Why Did I Ever

by Mary Robison

  239

  Now I’m lying across the ugly maroon bedspread. Everyone’s gone. Flown to Toronto or weddings or another place they didn’t say.

  I’m just here in the El Patio, haven’t yet called the rental people to come collect all the equipment.

  I’m admiring this letter I forged from the IRS. It reads: “You are paid in full.”

  Chapter Eight

  The American South

  Driving safely away from New Orleans International, if I were in an iron dump truck, would be a neat trick. These people are maybe not trying to kill me, but clearly they’d be indifferent toward doing so.

  241

  I roar up to a place called Bayou Susan’s and purchase Nam vet/Jello shot/gun owner/debutante/Mardi Gras stickers to fwap across the rear bumper of my car. Now, let’s see if I’m not treated like an equal.

  Protect Your Head and Go Limp

  Sixteen hours from LAX to here. I’m trying to finish up, trying to draggle my luggage in off the front porch, especially this Wardrobe Wheeler that just will not go up the step. Delta? What the fucking hell did you do to my bags?

  Who prowls up and sits there in his car smiling at me but Dix.

  “your money back!” he calls out.

  I slump to a seat on the stoop. I quit, and cannot go any further.

  “There’s my hard-earned money!” says he.

  I probably knew all along this day would come.

  “She’s made of money!”

  Both days. Both would come. The day he’d find me. The day he’d fool around with my name.

  And I don’t remember what month this is, but whichever, it is too hot.

  243

  Dix is out of his car now and has his trunk popped open. I just shouldn’t look. He’s unloading stuff, searching for something. He recommended that I hold still and wait and that’s what I am doing. I’m not sure how Dix gets me to do anything, ever. I really have to stop and wonder about that someday and figure out how such a thing came about.

  He’s thrown onto the ground a Tostados bag and golf shoes and an air filter and a few tools. And, aha! A pair of foam bats is what he brought for me. “Honey, these are Nerf bats,” he says. “So nobody gets hurt. We can go ahead and fight with these as much as you want.”

  Who leaked to him my home address? Was it Bell-Fuckwad-South?

  He’s holding his electric-blue bats, I’m lying down on the concrete porch, letting my eyes roll back into my head. I wish one of the ex-husbands would come along. This could look like a scene from a Cuban film.

  244

  Dix says, “You don’t gotta worry. I’m not one of those guys gets his rocks off beatin’ on a woman.”

  “God love you,” I say.

  “You do gotta worry, though, that at times I can be verbally abusive.”

  “No, you really can’t,” I say. “To do that you’d have to know the language better, Dix. You’d have to know, first of all, what is a verb.”

  “Everything that you own,” he says, “is the best stuff money can buy!”

  245

  I was already tired and then Dix made me more tired and I shelved my Tetsuo the Ironman video in the fridge. The tape seems fine, though, and for the next little while it’ll function fine and Dix will like it or be frightened by it and, either way, maybe shut the hell up.

  Flower in the Crannied Wall

  “You don’t wanna pay attention,” says Hollis and, fed up, throws his magazine at the coffee table.

  “Listen to you!” I say. “How could anybody ever possibly argue with you?”

  “Oh, I’m the one who’s unreasonable? Is that it? I’m the one jumping down the other’s throat?”

  “In fact,” I say.

  “Yeah, blame it on me.”

  “Hollis, that is so childish I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear.”

  “Well, we both know you did,” says he.

  “What?” I say.

  “You can’t pretend.”

  “Can so,” I say. “Beg your pardon?”

  Living Out the Trip

  Mev is very lovely but I’m not sure about the bicycle she painted egg-yolk yellow or about that—whatever it is—feathered headdress she got in Whozitville when she was visiting my dad.

  “Fucking hip-hop covers of every fucking song, they’re ruining everything,” she says. “I juss-juss cawled to say how mudge ahh care.”

  248

  “Good job,” I say to myself. “Books, music, films, and now the food alphabetized.”

  249

  I take a drive and, using a foot-long flashlight, hunt for my cat, my cat.

  Something white took off running and went behind this house, this wealthy nice house that is, nonetheless, letting off an ugly sound—the dinging, burning, beeping pathological noise of a TV game show.

  Just Keep Going Straight

  I’m in my car, those two are in theirs.

  The woman in the passenger seat is twiddling her sunglasses by the stem.

  She probably can’t hear me so I go ahead and scream, “You could get your own car! With its own beverage holder! Its own map pocket! You would work the controls for the side mirrors!”

  251

  “You know why you’re having this strong a reaction to things,” I say. “It’s because of those marshmallow pies you ate. Four of them? I can’t believe you did that!”

  “I can,” I say. “No surprise here.”

  252

  See, these people know me. I’ve been lost in their driveway before.

  253

  A cop makes me pick up every last cigarette end that I threw onto the lawn of Bell South. Maybe seven hundred or eight hundred butts I saved up. “Hands and knees, Missy.”

  254

  My search for the cat continues. Until after dawn, I’m shining this light and calling and screeching.

  And I see now why people like being out in the daytime. The stores are open.

