The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel

by Amy Hempel

  I asked if she had changed her mind about Wesley, and she said, “Mmmm. Can we not talk about that?”

  I worked at my drink. Eve stared at the empty stage. I said I was glad we weren’t talking about that.

  “I have a fondness for him,” she said. “Sometimes it’s weak…Did he seem nervous to you?”

  “Always.”

  “That’s what I mean,” she said. “That’s why the boat. That’s why,” the lights went down, “I’m always here.”

  The owner of the club bounded onto the stage. He grabbed the microphone off its stand and began to speak. Seconds later the sound came on.

  He said, “Every night I come out here and tell you what a great show we have and you know, it’s the God’s honest truth. But tonight I really mean it.”

  Eve and I scooted together till our shoulders touched. We heard him say Wesley’s name. A blue spotlight followed Wesley onstage. We heard Wesley tell the audience how great it was to be back in L.A.

  In Sydney Lawton Square, the knolls roll carefully into each other, but the trees don’t match, and there aren’t enough of them. Wesley and I pass the doggy station—half a dozen segments of yellow-painted phone pole carved into hydrants, to receive water, not give it.

  “I did what she wants,” Wesley says. “I got a boat, and we’re leaving the first of whatever comes after July. Hell, I did what I want. I’ve always been a seaman at heart—your Conrad, your Old Man and the Sea, your fish. It’ll be good to get out on the waves and sort of expand my limitations. Sink in water for a change.

  “As for Eve, she’s not sure it will work. But it will. I told her, The trick is this—I do what I want, and you do what I want.”

  He laughs at himself. “And because, too, I love her to death. I watch that girl like a movie. ‘Eve Grant Does Three Hours of Laundry.’ I’m watching.”

  “Why don’t you tell her these nice things?” I say.

  “I could,” Wesley says, doubtful. “But, hey—I guess I’m just a jerk.”

  “Can you just up and go?” I say.

  “I get residuals, remember—Cement cracks, this we know. And Eve can always apply for Aid to the Totally Disabled. You’ll want to tell her I said that.”

  A teenage boy hefting a tape deck matched his pace to ours and Stevie Wondered us to death.

  “You know,” Wesley says, as if he doesn’t hear the music, “I meet a person, and in my mind I’m saying three minutes; I give you three minutes to show me the spark. It’s always there with Eve, and it’s been how long? So I keep thinking—can’t we just be together all the time whether we’re together or not?”

  Ahead of us poplars wave against the sky, just as if they had grown here.

  “Isn’t it true that that’s what people can do?” Wesley asks.

  And I say, “Who’s to live in a world where that isn’t true?” But I think, Three popes walk into a bar.

  The Man in Bogotá

  The police and emergency service people fail to make a dent. The voice of the pleading spouse does not have the hoped-for effect. The woman remains on the ledge—though not, she threatens, for long.

  I imagine that I am the one who must talk the woman down. I see it, and it happens like this.

  I tell the woman about a man in Bogotá. He was a wealthy man, an industrialist who was kidnapped and held for ransom. It was not a TV drama; his wife could not call the bank and, in twenty-four hours, have one million dollars. It took months. The man had a heart condition, and the kidnappers had to keep the man alive.

  Listen to this, I tell the woman on the ledge. His captors made him quit smoking. They changed his diet and made him exercise every day. They held him that way for three months.

  When the ransom was paid and the man was released, his doctor looked him over. He found the man to be in excellent health. I tell the woman what the doctor said then—that the kidnap was the best thing to happen to that man.

  Maybe this is not a come-down-from-the-ledge story. But I tell it with the thought that the woman on the ledge will ask herself a question, the question that occurred to that man in Bogotá. He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn’t good.

  When It’s Human Instead

  of When It’s Dog

  It is just inside the front door. It is the first thing she sees when she stops to wipe her feet.

  It has been raining for a week, and it won’t be stopping soon. It’s what the people were talking about on the bus ride in, and Mrs. Hatano guesses that’s what they’ll be talking about on the bus ride going home.

