Oh!

by Mary Robison

  “From the very instant the curtain went up, one felt himself lifted from himself,” Chris said.

  “Be quiet,” Maureen said.

  “You know, that was enjoyable,” Cleveland said. “Very professional.”

  “I’m not sure I understood it all,” Virginia said. “But it was impressive and very stimulating.”

  “Inspiring,” Chris said.

  “I’m nervous for Howdy,” Lola said. “But what’s the worst that could happen?”

  “Just wait,” Chris said.

  Howdy’s play had a musical overture described in the program as a “work for electronic strings and percussion.” When a rock ballad played over the loudspeakers, the crowd kept circulating and having intermission. The houselights blinked repeatedly. “It’s time,” Maureen said.

  She dragged the party back to their seats.

  Chris said, “I thought someone was just snapping the lights to the music. Where’s our giant? If he doesn’t sit in front of me, I’ll be forced to look at the stage.”

  The curtain ascended a little way, stopped, started up again, stopped, dropped back down.

  “Howdy’s handling the curtain,” Chris said.

  People in the dark theater were battling for their seats, climbing over shoes and ankles. A needle scraped the amplified recording. The rock ballad began again.

  “Howdy’s in charge of the music too,” Chris said.

  Lola swatted Maureen and shook a finger at Chris. “I’m warning you,” she said.

  The big man and his wife fumbled down their row, making a lot of noise, apologizing. They fell, more or less, into their seats.

  “Good,” Chris said. “Total eclipse.”

  The rock ballad trailed off into silence. A change in the lighting signaled the curtain’s second attempt to rise.

  “What?” Lola said when the stage was exposed.

  “Oh, Howdy,” Maureen said. “Oh, Lord, no.”

  Chris craned his neck to see around the giant man. “What?” he said to Maureen.

  Stephanie squealed.

  On the stage, right down in front, Howdy was standing sideways. He was wearing an athletic supporter. He was making a gesture with his arms, raising them toward the ceiling. His thin body was painted with makeup so that he seemed to be not so much naked as wearing a naked suit. Over his head in a white spotlight was his painting of his family, and floating above the original line of portraits was a freshly rendered Stephanie in exact anatomic detail. Howdy had added crude, balloonlike bosoms on his sister’s and mother’s portraits—white circles with apple-red bull’s-eyes. Lola’s figure had an exposed belly swollen round as a manhole cover and painted a purplish cocoa.

  Lola began talking, using her normal loud speaking voice, until Maureen pressed a hand over her mouth.

  “Are you people crazy?” the giant, who had turned, said.

  “Thank God,” Cleveland called out. Two actresses who were playing Howdy’s daughters hastened forth with a choir robe to cover their naked father, whereupon Howdy started a recitation. He spoke of the mountains and valleys of women, and of the pillars that men have. He narrowed in on the subject of incest.

  Maureen, with her hand still over Lola’s mouth, said, “Chris, if you don’t quit laughing, you’ll never see Violet again.”

  “My mother’s loins,” Howdy said in a tender, tortured voice. He pointed to the oil painting, to the picture of his mother.

  “Shut up!” Cleveland yelled, and was booed and shushed by the crowd.

  Chris turned his gaze away from the stage, his fingers in his ears, humming intently.

  “Oh, sweet, sisterly love!” Howdy declared from the stage.

  6

  I’ve told you three times. Now, I’m telling you again, but I’m getting hoarse, so please listen! I did not write that play. It was not about you. You weren’t in that play. None of you! I was acting in a play about Greek people and mythological people, that was written in nineteen twenty who-knows, and translated, and neither the author nor the translator has ever met you, so how could he write a play about you? Richard Allen, who did the sets, saw my big painting and asked me if I’d change a few things—like adding the big bosoms and making one person pregnant—so that we could use it as a drop to clarify who-was-who during my opening speech.”

  “Don’t get near me,” Maureen said. Howdy had paced to within five feet of the living room couch, where Maureen sat in her new dress.

  “And what about Stephanie? Did she know you were going to hold her naked body up for everyone to look at while you paraded around without a stitch on?” Cleveland said. He drank an iced Coke.

