And that was when they started calling him "Buddy," or, worse, "Bud." He'd been hearing it all day, from all of them. Though he didn't particularly like his name, Randall Gregory Randall, he could see no "Bud" anywhere among the three words. He had no idea why they did it and he inwardly loathed it. Perhaps it was the tone in their voices, a tone for widows or widowers. He remembered the voices of his relatives when they spoke of his Aunt Rebecca after Uncle Eugene died; and that's when they started calling her again by her childhood nickname Plum.
His mother said outside the bedroom door, "They'll all want stuffing and gravy . . ." but the voices waxed soft again.
No, thought Randy, I won't. That's why he had made Teddy stop at the Jack-in-the-Box on the way home from the hospital. The familiar holiday taste of turkey on top of everything else would be too much today. He wanted something simple, tasteless. And dinner was going to be late. He was glad he'd had something to eat, to calm him. He remembered the ride home. The memory was funny to him: something about the way Teddy had acted in the car.
"I'd like a hamburger," Randy had said when Teddy stopped at the intersection. They had said little to each other since leaving the hospital and now the sound of his voice filled the car. They turned their heads as if hearing a sonic boom.
"You hungry?" said Teddy in his big-brother voice.
"I'm sure your mother has dinner ready," said Mary. She was carrying a green-bean casserole to be heated up for the meal.
"Can't you wait?" Teddy said.
Randy shook his head. "I want to go in there."
They looked at each other as if what he had said required them to make a difficult decision.
Mary said, "You'll spoil your dinner, Randy."
"Maybe he just wants a hamburger," said Teddy. Then to Randy, "Is that it, Bud?" And then back to Mary, "They probably don't get hamburgers in that place." Then to Randy, "Is that it?"
Randy, smiling, shook his head no.
"He's just hungry," Teddy said. "A little burger won't hurt anything. Sort of an appetizer."
"Fine," said Mary.
Teddy drove to the outside menu board. Randy leaned out the car window. He said, "I want three hamburgers, cut the onions, and a large order of French fries."
"Wait a minute," said Teddy. "I thought you just wanted a quick burger."
". . . . and a large vanilla shake," Randy said to the speaker. Then to Teddy and Mary, "I've got money."
The voice in the speaker said, "How about an apple turnover with that?"
"No, no," Teddy said firmly and drove up to the window.
Randy ate one burger, the fries and the shake in the car; two burgers waited in a bag in the pocket of his warm-up jacket.
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His parents were still in the hall, still whispering.
"Why don't you take that stupid flower out of your hair. You look like a floozie. Nobody wears a geranium in their hair."
He heard his father's footsteps. Then there was silence and then his mother left too. His parents had never understood how far and through what hard surfaces their voices would carry in the house. He had listened to their secrets all his life.
He lay on the bed watching the bedspread flutter above him. He saw some scratches on one of the slats under the mattress of the top bunk. He looked closely and remembered that he had made the scratches years ago with his Scout knife. They formed a rough star, five points. He remembered another scar in wood. It was on a cabinet door in the kitchen. He had seen the scar earlier but had not thought about it until now. There was a disturbing design to the scratches, something Oriental, and they had been glowering down at all of them for months. He imagined his mother touching the door each morning, thinking, We should have this refinished.
He allowed the memory to gel in his mind.
Early morning and everyone is up, getting ready for the day. He and Janet are still living at home, and they have overheard their parents arguing. He heard them as he went to the bathroom to shower, and he hears them now as he goes into the kitchen for breakfast. He pours himself a bowl of cereal and joins Janet at the dining room table. They are silent, exchanging silent glances. He hears his parents in the kitchen; one of them leaves and then comes back, and more words are exchanged: "It's none of your business," his father whispers and his mother says, "It's plenty of my business, half that money is mine and I don't want to lose it. . . . ." Randy goes into the kitchen, puts his bowl in the sink and starts to leave by the back door. But he stops. He sees his father throw something at his mother. She doesn't move, but it misses her head and slams into the cabinet door. It shatters when it hits the floor, and he sees the thick handle of a coffee mug. Anger wells up inside him so quickly that he doesn't know what it is. he grips his father's arm and spins him around. He pushes his father's arm back over his pinstriped shoulder until he thinks the arm may break. His father falls hard to the floor, and then Randy is on top of him with his arm cocked, ready to punch. But something is pulling on him, on his shoulders, and he realizes that it's his mother. His arm comes down out of her grip and his fist grazes his father's head before pounding against the floor.
"Don't, Randy," his mother screams. "Don't, Daddy."
He hears Janet crying behind him and his knuckles ache and then he feels a thud against his face. Everything spins around and he is lying on the floor on his back. He is groggy and feels sick at his stomach. His father is leaning over him, his face blanched. Everything is blurry.
"Are you hurt?"
"Daddy, don't, don't."
"Stop it, stop it."
"Are you hurt?"
"Get away from him."
"Daddy, don't."
