Why Did I Ever

by Mary Robison

  316

  “Cool out, you know I didn’t mean it, I don’t really hate you,” I hear someone say.

  While, over the intercom, the pilot jabbers. He’s explaining that some dysfunction, once we’re on the ground, can be easily fixed with a pin. I don’t know, at that point, how much any of us will care. Maybe I’m drunk, but seems like they could give the plane to the Arabs once we’ve all made our connecting flights.

  317

  The beer nuts just served to me in a cello packet are the most delicious food I’ve ever tasted in my life.

  Back at Dallas–Fort Worth I put an Otis Redding CD into my player and I doubt if I’ll ever have reason to take it out.

  Through the window, trigonometry, under a silky pink sky.

  Why Pay More

  The Hotel Dioria is a grand stone structure. I got here by way of a slender drive that was bordered on one side by a row of white statues and on the other by a lineup of cottonwood trees. I’ve just docked my rental car in the valet lane and now here are uniformed employees at my service.

  I wish I were wearing and carrying the nicer clothes and luggage of someone better than I. These men are helping with my duffel. To know the time, I’m consulting my UNICEF watch.

  319

  My behemoth suite is ordinarily for—I’m guessing—a child star. The décor is like a day care center: primary, bright, natural, rounded, sturdy, durable, stain-resistant. I could splash cups of espresso all over and mar nothing. I could stamp burning cigarettes out on this floor.

  I say to myself, “Ah, but that is not what you’re here for.”

  320

  My work is there, with the machinery and equipment the studio’s messengers delivered. Software as well, still in boxes and jewel cases and shrink-wrap.

  Mercury Brothers spent for this stuff. Belinda would have put me in her cement basement and she would have said, “Are you using that new steno pad? I haven’t heard a thank you!” For Belinda is the tightest of wads.

  321

  “Don’t convert backslash characters into yen signs” is just one more thing for me to ponder.

  Look Better Than You Do in These Pictures

  Penny opens a desk drawer, squints at something in there. He says, “Uh-oh.” He could be seeing anything—a stray staple or a Canadian coin.

  He is such a fresh-faced, Howdy Doody–looking guy. Always in the madras shirts.

  His best movies, however—Millicent, White Wine, and Don’t Do That Again—were three of the finest American films of all time.

  So here we sit.

  323

  He makes me work through lunch, throughout lunch, at the lunch table in this sushi restaurant. And I don’t get it with this food. What would it take them, two minutes, to cook the stuff?

  324

  I have to remember, regardless of anything I’ve espoused or told my kids, that what matters out here is not how good a job you do; that’s unimportant. What matters is how your hair looks and all your expensive clothes.

  Cyborgs at the Gala

  So I’ve dressed my best for this studio meeting.

  However, woven and stitched into the bodice of that executive woman’s sweater are rosebuds, and they’re still alive.

  326

  All of the liars at this conference table are referring to “my second reading” or saying, “on my third pass through the script.” Are they psycho? A John Ashbery poem you could read three times, maybe.

  327

  The only thing I really have going for me is my attention deficit. It’s very, very impressive to these people. How I forget to collect my checks, or fail to kiss the ring of whichever the hell one is the studio president.

  On the debit side, I missed removing an electric roller this morning and did the sushi lunch and the studio meeting with it lodged in the back of my hair.

  328

  “I’m sure you regard yourself as a nonconformist,” says Belinda.

  “No, a good beatnik,” I say, with a tap of the tip of my pen.

  History Says

  I’m trying to read because I have to be ready to discuss these two scripts in another hour with development folks from Universal, or perhaps they’re from MGM, I should learn.

  I do have their jillions of pink phone messages organized alphabetically in a packet.

  This first script involves the twelve apostles after Christ left them. And I see right away, in one glance, that Saint Matthew has undergone a gender change. This babyish fucked-up fucking town.

  Script Two, titled Shitstorms and Peckerheads, is for what—boys?

  I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I can no longer be a part of, or go on in, or have anything to do with this business.

  330

  I have to keep notifying Armando with all the different hotel information so Paulie can find me if he ever wants to find me. And maybe call if he ever gets a chance.

  What a Rip

  There’s something wrong with this day, and with every day that I’ve spent here. Work, lunch, a cigarette, and they’re over. “You’re kidding me,” I say, each night before sleep. “That was it?”

  332

  I believe everyone alive should have to watch the news, but it’s acceptable to watch the news without sound. You see planes in flames and bandaged heads and they make as much sense as they’re ever going to anyway.

  333

  The IRS takes all my money,

  Bump-bah,

  Gotta borrow from my honey . . .

  That is the refrain from one of Bigfoot’s original music compositions.

  All We Do Is Argue

  I say to myself, “Very funny. Very, very funny. Fucking with the clocks . . .”

  335

  There, I just ate all my idiot food. Although my meal would’ve been more enjoyable if the couple behind me had lightened up. They criticized everything—the weight of the silverware, our server’s shoes! I don’t know how they digested their dinner and I mean there they go, angry.

