Tell Me

by Mary Robison

  Jack said to him, “Let me know when you find out.”

  “I wasn’t here,” Barbara’s father said, nervously. “I’ve been at a GOP reception for the governor. I was a little drunk, having a pretty good time.”

  He led Jack from the bedroom. Leah pulled on her wool pants and a tiny sweater of Barbara’s and followed the two men to the lighted library. Barbara’s mother was up, sitting in a swivel rocker. She was wearing dark glasses, holding a highball in one hand and a pink Kleenex in the other.

  “Listen, Jack,” Barbara’s father said as he threw his body into a deep armchair. His wing tips didn’t reach the parqueted floor. He drummed his fingernails on a tray that supported a thirty-cup percolator and clean china cups. “I have a lot of stuff to do. Stuff I’m going to hate like hell doing. Why don’t you make some other friends? How about it? Why don’t you give Barbara a little breathing space?”

  “I didn’t come to see Barbara,” Jack said. He raised his voice to a shout: “Hey, Barbara, I didn’t come to see you!”

  •

  Doug was up, laboring over his motorcycle, which he had taken apart on some newspapers on the rug in Sweet’s living room. Bobby lay beside him on her stomach. She was drawing on the torn cover of the Niagara puzzle box with a flow pen. “Sweet broke the furnace again,” she said to Leah. “He made it hot.” She stopped drawing and spun the cardboard flap through the air like a disk toy.

  Leah found Sweet watching boxers on television. He had his shoulders hunched and his elbows raised off his knees to catch blows. “Number one,” he said when Leah came in. He smacked the sofa cushion for her to sit down. He pressed a tab on the TV remote control. “Look,” he said, nodding at the television. In the late movie, an eye on a snaking tentacle was searching through an apartment complex. “You can have that,” he said, and pointed to a tumbler of liquid on the sofa arm. “Bourbon and branch water on the rocks.”

  Leah got onto the sofa beside Sweet and started the drink. During the next commercial Sweet sat forward and snuffed through his nose. “After the war,” he said, “I had a spray-painting job.” He held his hands out as if they were pistols. “Just for weekends, way, way down, one hundred feet in the hulls of ships they were building. You were on a hairline.” He pointed up and looked at the ceiling. “Hanging there.”

  Leah looked up, too.

  “That was lead paint,” Sweet said. “To stick to steel, it must be lead. You wore a respirator. But I’ll tell you, most new men fell. Because the lead got them. Leave a bucket of lead paint unsealed for eight hours”—he clenched his fist—“it goes rock hard.”

  “Did you see men fall?” Leah said.

  “I had a physical,” Sweet said, “once every two weeks, and a urine analysis. Some men, after a while, couldn’t even make water. Plip, plip—pure lead. But I got paid for that work. Your mother and I lived in Red Hook, on a man’s front porch. She was all right then, but she was going to have a baby.”

  “That was me,” Leah said.

  Sweet bagged a foam pillow behind his neck and sat looking at the frostwork on the opened windows. Snow was sailing in, spitting on the heated TV.

  “Are you going ice-fishing with me tomorrow?” he said.

  “No,” Leah said. She put her fingers in her bangs. “Jack’s coming by. He’s decided to teach me Russian.”

  “I wish Jack could teach Bobby and Doug regular everyday English,” Sweet said. “I’ve been sitting here listening to them cuss all night, not believing my ears.” Sweet yawned with his mouth closed and pulled with his fingers at the white hairs on his throat. “Of course, Bobby’s a little girl, really. She’s got plenty of time to change.”

  “I guess so,” Leah said. She finished her drink and made a sick face. “What’d you think of what Jack said? That I need to change.”

  “You? Oh, you never will. You’re just your mother all over again,” Sweet said. “You don’t know friends from enemies and you’ll never be able to. When I was taking her to the hospital the last time, do you know what she said? She looked around and saw the tracks she’d made in the snow and said, ‘That’s good.’ And I said, ‘What’s good?’ She said, ‘The tracks. They show where I’ve gone.’ And she was right, but not only that: if you ever looked at your mother, you noticed this. You could tell everything she’d been through. You could tell it on her face. Just like yours.”

  “Oh, great,” Leah said.

  “No, it’s good,” her father said. “At least for your mother and you.”

