Everyday People

by Stewart O'Nan

  “What’s this?” she asked Nickels.

  He peered back at her.

  “You feeling all right?”

  She took him outside and watched as he went against the street-cleaning sign. His pee was the color of iced tea.

  It was blood, the vet said. Internal bleeding. It would be best if they took a look. As soon as possible.

  “Right now’s fine,” Sister Marita said, not even worrying about what it would cost yet.

  “We’re a little backed up, I’m afraid.” Dr. Thomas walked them out front and had the receptionist pull a schedule up. “I can give you Friday, and I’ll need him overnight tomorrow.”

  “Why can’t we do it today?”

  He had to calm her down, tell her it was probably minor, that this happened with older dogs—and cats. It was probably just an inflammation or infection of the bladder. They just needed to be sure. If she was still worried, he could do an emergency procedure right now, but at this point, in his opinion, it would be better to wait for Friday when they had the full surgical staff there.

  “In the meantime what am I supposed to do?”

  “Do what you normally do. Keep him comfortable, make sure he doesn’t overexert himself.”

  “All right,” she said doubtfully, and led Nickels out onto Penn Avenue, where traffic whizzed by, ignoring her. She picked him up to cross the street, and when she reached the other side she didn’t set him down again but kept him in her arms. She walked him all the way home like that.

  He didn’t act sick. The minute she put him down, he scooted into the kitchen, lobbying for a treat. She gave him one and watched him crunch it up and swallow it down. She never knew where he put all that food.

  “How you feeling? You feeling all right?”

  He just looked at her like he always did. Why did she always expect more from him?

  She got to bed late, but there was no choir practice today, and she slept till six, getting up just as night settled outside. It was windy. She took a flashlight from her nightstand to see what color his pee was.

  It was hard to tell.

  She was reaching for the paper towels to lay some down on top of the newspaper when suddenly her one hand went numb. The whole thing.

  “Mercy,” she said, and bent over, squeezing it with her other hand. She opened and closed it, and the feeling slowly drained back. Tingly, like spiders, or when you came inside after being out in the snow and held your hands over the radiator. She should see Dr. Williams. She’d call him tomorrow.

  Her and Nickels. “Falling apart, we are.”

  She heard Mr. Andre thump upstairs, then his door close, his footsteps moving across the ceiling. Another late night. And then, before she could say good-bye to Nickels, Mr. Andre came rushing down the stairs and out again. Well, a young man, she thought. How unlike Carl he was. But pretty the same way, those big eyes. She was surprised there weren’t women hanging around, ringing her doorbell at night by mistake.

  She knelt down and held Nickels in her arms. “You be good now. You go on the paper.”

  The bus filled up, and Sister Marita wondered what she’d say to Jackie tomorrow. They were practicing for the dedication of the busway next month, a whole program. Martin Robinson was flying in from Harrisburg. She’d heard so many stories about him and how he grew up on Spofford, right next door to Miss Fisk. She’d always wanted to meet him, just to shake his hand and tell him how proud he made them all feel. It wasn’t fair that it was just a busway they were naming after him, everybody knew that.

  But what could she say to Jackie? Maybe everything was fine now between them. Still, a false alarm on that account was almost as bad as a real one. With Carl she didn’t know when it started, the feeling that something was wrong. She didn’t know what exactly, but that feeling was there, and while she knew what it meant, she never told him or anybody. She just let things go along, hoping it wasn’t so. But it was.

  She was glad for her work; it kept her mind off things. It was only at break that she thought about Nickels in the apartment, probably on the couch, watching the TV she’d left on for him with the sound down.

  In the morning the paper towels and the newspapers were completely dry, untouched. She searched through the apartment, inspecting the carpet until, in her bedroom, on the far side of the bed, she found a brown stain the size of a pie.

  It was darker than coffee, and when she came back into the kitchen for some paper towels, Nickels slunk away, eyeing her sideways.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “Just try and hit the paper next time.”

