Why Did I Ever

by Mary Robison

  I’m leaning in a little, my shoulder on the doorframe. I say to Belinda, “Bite! Me! Farm-girl!”

  474

  I’m out of here, at any rate. Before she can pull a gun. I’m old, can’t think, can’t know this individual.

  475

  This now is just a bit of arithmetic for me: If coffee has six percent caffeine and decaf is ninety-seven percent caffeine-free, it’s got half.

  I just can’t decide if I want coffee or anything—a tranquilizer? A soft drink? Would I like to hear music on the radio? Or should I get out the travel iron and do the collars on my shirts? I can’t decide. There’s some dark metallic something razoring around in my chest.

  476

  One thing is certain and that’s that I need a shoeshine. For this next part, my shoes should not be scuffed.

  Where, in this bungalow, is the appropriate place for a shoeshine? I’ve swabbed liquid polish all over and now I must stand here with my feet on this newspaper from now on. I could have just instructed people, “Don’t look at my shoes.”

  477

  Penny phones my room at this late hour. “Show . . . ,” he says. “What’s shup?”

  I’m not telling him about the shoeshine mess or that I also polished my wallet.

  It’s Not What You Asked For

  In my notebook I’ve scribbled a list of all those who were ever kind to me. The list is about the same length as a list of those who weren’t. Some folks should have been nicer. However, some of the good folks on List One were also in error.

  479

  “I need you to tell me something,” I say to Garnet over the phone. “What do you think, if Paulie does this, will be the outcome?”

  “Attica,” she says.

  “For?”

  “About fifty years.”

  “How would you manage that?”

  “The photographs.”

  “Of what?” I ask.

  She says, “They’re of Paulie.”

  480

  And now my suitcase should be loaded for home—recorder, bathrobe, Sweet ’n Low, stockings, mouthwash, flashlight, suits, underwear, string, three bottles of Visine.

  Letter to Sean Penn

  I write:

  You should be allowed to punch any kind of photographer you want. I think.

  Mrs. Sean Penn

  P.S. You’ve made films about everything and been in them. Maybe you know why some freak would do heinous shit to my kid.

  Hate to Keep Asking

  I slept a couple hours, woke up and gazed around the room; heard nothing, saw nothing. Slept another hour. Awoke rolled up like a creamhorn in the bed comforter, and had to rock back and forth to get free.

  There. Now I can lie here.

  483

  Penny’s lingering with me while I diddle around this complicated seven-foot vending machine. “At least it takes dollars,” I say for something to say.

  He’s wearing a yellow windbreaker today, with his gray trousers and espadrilles.

  I don’t know how my own tired mouth can keep on working so tiresomely. “You like it O.K. at Mercury Brothers?” I ask.

  Penny’s mouth makes the slightest pout and he shrugs. “Sometimes,” he says.

  “Do you live, where? In the city?”

  “No, a little ways out,” he says.

  I now have a knee and a shoulder pressed against the vending machine. I’m shoving dimes and quarters into the coin slot and squashing the change return button at all about the same time.

  Penny can guess, surely, waiting behind me, that I’m just here doing this.

  Leave Some for Others

  My mother declares something when I phone her from the hotel. I have my butt on the side of the elaborate bed, my legs stretched out and my feet pointing. She says she’s packing it up and moving to Whozitville to take care of my father.

  “That is crazy,” I say

  “Well, how would you prefer it?” my mother asks.

  I’m staring at my legs in their stockings. “That Dad could hire nurses if he had a nickel to his name.”

  And now I’m bawling and saying, “I feel horrible, horrible. These are nineteen-dollar nylons I have on today.”

  “Well,” says my mother, “Right there! That’s money you could have sent to your dad.”

  485

  This bathroom is small, white, equipped with a clear shower curtain, paper-wrapped soaps, stacks of towels, mats and washcloths on a wire shelf, samples of green hair products good on any kind of hair.

  I’m at the mirror, wondering, for being alone in this bungalow, how contoured with blush powder need my face be?