  Howdy sighed gigantically. “For the fifth time, that wasn’t Steph. It was her head—they were all your heads. Steph’s body was Judy Allen’s, Richard Allen’s wife. You met them, Chris. At the cafeteria, remember?”

  Chris said, “Yeah, the one who burned her lunch.” He stared into his Perrier, and kept a level, even expression. No one had liquor because Virginia had asked them to prove they could stay away from it for one night.

  “Everyone thought it was Stephanie,” Cleveland said.

  “Not really,” Virginia said.

  “I was deeply embarrassed for her,” Cleveland said.

  “I think I looked good,” Stephanie said.

  “It was shit,” Cleveland said. “Obscene, unpoetic shit.”

  “Didn’t you pay attention?” Howdy said. “If you’d paid attention, you might’ve noticed that a big war was just over, that the family of the guy I was portraying had just been slaughtered in the big war.”

  “All I heard was about people having holes drilled in their ankles and being dragged around behind cars,” Maureen said.

  “The cars were chariots,” Howdy said. “It was a modern version of ancient Greek warfare.”

  “That was me up there,” Lola said.

  “It wasn’t exactly you, Lola. Good God, I’d expect this from the rest of them, but not you. You go to college. You write poetry. You’ve studied the Greeks and Greek tragedy. It’s erotic, sure. But this playwright just de-abstracted the violence and sex. He put them into terms we can really see and hear. Listen to my voice—it’s a croak! You’re all grinding me down.” He slumped on the hearth and seemed to lose mass before their eyes.

  “I think I know the problem here,” Chris said. “The problem is not that you were in the play, Howdy, but that you invited everyone to come and you didn’t prepare us for it.”

  “I forgot that you’re all a bunch of imbeciles,” Howdy said. “I forgot that, yes.”

  The front door chimed, and Chris went to answer it. He called from the hall for Howdy and Stephanie.

  Jack was standing just inside the door. He wore a suit and tie under a raincoat. He was red-eyed and swaying.

  “Did you want a ride?” he said to Stephanie.

  “Hello, Dad,” she said.

  “Didn’t you want a ride?”

  “Howdy’s going to drive me to Aunt Pearl’s for the night. Don’t you remember?”

  “You want a ride home?” Jack said.

  “Honestly, Jack,” Howdy said, “you’re stoned. I’ll drive you both home.”

  Jack threw a crisp punch into Howdy’s right eye. Howdy’s head snapped back, and Chris caught him by the shoulders. Jack winced, grabbing his own big knuckles.

  “Rich dick-suck,” Jack said.

  Howdy was on him a second later, pinning him to the door. Twice, Howdy’s clumsy roundhouse blows landed on wood, but most of them struck the drunken man.

  Stephanie watched without much expression.

  Howdy fell onto all fours and heaved for breath. Chris moved to help him. Howdy sobbed or coughed or both.

  Jack got down on one knee next to Howdy. Blood dribbled from his nostrils. He was trying to talk: “I got a gun in the truck. I’ll kill your ass.”

  Howdy threw a rubbery-armed haymaker and missed. On its way back, his open hand slapped Jack’s eye and damaged nose.

&nb
sp; Jack moaned and said, “Ouch. You dick-suck.”

  “Go,” Howdy gasped. “Go from my house!” He raised a fist to strike again.

  “This is plain crazy,” Chris said, stepping between the men.

  Howdy reached around Chris’s leg and bumped Jack’s nose. Jack said, “Whoa, no,” and crazily swatted the air around him as though he were after a bee. Howdy collapsed onto his side.

  “All right,” Cleveland said. “Let’s settle down, you knotheads.”

  7

  Cleveland was laughing and petting his dotted necktie, stroking it from knot to point. There was color on his neck, above his starched shirt collar. “Oh, damn, damn, damn, that was great. That was so great.” He beamed, stroked his tie, looked contentedly around the room.

  Virginia sat with her back straight. On her lap was a dish with a square of coffee cake. Her knees were pressed together.

  “I’m not sorry about a thing,” Howdy said from the sofa, where he lay on his back, a wrapped ice cube held to his eye. Sooty mascara tears from the melted ice streaked his face.

  “Not sorry neither,” Cleveland said. “My heavens, no. Old Jack thumped you a good one for that nonsense. Now none of us has to.”

