The Collected Stories of Lorrie Moore

by Lorrie Moore

  1964. Your mother calls long distance and asks whether you are coming home for Thanksgiving, your brother and the baby will be there. Make excuses.

  "As a mother gets older," your mother says, "these sorts of holidays become increasingly important."

  Say: "I'm sorry, Mom."

  1963. Wake up one morning with a man you had thought you'd spend your life with, and realize, a rock in your gut, that you don't even like him. Spend a weepy afternoon in his bathroom, not coming out when he knocks. You can no longer trust your affections. People and places you think you love may be people and places you hate.

  Kennedy is shot.

  Someone invents a temporary artificial heart, for use during operations.

  1962. Eat Chinese food for the first time, with a lawyer from California. He will show you how to hold the chopsticks. He will pat your leg.

  Attack his profession. Ask him whether he feels the law makes large spokes out of the short stakes of men.

  1961. Grandma Moses dies.

  You are a zoo of insecurities. You take to putting brandy in your morning coffee and to falling in love too easily. You have an abortion.

  1960. There is money from your father's will and his life insurance. You buy a car and a green velvet dress you don't need. You drive two hours to meet your mother for lunch on Saturdays. She suggests things for you to write about, things she's heard on the radio: a woman with telepathic twins, a woman with no feet.

  1959. At the funeral she says: "He had his problems, but he was a generous man," though you know he was tight as a scout knot, couldn't listen to anyone, the only time you remember loving him being that once when he got the punchline of one of your jokes before your mom did and looked up from his science journal and guffawed loud as a giant, the two of you, for one split moment, communing like angels in the middle of that room, in that warm, shared light of mind.

  Say: "He was okay."

  "You shouldn't be bitter," your mother snaps. "He financed you and your brother's college educations." She buttons her coat. "He was also the first man to isolate a particular isotope of helium, I forget the name, but he should have won the Nobel Prize." She dabs at her nose.

  Say: "Yeah, Mom."

  1958. At your brother's wedding, your father is taken away in an ambulance. A tiny cousin whispers loudly to her mother, "Did Uncle Will have a hard attack?" For seven straight days say things to your mother like: "I'm sure it'll be okay," and "I'll stay here, why don't you go home and get some sleep."

  1957. Dance the calypso with boys from a different college. Get looped on New York State burgundy, lose your virginity, and buy one of the first portable electric typewriters.

  1956. Tell your mother about all the books you are reading at college. This will please her.

  1955. Do a paint-by-numbers of Elvis Presley. Tell your mother you are in love with him. She will shake her head.

  1954. Shoplift a cashmere sweater.

  1953. Smoke a cigarette with Hillary Swedelson. Tell each other your crushes. Become blood sisters.

  1952. When your mother asks you if there are any nice boys in junior high, ask her how on earth would you ever know, having to come in at nine! every night. Her eyebrows will lift like theater curtains. "You poor, abused thing," she will say.

  Say, "Don't I know it," and slam the door.

  1951. Your mother tells you about menstruation. The following day you promptly menstruate, your body only waiting for permission, for a signal. You wake up in the morning and feel embarrassed.

  1949. You learn how to blow gum bubbles and to add negative numbers.

  1947. The Dead Sea Scrolls are discovered.

  You have seen too many Hollywood musicals. You have seen too many people singing in public places and you assume you can do it, too. Practice. Your teacher asks you a question. You warble back: "The answer to number two is twelve." Most of the class laughs at you, though some stare, eyes jewel-still, fascinated. At home your mother asks you to dust your dresser. Work up a vibrato you could drive a truck through. Sing: "Why do I have to do it now?" and tap your way through the dining room. Your mother requests that you calm down and go take a nap. Shout: "You don't care about me! You don't care about me at all!"

  1946. Your brother plays "Shoofly Pie" all day long on the Victrola.

  Ask your mother if you can go to Ellen's for supper. She will say, "Go ask your father," and you, pulling at your fingers, walk out to the living room and whimper by his chair. He is reading. Tap his arm. "Dad? Daddy? Dad?" He continues reading his science journal. Pull harder on your fingers and run back to the kitchen to tell your mother, who storms into the living room, saying, "Why don't you ever listen to your children when they try to talk to you?" You hear them arguing. Press your face into a kitchen towel, ashamed, the hum of the refrigerator motor, the drip in the sink scaring you.

