Why Did I Ever

by Mary Robison

  417

  Now, my dad, he really has and owns nothing. I bought him a few things, essentials, and I’ve brought those to the Allegheny Convalescent Hospital.

  What sickens me is that I shopped smartly for these items. I got the very, very best buys. Which I hadn’t realized until now, as my father holds up the top to the blue pajamas that should be cotton.

  418

  His hospital room’s the usual with a thick swinging door, gray floor tiles, white curtains with a stencil pattern, a chair, his bed, the air-temperature-control unit I am perched upon.

  To kill the time, I pose a question. I ask my dad what he did during the war.

  He says he was an engineer for the U.S. Navy.

  And this was a good, fine idea, my asking. He tells me about sonar and reverb and heat search and echo. For eighty minutes, he’s answering, telling me what he did.

  I wish things were different and not going to end soon. I wish we were all of us younger and could go back.

  He says, “Think of the sound that helicopter blades make on deep water—fwumph-fwumph, fwumph-fwumph.”

  A World of Love

  Southern men are working in the southern heat—prisoners in lime-and-white-striped pants; bike cops in jackboots; a man with dreadlocks collecting cans; another wearing cherry-red scrubs who’s pedaling a decrepit bicycle.

  On and On and On

  Busy at the computer, I say, “That noise has been going on and on. It is so distracting.”

  I say, “cat with its head trapped in the basket handle!”

  421

  “It is in fact an American stadium chair,” says the television. “They were popularly covered with red vinyl.”

  Go Someplace

  Three eleven-year-olds who live on my street lope over to the car while I’m at a red. They say, “We want to hear Al Green,” and climb into the back of my car. The four of us ride happily around for a time. The sky has sunset clouds edged in copper.

  “Drive us to Mr. Finley’s,” they say.

  “This is right,” they say as we bound along on a ruined street and on into a contemptible Southern slum where there are catfish hovels, hair shacks, weed plots, spiked wire fencing, a barbecue shed guarded by a sad, heat-soured dog. We pass a bar beaten to splinters and chips and a chalky, sun-bleached sign that once read “Fern’s.” There’s shattered glass everywhere. I slow when they tell me, at the road’s end, and drive onto the swollen and torn blacktop lot for Mr. Finley’s, where plates of old pavement joggle the car and bounce us in our seats. The place is a one-window wooden box with video games, maybe frozen pizza.

  I say, “You’re not getting out here. I wouldn’t get out here, so no one I know can get out here neither.”

  “We come here all the time,” they say.

  “That may be,” I say, jerking the car into reverse, “but today you have to go someplace nicer.”

  “Wah, wah,” they say.

  But I shake my head, saying, “Isn’t that too damn bad.”

  These Yellow Lights Must Mean Step on It

  The laundromat’s dollar changer is busted again and a woman asks if I have extra quarters.

  I do. Dix took me to the casino last evening, where I won great buckets of quarters on a Wild Cherry slot machine.

  This is a teeny-tiny woman asking. Who seems about to fade. With the machines turning in here, the heat is unbreathable. And whereas I’m slickered with sweat, this woman’s skin has a disturbing matte finish.

  I hand her nine dollars’ worth of quarters and she hands me a sack of nine hundred pennies. I needn’t count them, I’m certain they’re all there.

  424

  The laundromat’s rusty old soda dispenser gives me a plastic bottle of something carbonated and indelible brown, which I am taking outside now because in here, by being in here, I feel like I’m hurrying people.

  “We’re drying!” a married couple assures me, and I say to myself, “See, that’s just what I mean.”

  425

  This guy, however, I can take a lot out on. Always loitering here, sitting aboard the machines, talking embarrassing filth or carrying on and lying about serving in Nam.

  “Come with me,” I say and because he thinks we’re going on an attractive date, he does.

  Outside, I say, “We don’t smoke in there. It bothers people.”

  “You’re telling me what to do?”

  “If it sounds that way,” I say, “let it.”