  “That illiterate,” Howdy said.

  “He had the right, kiddo,” Cleveland said. “You showed his daughter naked.”

  Chris whispered to Maureen, “Jack’s my kind of drama critic.” They also were on their backs, on the floor, with plates of coffee cake on their stomachs.

  “And I’m not mad at you anymore,” Cleveland said to Howdy. “By God, you took your medicine and you came back swinging.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Howdy said.

  “Jack’s a tough rattlesnake to tangle with,” Cleveland said. “Aren’t you, Jack?”

  Jack looked as though he had been flung with great force into the deep armchair. His big, quivering hand had the knuckles taped. He held a glass of bourbon and a Pall Mall cigarette with a two-inch stick of ash at the tip. The ledge of his brow was bumpy from blows. His stockinged feet were laid one on top of the other. His eyes were closing.

  “You’re okay, aren’t you, Jack?” Howdy said.

  “Don’t you worry about it,” Jack said. “It’s not Saturday night without a fight.”

  “Howdy came running at you, didn’t he, Jack?” Cleveland said.

  “Didn’t he just,” Jack said. He moved his drink hand forward and backward in an ambiguous gesture. He lost the ash on his cigarette to the rug.

  Lola licked butter from her fingers and said she’d be going to bed soon. “This has been the worst day of my life,” she said.

  “Before you go,” Cleveland said, “Ginny and I have something we want to announce, if Chris and Maureen will stop whispering and listen.”

  On the floor, Chris and Maureen were laughing and having a separate conversation. “We know, Dad, we know,” Maureen said. “Unless this is a new one.”

  “I told you,” Virginia lashed out at Cleveland. “I told you, I’ve already announced everything. Yesterday after the tornado.”

  “About the marriage?” Cleveland said.

  “Yes!” Virginia hissed with such heat that Cleveland’s mouth dropped open. “Were you having an alcoholic blackout when I told you?”

  “Hey, give her a belt,” Jack said. “She’s slipped her harness.”

  “Yeah,” Chris said, and Maureen laughed. “Whomp her one in the chops, Mr. Cleveland.”

  Stephanie was on her backside with her legs drawn up. She looked pale, dull-eyed. “Dad, please? Please, can’t we go home?”

  “I wanted to tell them,” Cleveland said. “I mean I wanted us both to tell them.”

  Maureen said, “On the twentieth, in the piano room, everyone’s invited, small ceremony, reception on the lawn.”

  “Well, what do you think, Maureen? Howdy?” Cleveland said.

  “Oh, I give up,” Virginia said. “I already told you what they think. They couldn’t care less. No, indifference is too mild a term for what they feel. They feel overt hostility.”

  “She’s got it,” Maureen said.

  “Pay no mind,” Lola said. “It sounds lovely.”

  “It does, indeed,” Cleveland said.

  “I forbid you to talk about my wedding at this time,” Virginia said. “I’m much too aroused. You’ll be glad to know, Maureen, that I am leaving here soon, so you can all hit the liquor closet and get yourselves intoxicated and have more fistfights.”

  “Don’t think we won’t,” Maureen said.

  “Come on, Mo,” Howdy said.

  “Dad, please, let’s go,” Stephanie said.

  Howdy put a battered hand in her frizzy hair, but she jerked away.

  “Soon as I finish my drink,” Jack said. “But I don’t know why you’re in such a hurry to get home. You got my belt waiting for you when you do.”

  Howdy struggled to sit up. “I’ll kill you if you touch her.”

  “Uh oh,” Lola said.

  Virginia began to pray. She put her hands together and closed her eyes and lifted her face to the ceiling.

  “Jesus, fuck,” Maureen said.

  8

  I swear I can smell Violet out here,” Chris said. He was rocking a swing.

  “It’s the soap,” Maureen said.

  “Yeah, the soap,” Chris said. “But no soap you could buy.”

  “Little-kid scent,” Maureen said.

  They went along a path that cut through a tree barrier, and then along the rock wall that lined Charity Way. There was a mild flutter of rain.

  “Remember going to the golf course on this kind of night?” Chris said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey, stop walking,” he said. “Boy, some of those golf-course nights.”