  I tarry in here, thinking about this strange life. The little coffeemaker on the counter signals every eight seconds with a “snick.”

  Now smoking with my back to the mirror. Next at the opened window. There’s a half-moon out there, and below people hurrying from the front lobby and in their weird clothes, bustling off. They’re like someone talking delightedly about something you’d reject! And there’s what I can’t see—a freight train skidding twenty feet, an air-conditioning unit gargling. There’s a janitorial staff, somewhere above me, working with a furious carpet steamer.

  486

  “Is ‘annoyedly’ a word?” I ask myself.

  “No, I don’t think so,” I say, shaking my head.

  487

  If I could take a break from work I could read all my books, contact everyone, clean everything, learn to play the drums, drive to Quebec, Canada, and I would try to come back right away.

  And What Did You Learn

  I write on a postcard:

  Dear Dad,

  Be nice to my mother.

  Mrs. Sean Penn

  489

  I cross out everything except the “Dear Dad” and write:

  I miss you so much.

  490

  With Belinda in her office at Mercury Brothers. I’m to sit quiet while she studies the executive producers’ memo. My God, this is so unpleasant! Time is at almost a halt. Interns have been trundling the same piece of equipment down the corridor. The coffee percolator has been popping on and on. That guy, for hours, has been maneuvering to park his vehicle.

  Belinda raps the desktop twice as she finishes reading the memo, shifts back a little in her chair and turns to me. She fingers the cultured pearl in her earlobe. She says something inaudible, maybe “I forgot to swim today,” picks up her pen and writes “pool” on a pad stolen from the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

  So I give up. Yes, I am stupid. I just start saying anything—weather/ballgame/read your horoscope/cowlneck/car mileage things about no one, for no one. Lint, really, from my mouth into the air.

  Belinda stops me with a wave finally. She says, “Well, I never. They’ve accepted the revision and they offer their full support. Meaning, we’ve ascended to the next level and can start the final wee-reet. I mean, rill-wite . . . rear-while. Ridiculous! Why can’t I sree that rurd?”

  491

  Maybe it’s me.

  Simple Machines

  “You’ve got them in the car . . . ,” Penny says, with his laptop up and ready to go.

  “In the car,” I say.

  He says, “So, now they’re driving . . .”

  “The car’s . . . green,” he says, typing in “green.”

  He says, “Green car. They’re in it . . .”

  I rub my right temple, a throbbing there. I say, “Wind. Snow. Car’s green. Absolutely stuck. Justine gets out. Twists of exhaust. Blinding snow. Uses her shoulder, and tries to push. Way in the distance, we see a sandplow, just a tiny winking light—”

  “The other extreme,” Penny says.

  “What?”

  “A hundred degrees hot and it’s dry.”

  �
�It’s the Alaskan bush! We can see McKinley.”

  “So dry,” he says, “you wouldn’t dare light a match.”

  “I’m not doing this,” I say, crossing my arms.

  “Bigfoot’s got a wooden matchstick between his teeth,” Penny says. “And she warns him, ‘It’s so dry. You’d better not light that match.’”

  “‘You’d better not light that,’” he says, typing. “‘It’s so—’”

  “This is crackball,” I say.

  “No . . . sit still,” he says, reaching to pat my arm. “I was just following a thought. Sit still. It could be a nice moment, but forget it, forget it. We’ll save only the matchstick and that’s all. We can learn how dry it is later.”

  493

  I must always remember that the best anything I could hope for is that this script passes muster, the movie gets made, and my jokes are made known to dumb white people.

  494

  I’m lollygagging in the cafeteria. At a table not so far behind a clutch of my colleagues in the biz. Ordinarily, I can’t follow their industry yap or remember any of the people they’re junking. Today’s pick, however, is Belinda Juris-Janeway.

  And I agree with every ugly word they’re whispering. Up until this personal part about her knees and throat and weight and teeth and nose and eyebrows. Goddamn it, now I have to get up and go over there.

