Tell Me

by Mary Robison

  In the weeks before my stay at the farm, I had been awake too much. Whenever I did sleep, what ugly dreams! One I remember was of me roller-skating down cement hill after hill, no way to stop. Marcus, my husband, and I lived in a three-bedroom, all-electric condominium north of Chicago. Marcus, an architect with a pretty good downtown firm, looked as if he could have been my dad or even my grandfather, with his prematurely white hair and silvery beard. Whenever we were in a place where someone might see us together—even if we just stepped out onto our second-floor balcony for a whiff of the morning—Marcus had to have his arm low on the back of my waist, or his hand on the back of my neck, almost in a chokehold, announcing to everyone that I was in fact his. To me, that was sadder and a bigger problem than his skirt-chasing.

  Evenings on the farm, Kenneth would grill steaks or chops outside and my sister and I would do the salad, sometimes corn. We’d open wine. We would cut up muskmelon. After eating, we’d sit on the long flagstone patio, with its view of yard and pond, and maybe drink a Scotch. One night, we finally talked about Marcus and me.

  “You’re doing everything wrong,” Barbara said, as if she had been holding back for a long time.

  “For what it’s worth, I agree,” Kenneth said.

  “You broke a window? You phoned one of these women? Those were stupid moves, honey,” my sister said.

  “The surest way to drive him off forever,” Kenneth said.

  “While making anybody else look good,” Barbara added.

  So I had all that, their opinions, to consider, one afternoon while I was brushing Sunny down, pushing the curry brush along his flanks. Sunny started, kicked back, twisted his great neck, and bit me. Kenneth heard my yelp. He came from the tack room—authoritative in jeans, Dingo boots, a white shirt with pearl snap buttons—and scolded me. “Tie up his lead, for heaven’s sake. Get his head up. He doesn’t know enough not to hurt you. That’s a horse you’re playing with, not a puppy dog.” And he went on and said I might do well to learn a bit more about barn etiquette before I slapped on Barbara’s equestrian clothes and rode out “like Princess Di or somebody.”

  A week or so before, at the aluminum water trough, I had surprised Kenneth when he wasn’t wearing his dentures. Of course I knew Kenneth had been stuck with a removable upper plate for many years, although he was only just over fifty. A truck wreck had knocked most of the teeth out of his teenaged smile. He faced me there at the trough with an unusual gentleness. And then he winked. I made no mention of this to Barbara. Kenneth impatient or Kenneth embarrassed could lose no grace by me—he was tops. He deserved every minute of Barbara, to my mind. He deserved his smart wife and his good farm. Self-absorbed as I was, I had watched him going about the chores of his farmer’s life—some piddling, some awful, duties. He labored with a kind of patriotism, as though finishing things and doing them well meant the health of his home, his country.

  •

  At the tail of August came a series of savage thunderstorms. The rain flailed in the woods and made Amanda Creek wide. Thunder rolled through the afternoon skies, and lightning whitened the world in strobe flashes. Riding was out. I was talking to Marcus long-distance, in daily sessions—five minutes, then fifteen, finally half an hour—and in our pauses I could hear the crackle of electricity in the lines. When I rang off, I would go stand out in the soupy yard, unsheltered, getting soaked sometimes.

  The storms ended in fiery, poignant sunsets. In the blush of one of these, with the frogs and crickets ratcheting away down by the pond, Barbara talked to me. She said, “You know, it’s all work. Marriage, money, property—the big things. It’s not your fault you’re too young to know if it’s worth it—seeing to all the details. You’ve got to—you’ve got to insist.”

  She was riding in the giant doughnut hole of a tractor tire. The tire was roped to a monster willow, off on the side lawn.

  “Or maybe you think there’s a simpler way to be. All by yourself.” Barbara was turning the swing in circles, winding up the hemp. “I hear you sobbing into the phone. I know what Marcus is like.”

  Five days of not riding and I was feeling flabby and earth-bound. In the mirror in the mornings, my hair was very tired, my sunburn drying away and peeling off beneath my eyes.

  “Kenneth’s cheated on me. I’ve done it to him. It’s terrible,” Barbara said. “But being so selfish and wrong often brings with it a sort of strength. You know?”

