by Mary Robison
She said, “Yes.”
The boy had another handful of snow. He was eating it and squinting at Roy. “I’m related to the manager here,” the fat boy said. “They rent skates out to the public on weekdays, after four o’clock.”
“I know that,” Roy said. He studied the palm full of silver coins he had brought from his pocket. “I’d offer to buy you two a couple bottles of Coke, but I’m a nickel short.”
“We have to work today,” Frank Henderson said. “Don’t you have work to do?” The boy patted his wet hands.
“Nope,” Roy said.
“I hope you get to like living in America a little better,” the boy said.
“Oh, no problem,” Roy said, wagging his head.
The fat boy and his sister boarded a caged outside elevator that was beside the pile of snow. They drove the machine underground.
Roy removed his new shoes and his socks. He walked along the curb of the broad avenue, carrying the shoes by their leather laces. “Il tuci mi’ amore duke,” he sang. “Il bidone’ casa me strata.”
ROY SAT ON A BIG sofa he had moved onto his front porch. The porch was cement, shaded by an awning at the end of a short flight of cement steps that led to the sidewalk. Traffic on the street was thin.
“Wake up and live,” Roy told a long red dog that lived in the neighborhood. The dog was on the sofa with Roy. “Count the Fords that pass.”
“MacNamara!” Roy shouted to a newspaper boy pumping a yellow Schwinn that was strapped with saddlebags. The bike’s front tire swerved. The rider went over onto the sidewalk. Roy came down from the porch.
“That always happens,” MacNamara said. He had torn the flesh on an elbow. He was trying to straighten the handlebars.
“My fault,” Roy said.
“Jesus,” MacNamara said.
“Since you dropped it,” Roy said, looking into MacNamara’s face, “what do I owe you?”
The boy brought a tiny ring-binder from one of the saddlebags and thumbed through the pages. “Nothing,” he said. He showed Roy a page penciled with figures. “You’re paid up for a while yet.” He dumped the record book and tossed Roy a rolled and banded newspaper. “Pretty soon, a new guy will be collecting.”
Back on the porch, Roy was reading the paper aloud when Mrs. Kenny stepped from her front door. She was in her eighties and lived in the other half of Roy’s double.
“Are you reading news to the dog?” she said. She pushed her aluminum walker in front of her and took a while to make it to the sofa. “I’m sick with the heat.”
Roy said, “It’s awful. I’m dripping on the funnies.”
They sat for a while without speaking.
“I believe it’s hotter out here,” Mrs. Kenny said.
“It could be,” Roy said. “You know, it gets a lot hotter than this in Greece. It gets so hot that at midday they just close everything. No one does a thing.”
“Well, this is hot enough,” Mrs. Kenny said. “What does that say?” She put a hooked finger on the column Roy was reading.
“It’s Mickey Rooney,” Roy said. “He’s in town with a show. He says you’ve got to have your heart in it. Every minute.” Roy roughed the fur on the red dog’s neck. “The dog knows,” he said.
“I guess so,” Mrs. Kenny said. She was looking at the newspaper in Roy’s hand. The hand and the paper were trembling.
“What’s wrong with you?” she said.
“I’m having trouble,” Roy said, “with sleep.”
“Well, you listen to the music all night. You always play that radio.”
“That’s it,” Roy said.
“You don’t try to sleep. You listen to that music.”
“Oh,” Roy said, “that’s probably it. I don’t try.”
Stay with Me
“GET OUT OF MY YARD,” Neal said. He was standing in his living room, between the pastel drapes at the picture window.
“Who are you saying that to?” said Neal’s wife, Nancy.
“One of the Langhams. A girl.”
“Sharon?” Nancy said. “Cindy?”
“This kid is getting a figure. The one with the majorette’s baton all the time.”
“Cindy.”
“I hate her,” Neal said.
Nancy said, “Get away from the window.”
Neal looked at his feet, at the pearl-gray carpet under his loafers. “Quit telling me where to be,” he said to Nancy.
“Then behave,” Nancy said.
“Get out of the yard,” Neal said to the window glass.