  “I remember them differently probably. For me, it was just bugs and wet everything. And I was always afraid Dick VanZandt would come whizzing up on his motorized cart and put his searchlight on us.”

  “Dick VanZandt!” Chris said. “How the hell’d you remember his name? The security guy in his goddamn security golf-mobile.”

  “I was always afraid he’d blast us with that searchlight and then take a flash photograph and give it to my dad. And there was always somebody moving around on those greens, too. Sitting on sprinklers or eating live chickens or God knows,” Maureen said.

  Chris said, “VanZandt, you may know, stepped into the propeller of a pontoon plane in Hanoi and went to rock-and-roll heaven.”

  “Magnificent,” Maureen said. “I really wanted to hear that.” They walked in silence awhile. She said, “Now I have something to tell you, and it’s this. I want you to go away awhile.”

  “I’m not doing a thing. What am I doing?”

  “Ever since you got here, things have been exploding in my face. Fights, tornadoes, floods, theatrical flops. I blame them all on you—fair or not. I don’t know what blew you back from Canada. I’ll never know the real, whole truth, probably, but that’s okay with me. Keep your secrets.” Her gaze came back to him. “Anyway, you’re here now, and as usual, you’re making trouble happen. I believe in my heart of hearts that you’re the cause of everything. I believe it like Virginia believes in Jesus. I have faith in your power to bring chaos.”

  “If you want to be insane, Mo, how can I argue?” he said.

  “It wouldn’t matter if you did argue. I’ve decided. Just go away and let me regroup. I have serious things going on in my head right now. For one thing, what I’m going to say to my mother to show I forgive her.”

  “You want her to forgive you,” Chris said. “You and your dad. You must have been some unpleasant little six-year-old for her to leave and not write or phone or anything for all this time. For her to dump you and never look back.”

  Maureen said, “Don’t come here again, Chris. Don’t call me. Don’t go to campus and be around Howdy. Don’t ever try to see Violet. Don’t send a telegram. Disappear for a while, okay?”

  “How long a while?”

&nbs
p; “A week—minimum.”

  “May I ask you one question?”

  “No.”

  “Will you be gone for Ireland in a week?”

  “Probably not, no. If I am, I’ll let you know, so you can say good-bye to Violet.”

  “One week,” Chris said. “You get one week, Maureen. But so help me, I’m going to pay you back for this in some way.”

  “That’s the old Chris,” Maureen said. “Threats. That’s more like the prick you really are.”

  9

  Virginia was wearing only a thin brassiere and skimpy underpants. They were expensive pieces of underwear, silk, a color the saleswoman called taupe. Virginia’s body was tan and sleek, well-muscled but soft. “Like a hula dancer’s,” the saleswoman had said.

  “You are something,” Lola said.

  “How nice.” Virginia was weeping seriously and with great concentration.

  “Most nude women I see, I want to turn away fast. Old and young. But you’re like Violet. I don’t see any faults at all. Smooth as a seal.”

  Virginia, crying and smiling, said, “Well, that’s a delightful thing to say.” She lifted her arms and turned in front of Lola.

  “Perfect,” Lola said.

  They were upstairs, in a walk-in dressing closet that had full-length mirrors on two walls.

  Virginia held up some of her hair. “This is just hay,” she said, her voice rippled by a sob. Virginia used the hair as a towel, crying into it.

  In the week since Howdy’s play, they had had tornado watches or warnings almost every day. The temperature had been in the high nineties, the humidity insufferable. On this day, Saturday, a warm and bitter rain was falling, and the sky had turned dark enough that Lola had gone around and switched on the lamps.

  Cleveland had been ugly. On Wednesday, he had complained of a toothache and washed down his breakfast omelet with Bloody Marys. He had nursed a drunk until early evening, then gone upstairs to bed, leaving Virginia with dinner guests from his upstate bottling-plant operation. On Thursday, he had stayed in his room, sick. He hadn’t eaten. On Friday, he was better. He accompanied Virginia to the caterer’s and to the dressmaker who’d be doing her wedding gown. He had helped her with the invitations, kept an appointment with the minister, taken her to an elegant dinner. He had downed a lot of vodka with their meal, and more vodka later in the penthouse lounge of a downtown skyscraper.