  That Was Connie Stevens Wasn’t It Handing Out Samples of Cranberry Bread

  Hollis and the Deaf Lady arrive to help me with the Bigfoot script. Both have said they’re brimming with ideas. Hollis brings along a pencil and a legal tablet snapped to the clipboard he uses for Driver’s Ed.

  I put us in the breakfast nook so we can have the table and where there are enough seats.

  “Yes, this is perfect for me,” says the Deaf Lady, climbing aboard the padded bar stool. She leans this way and that trying to get comfortable, cocks the wooden heels of her shoes on the stool’s lower rung. She smooths the fabric of her paisley skirt on her thighs.

  “We don’t have to do this. We could do something else, if you’d rather,” I say.

  “Do you have anything to eat? Do you have any raisin toast?” she asks.

  “No raisin,” I say.

  I open the refrigerator and stare at the contents, stoop and consider what’s positioned toward the back. “Does . . . either carrot, or pineapple juice sound good to you? Or I have this pint of Ben and Jerry’s that’s almost soft.”

  Hollis says to me over his shoulder, “You see that small door at the top there? It leads to a compartment where you can keep foods extra cold.”

  “Is that chicken?” asks the Deaf Lady, peering around me.

  “Yesterday’s,” I tell her.

  She says, “No.”

  “In a suit, yet,” she says to Hollis. He’s wearing an inexpensive navy-blue suit.

  “Yes,” he says, “I had to work this morning. I’m a member of the working force.”

  “I used to be,” she says wistfully.

  “You were?” I ask as I’m sitting down. “What part?”

  “Wildlife,” she says. “Well, so to speak. It was really more like forestry, up in the tall trees.”

  “Lord!” I say.

  “And a lion tamer some nights when I finished designing sweaters for the Gap. Could I have a different chair, please?”

  “Certainly may,” says Hollis. He gets off his and scoots it over for the Deaf Lady. “Work can be gratifying,” he says, hoisting her bar stool over her and into place. “It’s good to be good at something.”

  “Hmm,” I say. “Yes, I suppose. I’m a pretty fair gardener. An excellent driver. I was a good pet owner until that went out the window.”

  “You were never a good pet owner,” the Deaf Lady says.

  “What do you mean? I was so. What did I do incorrectly?”

  “Fed it junk food,” she says and nods on the word for emphasis.

  “I never. Did not. That is completely false.”

  “Cool out,” she says. “Christ. I’m just expressing an opinion.”

  “You’re entitled,” Hollis says.

  I say, “I just wish it were a right one. Or an opinion based on fact.”

  “All right, listen, folks,” the Deaf Lady says, smiling. “I don’t want to do this if you’re just going to squabble.”

  “You’re right. So right. Beg your pardon,” I say.

  Because I notice she put makeup on for this and Hollis has that fresh tablet and his sharpened pencil on the tabletop.

  “Bigfoot’s played by a guy in a suit of fur? Or special effects, or what?” asks Hollis.

  I say, “They don’t tell me. That’s in a whole other department. I just
deal with the writing. Period. Yeah, a human actor will be under there probably.”

  “Then . . . would this be a Caucasian gentleman in the role?”

  “She doesn’t follow you,” the Deaf Lady says. “Or see the difference.”

  I say, “What is the difference?”

  The Deaf Lady puts her elbows on the table and hunches down to look at me. “Bigfoot could seem symbolic to some people.”

  “Symbolic of . . . ?”

  “The big black bogeyman hiding in the bushes.”

  “First of all, nonsense,” I say.

  “Maybe to you,” says the Deaf Lady.

  “Second,” I say, “and you’ll be able to believe me on this: Nobody anywhere near this script is that clever.”

  “Let’s just go on,” Hollis tells us.