“Neal,” Nancy said sharply. “Come on, Neal.” She was frowning and pasting trading stamps into a paper booklet. She was sitting on the stuffed couch.
“In ten years of marriage,” Neal said, “the best thing that’s happened to you is being able to tell me to behave. You are delighted to be able to tell me to behave.”
“Come on, Neal, I mean it,” Nancy said.
Neal switched his gaze back to the window. “That’s right,” he said. “Walk all over my crocuses. Bat the heads off my roses with your baton. I can afford it. Here comes her sister to help her wreck up my garden.”
“If she, or they, are really bothering our flowers, Neal, go to the door and politely tell them to stop.”
“No, no,” Neal said. “What the hell. Now they’re clearing a little path for themselves to play in. That’s right. Tread on those mums. The sister has a little scythe. Why don’t they go get old man Langham to do it right with his Toro?”
“Is there anybody really out there, or are you just exercising your voice?”
“I’m just exercising my voice,” Neal said. He went and sat beside Nancy on the couch.
“Settle down,” Nancy said. She pushed a row of gummed orange stamps into the wet sponge that rested on the low table in front of her. “Settle down for Sunday,” she said, and lined the row of stamps in the booklet and pressed them down with the heel of her hand. “Did you take a pill?”
“Honey, yes,” Neal said.
There was something in his voice that caused Nancy to tip her head sideways and look at him. She made a noise with her mouth. “Neal?”
“Honey, I did. See?” He stuck out a flattened hand.
“See what?”
“I’m shaking. Are you happy?”
“I don’t see any shake,” Nancy said. She bent closer to Neal’s hand and studied the long clean nails and thin hairless fingers.
“Great,” Neal said. “Then my eyeballs are the things that are shaking. In my head.”
“You’re all right,” Nancy said. “They wouldn’t give you something—”
“We’ve had this conversation,” Neal said. After a moment he said, “I am really shaking.”
“Don’t jiggle your knee,” Nancy said. “Do something, why don’t you?”
Neal got off the couch and dropped on his knee before the television. “I’ll have a beer and watch a movie.” He switched the channel knob around. “Two stations, and both of them have nothing but basketball.”
“Turn it,” Nancy said.
“We just get two stations. All that’s on is this.”
“You were going to fix the set,” Nancy said.
“Well, there’s nothing else on,” Neal said. He sat back on the carpet and held onto the toes of his shoes. Ahead of him, the TV showed a player dribbling a basketball on the edge of the court, cornered by two members of the opposing team. People were clapping.
“Sunday,” Neal said. He sighed and said, “If this wasn’t Sunday, the Langham brats would be in school. Something else would be on television.”
Nancy finished with her trading stamps and carried the swollen book into the kitchen.
“I’m making hot cocoa,” she called to Neal.
“I’m going to have a beer.”
“I’m making the cocoa for you, instead of a beer.”
Whistles blew on the TV. A player was sent to the bench. The player held his clenched fists high over his head. Feet stamped. A larg
e section of the crowd was put on the camera. Their fists were raised like the player’s.
Nancy came back into the room, blowing steam from the top of a nubby ceramic mug. Neal was rocking on his bottom with his shoes in his hands.
“Pretty soon you can go back to work,” Nancy said.
Neal squeezed his eyes shut and shivered like a wet dog. “Leebert Industries,” he said. “Toledo Steel. Rafkin Bearings. Shipping and receiving. Thermocouplers. Mech-analysis. Mr. Hart and Mr. Fox. United Pap. United Parcel. The Telex machine.” He began to make a weak, breathy laughing noise.
“I talked to Harry Hart,” Nancy said, ignoring Neal’s laughter. “You can’t imagine how nice he was.”
“I know he was,” Neal said. He stopped rocking. “Tell me something new.”
“You’re not ashamed of seeing him, are you? He said the one thing he’s most afraid of is you being ashamed to see him.”
“He can rest at ease about that,” Neal said. “Hart’s a drunk, an embezzling crud, and so is his big buddy, Bill Fox.”