  He let her pick him up, and they watched TV, Sister Marita stroking him slowly. His fur was a dirty silver the color of a nickel; that’s how he got his name. Now his muzzle around the rubber nub of his nose was pure white.

  “Listen,” she said, during a commercial. “Tonight I’m going to take you to Dr. Thomas’s and you’re going to stay there, okay?”

  He looked up at her, his eyes dark and cloudy. It was always hard to tell just what he understood. “It’ll be all right,” she promised him.

  She thought of calling Dr. Williams about her hand. She would, as soon as this business was over.

  They slept the day away, the alarm startling her. She had to get Nickels down there before Dr. Thomas closed, and she was short-tempered with him, and then, leaving him, regretted it.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow,” she said, squatting, and she knew it was wrong to just leave him. The doctor’s assistant had him on a leash. Watching her go, he strained against it, his claws scrabbling on the hard floor.

  Outside she had to stop for a minute on the sidewalk, a hand over her nose as the cars whistled past. I’m sorry, she wanted to say.

  And then, getting ready for practice, she thought she was being silly. He’d be fine. If Dr. Thomas said he needed the operation, then he needed it, and that was that. It was stupid to cry.

  She remembered the nights as a girl when she cried into her pillow, just then understanding the terrible loss of her parents, though they’d been dead seven, eight years. “You go ahead and cry, baby,” her grandmother said, rubbing her back through her flannel nightie. But that wasn’t what Sister Marita wanted. It was better when no one came and she could cry as much and as hard as she wanted, picturing the faces on her grandmother’s mantel alive, riding in the big fifties Buick that would always crash, the police car coming through the intersection too fast, its lights on but not its siren, the two of them dressed for the movies. What were they talking about in that last minute? She wanted her father to laugh, appreciating the wit of her mother. To keep it hers, she waited till everyone was out of the house, and then indulged herself, or, at night, crushed the pillow to her face so it caught her sobs.

  At practice she tried not to think of Nickels, letting her eyes wander across the stained-glass windows above the organ loft. She was a soprano with a deep reach, but had trouble hitting some of the higher notes, and for several measures she merely stood there next to Jackie, listening to the solid, perfect wall of voices around her, then, when the melody fell back into her range, joined in again.

  Jackie said everything was fine and thanked her for listening the other day. “It’s work, I think,” she said. “And the boys. Chris mostly.”

  “Eugene seems to be doing fine for himself,” Sister Marita said, because she’d seen him in church and not on the street the way he used to be.

  “Yeah, he’s going to be fine. It’s Chris we’re a little worried about right now.”

  She seemed sure. She didn’t want to talk, didn’t need to, and Sister Marita thought that was a bad sign. Things didn’t change that fast, especially big things, if she was any judge. Maybe it was her job, or how good a listener Carl had taught her to be, but she knew how people talked, and at home she didn’t hurt for her, not even the littlest twinge.

  The apartment was quiet, and she turned on the TV, heated up some chicken from the other night. Taking it from the microwave, wouldn’t you know she slop
ped some sauce on the floor and he wasn’t there to clean it up. There was water in his water bowl, his Porky Pig chew toy in the middle of the rug. It was only tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow night he’d be back, all better. She’d do something special for him, and they’d spend the weekend together, maybe go to the park. She wondered if he’d have to rest. Probably.

  Cleaning up, she couldn’t stop looking at the conch. Why had she kept it so long? It was like her grief over her mother and father, she thought, something she couldn’t let go of. She turned off the water and dried her hands and lifted the shell. It was chalky on the outside and smooth within. She held it to her ear, and there was the distant swell of the ocean, a far-off trembling caught and echoed forever inside the spiral, like white noise, even though there was nothing there. It was like Carl that way. She should throw it away, she thought, even as she gently replaced it on the sill.

  She was getting dressed for work when she heard Mr. Andre upstairs. He was yelling something, angry. She stopped, one arm half in a sleeve, and cocked her head, waiting for another voice.

