Tell Me

by Mary Robison

  “What’s the big deal about ninety-four degrees?” Shane said. “In L.A., that’s the norm.”

  “Well, for June,” Jonathan said.

  “You’d think it was some crisis,” Shane said. After a moment, he said, “You know, things were looking up out there. I had a sort of letter of inquiry from the William Morris people after my commercial. That’s what hurts. To get turned down here by some pimp in a button-down collar.”

  “Don’t be too hard on your home area,” Mr. Deforest said.

  “Will you be on television, Shane?” Lana asked.

  “I already was, Lana. You know about that. And can’t you eat with slightly better manners than Rosalie—which you forgot to clean the burrs off,” Shane said. “You have to groom this sort of dog, Lana.”

  The chimes of an ice cream truck sounded out on the street. “I hear dessert coming,” said Mr. Deforest.

  “Quick, Pop, give me money,” Lana said, hopping down from his lap.

  “We just hoped you’d stay around for the summer, before you go chasing your stars,” Mr. Deforest said to Shane, reaching into his pocket.

  “It all depends on this job,” Shane said.

  “I’m sure glad it’s not me,” Jonathan said. “I might do all right during actual exposure time, during the interview, but right now, beforehand, I’d be throwing up.”

  •

  It was Sunday. Lana was on the screened porch, fixing round stickers onto her tissue-wrapped gift for her father. The stickers said things like “Grin and Ignore It” and “Things Are Getting Worse—Send Chocolate!”

  Shane was lounging on the wicker sofa with a copy of Variety. He wore a black polo shirt and white trousers today. “Lana, tell me again, did you really check for ticks in your hair?” he asked. “There were three on Rosalie last night.”

  “Yes, Shane.”

  The east wall of the porch held tendrils of ivy. Through the ivy and the screen’s mesh, out above the trees, the sky looked chalky with clouds. It was much cooler this Father’s Day morning.

  Jonathan lay in the hammock outside—a curled sleeping bundle. One hand dangled loose, still wearing a cowhide work glove.

  The day before, Jonathan had ridden Lana on his Suzuki through a meadow and a shady woods where they knew they’d find butterflies feeding on the wildflowers and among the willow and wild cherry trees. It was Lana’s plan to supplement her Father’s Day present with a framed specimen. They captured and let go a few cabbage whites and one faded viceroy. Then, in a lucky swoop, Jonathan netted a red-spotted purple. Back home, he chloroformed the butterfly in their killing jar—a thing he had learned in biology class. “It’s gone to sleep,” he said to Lana.

  “He stayed in the hammock last night,” Lana said now to Shane. “I had another present for Dad, but Jonathan let it go.”

  “I know,” Shane said.

  Jonathan had confided to Shane about pinning the butterfly the evening before, only to find that it wasn’t quite dead. Its wings rose and quivered, and now and then beat rapidly enough to make a fluttering noise. Jonathan fled his bedroom, leaving the butterfly impaled, and hadn’t yet gone back there. He told Lana he had changed his mind and released their specimen.

  “Everything set?” Mr. Deforest yelled to them on the porch.

  “Sixty seconds!” Shane called. He collapsed his paper. “Lana, get Jonathan. Those’re enough stickers.”

  Lana went out and returned with Jonathan, who looked sun- and sleep-dazed. He took the seat next to Shane on the wicker sofa.

  Mr. Deforest entered with his face bright, his hands folded behind him. “Well, hot ziggetty, a holiday for me. What have we got going here?”

  “Cards first,” Lana said.

  Her father obeyed. “Great card, Shane. Your mother’s is nice too—I opened it after breakfast. She asks how you’re doing on that new medicine. I’m wondering the same.”

  “If the moon’s full, I grow huge hands and fangs, and hair all over my face, but those are the only side effects so far,” Shane said. “I’m settling into it.”

  “This one, of mine,” Lana said.

  Mr. Deforest opened Lana’s envelope and showed around the contents—a bumper sticker with the message “I Love My Mutt!”

  “And if that’s not Rosalie’s picture on there, I’ll eat it with mustard,” Mr. Deforest said. “Good for you, Lana girl. This goes right on the car.”

  “Over my dead corpse,” Jonathan whispered to Shane.