  “Hey, people,” I say. “The woman gives seventy percent of her income to the blind. This level y’all are focused on, this is not cool.”

  But now, walking off, I regret mixing in and making up lies. I never liked Belinda, I still don’t. She probably was a tubbo. Those people, however, are like a jellied acid that adheres to you and sets you on fire and eats down through to your bones.

  Ask to Speak to Whoever’s in Charge

  I know damn well Hollis is constantly at my place, that he’s there copying documents, taking photographs and fiber samples. When I get him on the phone, he says, “Right, what else is there to do but rummage through your undie drawer?”

  I say, “I want you to realize those aren’t representative undies you’re seeing there. I brought with me any that were any good.”

  496

  I’ve tabulated the three things Hollis most often says to me. They are:

  “You’ll live.”

  “What don’t you understand?”

  And, “Fuckin’ pick one or the other.”

  What Can I Do for You

  Penny is seated with his palms on his knees. He’ll move his hands to the chair arms in a minute and grip them as Belinda sharpens her tone. I’m wondering what drew him over from Paramount to work on a Bigfoot movie besides millions and millions and millions of dollars.

  He breathes in, pulls himself up, and starts again: “Itsh dry cold. Killing cold. Fifty or shixty below sheero.”

  “And . . . how are we suggesting this?” asks Belinda.

  Penny thinks a second. He says, “Bigfootsh noshe ish bleeding. Show Jushtine handsh him a Kleenexsh.”

  “My nose bled the whole time we were in Fairbanks,” I say, just so Penny can take a rest. “He’s right. Dry cold, that is right.”

  Belinda looks at me and squints at me and wonders what I’m about.

  She says, “Her hankie, rather. Let’s go with that. It could be a nice moment between them.”

  No Strung-Out Queens

  We’re hurrying out in the hallway at the same time, but I’m taller than Belinda and longer-legged and she can eat my dust.

  Chapter Fourteen

  499

  Something is going on down there, below us in this airplane. Like a game board—circles and squares, huge circles, huge squares and hundreds of them. I will never know what that’s about. This now could be parquet flooring and here’s all of a sudden a city—its glass and metal glinting with sunfire. It’s New Orleans, looking like a brooch.

  A World of Love

  On the freeway, headed home, quite low on gas, riding behind Cheech and Chong.

  501

  I need something to eat that’s not poison. But I guess that, for most folks, goes without saying.

  Empty Your Pockets

  I’m watching Mev hoe. While I was gone she kept up my flower garden. It looks quite good, but Mev doesn’t. She’s been withdrawing from Methadone. She acts as though maybe her eyes are bothering her, and she looks ashen, and her skin looks doughy and damp.

  “What did you do?” I ask.

  “Gave them,” she says, “just like steroids.”

  503

  Dark of the night and I’m ignoring the lightning bug, way up there, winking at the center of the ceiling.

  Next, the Lee Press-On Nails

  I would say to all the ex-husbands, “I think, from now on, whenever there’s a situation or a little discrepancy you don’t want to explain, go ahead and lie.”

  I would say, “Go on, go your way, keep it moving.”

  505

  “The best music I ever heard in my life,” I tell Martin, who keeps the list of songs, “was in my parents’ car on the AM radio. It was Little Stevie Wonder’s ‘Fingertips,’ Part One. And then, Part Two made me even happier.”

  “I’ll take it into consideration,” says he.

  506

  The Deaf Lady’s forgotten me entirely tonight. I can tell from her expression she doesn’t have a clue. “You’re not going anywhere until your closet is cleaned,” she says.

  “Fine with me,” I say. “There’re plenty of interesting things in my closet.”

  I’ve been trying to toss this afghan around her and over her shoulders, flinging it like a net.

  She does seem to recognize Hollis, who’s joining us here on the walk.

  He says, “I have the answer, not to all of life’s problems, but numerous ones. A wagon.”