  255

  I’m going along on Chapel, the one main street in Melanie, my town. The trees are in freakish flower and behind a pink picket fence is a huge fluffy herd of goats. The sky rolling over is lavender. At a railroad crossing, a giddy-looking train with a bulbous licorice engine seesaws by.

  Whatever You Do, Don’t Let Go

  Time for a car wash.

  Monday morning, and even here at the Econo-Cleaner I have friends.

  Party

  “What’s with the bandage?” I ask the Deaf Lady. “Did you hurt your hand?”

  “This? Just a mattress fire.”

  “Oh, don’t tell me,” I say.

  She says, “Calm down, I made sure it was out.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Uh, yesterday.”

  “You couldn’t mean yesterday. Yesterday—”

  “All right, all right. Then the other day it was,” she says. “Get off my ass.”

  I hear her and deep down I realize that God put the Deaf Lady next door to me for a reason.

  258

  One thing I have never owned and would never own is a teensy spindly-strapped lady’s wristwatch. Whyever? When I need to know the time.

  259

  I’ve spent all afternoon on the photograph gallery here in my office. That shot of me throwing up with Jerzy Kosinski is fine art. I also put a lot into the picture of me with my arm over the shoulder of Joan Didion, signed: “Best time I ever had with a girl.” There’s a letter I made up from Joan as well, tucked into the back there, in which she talks about drug drops and all the money she owes me.

  260

  I would say to my ex-husbands, “You know what I get to do? Anything! Sing, if I so choose. ‘Stormy weath-errr . . .’”

  261

  While the thing was unde
r way, Paulie’s friend Armando happened to call and he kept calling and trying to get Paulie to answer, only the Savage Lice-Face Criminal wouldn’t permit that, but the third or fourth time, Paulie kicked the phone receiver loose and for a few seconds Armando could hear, although he doesn’t remember what, but he got the super and got the police and then he must’ve taken off running and must’ve run all the way there from work because he appeared at the door, I’m told, panting and breathless and armed with one of his shoes.

  Just Go

  When I check in with my shrink, he’s bleary—as if he’s a stand-in for my shrink, someone who’s only skimmed my file.

  “I’ll let you get comfortable,” he says to me.

  I think, Now that you’ve said that, I can’t.

  I leave the chair, leave the room, go outside and pace in a circle, have my thoughts, tell them to no one, climb into my car, and drive off in comfort.

  263

  Cruising the neighborhood. Now ringing the shrink on the mobile phone to make an apology.

  “Well, you’d better come back in,” says he.

  “Oh? And why had I?”

  “So that I may be of help to you,” he says. “What’ve you got scheduled for later?”

  “Scheduled,” I say. “You silly.”

  “Got going on later. At—how about two this afternoon.”

  “You don’t have someone else to therapize at two?”

  “I’m begging you,” says Dr. Rex. And that always gets me.

  264

  I take the corner booth at IHOP, where perhaps I can last until two. Thinking about my lean and suntanned son. Weeping into a napkin. Ignoring a short stack and a side of links that, anyway, would be tastier if I ate their depiction on the menu.

  I have long thought pharmaceutical drugs were the solution and I was right about that and that’s correct. Still, you have to consider, with even the best prescription drugs, who it is who’s taking them.

  Letter to Sean Penn

  In a second note, I write:

  Would you have any big objection to my going by the name of “Mrs. Sean Penn”? I’ve tried introducing myself with it a few times already and it always gets a good reaction.

  Yours,

  Mrs. Sean Penn

  266

  Wake up, you drunkards, and weep!

  —joel 1:5

  Now we’re side by side on the bench in the yard, the Deaf Lady and I. From somewhere we can hear plinking piano music. It fades out. I throw my arm over her shoulder. I say, “Do you want to hear a strange story? This took place in Cumberland, in the fall, back when I was a teenager. It’s a true tale,” I say, smiling and turning to give her a wink. But the Deaf Lady has gone, for all intents and purposes, deaf.

  267

  “Get him, get him, get him!” shouts Hollis from the living room. I tumble out of bed and drag in there. He’s made a campground on the floor in front of the television.

  “Do you never sleep?” I ask and throw groggily in with his pillows and blankets.

  “They’re constantly getting better,” says a sportscaster. “Despite the sidelining of their point guard and the banishment of three players from a series of practices. Plus this new coaching team had to learn all-new offensive and defensive sets.”

  I’m here listening, trying to. That is a whole, other, language.

  268

  Hollis is six feet or so and he still has the blond hair, and in his undershirt tonight, he’s surprisingly fit and strong and Thor-looking.

  His things, though, generally, are not very nice. I don’t know if maybe Midge took all his money. I would help him buy less crappy things if there were ever a way. His belt and shoes there are definitely cardboard.

  269

  Once more I’m out, at one a.m., in some store trying to purchase bedding plants. The cashier woman says, “They’re three for five dollars. You sure you need eight?”

  I’m distracted, looking at this man behind me.

  She asks, “You’re sure you want to cut it off at eight?”

  This guy behind me in the checkout lane is wearing a sweater vest and his arms bare. He’s waiting with a hundred-dollar bill to pay for Twizzlers and a porterhouse steak.

