Oh!

by Mary Robison

  Violet lowered a record onto the turntable. She put the tone arm down and eerie organ music came out the tiny speaker. “Watch out!” said a man’s voice on the record.

  “She’s not even listening,” Lola said.

  Maureen kicked the phonograph. It squawked as the needle raked across the record. A bolt of pain raced from Maureen’s toes up her shin, and she kicked the phonograph a second time and knocked it on its end. “Damn it, Violet!” she said. “Honey, we were talking to you!”

  Violet started, her mouth open.

  “You should listen!” Maureen said. She looked at her foot, saw the nail of her big toe bright with blood.

  “That was dumb,” Lola said.

  “Shut up,” Maureen said.

  “Don’t hurt my ghost record,” Violet said.

  “It’ll be fine,” Lola said. “If it’s not, we’ll get you another one.”

  Maureen limped to the bed, crossed her ankle on her knee, and watched the blood come out.

  “I’ll get you something for that,” Lola said. “If you’ll try not to injure yourselves while I’m gone.” She walked away down the hall.

  “See what happens when a person gets mad?” Maureen said. “Oh, my gosh. Hurt, hurt.” She rocked her foot back and forth.

  “I’m sorry,” Violet said. She got up, wiped her face with the front of her T-shirt, and came close enough to look.

  “See?” Maureen said. “This is what happens.”

  4

  Violet was sitting on top of the dishwasher, where Maureen had lifted and deposited her. The kitchen cabinets shook with the vibrations from the bass patterns thundering in the garage. The flatware trembled in the drawers.

  “No running ever for anything in the house,” Maureen said. “If you’ve got a question or a problem, hunt me up and don’t ask Lola.” Using her heel to walk, Maureen was putting together a plate of food for them to share. “You call this brunch,” she said.

  Violet swung her legs and banged the backs of her Nikes on the dishwasher door.

  “All right,” Maureen said, and Violet stopped. “Watch what I do here, so you’ll be able to do it for yourself sometime.” She sliced a tomato in half.

  “Dad!” Violet screamed.

  Maureen dropped the knife and hobbled to the windows.

  On the long driveway, where it curved between stands of barbered shrubs, Chris’s low-slung import, with its crushed grille and splintered headlight, was moving toward the house.

  Violet flung herself from the dishwasher and flew out the back door.

  Maureen limped after her. Somewhere along the way she passed the Signoracci girl, a guitar buckled high on her chest, and Howdy, leaning back into the electric roar with his eyes slammed shut and a microphone squeezed in his fist.

  Chris stopped his car on the turnaround behind the music makers’ van. He sprang from the door and threw himself face down onto the blacktop, arms and legs spread.

  “Don’t, Dad!” Violet squealed.

  Chris got up. He lifted the little girl and cradled her in his bent arm.

  “I love you,” Violet said.

  “Put her down,” Maureen said.

  “What’s your trouble?” Chris said.

  “Nothing. Now put her down.”

  “Come on, Mom,” Violet said, wriggling in her father’s arm. She reached for the ground with one foot.

  Chris set Violet down and propped his hands on her small shoulders. “I’m all through with Canada,” he said.

  Maureen said, “I saw your helicopter this morning.” She grabbed for Violet, who had stepped away from Chris and was pulling at the waistband of her shorts, hiking them up higher on her skinny body.

  “Is she nuts? What helicopter?” Chris asked Violet.

  “When did you get back?” Maureen said.

  “Right now, this minute. I drove straight through. I drove the last hour without a cigarette.” He took a look around. “Place is the same.” He examined Maureen. “What’d you do, bite your toe?”

  “My ghost record,” Violet said. “She kicked it.”

  “Sounds like your mom,” Chris said. “She also forgot to wear trousers today.”

  Violet said, “She’s got a swimming suit on underneath her shirt.”

  “My shirt,” Chris said.

  “You’re not allowed here,” Maureen said. “Your presence here is unlawful.”

  Chris frowned, rolled his eyes at Violet.

  “I don’t care if she hears,” Maureen said.

  “I’d like a cigarette,” Chris said. “Offer me one and I’ll tell you about my trip. It’s a story.”

