Tell Me

by Mary Robison

  “I’ve seen them thriving,” Gene said. He swallowed half of his drink and refilled the glass from the shaker. “Dell,” he said, “get your daughter in here. Everybody come over here and sit down around the coffee table. This is a meeting. Charlotte!”

  Dell went out and reappeared with Charlotte, who was holding a plastic doll with blonde hair. They found seats around the low mahogany table. Gene had the cocktail shaker in front of him.

  “This is about you,” Gene said to Charlotte. He took an old-fashioned jeweler’s watch case out of his sweater pocket and tipped back the hinged lid with his thumb.

  “Oh,” Charlotte said. She got down from her seat beside her mother and sat on the floor.

  “You know what’s in this box, don’t you, Charlotte?” Gene said.

  “I broke his watch,” Charlotte said.

  “First she stole it, then she broke it,” Gene said. He held up a gold wristwatch with a shattered crystal. The hands of the watch were smashed against the watch face. “This was my anniversary present,” Gene said. “Your mother gave it to me, Dell, on our twenty-fifth.”

  “Charlotte, this is terrible,” Dell said. “Look at that watch. I feel so sorry for Grandpa.”

  “I feel sorry for him,” Charlotte said. She tugged with her fingers at the carpet.

  Dell said, “It was an important, special thing of his.”

  “It was irreplaceable,” Gene said.

  “All right, we’re sorry, Father,” Dell said. “But I don’t think this is the time for a reprimand.”

  “Reprimand?” Gene said. “Hell, I just want to know why she did it.”

  “You’re on the hot seat,” Pierce said to Charlotte.

  Charlotte looked at him out of the corner of her eye. She rocked forward and planted her spread hands on the carpet. She tried to do a headstand.

  “Getting upside down won’t help,” Pierce said.

  Dell picked a cigarette from a lacquered box on the table. She said, “Charlotte, go get Mommy’s lighter from the bedroom.”

  “You send a kid for a cigarette lighter?” Gene said. He gestured to Charlotte to stay where she was.

  “Probably unwise,” Pierce said.

  “I do it all the time,” Dell said. “It never occurred to me.”

  “Well, when you come home and your home is a charred black hole it will occur to you,” Gene said.

  “I just wanted to shoo her off, Father,” Dell said, putting down the cigarette. “I’ve wanted to discuss this stealing thing with her, but not now. She’s embarrassed and on the spot. Aren’t you, Charlotte?” She leaned over and looked at her daughter. “Are you crying? Do I see tears?”

  “No,” Charlotte said. She was lying on her hip.

  “Neither do I,” Gene said. “Frankly, Charlotte, I could wring your neck.”

  Dell said, “Thank you very much, Father. Now I think it’s time for Charlotte and me to take a bath.”

  “I wouldn’t know what time it is,” Gene said. “I don’t have a watch.”

  Dell refilled her glass and tasted her drink. “My, these are strong,” she said. “Excuse me, Pierce.” She took the cocktail and Charlotte and left the room.

  •

  Dell balanced her drink on the side of the tub in Charlotte’s bathroom and turned on the tub faucets. Charlotte came into the room on tiptoes.

  “A bath, and then I’m tucking you in,” Dell said.

  “Now?” Charlotte said.

  “It’s so early. I don’t even see the moon.”

  “What I see is you,” Dell said. “And, unless I’m mistaken, you have completely disrobed. Hop in.” “I’m so hungry,” Charlotte said.

  “Didn’t I offer you dinner downtown? Would you eat it? No, you wouldn’t.”

  Dell left Charlotte in the bathroom. A few minutes later, she came back carrying a tray with a dish of sliced fruit and cheese and a glass of pink soda on it. She put the tray down on the closed toilet seat. Charlotte was in the tub, surrounded by a flotilla of bath toys. Dell undressed, dropping her clothes on the bathroom floor. She retrieved her gimlet and stepped into the tub behind her daughter.

  Charlotte twisted around and sniffed. “God,” she said, “why are you drinking that?”