  1945. Your father comes home from his war work. He gives you a piggyback ride around the broad yellow thatch of your yard, the dead window in the turret, dark as a wound, watching you. He gives you wordless pushes on the swing.

  Your brother has new friends, acts older and distant, even while you wait for the school bus together.

  You spend too much time alone. You tell your mother that when you grow up you will bring your babies to Australia to see the kangaroos.

  Forty thousand people are killed in Nagasaki.

  1944. Dress and cuddle a tiny babydoll you have named "the Sue." Bring her everywhere. Get lost in the Wilson Creek fruit market, and call softly, "Mom, where are you?" Watch other children picking grapes, but never dare yourself. Your eyes are small, dark throats, your hand clutches the Sue.

  1943. Ask your mother about babies. Have her read to you only the stories about babies. Ask her if she is going to have a baby. Ask her about the baby that died. Cry into her arm.

  1940. Clutch her hair in your fist. Rub it against your cheek.

  1939. As through a helix, as through an ear, it is here you are nearer the dream flashes, the other lives.

  There is a tent of legs, a sundering of selves, as you both gasp blindly for breath. Across the bright and cold, she knows it when you try to talk to her, though this is something you never really manage to understand.

  Germany invades Poland.

  The year's big song is "Three Little Fishies" and someone, somewhere, is playing it.

  * * *

  Amahl and the Night Visitors: A Guide to the Tenor of Love

  11/30. understand that your cat is a whore and can't help you. She takes on love with the whiskery adjustments of a gold-digger. She is a gorgeous nomad, an unfriend. Recall how just last month when you got her from Bob downstairs, after Bob had become suddenly allergic, she leaped into your lap and purred, guttural as a German chanteuse, familiar and furry as a mold. And Bob, visibly heartbroken, still in the room, sneezing and giving instructions, hoping for one last cat nuzzle, descended to his hands and knees and jiggled his fingers in the shag. The cat only blinked. For you, however, she smiled, gave a fish-breath peep, and settled.

  "Oh, well," said Bob, getting up off the floor. "Now I'm just a thing of her kittenish past."

  That's the way with Bob. He'll say to the cat, "You be a good girl now, honey," and then just shrug, go back downstairs to his apartment, play jagged, creepy jazz, drink wine, stare out at the wintry scalp of the mountain.

  12/1. moss watson, the man you truly love like no other, is singing December 23 in the Owonta Opera production of Amahl and the Night Visitors. He's playing Kaspar, the partially deaf Wise Man. Wisdom, says Moss, arrives in all forms. And you think, Yes, sometimes as a king and sometimes as a hesitant phone call that says the king'll be late at rehearsal don't wait up, and then when you call back to tell him to be careful not to let the cat out when he comes home, you discover there's been no rehearsal there at all.

  At three o'clock in the morning you hear his car in the driveway, the thud of the front door. When he comes into the bedroom, you see his huge height framed for a minut
e in the doorway, his hair lit bright as curry. When he stoops to take off his shoes, it is as if some small piece of his back has given way, allowing him this one slow bend. He is quiet. When he gets into bed he kisses one of your shoulders, then pulls the covers up to his chin. He knows you're awake. "I'm tired," he announces softly, to ward you off when you roll toward him. Say: "You didn't let the cat out, did you?"

  He says no, but he probably should have. "You're turning into a cat mom. Cats, Trudy, are the worst sort of surrogates."

  Tell him you've always wanted to run off and join the surrogates.

  Tell him you love him.

  Tell him you know he didn't have rehearsal tonight.

  "We decided to hold rehearsal at the Montessori school, what are you now, my mother?"

  In the dark, discern the fine hook of his nose. Smooth the hair off his forehead. Say: "I love you Moss are you having an affair with a sheep?" You saw a movie once where a man was having an affair with a sheep, and acted, with his girlfriend, the way Moss now acts with you: exhausted.

