Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee

by James Tate

  Angel was very religious and still lived at home with her parents and eight brothers and sisters. Mr. and Mrs. Roth had on several occasions inadvertently interrupted Angel praying at Richard’s bedside. She was praying to Jesus on Richard’s behalf. Mr. and Mrs. Roth, while they knew this to be unprofessional, were ready to accept help from any quarter.

  “Please forgive me, Mr. and Mrs. Roth, I hope I haven’t offended you in any way. It’s just that I thought . . .”

  “That’s quite alright, Angel, we understand and we both appreciate all that you have done for Richard, and I know Richard appreciates it too in his own way and would want to thank you if he could. We will all continue to pray in our own way.” Mrs. Roth was such a fine lady in Angel’s eyes, so kind and strong, and suffering so much pain day after day without once complaining or thinking about herself.

  “He smiled at me this morning, Mrs. Roth, I’m certain of it. I was combing his hair, he always likes that, and I was talking to him as I always do, telling him how handsome he looked, and he got this little bitty smile on his face, kind of sweet and devilish, you know. I really think he understands most of what I say to him.”

  “I know what you mean, Angel. We were here after dinner last night and we were watching one of his favorite Marx Brothers movies, and I’m certain he not only smiled but even chuckled, well, perhaps chuckled is too strong a work, but he made some sort of laughing noises at the right places. I think there’s been some kind of growth this week. Mr. Roth thinks so too.” Mr. Roth tended to remain silent during these exchanges between Mrs. Roth and Angel. Mexican Catholic women ran heavy traffic in miracles, he knew that.

  “Dr. Wells claims he saw movement in the little finger of Richard’s right hand last week, but there’s been nothing since. So, while we must keep our hopes alive, we must also remain cautious.” He stared out of the window and lit a cigarette. He had never smoked before this tragedy visited their lives, and he disapproved of it thoroughly.

  “Has Dr. Somerset been in today?” he asked Angel.

  “No, I think he is in surgery this morning.”

  “Goddamn these doctors! I pay them a fortune and they are never here.”

  Angel still winced automatically at Mr. Roth’s frequent sacrilegious profanity, but she was getting accustomed to it. Still, she knew he was a gentleman in every other way and was gravely distraught at his only son’s miniscule progress. So she forgave him this little sin.

  At home she talked to her mother and her sisters about Richard and about Mr. and Mrs. Roth. Mrs. Montez did not even act surprised when Angel confessed to her one day that she thought Richard might some day ask her to marry him. Mrs. Montez saw her daughter’s devotion to this fine, young man, as ill as he might be, to be a sure sign of her daughter’s religious and charitable nature, and this was good. For her good deeds in this world she may some day be a saint. That’s how she thought about it as she stirred a big fish soup.

  It was only a few days after Angel had confessed her secret thoughts to her mother that a nearly miraculous thing happened. Angel had arrived at the hospital early and was alone in the room with Richard, talking to him as usual. Her manner might be described as coquettish or flirtatious when she was alone with him, but it was all very sweet and innocent. She batted her eyelids at him when she puffed up his pillow or straightened his sheets. She chatted on to him as if he were a soldier back from the front with a shoulder wound.

  “I have a surprise for you today, “she said to him. And then it happened, the miracle.

  Barely audible, so that she had to wonder, much later, if she had made it up herself, he said “Wha . . .”

  Merciful Mary, she thought, he spoke! Richard spoke! He spoke to me! At which point she neglected to answer, she forgot to show him the little friendship ring she had bought for him with the engraved message inside that read simply Love Angel. She was dizzy with excitement and needed to tell somebody, everybody, the news of the miracle. His first word in six months and it was to her!

  She raced down the corridor and frightened Julie, the nurse at the head desk, with her manic reconstruction of the incident.

  Julie was slow to respond, to join Angel in her unbound joy, and instead advised her to pass on her little story to Dr. Somerset when he comes in in an hour or so. Angel looked around the corridor for someone, anyone now, who could understand the significance of what had just happened, and that is when, God sent, Mr. and Mrs. Roth came walking through the big double doors at the end of the hall.

  It was another long and emotionally draining day for Richard’s parents. Richard had suffered another seizure around eleven o’clock, and the inevitable setback had left him nearly lifeless through the rest of the afternoon. The Roths had finally left for a restaurant around 6:30. Mr. Roth stared into his second cocktail in silence for minutes at a time, and Mrs. Roth respected his silence.

  “She’s a dangerous woman,” he said finally.

  “Who?” Mrs. Roth had no idea of whom he was speaking. “Angel. We’ll have to replace her.”