  “Not interested,” Maureen said. Behind her, the drummer began batting out a tumbling solo routine.

  Chris hunkered down in front of Violet. He closed his eyes and snapped his fingers completely out of time with the music.

  “Dad?” Violet said. “Quit doing that.” She put her hands on his face. “Da-ad. I never got my breakfast and Lola wouldn’t feed me.”

  “Who’s Lola?” Chris said.

  “Lola,” Maureen said.

  “Oh, Lola,” Chris said, winking broadly at Violet.

  “You better have a good reason for showing up here,” Maureen said.

  Chris stood up, his jaw muscles bunching behind his flared nostrils. “You better change your tone with me. I’ve been awake a long time.” He was ten years older than Maureen, a sharp, good-looking face—all angles—longish, fair hair.

  Maureen pawed her shirt pocket for a cigarette. She found one and handed it to Violet, who passed it on to Chris. “You better not hurt anybody,” Maureen said.

  “Why would I hurt anybody?” Chris said. He bit off the filter, slapped his pockets for a match. He took the cigarette from his lips, rolled it between his fingers. Tobacco fell out. “Defective,” he said, and snapped the cigarette at Maureen’s legs.

  The girl guitarist stalked out of the garage, striking her instrument. Her lips popped each time her guitar rang. She threw her leg over the extension cord that was drawing taut behind her, and spun on the heel of her jackboot. Chris laughed and tossed his head.

  Cleveland came around from the side of the garage. He put down the rake he was carrying and looked at Chris. “So, how’re you doing?” Cleveland said, and shook Chris’s hand.

  “Good,” Chris said. “Really good.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m just here piddling around with the yard,” Cleveland said.

  “It looks a little baked,” Chris said.

  “Oh, sure, it’s parched,” Cleveland said. “It’s burnt but not for lack of water or the heat or anything. It’s that Lawn Dinner or whatever they call it. Never should have put it down.”

  “No?” Chris said.

  Cleveland leaned a little to one side and spat. “No.”

  “The bushes are looking nice,” Chris said. He stood with his feet apart and his arms folded.

  “Yeah, and my primroses are in great shape,” Cleveland said. “Cherry trees are fine, so are the roses. Everything that didn’t get burned to the ground by the Lawn Dinner is fine.”

  “Lotta work,” Chris said. He leaned over and spat too.

  “Oh, it’s work,” Cleveland said.

  “Who put down the fertilizer?” Chris said. “You or your gardener?”

  “Guilty as charged,” Cleveland said, and raised his hands as if surrendering to guns. “So when did you come back from Canada or wherever you were, Chris?”

  “Just this second. Interstate all the way from the border.”

  “That’s the route,” Cleveland said.

  “He won’t leave,” Maureen said.

  “You want him to leave?” Cleveland said. He pulled a handkerchief from his shirt pocket and bent his neck to blow his nose. “What are you, in a motel, Chris? You visiting or did you come back to live?”

  “I’ll get a room near campus. There’s this house I know of,” Chris said. He was scrubbing a little area of the drive with the toe of his shoe. “It’s a roo
m for students, like, and all the students are gone for the summer. I’ll get it cheap.”

  “So you’ll live down on campus,” Cleveland said.

  “Week to week,” Chris said.

  “What are you doing for a job?” Cleveland said. “Or do you have any? I hope you didn’t spend all your lottery money.”

  “No,” Chris said.

  “You didn’t blow the whole one hundred G’s on a new car, I see,” Cleveland said.

  “No, sir,” Chris said, still scuffing the pebbles in the driveway. “But the money was two years ago, just about. So I work, on and off, for the hell of it. Hang drywall or something. Carpentry. It keeps me tan.”

  Signoracci’s guitar noise flared up again, but abruptly stopped. The bass and drums continued a moment, then dribbled out.

  Howdy came out of the garage. He had a black bullwhip curled in one hand. “Breakdown!” he called to them. “The wattage blew our amp.”

  “Good work,” Cleveland said.

  “You don’t go for Howdy’s group?” Chris said, grinning.

  Cleveland looked at him sideways, then shut his eyes.

  Howdy angled, barefoot, off the hot blacktop for the grass.