  “What?” Mr. Andre shouted. “What did you just say to me?”

  There was a crash, something heavy falling over, and Sister Marita fitted her wrist through the cuff. She wished Nickels were there.

  A door slammed. Thunder on the stairs. He was going out, or maybe it was the person he was arguing with. Maybe they’d fought and the one had knocked the other down, maybe hit him with something.

  She hurried to the front door in time to see Mr. Andre walking to his car, a little sporty Japanese thing. He was wearing an undershirt and shorts, rubber beach thongs. He got in and flipped the lights on and peeled out like he was after someone.

  “My gracious,” she said, and went back to buttoning. It wasn’t like Mr. Andre at all, it was like someone else completely. She was glad she was going to work. She wouldn’t have to be here alone, and the time would go quickly.

  She had her bag on her shoulder and her key in her hand when she heard someone on the porch. Mr. Andre coming back, she figured. She flattened herself against the wall so he couldn’t see her silhouette and peeked out from behind the blind.

  It was Harold Tolbert with his cigar. He leaned close to the buzzers and thumbed one, and upstairs Mr. Andre’s bell rang. Twice, three times. She waited for him to go away.

  Maybe it was something about money. A loan maybe.

  Harold opened the stair door and clumped up. She watched his progress as if she could see through the wall, then stood there frozen as he made the landing and rapped on Mr. Andre’s door. She couldn’t leave, and she waited for him to come back down, watching the clock above the sink, blaming him in advance for making her late.

  And then he came downstairs again and across the porch without a glance in her direction and off down Spofford, not looking back.

  “Oh, Jackie,” she said. “Girl, we need to talk.”

  On the bus, everything churned in her head. The Thrift Drug was still there in Brushton, boarded up, only holes where the neon had been, a huge mortar and pestle above the door. Had she really asked for that much? A mother, a father, someone to love her. You go ahead and cry, her grandmother said, and she did, but it wasn’t the same. Mr. Andre and Harold doing who knows what. Why did he come? He knew she lived there. The only man she had any respect for was Reverend Skinner. Of course her grandfather when he was alive. Carl, yes. Did she really love him? It was too late for all of these questions, she thought. The tingling had gone away, that was a good thing. It could always come back though.

  No. She believed in God. She had Nickels, and tomorrow she would bring him home. She had work tonight. Fine.

  “Busy?” she asked Serena.

  “Not too.”

  She sat down and fit the headset on, smelled the menthol on it. She cleared the screen and punched up a caller.

  “Oh, thank God,” a woman said, “a real, live person. I’ve been dealing with nothing but recordings.”

  “What is the name of your party, ma’am?”

  “Walter Clemmons, or Clements, I’m not sure how you spell it. I only met the man once, on a plane, and he just happened to mention that he lived in Pittsburgh, and I’m not even sure I know what I’m doing calling him. I’m an older woman as you can probably tell, but he seemed so nice and there are so few nice ones out there that I thought, well, you know.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You must think I’m crazy.”

  “No, ma’am. You wouldn’t have an address for this party?”

  “Clemmons,” the woman said. “Walter Clemmons, that’s all I have. I’ve never done anything like this before.”

  “Please hold,” Sister Marita said.

  She punched the name in. There was a gap while the machine processed it. In the silence she could hear the woman on the other end of the line, breathing, waiting. It seemed a perfect time to speak. But what could she say to her? And would the woman listen? She didn’t dare. The procedure was clear, and in all the years she’d worked for the phone company she’d never broken the rules, not once. The name came up on her screen, and an address, a street she knew, a nice place in Shadyside. She listened to the hiss of her headset, waited for the prerecorded voice to kick in.

