Oh!

by Mary Robison

  ALSO BY MARY ROBISON

  An Amateur’s Guide to the Night

  Believe Them

  Days

  One D.O.A., One on the Way

  Subtraction

  Tell Me

  Why Did I Ever

  Oh!

  Copyright © 1981 by Mary Robison

  First Counterpoint paperback edition: 2019

  First published in the United States in 1981 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events is unintended and entirely coincidental.

  A part of this book first appeared as “The Help” in The New Yorker, in slightly different form.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Robison, Mary, author.

  Title: Oh! : a novel / Mary Robison.

  Description: First Counterpoint paperback edition. | Berkeley, California : Counterpoint, 2019.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018033434 | ISBN 9781640090910

  Subjects: LCSH: Domestic fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3568.O317 O37 2019 | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018033434

  Cover design by Jenny Carrow

  Book design by Jordan Koluch

  COUNTERPOINT

  2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318

  Berkeley, CA 94710

  www.counterpointpress.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  10987654321

  With affection for the Cennamo kids,

  Judy, Teresa, Arthur, Louis, Tommy, Michael, and Donald

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  One

  1

  Athunderous noise shook the ground and jolted Maureen from her dream. She shoved herself up onto her elbows in grass clippings that whirled like gnat swarms, and looked into the skis of a helicopter bobbing, nose down, yards above her own nose. Noise pressed on the bulb of her skull. She rolled out of her sleeping bag, stood too fast for balance, flumped to her knees. Above her the machine swung like something on the end of a derrick. The man in the Plexiglas bubble wore a headset, had the lenses of his black glasses trained right on her. She scrambled for the patio. The helicopter dipped and chased her, the wash that shot from its blades beating against a row of hedges. She went under the patio’s slatted roof. The helicopter, hovering, gave off a siren sound that never got going, a pleading meant just for her.

  2

  I’ll need a ton of things if you want me to do this right,” Lola said. She pressed her hands on her waist, a pretty, brown-skinned woman in her middle thirties. “Rug shampoo, more steel wool, cleanser, a new mop. I’m not going to clean floors with a sponge.”

  “Sit down, darlin’,” Mr. Cleveland said. “We’ll hash it out.”

  “I don’t want to sit down. I want to get rolling on the cleaning so I can get it done with,” Lola said. She moved from the kitchen doorway into the tile-floored breakfast room, where Mr. Cleveland sat over plates of melon, cuts of fried ham, eggs, and buttered muffins.

  He pinned a thick disc of meat with his fork and knifed off a bite. He was fifty-seven, a Texan long ago turned loose on the Midwest. There was a fleshy knob for the end of his nose. He wore a drowsy look and an old-fashioned dressing gown with padded shoulders and wide velvet lapels. He ground the bite of ham with his teeth. “Anyhow, I thought a cleaning person was responsible for furnishing her own tools of the trade.”

  “I’m not a cleaning person. I’m a cook and a maid,” Lola said. “And a valet and a bartender and nurse.”

  “You have Howdy drive you to the Skyway and charge up whatever you need,” Mr. Cleveland said. “Only don’t charge an electric garage-door opener or a rotisserie barbecue grill. No drill bits, either.”

  “No drill bits,” Lola said.

  Mr. Cleveland quit feeding himself and rested his knife and fork. He poured and drank coffee from a china service.

  “Have some coffee,” he said.

  Lola had begun clearing the plates.

  “We’ve got the whole day to work,” he said.

  Cleveland was retired, but still had controlling interest in the Whistle-Low Corporation, a company with land holdings and plants that bottled and marketed eighteen varieties of soda pop. The company owned quick-shop food stores, franchised miniature-golf layouts, and even ran a chemistry laboratory. Cleveland had a huge home on a road called Charity Way, a road that wound through a little wood on the border of a country club.

  “Look what’s up from the dead,” Lola said.

