Tell Me

by Mary Robison

  “I did it. Here we go. They are Sirius, Canopus, Alpha Centauri, Arcturus, Vega,” I told her, and right on through to old reddish Antares.

  Mom was both smiling and grave, like a person hearing a favorite poem.

  “Mom,” I said, after a minute, “before commencement tomorrow, there’s the Senior Tea. It’s just cookies and junk, but I told them maybe you’d help serve. They wanted parents to be guards for the tables, just so nobody takes a hundred cookies instead of one or two.”

  She was surprised, I could tell. I wondered if she was flattered that I wanted her to be there.

  “Honey, I couldn’t do that,” she said, as though I had asked her to leap over our garage, or jog to Kansas. “I couldn’t do that.”

  The trip to Terre Haute was all the way beside a river. Sometimes, the river was just a large ditch and sometimes it was an actual wild river. Today, it was full to the banks, and we were rolling along in the bus at the same rate as the current.

  In the corner of my sight, I saw Mom fussing with the jumbo purse she had brought. I peeked down into it, and there were her toothbrush and plastic soap box and her cloth hair-curlers. So I knew she was thinking of getting off at Platte and seeing if they had a bed for her at the Institute there. I thought maybe Dr. Goff, whom she saw, had decided she ought to check in for a bit again. Or, more probably it was her idea.

  •

  The hospital was Mom’s idea, I finally learned from Grandpa, but it turned out they didn’t have space for her, or they didn’t think she needed to get in right then.

  She wasn’t at my graduation ceremony, which was just as well, in one way—I didn’t do a great job, since I had missed rehearsal. During the sitting moments, I wondered about her, though, and I decided that graduation had been one of the chief things upsetting her. She was scared of the “going forward into the world” parts of the commencement speeches.

  Grandpa lied to me. He said he was certain Mom was there, just back in one of the cooler seats, under the buckeye trees. Graduation was outside, see. He said Mom wanted shade.

  •

  Late that night, we were all three watching the Fright Theatre feature. A girl in the movie was married to a man who changed into a werewolf and attacked people. Sooner or later, you knew he was going to go after the girl.

  “That poor woman,” Mom kept saying.

  “She’s got it tough, all right,” Grandpa said. “Trying to keep her husband in Alpo.”

  I was exhausted from work. I was nibbling the black kernels and oily salt from the bottom of the popcorn bowl.

  “She has to make sure he’s got all his shots. He’s got to be wormed. Here she comes now, going to give him a flea collar,” Grandpa said.

  I liked being as dragged out as I was. My new apricot robe that Grandpa had made for me was across my legs, keeping them warm. My other graduation gifts, from Mom—really Grandpa—were all telescope related.

  There was a pause in the movie for a commercial. “Take a reading on this,” Grandpa said. He flipped a big white card to me. The card said, “Happy Graduation, Good Luck in Your Future.” It had come from my dad.

  I was still looking at the signature, Your father, when the movie started back up again. “What if Dad were back living with us?” I asked Grandpa and Mom.

  “It would cut down on your mom’s dating,” Grandpa said.

  Mom, concentrating on the television, said, “Uh-oh, full moon!”

  “But just suppose Dad were to somehow come back here and live with us,” I said to Mom. I had put down the card and was pulling on my short hair a little.

  “He better not,” she said.

  “You’re damn right, he better not,” Grandpa said.

  I was surprised. He even sounded angry. I guessed I had been wrong, thinking Grandpa missed having Dad as a crony so much.

  I stuffed a pillow behind my head and sat back and listened to the creepy music from the television and to a moth that was stupidly banging on the window screen. It would take a lot for my dad to understand us, and the way we three did things, I thought. He would have to do some thinking.

  “Ah, this couch feels good!” I said. “I could lie here forever.”

  I didn’t know whether or not Mom had heard me. But she was beaming, either way. She pointed to the TV screen, where the werewolf lay under a bush, becoming a person again. She said, “Shh.”

  3

  Smoke

  MARTY ELBER FOLLOWED HIS mother’s green sports car through Beverly Hills, but she was too good a driver for Marty to stay close, even on his motorcycle. The recently remarried Mrs. Audrey Elber Sharon caught the next-to-last corner before her new home at about sixty at the apex of the curve, tires twisting, exhaust pipes firing like pistol shots.

