by Lorrie Moore
Hane, who had met John coming out of the bathroom and had mumbled an embarrassed how-do-you-do, now sat at the head of the dining room table, waiting to serve the food. John sat kitty-corner, Michael's old place. He regarded the salad bowl, the clover outlines of the peppers, the clock stares of the tomato slices. He had taken a shower and parted his wet hair rather violently on the left.
"You'd think we'd be able to do a little better than this on your first night in America," said Hane, poking with a serving spoon at the fried pallet of mashed potatoes, turnips, chopped broccoli, and three eggs over easy. "Millie here, as you probably know already, is devoted to recycling." His tone was of good-natured mortification, a self-deprecating singsong that was his way of reprimanding his family. He made no real distinction between himself and his family. They were he. They were his feminine, sentimental side and warranted, even required, running commentary.
"It's all very fine," said John.
"Would you like skim milk or whole?" Millie asked him.
"Whole, I think," and then, in something of a fluster, he said, "Water, I mean, please. Don't trouble yourself, Mrs. Keegan."
"In New Jersey, water's as much trouble as milk," said Millie. "Have whichever you want, dear."
"Water, please, then."
"Are you sure?"
"Milk, then, I guess, thank you."
Millie went back into the kitchen to get milk. She wondered whether John thought they were poor and milk a little too expensive for them. The neighborhood probably did look shabby. Millie herself had been disappointed when they'd first moved here from the north part of town, after Ariel had started college and Hane had not been promoted to full professor rank, as he had hoped. It had been the only time she had ever seen her husband cry, and she had started to think of themselves as poor, though she knew that was silly. At least a little silly.
Millie stared into the refrigerator, not looking hungrily for something, anything, to assuage her restlessness, as she had when she was younger, but now forgetting altogether why she was there. Look in the refrigerator, was her husband's old joke about where to look for something she'd misplaced. "Places to look for your mind," he'd say, and then he'd recite a list. Once she had put a manila folder in the freezer by mistake.
"What did I want?" she said aloud, and the refrigerator motor kicked on in response to the warm air. She had held the door open too long. She closed it and went back and stood in the dining room for a moment. Seeing John's empty glass, she said, "Milk. That's right," and promptly went and got it.
"So how was the flight over?" asked Hane, handing John a plate of food. "If this is too much turnip, let me know. Just help yourself to salad." It had been years since they'd had a boy in the house, and he wondered if he knew how to talk to one. Or if he ever had. "Wait until they grow up," he had said to Millie of their own two children. "Then I'll know what to say to them." Even at student conferences he tended to ramble a bit, staring out the window, never, never into their eyes.
"By the time they've grown up it'll be too late," Millie had said.
But Hane had thought, No, it won't. By that time he would be president of the college, or dean of a theological school somewhere, and he would be speaking from a point of achievement that would mean something to his children. He could then tell them his life story. In the meantime, his kids hadn't seemed interested in his attempts at conversation. "Forget it, Dad," his son had always said to him. "Just forget it." No matter what Hane said, standing in a doorway or serving dinner—"How was school, son?"—Michael would always tell him just to forget it, Dad. One time, in the living room, Hane had found himself unable to bear it, and had grabbed Michael by the arm and struck him twice in the face.
"This is fine, thank you," said John, referring to his turnips. "And the flight was fine. I saw movies."
"Now, what is it you plan to do here exactly?" There was a gruffness in Hane's voice. This happened often, though Hane rarely intended it, or even heard it, clawing there in the intonation.
John gulped at some milk and fussed with his napkin.
"Hane, let's save it for after grace," said Millie.
"Your turn," said Hane, and he nodded and bowed his head. John Spee sat upright and stared.
Millie began. "'Bless this food to our use, and us to thy service. And keep us ever needful of the minds of others.' Wopes. 'Amen.' Did you hear what I said?" She grinned, as if pleased.
"We assumed you did that on purpose, didn't we, John?" Hane looked out over his glasses and smiled conspiratorially at the boy.