“They’ve been fine to us,” Nancy said. “Harry told me they’re just chafing to see you get on with your life.”
“Chafe away,” Neal said. Then he said, “I like Harry Hart.” He sighed and pushed in the TV control knob with the end of his shoe. The picture popped and the basketball game vanished. “Look,” Neal said. “Us.” He pointed to the TV screen, to his and Nancy’s reflections. He lay back on the gray carpet and put his hands behind his head.
“In the meantime, there’s a lot to do around here,” Nancy told him. “You could get busy on the garage. Let’s do fix the set. I’d like the slate put down for a patio before it starts to get really nice out.”
“Ah, let me sleep,” Neal said.
“I will not. The sun’s still high. Do not go to sleep.”
“Okay,” Neal said.
“I’ll perk coffee. You stay awake until ten or so, Neal. You haven’t touched your cocoa.”
“Why wait until ten, Nancy?”
She leaned forward on the sofa and clenched one hand. “You’re sure feeling sorry for yourself today.”
“Here we go,” Neal said.
“What?”
“Why do you stay with me, Nancy?”
“I do wonder, Neal,” she said.
“Big secret,” he said. He sat up and spun his body around once on his bottom. He got to his feet and walked toward the door.
“Now where are you going?”
“No place.”
“Good,” Nancy said. “I’m going to start dinner pretty soon.”
“I’ll make my own,” Neal said.
“No, Neal. We can’t be doing things that way.”
“Then don’t dish the plates. I’ll eat exactly what you eat, Nancy. Goodbye,” he said. He snapped open the door, crossed through, and closed it behind him. He walked down his lawn, a short hill, and stopped under a sycamore tree.
Cindy Langham dashed past him and ran across the street to the yard of the house that fronted Neal’s.
Neal sat on the curb. “You know what?” he said to the Langham girl. She was facing him from across the street, her eyes narrowed against the warmish early-spring sunlight. She had the baton yoked across her small shoulders and was resting both wrists on the shaft.
“What?” she said.
“If you come over here into my yard again, I’ll have you arrested.”
“I didn’t come over to your yard. I was looking for our whiffle ball,” she said. “Father said I could.”
“Do you know what trespassing is?” Neal said.
The girl ignored him. She began to work her baton. Her long straight legs bent in a stationary march and her fine blond hair lifted, and she shook the hair down her back.
“Do you know what that word is?” Neal said. He stood up.
From the street, a large dog, an Irish setter, that was leashed to a stubby retarded boy, broke away and bounded up to Cindy Langham. The dog fought with the girl for the baton.
“Blind him the way you did my cat,” Neal said.
The girl was shrieking and laughing. “Come and get Lancer!” she yelled to the retarded boy, who was trotting toward her. The girl stepped away from the dog and used fingers to remove a banner of hair that had caught in her mouth. She held the baton high over her head. Without looking at Neal, she said to him, “I was never in your yard.”
“If you say so,” Neal said. He walked back up to his house and stood in front of it, between boxed shrubs. A window cranked open behind him.
“What are you doing?” Nancy said.
“The sun’s getting ready to set,” Neal said.
“It is not,” she said. “You look ridiculous.”
“Standing in my yard?”
“Shirttails out and staring off. No jacket.”
“How do you know if I’m staring?” Neal said. “My back is to you. I don’t need a jacket. It’s late April. It’s sunny. You could get a tan the way the sun is beating down.” He squinted up at the sun.
“I have dinner ready,” Nancy said.
“Fine. Eat it,” Neal said.
“All right,” Nancy said. “I’m calling Doctor Bruskin.”
“Don’t call Bruskin,” Neal said.
“I don’t know what else to do. I’ve been keeping a count on your pills, Neal. You’ve been skipping them. You skipped today.”
“Would you like to shake all the time? Would you like that?” Neal said. “I’m not hurting anybody in my yard, standing here in the ruins of my roses.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Nancy said.
“You figure that out for yourself. I’m just working on me right now.”
“I want you to come in,” she said. “I don’t want to eat alone. I want somebody to talk to while I eat.”