  I knew. That was the look I’d seen in Kenneth’s face when I’d seen him with his teeth out. He didn’t care.

  She raised her anchor foot and let the tire spin. I was dizzy for her. Whatever that moment was in the woods, I wanted it back. I wanted Barbara to stop revolving, and the rain to end, and the summer to start over—for everything to just hold off until I could catch up.

  5

  The Help

  “I’LL NEED A TON of things if you want me to do this right,” Lola said. She pressed her hands on her waist—a pretty, brown-skinned woman in her middle thirties. “Rug shampoo, more steel wool, cleanser, a new mop. I’m not going to clean floors with a sponge. A new mop and some window cleaner. I think I need a professional window cleaner.”

  “Sit down, darling,” Mr. Cleveland said. “We’ll hash it out.”

  “I don’t want to sit down. I want to get rolling on the cleaning so I can get it over with,” Lola said. She moved from the kitchen doorway into the tile-floored breakfast room, where Mr. Cleveland sat over plates of melon and ham-and-eggs.

  He pinned an English muffin with his fork and knifed off a bite. He was sixty-seven, a Texan long ago transplanted to Indiana. He wore an old-fashioned dressing gown with padded shoulders and wide velvet lapels.

  “Anyhow, I thought a cleaning person was responsible for furnishing the tools of her trade,” he said. He gave her a sweet, closemouthed smile.

  “I’m not a cleaning woman. I’m a cook and a maid,” Lola said.

  “My Lord, call the lawyers. I didn’t read the fine print on your labor contract,” Cleveland said. “No, you have Howdy drive you to the Fairway, and charge up whatever you need. Only don’t charge an electric garage-door opener or a rotisserie barbecue grill. And don’t buy a set of drill bits.”

  “No drill bits,” Lola said.

  Mr. Cleveland was retired, but he owned most of a company that bottled eighteen varieties of soda pop. He lived in a big Tudor-style home, in a little woods bordering a country club.

  “Look who’s up from the dead,” Lola said.

  Cleveland’s son, Howdy, came into the dining room and flopped into a chair. He was a tall young man, with a strong jaw, rusty hair like his father’s, and clear blue eyes under white lashes.

  “Walk on tiptoe,” Cleveland said to his son. “Lola’s on a human-rights campaign this morning. She’ll bite off your head.”

  “Morning, Lola,” Howdy said.

  “Ms. Turtledge,” Cleveland said.

  “Coffee’s on the counter,” Lola said.

  Howdy poured some coffee and stared sleepily at the vase of day lilies in the middle of the table.

  “Damn teeth,” Cleveland said. He had paused, with a forkful of eggs in midair.

  “Now you have another toothache,” Lola said.

  “Aspirin,” he said.

  “Aspirin is horrible for your stomach,” Howdy said. He yawned.

  “Last time your dad took aspirin, we heard about it all day and all that night,” Lola said.

  “You’re a lovely woman and a very bright one,” Mr. Cleveland said, putting down his fork. “You and Howdy would do well in medical school. Dr. Lola and Dr. Howdy.”

  “Right,” Lola said.

  “I’d like to shoot you both in the heart,” Mr. Cleveland said. “Only you don’t have hearts. Lola, you’re fired.”

  “Sure I am,” Lola said. “Again. Good.”

  “I’ll hire you back,” Howdy said. “At least long enough to fix me some of those eggs.”

  “He’ll pay you in original artwork,�
�� Cleveland said. “An original Howdy oil painting each month, and some charcoal studies of naked people for your extra change.”

  Lola brought a swatch of cloth from the pocket of the smock she wore over her Levi’s and began dusting the leaves of a potted palm that stood in a cement urn before the diamond-paned windows. “Spring cleaning has officially begun,” she said. “In the eggs-and-aspirin department, you can both just forage for yourselves.”

  “Get me the Yellow Pages, Howdy,” Mr. Cleveland said. “I want the phone number of a good employment agency.”

  •

  Howdy was taking Lola to the store in his M.G. Midget, to get her cleaning supplies. He was driving too fast down a winding graveled road. He wore wraparound sunglasses and white perforated gloves.

  “My mother did paintings!” he shouted at Lola. “She won some prizes at a few county fairs. Landscapes.”

  Lola was gripping her seat and the door of the rattling M.G. They bucketed over a deep pothole.

