Why Did I Ever

by Mary Robison

  I’m vibrating. I wonder why I’m not driving somewhere to eat? I could have stayed home and ignored food totally.

  Enough of this! I need Jimi, Van, Black Uhuru.

  Below is oily black water and hurrying over that are long night tugs that are webbed with tiny purple lights.

  164

  I can close my eyes and, if I ever want to, go back in time and hear Paulie rehearsing for the dipshit school play, singing in his little sixth grade voice that he had then.

  165

  I say to myself, “Damn you, damn you, God help you, help you, help.”

  Men of Science

  “Just getting a little background on you,” says the doctor in Admissions at the nut hospital when I try to check in. “Where did you attend high school?”

  “Oh,” I say, “just skip ahead, will you? Ask me something from now.”

  “All right, whatever you prefer. Marital status?”

  “That doesn’t matter either. You can leave that blank too.”

  “Last menstrual period?”

  “Look,” I say. “Life has its problems. Those are not they.”

  “Well,” he says, “I don’t want to seem impertinent.”

  I say, “I am guessing that no one does.”

  He has his clipboard slotted between his knees now, and he gives a sigh. He holds his pen aloft, like a dart he’s going to throw at me.

  I say, “Just ask what you need to ask so we can both get on with it. I’m busy, I’m sure you’re very busy.”

  “O.K.,” he says, “let’s start with what brought you here. Tell me about that.”

  I nod. With this I’ll comply. I say, “I have an awful, kind of, Sunday hollow feeling.”

  “Yep,” says a voice to my left, the voice of some other applicant for admission here. I like being understood but I wish this hadn’t happened.

  The doctor isn’t going to let me in, anyway.

  He doesn’t care that, on the way over, the skyful of silvery little fish almost made me wreck. Or that all the other cars kept getting ahead of me, even though some of those drivers never gave a thought to Sylvia Plath.

  I want to explain a few things before I finish here.

  “This,” I say, pointing at the area in front of me, “is not my real life. My real life is still coming up. It’s just a matter of my digging in. I won’t have this hair, for one. I’ll put better magazines out. Drink juice. Take stuff to Goodwill. Get the car tuned. That, there, will be my real life.”

  It’s Not What You Asked For

  I would say to one particular ex: “Twit was too short a word and Pigboy was unkind. I should never have said such ugly things about you. Bumpkin, however, and Thieving, Lying Wino can stay right where they are.”

  Filing System

  O.K., scary. Out this upstairs window, whatever just flew by on its wings was fur-covered and bigger than a fox.

  I say to myself, “Think about something else, you’ll be fine. Put on a nice robe. Movies! Find something with Morgan Freeman!”

  169

  The phone rings as I’m stretched out on the bed now trying like hell to remember where I could’ve hidden the Morgan Freeman films. The answering machine catches some female calling here for Hollis. “Hollis,” her voice says. “It’s me . . .”

  I know that one. Through and through. And I know everything “It’s me” is about.

  170

  The thing rings again, I grab it up. Mev is the caller. Mev, who is off visiting Nimrod or whatever is my dad’s name—her grandfather.

  She says softly into the phone, “He’s been pointing questions at me, Mother. Interrogating me for information about you. But just hold up before you lambaste me. I didn’t rat.”

  “I am still his daughter. Maybe he’s just curious.”

  “Nuh-uh, none of that,” she says. “He can forget about it. Your whereabouts at the precise date in time? Get a warrant, Grandpop.”

  “I’ve always liked you,” I say to her.

  I’m Just Here to Fix the Furnace

  “Here’s the answer,” Hollis says. “No, listen to this, listen. Just yank out those idiotic shoulder pads and the coat’ll be great.”

  “Doesn’t have shoulder pads,” I say, flopping dejectedly onto the bed.

  “Well, then done, it’s already great,” he says and throws up his hands as if his words were supported by logic.

  172

  I wander into the kitchen to make peace with him after a while.

  He’s standing at the stove stirring some mysterious potion he’s got bubbling in my little copper-bottomed saucepan.

  I ask what he’s doing and he says, “It’s obvious.”

  I tell him it really is not and he says, “In a few seconds we’ll have pistachio pudding.”

  So I think I’ve changed my mind and I can never make peace with this person.

  Get the Bugs off Me

  “Where was I?” I ask myself, just out of bed in the morning.

  I say, “Three clues. Not at Pizza Hut, not in outer space, not in New Jersey.”

  “That still doesn’t tell me, though,” I say.

  174

  The hardware store’s on strike so I have to beat it over there before the workers form their picket line.

  From inside the store I see Hollis trailing after me. Or that he wants to. He means to. But, no. He gets stopped and brought into a discussion with the strikers and now there he is, grabbing up a protest sign.

  175

  I wander the store, pick up a trowel, a level, a toolbelt. This pegboard in front of me, it’s hung with what? Rafters, anchors, nutcrackers? I don’t know.

  “Show you something?” asks a salesman.

  “I just need wire,” I say, “I guess.”

  “Any particular kind of wire? That does hedges,” he says. He takes a tool away from me and realigns it on a shelf.

  “No, just regular wire. Whichever one people buy the most. Your most popular.”