  She wonders if the stain is from water leaking in. But the plaster isn’t buckled on the ceiling above the spot. It’s as big as a three-quart saucepan, though it is not a perfect circle.

  It is two weeks since Mrs. Hatano cleaned this house. The Mr. gave her time off after the Mrs. died. Before, Mrs. Hatano left at five o’clock. Now the schedule is this: She will come every day at five o’clock to make dinner for the Mr. She will do some light cleaning—a load of laundry, an upstairs dusting—then she will wash the dinner dishes, collect her forty dollars, and let herself out.

  No one seems to be at home. Mrs. Hatano at the kitchen counter tears a sheet of paper from the telephone message pad. She draws a question mark at the top of the page. Under the question mark she writes in a column: lamb chop, pork chop, chicken, fish. She writes: bake or broil. Vegetables she will serve cut in strips and stir-fried. The rice can cook while she runs the vacuum.

  Upstairs, there is one room she never cleaned. The door was always closed, the Mrs. never well. But the door is open now.

  The room is dark—the shutters are closed—so Mrs. Hatano turns on a lamp.

  The wastepaper basket is filled with cards. There is an open letter on the desk, and, although it is not in Mrs. Hatano’s nature to pry, she begins to read. It is a sympathy note.

  Mrs. Hatano hears the front door open. She puts down the letter and moves to the bed, which is stripped of its sheets. On a chair beside the bed is a stack of clean linen, and a queen-size folded blanket.

  From the doorway the Mr. says hello. He smiles at Mrs. Hatano and offers to help her make up the bed.

  Before she can tell him no, he should please read his paper, the man takes two corners of the blanket and flaps it over the mattress. He waits for Mrs. Hatano to smooth out her side. She is unable to tell him, until she does, that the sheet goes first.

  “My God,” the man says quietly. He stares a thousand miles into the bed.

  At the smell of the dinner frying in sesame oil, the man’s face changes. Mrs. Hatano reads the look as Other People’s Food. In the freezer she saw dinners delivered by friends—shrimp casserole, curried chicken, lasagne; the recipes were included, taped to the foil.

  After serving dinner, Mrs. Hatano opens the cabinet under the sink. She removes a plastic bucket and arranges inside it a sponge, a scrub brush, a bottle of white vinegar, water, and a can of spray-on carpet cleaner.

  She leaves the kitchen by the door that opens into the hall.

  Mrs. Hatano sings while she works, and the foreign sounds carry to the dining room. She waters down the vinegar—so that it will not take out the color. But scrubbing the stain with vinegar fails to bring up the nap. That place on the carpet, that darker surface like geography on a map, it can still be seen.

  What would do it? Mrs. Hatano says to herself.

  Maybe the spray cleaner, she thinks, and points the aerosol can. She presses the button and traces the spot with foam. It must be allowed to dry, so Mrs. Hatano returns to the kitchen. She opens the freezer and takes out what’s inside. She empties the crusty white ice-cube trays, and fills them with clear cold water.

  While the man has his dinner, Mrs. Hatano uses the phone. She calls her friend Ruthie, who cleans down the block.

  Ruthie tells her vinegar, in the first fifteen minutes. She says, “A dog wets—you can pretty much forget it. Best idea, you cut a runner from one of those carpet squares, you just cover the who
le thing up.”

  Then Ruthie tells her it wasn’t a dog. “That’s where the lady died,” Ruthie says. “No dogs there.”

  And Ruthie tells Mrs. Hatano what she heard her people say, about the day the lady died and the man carried her down the stairs.

  “It happened then—do you hear what I’m saying?” Ruthie says.

  Mrs. Hatano tries Esther Fat next. It is Esther’s day off so Mrs. Hatano phones her at home.

  Esther Fat says lemon and soda water. She says lemon is acid, and a stain like that is the opposite.

  “Unless I am confused and it is the other way around,” Esther Fat says. “Is it different when it’s human instead of when it’s dog?”