  Moss's eyes close. "I'm a king, not a shepherd, remember? You're acting like my ex-wife."

  His ex-wife is now an anchorwoman in Missouri.

  "Are you having a regular affair? Like with a person?"

  "Trudy," he sighs, turns away from you, taking more than his share of blanket. "You've got to stop this." Know you are being silly. Any second now he will turn and press against you, reassure you with kisses, tell you oh how much he loves you. "How on earth, Trudy," is what he finally says, "would I ever have the time for an affair?"

  12/2. your cat is growing, eats huge and sloppy as a racehorse. Bob named her Stardust Sweetheart, a bit much even for Bob, so you and Moss think up other names for her: Pudge, Pudgemuffin, Pooch, Poopster, Secretariat, Stephanie, Emily. Call her all of them. "She has to learn how to deal with confusion," says Moss. "And we've gotta start letting her outside."

  Say: "No. She's still too little. Something could happen." Pick her up and away from Moss. Bring her into the bathroom with you. Hold her up to the mirror. Say: "Whossat? Whossat pretty kitty?" Wonder if you could turn into Bob.

  12/3. sometimes Moss has to rehearse in the living room. King Kaspar has a large black jewelry box about which he must sing to the young, enthralled Amahl. He must open drawers and haul out beads, licorice, magic stones. The drawers, however, keep jamming when they're not supposed to. Moss finally tears off his fake beard and screams, "I can't do this shit! I can't sing about money and gewgaws. I'm the tenor of love!" Last year they'd done La Boheme and Moss had been Rodolfo.

  This is the sort of thing he needs you for: to help him with his box. Kneel down beside him. Show him how one of the drawers is off its runner. Show him how to pull it out just so far. He smiles and thanks you in his berserk King Kaspar voice: "Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!" He begins his aria again: "'This is my box. This is my box. I never travel without my box.'"

  All singing is, says Moss, is sculpted howling.

  Say, "Bye." Wheel the TV into the kitchen. Watch MacNeil-Lehrer. Worry about Congress.

  Listen to the goose-call of trains, all night, trundling by your house.

  12/4. sometimes the phone rings, but then the caller hangs up.

  12/5. your cat now sticks her paws right in the water dish while she drinks, then steps out from her short wade and licks them, washes her face with them, repeatedly, over the ears and down, like an itch. Take to observing her. On her feet the gray and pink configurations of pads and fur look like tiny baboon faces. She sees you watching, freezes, blinks at you, then busies herself again, her face in her belly, one leg up at a time, an intent ballerina in a hairy body stocking. And yet she's growing so quickly, she's clumsy. She'll walk along and suddenly her hip will fly out of whack and she'll stop and look at it, not comprehending. Or her feet will stumble, or it's difficult for her to move her new bulk along the edges of furniture, her body pushing itself out into the world before she's really ready. It puts a dent in her confidence. She looks at you inquiringly: What is happening to me? She rubs against your ankles and bleats. You pick her up, tuck her under your chin, your teeth clenched in love, your voice cooey, gooey with maternity, you say things like, "How's my little dirt-nose, my little fuzz-face, my little honey-head?"

  "Jesus, Trudy," Moss yells from the next room. "Listen to how you talk to that cat."

  12/6. though the Christmas shopping season is under way, the store you work at downtown, Owonta Flair, is not doing well. "The malls," groans Morgan, your boss. "Every Christmas the malls! We're doomed. These candy cane slippers. What am I gonna do with these?"

  Tell her to put one slipper from each pair in the window along with a mammoth sign that says, mates inside. "People only see the sign. Thorn McAn did it once. They got hordes."

  "You're depressed," says Morgan.

  12/7. you and moss invite the principals, except Amahl, over to dinner one night before a rehearsal. You also invite Bob. Three kings, Amahl's unwed mother, you, and Bob: this way four people can tell cranky anecdotes about the production, and two people can listen.

