Tell Me

by Mary Robison

  “How are you today, darling?” the man said. His face, under the tall striped hat, was tiny.

  Darla, Helen’s sister, was in the parade, in a beige Ford that was part of the automobile show. She looked sad and pale, perched on the hood of the car.

  “She was dreading this,” Terry said.

  “Who was?” Helen said.

  “Darla. She was dreading this. Your father made her do it, I guess,” Terry said.

  “How would you know?” Helen said.

  “I talk to Darla,” Terry said. “Whenever you don’t answer. I’ve talked to her a lot about her life.”

  “Have you? And what else?” Helen said. She had trouble holding a match still to light a cigarette.

  “I came down to see her once. Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this.”

  “No, it’s all right, I guess,” Helen said. “So you want to buy my father’s house?”

  “If he wants me to,” Terry said. “I get the impression he does. He doesn’t want the responsibility for the place anymore. But I don’t mind the responsibility. I’ll buy it up and kick you out.”

  “That’ll be all right,” Helen said.

  18

  Apostasy

  DONNA WAS LATE. SHE left the Camaro running alongside a dumpster and jogged to the all-night drugstore.

  Sister Mary Divine Heart stood waiting before a backlit wall of creams and ointments. Her eyes were bruised from lack of sleep. She wore a trenchcoat, and her hair was bound with a yellow rubber band.

  Donna ticked a coin on the display window, and her sister, Sister Mary, covered her grinning mouth with a tissue and came out into the harsh light of the predawn. It was Sunday morning—a watery October. A lake breeze blew, tangling a Plain Dealer between Sister Mary’s legs.

  The women drove along the lakefront, listening to a rebroadcast of the Texaco opera on Donna’s car radio. Sister Mary said wasn’t it a peculiar sound track for the bait shops and sagging cottages that rolled by the windshield.

  “Were you waiting very long?” Donna said, pushing in the cigarette lighter. “The reason I’m late is Mel and I had to work all night. You remember him? He’s my boss. The congressman? He’s done an article on prosecutorial immunity, and it’s really something. It’s really getting to him. It’s getting to both of us.”

  Sister crossed her feet. She said, “I don’t mind waiting. I watched Les Girls on the pharmacist’s portable TV. Anyway, I slept plenty. I slept the whole way back on the Greyhound.”

  “What did they tell you in Rochester?” Donna said. She slowed the car and stared at her sister. “They said you’re dying.”

  “Probably,” the nun said. “Your last pal.”

  “Well, Jesus Christ,” Donna said.

  “Well, I’m dying,” Sister said.

  The road bent sharply and hugged a little industrial canal that ran by a mile of warehouses before rejoining the sliding surface of the lake.

  Donna parked on the yellow grounds behind the cloister’s tamed woodbine and herbarium. Sister Mary got out of the car and stood in the blotchy shade of a partly stripped plum tree, and Donna slid over to the passenger’s seat.

  “In a way, I envy you,” Donna called through the window frame.

  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.

  •

  Proudhe
ad 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 eyes. “Really.”

  19

  For Real

  I WAS IN THE DRESSING rooms, comfortable in my star’s chair, a late evening in October. We had taped three shows. My lounge chair was upholstered in citrus-green fabric. My section of the studio dressing rooms was all lollipop colors, in case a Cub Scout troop or something came through.

  I was alone, confronting a window. I could see lights around the Dutch Pantry restaurant, and a single truck enduring the horrific eastbound uphill grade on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Beyond that, the mountains—which were florid in the autumn daylight—had darkened to a hostile black-green, as if they were closed for the night to visitors. Their pointy peaks were brushed with beautiful cloud smoke, though, and on the piece of Lake Doe that I could see, there lay a startling reflection of the night’s quarter moon.

  I was Boffo, the girl clown, who hosted Channel 22’s Midday Matinee. We ran old bad movies on the MM—or worse: old TV pilot shows we passed off as movies. My job was to ridicule the films and gibe at our sponsors, so the viewers at least would have something to smile about. The job was complicated. I felt tested, whenever the cameras were aimed at me, to improve the little monologues and jokes I had written—to act funny, as if I really was Boffo.

  Three years of playing her had told on my face. I used an expensive, hypoallergenic clown white that I special-ordered from Chicago, but my complexion was coarsening. My wigs were coral-pink acrylic, with tubes for hair; I wore a skullcap, under which I had to keep my real hair cropped short—an inch or so at most. The fact was, I never wanted to be a clown. I hadn’t gone to clown school in Florida or anything, but I’d studied broadcast journalism here at our own Penn State. I didn’t even particularly like circuses. I was pushed into the job by management.