  She was laughing, leaning out of the open driver’s door of her car and brushing grains of sand from her bare feet, when Marty drove his bike onto the blacktop turnaround. He dropped his kickstand, sat back sideways on the bike saddle, and lighted a cigarette. He was wearing Levi’s, with suspenders and no shirt, and linesman’s boots. He was twenty-six.

  “I won,” his mother said. “You couldn’t catch me, and you had all the way from Santa Monica.”

  “All the way from Malibu,” Marty said. “I saw you leaving the Mayfair Market. You made every single light, though. I had to stop a lot.”

  Audrey Sharon picked up a paper sack of groceries and a cluster of iced-tea cans from the passenger seat of her car. She cradled the groceries in her arm, hooked the cans with her free fingers, used her knee to slam the car door, and came toward Marty. “Give us a puff,” she said.

  Marty put his cigarette between his mother’s lips. “I need to borrow a great deal of money,” he said while Audrey inhaled. “Before the weekend.”

  “Don’t talk to me,” she said, “talk to Hoyt.”

  Marty wiggled his jaw and yanked his chin strap loose. He lifted off his motorcycle helmet. “I can’t talk to Hoyt,” he said.

  Hoyt Sharon came around the corner from the side lawn, carrying a 9-iron and a perforated plastic golf ball. His white hair was cut to a fine bristle, and he wore a long-billed fishing cap and what looked to Marty like a crimson spacesuit—one-piece, with its Velcro closing straps undone from his throat to his belly.

  “Marty! Great! Come in, come in,” Hoyt said.

  “Hey,” Marty said, “how’s the honeymoon?”

  Hoyt had planted himself over the golf ball. He rolled his shoulders and swung the club. The ball clicked and flew up onto the slate-shingled garage roof. “So much for that soldier,” Hoyt said. He came up behind Audrey and tried to take the groceries away from her.

  “Will you please calm down?” she said to him. “Look at how much you’re sweating.”

  “O.K. Sorry,” Hoyt said.

  “If you want to help me carry, get the food cooler and beach umbrella from the trunk,” Audrey said.

  “Remember to talk to him for me,” Marty whispered to his mother as they trailed Hoyt across the lawn.

  Hoyt dumped the umbrella and golf club he was carrying and opened the front door for Audrey and Marty. They entered a paneled foyer cluttered with plants and bright oil paintings of sinewy cowboys. Audrey went up three carpeted steps and through a swinging saloon door that led to the kitchen.

  Hoyt led Marty through another foyer, which was being repapered with flocked maroon sheets; through the shadowy game room, where an old-fashioned dark-green billiard table stood on an emerald carpet; and into the library, which was two stories tall. Two of the library walls were glass, with louvered double doors, and in front of a third wall was a row of plush-covered theater seats, bolted to the floor. Above these, a mural depicted a cattle stampede and a cowboy being flung from the saddle of a panicky-looking horse.

  Marty sat down in a large wooden armchair decorated with old cattle brands. Hoyt threw himself into the sofa, which was as long and deep as a rowboat.

  “Your mom tell you about Henry Kissinger?” Hoyt said, clasping h
is hands behind his head. “It’s the damnedest thing. She tell you? You won’t believe it.”

  “I don’t think so,” Marty said. “No.”

  “Ben Deverow and his wife—you don’t know them—go into the Derby for lunch and there he is, Henry Kissinger.”

  “Really?” Marty said.

  “Yeah, having shrimp or something,” Hoyt said. “Only, you won’t believe this, but he’s in drag. He’s dressed up like a woman.”

  “Oh, come on,” Marty said, reaching across the coffee table for a copy of Sports Illustrated.

  “No. He’s really Kissinger, but he’s got a … a whatchamacallit.…” Hoyt pointed to the swordfish stitched on his cap.

  “A wig?”

  “No, he didn’t even have a wig. He had a little … like a hat thing, you know? With a little lace veil?”

  Marty said, “He couldn’t do that. Everyone would know if he dressed up like a woman and went out in public.”

  “That’s what you’d think,” Hoyt said. “It’s what I’d think, isn’t it? But it was him. I swear it.”

  “You weren’t even there,” Marty said.