  Howdy came into the breakfast room through the side of the house. He was a tall young man with a big jaw, rusty hair like his father’s, and clear blue eyes under white lashes.

  “Walk on your shoe toes,” Cleveland said to his son. “Lola’s puffed up and on a human-rights campaign.”

  “Morning, Lola,” Howdy said.

  “That’s Miz Turtlidge,” Cleveland said.

  “Coffee’s ready here,” Lola said.

  “Where’s your sister this morning?” Cleveland asked Howdy, who poured coffee, sat down across from his father, and stared sleepily at the vase of day lilies in the middle of the table.

  “She slept in the yard again,” Howdy said. He scratched at a rough place on his unshaved jaw. “And I hope she stays out there. She’s in hysterics. Claims a helicopter dive-bombed her. Oh, and Lola, you’re supposed to let Violet stay asleep.”

  Violet was Maureen’s eight-year-old.

  “How?” Lola said. She squinted at Howdy.

  He picked up and bit into a muffin. “Beats the hell out of me. I’m just relaying the message.” He washed down the muffin with coffee and took up another muffin. “Mother used to have a high tea every afternoon,” he said. “She’d have muffins like this, and chocolates and biscuits. What you’d call cookies.”

  “No, I wouldn’t,” Lola said.

  “You can’t remember that,” Cleveland said. “What your mother would have is a gin fizz and a Hershey bar.”

  “You hear that?” Lola said.

  “Damn teeth,” Cleveland said, forkful of eggs in midair.

  “Aw,” Lola said.

  “Aspirin,” Cleveland demanded, dropping the fork.

  “Aspirin is horrible for your stomach,” Howdy said and yawned.

  “Grinds it all to hell,” Lola said.

  “Dr. Lola and Dr. Howdy,” Cleveland said.

  “Right,” Lola said. She brought a swatch of cloth from the smock she wore over her Levi’s and began dusting the leaves of an enormous potted palm that stood in a cement urn before the diamond-paned windows.

  Cleveland said, “You’re fired, Lola.”

  “Good,” Lola said. “Now I don’t have to fix your filthy house.”

  “I’ll hire you back,” Howdy said. “At least long enough to get me some of those eggs.”

  “He’ll pay you in canvas,” Cleveland said. “An original Howdy every month, twelve naked people a year.”

  Howdy and Lola were both going to the university. Howdy wanted to be a painter. The carriage apartment where he lived over the old garage was decorated with his acrylic paintings, and so were his shirts and trousers and sneakers. He told people he wanted to be a billboard painter. “No one looks at fine art anymore,” he’d say, “but everybody looks at b
illboards.”

  Lola was headed for the kitchen, carrying the serving skillet. “I’m cleaning,” she said. “In the egg and aspirin departments, you can both forage for yourselves.”

  3

  Cleveland struggled with a chain saw as he made his way down the sloped lawn toward his daughter.

  “You won’t believe something!” she called to him, hands cupped to her mouth.

  “Chopper?” Cleveland said. “Just traffic guys, Mo.”

  “I bet it was Chris,” Maureen said.

  “Oh, hell, Maureen, no Chris I know flies around with any patrol unit.” Cleveland put down the chain saw and sat on his heels. Maureen was cleaning up her campsite from the night before. She had rolled and tied her sleeping bag, piled her magazines, brushed her cigarette butts into a heap, buttoned the leather case over her huge transistor radio, and was collecting her bottles of nail polish and emery boards, stowing them in a box.

  “I didn’t sleep all night,” she said, “and then I’d just dropped off when this helicopter comes swooping down and starts coming at me.”

  “You’re nervous because you’ve got Chris on the brain,” Cleveland said. “Because Chris is on the way, you’ve got Chris on the brain. You pulled the chopper over with your p.j.’s. Or maybe they were looking for somebody.”

  Maureen tugged at her pajama top, tried to get it to cover her better, and then, with one finger, she drove her eyeglasses up high on her nose. “Idiot Chris. I hate him,” she said.

