straight from the Godfather, announcing their life as they live it.

“Me and my baby go Hawaiian,” he says, handing Sharon a blue drink made of rum and bottled mix, which she thinks looks like Windex.”

“Me and my baby make out,” he crows when he parks down a dirt road after they’ve been to a movie together.

Sharon lies, she takes chances, she gets greedier and greedier for time with Raymond. Once, when Leonard is away for work, says she has to go to Greenville for a medical test and leaves her kids with friends so she can spend the night at a Ramada Inn. The room is a suite, “with a color TV, a sunken tub, and a king-size bed under a tufted velvet spread.” They check in as Mr. and Mrs. John Deere.  

Not long afterward, Raymond gets excited about the upcoming eclipse, telling Sharon again and again, “I want to be with you, baby, to view the eclipse.” Fortunately, it’s on a school day and Leonard will be at work. They can watch it in Sharon’s backyard.

But Sharon feels strange; she feels ancient.

Drinking pink champagne on lawn chairs, waiting, Raymond tells her that dogs will bark and birds will cease to twitter.

And they do. A hush falls, it gets cold, they can see stars. “‘Me and my baby view the eclipse,’” says Raymond. And Sharon starts to cry.

She knows the affair is over; she also knows she’ll never love anyone in the world as much as she loves Raymond.

I love this story so much. I love how Lee Smith brings the lives we’re tempted to discount as ordinary so fully to life in a voice that seems to be talking to you, telling the story to you, alone. And how the details make you laugh and also break your heart.

“He wears huge silky handkerchiefs and gold neck chains and drives all the way to Roanoke to get his hair cut in what he calls a modified punk look.

As the high school drum major, “Raymond had a special routine he did while the band played “Blue Suede Shoes” and formed itself into a giant show on the field.”

I love how Lee Smith makes us see that Sharon is a good woman in need of something only Raymond can give her at that moment in her life—allowing us to forgive her for everything.

4.

The weather holds! The traffic jams do not materialize!

We are out on the lake around 1:45, snacks—including eclipse cookies—in tow.

There are a half-dozen or more other pontoon boats drifting out there, people on the grass along the shore and on balconies and decks.

We wave; they wave.  

We chat. We listen to the cool eclipse playlist my sister put together.

We put on our eclipse glasses every few minutes. At first, it looks like a little bite has been taken out of the sun. The bite gets bigger and bigger and then there’s a crescent of sun, shrinking, shrinking into what looks like a snip of fingernail, then the sides shrink into themselves until there’s just a dot of light.

The birds stop singing, as promised. The air chills. Lights on automatic timers go on in houses around the lake.

Then—whoa!—there’s nothing but black circle in the dark sky, glowing white all around.

A shout goes up around the lake.

And I think I could live in this warm spring day, looking up—and at—forever…forever.