  "This really is a trashy opera," says Sonia, who plays Amahl's mother. "Sentimental as all get-out." Sonia is everything you've always wanted to be: smart, Jewish, friendly, full-haired as Easter basket grass. She speaks with a mouthful of your spinach pie. She says she likes it. When she has swallowed, a piece of spinach remains behind, wrapped like a gap around one of her front teeth. Other than that she is very beautiful. Nobody says anything about the spinach on her tooth.

  Two rooms away the cat is playing with a marble in the empty bathtub. This is one of her favorite games. She bats the marble and it speeds around the porcelain like a stock car. The noise is rattley, continuous.

  "What is that weird noise?" asks Sonia.

  "It's the beast," says Moss. "We should put her outside, Trudy." He pours Sonia more wine, and she murmurs, "Thanks."

  Jump up. Say: "I'll go take the marble away."

  Behind you you can hear Bob: "She used to be mine. Her name is Stardust Sweetheart. I got allergic."

  Melchior shouts after you: "Aw, leave the cat alone, Trudy. Let her have some fun." But you go into the bathroom and take the marble away anyhow. Your cat looks up at you from the tub, her head cocked to one side, sweet and puzzled as a child movie star. Then she turns and bats drips from the faucet. Scratch the scruff of her neck. Close the door when you leave. Put the marble in your pocket.

  You can hear Balthazar making jokes about the opera. He calls it Amyl and the Nitrates.

  "I've always found Menotti insipid," Melchior is saying when you return to the dining room.

  "Written for NBC, what can you expect," Sonia says. Soon she is off raving about La Bohème and other operas. She uses words like verismo, messa di voce, Montserrat Caballe. She smiles. "An opera should be like contraception: about sex, not children."

  Start clearing the plates. Tell people to keep their forks for dessert. Tell them that no matter what anyone says, you think Amahl is a beautiful opera and that the ending, when the mother sends her son off with the kings, always makes you cry. Moss gives you a wink. Get brave. Give your head a toss. Add: "Papageno, Papagena—to me, La Bohème's just a lot of scarves."

  There is some gulping of wine.

  Only Bob looks at you and smiles. "Here. I'll help you with the plates," he says.

  Moss stands and makes a diversionary announcement: "Sonia, you've got a piece of spinach on your tooth."

  "Christ," she says, and her tongue tunnels beneath her lip like an elegant gopher.

  12/8. sometimes still Moss likes to take candlelight showers with you. You usually have ten minutes before the hot water runs out.

  Soap his back, the wide moguls of his shoulders registering in you like a hunger. Press yourself against him. Whisper: "I really do like La Bohème, you know."

  "It's okay," Moss says, all forgiveness. He turns and grabs your buttocks.

  "It's just that your friends make m
e nervous. Maybe it's work, Morgan that forty-watt hysteric making me crazy." Actually you like Morgan.

  Begin to hum a Dionne Warwick song, then grow self-conscious and stop. Moss doesn't like to sing in the shower. He has his operas, his church jobs, his weddings and bar mitzvahs—in the shower he is strictly off-duty. Say: "I mean, it could be Morgan."

  Moss raises his head up under the spray, beatific, absent. His hair slicks back, like a baby's or a gangster's, dark with water, shiny as a record album. "Does Bob make you nervous?" he asks.

  "Bob? Bob suffers from terminal sweetness. I like Bob."

  "So do I. He's a real gem."

  Say: "Yeah, he's a real chum."

  "I said gem," says Moss. "Not chum" Things fall quiet. Lately you've been mishearing each other. Last night in bed you said, "Moss, I usually don't like discussing sex, but—" And he said, "I don't like disgusting sex either." And then he fell asleep, his snores scratching in the dark like zombies.

  Take turns rinsing. Don't tell him he's hogging the water. Ask finally, "Do you think Bob's gay?"

  "Of course he's gay."

  "How do you know?"

  "Oh, I don't know. He hangs out at Sammy's in the mall."

  "Is that a gay bar?"

  "Bit of everything." Moss shrugs.

  Think: Bit of everything. Just like a mall. "Have you ever been there?" Scrub vigorously between your breasts.

  "A few times," says Moss, the water growing cooler.