  “Are you calmed down?” Cleveland said. He cleared some sweat from his eye with the palm of his work glove. “It was just a low pass by a helicopter, that’s all. It shook me up too.”

  “Do you believe me that Chris caused it?”

  “What I believe is you dreamed the Chris part,” Cleveland said.

  Maureen was searching the grass around her bare feet. She bent and picked up a matchbook and a loose cigarette, and prepared to light it.

  “I just filled this with gasoline,” Cleveland said. He hefted the chain saw, jiggled it to make a sloshing noise.

  Maureen took the cigarette down from her mouth. “So that’s what I smell. I thought you had bourbon on your breath already.”

  “I wish I could have some bourbon,” Cleveland said. “I’ve got a toothache.”

  “It can’t be good to run a saw this early. Especially not with a toothache.”

  “Early?” Cleveland said. “Honey, it’s ten o’clock.”

  “Oh, hell,” Maureen said. “Poor Violet. I gave her strict orders not to leave her room today until I came for her.”

  An amplified guitar sounded a C chord. Cleveland said, “Now just relax. That’s nothing but Howdy in the garage.”

  “I know it is, Father. I’m okay,” Maureen said. She walked past him, through the shadow of a beech tree, and up the lawn.

  He called after her, “That’s just your brother and his friends and their band!”

  Maureen was scraping a match. She couldn’t get enough friction for a spark.

  “They’re going to rehearse some,” Cleveland said, trailing her. “So you’ll know if you hear a lot of ugly noises.”

  “Daddy, get away from me with that saw,” Maureen said. She used the tip of her thumb to mash the head of the match against the striker, then ripped it sideways. A flame blew between her cupped hands.

  She was twenty-four, a thin woman with tiny breasts, close-cropped hair, and big ears. Her hair was wavy, bleached almost white. She wore a pair of boy’s horn-rimmed glasses.

  “I hope you’re on your way to see your little girl,” Cleveland said. “I hope that’s where you’re going.”

  “That’s my next stop,” Maureen said.

  Cleveland went to an old dogwood tree. He snapped the starter rope on his chain saw. He moved carefully around the tree, stooping to nick off the lower branches. Shavings exploded each time the saw touched wood. Maureen worked at her cigarette and stood off on the lawn, watching.

  Howdy came slamming out the back door of the garage. He marched toward his father, yelling. But Cleveland wouldn’t stop the saw. Howdy turned, exasperated, to Maureen. Both made megaphones with their hands and shouted at their father.

  Cleveland cut off the engine and pushed his safety goggles up onto his forehead.

  “Why are you doing that now? What’s wrong with you?” Howdy was screaming. “We’re trying to rehearse!”

  From inside the garage, electric feedback squealed. Someone was beating little riffs on a drum kit, making fluffing noises.

  A girl with heavy, big-heeled boots leaned from the garage doorway. She pushed two fingers into her mouth and whistled.

  “Eat it, Signoracci!” Howdy shouted.

  “Everybody, take it easy,” Cleveland said. “Almost done.” He leaned over and began bunching the snipped limbs.

  The girl whistled again. Howdy said, “I hate this group. I really do. Bunch of kids.”

  “Then maybe you could keep them out of the house,” Cleveland said. “Maybe you could keep them out of Lola’s way and out of my beer, and maybe you could tell them to park their van on the drive and not in my rose bushes.”

  “They didn’t,” Howdy said.

  Cleveland sighed and regarded his daughter. “You going to see about Violet or what?”

  “Quit carping,” Maureen said.

  “Violet and Lola are having a fight,” Howdy said.

  Blurry guitar noise came splattering from the garage and a single bass note thumped mightily. Maureen put her hand on her chest to see if something was rattling inside.

  “I want to make sure you’re done with that saw,” Howdy said.

  “Well, I am,” Cleveland said. “For the moment.”

  Maureen went on up to the casement windows that showed through to the kitchen and breakfast room. She saw Lola standing with her bottom against the stove, her arms tightly folded.

