by Mary Robison
72
My thoughts about Paulie are a thing, over there, I’ll have to go through and sort sometime. Maybe keep some of it separate.
73
Rain batters the trees until they’re slick and dripping. There is certainly, outside, a lot going on.
74
And whatever the thing I was looking for, it’s maybe in my hand, mouth, on my fucking head, whatever the thing.
75
“I’m at the store,” I say to the ringing phone.
Nevertheless, Belinda’s revolting voice issues on my brand-new answering machine. “Our edits have been formally delivered. They’re on Lionel Shumacher’s desk,” says she. “Now all we can do is pray.”
I don’t care what the fuck she’s talking about. And Belinda’s afraid of chain letters. She shouldn’t be allowed to pray.
Are You Sure You’re All Right
Daughter Mev lives in a rental, a white house with red shutters and doors. Inside are sunny rooms, gleaming golden hardwood floors.
“Try this,” she says, giving me a spoon of something to taste from her mixing bowl.
“Um, I’m not really very—”
“What, Mother? These eggs are like, from hens who were pets.”
I say, “There’s Methadone in your refrigerator. Mightn’t it have an effect on the neighboring foods?”
“You don’t get any of this, changed my mind,” says Mev.
77
Now we’re seated on the floor together and I have a hand outstretched as Mev silently, painstakingly brushes my nails with a coppery lacquer.
There behind her is the stepladder she painted cornflower blue, and stacked on the ladder’s rungs are clay pots in which there’re hearty examples of the cephalopod plants that grow so very well down here in the country’s dumps.
Mev moved here with a Methadone habit. Over a year ago. After she had spent six months in rehab. Which she disliked.
Now, weekdays and Saturdays she rides the Amtrak over the pine-woodsy border into Louisiana, where Methadone can be legally obtained. For Sundays she’s given little plastic take-home vials.
Leave Some for Others
You don’t want to bother Miss Mev sometimes, she’s a very preoccupied person. Anyway, if she were involved in something, you’d have to tackle and maybe blind her to get her to stop.
79
I say to myself, “Whatever it is you think you’re doing right now? Lying on the couch there, doing whatever it is you think? You’re going to have to cut it short, know what I mean?”
“Stop pestering me,” I say. “I have problems to solve. Be with you soon as I can.”
But, But, But
“They’re replaying The English Patient,” says the Deaf Lady.
She says, “Which I have to confess I like.”
Hollis has such a look of disdain, she adds, “All right, so I’m a sucker for a love story.”
“No,” I say, “you most certainly are not. The English Patient is the most profoundly important movie ever made.”
And when Hollis wants to talk I won’t let him. I say, “You’re only going to say something incorrect about The English Patient!”
After he slumps off, the Deaf Lady and I relax and spread out on the bench a little. There is a white sky overhead and a flock of screaming birds.
I’m positive The English Patient is a good movie that I too would enjoy.
81
A paperwad pops around in the grass. It blows over my way and catches between my shoes. I snatch it up, undo the crinkled page.
“What’s it say?” asks the Deaf Lady. She props her chin on my shoulder so she too can read.
Printed in faint shaky capitals is “you will obey me.”
“Who in the world . . . ,” I say.
“Oh, that’s the mailman,” says the Deaf Lady.
“How so?” I ask.
“It just is,” she says. “Believe me. Pay no attention. It’s some Freudian nightmare he’s trapped in, you don’t want to know.” She takes the note away from me, wads it back up.
“Another thing that happened,” she says. “I went to play my Walkman and found a tape stuck in there. It was the soundtrack to Les Misérables. Show tunes? I never listen to that junk.”
“No, uh-uh, that’s not right,” I say and lower my eyes to look straight into hers. “That didn’t happen to you. That happened to me. Remember my telling you about it? Remember that we decided Hollis was playing a trick? Do you even own a Walkman?”
“Well, I do, yes,” she says. “However, of everything I’ve been telling you, Olive. I found a strange tape. I had a memory that isn’t my memory. My owning a Walkman is not the astounding part.”
I have to ask her sometime who is Olive.
Chapter Three
Just Wasn’t Made Very Well
With a glue gun I have attached “Solid Gold” labels to every sort of item.
I pack some of them into a duffel bag and ride them to New Orleans to show the moron New Boyfriend.
Now I get to watch as he hesitates to touch things that are made of wood, paper, rubber, or glass.
83
I have never to this second told the New Boyfriend my home address. I drive to his place; he must never know the location of mine. There was once a mention of the name of my street but I regret that and pray the Boyfriend was drunk and won’t ever remember. Which is asking God for exactly nothing.
84
The Boyfriend has advised me from the wisdom of his experience. He’s said, “Beer on hard, you’re in the yard.”
And he was right about that too, as written here with my Lancôme lip crayon on the floor below the commode is: “kill me.”
Also, down in the kitchen, the box of Rice Chex was opened by the quicker top and bottom method.