  25

  Doctor’s Sons

  DICK WAS SITTING AT the kitchen table with his left hand resting flat, fingers spread, on a linen placemat decorated with Coast Guard flags. He was trimming his nails with a pinch clipper and crying. The mustache he had recently grown for his twenty-fifth birthday was wet with tears. He was embarrassed, and his cheeks and throat had the high color of a rash. Mrs. Sorenson, Dick’s mother, sat across the kitchen table with a paperback book in her hand. She was humming along with the Porgy and Bess tape being piped from a tape deck in the family den.

  Dick arched a finger and wiped away a streamer of tears from his cheekbone. He used his fork to break up the last strip of bacon on his breakfast plate. He looked out the kitchen window and said, “Here comes a pregnant girl.” He clicked a fork tine on the windowpane.

  Mrs. Sorenson stood up to get a better look at a pretty woman in white who was striding up the Sorensons’ driveway. A fabric bag, stuffed with flyers, was slung on the woman’s shoulder like a purse.

  “About seven months pregnant, I would guess,” Mrs. Sorenson said. “Is Spencer still out there?”

  Dick nodded and shoved the window up a crack. “Here comes someone,” he said to his brother, who was lying on his stomach in a nylon lounge chair on the blacktop just under the window. Spencer was wearing green swim trunks and dark glasses. His back was basted with oil. He flipped over in the chair and waved to the young pregnant woman.

  Mrs. Sorenson put the window down. “I would imagine that’s a volunteer who’s canvassing for the school-bond issue,” she said.

  Dick was frowning. He watched his brother chat with the girl.

  “She’ll be sorry she ever came by,” said Mrs. Sorenson, “once Spencer gets going.”

  Dick sighed aloud and appeared to have difficulty swallowing. His eyes spilled tears.

  “Come on, now,” Mrs. Sorenson said. She opened her book.

  “I’m thinking about my wife,” Dick said.

  Mrs. Sorenson wet her index finger with her tongue and turned a page. “Which wife?” she said.

  “Gladys, of course. She’s living somewhere in the Oldsmobile you and Dad gave me. I told you already.”

  “This sounds hard,” said Mrs. Sorenson, “but we gave it to both of you.”

  “But she’s living in it,” Dick said.

  “Don’t let your father hear you complain about that. He thinks there are worse places to live than in new Oldsmobiles.”

  “No one but me ever liked Gladys in her whole life,” Dick said.

  Mrs. Sorenson sang a little with “I Loves You, Porgy.” “Oh, I apologize,” she said, breaking off. “You’d probably appreciate a little quiet.”

  “No, I enjoy the music,” Dick said.

  “Well, it’s beginning to bother me,” Mrs. Sorenson said. She stood and touched Dick’s shirt sleeve. “I like that grille pattern,” she said.

  “I’d better tell Spencer to come inside,” Dick said, “so that girl can get the word to the voters.” He picked a navel orange from a fruit bowl and bumped it several times on the window. Spencer shifted his position on the lounge chair and grinned broadly at Dick. The pregnant woman moved off, walking backward and making good-bye gestures. When she was gone, Dr. Sorenson appeared outdoors, trailing a garden hose, and squirted the blacktop around Spencer. Steam rose from the wetted drive.

  “I’m going to stop that tape,” Mrs. Sorenson said, leaving the kitchen through a swinging door. Dick took his plate to
the sink and cleaned it with a damp lilac-colored sponge.

  Spencer came through the outside door, slamming the screen, and sat in Dick’s chair. His chest was wet with hose water, and he had stuck a blue paper sticker over his ribs. “Thumbs Up on Issue One,” the sticker read.

  “That girl I was talking to,” Spencer said, “her husband’s on the staff at White Cross with Dad. He’s a neurosurgeon.”

  “I’m so glad,” Dick said.

  “I told her she’s wasting her summer campaigning for a bond issue,” Spencer said. “I told her the economy’s collapsing and there’ll be a global depression by 1990.”

  Mrs. Sorenson came back into the kitchen and found Dick sniffling. She bent over and put one arm around his waist. “You’re so attractive, with those blond curls framing your face,” she said.

  “I’m so attractive,” Dick said in a squeaky voice, mimicking his mother.

  “Uh-oh—Dick’s in a ditch,” Spencer said. “Did you see the girl I was talking to?” he asked his mother. “Her husband’s at White Cross with Dad.”