  Mr. Deforest opened his gift from Lana, saving the wrapper stickers for her. “Lana, you are a shopper! Men’s-formula hair spray. I do need this.”

  Lana took the can from her father and showed him how to work the nozzle.

  “Excellent, baby, but not so much on the ivy. The ivy doesn’t need it too bad today,” Mr. Deforest said.

  “Mine,” Jonathan said. He reached under the wicker sofa.

  Mr. Deforest hefted the big package, wrapped in gold foil. “Is this a joke? It’s too big.”

  “I still had some graduation money and nothing to do with it,” Jonathan said.

  “Well, you made me look awful,” said Shane. “Aside from my card, I didn’t do anything. I’ve been pinching every cent for L.A.” He had not been hired by the sporting-goods store.

  “Holy mother! Look at this, Shane. Lana, look,” Mr. Deforest said. He swept aside tissue wrap.

  “Damn, it is nice. Really nice,” Shane said. He got to his feet for a closer look.

  “Extraordinary. A duffel bag you would call it?” Mr. Deforest said. “Get a load of this leatherwork. A place for socks, toiletries. I got a hundred zippers here.”

  “Where’d you buy it?” Shane asked.

  “Carlton’s—before they didn’t hire you. Sorry,” Jonathan said.

  “I thought so,” Shane said.

  Their father said, “You could put a suit in here.”

  “You wouldn’t, though,” Shane said. “You’d wear the suit.”

  “Thank you, Jonathan, thank you,” Mr. Deforest said. “Now I have to think of someplace nice enough to go.”

  “I’ve got a nice trip all lined up for a bag like that,” Shane said. “You wouldn’t want to let me break that in for you, would you, Dad?”

  “Hint,” Mr. Deforest said.

  “Are you really going to go?” Jonathan said.

  “Yes. I wish I could wait for Mom, but … I’d sure feel better about myself if I were stepping off the Trailways bus with that bag over my shoulder. I’d send it right back to Dad.”

  “It would have to be in virgin condition,” Mr. Deforest said to Shane.

  Shane said, “Well, you know me.”

  Lana was in the yard now, running with Rosalie and giving off screams.

  Jonathan stretched, groaning. “Lana had a butterfly for you, Dad, but I messed it up trying to mount it.”

  “From the meadow? You check her for ticks?” Mr. Deforest said.

  There was a silence on the porch and Shane and Jonathan and Mr. Deforest all looked out at Lana, who had straddled the dog.

  “I better rescue Rosalie,” Shane said. “Lana still doesn’t believe you can’t tickle a dog and make it laugh.” He pushed the screen door open but then paused and said to Jonathan, “You maybe ought to come to the Coast with me. We could have a wild time.”

  “Yeah, it’d be fierce,” Jonathan said.

  “Feelings aren’t hurt, are they?” Mr. Deforest said to Jonathan when Shane had gone. “It was your graduation money, I know.”

  “I can’t believe I’d ever pick out anything he’d like so much. That’s truly a first,” Jonathan said.

  “But you wouldn’t consider what he said. I mean about going with him. I don’t think he meant it literally.”

  “No, I know he didn’t,” Jonathan said. “Don’t worry, I know.”

  Mr. Deforest had picked up the bag again and now practiced walking up and down the porch with it. “This is first-class,” he said. “You can hang it on your shoulder or car
ry it by hand.” He put it down again and directed a look at Jonathan. “O.K., the truth. You’re hurt,” he said. “And you want him to stay here, stay home with us.”

  “Yes, but no—no, I’m really not. There’s something else. I have to go up to the bedroom to make sure that butterfly’s croaked, once and for all. And throw the damned thing away. It’ll put a couple years on me, so expect an older son to come back down. I’ll be about caught up with Shane.”

  “You might want to rethink,” Mr. Deforest said. “Before catching up with Shane. I sort of remember being his age. It was terrible. Maybe just skip it when your turn comes.”

  14

  In Jewel

  I COULD BE GETTING MARRIED soon. The fellow is no Adonis, but what do I care about that? I’d be leaving my job at the high school. I teach art. In fact, I’d be leaving Jewel if I got married.