85
Now he bams on the bathroom door as I’m brushing on cheek powder and yells, “I wanna be at Deannie’s eating jambalaya in one-half hour, get ready!”
I open the door and say, “I am if you are.”
He looks me over, gives a nod. He says, “You could wear that probably. I guess that’s O.K. But you have to put a shirt over it. Honey, there’s gonna be kids at this place.”
86
To them at Deannie’s in Bucktown, he says, “Gimme all male crabs.”
I Don’t Care How Tired You Are
Now he has his “bloody doll”–emblazoned lighter out on display on this bar’s bar. I snatch the lighter up as our bartender approaches. I give my cigarette more fire.
88
Oh sure, in my dreams I eat Fritos.
Last night or toward morning I dreamt I ate a full bag. They’d settled but very few of the chips were broken. They had just the right taste.
The Entertainment Industry
Word from my old director friend Penny. He’s moved from Paramount over to Mercury Brothers where he’ll be working with me and Belinda.
Penny speaks with a lisp whenever he’s stressed. Which he apparently is in his new post. He reports that his phone number there is “shix-sheven-shix, sheven-sheven, sheero-sheero.”
90
I got started doing script work with Penny. After I met him at some point earlier and then worked with him doing something and then we got better acquainted and by now he’s someone I know.
91
To the last script conference, I took my tape recorder so I could get evidence on Belinda.
Here’s her voice on my tape saying, “Money. I’ve received the producers’ memo and their response is very bad. But they’re not always a hundred percent right about everything.”
That is actually the kindest, most supportive and constructive remark anyone at the studio has ever made to me. Girlfriend Belinda.
92
The recording proves to me, however, that in the hours following the script conference when the thing was left on “record” and I carried it around running in my handbag all afternoon, my personality fractured and I became a multiple.
All Characters Improve Their Lot
I ask myself, “So, what’s the difference?”
“Well, there is one,” I say, “but I don’t feel like explaining it to you right now.”
94
Mev is here at the sinks, scrubbing fruit for a fruit salad. She says, “With a brand-new syringe, there’s a little pop, same as when you open a jar. It’s resistance. The release of about a millimeter of air.”
Feed Your Head
I play my phone messages for today—thirteen so far from the New Boyfriend. In one he says, “Honey, I’ve been dipping into the dictionary you bought me.”
I did buy him a dictionary. Not an OED, just one that didn’t have “Student” in the title.
He says, “Guess it’s about time.”
96
I go out to the road and sit in my parked vehicle, where no one can disrupt me and people will let me be.
There are street-cleaning sounds, a dog barking in code, and on that lawn, in powder-blue coveralls, a Dimmler’s Nursery man watching me, watching me, his lips moving. The sky above us is dove gray.
I hunch down on the car seat but stay high enough that I can keep an eye on my surroundings.
Now comes a gaggle of made-up high school girls in their wide slapping shoes. One with overplucked eyebrows is reading horoscopes aloud from her magazine. Another is asking, “You know what I wish? My biggest wish?”
More on the dark side, I see a dead snake, and by the curb there’s a small pile of unexplained cardboard strips on fire.
97
Paulie was healed when I was there, or anyway, he looked normal, in that he could walk and talk O.K., could see and hear. He did plenty of shaking and puking, though. And even if his hands weren’t bandaged he could not have held a glass of water to fucking bring it to his face.
Things to Do
The police found the Gruesome Baby Dick Criminal in Paulie’s walk-in closet, foaming, and using his teeth to tear the clothes to shreds.
99
I guess he’d like to avoid going to trial and would like to be at home now, doing what he wants with his time, coming and going as he pleases.
100
I dozed for an hour or so, out here in my auto.
In my dreams, it was winter and time to take a sleigh ride. That suited me fine and I giggled going over the icy hills.
Why Bring It Up
I say to myself, “You’re not thinking right, you’re not thinking clearly.”
I say, “You’re thinking, thinking, thinking, but most of it is gobbledygook.”
102
Each day I make a lot of purchases but I don’t unbag anything. If I took stuff out of the sack I’d have to decide on a place for it, stow it somewhere; there’d be another new thing I’d have to own.
Nor am I carrying in any huge sacks of groceries. I’m tossing anything I can’t just eat in the car.
103
I’m at the drive-thru window at Aunt Julie’s Sandwich, idling with my hand out, about to receive change and oh good, here’s the ticken-chuna-talad hoagie I ordered. I wonder what this will be.
Bring the Noise
“You can’t be my daughter,” my mother says. “Who ever heard of a person hating and avoiding sleep?”
“Well, but Mom, consider. I eat jars and jars of speed.”
“Why do you?” she asks me.
I shrug, although she can’t see, as we’re conversing on the phone. “The same old reason.”
“Still? I’d hoped you were over that,” she says.
“It’s a birth defect,” I tell her. “Haven’t been able to shake it.”
105
Whereas my doctor says, “You ought to try taking your medication at four intervals and have the effects for sixteen hours.”