  Mrs. Hatano thinks, What the Chinese don’t know about cleaning a house.

  “Hell, they got money,” Esther Fat says. “Let them get a new rug.”

  When the man finishes dinner, he helps Mrs. Hatano clear the table. Then he leaves her to the dishes. That is when Mrs. Hatano sees him see the carpet.

  There is no question that they see the same thing. The thin line of foam has dried to white powder, calling attention to—a state on a map? No, Mrs. Hatano thinks it looks like something else now. The white traced shape is like a chalk-drawn victim on a sidewalk.

  The man excuses himself after a pause, and Mrs. Hatano washes the dishes.

  When the counters are clean and the pots are put away, Mrs. Hatano gets her coat and boots. She takes the forty dollars from the table in the hall. In its place she leaves a five-dollar bill from her purse because she still could not get the spot out.

  Why I’m Here

  “Name a time when you are happy,” is one of the questions. I am taking a test to find out what to do. The way to do this is to find out what you like. This is not obvious, the way it sounds. For example, the questions that say, “Would you prefer…” “Would you prefer to: (a) Answer questions about what you do, (b) Answer questions about what you know, (c) Answer questions about what you think?”

  My answer is, “Depends.” But it’s not one of the choices. I am having to think in terms of Always, Sometimes, Never.

  You cannot pass or fail this test; your grade is more of a profile.

  After the written part of the test, I talk to the vocational-guidance counselor. She is fifty or so, a short, square woman in a dress like a blender cozy. Mrs. Deane is the one who asks me when I’m happy. She says, “Tell me the thing you do anyway, and let’s find a way to get you paid for that.”

  I ask about a job throwing sticks for dogs to fetch, and she says, “Oh, now,” and gives me the courtesy laugh.

  I’m the wrong age to be doing this.

  You take this test in college if you can’t pick a major. Or you take it to help you change your life—later, after you’ve had a life. Somewhere in the middle is the reason why I’m here.

  So—The Time When I Am Happy.

  It starts with the sign that says OPEN HOUSE, and the colored cellophane flags on a string across the walk. Then the unlocked door into a furnished model home, or, even better, unfurnished rooms. Here you have to imagine the lives the way you see characters in a book as you read.

  It doesn’t stop here, with inspecting the rooms. The thing that I do anyway—I move into new apartments.

  First, I get rid of most of what I have. My friends are loaded up with ironing boards and sofa beds. I hand out records and wicker and lamps. Never mind the plants.

  The books alone!

  When the place is pared down, I spell my new number. It works like this: You take your telephone prefix, say it’s 7-7-6. That’s P-r-o. Then you start dialing words until you reach a disconnect, an available number: Pro-mise, Pro-digy, Pro-verb, Problem, Pro-voke, Protect, Pro-sper…

  I buy a few beers for the “Two Guys with Van” who will load up what is left. I hope for the best, though you can count on this for damage: Three moves equals a fire.

  The new place brings a rush of settlement. Paper towels and spray cleaners, plastic bags to line plastic wastebaskets. There is glossy shelf paper to cut for the cabinets, and my name to put on the mailbox. It’s the same thing again, three months later. Move enough times and you will never defrost a freezer.

  I’m telling this to Mrs. Deane.

  She says the key thing here is process—what she looks for on the Happiness Question. Does this happiness come from a person, place, or process?

  I tell her I don’t know, that sometimes I just have to move.

  The place before this, this is what it was. I took a small apartment on the top floor of a house. It was a narrow gray Victorian with amber stained-glass windows on the landing.

  The manager apologized for the faulty showerhead. He said he would fix it, and he did—the next day. He said that he used to live in the house. He said that he and his brother used to play in my apartment where they set up their HO trains.

  On my way out one morning, I said hello to the manager. He was down on his knees on the carpeted stairs, suctioning lint with a special vacuum attachment. But something was different when I got home that night. It took me a minute. Nothing was moved. Then I noticed the rug. It covered the space between the fireplace and couch. Since I had been gone, that rug had been vacuumed.