“Okay. Here I come,” Neal said. “You should have just told me that in the first place.”
Felt Pieces
THERE WAS DUST IN THE air and in the light. Valery’s chair stood in a shadow, away from the cone of sun coming through the window glass. She was reading from a library book in a Mylar jacket. But she could not concentrate. She read a sentence five or six times. “I saw the Earth cower.” She read this again and again, and thought about the bad fit of her navy suit. The coat was biting beneath her arms. The skirt reached a little too far down her crossed calves.
“I saw the Earth . . .” Valery read, and with her free hand fluffed the short hairs over her ear.
Her daughter, Jane, was in the room, cutting pieces of felt, making a collage of a village to paste onto white posterboard. There were black avenues, a turquoise church, yellow houses.
The little girl wore clothes that Valery had made for her on their sewing machine. She wore a khaki jacket and a skirt of polished cotton. The jacket had dark shell buttons. The sewing had cost Valery a long weekend because the sewing machine was old and had to be cranked by hand, pumped by foot.
Valery closed the book without marking her place. She drank from a short glass of whiskey.
Jane was on her knees, tucking the felt scraps under each other, trading the colors, making a pinwheel, dividing it, making a fan.
Valery’s eyes closed. Somewhere on the street a radio was tuned to a Canadian station. She heard a French-spoken monologue, the news. She heard the bump of Jane’s bare feet on the uncarpeted stairs.
The girl brought a brush from an upstairs room. She ran it over her mother’s hair. Straightening, Valery took a mouthful of drink. The ice cubes in the whiskey glass had dissolved to dime-sized circles.
“Was I asleep? How long?” Valery said to Jane, who shrugged.
MERLE, VALERY’S A.A. FRIEND, PATTED the screen door and pushed through. She was holding a lemon pie. “Oh, Val,” she said. “What are we doing?”
“You should go,” Valery said to Merle.
“I know that,” Merle said, and sat on the sofa in her raincoat. Her legs straddled Jane’s collage. Merle held the pie in both hands.
Jane was on the floor again, brushing her own hair and going through the magazine for the picture she was copying for her collage.
“Janey,” Valery said, “take Merle’s pie carefully out to the kitchen. Carefully.” When Jane was gone, Valery said, “For the first time in a month I feel tired.”
“What are you reading?” Merle said.
Valery passed her the book. Merle held it the way she had held the lemon pie, on her thighs. She said, “So much is marked out.”
“It’s a library book,” Valery said. “Somebody else did that.”
Jane came back into the room. Valery rested the whiskey glass on her bottom teeth and watched her daughter do yoga positions. “Show Merle the Cobra,” she said.
Jane lay on her stomach. She laced her fingers behind her back and raised herself from the floor.
“Cripes!” Merle said. “I can’t bear to watch.” She said to Valery, “She’s wonderful in those clothes.”
“I know,” Valery said. “I had a daydream that I made her four more of those skirts. Four shades of blue.”
“Who really did all this crossing out?” Merle said, looking back at the book. “Wasn’t it you?”
“Yes, it was me,” Valery said. “I was so distracted, I crossed out the sentences I understood. That’s how bad off I was. You can see how many I didn’t understand.”
“Look,” Merle said. “Can you believe it?” She nodded toward Jane. Jane was lying on her back, breathing quietly. Her eyes were shut and her lips parted.
THE WOMEN SAT FOR A while, Valery drinking and Merle smoking. “Hey,” Merle said, “do you think Jane would mind if I helped with her picture?” She leaned forward and fingered the cloth cuttings.
“Have at it,” Valery said.
Merle worked from her leaning position.
Valery removed her suit jacket and wadded it. She got onto the floor beside Jane and put half the coat under each of their heads.
“You be here awhile?” she asked Merle.
“Yes,” Merle said. “Where have you got it?”
“Same cabinet as always,” Valery said.
Merle went to the kitchen and came back with a glassful of Valery’s whiskey. She drank and she stood in the living-room doorway and she looked at Jane and at Valery, who lay with her eyes open.