  336

  I’m reading through the latest printing of the revised Bigfoot script and I say, “Whoa, wait, wait, no, no, wait. This is all fucking wrong. This has pages missing. What happened to the action scenes where he ambushes the demon and throws him into a trench?”

  Belinda. That apple doll. Someday I will go where she is and set off a bomb.

  337

  Now she’s summoned me to her office and has me standing like a halfwit in the center of the room.

  There are polished hardwood floors, a lineup of lemon trees before the tall windows, cushioned loveseats covered in Laura Ashley prints, a tiny but authentic Frank Stella painting of which I won’t someday mind owning an imitation.

  “Money, has it ever occurred to you,” she says. She takes a sip from her cappuccino and sets the cup back down unhurriedly. “That I know precisely what elements I want in the script? That when I say ‘golf’ I mean he’s to play it. Not something else. If I want a canoe and a romantic moon and a ukulele, I’ll have those too. What makes that so impossible for you to understand?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “Canoe, moon, ukulele.”

  “Be quiet,” she says, and shifts back in her chair.

  338

  I need to do something very right.

  What happened? Used to be, someone would come over to your place, put a cool cloth on your head, offer to pay for it.

  339

  I’m walking by Penny’s office where the door’s ajar and I can see him in there, stoop-walking with his hands and arms reaching like he’s trying to catch a duck.

  340

  Out of the Hotel Dioria, into the Forty Winks Motel.

  We’re at War Softly

  I say, “I’d be happy in this room if I had a dust mop.”

  �
�No,” I say with a sigh, “that is not true. It wouldn’t end there.”

  342

  I’ve been, all afternoon, propped with both bed pillows on this Elvis-ish couch.

  I broke down and started eating items from that fucking appliance—the Special Executive’s Refrigerator. I’m into their “Cocktail Snacks and Appetizers” for pretty big money. Although I would like to say in defense of myself that a couple things I ate only out of curiosity.

  Paulie

  “There are a lot of reasons that people don’t take care of themselves,” I say to Paulie. “Or that they stop taking the best care.”

  He’s phoned me here at the Forty Winks, upset because a woman cop made remarks about his appearance.

  Which is, I take it, deteriorating.

  He says, “Although I, you know, worked as a model. And used to get these like two-hour haircuts. But what she’s talking about is that I don’t even want to bathe.”

  “Paulie. Hold it. Stop right there.”

  I’m seated on the side of the bed, bent over as if to tie my shoes, phone in one hand, kneading my forehead with the other. I say, “I don’t think anyone but your doctor should speak to you about personal hygiene. Including me. That is a very, very private matter.”

  “Yeah, but she’s just trying to help. And I don’t know what’s wrong or what’re the reasons,” he says.

  “And yet there are some,” I say. “There’s how awkward it is with the gloves and all. Or, that maybe you don’t want to feel attractive.”

  I say, “And there’s thinking of yourself as somebody’s toilet.”

  344

  Rain’s thrashing against the motel room’s picture window. The white dawn and the rain have tinted everything a heather green.

  On a piece of poster board, I’ve inked in a huge crude calendar. Now, first thing out of bed, I’m marking an x through today.

  Chapter Eleven

  Wear a Sun Hat

  I’ve finished hoeing a little rectangle of earth in the side yard. I say to myself, “I’m about wiped out. You?”

  “Nah. Not for another hour.”

  “You’re the boss. So what’s the time?” I ask.

  “It’s now twenty-five,” I say, tipping the face of my watch into the sun, “twenty-eight after.”

  “It couldn’t be. No way possible. I’ve been out here much, much longer than that.”

  “I assure you,” I say, reading my watch again, “it is.”

  346

  Appletree hires Mev for the Meat Department, to wrap and package chicken.

  I wasn’t sure at first and asked, “They are paying you? It’s not just that some chicken there needs cutting?”

  347

  Secretly I fear she’ll arrive for work on her yellow bicycle or wearing the feather headdress of which she’s so fond. That they’ll fire her and think she’s nuts. So I drive her to the job every a.m.

  348

  And as I am still her mother, each day I dispense to her a few pieces of parental advice—“Sleep and you’ll feel rested.” “Read and you’ll be smart.” “Lift weights and you will grow stronger.”

  There seems so much to cover. I hope Mev holds this chicken-cutting job solidly and for a very, very long time.

  349

  See me in this black-and-white photograph, shoulder to shoulder with Albert Camus, both of us smoking, both with the collars turned up on our identical peacoats.

  What Do You Need to Know

  The Deaf Lady says, “I didn’t set it up for the neighbor dogs to bark like that all night fucking long.”

  “Probably they had my cat,” I say.

  “Oh, what a horrible way to think! More than horrible—macabre.”

  “Nevertheless, it’s what I envisioned.”

  She says, “You must keep that separate in your mind from what is real.”

  “Thank you for telling me that,” I say, genuinely relieved and grateful.

  And What Else

  I find Hollis on the floor in my living room, two unopened Power Bars on his lap and a gargantuan reference text lying beside him. I tiptoe in my socks around his study area. He glances up and says, “Wearing your . . . Thumbelina clothes?”