  Which leads me to look down at my own self. “Do I know you?” he asks softly.

  “No,” I say, sighing. “Not in the way you mean.”

  Dropped Something, I Have to Go Back for It

  The phone machine bleeps on and that’s my father’s grainy voice leaving a message for Mev. She and I are frozen still, not answering.

  Mev has on her wire-rim glasses today. Her head is still, her gaze fixed on her lap, on some piece of fabric she’s embroidering with purple birds.

  He says, “Mev, it’s your grandfather. Please get back to me immediately. I have something we need to discuss before I take further action. I came upon a most disturbing item hidden in the closet there in the guest room where you stayed.”

  Mev snatches up the phone and says, “Listen to me, Grandpa. I paid forty-seven dollars for that bong. It’s personal property. You weren’t supposed to go rooting around in there anyway. Close the door and don’t touch a finger to it.”

  I’m shocked at the way Mev’s ordering my dad around. I’m shocked further that she gave him my number to call.

  And Me

  I remember after the third and final husband left, I looked around to see what was different or changed—two lamps were broken, two chairs, my camera, one of the speakers, a couple windows, a couple mirrors, drawers, cabinets, all handles and knobs, the bathroom, my car, the kitchen.

  272

  I would like to ask all the husbands, just in case I ever have to fill out a form, “You did what kind of work?”

  Paulie

  I hadn’t budged from my chair that first day, not the whole time Paulie slept. I really wanted to talk to him but he was leery of talking. He would rather have swan-dived from the window into the street, was how much he didn’t want to talk.

  So I sat there with him and time crawled fucking by.

  I wasn’t even perfectly sure what had happened. All things horrible, I was perfectly sure. And sure I’d never get past it, get beyond it, and let it go. I knew I never would, ever. This was my diamond baby boy.

  274

  He came to, or he had come to, and it was a while before I noticed. Still leaning over in his chair with his face on the dining table and looking at me, I thought, kindly.

  He wasn’t awake, he just wasn’t asleep either.

  275

  Now I’m choking down Aleve.

  276

  A news thing with the president comes on the television. He tells the press, “Let’s not take the super-flew-us route,” and moves his hand in a snaking motion. I think that’s wrong in several ways. And I think perhaps a syllable maximum should be set for some people and, I’m sorry, but rather a low one.

  There Have to Be Rules

  I’m in a bright aisle at Appletree reading a fashion magazine—reading all of it, the letters, contributors’ notes, the products listings. I’m thinking, This is not like reading Alfred Lord Tennyson but neither is it like inhaling from a bag of glue.

  It’s a little like doing glue maybe, as I’m now in the aisle with the kitten greeting cards and saying, “Don’t,” as a warning to my own reaching hand.

  Here even worse off than I is my daughter, wearing the headdress and, as we stroll by the prepared meats, singing, “Eeemo whoa-whoa oh shun.”

  Somewhere in the store is a little child yelling, “Where’s my breakfast?” over and over and over. Mev and I keep turning our heads to the sound. “Kid, it’s dark out,” Mev says. “You, have got stuff to memorize.”

  “Mom, no,” she says, “bacon kills,” as I pick up and put down a package of it.

 
278

  Now she’s puking her head off. Methadone’s the foulest thing I’ve ever heard of. She is very, very embarrassed, my Mev, and we’re still thirty feet from the car. There isn’t one bush along here if she loses it again and, as I suspect she’s going to, I’ve got my jacket ready to hold up as a drape, give her a little privacy.

  By That Time, It’ll Be Too Late

  An article on ADD advises me to put labels on everything in the kitchen.

  So here they are, labels. They read: sink, counter, cabinets, clock, door, refrigerator, and inside the closet I’ve put one on the broom. I should be all set. And yet I’m back and forth, back and forth, and Hollis is eyeing me as I seek a stowing place for this net bag of potatoes. Where? Not in the dishwasher. How about if these go sit nicely in the side yard.

  “My God,” Hollis says. “You need a wife.”

  Chapter Nine

  280

  I need coffee bad, and I need a clothes dryer that’s free. Over there, Mev, squeezing her fingers into her jeans pocket to find quarters for a giant boy. Now wandering back to the Formica table where she’s helping someone fold.

  She has sparkle, my daughter—long lashes, soft shoulders, baby skin, the face of a mermaid.

  I Was Addicted to Broccoli One Summer

  Maybe I shouldn’t permit myself even the one cigarette a week. The end went where? We’re driving up Corina Street. Mev is shouting, “Hot! Flying! Ashes, in the air!”

  She used to have an old BMW that she drove to law school and then drove to the women’s penitentiary where she taught street law and learned everything she knows about narcotics. That car disappeared.

  I ask her, “Mev? Whatever happened to that BMW you had?”

  “Uhm,” she says. “I spent it.”

  282

  Late, I drift on over to visit the Deaf Lady, maybe see how she is and sit and have a nice conversation with her.

  “So, what’s the situation?” she asks, cracking the door.

  I say, “I am your dear, dear friend.”

  She steps out onto the sidewalk with me. She’s barefoot and wearing a robe. Which I’ve done and it’s not that drastic an error.