  “But, Father, what are you saying? No one could be more selfless in their devotion to Richard.” Mrs. Roth was never to contradict her husband. But she too was exhausted now and couldn’t comprehend her husband’s desire to hurt such a good person, such an exemplary private nurse.

  “I will not have my emotions toyed with by this Bible-beating beano wench.”

  The subject was dropped, but Mrs. Roth was afraid for them, afraid of what they might become, she and her husband, in their endless and helpless grief.

  Angel told her mother of the miracle, though some of the joy had been dampened by Richard’s subsequent setback. Her mother wasn’t certain if it qualified as a miracle, but she promised to ask the priest that week.

  DEWEY’S SONG

  Benton Snead’s nephew, Dewey, slept all day in a broken-down Plymouth Falcon in the backyard. He hung rags over the windows to keep the sun out. Benton went about his work in the yard as if Dewey didn’t exist. Indeed, Mr. Snead wished he existed some place far away where he would never have to see him again, some place like, say, Pluto. Dewey was unemployable, he was un-everything as far as Benton Snead was concerned.

  Dewey had his own routine. He would rise from sleep around seven in the evening. Then there followed a five mile walk to the shopping mall where he would perform his ablutions in the public toilet. Innocent intruders were often puzzled by Dewey’s public bathing, and Dewey encouraged shoppers to believe it was his own private facility, then he would generously offer to share it with them, perhaps for a small token of gratitude. Then Dewey would take his only meal of the day at one of the greasy spoons that line the highway leading to the mall.

  In short, Dewey lived out his days without conversation or social exchange. Benton Snead was embarrassed whenever a neighbor referred to seeing Dewey making his rounds. Dewey had been dumped on him by his sister who had banned him from her own house. Mr. Snead lived alone his whole life, a bachelor who loved his garden more than anything. Periodically, he would strike a deal with Dewey, but it was always a mistake.

  “You paint the house, and paint it right, and I’ll let you sleep in the attic for awhile. No messing around, do you understand?”

  Dewey was picking flakes of yellowed newspaper out of his hair.

  “Do you hear me, you dag-blamed idiot?”

  “Uncle Benton, I don’t mind the car. It suits me just fine.”

  But Mr. Snead really did want his house painted, and he was too old to do it himself now. Last time he tried to paint it himself he fell off the ladder and had his shoulder in a cast for two months. And he was too cheap to pay anyone else to do it.

  “Do you want to do it or not, you lazy good-for-nothing?”

  Dewey never wanted to do anything, but sing. He sang in the church choir on Sundays and to everyone’s amazement, he sang like an angel.

  “I don’t know much about painting houses, Uncle Benton.”

  “Crime-in-Itly, boy, I’ll show you
how to paint it. Any idiot can paint a house.”

  And, much to the amusement of Mr. Snead’s neighbors, Dewey proceeded to paint his uncle’s house at night. The daft young man would shine the lights of the defunct Falcon onto the side of the house and paint. Should anyone awake at two or three in the morning, there he would be, a ghostly dream on a ladder. Benton Snead was disgusted but could do nothing about it. Dewey still preferred the washroom at the mall to his uncle’s. His routine varied almost not at all, even with a roof over his head. Dewey was incorrigible. Mr. Snead had given up hoping that the Army would take his nephew, or that some unfortunate, lame-brained woman would take him off his hands. He was going to die with this whacko nephew tied around his neck.

  Dewey finished painting the house, but of course there were large splotches he missed altogether, painting in that eerie light. But Mr. Snead grudgingly thanked Dewey anyway, since it was about the only thing he had ever stuck with in his whole life, except the singing. The two men walked around the house and admired those parts Dewey had covered.

  “Not too bad, considering your approach.”

  Dewey was all smiles, he wasn’t dumb. He wasn’t dumb at all. He just didn’t want what most people wanted.

  “I’m going to London next week, Uncle. I thought I should tell you. I’ve got a job singing. Reverend Starkey recommended me. I tried out last Sunday and I got word today. They’re paying for my ticket and everything.”

  Mr. Snead was stunned. “You’ve got to be kidding me, somebody’s flying you to London just so you can sing for ‘em?”

  “That’s right, Uncle Benton. I’m going to be singing seven days a week.”

  “But how . . . What . . .”

  “You’ve been real good to me, Uncle Benton. My mother always said I would amount to nothing. You tell her for me, will you?”

  “But Dewey, what if something happens to me? What if I have a heart attack mowing the lawn? What if I have a stroke picking beans?”

  Dewey looked his uncle in the face and saw how afraid he was of dying alone.