  Gradually, two things happened. I stopped feeling so reduced by the clown suit. The first months, putting on the nose and wig and the purple gloves with gigantic gauntlet-style cuffs, I had always winced and apologized repeatedly to myself. I got around that by deciding one day that the suit was only a disguise—something to do with my act, not me. I hadn’t invented Boffo or her costume. What else happened was that I became convincing, actually pretty good at playing her. Also, I grabbed a crazy amount of pay.

  I came back from the window and tried to call Dieter, using the special oversize clown telephone near my chair. I had to thump the out-call tablet four times, because Channel 22’s phone system was no better than its movie library. Arranging the receiver so it didn’t touch my greased cheek (I had another show to tape, so I was still in full Boffo gear), I tapped off Dieter’s number. In the mirror, my cheek was porous and as white as a sheet of rag paper. While Dieter’s telephone rang, I found myself trying to loosen some of the coils in my phone’s exaggerated wire cording. I permitted ten rings. No Dieter. “Wo ist Dieter?” I asked myself.

  Dieter was the only guy I bedded with just then. He was a few years my junior—a recent college grad, in fact—which was part one of the problem. He was employed by the Channel 22 news department. He was all set as long as his student visa remained valid, which it wouldn’t for long. Dieter was a West German citizen, and he was going to get shipped nicely back there soon if he didn’t come up with a legal reason to stay.

  “So what the goddamn hell is this not-there jazz?” I asked in my shrill Boffo voice. I often reverted to character when I was in clown rig. I pretended to abuse the enormous receiver, throttling it before I dropped it back onto its rest. “Dieter is always home in die Nacht. Nacht is ven the news happens!”

  Dieter wanted to marry me, and plenty of times I had agreed, so he could stay on in the States. But I didn’t want to marry Dieter, really, and that was part two of the problem: he knew.

  I made fun of him a lot, for being such a tidy person and so formal-acting. He wore starchy white shirts always, with cuff links. The line in his side-parted hair was ever straight. “Was ist das?” I would say to him. “Did you use a slide rule and a T-square to get that straight a part? It’s centered perfectly over your left eye!” An outsider might think I treated him condescendingly, but I wasn’t asking any outsiders.

  I plucked up four rubber balls and juggled them. I flapped my Stars and Stripes shoe, as long as a diver’s fin, on the tile. I got a rhythm going with the soft pops of the rubber balls and the splat of my shoe. That’s what I was doing—that and worrying about Dieter—when Terrence, the floor director, opened the dressing room door and said, “We need you for the spot.”

  “See the moon?” I asked Terrence.

  The spot was a little promo for a coming show. Out in the studio, I stood where they told me to, before Cary Williams’s camera. I juggled the balls and kept slapping my sh
oe.

  Terrence said, “Three, two, one,” and pointed to me before he was distracted by something happening over his headset. We waited.

  I liked Cary Williams, the cameraman. He was in his fifties, dimpled and shy, with an impossible laugh. I said, “Hey, hi!—it’s Boffo. For tomorrow—whoa, brother. We’ve got a movie that’ll bring up your breakfast, brunch, lunch, and dinner. And next you’ll get to hear me read a medical review on toxic shock syndrome. Lastly, we’ll have a visit from Sam and Janet. Sam and Janet who?”

  Pete, who was holding up the cue card, said flatly, “Sam and Janet evening.” That was our oldest joke.

  “Yeah, yeah, could we just do it right for once?” asked Terrence.

  I peeked around the trunk of Cary Williams’s camera. He was not even smiling. I said, “If I had to do it right, I’d quit.”

  •

  I had a pretty comfy condo, with a view of the mountains and Lake Doe. When I was home there, nobody knew I was Boffo the clown. Tonight, because of a flood watch and drenched roads, Dieter was staying over.

  I got into bed with him, but also with a vinyl-bound notebook that I balanced against my knees. I tried writing some material—just dumb puns and so on—for a Gregory Peck movie we had scheduled. The film also had Virginia Mayo in it, so I was goofing around with “Ham on rye, Greg, and hold the mayo,” and variations of that kind of low-grade snorter.

  I couldn’t get much written. I was too conscious of Dieter and how much more convenient the future would be if I loved him some, or at all. He was sharp-looking enough—cool-faced, with a romantic broken nose, from being a wrestler for a while in college. He had a slippery grin that was a trick to summon.

  “Laugh, Dieter! This is honestly funny, and I’ll think more of you,” I’d tell him sometimes as he helped me get dressed. He’d hold up the big stiff costume while I boxed my way into it. Then he’d steady me, so I could fold myself way over to strap on the floppy, dazzling shoes.

  “Right, ja,” he’d say, his face entirely sober.

  He tried especially hard whenever we watched a taped Midday Matinee rerun together. But he always failed because he didn’t have the same references. At first, I figured I’d just catch Dieter up—give him the lowdown on somebody like Charlton Heston and why it was a pleasure to crack on such a jerk. But that wouldn’t have done much good.