  The salesman stares down at his feet, lifts and turns each of his shoes, this one, now the other.

  176

  In the yard, the Deaf Lady.

  I call out, “You should see what they have over there,” and, arriving before the bench, jostle my bag. “Like a staple gun. My dad always had these, but he’d make me leave the room before he used them, and my husbands were the same way! They’d say, ‘Those can be tricky, honeypie. Better bring the thing to me.’”

  “I’m never sure,” the Deaf Lady says, “when you’re faking.”

  177

  Two white boys approach from the side yard. They’re sporting fresh haircuts and wearing shined black shoes, blue trousers, starched shirts.

  We watch them walk over to my apartment door. They thump the knocker and wait. Hollis answers and lets them inside.

  What Did You Think Would Happen

  He’s in my living room, down on the floor petting a little collie dog I’ve never seen before. He’s performing for the Christian boys, who’re trapped on the couch now, observing him with the dog.

  He says, “There, there, Molly. Everything’ll be fine. I’ll get you to the veterinary hospital the moment we’re through here.”

  “Sir, we can go,” says one of the boys.

  “I’m sure there’s plenty of time,” says Hollis. “Let’s get back to that thing you were telling me about Paul and the Thessalonians.”

  “That is not his dog,” I say.

  “I feel sorry for it, though,” says the second boy.

  Hollis raises himself slightly and looks at me. He says, “Darling? Maybe think about changing your blouse before we leave?”

  I come back out of the hallway, where I’d begun shelving my hardware things in the little utility closet. “Why?” I ask him. “What’s wrong w
ith my blouse?”

  “Now, now. Don’t get huffy. You have plenty of nicer things you could wear,” he says. And, softening his voice, murmurs to the Christians, “With all the money she spends on clothes?”

  “It’s funny but I bought a blouse like that,” says the first boy. “And gave it to my mom for Christmas.”

  Gives Me the Shivers

  Daughter Mev lights out, bored at her grandfather’s. She calls me from Snowshoe, Pennsylvania, at four in the morning. I’m up. She calls from a phone booth near the boiler room where she’s taken shelter. “I didn’t plan this greatly,” she admits. “Like I’ve got all my meds, safely ensconced, but I should’ve stopped someplace and stolen gloves or mittens.”

  180

  Five in the a.m., the phone jangles again. My heart goes roaring up my throat.

  “We were disconnected,” says the Boyfriend.

  And I’m hanging on the line here for a minute or two. This ploy is so good, I’m letting him talk.

  “I’d just like to come visit my lady love,” he says, trying to wheedle the address out of me.

  He says, “I don’t see what’s the problem. Is it our age difference?”

  “Enough about that, you can drop that,” I say. “I’ve been lying all along. I’m the same age as you.”

  “I thought you were much-much older,” Dix says.

  I wait for him to apologize but he’s not going to. He’s an idiot! He says, “Honey, this is a huge relief. Here I thought you were like really-really old.”

  181

  Last thing before sleep, I get to make a call. I dial the phone and recite some favorite movie lines as a message on Hollis’s answering machine. I say, “‘Dad, I love you. But you think of yourself as a black man. I think of myself as a man.’”

  The Issue Is Not the Issue

  Church of the Sacred Passion, I get right up next to it and to its pastor, who’s out here glad-handing.

  “What was your name again, dearie? I’m sorry, I know you’ve told me,” he says.

  That is jive. He’s never asked, I’ve never offered.

  “Linda Kenesevich, isn’t it?” he says.

  I go inside the church and get down on my knees and pray.

  “God, please, you must hear me. Please don’t let me resemble Linda Kenesevich, the Bougainvillea Blossom Cleaners’ manager. Please, God. I deserve better respect than that, for who I was in the day.”

  Hate to Keep Asking

  “Up! Lordy! Good morning, I’m up!” I say. “What the hell has been going on?”

  Chapter Six

  184

  About the Mercury Brothers’ script I think: O.K., get a lot of sleep tonight, war starts tomorrow. You’re going off to war. A plane will take you to the war place and a limo will fetch you so you don’t gotta worry about parking. And when you get through, even the first day, you’ll be able to leave war and relax. Maybe go out, have cocktails with somebody, chill and put war out of your mind.

  Nevertheless

  I notice that at night before landing at LAX the plane takes a little side trip and we’re over water dumping our fuel. So dangerous is their imbecilic runway.

  186

  Like an electric football game is their runway. All the parked planes jitterbugging and lurching cattywompus.

  187

  “That,” explains our pilot, Captain Butterfield—and what a handsome all-business kind of fellow he is—“was an earthquake.”

  188

  I have purchased a soft pretzel and I am eating that as I await my ground transportation.

  I say to myself, “How smart is this?”

  189

  My director friend Penny is an exacting man who knows food temperatures and tire sizes. For getting to the hotel, he gave me nineteen minutes’ worth of directions.

  But my driver, when I try to give him the details, says, “It’s four streets.”

  Along the way the pretzel topples me. I’m streaming and saying, “Let me out of here!” but to myself mostly and I mean my own skin.

