by Mary Robison
Sister shrugged. She scooped a bee off a spear of fern and held it under her eyes. She said, “I’m willing you my Saint Augustine.”
“Goody,” Donna said, and exhaled on the wings of the bee Sister was holding. The bee stung Sister, who brandished her palm with a white welt blooming for Donna to see.
Clouds hurried over the convent’s grounds. On the drive adjacent to the refectory, kids were unloading pieces of a public-address system from the back of a Ford Pinto.
JOHN MANDITCH WAS ON THE front porch of Donna’s rental house, his hands pressed on his hips, doing deep knee bends. “Hold it a second,” he said. “I might be sick.” He looked down at his stomach and then he paced around in a small circle.
Donna opened the screen door and went into the house. A fat boy in a poplin blazer was sitting in the living room on top of her Utah loudspeaker. The couch had been moved. On the TV, a cheer-crazed commentator announced the morning news.
Manditch caught up with her when she stopped at a sideboard in the hallway. He filled a tumbler with Tanqueray and used the tail of Donna’s jacket to mop a puddle of gin he splashed on the tabletop.
Amy, Donna’s housemate, appeared at a mirror in the hall and waxed on some lipstick. “It was my idea to have a party,” Amy shouted, “but nobody will go home.”
Donna went over and cupped a hand on Amy’s ear. “Is there any food left?” she said.
“Who knows?” Amy said, and shook loose.
Donna stomped into the kitchen. She opened cabinets and flapped the breadbox. Proudhead was stretched out on the floor in evening clothes and fancy new shoes. He was eating fried chicken and drinking brandy.
“I have twin brothers,” he said to a crouching girl. “Thirteen and eleven, with hair down to here.” He pointed to his nipple with a shredded drumstick.
“Who ate the roast beef?” Donna said. She threw the refrigerator door shut.
“Some of this left,” Proudhead said, pushing his paper chicken bucket toward her with a glossy dress shoe.
A young man in white slumped into the kitchen. He said, “I think I just backed over a Great Dane.”
“That’s our neighbor’s Great Dane,” Donna said. “You ran over Lola.”
“I’m sorry,” said the young man.
“I’m sorry,” said Proudhead.
Donna squatted and sipped from Proudhead’s Hennessy bottle. John Manditch walked by, holding his belly, and headed for the sink.
“John, get these people out of here,” Donna said.
Manditch said, “The neighbors on all three sides have phoned the police. Thanks to you,” he said to the young man in white.
“Lordy, Lordy,” the young man moaned. “Why do these things happen to me?”
“Don’t ever come back here,” Proudhead said to him.
DONNA WOKE UP WEARING A rope of cotton underpants and a madras jacket she had left over from high school. “What’s that noise?” she said.
Manditch was beside her in bed, with a bottle of carbonated wine and a paperback novel. He pointed to Proudhead, who knocked a croquet ball across the hardwood floor with a hearth shovel.
“He has a nosebleed,” Donna said.
“I know it,” Manditch said, flattening his thumb on the bottle spout. “I told him. I forgot to shake this.”
“Lift up,” Donna said, trying to free her arm from under Manditch. “And who opened the windows in here? I can see my breath.”
“I did,” Manditch said. “We had a pipe-smoking visitor.”
“We did? Who?” Donna said. “This morning?”
“About a half hour ago,” Manditch said. “Want some of this?”
Donna took a drink from the wine bottle and coughed.
She said, “My sister has cancer.”
Proudhead sat down on a ladder-back chair and wadded a piece of white underwear against his nose.
The bedroom door came open and Amy put her head in.
“I’m moving out,” she said.
“Fine,” Donna said. “Proudhead? Toss me my pants.”
Proudhead threw the trousers. Donna pulled them on and climbed over Manditch, who had taken off his horn rims and was massaging the bridge of his nose.
Donna stood at the window. She found and lit a half-smoked Kool. She could see Congressman Mel Physell down there in the yard. He wore a clear, floor-length raincoat, and he was knocking pipe ash into a puddle of mud.
“That was going to be my zinnia garden,” Donna yelled at him. Congressman Mel Physell jumped backward. He looked up and down the street. He threw his pipe into a clot of shrubs and moved away to the sidewalk, where Amy was busy loading a floor lamp into her Peugeot truck.