  I say, “These! Are! Pajamas!”

  I stretch out on the sofa behind him and look at yesterday’s paper, see what I can see. He turns halfway to speak to me. I elbow up and lean forward to hear.

  He says, “Neon. Picture it like a straw. Except there’s gas down inside there.”

  I nod, flump back.

  He starts again. “That’s really all clouds are, is gas. Or gaseous water. Humidity. Steams up. Makes clouds.”

  “So, what’s a kiloton?” I ask him, just for something to do. “Or maybe you don’t know,” I say.

  He turns away from me and plucks up a Power Bar, tears at its wrapping.

  “Sorry.”

  “Weight,” he says. “It’s a thousand tons, equivalent thereto.” I’m going through the newspaper, or so I pretend. “Hollis?” I say.

  “What? Hollis what?”

  I drop my arms and rest the paper, look over at him. “All this that you know. It doesn’t make you better than me.”

  “Than I,” he says. “Still doesn’t.”

  O.K., but Where Are You

  I’m parked outside the grocery waiting for Mev as a threesome of retarded adults approaches the automatic entrance. They come to a halt at a fresh flowers display, jam the electric door and set off the noise of a nasal buzzer.

  And down there’s a man wearing the store’s red singlet, throwing his shoulders into pushing thirty shopping carts.

  Now I see Mev, by the Toy Corner, chatting and with her arm over the shoulder of some absolute derelict.

  This is her striving to do good in the world, and one more way she worries her mother.

  353

  At the women’s penitentiary, Mev taught, such as, how to open a checking account, or read a rental lease, how to register to vote, subscribe to a magazine.

  354

  With her earnings she’s bought staples and in bulk. “I’m all prepared,” she says. “In case there’s another World War Two.”

  I always understand Mev. I have to go up and around the corner with her sometimes but I do understand.

  What Makes You Think So

  “Aw, this is a fuckin’ ginger snap,” says Hollis and tramps back into my kitchen.

  356

  Mev visits after work and sits with me on the sun porch. She’s wearing cat’s-eye dark glasses and sipping from a wax-paper cup of lemonade.

  “Don’t ever eat chicken again,” she tells me.

  “Really?”

  She nods. “Really, really don’t. Very much to your detriment.”

  “Heroin’s one thing,” she says.

  And What Did You Learn

  My cat is back. Quacking and faking blindness but back.

  358

  She’s here before us, lying on an elbow if that’s what it’s called.

  “She’s mammoth,” says Hollis. “With a huge butt. Was she always like that?”

  “Truly,” I say.

  “What’s her background?”

  I say, “Loped in on a Saturday morn and sat down.”

  No Fun for Anybody

  I say to myself, “Don’t put that there, you’re going overboard.”

  “I don’t agree,” I say and hang the macramé God’s-eye right, smack, dab in the front window. Walking off, I call out, “That better not get moved.”

  360

  “There’s a trick to this part of the vacuuming,” I tell Hollis.

  “Which is?” he asks, sighing and seeming low on patience.

  “O.K., you don’t ever go back there behind the couch. The c
at has stuff stored back there.”

  He’s looking at me.

  I say, “It’s her house too.”

  “You could train her. You could teach her to pick up her goddamn toys and put them where they belong.”

  “But I have,” I say. “She did. They are. That is.”

  All Characters Improve Their Lot

  “Sit down with me,” I say to Mev, patting the couch seat next to me.

  “I can’t now, Mother. I’m so hot and tired. I’ve gotta get these poor shoes off my feet.” She stands with a hand on her hip, the other opened on her thigh. “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing.” I lean forward, square up the magazines on the coffee table, fall back.

  “Mother, you know that pressboard?” she says, nodding at the bookshelf across the room. “Because of whatever it’s bonded with, it spits off poisonous fumes.”

  I say, “I never asked you, Mev. What kind of law you were interested in.”

  “Torts,” she says. “You need to set about two or three plants all around the shelf. They will, for some reason, absorb up the toxins.”

  362

  “Maybe he’s quit drinking,” I say to Mev, on the subject of an ex-husband. “Or at least maybe he’s cut way down.”

  She says, “I could take only minishots of skank.”

  363

  “It’s a noun,” says Hollis, consulting his dictionary. “Meaning . . . ‘civil wrong.’”

  He says, “‘Skank,’ I’ve looked. It ain’t in here.”

  364

  Mev’s fired for having had her eyebrow pierced. I drive over there to fetch her.

  Her eyebrow is bleeding when she gets into the car. I say, “You need vitamins and to take vitamin K! What kind of a slacker junkie were you? All junkies know to take vitamin K. It helps their blood coagulate!”

  “Mom! Mom! I will try to do better,” says Mev.

  She has, I now notice, a violet star-shaped barrette pinned in her hair.

  365

  Hollis is perched on one of the seats in the breakfast nook as we come in. He’s eating a pecan roll and reading the Book of Revelation. “Whoomp!” he says. “Did you ever know about this? ‘There will be no more night.’”

  366

  In my head now, the mixed-up words to rallying war songs. Do you never get to sort through and wipe disk that stuff?