  That wasn’t all.

  There was something the manager said, the day he fixed the shower. He said now that the stream was strong, I could “really lather up.”

  “Lather up!” I repeat to Mrs. Deane.

  Mrs. Deane scans the written portion of my test. She says I skipped a question, the one that says, “Would you prefer to: (a) Think about your plans for tomorrow, (b) Think about what you would do if you had a million dollars, (c) Think about how it would feel to be held up at gunpoint?”

  I say, “I want the job for the person who picks (b).”

  Mrs. Deane says, “What do you suppose would happen if you just stayed put? If you just stayed still long enough to think a thing through?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I won’t feel like myself.”

  “Oh,” she says, “but you will—you are.”

  Breathing Jesus

  Things turned around after I saw the Breathing Jesus. My lost diamond solitaire was recovered from under the couch. The orchestra noises in my head stopped warming up. My neighbor and I witnessed the Resurrection of Baby.

  I had gone to the Civic Center to see the Breathing Jesus. This was an outdoor Jesus. He was featured in the carnival they put on every springtime near the City Hall dome. An artist made this Jesus. He sat large as life on a jeweled throne in the trailer-size room that was done up as a shrine.

  Out in front of the shrine was a coin box for your quarter. I dropped one in the slot, and looked at the velvet-robed figure on the throne. I watched his chest rise with the intake of air, and then fall back in the instant after someone watching beside me said, “Jesus—he’s breathing.”

  I matched my respiration to the rhythm of His, and drew breath with the Lord until my quarter ran out.

  I have seen a lot of things I would not know how to explain. I’ve seen “sparkling rain” that crackled and struck up sparks when it hit the ground. I’ve seen a white rainbow over the full moon. I’ve seen Spooklights and will-o’-the-wisps—those cold flames and luminous bubbles of light that float over swamps. I’ve seen a meteor wiggle out of its arc before burning itself out. I have read by the light of the southern aurora at 3 a.m.

  I saw these things because of the noises in my head. Because the sound—like that of a symphony tuning up—kept me awake at night. The noises only stopped when the breath left my body and, lying there, I couldn’t move.

  Things happen, or they stop happening, and who can tell you why?

  Baby I can explain.

  Baby was only lost, not dead. But I thought she was dead because that is what the Department of Highways told me she was. They said a dog of Baby’s description had been found at the university off-ramp. They said that the body had already been disposed of.

  T
his was worse than it was because Baby was my neighbor’s dog, left in my care while my neighbor went away.

  Baby was gone three days when my neighbor returned. It was raining that day, and there was thunder, too. I felt strangely calm, prepared to deliver the news. I felt lucky to have my wits about me, and worried that I might need them.

  And then there was Baby before I had to say.

  What brought her back from where she was could have been the tires on the gravel drive. Or maybe it was the thunderstorm, the first one of the season, with the low and rolling sounds that wake up those in hibernation.

  If that wasn’t it, then I don’t know what was.

  I don’t know why the breathing stops. They don’t know why you get it, and they can’t make it go away. There’s a name for when the breathing stops, and they think that it’s the killer when those babies die in their cribs.

  I’m careful going to sleep at night. Always there is the noise before I can’t get air. What I do is put a sound there first, the sound of someone else’s breathing, regular and deep. At night I am back in the carnival tent, breathing along with Jesus. It’s—in with the good air, then out with the same good air, breathing with something that can’t breathe by itself.

  I breathe along with Jesus till my quarter runs out, until I run out of change and take up a dollar bill from my purse. In my mind I say to anyone, Give me change for a dollar? Can you get me another four quarters?

  Because you have to believe that something will work. I don’t, but you have got to.

  The ticking of a clock is what does the trick for Baby.

  The things I’ve seen I can’t explain are nothing next to what I’ve heard—musical sand, whispering lakes, a shout whose echo came back as a song.

  Oh, I’ve heard stranger things than that, but those were in my head.