  “Don’t say ‘God’ to me, Charlotte,” Dell said. “You are in enough trouble. Your grandfather’s had it with you, in case you don’t know. You walked off with Dr. Hanley’s paperweight. Then you brought home Trish Bydecker’s doll buggy. You stole seventy-four dollars from somebody. Now you’ve crushed Grandpa’s poor watch. Think about it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Charlotte said.

  Dell finished her drink and submerged her glass in the bathwater. “You’ve got one last chance, Charlotte,” she said. “I think you’ll agree it’s better for us if you stay out of sight and under the blankets tonight. Do I hear a ‘yes’?”

  Charlotte heaved a sigh and nodded.

  Dell’s face was flushed. She said, “So you see, if you go to sleep in a while, or even pretend to go to sleep, I’ll buy you a car tomorrow.”

  “What kind of car?” Charlotte said.

  “Like Pierce and Nicholas’s. You can drive around town and get some new friends.”

  “What will you really buy me?” Charlotte said.

  “It depends,” Dell said. “Stretch Armstrong?”

  Charlotte made a little shiver of pleasure. “Would you really?”

  “Really,” Dell said. “Sleep tonight, and Stretch Armstrong when you wake up.” She soaped Charlotte’s back and drew numerals on it with her fingernail.

  •

  When Dell came back to the living room, she was wearing a silk blouse, pleated trousers, and patent-leather slip-ons. She found her father pacing up and down with a library book open in his hand. He had his reading glasses on. Pierce was sitting on the couch, holding a golf putter. He looked a little stunned. Some of his dark hair had come forward on his forehead.

  Gene said, “Sit down, Dell. I want you to hear this. ‘It seemed as though I had left my body and was about ten yards above myself, floating in the air,’” he read. “‘I could see myself down below, crushed beneath the car’s tires, but I felt no pain. I was strangely detached. I wasn’t even interested.’”

  “Don’t let Father read to you,” Dell said to Pierce. “You poor thing.”

  “I’m all right,” Pierce said. “I’m about ten yards above myself, feeling no pain or even interest.”

  “This proves life after death, I think,” Gene said.

  “What about dinner?” Dell said. “Have you offered Pierce dinner, or were you going to put him in a coma first?”

  “I’m hungry, too,” Gene said, “but let me finish. I was reading about this guy who was hit by a car.” He closed the book. “I’ll just tell you, all right? The guy is legally dead. Heart stopped. No brain waves. You know what he hears?”

  “How can he hear anything?” Pierce said.

  “Angels,” Gene said. “A choir thing starts up for him.”

  Pierce had poked the golf club into his shirtsleeve and worked it up to his shoulder, so that his left arm stuck straight out. “I wouldn’t hear choirs,” he said. “I hate choirs.”

  “It’s different at my age,” Gene said.

  “I think I have to leave now,” Pierce said. “Gene’s liquor has punched me between the antlers.”

  “Gets you, doesn’t it?” Gene said.

  “Come on in the kitchen with me, Pierce,” Dell said. “I’ll phone for a cab, and you can watch me fix dinner.”

  “There are some strip steaks thawing in the icebox,” Gene said.

  Pierce shook his arm, and the golf putter fell down his sleeve and onto the carpet.

  “Everyone must have a clear conception of his or her relationship with God,” Gene said. He spoke with great precision, pronouncing each syllable.

  “I don’t,” Pierce said. He followed Dell into the kitchen.

  She called a cab on a wall phone in the breakfast nook, and
then she walked back and forth under the cabinets, gathering plates and shaking out napkins. She took a head of lettuce from the refrigerator and began washing the leaves under cold water at the sink.

  Pierce had found a bone-handled carving knife and sharpener, and he drew the blade back and forth against the rod. “We haven’t taken in another boarder since you,” he said. “You left quite a hole in our lives, Delilah, which I could manage to live with if you’d phone once in a while.”

  “I haven’t called because of guilt,” Dell said. “I know I still owe you that rent money. You’ve been very nice not to mention it.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Pierce said.

  “No, I do owe it, and I’m working on paying you. You’ll get a pleasant surprise in the mail someday.”

  “Don’t embarrass me,” Pierce said. He put the knife down and picked up his gimlet glass from the top of the dishwasher. “Don’t put a strain on our friendship.”

  “I know how angry I made Nicholas,” Dell said.