  “You’re too quick for me,” Hoyt said. “I was lying. It wasn’t Kissinger at all. It was Ronald Reagan.”

  “He give you the Kissinger thing?” Audrey said as she padded into the room. “Isn’t that incredible?” She had put on a pair of jeans and combed her hair in a ponytail.

  Hoyt took a red tablet from his shirt pocket. He put the pill on his tongue, hopped up from the couch, crossed the room, and gulped water from a cut-glass pitcher on the bar. “Forgot my Stresstab,” he said apologetically.

  Marty cleared his throat three or four times, turning the pages of his magazine.

  “Marty needs money for his business, Hoyt,” Audrey said.

  “Why the hell didn’t he come to me before?” Hoyt said. He slapped his palms on the seat of his spacesuit.

  “He didn’t need money before,” Audrey said.

  “Look,” Hoyt said, “I get a kick out of helping young people. You know who helped me when I was stalled? Forty years ago, when Anaheim was just a crop of orange trees?”

  “Gene Autry,” Audrey said.

  “Gene Autry is who,” Hoyt said. “That’s right, honey.” He turned to Marty and said, “No, I don’t see any problem here. What are we playing with? Land?”

  “Smoke detectors,” Marty said. “I can get in on a pretty safe operation, Hoyt. Some friends in Sacramento tell me they’re thinking about making detectors mandatory in the next couple of years.”

  “Besides which, I believe in the damn things,” Hoyt said. “They’re like little alarms? You bet I do. They save lives. Friends of mine lost a kid in a fire once. I say ‘a kid,’ but I mean infant. You should have seen it.” He parted his hands. “They had a teeny-tiny casket only this big.”

  Audrey switched on the television, and a local charity telethon appeared on the screen. A high-school orchestra was playing “High Hopes.” Audrey sat down on the carpet in front of the set, and Hoyt leaned over and kissed one of her ears as they both watched the screen.

  “Can I neck with you for a second?” the show’s master of ceremonies said to a five-year-old girl whose legs were strapped into metal braces. The child had on a party dress. “Why can’t I?” he said. “Are you married?” He dropped on one knee before the girl and squinted at her suspiciously.

  “No, I’m too little,” the child said.

  “You aren’t too little,” the M.C. told her and the audience. “You’re one of the very biggest people on this planet, because your heart is full of courage and hope.”

  Marty went over and pulled open the double glass doors. They moved easily on their runners. There was the smell of cut grass, the knock of a carpenter’s hammer, the hiss of lawn sprinklers.

  Hoyt turned abruptly and came across the room. He sprang back and forth on the balls of his feet, shooting fists in combinations like a prizefighter. “O.K., buddy,” he said to Marty. “Your turn. Waltz with me a few rounds.”

  “I really can’t, Hoyt,” Marty said.

  “You want a grubstake,” Hoyt said. “You got to do a little dancing.” He moved easily, but his face was red. He jabbed wide of Marty’s throat, delicately pointing the knuckles of his half-closed fingers.

  Audrey turned off the television set and watched the two men with her arms folded.

  Hoyt stopped moving. Marty stood before him, flat-footed, with his arms half raised.

  “The old monkey,” Hoyt said. He swung a clowning roundhouse right that smashed into Marty’s left temple.

  “Jesus, Hoyt,” Marty said. The blow had knocked him onto the carpet, where he lay on one elbow and hip.

  “He’s all right,” Hoyt said to Audrey.

  “I’m all right,” Marty said, getting to his feet.

  Hoyt danced toward him. “Cover up,” Hoyt said, and Marty crouched and crossed his arms over his face.

  “Breadbasket,” Hoyt said, and whipped his left fist at Marty’s bare stomach. Marty walked away with his hands on his hips, trying to take a breath. He bent over and went into a squat.

  “Leave him alone,” Audrey said. “Poor Marty.”

  “Christ, Hoyt,” Marty said.

  “Woozy?” Audrey asked him. She pushed Marty forward until he went onto all fours, and then found a metal wastepaper basket, which she put down under his face.

  “I’m sorry, Marty,” Hoyt said. “That was nuts of me. Just wanted to get the blood running back to the pump, you know? Those weren’t supposed to land.”

  “You didn’t have to put his eye out,” Audrey said.