  “She was Irish and very moody,” Howdy said. “Her pictures are typically Irish. It was always raining and there were no people in them.”

  “Maybe she couldn’t draw people,” Lola said, also shouting over the noise of the car and the wind.

  “Maybe,” Howdy said. “Anyhow, she divorced Daddy and went back to Dublin. I was ten or so.”

  “So you told me,” Lola said. “Your father told me, too. Could you slow down?”

  “Don’t think about it,” he said, and twisted the wheel. “How’re your classes?”

  “Poor,” Lola said. “I don’t have time to do all the reading.”

  “What?” Howdy said.

  “The reading!” Lola shouted. “It’s slow going. I don’t have the time to concentrate.”

  She and Howdy were both going to the local university. He had started in economics and dropped out. Now he was back, as a fine-arts major. Lola was studying sociology, in night school. This was her fifth year there.

  “Yeah, me, too,” Howdy said. “One thing I found out, though. I don’t want to be an artist anymore. That’s all a racket, and you have to kiss somebody’s behind to have your work taken. Besides, nobody looks at paintings anymore unless they can’t help it.”

  The top of the car was down, and it was hot. Howdy stuck out his left hand and let it ride on the air current. “Guess what,” he said.

  “Don’t make me guess,” Lola said.

  “I took a drama class as an elective—” Howdy said.

  “Uh-oh,” Lola said.

  “And you know, I’m good? For my first project, I did Tom’s opening speech from The Glass Menagerie. I got an A-plus—plus.”

  “They don’t have those plus jobs in the Sociology Department,” Lola said.

  “Don’t tell Daddy, but I’m also painting the scenery for the Midsummer Fête. It’s a musical, written by some senior drama students. I’m in the chorus, too, believe it or not.”

  “You’ll sing in it?” Lola said.

  Howdy worked the clutch and yanked the gearshift for a sharp corner. “It’s a musical comedy about Stalin and Marilyn Monroe,” he said.

  “What?” Lola said.

  “It’s satire!”

  “Your father will like that,” said Lola.

  Howdy laughed and banged the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. “Won’t he? He won’t see the humor, of course.”

  “I’m not sure I do,” Lola said.

  “Come on, Lola. Stalin really gets his in this musical. In fact, it has a very sad ending—sort of powerful. That’s a breakthrough, to me. Traditionally, the Fête is gay and frivolous.”

  “Not this year,” Lola said.

  “Right,” Howdy said. “I’m really thinking I was born for the stage.”

  •

  Lola trundled her cart up and down the wide, bright aisles of athletic equipment, toys, cameras, fabrics, pyramids of cut-rate motor oil, TVs, hammocks, shoes. Howdy followed her, singing along with the Muzak: “‘Ahhh, look at all the lonely people.…’”

  A man in plaid pants stared at Howdy. Howdy sang louder, watching the man.

  “Cool down,” Lola said.

  “I’ll tell you,” Howdy said. “Most people are prisoners in their own flesh.”

  He went off, saying he was going to inspect the art supplies. Lola rolled the cart around the housewares department until her basket was full, and then she pushed up to the checkout counters. She stood away from the lines, waiting for Howdy, who had the charge card.

  After twenty minutes, she left the cart and went to hunt for him. She finally spotted him in men’s sportswear. He was posing in front of a triptych of mirrors, in a white jumpsuit.

  “Where have you been? I was about to report a lost child,” Lola said.

  “Right here,” Howdy said. “Ray? This is Lola.” He gestured toward a chunky salesman, who was standing beside him. “This is … Ray?” he said, and the salesman nodded.

  “Don’t you love this coverall?” Ray said.

  “What are all the zippers for?” she asked.

  “Whatever,” Ray said.

  “I can see his underpants through that material,” Lola said.

  “I have complete movement,” Howdy said. He did a knee bend.

  “I think it’s for girls,” Lola said. “Can we please go?”

  “Men are wearing these, actually,” Ray said to Howdy. “You’ll see a lot of them this season.”

  “Well, don’t bring that playsuit to me on washday,” Lola said. “It’ll have to be washed in its own machine, with four or five quarts of bleach.”

  “It’s new and it takes getting used to,” the salesman said. “I think your wife here will get to like it, though.”

