An Amateur's Guide to the Night

by Mary Robison

  “To prove what I mean, we saw these amazing films, of Jean Renoir, in his last and final days, where he was painting with brushes strapped to the backs of his wrists—which were crippled up with something, but even that didn’t stop Renoir. Okay, you’re not interested,” Allen said. “But what brought all this up is I really do like your picture, if nothing else, just for the winter theme. I love winter, and I hate summer. You wouldn’t believe how lazy I am because of the humidity recently. I just drop when it gets too bad, and Dad leaves our air conditioner off overnight, so you wake up already sick. One morning I was fixing cinnamon toast or something, and I had to practically lie on the counter to keep from going into a complete faint.”

  “How is Paul?” Mindy said.

  “Fine,” Allen said. “So what I do is throw a whole tray of ice cubes into the bathtub with me, first thing, and then I just stay there until the air conditioner’s working enough to make some difference. I know it’s not good for you, to go from red hot to freezing cold—it’s probably why I’m so hoarse. Dad says I go around coughing twenty hours a day.”

  “Is Paul still thinking of remarrying?” Mindy said. She untangled her legs from the afghan, stood, and circled where Allen was positioned on the rug.

  “That’s the whole thing I came to talk to you about, Aunt Min.” Allen looked up, and turned slowly on his seat, following Mindy. “The woman, it turns out—I’ve never met her. I just heard about her from Dad, and, of course, he left out all the bad stuff. She’s older than he is. She’s been married before, at least once. She’s got four kids, which are grown, thank God. He wants to move her—Laura Glinnis is, I guess, her name—into the house with us. You can imagine what that’d do to me. I’ve never had to live with a woman. Not since we lost Mom.”

  “You never lived with your mother, Allen. She died in childbirth.”

  “I know,” Allen said, looking sad for a moment. “See, Dad’s forgot all about Mom, that’s what gets me.” Allen pulled a burr from his sock and threw it onto the carpet. “I had the Dodge out one night, driving around, and thinking over this whole thing. I got off the beltway at some exit, and went to a bar and had a couple of mixed drinks. No one even asked for an i.d. They just served me the drinks, one on top of another. I was completely exhausted by then. I didn’t care if Dad moved Mrs. Glinnis and her brood right smack into the dining room and fed them T-bone steaks. I started smashing my fist on the tabletop of the booth they had there. I didn’t hurt anything really. Just my own hand. But I realized I have a capacity to be very destructive. It’s like there’s some monster inside me that wants to kill everything in my way.”

  “Why don’t you get married, Allen?” Mindy said. She was between him and the couch, snapping at her manicured fingernails with her thumb. “Why don’t you get a wife somewhere, and marry her, and move away?”

  “I don’t have anyone to marry,” Allen said.

  “I know dozens of people.”

  “That’d marry me?”

  “In a minute,” Mindy said.

  “Yeah, okay. Only, so many people make me nervous. There was a kid out front today, for example.”

  “Tex? Tex is usually out front. You’d delight in him, Allen. He’s got just the right touch of—”

  “No, you must be thinking of someone else,” Allen said.

  MINDY WAS IN A BEAN-BAG CHAIR IN THE CORNER, loading film into her camera. “You know, I bought this camera with money I won in the football pools,” she said. “I always win. That’s why I love to gamble.”

  “What?” Allen said.

  “Nothing,” Mindy said. “Don’t worry.” Her chignon had come undone, and the left side of her hair—blonde, though she was fifty-one—had fallen onto the shoulder of her kimono. “I clicked off a couple I didn’t mean to. It’ll be all right.”

  “It will,” Allen said, in a low voice to the cowboy-hatted teenager who sat on the couch with him. “She’s really more or less a professional. Her work’s appeared in a couple of the D.C. galleries—places you’d recognize if I could remember the names.”

  “One gallery. They just showed two of my self-portraits,” Mindy said. “A picture of me at the stove, and one of me petting Abra.”

  “Cat that ran away,” Allen told the cowboy.

  Both young men had been drinking earnestly. Allen tugged off his cotton shirt and laid it out on the floor. He removed his loafers and his wristwatch. The cowboy took off his vest.

  “What may I call you?” Allen asked.

  The cowboy puffed his right cheek full of air, then noisily let the air out. “Baker,” he said.