"Yes," said John. He looked at the ceramic figurines on the shelf to his right. There was a ballerina and a clown.
"Well," said Millie, "maybe I just did." She placed her napkin in her lap and began eating. She enjoyed the leftovers, the warm, rising grease of them, their taste and ecology.
"It's very good food, Mrs. Keegan," said John, chewing.
"Before you leave, of course, I'll cook up a real meal. Several."
"How long you staying?" Hane asked.
Millie put her fork down. "Hane, I told you: three weeks."
"Maybe only two," said John Spee. The idea seemed to cheer him. "But then maybe I'll find a flat in the Big Apple and stay forever."
Millie nodded. People from out of town were always referring to the Big Apple, like some large forbidden fruit one conquered with mountain gear. It seemed to give them energy, to think of it that way.
"What will you do?" Hane studied the food on his fork, letting it hover there, between his fork and his mouth, a kind of ingestive purgatory. Hane's big fear was idleness. Particularly in boys. What will you do?
"Hane," cautioned Millie.
"In England none of me mates have jobs. They're all jealous 'cause I sold the car and came here to New York."
"This is New Jersey, dear," said Millie. "You'll see New York tomorrow. I'll give you a timetable for the train."
"You sold your car," repeated Hane. Hane had never once sold a car outright. He had always traded them in. "That's quite a step."
the next morning Millie made a list of things for John to do and see in New York. Hane had already left for his office. She sat at the dining room table and wrote:
Statue of Liberty World Trade Center Times Square Broadway 2-fors
She stopped for a moment and thought.
Metropolitan Museum of Art Circle Line Tour
The door of the "guest" room was still closed. Funny how it pleased her to have someone in that space, someone really using it. For too long she had just sat in there doodling on her business cards and thinking about Michael. The business cards had been made from recycled paper, but the printers had forgotten to mention that on the back. So she had inked it in herself. They had also forgotten to print Millie's middle initial—Environmental Project Adviser, Mildred R. Keegan—and so she had sat in there for weeks, ballpointing the R back in, card after card. Later Ariel had told her the cards looked stupid that way, and Millie had had to agree. She then spent days sitting at the desk, cutting the cards into gyres, triangles, curlicues, like a madness, like a business turned madness. She left them, absent-mindedly, around the house, and Hane began to find them in odd places—on the kitchen counter, on the toilet tank. He turned to her one night in bed and said, "Millie, you're fifty-one. You don't have to have a career. Really, you don't," and she put her hands to her face and wept.
John Spee came out of his room. He was completely dressed, his bright hair parted neat as a crease, the white of his scalp startling as surgery.
"I've made a list of things you'll probably want to do," said Millie.
John sat down. "What's this?" He pointed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "I'm not that keen to go to museums. We always went to the British Museum for school. My sister likes that kind of stuff, but not me."
"These are only suggestions," said Millie. She placed a muffin and a quartered orange in front of him.
John smiled appreciatively. He picked up a piece of orange, pressed it a
gainst his teeth, and sucked it to a damp, stringy mat.
"I can drive you to the station to catch the ten-o-two train, if you want to leave in fifteen minutes," said Millie. She slid sidesaddle into a chair and began eating a second muffin. Her manner was sprinkled with youthful motions, as if her body were on occasion falling into a memory or a wish.
"That would be lovely, thanks," said John.
"Did you really not like living in England?" asked Millie, but they were both eating muffins, and it was hard to talk.
At the station she pressed a twenty into his hand and kissed him on the cheek. He stepped back away from her and got on the train. "See a play," Millie mouthed at him through the window.
at dinner it was just she and Hane. Hane was talking about Jesus again, the Historical Jesus, how everyone misunderstood Christ's prophetic powers, how Jesus himself had been mistaken.
"Jesus thought the world was going to end," said Hane, "but he was wrong. It wasn't just Jerusalem. He was predicting the end for the whole world. Eschatologically, he got it wrong. He said it outright, but he was mistaken. The world kept right on."