  “Nicholas is an old lady,” Pierce said. “Anyway, he and I are thinking of getting a divorce. We’ve been at each other’s throat twenty-four hours a day lately. You hang on to your money. You got a rough break from your husband, and you need all the money you have. Nicholas and I don’t need it, and you know I’m telling the truth, because I’m generally such a bitch about finances.”

  Dell twisted a knob on the stove and then looked out the bay window in the breakfast nook. A pair of headlights was moving down the drive. “I see your cab, Pierce,” she said.

  Pierce went out of the kitchen, and when he came back he was stuffing his arms into his raincoat sleeves. “Gene’s conked out,” he said. “He’s using his afterlife book for a pillow.” He stooped a little and squinted out the bay window. “Why, that’s Nicholas. What do you know? He came back for me.”

  “Will he come in?” Dell said.

  “He’s too ashamed,” Pierce said. “He’ll sit out there in the car until I go to him.” He leaned forward and kissed Dell on the mouth.

  Charlotte came into the kitchen wearing a clean nightgown. She had a sheet of red construction paper with a crayon drawing of a dog on it.

  “Is that Django?” Pierce said. “For me?”

  “Yes, I drew it for you,” Charlotte said. She looked at her mother.

  “Instead of being asleep,” Dell said.

  There was a quick, loud horn blast from the driveway. Pierce shrugged and worked the collar of his raincoat into place. “I’m being called,” he said.

  8

  Seizing Control

  WE WEREN’T SUPPOSED TO stay up all night, but Mother was in the hospital having Jules, and Father was at the hospital waiting.

  We spent a long time out in this blizzard. We had the floodlights on out behind the house, and our backyard shadows were mammoth. We kicked a maze—each of us making a path that led to a fort like an igloo we piled up at the center of the maze. We built the fort last, but then nobody wanted to get inside. Hazel patted the fort and said, “Victory!”—from a movie she knew or something. We didn’t quit and come in until Sarah, the youngest, was whimpering.

  Our cuffs and gloves were stiff and had ice balls crusted on them. Our socks were soaked. All of us had snow in our boots—even Terrence, who had boots with buckles. Zippers were stuck with cold. Our ears burned for a long while after, and our hair was dripping wet from melted snow. We put everything we could fit into the clothes dryer and turned it to roll for an hour.

  Our neighbors on both sides had been asked to guard us and watch the house (there were five of us kids, not counting Jules), so when it got late and the TV had signed off we put out the lights and had a fire in the fireplace instead. We didn’t subscribe to cable, and Providence, where we lived, has no all-night channel on weekends (this was a Friday). Sometimes we could get Channel 5 from Boston, but not that night, not with the blizzard.

  Hazel, who was the oldest of us, was happy about the fire but baffled about the television. Hazel was retarded. She’d get the show listings from the Providence Journal and underline what she wanted to see. To do this, she must have had some kind of coding system she’d memorized, because of course she couldn’t read. This was the first time Hazel had ever been awake when the TV wasn’t.

  She watched the fireplace, and once when she saw an up-shoot of flame she said, “The blue star!” which was what she called a beautiful blue ring that our mother wore. Hazel watched the fire some more and kept quiet enough. She had her texture board with her on her lap. “Smooth … grainy … soft,” she recited, but just to herself, as she felt the different squares.

  Terrence got on the telephone and called up a friend of his—Vic, who’d claimed he always stayed up all night. Terrence couldn’t get anyone but Vic’s very alarmed parents. He didn’t give them his name. Terrence was also drinking a bottle of wine cooler—Father’s—which wasn’t allowed, but the rest of us had shared a can of beer earlier and now we were having coffee that we’d made in the drip machine, neither of which we were allowed to do, either. We figured we were all about even and no one would tell.

  Hazel started to get annoying with her texture board. She had torn off the square of wide-wale corduroy, and she kept wanting the rest of us to feel the beads of rubber cement left on the backing. “Touch this,” she said over and over to Willy, our other brother.