  “First, or last?” Allen said.

  The cowboy shrugged.

  “Baker, alone, is fine,” Allen said. “Easier to remember.”

  “One more minute,” Mindy said from the corner. “I’m truly sorry this is taking so long. It isn’t my fault. The spool’s in backwards or something. I wouldn’t have had Allen get you up here,” she said to the cowboy, “if I’d known this was going to happen.”

  “These’ll be great photographs,” Allen said.

  “Oops,” Mindy said. “Oh, I did something, and now I can’t—do you know anything about cameras?”

  “I had a basic film theory and technique course,” Allen said.

  “Loading,” Mindy said. “L-o-a-d-i-n-g.”

  “Not for any camera,” Allen said.

  Mindy struggled out of the bean-bag chair. She came toward them, stepping over the coffee table and showing one of her legs from the thigh down. She dropped the camera. Its timer ticked off fifteen seconds against the floor carpet.

  Allen squeezed his forehead and sighed.

  “The joke is, I do make good photographs,” she said. “Maybe—who’s to say?—great ones. But you’ve got to do daily work to be great, and for that you need a darkroom in your house, and not way across the g.d. town.” She sat on the coffee table with her skirt hitched up.

  “That’s true,” Allen said.

  “I had a camera,” Baker said.

  “Good for you, Tex,” Mindy said. “Seriously, I got two rolls of thirty-six people each. What did I just say? Did I say, ‘thirty-six people each’? Isn’t that a scream? Thirty-six exposures each.”

  “Faces?” Allen said.

  “Yes, honey, that’s what the world is. There’s no world without faces. Look at that face.”

  Allen and Mindy looked at Baker.

  He was whistling through a cavity in a front tooth. He wiggled his eyebrows at them, hard enough to make the brim of his cowboy hat move up and down.

  “What’s in that face, Allen?” Mindy said.

  Allen narrowed his eyes at Baker, and asked him to turn his head left, then right.

  “Well?” Mindy said.

  “Well, because of the hat, he looks—I’d say Western.”

  “You’re a sharp boy,” Mindy said.

  “I wasn’t done,” Allen said. “It also looks like a face that’s recently lost weight.”

  “Yeah, I did,” Baker said.

  “You don’t see any pain in those eyes?” Mindy asked Allen.

  “Yes. Well, really, no. Frankly, I don’t, Aunt Min, I don’t.”

  “Good, because I don’t, either. There isn’t any. How about fear? Do you see fear in his eyes? Never mind.” Mindy got up and headed for the bathroom.

  “Do you like it hot, like this?” Allen asked Baker.

  Baker looked around his feet, and then around the apartment.

  “I mean, do you like hot weather?”

  “Sure,” Baker said.

  Mindy came back and Allen stood up. Baker gathered his vest, and stood up as well.

  “Here’s a face. Sit down, both of you,” she said. She showed them a photograph of a young fellow whose head was shaved and whose eyes were wild-looking. There were markings, or scratches, on the photo, above the dark eyes. “This one is disturbed. People call him disturbed. But he made perfect sense to me the day I took pictures of him. It’s one reason I want
ed to photograph you two,” Mindy said.

  “Not that you’re retarded,” Allen said to Baker. “Or me— that I am.”

  “Oh, you’re retarded, all right,” Mindy said. “I don’t know how, Allen, but you got all stunted up at the age of six.”

  “Hey, that’s the bottle talking,” Allen said.

  “This was nice,” the cowboy said to Mindy. “I’d like to visit you again sometime in the future.”

  “Good, Tex. When?” Mindy said.

  MINDY HAD FELT SICK, GRABBED UP ALLEN’S SHIRT, and gone swiftly into the bathroom with the shirt held against her mouth. For a long while, Allen heard faucet water running. Eventually, he tried pushing open the folding door.

  “Aunt Min?”

  The door moved a few inches, and caught on Mindy, who lay over the floor tiles with Allen’s shirt balled under her cheek for a pillow.

  Allen pulled the door shut. He paced around the apartment in just his slacks, hissing and swearing to himself. He perched on the back of Mindy’s couch, and brought the telephone to his lap. He dialed “1” and then his home phone number.

  “Hello,” said a woman’s voice, startling Allen.