"Perhaps he meant it as a kind of symbol. You know, poetically, not literally." Millie had heard Hane suggest this himself. They were his words she was speaking, one side of his own self-argument.
"No, he meant it literally," Hane barked a little fiercely.
"Well, we all make mistakes," said Millie. "Isn't the world funny that way." She always tried to listen to Hane. She knew that few students registered for his courses anymore, and those that did tended to be local fundamentalists, young ignorant people, said Hane, who had no use for history or metaphor. They might as well just chuck the Bible! In class Hane's primary aim was reconciling religion with science and history, but these young "Pentecostalists," as Hane referred to them, didn't believe in science or history. "They're mindless, some of these kids. And if you want your soul nourished—and they do, I think—you've got to have a mind."
"Cleanliness is next to godliness," said Millie.
"What are you talking about?" asked Hane. He looked depressed and impatient. There were times when he felt he had married a stupid woman, and it made him feel alone in the world.
"I've been thinking about the garbage barge," said Millie. "I guess my mind's wandering around, just like that heap of trash." She smiled. She had been listening to all the reports on the barge, had charted its course from Islip, where she had relatives, to Morehead City, where she had relatives. "Imagine," she had said to her neighbor in their backyards, near the prize tulips that belonged to neither one of them. "Relatives in both places! Garbagey relatives!"
Millie wiped her mouth with her napkin. "It has nowhere to go," she said now to her husband.
Hane served himself more leftovers. He thought of Millie and this interest of hers in ecology. It baffled and awed him, like a female thing. In the kitchen Millie kept an assortment of boxes for recycling household supplies. She had boxes marked Aluminum, Plastic, Dry Trash, Wet Trash, Garbage. She had twice told him the difference between garbage and trash, but the distinction never meant that much to him, and he always forgot it. Last night she had told him about swans in the park who were making their nests from old boots and plastic six-pack rings. "Laying their eggs in litter," she'd said. Then she told him to be more fatherly toward John Spee, to take a friendly interest in the boy.
"Is this the end of the leftovers?" asked Hane. At his office at the college he ate very light lunches. Often he just brought a hard-boiled egg and sprinkled it carefully with salt, shaking the egg over the wastebasket if he got too much on by mistake.
"This is it," said Millie, standing. She picked up the skillet, and taking a serving spoon, scraped and swirled up the hardened, flat-bottomed remnants. "Here," she said, holding it all in front of Hane. "Open up."
Hane scowled. "Come on, Millie."
"Just one last spoonful. Tomorrow I cook fresh."
Hane opened his mouth, and Millie fed him gently, carefully, because the spoon was large.
Afterward they both sat in the living room and Hane read aloud a passage from 2 Thessalonians. Millie stared off like a child at the figurines, the clown and the ballerina, and thought about Ariel, traveling to foreign countries and meeting people. What it must be like to be young today, with all those opportunities. Once, last semester, before she'd left for England, Ariel had said, "You know, Mom, there's a girl in my class at Rutgers with exactly your name: Mildred Keegan. Spelled the same and everything."
"Really?" exclaimed Millie. Her face had lit up. This was interesting.
Ariel was struck with afterthought. "Yeah. Only… well, actually she flunked out last week." Then Ariel began to laugh, and had to get up and leave the room.
at nine o'clock, after she had peeled the labels off an assortment of tin cans, and rinsed and stacked them, Millie went to pick up John Spee at the train station.
"So what all did you do in the city?" asked Millie, slowing for a red light and glancing at the boy. She had left the house in too much of a rush, and now, looking quickly in the rearview mirror, she attempted to smooth the front of her hair, which had fallen onto her forehead in a loose, droopy tangle. "Did you see a play? I hear there's some funny ones." Millie loved plays, but Hane didn't so much.
"No, didn't feel like buzzing the bees for a play." He said ply.