  “And I remember her from someplace else,” Mrs. Sorenson said. “She’s a patient of your father’s. He’ll be delivering that baby.”

  “None of us wants to think about that,” Dick said.

  “I told her what will happen with Eurodollars, and how the depression in 1990 will show that the 1930s depression was just one in a series,” Spencer said.

  Mrs. Sorenson was spraying the steel sinks with the dish rinser. “You look very tan and fit,” she said to Spencer. “You seem to be having a good summer.”

  “I told that woman to bury her pocket change in her backyard,” Spencer said. He took a pack of gum from the waistband of his swim trunks and slid a stick between his white teeth. “Come on, Dick,” he said, getting up. He pulled his brother out of the kitchen by the arm.

  Upstairs, in their bedroom, Spencer shoved Dick into a velour chair. “Put this on,” he said, handing Dick a cordovan loafer.

  Dick slid the shoe onto his bare foot. “It’s too big,” he said.

  Kneeling in front of Dick, Spencer lifted the foot with the shoe onto his thigh. He laid a yellow scrap of soft cloth across the toe and began to shine it, buffing the leather.

  “Did you just put a lot of polish on this shoe?” Dick said, shaking his foot loose. “Because look what it’s doing.” There was a ring of dark wax on the side of his ankle.

  Spencer had his head turned. “Sh-h-h,” he said. “Listen—Mom and Dad.”

  There was a baritone noise from Dr. Sorenson, and Mrs. Sorenson’s tinkling response.

  “What are they laughing about?” Spencer said.

  “I wouldn’t know,” said Dick. “Probably not about us.”

  26

  What I Hear

  ONE HILL AFTER ANOTHER, this bumpy flight. My view is of the void. If anyone asked, I could make known my opinion of these seat covers. Or watch the beverage cart take forever. How does it fit, coming down the aisle? Eight inches—I’m measuring with my eyes. Four inches on each side.

  Christian, asleep in the middle seat next to me, agreed to come along on this Alaska trip, travel up and back with me, on my dime. I can see the little tattoo inside his right forearm, from his Navy SEAL days: a face that looks like maybe Magellan above a map of some ocean or other. He’s not quite my boyfriend. He’s been divorced three years but remains in love with her. She’s always on his mind: Anna.

  I’m famished. I bought cashews, so where are they?

  Christian comes out of his troubled sleep and says he feels rejuvenated. He doesn’t realize his face is stained with tears.

  The woman across the aisle is ripping perfume cards out of the free magazines. She’s also ignoring her child, who’s saying, “Mom, remember that girl? Mom, Mom. That girl, remember?” If I were the child, I’d stop that this minute and look out the window. Those weird little metal blades sticking up from the wing top. Over there will be Mt. McKinley. Or Denali. Whatever.

  My snack from the cart is a bar of old banana cake, stuck to its cellophane; tough like a sponge. Where are my cashews? Why didn’t I bring ninety-five dollars’ worth of snacks?

  Below us there are mountains now, glinting with sunfire, grouped around Anchorage.

  “My bad mood’s not about you,” Christian says. That’s probably true.

  “Look,” I begin, and he does—looks at me. “What about the time she—”

  He waves his hand to stop me. In some ways, this entire flight has been something to forget.

  •

  On the bus ride to our hotel, Christian reads aloud some stuff from a folder. “‘Edged by the fierce beauty of the Chugach and the waters of Cook Inlet, Anchorage is cosmopolitan but with the Alaskan wild always at its back.’”

  “Plus it’s eighty-two degrees and only June,” I say. “Look, there’s a Kinko’s. Hey, an Eyewitness News truck. And—oop, a Cirrus machine.”

  We stop and let off some passengers, but Christian and I stay on, headed for our hotel: the Wallchart or the Woodwork. I can’t get the name right. It’s still daylight, of course—one of their days—but only for a few hours more. Christian asks me about Pammie, my daughter. It’s funny: she’s the whole reason I’ve come here but this is the first time either of us has mentioned her name.

  •

  Still the same daylight, but now it’s another day. Christian looks groomed and handsome, and even seems glad to be here. He excuses himself and disappears—off, he says, to ask the way to Matanuska, the home of the softball-size radish. I have coffee and—I can’t put it off—go to see Pammie.