  We took her to bed, to our parents’ king-sized bed—which we thought would be all right this once. And Sarah, the baby, was there in bed already. At first Sarah pretended to be asleep while Hazel was undressing. She could undress herself if she stood before a mirror, and she knew to arch her back and work her hands behind to get her bra unhooked. She never wore clothing that looked retarded. In fact, whenever Father said to her, “How come you always look so pretty?” Hazel really would look pretty. She swung her arms when she walked, the same as the rest of us.

  Sarah pretended to wake up suddenly. She wanted her cherry ChapStick—her lips were so dry, she complained. Terrence must have heard Sarah—we were downstairs—because she was being so insistent. He called, “You left it out in the yard! You had it outside with you. You left it.” Sarah believed Terrence, because his voice had authority. He was very attuned to voices, and he knew how to use his though he was only seventeen. He’d say to Hazel, “Don’t sound like you’re six years old. You’re not six.” Or if someone said just what was expected and predictable Terrence would ask, “Why should I listen when you’re only making noise?”

  Sarah wanted us to retrieve her ChapStick. But the blizzard was still on, and nobody was going back out there, however sorry for her we felt. Most of the time when Sarah was outside, she’d kept her wool muffler over her mouth to protect it. Willy had to wrap it around her, under the hood of her parka, so it was just right. She had baby skin and the cold got to her.

  Late in the night, Hazel punched Sarah in the face when they were supposed to be sleeping. Probably they were asleep, and Hazel was probably having a dream. Terrence was interested in dreams and wrote about his in a dream journal he kept. Sometimes he’d ask us questions about ours, or he’d talk to Mother and Father about the meaning of dreams. But he didn’t ask Hazel if she was dreaming when she swung and socked Sarah.

  We all talked at once: “I can’t find a coat.… Wear mine.… Un-unh, I hate that coat.… This is wet! … Go look in the dryer.… Get a blanket—get two! … No one will see you except maybe the doctor.… It makes virtually no difference what you’re wearing or how you look.… Another towel for her nose! … Let’s just get out of here.”

  Terrence warmed up the old Granada out on the street, where Father had parked it because the driveway was snowed over. We left Hazel alone in our parents’ bed, and we carried Sarah. We put her in the back, and then two of us got on either side of her. Sarah was covered up with a blanket and also Father’s old topcoat.

  The snow blew around in the headlights. No one else was out, and we urged Terrence to run the red lights. He said he co
uldn’t afford to—his license was only a learner’s permit. He also had a fake license from one of his friends, but the fake said Terrence was twenty-six, which wasn’t believable. We begged him to put on some speed. We said that with a hurt person aboard, the police might even give us an escort through the storm. Terrence said, “Well, I checked her out and she’s not that hurt, unfortunately.”

  A man walking his brown poodle loomed up beside us for a moment. The poodle was jumping around in the deep snow, loving it.

  “Dog,” Sarah said through her towel bandage. She was wide awake.

  •

  After the emergency room, we left Sarah on the car seat. She was out cold from the shot, even though the doctor said it was just to relax her. Her nose was nowhere near broken.

  We’d driven a while and then we hustled into an all-night pancake place, there off Thayer Street. Inside it was steamy and yellow-lit, although it felt a little underheated. We took over one side of an extra-long booth, each of us assuming giant seating space and sprawling convivially. Our arms were spread and they connected us to one another like paper dolls.

  We spent time with the menu, reading aloud what side stuff came with the “Wedding Pancake,” or with the “Great American French Toast.” Willy wanted a “Sliced Turkey Dinner Platter,” but Terrence said, “Don’t get that. It’s frozen. I mean frozen when served, as you’re eating and trying to chew.” The waitress approached, order pad in hand. She wore a carnation-pink dress for a uniform. We fidgeted in irrelevant ways, as if finding more comfortable spots on the booth seat. But we didn’t whisper our orders. We acted important about our need for food. We’d been through an emergency.

  After the waitress, we discussed what we’d tell Mother and Father, exactly. They’d be so busy anyway, we said, with baby Jules. They’d been busy already. Father had painted the nursery again, same as he’d done for each of us.

  We wondered if washing-machine cold-water soap might remove the bloodstains Sarah had left on the pillowcase.

  “We’ll tell them …” Terrence said, but he couldn’t finish. We pressed him. We wanted to know.