"Oh," said Millie. Her features sagged to a slight frown. Buzzing the bees. Ariel had used this expression once. Money, honey, bees, Ariel had explained impatiently. Get it? "Did you go down to Battery Park and see the Statue of Liberty? It's so beautiful since they cleaned it." Not that Millie had seen it herself, but it was in all the newsmagazines a while back, and the pictures had made it seem very holy and grand.
The light turned green, and she swung the car around the corner. At night this part of New Jersey could seem quiet and sweet as a real hometown.
"I just walked around and looked at the buildings," said John, glancing away from her, out the car window at the small darkened business district of Terracebrook. "I went to the top of the Empire State Building, and then I went back and went to the top again."
"You went twice."
"Twice, yeah. Twice."
"Well, good!" Millie exclaimed. And when they pulled into the driveway, she exclaimed it again. "Well, good!"
"so how was the city?" boomed Hane, rising stiff and hearty, so awkwardly wanting to make the boy feel at home that he lunged at him a bit, big and creaky in the joints from having been sitting and reading all evening.
"Fine, thank you," said John, who then went quickly to his room.
Millie gave Hane a worried look, then followed and knocked on John's door. "John, would you like some supper? I've got a can of soup and some bread and cheese for a sandwich."
"No, thank you," John called through the door. Millie thought she heard him crying—was he crying? She walked back into the living room toward Hane, who gave her a shrug, helpless, bewildered. He looked at her for some reassuring word.
Millie shrugged back and walked past him into the kitchen. Hane followed her and stood in the doorway.
"I guess I'm not the right sort of person for him," he said. "I'm not a friendly man by nature. That's what he needs." Hane took off his glasses and cleaned them on the hem of his shirt.
"You're a stack of apologies," said Millie, kissing him on the cheek. "Here. Squash this can." She bent over and put a rinsed and label-less can near his shoe. Hane lifted his foot and came down on it with a bang.
the next morning was Friday, and John Spee wanted to go into the city again. Millie drove him to catch the ten-o-two. "Have a nice time," she said to him on the platform. "I'll pick you up tonight." As the train pulled up, steamy and deafening, she reminded him again about the half-price tickets for Broadway shows.
Back at the house, Millie got out the Hoover and began vacuuming. Hane, who had no classes on Friday, sat in the living room doing a crossword puzzle. Millie vacuumed around his feet. "Lift up,"
she said.
In John Spee's close and cluttered room she vacuumed the sills, even vacuumed the ceiling and the air, before she had to stop. All around the floor there were matchbooks from Greek coffee shops and odd fliers handed out on the street: Live Eddie; Crazy Girls; 20% off Dinner Specials, now until Easter. Underwear had been tossed on the floor, and there were socks balled in one corner of the desk.
Millie flicked off the Hoover and began to tidy the desktop. This was at one time to have been her business headquarters, and now look at it. She picked up the socks and noticed a spiral notebook underneath. It looked a little like a notebook she had been using for her correspondence course, the same shade of blue, and she opened it to see.
On the first page was written, Crazy People I Have Met in America. Underneath there was a list.
1. Asian man in business suit waiting on subway platform. Screaming.
2. Woman in park walking dog. Screaming. Tells dog to walk like a lady.
3. In coffee shop, woman with food spilling out of her mouth. Yells at fork.
Millie closed the notebook quickly. She was afraid to read on, afraid of what number four might be, or number five. She put the notebook out of her mind and moved away from the desk, unplugged the Hoover, wound up the cord, then collected the odd, inside-out clumps of clothes from under the cot and thought again of her garbage business, how she had hoped to run it out of this very room, how it seemed now to have crawled back in here—her poor little business!—looking a lot like laundry. What she had wanted was garbage, and instead she got laundry. "Ha!" She laughed out loud.
"What?" called Hane. He was still doing the crossword in the living room.
"Not you," said Millie. "I'm just going to put some things in the wash for John." She went downstairs to the laundry room, with its hampers of recyclable rags, its boxes of biodegradable detergent, its cartons of bottles with the labels soaked off them, the bags of aluminum foil and tins. This was an office, in a way, a one-woman room: a stand against the world. Ox for the world. She meant for the world.