PROUDHEAD AND DONNA WERE IN the kitchen, leaning against the stove eating scrambled eggs from a skillet.
Congressman Mel Physell came through the side door. “Your lock’s broken,” he said.
“I know,” Donna said. “For about two months.”
She took him into the living room. John Manditch was lying on the floor carpet with his hair wrapped in a soap-smelling towel. “Aaah,” John Manditch said. He unbuttoned his corduroys and revealed a full stomach.
“Who are these guys?” Mel Physell asked.
“I know them,” Donna said. “Don’t ask me how. I just do.”
Amy walked by carrying a blow dryer and a CB radio.
“I’ve written some poems on prosecutorial immunity I’d like to read to you,” Mel Physell said, opening a spiral-bound notebook.
“That’s wonderful,” Donna said. “Please do.”
“I worked the whole morning on these,” Mel Physell said, “though they’re rough, you understand. These are just the roughs.”
“That’s okay,” Donna said. “We’d be honored.”
“Keep in mind, these are not the finished products. In fact, they’re just an outline, really, a pastiche. Don’t pay any attention to the first five or so. They’re just scribbles and doodles, rough drafts, not worth thinking about. I just scratched them down without a nod to rhyme or meter. They’re utterly worthless,” Mel Physell said, and threw his notebook into the fireplace. He sat with his face in his hands.
Proudhead came from the kitchen, carrying the skillet and scraping out bits of egg with a spatula.
“Now stop being foolish,” Donna told Mel Physell.
“I kag hab id,” he said. He had a pen between his teeth and was searching for something in his raincoat pockets.
John Manditch got to his feet. He picked up the morning paper and sank into the sofa beside Proudhead.
Donna said, “I really want to hear the poems.”
“Okay,” Mel Physell said, lifting the notebook and brushing off a page. “Here we go. Don’t listen to this first one. It’s just a preliminary draft.” He smoothed the page with his palm. “It’s so wrinkled,” he said, “I don’t think I can read the handwriting. I can’t seem to make it out. Just forget I mentioned it.” He threw the notebook into the fireplace again.
John Manditch had the newspaper spread out on the coffee table. “Carborundum’s striking,” he told Proudhead. “Doesn’t your father work there?”
“Cathcote,” Proudhead said. “He works at Cathcote.”
“I know Dick Burk at Cathcote,” Mel Physell said.
Donna locked her teeth. “Mel,” she said, “look at us.”
“Three people,” the congressman said, grinning. “Constituents.”
Donna sighed and looked at the ceiling.
“Things are not so good,” Mel said.
“Well, you’ve got that right,” Donna said.
“They used to be good,” Mel said. “Things were proper, and that’s a cherished goal. Now—who knows? Now it’s here come the firemen, here come the chilly-willies. You know?”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Donna said.
Mel Physell broke into full-throated laughter, which John Manditch and Proudhead parroted.
“You know?” the congressman said, wiping at his eye
s. “Really.”
Doctor’s Sons
DICK WAS SITTING AT THE kitchen table with his left hand resting flat, fingers spread, on a linen placemat decorated with Coast Guard flags. He was trimming his nails with a pinch clipper and crying. The mustache he had recently grown for his twenty-fifth birthday was wet with tears. He was embarrassed, and his cheeks and throat had the high color of a rash. Mrs. Sorenson, Dick’s mother, sat across the kitchen table with a paperback book in her hand. She was humming along with the Porgy and Bess tape that was being piped from a tape deck in the family den.
Dick arched a finger and wiped away a streamer of tears from his cheekbone. He used his fork to break up the last strip of bacon on his breakfast plate. He looked out the kitchen window and said, “Here comes a pregnant girl.” He clicked a fork tine on the windowpane.
Mrs. Sorenson stood up to get a better look at a pretty woman in white who was striding up the Sorensons’ driveway. A fabric bag, stuffed with flyers, was slung on the woman’s shoulder like a purse.
“About seven months pregnant, I would guess,” Mrs. Sorenson said. “Is Spencer still out there?”