  Here in the tiny box of a house she never leaves. She wears a coat indoors, and cheap red boots. Her legs are bare, I notice. We don’t really talk. She’s busily scribbling notes in a college notebook while she watches the TV—a black-and-white ’70s portable, older than she is. The picture is a muck of gray half-tones. There’s no black or white.

  Pammie doesn’t want me to replace the TV or buy her better red boots, or to say that everything else in her life is trash that should be hauled off to the dump. She wants me to stay seated, here on this futon chair, and get interested in this cartoon show. A Heckle and Jeckle. I try to. I do. And time goes by.

  She got off track, it’ll be a year ago this October. Since one night when she was sitting here, a perfectly normal, only a little bit messed-up junior-year anthropology major, holed up here studying for comps. A crazy man crashed in, nobody she knew. He smashed furniture, broke her eyeglasses, broke her wrist, broke her cheekbone, three of her teeth. Then he left, got away. The doctors did a great job; gave her a new face, if not quite hers.

  “Am I bothering you?” I ask her. If I am, she doesn’t say. Should I ask her again to open these crinkly presents I’ve brought? She’s in something like pain when it comes to opening gifts, so I really have to think. Or I can be quiet. I don’t need entertainment. That pretty hair barrette is sliding down. No, I won’t touch it.

  •

  The taxi driver taking me back to the airport smiles around and asks, “Who am I?”

  “I’m sorry?” I say.

  “Guess my name,” he says.

  “Ah, let me see—” It could be anything. “Sidney?” I say. Wherever that guess came from, he’s nodding.

  “You saw my license,” he says. “So, something harder. My birth sign.”

  “You’re a Gemini” comes out of my mouth, and Sidney nods. He’s not so happy this time. He says, “I bet you have a boyfriend who’s informed about that stuff.”

  I spend the rest of the steamy ride trying to figure that one out. As we pull up at the Departing Flights curb, Sidney consults his wristwatch and says, “Fast.” The cab putters off and I look around for Christian, who must have been surprised when he came back to the hotel and found my message telling him we were heading back so soon. Check out, I said. Meet you at the Delta counter. I’d turned chicken—anybody could see that.

  It’s half night, finally, though there
’s still a ghostly sun above the trees. A little thing, my guessing Sidney, but my elation over it is big.

  •

  Hours we’ve been waiting at this gate. I’ve skipped sleep. Our night will be across the whole country of Canada. “You don’t make me feel important,” Christian says, slumped in his plastic scoop chair. I’m wondering, Does he want me to correct that? Now?

  “We’ll need soymilk,” he says, and I don’t ask or argue. His shoulders are sagging as he drifts on down the concourse. In the mint lighting there it all looks like a colorized film. He should lighten up. None of my mood is about him.

  I get up and leave his plane ticket on top of his Jimi Hendrix magazine, but hidden under his cap, where he’ll find it. He can sell the ticket or use it and leave. He has my number at home.

  Beside the luggage lockers is a postal machine. I buy all the Mary Cassatt stamps it’ll put out. Some Raoul Wallenbergs. The red Georgia O’Keeffe. My, what a pretty stamp. I feed in bill after bill on those. I’m going to be up here for a bit, not flying anywhere.

  She should be afraid of a lot of people, but not afraid of me. It’s like I can hear my parents calling, my mom saying, “Get up, honey. You’ve been asleep for a while. Honey. Honey bunch. You want to get up.”

  27

  Smart

  MOM SENT MY BROTHER, Jackie, over from Wheeling to take care of me the last week of March, right before I had the baby. I was living in D.C., alone, in five rooms of a sagging apartment house called the Augusta, on Wisconsin Avenue, opposite the National Cathedral. The Augusta was a worn, white building, and it shone behind me, cold and crooked in the sun of a false spring. I was waiting on the sidewalk for Jackie’s car. Across the wide dangerous street, the cathedral’s huge towers and many points glowered. I had been waiting for over two hours, which was the longest I’d been out of my rooms for months, including trips two blocks away to see my O.B.

  I was living mostly in the study then. It was a dim room that smelled of old drapes and waxed paneling and rusty radiator heat. I spent my hours there in a resident chair that was covered with some kind of bristly horsehair, like an old theater seat. The chair had a cracked foot and leaned, perforce, into a corner. One nice thing in the room, some people would think, was a little window with diamond panes of blue and brown glass.