  “I’ll sing at your funeral, Uncle Benton. You’ll hear me because I’ll sing prettier than I ever sung in my whole life. You’ll see, it won’t be so bad.”

  FAREWELL, I LOVE YOU, AND GOODBYE

  Our lives go on. Our fathers die. Our daughters run away. Our wives leave us. And still we go on. Occasionally we are forced (or so we like to say) to sell everything and move on, start over. We are fond of this myth mainly because we have so few left. The Starting-Over-God is, of course, as arbitrary as the one who took father before his time. But we have to hang onto something. So we start over. There is a little excitement to spice the enormous dread. Not again, I can’t, I don’t have it in me. I’ve seen this one before and I can’t sit through it again. But we do, just in case. In case we missed some tiny but delicious detail all the other times we saw it.

  Can you recommend a dentist, a doctor, an accountant, a reliable real estate agent, a bank? And before you know it, a life is beginning to fall into place. You have located the best dry cleaner, the best Chinese food. A couple of the shop owners have remembered your name. How long have you been here? they ask. And here is the opening, the opportunity you’ve been waiting for.

  “I was born here,” you reply, “lived here all my life.” Rooms full of pain, lawns of remorse, avenues of regret, whole shopping malls of grief begin to detach themselves from you, from the person, from this husk, this shell you call simply Bill.

  “My name’s Bill, I live just down the street, it’s funny we haven’t met before.”

  “Nice to meet you Bill. My name’s Carla. I just opened the shop a week ago. I moved here from Chicago last summer. Divorce, you know.”

  She was an attractive woman, slight, fine-boned, and had a pleasant manner, and Bill couldn’t imagine why anyone . . . He stopped himself. Let it go, let her previous life go. And why had he lied to her automatically? He wanted to clear it up right away, but what would she think, telling lies to a stranger, what kind of behavior is that, anyway?

  “Carla, I have to apologize to you.”

  “Why? I don’t understand.”

  “I haven’t lived here all my life. I’m new in town. I just . . .”

  “That’s all right, you don’t have to say anything.”

  “Well, then, can I buy you a drink or something when you close up today or some other day?”

  “That’d be nice. Can you come by about five past five?”

  “Great.” And so, it was starting again. Some single-minded agent of life was stirring, was raising its perky head, and Bill smiled and waved goodbye to Carla.

  On the short walk back to his house Bill found himself humming an old Billy Holiday tune, “God Bless the Child that’s got his own,” and he laughed at himself and shook his head. Here he was in his new place, his new life, so much blood and ashes under the bridge. But it wasn’t under the bridge. It was his, all that pain was not washed away, it was his, and suddenly he was proud of that. Carla, he said the name several times out loud. Carla, wow, who would have thought.

  Published by Wave Books www.wavepoetry.com

  Copyright © 2008 by James Tate ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  ISBN 978-1-933517-71-1

  Originally Published by Verse Press

  Copyright © 2002 by Verse Press

  All Wave Books titles are distributed to the trade by

  Consortium Book Sales and Distribution

  Phone: 800-283-3572 / SAN 631-760X

  The following stories appeared previously and are reprinted by permission of the author: “Little Man, What Now?” and “Hedges, by Sam D’Amico” in Columbia. “Mush” in Franck (Paris). “Suite 1306” in The Missouri Review. “Raven of Dawn” in New Letters. “The Thistle” and “Welcome Signs” in The North American Review. “Dear Customer,” and “The New Teacher” in Ploughshares. “A Cloud of Dust” and “Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee” in Sonora Review. “Eating Out of Mousetraps” and “Robes” in Denver Quarterly. “At the Ritz” and “Vacation” in Boulevard. “Running for Your Life” in Georgia Review. “Pie” and “My Burden” in The Illinois Review. “The Stove” and “What It Is” in Black Warrior Review. “TV” in Michigan Quarterly. “Pie,” “Dear Customer,” “The Torque-Master of Advanced Video,” “The Examination,” and “The Invisible Twins” in Denver Quarterly.

  The following stories © 1999 by the University of Michigan Press and reprinted by permission of the publisher: “At the Ritz,” “What It Is,” “Despair Ice Cream,” “Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee,” “Vacation,” “A Cloud of Dust,” “The Thistle,” “Pie,” and “Dear Customer.”

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the

  Verse Press hardcover edition as follows:

  Tate, James, 1943–

  Dreams of a robot dancing bee : stories / by James Tate.

  p. cm.

  I. Title.

  PS3570.A8 D74 2002

  813´.54—dc21

  2001006107

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  FIRST PAPERBACK EDITION