Dick nodded and shoved the window up a crack. “Here comes someone,” he said to his brother, who was lying on his stomach in a nylon lounge chair on the blacktop just under the window. Spencer was wearing green swim trunks and dark glasses. His back was basted with oil. He flipped over in the chair and waved to the young pregnant woman.
Mrs. Sorenson put the window down. “I would imagine that’s a volunteer who’s canvassing for the school bond issue,” she said.
Dick was frowning. He watched his brother chat with the girl.
“She’ll be sorry she ever came by,” said Mrs. Sorenson, “once Spencer gets going.”
Dick sighed aloud and appeared to have difficulty swallowing. His eyes spilled tears.
“Come on, now,” Mrs. Sorenson said. She opened her book.
“I’m thinking about my wife,” Dick said.
Mrs. Sorenson wet her index finger with her tongue and turned a page. “Which wife?” she said.
“Gladys, of course. She’s living somewhere in the Oldsmobile you and Dad gave me. I told you already.”
“This sounds hard,” said Mrs. Sorenson, “but we gave it to both of you.”
“But she’s living in it,” Dick said.
“Don’t let your father hear you complain about that. He thinks there are worse places to live than in new Oldsmobiles.”
“No one but me ever liked Gladys in her whole life,” Dick said.
Mrs. Sorenson sang a little with “I Loves You, Porgy.” “Oh, I apologize,” she said, breaking off. “You’d probably appreciate a little quiet.”
“No, I enjoy the music,” Dick said.
“Well, it’s beginning to bother me,” Mrs. Sorenson said. She stood and touched Dick’s shirt sleeve. “I like that grille pattern,” she said.
“I’d better tell Spencer to come inside,” Dick said, “so that girl can get the word to the voters.” He picked a navel orange from a fruit bowl and bumped it several times on the window. Spencer shifted his position on the lounge chair and grinned broadly at Dick. The pregnant woman moved off, walking backward and making goodbye gestures. When she was gone, Dr. Sorenson appeared outdoors, trailing a garden hose, and squirted the blacktop around Spencer. Steam rose from the wetted drive.
“I’m going to stop that tape,” Mrs. Sorenson said, leaving the kitchen through a swinging door. Dick took his plate to the sink and cleaned it with a lilac-colored sponge.
Spencer came through the outside door, slamming the screen, and sat in Dick’s chair. His chest was wet with hose water, and he had stuck a blue paper sticker over his ribs. “Thumbs Up on Issue One,” the sticker said.
“That girl I was talking to,” Spencer said, “her husband’s on the staff at White Cross with Dad. He’s a neurosurgeon.”
“I’m so glad,” Dick said.
“I told her she’s wasting her summer campaigning for a bond issue,” Spencer said. “I told her the economy’s collapsing and there’ll be a global depression by 1990.”
Mrs. Sorenson came back into the kitchen and found Dick sniffling. She bent over and put her arm around his waist. “You’re so attractive, with those blond curls framing your face,” she said.
“I’m so attractive,” Dick said in a squeaky voice, mimicking his mother.
“Uh-oh—Dick’s in a ditch,” Spencer said. “Did you see the girl I was talking to?” Spencer asked his mother. “Her husband’s at White Cross with Dad.”
“And I remember her from someplace else,” Mrs. Sorenson said. “She’s a patient of your father’s. He’ll be delivering that baby.”
“None of us wants to think about that,” Dick said.
“I told her what will happen with Eurodollars, and how the depression in 1990 will show that the 1930s depression was just one in a series,” Spencer said.
Mrs. Sorenson was spraying the steel sinks with the dish rinser. “You look very tan and fit,” she said to Spencer. “You seem to be having a good summer.”
“I told that woman to bury her pocket change in her backyard,” Spencer said. He took a pack of gum from the waistband of his swim trunks and slid a stick between his white teeth. “Come on, Dick,” he said, getting up. He pulled his brother out of the kitchen by the arm.
UPSTAIRS, IN THEIR BEDROOM, SPENCER shoved Dick into a velours chair. “Put this on,” he said, handing Dick a cordovan loafer.
Dick slid the shoe onto his bare foot. “It’s too big,” he said.
Kneeling in front of Dick, Spencer lifted the foot with the shoe onto his thigh. He laid a yellow scrap of soft cloth across the toe and began to shine it, buffing the leather.