I’m wondering, “From what source, Dr. Rex? A magic hat? Surely not from this nickel bag you gave me to last until summer.”
106
“No more journal,” I tell him. “I’m never bringing it to therapy again. All my time, any hour, any day of the week, is wasted. Pointless to record where or how.
“Nor am I keeping any more organizational lists. I’ll show you why,” I say. “Here, you can read this. Its reminders are, one, ‘sweater,’ two, ‘read newspaper.’
“I can’t,” I say, crumpling the page, “be this pitiful.”
And Then a Kitchen Fire
Hollis appears at the door. He says he left work early. He says, “Fuck Driver’s Ed.,” which is what he teaches over at the Roger Taney School, right across the road.
“Lemme in before they see me,” he says, and says, “Found out Midge got remarried,” as he shoulders past me on his way to the couch.
He lies gaping at the living room ceiling as if an answer is up there, or a picture of a better world.
I sit on this end of the couch near where he has his feet. They’re in boating moccasins, the leather laces tied in precise and identical bows.
“Maybe you should go back,” I say. “You know how work can distract you sometimes? Just get lost in the routine.”
“Always enjoy talking to you,” Hollis says. “Always appreciate the many do’s and don’t’s.”
“I was in the middle of something,” I tell him.
Which I was. I have gone halfway around my apartment with a glue gun, making adjustments, and I still have the other half waiting. What doesn’t need glue?
“Have you thought of gardening?” I ask him.
His head raises and he balances it on the sofa arm. Looking at me.
“If you ever start one, you should do your watering first thing in the morning. Afternoon, your plants can overhydrate and burn in the sun. Night, you’ll get that powdery mildew. And you should once a week drown them instead of a little bit of water every day. It encourages deep root growth.”
“You are shocking,” says Hollis. “I’m not even going to ask if there’s ginseng tea left. I already know you drank it, all.”
“Happy to make fresh,” I say.
He says, “A few winks of sleep are what I need. Maybe go grab a nap in your spare room.”
I’ve been acting peculiar lately. The spare room has a lot of information about that.
I say, “You can’t, friend. Not in there. That room is ‘Bikers Only.’”
“I just wanna rest my eyes,” Hollis says and lurches off the couch and into the spare room and closes the door.
I hear a crash from in there that is the library lamp falling off the desk. Now there’s a pause as Hollis must be feeling around in the dark, getting the lamp righted. In two seconds he’ll switch it on.
“Jee-ruse-a-lem!” he shouts.
I yell, “Next time heed the warning!”
He reemerges with his head lowered. We bang knees as he steps around me on his way back to the couch. He lunges into place and again lies staring at the ceiling.
I feel an obligation to tell Hollis something. Nothing that begins with “You poor fool.” I say, “Give it time to settle.”
“Cookbook,” he mutters.
“As you wish,” say I.
I say, “Or do this. Consider the things you disliked about Midge. Her greed and rudeness and disregard. How she treated everyone like servants. That obnoxious and superior laugh of hers.”
“It wasn’t, if you knew her,” says Hollis. “That was all a veil for her lack of confidence, she told me.”
“Lack of confidence? How she’d talk about herself? Nonstop and lovingly? Until her eyes were flaring and her cheeks flushed? She’d claw anyone who interrupted?”
“She locked you in that hallway? She pitched a rock at your windshield? She called you a maggot in front of everyone you know?”
“Midge did? Not that I heard,” he says and covers his eyes. “Midge said I was a maggot?”
“I could,” I say, “easily have gotten that wrong.”
I’m looking hard at the coffee table, at the butterscotch balls in the candy dish there. Oh, from now on I will keep very quiet.
108
Hollis shakes out his shirt sleeves, buttons this cuff, now the other. “I do feel better,” he says.
He finishes with his sleeves and rises from the couch.
“We’ll need doughnuts,” he says, moving purposefully toward the door.
Capital Not, Capital Happening
And not to whine but the New Boyfriend calls every two or three hours and whatever his crisis, it’s bleeding from the nose, it’s right away, it costs ten hundred dollars, there’s no one else he can contact, I’ll have to go to Mexico to be of any help.
110
“Are you listening?” the Deaf Lady asks the whole store of them.
The Few Things I Care About
I sit the New Boyfriend down and explain to him, “I want you to ask yourself each time before you speak. Would your conversation, if you were in the joint, say, be good conversation? Would it be funny or interesting to your fellow inmates in the joint? If your answer to any of these questions is yes, then whatever the thing is, no matter what, you are forbidden to tell it to me.”
112
He presents me with a gift from his time in the military—a grease stick of face camouflage. The stick is two colors from nature: light green and loam.
I try streaking the grease on like war paint once, to see how it looks. Like war paint, whatever that really is.
113
“Honey, tell me,” he asks now, “why do you think people see aliens?”
My face is in my hands and I’m shaking it. I say, “I’m sorry but go over there and hide from me.”
He says, “You don’t believe in the people that were taken up?”
“Unable to talk right now,” I say.