  “I think he did,” Marty said. “I can’t see out of it.”

  “Look at me,” Audrey said, taking Marty’s chin in her hand. “No. All it is is a little sliver-cut at the edge of the brow. You’ll have a mouse that may close your eye a bit. I’ll get you a cup of coffee.” She left the room.

  Marty sat on the couch. Hoyt paced in front of him. “Forget it, Marty, really,” he said. “I didn’t mean for those to land. You’re a great kid for not hauling off and plastering me right back.”

  Marty said, “I wouldn’t mess with you.”

  “What’d you say you’d need to get in on those alarm systems? Did you say three or four thousand?”

  “Really, three thousand is more than it would take,” Marty said. “Three thousand is great, sir.”

  “Not ‘sir.’ Don’t call me ‘sir.’” Hoyt went over to the door and took some deep breaths. He pounded his chest a few times. He put a finger on the side of his nose, closing off the nostril, and breathed deeply five or six more times. “Listen, though,” he said. “Don’t those fire alarms sometimes go off when there’s no fire?”

  “They’re working on that,” Marty said.

  “Your mother’s so mad at me,” Hoyt said.

  “I’ll tell her everything’s O.K.,” Marty said.

  When Audrey came back into the room, she was carrying a full cup of coffee for Marty. “Everything’s all right here,” Hoyt said. She and Marty smiled at each other. When Marty glanced over at Hoyt, he saw that Hoyt was grinning, too.

  “We’re in business,” Hoyt said. “My father told me the only things you got to worry about are sex, death, and money. And he told me if you’ve got the right family you’ll never have to worry about two of them. That just leaves death. Bear that in mind, friends.”

  4

  In the Woods

  HORSES, GOES THE RAP, are skittish and unpredictable and dangerous, but one I knew I got to love, although he was all those things. Sunny, the horse, lived with my sister and brother-in-law on their Indiana farm. A thousand-pound horse of the Tennessee Walking breed, Sunny was a strawberry roan, fifteen hands high. He would let me ride him around the periphery of Kenneth and Barbara’s considerable acreage there—hours of riding, every day—and I could safely keep my mind on that, and on Sunny. And I was grateful, because my marriage and most of the rest of me had recently spl
intered.

  It’s hard work to ride, and it was usually thick hot weather that summer, yet I never missed a day. I’d gear up in tall black boots, canvas trousers, a velvet helmet. Wearing these clothes every day assured something in me, they were such a treat to wear. From the corrugated-fiberglass stable, we’d go first across a meadow that my brother-in-law, Kenneth, kept mowed. It was washboard earth, ridged and baked hard, and so I’d let Sunny amble. Next we would tour a lane of shade trees and then turn into a careful path that invaded the woods. Along here we’d often get up speed, with the thud of hoof and jingle of bridle and, after a bit, Sunny’s rasping huge breath. Deep in, there was a ravine. I liked to rein up on its high side, admiring the frightening detail of full-blown summer. Weed wands would bow to me. Flower spokes would wag, and tree boughs, hideously muscled, would reach for me or shrug indifferently. There were mosses, bright green, and freckled toadstools layered like spills of pancakes against the trunks of trees. Sometimes, over the gabbing and ticking of bugs, I would listen to a tractor’s thin ringing. Its noise pulsed every other second, saying nothing, which was best, for there weren’t any words I wanted to hear.

  We’d go on to the open fields, into amazing heat. There were graded and scraped paths there, so Sunny’s cannons were safe. I could let him lope. Starting from points between my shoulder blades and breasts, the heat would hold me with its dullness and anger. My focus would soften.

  Sunny’s scent, I thought, was a regal one—leathery and old. And the heat would draw out other smells around us: cucumber, weeds, and dust. I’d dismount to eat wild scallions, but the blackberry canes that lined one pasture—like rows of spectators for Sunny and me—were so tall that I could pick from them while still in the saddle. Once, while I sat scrunched in the saddle eating berries out of my juice-stained fingers, there was a weird, thrilling thing. The miserly breeze gave up. I saw total stillness, as in a freeze-frame. It was as though the world had died but not quite yet bothered to topple. Blades of grass, bugs, blank sky, even Sunny, were all cast in glass. I was alone in it and feeling suddenly afloat, as if I had bolted a lot of champagne.