  “Is this my house?” he said. “Who is this?”

  “I’m Laura Glinnis,” the woman said.

  “Well, put Dad on if he’s there. I need to talk with him immediately.”

  “Just a second, Allen,” Mrs. Glinnis said. “Paul?”

  “What do you want?” Allen’s father said into the phone.

  “Just to let you know what I’m up to,” Allen said.

  “Is it serious?”

  “I feel that this time I’m in deep water, Dad. Things are completely out of my control. I’m sauced, for one thing. There might even be an ambulance case in the bathroom. I’m so messed up,” Allen said.

  There was a long silence at the other end of the line.

  Allen heard the whispery-scrape of a cupped palm over the phone’s mouthpiece. His father’s voice came back, slowly saying, “Relax, boy. Run this thing down for me, step by step.”

  “Okay,” Allen said. “Now the first thing you should know is I came here to tell Aunt Mindy about what’s been happening— my side of the story.”

  “Who’s in the bathroom hurt?” Allen’s father said. “Is it Mindy? Tell me straight. Take it slow now, son.”

  “Aunt Mindy’ll be fine. I’m not worried about her,” Allen said. “She’s used to being drunk.”

  “Allen?” the voice said. “Do you know how you make me feel?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Allen said, and smacked down the phone’s receiver.

  HE STRAIGHTENED THE APARTMENT A LITTLE, TIDIED the kitchen, and perked coffee. He opened the bathroom door the few inches it would go. He hoped the coffee aroma would revive Mindy.

  “You know Charles,” Mindy said in her sleep.

  Allen got the camera off the floor, and sat down, and tried until he was sweating to get the roll of film untangled.

  “I feel so regretful!” Mindy called.

  Allen looked in on her. She was awake, but in the same prone position. Water still splashed from the opened faucet.

  “This is disgusting, I know,” she said. “It must be disgusting for you to see, Allen. A young boy. I’m really so, so sorry.”

  “You’re forgiven,” Allen said.

  “Do you mean it? You’re not really angry?”

  “Hell, no. Not at all,” Allen said.

  Whistling to himself, he borrowed a tailored shirt from a hanger in Mindy’s closet. He rolled the cuffs, where there were flower-shaped pearl buttons. He turned the collar under, uncomfortably.

  In the kitchen, Allen poured coffee into one of his aunt’s pretty teacups. He sat in the tiny dining annex, his legs crossed. He sipped coffee and considered his day. He thought he’d drive out around the Baltimore zoo—maybe buy himself some dinner.

  I Am Twenty-One

  I HEARD RINGING, AND I REALIZED THAT WHAT I had done was continued my answer to Essay Question I—“What effect did the discovery of the barrel vault have on the architecture of 13th century cathedrals?”—writing clockwise in the left, top, and right-hand margins of page one in my exam book. I had forgotten to move along to page two or to Essay Question II. The ringing was coming from in me—probably from overdoing it with diet pills or from the green tea all last night and from reading so much all the time.

  I was doing C work in all courses but this one—“The Transition from Romanesque to Gothic.” I needed to blast this course on its butt, and that was possible because for this course I knew it all. I needed only time and space to tell it. My study notes were 253 pencil sketches from slides we had seen and from plates in books at the Fine Arts Library and some were from our text. I had sixty-seven pages of lecture notes that I had copied over once for clarity. Everything Professor Williamson had said in class was recorded in my notes—practically even his throat clearings and asides about the weather. It got to the point where if he rambled, I thought, yeah, yeah, cut the commercial and get back to the program.

  Some guy whose hair I could’ve ripped out was finished with his exam. He was actually handing it to the teaching assistant. How could he be finished, have given even a cursory treatment to the three questions? He was a quitter, a skimmer, I decided; a person who knew shit about detail.

  I was having to stop now and then, really too often, to skin the tip of my pencil with the razor blade I had brought along. I preferred a pencil because it couldn’t dry up or leak. But this was a Number 2 graphite and gushy-gummy and I was writing the thing away. The eraser was just a blackened nub. Why hadn’t I brought a damn box of pencils?

  The teaching assistant was Clark—Clark Something or Something Clark, I didn’t know. He was baggy and sloppy, but happy-looking. He had asked me out once for Cokes, but I had brushed him off. That was maybe stupid because he might’ve been in charge of grading exams.