  He says, “Here’s what I’ve got so far.” He’s folded back the top sheets on his tablet to reveal a page of handwritten notes. He reads, “First off, I think there should be several realistic chase scenes, and then there should be spliced in a lot of newsreel-type footage, you know? Like with the Chinese capturing Bigfoot. Next, maybe take out the dairy farm.” He looks up at us. “I’ve seen that one before.” He looks back at his notes. “Then, you show your Justine character being a little selfish. A birthday party, is what I scribbled down. Followed by a department store where she exchanges and returns all the gifts. Also, I think she should have a cell phone. Then, I think get rid of the scene where her former boyfriend gets mistaken for a demon and beat up and thrown in a ditch. ’Cause it didn’t really seem like he deserved it, but whatever. Substitute a scene where he appears at her door already beat up by somebody. Then, have Bigfoot gathering up to seek revenge, and walking out, he says, ‘I am too old for this shit.’”

  The Deaf Lady and I are both sitting here, nodding.

  Hollis says, “Or another thing that could be possible is, give Bigfoot a sidekick.”

  427

  The phone interrupts us and it’s Dix calling.

  He says, “Honey, Daisy’s here with me and we been goin’ over some of the problems. She’s that psychic, in case you forgot.”

  “I can’t talk right now,” I say.

  “Just try listening to her for two seconds. You don’t even have to—”

  “I would, but I really can’t right now.”

  “She already knows stuff about the future, honey. She can help you.”

  “Hmm,” I say, “probably not.”

  “You won’t even try it? I can’t believe you. You don’t even wanna know if your kid has AIDS?”

  “Unhh,” I say.

  I say, “Maybe some other time,” and a new voice says, “This is Madam Daisy,” just as I’m closing the phone.

  Chapter Twelve

  428

  It’s two in the morning. I’m miles from anybody, lost in Somewhere, Louisiana. It’s starting to thunder. I have my chest against the steering wheel and my neck stretched, trying to see. One finger’s bleeding a trickle from where I cut it on the hinge of the pet carrier there in back. “This seems a lot worse than it is,” I tell the cat. “Or your guess is a little off and it’s worse than it seems.”

  I’ve driven down around a hairpin bend and into a canyon with a wavy line of oily black river and descending the hill there ahead are a half-dozen whipping snatching willow trees, coming for me and the cat.

  429

  I can’t find a way to turn over certain playing cards, or to know which ones Paulie has seen.

  430

  “Please don’t draw on me,” Hollis says.

  I say, “I wasn’t.”

  “No, only your hand was.”

  “You’re such a five-year-old,” I say. “I was discouraging, with my pen, the mosquito that just bit a hole in you.”

  He looks at me, shrugs, looks again with a little smile. “This is . . . like you’re going on a hayride,” he says about my clothes. “It’s cool, it’s a kind of . . . inbred look. I mean, I like it. It’s very . . . Dogpatch.”

  I stomp back up to the bedroom to take off the plaid.

  Call Us with the Answer

  The landlord stops by to say he’s sold the place to a new owner. “Sorry to see you go,” I say.

  His head bobs, thanking me. He says, “That must be your daughter that I’ve noticed coming around.”

  “Probably is. The redhead?”

  “Whorehouse red,” he says, as he plucks up a plastic bag that’s blown onto the porch. “Always acts kind of flaky.” He’s squeezing the bag, making it pop.

  “Please,” I say.

  “What? I didn’t mean nothing.”

  I’m backing up behind the screen. “Why would you think it O.K. to insult my kid?”

  “Lady . . . ,” he says, and pitches the wad of plastic into the yard. “You got a PMS problem. I didn’t say a blasted thing.”

  “I just don’t need to hear your remarks, whoever you are.”

  “Well, Miss Hoyt Tee Toyt.”

  “Is who I am,” I say.

  432

  But I have a vivid picture of myself in a few short years—with a silvery bubble haircut, legs like a chicken’s, baby-doll pajamas, hiding in some room, singing along with James Brown.

  433

  It’s a mistake when Mev’s Flub-a-Dub routine obscures the deeper layers of her person.