  I have six smart students, total, but only two with any talent, both at third period. One of them might make it out of here someday. I don’t know. Jewel is coal mining, and it’s infuriatingly true that all the kids end up in the mine.

  One of my two talented students is a girl. She’s involved with the mine already—works after school driving a coal truck for them. I’ve had her in class since her freshman year. She’s got a ready mind that would have wowed them at the design school in Rhode Island where I took a degree ten or so years ago. “Dirty Thoughts,” she titles all her pieces, one after another. “Here’s D.T. 189,” she’ll say to me, holding up some contraption. She does very clever work with plaster and torn paper bags.

  Jack’s the name of the man I might marry. He’s a sharp lawyer. He looks kind of like a poor relation, but juries feel cozy and relaxed with him. They go his way as if he were a cousin they’re trying to help along.

  Jack’s a miner’s best friend. He has a case pending now about this mammoth rock that’s hanging near the top of a mountain out on the edge of town. And the mountain’s on fire inside. There’s a seam of coal in it that’s been burning for over a year, breaking the mountain’s back, and someday the rock’s going to come tumbling straight down and smush the Benjamin house, it looks like, and maybe tear out part of the neighborhood. The whole Benjamin family has seen this in their dreams. “Hit the Company now,” Jack says, “before the rock arrives.”

  Jack first met me when a student was killed a couple of years ago and the boy’s parents hired Jack to file suit against the Company. As I understood it, there were these posts every few or so feet in the mine, and the Company had saved a buck skipping every third post. Well, Rick, the boy—he was a senior at school but he worked afternoon half-shifts in the mine—was down in the shaft one day, and some ceiling where there wasn’t a post caved in and he died on the spot. Rick was a kid who was never going to be a miner. His ceramics, done for me, weren’t bad, when they didn’t explode in the kiln.

  Jack asked me out for coffee one of those days when court was in recess. We blew a couple hours at the Ballpark Lounge, playing a computer game called Space Invaders.

  “You could win money at this,” Jack said. “You ought to have your own machine.” Don’t I wish. That’s how Jack thinks: big.

  My gifted student who might get out of Jewel someday is Michael Fitch. “Maybe I’m nuts,” he said to me after homeroom had cleared out one morning. I have him for art and homeroom.

  “I don’t mind,” I said.

  “There’s a lot of noise because I won’t say the pledge of allegiance in assemblies,” Michael said. “I refuse.”

  “You got to stay alert from now on, Michael,” I told him. “For the next little bit, you’ll have to be on your toes.”

  He took a pink stick of chalk to the blackboard and worked in thick, porous contours. Clouds, maybe. “I think the entire town’s afraid of me,” he said.

  “Probably,” I said. Why would anyone balk at the pledge?

  •

  Jack and I would go live in Charleston if we got married. We’ve talked about being there by the end of August. He even has a house lined up. Actually, it’s half a house. The downstairs is a crisis center where they take “hotline” calls. Jack says I could work there, if I want to work. He got me to spend an afternoon with the people, learning their procedure. They listen to these calls, I found out, and then they more or less repeat back whatever the caller’s just said. Such as “You discovered your dearest friend in bed with your husband.” Then they add something like “You sound angry.”

  Jack thinks I’d be terrific at this sort of thing. He doesn’t realize my worst moments as a teacher are when somebody confides in me. Brad Foley, for example. He confessed about some stuff he was going through with his dad, and when we were all finished talking, Brad, crying, asked if he could kiss me. I said he could hug me, the poor thing, but just for a second.

  I wouldn’t mind waving good-bye to Jewel, but it would be tough leaving my family. Mom’s all right here, and so is Russell, my big brother. Russell recently got Mom a new clothes washer. He does things like that, and they’re a very contented couple.

  Russell’s nuts, though. I mean, here’s a guy working in three feet of coal every day, contending with a couple kinds of gases that are there, also the dust from the machines, and all he wants is to be allowed to smoke cigarettes. He says it isn’t because of methane that you can’t smoke in the mine, it’s dollars. Most of the miners roll their own cigarettes, see, which takes a minute or two. So you figure a couple of dozen smokes would cost the Company a half-hour’s time every shift.