  “Your daughter,” Lola said when Maureen stepped inside. “I hope you got some fresh air last night and a nice suntan because while you were out, your daughter—”

  “Where is she?”

  “Locked up,” Lola said.

  Maureen drove the end of her cigarette into a saucer on the counter. “Fine. Has she eaten anything?” The kitchen still smelled of ham and eggs and coffee.

  From the garage, the musicians began a tinny, hammering noise, and Howdy sang, “If . . . I say . . . if . . .”

  “Oh, Howdy, shut up,” Lola said.

  “Really,” Maureen said.

  Lola went over and closed the windows. “You better come with me,” she said.

  Violet’s bedroom was a mess. The giraffe wallpaper had crayon scribbling all over it. The canopied bed was jammed in a corner, the ruffled flounce in shreds, the outer bed rail wired with a splint. A plastic toy chest molded into the shape of a frog stood with bulging eyes on a throw rug made of fake panda fur.

  Violet was in the toy chest sitting in the frog’s mouth. “Mom, you said last night I could make breakfast.”

  “Breakfast is a thing of the past,” Lola said.

  “I’m sorry,” Maureen said. “It’s all my fault.”

  “I was waiting for you to get me up,” Violet said, “and you never did.”

  “You were awake all last night,” Lola said. “Don’t think I didn’t hear you going like mad in here long after the TV signed off.”

  “I know it,” Violet said.

  “You were in here playing your records and singing and monkeying around like a crazy person,” Lola said.

  “I couldn’t get to sleep,” Violet said.

  “It’s my doing,” Maureen said.

  “The reason you can’t sleep is because you don’t get up in the morning. And that’s the reason you don’t get your breakfast, either,” Lola said.

  “It’s my fault,” Maureen said. “I’ll fix something quick and I’ll be careful not to make any mess.”

  Violet said, “I’ll fix it.”

  “Then neither of you will be hungr
y for lunch,” Lola said. “Just like yesterday and the day before that. So then I’ve got to fix a second lunch and a second supper and go insane just like the rest of you.”

  “Okay,” Maureen said. “Don’t do a thing for us today. Tomorrow, I promise, we’ll get up at sunrise or whenever we’re supposed to. I’m sorry about today. Today’s ruined, so let’s forget it.” She tried to pick up Violet. But Violet twisted away and ran out the door.

  “Violet Ann Cleveland!” Lola called after her. “Come back here instantly.”

  Violet dragged herself back into the room and bellyflopped onto the bed.

  Lola narrowed her eyes. “Go on, tell her,” Lola said.

  “Go on and tell her what?” Maureen said.

  “Tell her what we agreed to tell her. Tell her about the new rules. And don’t make me the v-i-l-l-a-i-n.”

  “Right. Of course,” Maureen said. “Let’s see.”

  While Maureen was thinking, Violet melted down the side of the bed until most of her was on the floor.

  “Let’s see,” Maureen said. “Lola works hard here for Grandpa and she has many jobs and all of them are very hard.”

  “And she lives here,” Violet said, sliding.

  “Yeah,” Maureen said, “that’s part of the deal.”

  “Some deal,” Lola said.

  “But Grandpa does not pay Lola to be your mother or to watch you all day.”

  “He’s not rich enough for that. Nobody is,” Lola said.

  “Then don’t have Lola watch me,” Violet said.

  “That’s impossible,” Lola said.

  “That’s impossible,” Maureen said, “when you’re always underfoot and asking questions and demanding things. Food and things.”

  Violet got to her feet, walked purposefully to her portable phonograph, and squatted down in front of it.

  “You remember when I made you watch little Boris Schuster?” Maureen said.

  “Oh, God,” Violet said. She sat up on her knees and began to go through some records piled by the phonograph.

  “Well, you see?” Maureen said. “So that’s why we have some new rules around here, and you’re going to abide by them or else.”