  “His wife?” Lola said.

  Howdy looked pleased. “Well, I’ll take it,” he said. “You can bag my old clothes.”

  The carry-out boy stacked Lola’s sacks in the trunk of the M.G. Howdy slammed the trunk lid and said, “Now lunch. How about the lunchroom right across the way?”

  “I should be home—I left the dishwasher running,” Lola said. “It’s broken, and the only way it’ll stop is if somebody yanks the door open.”

  “Daddy’ll figure it out,” Howdy said.

  Inside, they climbed onto revolving stools at the soda fountain. They gave their orders to a girl wearing a paper waitress hat. “I want my coffee right away,” Howdy said.

  They didn’t say anything while they waited. Howdy slowly rotated on his stool. Lola was thinking about her Statistics test, the next week. When her order came—a banana split on an oblong dish—she pushed the whipped cream to one side and then took a careful spoonful of strawberry and chocolate ice cream, mixed.

  Howdy swore suddenly and put down his coffee cup. Coffee had dribbled all down the front of his new outfit.

  “Well, you can wear it to wash the car in,” Lola said. “That’s probably what it was made for anyway.”

  Howdy scrubbed at the stains with a napkin. “This’ll come out, won’t it?” he said.

  “Nope. But I could make enough coffee to fill your bathtub, and you could put it in and then the suit would be all coffee color.”

  Howdy shrugged. “How many years have I known you?” he said.

  “Four, about. Why? Are you going to ask me for a date?” Lola said, and hacked up her banana.

  “Not a date, exactly. I was going to ask you to come and see me in a play.”

  “Oh, of course I’ll do that. I’d enjoy that,” Lola said.

  “I don’t know hardly anybody to ask, after all the rehearsing I’m doing. Daddy wouldn’t like it, for sure.”

  “No,” Lola said. “So I’ll come. But you’ll have a lot of people watching. A whole audience.”

  “All strangers,” Howdy said.

  Lola said. “I’d be nervous with family or friends out there.”

  Howdy said, “But you wouldn’t do it to begin with.”

  •

  Mr. Cleveland swung his slippered feet do
wn from the davenport. “Great to see you-all,” he said to Lola and Howdy. “You have a good vacation in Jamaica, or what? You’ve got some explaining to do to the police, the both of you, because I called them after Lola wasn’t back in time for Another World. I explained how you must have been captured by the P.L.O., or something.” He’d been watching television in the den, drinking a Scotch-and-water.

  Howdy helped Lola carry the sacks into the kitchen, and then went back out to the M.G. for the last of the supplies. Lola yanked open the dishwasher, and steam billowed out. She cleared some space in the floor cabinets and put away the cleaning equipment. “I suppose you’re starving,” she called out to Mr. Cleveland. “I’ll make a chef’s salad and soup.”

  She dried her hands and walked back to the den. “You must be drunk, Mr. Cleveland. I didn’t hear you comment on Howdy’s new suit.”

  “Where is he?” Cleveland said.

  Lola put her index finger up to signal quiet. Howdy came by the den door, struggling with a bucket and a couple of brooms.

  Mr. Cleveland looked him up and down. “That’s terrible,” he said.

  “So what’s going on here?” Lola said, pointing to the television.

  Cleveland said, “That boy, Willis, is back in the soup with his wife. And that other boy, with the dark hair, is upset about his mama.”

  “Umm. Same as yesterday,” Lola said.

  •

  Lola worked the rest of the afternoon. She took down the drapes, all over the house, and boxed them for the dry cleaner. She washed the insides of the windows. She carried a plastic transistor radio from room to room, tuned to a classical station. She checked in to the kitchen, at intervals, to tend a pot of fish chowder and some chicken breasts she was getting ready for the broiler.

  Howdy had gone to his afternoon classes. Mr. Cleveland was asleep on the davenport.

  At six, Lola stood on the kitchen counter, cleaning the top shelf of a high cabinet. The overhead lights snapped on.

  “You’ll ruin your eyes,” Mr. Cleveland said. He had changed from his robe to a V-necked sweater and chinos.

  Lola jumped down and switched off her little radio.

  “You look beat,” Cleveland said. The front-door chimes sounded. “Sit still,” he said, but Lola followed him to the entrance hall.