  She wanted to say she was happy for her, that she hoped the two of them would get together. She wanted to say she was tired of living alone and having no one, that she was frightened about tomorrow and the surgery. Of all people, surely this woman would understand her. She wanted to say that her life wasn’t over yet, that there was still time, that maybe Carl was out there somewhere thinking of her. Inside the machine, the numbers were being linked together. Sister Marita wanted to talk, to tell her everything, but she knew she couldn’t. She knew what she was supposed to do. There was a procedure. She’d had practice at it, she’d done it a million times, her entire life really. She was supposed to be quiet, like she wasn’t even there.

  AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY

  THE FIRST THING was the professor was white. A white woman. Very white. Like 90210 white. Vanessa didn’t have a big problem with it, but the rest of the class wasn’t happy. It was Vanessa’s first college course ever, and she didn’t know if she should join in with the grumbling, the low, class-wide groan of disappointment, the muttered curses of disbelief.

  “Excuse me,” one big guy right behind her said. “Do you think this is appropriate?”

  “Actually I don’t,” Professor Muller said. She was tall and blond and young, and wore a chiffon scarf around her neck like Barbie. Like the women behind the perfume counter who asked if they could help you, all the time checking out your pockets. “Professor Shelby asked me to fill in for him while he’s in the hospital, and I couldn’t turn him down. I think you’ll find I know the material.”

  “That’s not the point,” the guy said.

  “I understand,” Professor Muller said. “It’s only going to be for this first week, I promise.”

  The guy shook his head bitterly, as if he’d been cheated.

  She waited for someone else to challenge her, then started in on Professor Shelby’s syllabus. There was a lot of reading. Vanessa knew the authors but had never actually read them. W.E.B. Du Bois, Claude McKay, Ralph Ellison, Malcolm X, Toni Morrison. It looked like a good class. The professor didn’t really matter to her.

  In fact, the class didn’t matter; she was only here because her mother expected her to be. Whenever they argued about it, she reminded Vanessa that she was the first person in two generations who even had the chance to go to college, and dammit she was going to take advantage of it. Pitt was cheap, they could afford a class, maybe even two. Vanessa thought she could use the money for something else, that they should just save it. She’d never liked school, she’d always been a C student. But she had to agree. Her grandparents had sacrificed, her mother had struggled, her father had even died for the privileges she seemed to take for granted. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you,” her mother accused. “You ou
ght to be grateful.” It wasn’t enough to just say, “I don’t want to.”

  “Personally,” Professor Muller was saying, “I’d like to see more women on this list, and more contemporary writers. More gay and lesbian writers as well. To remedy this, I’ve created a list of my own.”

  She passed out a stack. The list was three pages long. There was Terry McMillan and Alice Walker, but the rest of these people Vanessa had never heard of. Yusef Komunyakaa, Patricia Smith. She could tell which ones were women, but which were gay and lesbian? She thought it was important to know. She hoped someone would ask about it.

  “I’d like each of you to read at least one book from this list this semester. History isn’t something that’s done with, it’s what’s happening right now. The purpose of studying history is to influence history. To make history. Every person in this room is going to make her or his own history.”

  Vanessa wrote this down, even though it seemed obvious. She wrote down everything Professor Muller put on the board, which wasn’t much. Mostly the professor leaned back against the desk and went on and on in these long, perfect sentences about oral traditions in different African cultures and how it was important to take these into account before looking at decidedly American texts.

  “American in what sense?” the big guy behind Vanessa said, and she turned to look at him. He was fat and kind of Sinbad-looking and had a leather jacket and a Black Power pick in his hair like Ice Cube. He glared at the professor like he was debating her.

  “In that their authors resided here and were influenced by the dominant culture, whether they were of this country or merely in it.”

  “In it,” he insisted.

  “That’s what we’ll discuss next time.”

  She assigned the Du Bois, and then it was time; everyone started putting their backpacks together. “And I want you to have arguments for both sides,” she ordered, “not just the one you agree with.”

  In the hall, waiting for the elevator, Vanessa overheard Sinbad saying, “Thesis-antithesis. Completely European concept. It’s another form of brainwashing.”