“Did you just put a lot of polish on this shoe?” Dick said, shaking his foot loose. “Because look what it’s doing.” There was a ring of dark wax on the side of his ankle.
Spencer had his head turned. “Shhh,” he said. “Listen—Mom and Dad.”
There was a baritone noise from Dr. Sorenson, and Mrs. Sorenson’s tinkling response.
“What are they laughing about?” Spencer said.
“I wouldn’t know,” said Dick. “Probably not about us.”
Camilla
ROSPO SAID, “BUY A NICE coat for once. Buy the rabbit fur coat.” They were in Hecht’s—Rospo and his sister, Camilla—in the women’s department. The store had just opened, but was noisy with after-Christmas shoppers returning gifts.
Camilla did turns before a mirror, modeling a cloth jacket with a waist sash.
“It’s mannish,” Rospo said to her in Italian.
Camilla was forty. She had been in America since her teens, though she knew English from Italy, from the Dominican nuns. Rospo was a little older. He had learned English from Camilla.
They rode to her apartment on Rospo’s motorcycle. Rospo drove very fast, between lines of cars that were turning into the parking garages. Camilla balanced her shopping box on the bike saddle, between herself and Rospo. In the box was the rabbit fur coat. Camilla breathed through her mouth, and her breath streamed off sideways, like the bike’s exhaust.
She lived on the ground floor of a brick row house, on Aisley Street, in Baltimore. She had never married. She lived alone. She worked nights, driving an elevator in a hotel, and she was still dressed in the elevator uniform.
“Call you up later,” she told Rospo.
He left her in the alley by her house, holding the shopping box. She took the box inside, unpacked the new coat, and laid it on the bed.
At her stove, she cooked ground sausage and eggs. She carried the food to her bedroom, and ate with her elbows on her knees, the plate held in front of her, watching an early news broadcast on her color television.
When she finished with the food, Camilla cleaned her face and hands at the bathroom sink and traded her uniform tunic for the rabbit fur coat. She opened the bathroom door and stood back before its full-length mirror, smoking a Winsto
n cigarette.
Camilla wanted the fashion model to see the coat—the fashion model who lived upstairs, the woman Anne.
THE AIR ON THE STEPS leading to Anne’s rooms smelled of new carpet and paint. Camilla pushed the door buzzer, and stepped away with a hand at her waist.
Anne opened the door. She was stooped with drink. She had charcoal make-up on her eyelids. She wore a dress that Camilla thought was made of foil.
Anne led Camilla into the living room, which had fresh paint, the color of lime, and small birch trees standing in pots. On the muslin-draped sofa sat Daniel, Anne’s friend. An adding machine was on the low table before him, as well as a whiskey bottle, ice in tumblers, and a sheaf of papers. Daniel wore his glasses, and over his ears were plastic headphones. He was beating his foot as he punched the keys of the adding machine.
“He’s doing taxes,” Anne said. She kissed Camilla’s face. “You’re Rospo’s sister, aren’t you? I almost didn’t know you, you look so pretty. You’re the one who’s in love with Daniel.”
Camilla’s face heated and she hid her chin in the collar of her coat. She tried to cover her features with spread fingers.
“He can’t hear me. Don’t worry,” the model said. “Can you, moron?” she said to Daniel. Daniel’s head continued bobbing as he worked the adding machine. “Rospo told me about how you feel,” Anne said, “when he came up once before to trim my hair. I guess he gave me a good cut. I’m not sure. We were laughing so much.” Anne walked over to the record player and lifted the tone arm. “Rospo’s a barber, after all, not a stylist.”
Daniel looked up and smiled at Camilla. “Captain,” he said, and smiled. He took off the headphones.
“She’s got a pretty new coat,” Anne said.
“Yes, it is new,” Camilla said. “Do you like it?”
“Sure I do,” Anne said.
“A great coat,” Daniel said.
“I thought I would invite you to the movies, Anne. So I could have a chance to wear it,” Camilla said. “To a matinee?”
Anne said, “I’d never make it through one single feature. Danny and I didn’t sleep all night, you know. I was helping him do his income taxes.”