The voices collide and mingle and he is pushing with his heels away from his father's blurry face. He pushes until his head strikes something solid. It's the door and he pulls himself up and tries to push his father but his father's great bulk is firm. He pushes again, and his father acts as if all life has gone out of him and he stumbles backward. His mother is now between them saying, "Don't, don't," and his father's face is deep and angry and frightened and he hears himself say: "If you ever do that again I'll get a gun and shoot you." He finds the doorknob and leaves the house and doesn't come home for two days. He stays with a friend who lives in a dormitory at school.
That was his freshman year, his only year, at Rice. He had been accepted on a scholarship but never played baseball. He never played because he had been hurt his senior year, cleated in the ankle as he covered first from the mound on a grounder in the team's next-to-last game. But he had gone to class, failed three of his five freshman courses, and he fell in love with Jean.
If you ever do that again I'll get a gun and shoot you.
They never spoke of that day, never wanting to remember those contorted faces, the fierce unnatural voices, those tiny flesh wounds. They went on living the way they had always lived with each other, in a kind of self-contained rage. But the rooms of the house grew smaller each day. Often he would wake in the morning to find that he had left his window open and his radio on all night, the simple cool wind and the smug distant music wafting in from the world outside. He would stand at his window, looking out at the aged wisteria bush his parents had planted when they bought the house, wanting something.
He saw Jean regularly. She would take him out into the world in her car and later his parents, wringing their hands, would ask who she was and he would say just a girl and then go to his room. When summer came they went to drive-in theaters at night, and they took her son, Jason, on picnics to the country. They spoke of themselves to each other but never of the future, of a future beyond the longing to be somewhere else. Then they got away, she from the father of the child who wanted to marry her and take her to Alaska where he could get work, Randy from his family and the feeling that he had disappointed them all in his failures, in wanting something but not knowing what it was, in not knowing how to proceed with his life. He had had to say "I don't know" far too many times wh
en one of them asked "What are you going to do with yourself?" So he and Jean went to the farm near Brenham that belonged to her aunt and did odd jobs to pay their rent. They stayed three months. Toward the end she cried at night and wouldn't tell him why. Until one morning it came out: "This is not working, I don't love you. I thought I would grow to love you but I don't. I don't love anybody but this little one."
They had been awake all night, separated only by the thin door between the cramped wood-paneled bedroom and the cramped one-window living room. He had heard her crying off and on and murmuring quietly to the baby who lay beside her in the bed.
He said, "I know, I've known for a while."
"Then why have you stayed?"
He said nothing for a long time and then started laughing.
"Don't," she said, and her white-blonde hair shook with emphasis. Her blue eyes flashed and cursed him.
But he laughed; he couldn't stop, though once he muttered through the laughter, "We're a fine pair, aren't we?" "Don't," she screamed and the baby cried.
He laughed. He muttered, "You trying to run away from it all the time and me trying to run to it all the time." He laughed.
"Stop it." She snatched up the baby, hushed him with whispers and caresses. "Don't! You're scaring him."
He attempted apologies, but all he could do was laugh.
She said, "Quit it" and then locked herself in the bedroom.
That was the last time he saw her. He hitched a ride with an old man in an old truck loaded with crates of tomatoes. The old man took him to a vegetable stand in the city near the port where he got a job. Then there was the hospital, the psych ward, the place of the disappointed, the place where they house those who don't know what they want. It was almost two weeks before his therapist would venture a diagnosis: Major Depressive Illness.
The furnace wheezed, and he knew that meant it was cycling off. He didn't want to think about anything else so he allowed his mind to fall slowly into the abyss of sleep. He did not dream but once in his drowsiness he heard a voice say, "Don't!"
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The knock on the door was light, a woman's hand, and in came Janet followed by the robust smells of cooking food.
"Dinner's ready," she said. "Mama wanted me to get you up."
He nodded. They smiled at each other, he a little groggy, she cheerful and friendly.
"How you feeling?" He nodded again.
"Everybody's sure been worried about you."
She had left Houston for college in Austin that fall now home for the holiday. He was certain that she had received reports from his mother, but he was equally certain that she knew little of what had happened. His mother had surely told her not to talk about it but he feared she would try to anyway, as his mother had, and that she'd be hurt when he had nothing to say.
Janet closed the bedroom door and then sat on the bed. A glint of conspiracy enlivened her eyes.
"I want to tell you something," she said. "I can't tell them yet but I wanted to tell you. I'm going to quit school."
The look on her face made him think he was supposed to gasp in surprise. They were silent for several moments.
He said, "Why?"
"I'm going to play the drums in a band, a jazz band." She smiled below her orange hair. "I've played a few gigs with them. They say I've got talent. I've given up the violin for good."
He nodded to show that he agreed; she did have talent. Their parents didn't know it but Janet had been training herself on the drums for years. She used to practice in the garage of Jimmy Madison's parents' house on Jimmy's old drum set. Randy had gone to listen several times and he knew what she wanted.
"They want me to move to Kansas City with them. That's where Corey's from. He's sort of the leader of the band. I think I'm going to go." She smiled to herself. "What do you think?"
He nodded and shrugged his shoulders. She was going; she had packed her bags. He would miss her but there was nothing he could do about it. Her eyes beseeched him to say something.