  The driver fits something onto the seat beside my face. “Here’s a bucket if you feel like you’re gonna get sick,” he says.

  And I’m out of it, but that bucket was once a tub for Imperial Margarine.

  Work Better, Go Union

  I ask myself, “What time is it? Seven or so?”

  “Actually, it’s a little worse than that,” I say, peering at my watch. “More like seven-fifteen. You’re late!”

  “All right, I know,” I say.

  I say, “And whatever you did last night? It must’ve been disgusting. So disgusting you passed out in terror.”

  The Something Producer, Evan, ended up here, I’m fairly sure. And the night did cost me but somehow it paid very well. Here is my wallet, emptied of every dollar and coin. My left Nine West shoe, however, has six hundred bucks in the toe.

  191

  I say to myself, “And let me remind you. The next time you go off in some purple fucking haze, you are not to go wearing your good red-leather jacket. Because you don’t always return to consciousness with it on. You know what I mean?”

  Whether I Matter or Not Doesn’t Win or Lose

  I’m at Mercury Brothers, given not even a chair but a stack of boxes to sit upon while Belinda chides me.

  She says, “Perhaps you won’t mind if I tell you what I think. I’m talking about the work we expected from you today.”

  “Right, right, I know,” I say.

  “I’m sure you know,” says Belinda. She swats open the script she has on her lap and swivels in her chair so she’s facing away from me.

  “That everything?” I ask.

  She looks around at me for less time than it would take to check a clock. She says, “When I went by your bungalow last night, I noticed an auto parked outside. Perhaps you’re not a person who treats her schedule very seriously.”

  “So, is that it?” I ask.

  “And if I’m not mistaken, he’s married.”

  “Who?”

  “Evan.”

  “Producer Evan? Could be,” I say. “Plenty of people are. Are we through here, Belinda?”

  “We’re going into a meeting,” she says, and now she’s yanking pages from the script. “Into a meeting. With this.”

  Hell, as far as I’m concerned, has frozen over, and I’ll soon enough be living in an underpass in a cardboard box. “Get you,” I say to Belinda. “Get this woman,” I say into the air.

  193

  The script used to have a man in love with a wood nymph. Then a version had him in the redwood forest in love with a tree. Now the story’s set in Alaska, and is about some dame chasing after Bigfoot. My job, and what I do for a living.

  194

  There are eleven producers around the meeting room, groomed and golden men wearing cuff links and three-piece suits that cost more than my car. Their assistants, or whoever’s assistants, are going in and out to fetch mineral water for people. They’re neutralizing us with ballgame/train crash/scalp massage talk that is unrelated to work.

  Now, I don’t have the nerve to ask if anyone fell by my bungalow last night, so I’ll just go on. There are other things to mull over. I see a few. Mr. Shumacher’s eyeglasses, for one. Are they not upside down?

  195

  For an hour, Mr. Shumacher has been reading to the group. Perhaps a thousand pages! He finishes and his brow lifts. He sips from his smoking cup of tea. He turns to Penny. Penny turns to me. We contribute nothing and so look to the next guy, Evan.

  Whom I now remember seeing at some time this morning. I needed the washroom. He was in my path. Could that hick have given me money?

  All of Evan’s remarks are around the theme of his happy marriage—when he and the wife did this or went there or had such and such happen.r />
  196

  “Don’t start on me,” I say to myself. “Yes, I’m deeply, deeply regretful and ashamed.”

  And No Fat Chicks

  Penny tries to keep a lot of control. He would not mix a red rubber band in with his beige ones, say. Or if he suddenly knew that in his wardrobe closet there was a shirt facing the wrong way, he would vault from behind his desk, cry out for his driver, and be sped home.

  198

  He and I are in the glass-block building that is Studio B, in the sitting room Penny prefers to his office. The room’s got two floor lamps, a couch, camel-colored walls. It’s a plain, uncomplicated room.

  We’re seated on either end of the couch. Penny holds the laptop and in there is the script. I’m allowed nothing—not a pencil, not a pen.

  Tilted against the wall opposite is Penny’s mammoth bulletin board. It’s tacked full with index cards that have scene directions, slug lines, notes in Penny’s creepy little insect scribble. Although I like the man. Now he rises from his seat, ambles over there, reads something, unpins the cards, switches them all around.

  While I’m slouched here, wondering what attracts me to this work. Nothing that is good, that’s for certain.

  Penny’s in close, his shoulders bowed as he tacks the last cards. He’s wearing suspenders today and an immaculate suit. “O.K., not bad,” he says. “Not too shabby.”

  I say, “It’s excrement. Vapid and cornball. Trite, boring, insipid shit.”

  Penny’s round head gives a nod. He drops back onto the couch. He isn’t listening. At least, not to me.

  199

  I wander down to the cafeteria, get a scary orange-iced bun that’s not worth unwrapping, get coffee, droop over it, think about the mistakes I’ve made.

  200

  I find a phone, call my daughter Mev’s place, leave a message for her on her answering machine. I say, “Did I forget to tell you this? Don’t live your life in the gutter!”

  Not Deaf

  Back in the sitting room, Penny reads a line aloud for me: “‘After descending Mount McKinley, Justine trudges through the—’”