  I get sad for Russell. The biggest achievement in his life is being respectable. He’d cheat and lie before he’d do anything that’s frowned upon.

  But I was always respectable, I admit. Two years in a row I won the Jaycees’ Good Citizenship Award—Women’s Branch. Really, though, that was for my dad. I couldn’t like Dad, but I often pleased him. He was superstitious about women ever working in the mines, and very confident about his opinions, which weren’t backed by anything but his fears. He would hate that there are five women down there now. If he were alive, he’d be yelling about it.

  The women won’t last long. They’ll get sick or quit for some reason. You can’t blame them—it’s no fun making everyone nervous.

  My fiancé doesn’t get too excited or too blue. He won’t allow himself. He’s learned to take comfort in small things. Say, if he finds a word he likes he speaks it with relish. He makes you enjoy the word with him—its aptness or strength. “I like a shower head that throws an aggressive spray,” he says, and leans on that word aggressive. Or he tells you that for supper he can get by gladly with a plate of fresh yellow tomatoes and just a mug of coffee, so long as the coffee is “pitchy.”

  One thing that bothers me about leaving Jewel is that I just wallpapered my bedroom at Mom’s. The wallpaper I put up has a poppy pattern that’s like Matisse.

  Charleston wouldn’t thrill Jack for long, I bet. He’s headed for growth: Atlanta, Seattle, Santa Fe.

  You name it and it went wrong for me up in Rhode Island. I got mangled or something. I was at the School of Design there. I finally did graduate, or some version of me graduated. I really wasn’t present. I’d be walking on Thayer Street and all of a sudden realize I was looking for my reflection in every shop window.

  Back in Jewel again—surprise—I was fine.

  Imagine teaching at the same high school where you and your whole family went—it can’t be good. I figured out my dad was a freshman there in 1924.

  Some days, the Rhode Island thing seems like a dream. I’ll be pushing a cart around the market here, say, and it comes to me that I know all the people in the store—first and last names. I know the meat cutter. I was a Camp Fire Girl with Marsha, who works the checkout counter. I went through twelve grades with the milk guy, Lewis, who loads the dairy refrigerator. I even know what grief sends his family running to the therapist at the new guidance center. And, outside, those Leahy brothers, with their beef-red faces, on their bench on the courthouse lawn I know, and S
ue Forrest, pacing around carrying a sandwich board for her son’s bakery, and the guys crowding the Ballpark Lounge and the Servo Hardware. I like feeling at home, but I wish I didn’t feel it here.

  Little Brad Foley sent me a note of congratulations when he found out from the newspaper that Jack and I are engaged. “I hope for your sake you’ll be moving,” he wrote. The note’s still on the shelf of my secretary. I don’t throw anything away. No, worse—I don’t put anything away. All that I’ve ever owned or had is right out here for you to examine.

  15

  Happy Boy, Allen

  ALLEN WAS DRIVING HIS father’s Dodge up Light Street, in Baltimore, looking for an empty parking space near Cheshire Towers—the old hotel turned apartment building. As he drove close, Allen noticed an odd-faced teenager who was on the steps of the Cheshire. The boy had an involuntary giggle. He wore shorts and a cowboy hat. He was seated in the white sun, up from the shadows of the mighty shrubs that flanked the Cheshire’s entrance doors.

  Allen began breathing through his teeth. People such as the teenager made him anxious. People who were happy for no clear, visible reason.

  The teenager bounced from his seat, and threw open the Cheshire’s doors for a nurse in pale hose and crisp uniform. Allen pointed his father’s car into the far-left lane of the street and kept on driving.

  Allen’s paternal aunt, Mindy, had a rental suite on the eleventh floor of Cheshire Towers—a creamy stone building, distinguishable for its many windows and the various drape styles and colors in each. Allen had left his home in Towson that morning on an impulse. He had felt the urge to chat his problems out with someone more mature.

  “Aagh,” he said, and stamped the brakes for his fourth stoplight. “I hate this damn town. I really do! Row houses, shmow houses. Couldn’t they think of something else?” His generator light blinked on. With a little jump and intake of breath, Allen saw the light and snapped off the air conditioner. When the blowers quit, Allen heard the car radio, which was sputtering, forgotten, between stations.