"Guess what else," she said. "Teddy just told me while Daddy was in the store getting the film." Her voice dropped. "Mary's pregnant." Her eyebrows lifted, dropped. "I think they're going to wait to tell Mom and Dad until things calm down." She thought a moment. "I think it's exciting, a new generation. Don't you?"
He nodded. So many secrets. He thought of the dictionary he kept next to his hospital cot. He said, "An unborn or recently born person, a young person between the periods of infancy and youth, a male or female offspring, son, daughter, one strongly influenced by another or by a place or state of affairs."
Her oval face puckered around her dark eyes, under the orange, greasy-looking bangs, above her pointed chin. "Huh?"
He shook his head.
"Well, I hope it's a girl."
He nodded.
"Teddy's making enough now that they'll do fine. Can you imagine Mary pregnant? She'll blow up like a balloon." Janet sat still, considering. "And what about Teddy. Marriage sure agrees with him. He's really put on weight." She glanced around, said in a confidential voice: "But what about those clothes." They both smiled. "I've never seen him in cowboy boots before."
Neither had Randy. Teddy wore business suits to work but today he had on a western shirt and jeans and black boots.
Randy said, "A new image maybe."
"Yeah." She laughed once. "Oh! And guess what else."
He waited.
"God, there's a lot going on."
He waited.
"I think Mama's living in my room." Again she raised her eyebrows but he said nothing. "All her clothes are in my closet and her shoes too. And I think she started smoking. I found a pack of Kools in the pocket of a dress. Isn't that funny?"
Randy remembered the smell of his mother's breath. He smiled and shook his shoulders to make her think he was laughing.
"She must hide them in there from Daddy."
Randy mumbled, "Something kept from the knowledge of others, a mystery, concealment."
She almost said something but then got up from the bed.
"Can you believe it, I'm going to be an aunt." She looked at him.
"And you're going to be an uncle." Then she said, wistfully, remotely, "A baby," and briefly cupped her stomach with both hands. She walked through the small room, touching things as she talked. "Now all we've got to do is get you well and everything will be settled." She touched an old baseball cap on the dresser top and his high school diploma in its frame and then reached up and touched the last remaining model airplane hanging by a string from the ceiling. It was a P-38 from World War II. The plane turned slowly after she went on, circling the room.
He watched her. Her turquoise sweater and tight black jeans revealed a shapeliness, a woman's breasts and hips, that he had not noticed before. Several bracelets jangled on her arm. A long chain of gold gathered in a knot between her breasts like a loosely knotted tie then dangled across her belly. The chain flapped against the crotch of her pants when she moved. She said, "What's it like in the hospital?" and glanced at him.
"No good," he said.
She stopped at his closet, opened the door, looked in. "You haven't had shock treatment or anything have you?"
He kept quiet, still; she wasn't looking, didn't expect an answer. She took out a robe on its hanger, blue corduroy, a Christmas present from five or six years ago. Holding it before her, pressing its middle to her abdomen with a hand, she looked at herself in the mirror. "I didn't know you still had this. I think I wore it as much as you did." She hung up the robe, touched some other clothes. "How long you gonna be in there?" Her voice was muffled in the closet. She stepped out.
He shrugged, tilted his head. Then he thought of something. He said, "Till all the cows come home, mooing and swinging their tails." His mother had always said that.
Janet smiled. "Oh it won't be that long." She touched the old radio on his nightstand then leaned her head on her arms against the upper bunk. The long gold chain swung ou
t from her body like a rope over a swimming hole and lightly tapped her belly. She looked down at him. Her eyes were so young, so deep, so wondrous with questions. She said, "What happened, Randy, can you tell me? I won't say anything."
A dozen images pulsed through his mind. He saw the events of the past few months flip by like pictures in a viewfinder. He saw bits of his childhood and imagined bits of the future. Janet's face, so full of secrets and probing encouragement, hung above him. The furnace in the attic rumbled and wheezed and came on again. The breeze fluttered the bedspread next to her face. Suddenly he realized what she had been doing: telling him her secrets so that he would tell her his. A sense of betrayal twitched the corners of his mouth.
He said, "I . . . I don't know."
They stared at each other until the voice of their mother pierced the bedroom door: "Let's go, you two, it's on the table."
Randy sat up on the bed.
"Maybe we can talk later," she said.
He nodded. He waited, looking at her.
"Don't tell anybody about what I said," she whispered.
He shook his head. She stared at him a long time and then smiled, the corner of her mouth rising once, twice, as if trying to think of what to say. He thought she wanted to say: I know what you're doing and it's okay: I, at least, understand. That's what that look had always said to him before, when they were young, growing up so close together. If she knew, he wanted her to say it; he tried to encourage her with his eyes. He longed to know what she thought he was doing. Instead, she stepped away.
"Come on, let's eat," she said. "I'm starved."
3
Landscape With Lightning
Randy peered through the window into the oven. His hamburgers were almost ready. He could hear the others in the dining room making talk about how "lovely" the turkey looked and smelled and what a "marvelous" Thanksgiving table his mother had spread.
"Where's Randy?" his father said.
"He's up to something in the kitchen," said his mother. "Randy, come on."
With a spatula he lifted the hamburgers onto a plate and then joined his family in the dining room.
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