  She folds her arms and puts her weight on one leg and, standing like that, bobs her head in agreement. There goes the afghan.

  Still Something Missing

  Mev is seated across from me. She looks painted by Degas tonight.

  It is a goulash of feelings I have for her just now.

  508

  I say, “This is my last and final piece of advice. That I know from years and years of marriage to different pigboys.”

  “Let’s have it,” Mev says.

  I say, “Picnic foods.”

  509

  “Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them.

  —matthew 15:16

  A woman named Marla is determined to sleep here in the laundromat and she wishes the doors closed as it’s foggy and damp outside. I gift her with a black cashmere sweater I have shrunk in the dryer. “Marla?” I lie, “I’m giving you this because it’s nice.”

  The place is empty at this hour so we each have our own table to lounge upon.

  Ah, but here’s the fake Viet Nam vet intruding on our party, scrambling onto a table beside Marla and me.

  “Like yer little halter top,” he says in my direction.

  I say, “Don’t have an opinion about my halter top, please.”

  “It was a frickin’ compliment!”

  I say, “Still. I’m not available for all your remarks. Compliment me just as well by keeping quiet.”

  Marla scoots over and sits close and passes me her little bottle of bourbon. “Now,” I say, with my back to the man, “let’s just stay sitting up and drink like ladies.”

  Why Stir Things Up

  “What is your name?” I ask the Deaf Lady.

  “Mrs. Robert Sanobel,” she says.

  “Huh,” I say. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for a Robert.”

  511

  “Hot! Danger! Red! Run!” I tell the cat, but that does nothing. I say, “Canister vacuum!” Yes and now you see her tail flying.

 
; She’s a rewarding cat to have, sometimes, in my view. A moment ago we were sharing a smoke—I was blowing it, she was catching. Or, so was the goal as far as I could interpret things.

  Why Is Everybody Leaving

  Here I am pictured sitting demurely on the couch, wearing a red dress, my hair long and dark. In the foreground on the floor, Bob Dylan.

  513

  “What do you think of these celebrity divorces?” asks the Deaf Lady, herself again, more or less.

  “Not a thing,” I say. I have a Bartlett pear here, streaming juice. I’m holding it away from my linen trousers.

  I say, “And I’ve gotta say I’m surprised that you do.”

  She shrugs. “You’ve been divorced. Don’t act too superior.”

  “Not acting superior,” I say.

  “On the same subject,” she says, “let me ask you a question. Where do you go to meet good men who aren’t going to cheat on you and who’re ready to make a commitment?”

  This pear’s keeping my hands busy. Otherwise, I’d bam my head in response. I say, “Nowhere! Such men don’t exist!”

  “What about your Dix boyfriend? Doesn’t he fit the criterion?”

  That shuts me up.

  Eventually, I say, “I should do another round of research before I give out that information.”

  And it’s not eight seconds before the phone rings and there on that end is Dix, weeping. He’s an idiot but a weeping idiot who loves me and so I can’t hang up.

  There Is No They

  Hollis has accidentally let the cat escape, he informs me. “Look,” he says, “this was her will against mine. She’s been a deranged psychotic pest ever since you brained her with that walnut.”

  Mev says, “Maybe so, but she shouldn’t be outdoors. There’re bad, evil people in the alleyway sometimes.”

  “I’m guessing . . . ,” I say, “boys?”

  Turn Off the Radio

  There’s some news stuff about the Rodent Slime Criminal that Paulie’s forbidden to see. “We’re keeping charge of the TV remote,” a detective tells me over the phone. “There’d be no point in it, but to scare him.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing about your guy,” the detective says. It’s a second before I realize he means the Crawling Thing Criminal. “Most people commit the first little crime or two. It gives them a sense of confidence. Now they’re trouble. Now they’re gonna do some real damage. Whereupon, they do usually embark on a career of worse crimes. Sometimes going all the way up. Your guy,” he says, “got started that way. The middle-of-the-way crimes, he skipped right past them.”