  434

  So plants, I guess, like smoke?

  Keeping Sight of Your Goals

  Most of the men from the weight room at the gym have asked me out. It’s always six in the a.m. when I go and the men at that hour are ninety-nine years old, they have minutes left to live, they’re alcoholics. They would ask me if I were a button or a stick. They would say, “Want to go for drinks?” and ask if I’d drive them to the carryout.

  436

  “I’m sure,” says the Shoney’s diner behind me, “that some Europeans have problems.”

  Where Are You Taking Me

  Months ago, after Hollis was house-sitting here, he left his Dopp kit and possessions out on the vanity in the washroom. Mostly what he had there was poor-guy crap. I did notice he owns a Mason Pearson hairbrush.

  “If you like that so much I’ll buy one for you,” he said.

  And a little while later, he said, “Still mean to buy you that brush.”

  438

  Here I am. Holding an orange strip of ribbon and a sheaf of gold foil paper, folded by a person who has not wrapped many gifts and tucked around this genuine Mason Pearson hairbrush that Hollis left on the front steps as a surprise for me today.

  On the handle right where my thumb touches, there’s a pinhead chip in the wood. I noticed this chip on the handle months ago. I am noticing it now.

  These Are the Odds and Ends

  “I don’t mean to be rude to you,” I say into the phone. It’s ten-thirty at night and the prosecuting attorney is at her desk.

  “You can’t help it,” she says quickly.

  “Maybe you don’t know exactly who you’re dealing with, not how that sounds. But, have you had a hard look at Paulie? The plan is for him to participate in a trial?”

  “If I have to I’ll subpoena him,” she says, “to testify.”

  “Or,” I say, “to march into court and build a refrigerator, which he could just as soon do.”

  “I really don’t mean to be so rude,” I say.

  440

  I call her back, crying this time. “Garnet,” I say, because that is her name, “did you know he was a lacrosse player? Or that he turned down scholarships so he could live in New York? Zoology is his major. He’s interested in the ram.”

  “I’m a mother too,” she says.

  I say, “I mean rams who are animals with horns, not the constellation.”

  I say, “I don’t want
you thinking he’s just a goddamned little fruit.”

  There’s More

  Paulie and Armando are like some old couple who communicate with each other invisibly.

  They had been playing poker when I was there and I watched and both of them were cheating.

  They made a pot of cocoa and smoked cigar-sized joints and sat out on the balcony cackling, and ignoring me, because they were trying to have their lives.

  Here Are My Questions for Today

  I sit myself down and say to myself, “I’ll just hurry ahead and get this over with:

  “Where’s the phone book?

  “Is this the last coffee filter?

  “Car’s in the front or the back?

  “Wait, was that a wreck?

  “Who let this moth inside?

  “How? By causing everybody pain?

  “Did I already take this, or was that yesterday?

  “Isn’t that the same woman collecting for the March of Dimes?

  “Where’s the rest of the Frosted Flakes?

  “What pickup truck? What landfill project?

  “Where’s the screws that came with this?

  “Isn’t that, I mean, way too tight?

  “Who else is going to be there?

  “O.K. if I just pay half?

  “Who tied this in knots?

  “You mean Aunt Jemima is really a person?

  “All right, what?

  “Whose handprint is this?

  “The newspaper girl again? Did you not receive my check?

  “How did this juice stain get here on the carpet?”

  443

  Some friends of Dix have dropped by so I’m moving over into the bedroom with my skeins of yarn or whatever these are. Earlier today I did decide I’d learn to knit.

  444

  I’m cross-legged on the bed, shoulders forward, working these two very long knitting needles.

  This is a bedroom in which I have spent time but in the dark always.

  There is a photograph of the parents, wealthy, still married, and with only Dix for a child.

  Dix owns properties. He doesn’t really work, or have much education, and his hobbies are going out and going out to clubs and standing in the center of the street in the French Quarter any night of the year and drinking his fill.