  Signoracci continued fingering the neck of her guitar, but no sound came from it. She talked to herself as she pressed and picked the wires.

  “That one’s far gone,” Cleveland said.

  Violet padded over to Howdy and tried to snatch his whip away from him, but Howdy held it high.

  “I was leaving,” Chris said. “But I’d like to see this first, whatever it is.”

  “Whip stunts,” Cleveland said. “Stick around.”

  “Thanks,” Maureen said.

  “Stand back, Violet,” Howdy warned.

  Violet backed up a little. She put both her arms into her shorts up to the elbows. She bent over at the waist.

  Howdy shook out the bullwhip and walked backward on the lawn, turning and flicking his wrist in front of him so that the length of plaited leather swept the grass and doubled back on itself.

  “Violet, get back!” Maureen shouted. “Your Uncle Howdy is doing something dangerous!”

  “On the news,” Cleveland said to Chris, “I saw this report about a guy in Hollywood who can take a snake whip and untie the knots in ladies’ halters. You ever see that?”

  Chris, who had propped himself against the side of his car, shook his head.

  Howdy began winding the whip in the air. He drew his arm down sharply. The whip buckled, made a soft pop. Howdy cursed. He tried again, whirling the leather until it whistled, then cut his arm down with a jerk.

  The whip made a splashing noise.

  “Give me that thing!” Chris shouted.

  “Stay put!” Howdy yelled back.

  “Come on!” Chris yelled. “Give it here before you do yourself harm!”

  “No!” Howdy shouted.

  Chris started across the lawn.

  Cleveland clasped his hands behind his head and chewed the inside of his cheek.

  Maureen took Violet inside, and pushed her into one of the captain’s chairs that ringed the breakfast table. “Now,” Maureen said, “food.”

  She set out bowls, drinking glasses decorated with Tweetie Pie the canary and Sylvester the cat. For napkins, she folded two sections of paper towels.

  “Can’t I go outside and eat?” Violet said. “I want to watch what Dad’s doing.”

  “He’s not your dad, Violet. I’ve told you that a thousand times. You don’t have a dad.”

  “Really?” Violet said.

  “Really,” Maureen said.

  Outside, something cracked like rifle fire. Maureen went to the bank of windows. She stood there, gazing through the leaves of English ivy that hung in baskets above the casements.

  She saw Cleveland crouched over, helping the Signoracci girl with the socket on her guitar. She saw Howdy staring. She saw Chris in the turnaround working the whip. He swatted it, making crisp zigzags that ended in fierce, smacking explosions.

  5

  Howdy was driving Lola to the Skyway in his MG. They were on the way to get her cleaning supplies. He had taken a shortcut down a graveled road, speeding along, wearing wraparound sunglasses and white, perforated gloves. “My mother did paintings!” he shouted at Lola. “She won some prizes at county fairs! Landscapes!”

  Lola was gripping her seat and the door of the rattling MG. They bucketed over a pothole.

  “She was Irish and very moody! Her pictures are typically Irish! It was always raining and there were no people in them!”

  “Maybe she couldn’t draw people!” Lola screamed.

  “Maybe!” Howdy shouted. “Anyway, she divorced Daddy and went back to Dublin! I was ten! Maureen was six!”

  “You told me! Your father told me too!” Lola screamed. “Could you slow down, do you think?”

  “Don’t think about it!” Howdy shouted. He twisted the wheel, and the car veered around a broken liquor bottle. “How’re your classes?”

  “Not good! I don’t have time to do the reading!”

  “What?”

  “The reading! It’s slow going. I don’t have time to concentrate!”

  “Yeah! Me too! One thing I found out, though! I don’t want to be a painter any more! That’s all a racket and you have to kiss somebody’s behind to have your work looked at! I think I’m through with rock bands too! Because of the people! But guess what!”

  “Can’t guess!” Lola screamed.

  “I took a drama class as an elective!”

  “Uh-oh,” Lola said.

  “For my first project, I did Tom’s opening speech from The Glass Menagerie! I got an A-plus!”

  “They don’t have those plus-jobs in the Humanities Department!” Lola screamed.