  I decided to ignore Essay Question II, pretend I hadn’t even seen it. I leaned hard into Question III, on church decoration, windows, friezes, flora, fauna, bestiaries, the iconography in general. I was quoting Honorius of Autun when the class bell fired off.

  I looked up. Most people were gone.

  “Come on, everyone!” Clark called. “Please. Come on now. Miss Bittle? Mr. Kenner, please. Miss Powers?”

  “Go blow, Clark,” I said right out loud. But I slapped him my exam booklet and hurried out of Meverett, feeling let down and apathetic all of a sudden, and my skin going rubbery cold.

  I BIKED HOME WITH A LOT OF TROUBLE. I WENT ON the sidewalks. I was scared that in the streets I’d get my ringing confused with car warnings.

  I was still ringing.

  Last semester I had had a decorating idea for my apartment, this monastic idea of strict and sparse. I had stripped the room down to a cot, a book table, one picture. The plaster walls were a nothing oatmeal color, which was okay. But not okay was that some earlier renter had gooped orange—unbelievably—paint on the moldings and window frames. So where I lived looked not like a scholar’s den, finally, but more like a bum’s sleepover, like poverty.

  My one picture up wasn’t of a Blessed Virgin or a detail from Amiens of the King of Judah holding a rod of the Tree of Jesse. Instead, it was an eight-by-ten glossy of Rudy and Leslie, my folks. Under the backing was written Gold Coast, the first cool day. The photo had been shot out on North Lake Shore Drive around 1964, I’d say, when I was three. Leslie, my mom, was huddled into Rudy, sharing his lined leather jacket. They appeared, for all the eye sparkle, like people in an engagement-ring ad. I kept the picture around because, oddly, putting away the idea of my folks would’ve been worse than losing the real them. In the photo, they at least looked familiar.

  They had been secret artists. Rudy was a contractor for a living, Leslie a physical therapist. So they worked all their art urges out on me—on my school projects, for instance, which they hurled themselves into. One project “I did” for seventh grade that they helped me with
was, I swear, good enough for a world’s fair. It was a kind of three-dimensional diorama triptych of San Francisco Bay with both bridges—Oakland and Golden Gate—that may have even lit up or glowed in the dark. We had to borrow a neighbor’s station wagon just to get the thing safely over to Dreiser Junior High—it lined up as long as an ironing board.

  I GOT MY BIKE TUGGED INSIDE, LEFT IT LEANING against the wall under the photograph. I clapped a kettle onto the midget stove in my kitchen part of the apartment, and paced, waiting for the water to heat. The pitch of the steam when it got going was only a quarter tone below the ringing in my head.

  My folks were two and a half years gone.

  I used to drive out to the site of their accident all the time—a willow tree on Route 987. The last time I went, the tree was still healing. The farmlands were a grim powdery blond in the white sun, and the earth was still ragged from winter. I sat there in my tiny Vega on the broken crumbly shoulder. The great tree and the land around—flat as a griddle for miles and miles—didn’t seem as fitting as I had once thought, not such a poetic place for two good lives to have stopped.

  I had my tea now and grieved about the exam. Leaving a whole essay question unanswered! How could I expect to get better than a C?

  Just before my first sip of tea, my ringing shut off as though somebody had punched a button, said, “Enough of that for her.”

  I decided it was time to try for sleep, but first I used a pen with a nylon point to tattoo a P on the back of my hand. This meant when I woke up I was to eat some protein—shrimp or eggs or a green something.

  On the cot I tried, as a sleep trick, to remember my answer to Essay Question I—word for fucking word.

  Smart

  MOM SENT MY BROTHER, JACKIE, OVER FROM WHEELING to take care of me the last week of March, right before I had the baby. I was living in D.C., alone, in five rooms of a sagging apartment house called The Augusta, on Wisconsin Avenue, opposite the National Cathedral. The Augusta was a worn, white building, and it shone behind me, cold and crooked in the sun of a false spring. I was waiting on the sidewalk for Jackie’s car. Across the wide dangerous street, the cathedral’s huge towers and many points glowered. I had been waiting for over two hours, which was the longest I’d been out of my rooms for months, including trips two blocks away to see my O.B.