  “Don’t tell Daddy, but I also painted the scenery for the summer fete! It’s a musical, night after tomorrow! I’m in the chorus!”

  “You’ll sing in it?” Lola screamed.

  Howdy worked the clutch and yanked the gearshift for a sharp corner. “It’s a reworking of an ancient tragedy, and we put in tunes!”

  “That’s nice!” Lola screamed.

  “I really think I was born for the stage!” Howdy screamed back.

  6

  The Skyway was a discount store, larger than an aircraft hangar and newly constructed on acreage that had been graded from corn fields. There seemed to be three square miles of parking space sectioned by concrete islands and curbs and by ropes hung with colored flags. Toward the back of the lot, floating among the parked cars, was one of Cleveland’s miniature-golf courses. It specialized in Oriental-looking props and chartreuse-carpeted runways.

  A teenager in blue makeup and an orange wig stood in front of Skyway’s stream of automatic doors. He was hawking helium balloons stamped with pictures of footwear.

  Lola got a shopping cart and trundled it up and down the wide aisles of sporting goods, toys, cameras, fabrics, pyramids of cut-rate motor oil. Howdy tagged after her, singing along with the Muzak.

  “Settle down,” Lola said.

  Howdy went off to inspect the art supplies while Lola rolled the cart around the housewares department filling up the basket. When she had everything she wanted, she pushed up to the checkout counters and stood waiting for Howdy because Howdy had the charge card.

  After twenty minutes, she left the cart and went to hunt for him. First she tried the groceries section of the store, where the air conditioning was so powerful the employees wore sweaters. Then she tried the notions section, asking a lady who sat behind a tiny desk if she had seen anyone who looked like Howdy.

  “No, honey,” the lady said, “but let me get those sunglasses clean for you.” Lola gave the woman her glasses, and watched while they were coated with a slimy fluid and then rubbed dry with a terry-cloth towel.

  “Breathe on them,” the lady said, handing the glasses back to Lola. “With C-Kleer, they won’t steam up.”

  Lola tried to fog her glasses wit
h her breath. She couldn’t. She bought two tubes of C-Kleer.

  She searched through the clothing section, and there he was, in men’s sportswear, posing in front of a triptych of mirrors in a white paratrooper’s jump suit, high-topped sneakers, and a scarlet ascot.

  “I was about to report a lost child,” Lola said.

  “Ray?” Howdy said. “This is Lola.” Howdy introduced the chunky salesman standing beside him. “This is Ray,” Howdy said, and the salesman nodded.

  “Don’t you love this coverall?” Ray said.

  “What are all the zippers for?” Lola said.

  Ray smiled.

  “I can see his underpants through that stuff,” Lola said.

  “I have complete movement,” Howdy said. He did a deep knee-bend.

  “I think it’s for girls,” Lola said. “Can we please go? Buy that dress, and let’s go.”

  “You’ll see a lot of these this season,” Ray said.

  “Don’t bring that joke to me on washday,” Lola said.

  “It’s new and it takes getting used to,” the salesman said. “I think your wife here will get to like it.”

  “His wife?” Lola said.

  “I’m not pushing the thing,” Ray said, “but I had a guy bought two and he was back yesterday to get seven more.”

  Howdy looked pleased. He did some turns before the mirror. “I’ll take it,” he said. “And you can bag my old clothes.”

  7

  Cleveland swung his slippered feet down from the davenport. “Great to see you all,” he called to Lola and Howdy. “You have a good vacation in Tibet or what?” He had been watching television in the den, drinking a watered Scotch.

  “So what’s going on here?” Lola said, nodding at the television set.

  “Same as yesterday,” Cleveland said.

  8

  Lola wrote out a list of cleaning plans and stashed it in the pocket of her smock. She went upstairs to Maureen’s room with a basket of laundered clothes and her new bucket of stuff.

  Maureen was sitting on her bed, her short white hair in rollers, her feet drawn up. She was painting dark red lacquer on her toenails, all except the one that was covered with a bandage. The smell of acetone was terrific.

  “What’s that sound I keep hearing?” Maureen said.

  “Your brother’s new high-top sneakers,” Lola said. “They’re in the clothes dryer. He wanted them broken in.”