Oh!

by Mary Robison

  The lights, the view, the height had been exhilarating to Virginia, but Cleveland had turned sour. More than once he had patted the behind of their waitress, who was costumed as a French maid. He had snapped her garter finally, and been refused more drinks. He and Virginia were asked to leave. In his bedroom, he had tried to make sloppy, dizzy love to her, and she had answered with a dainty slap on his cheek.

  “There, that does it,” she had said. “I’ve never hit anyone in my life, and now I have. I’ve never been asked to leave a restaurant, and now I have. You and your family upset me. But right now I am more disgusted than upset. I told myself I’d never marry anyone with whom I could have a quarrel, and now that’s just what you and I are doing.”

  She put on a slim gray dress and let Lola do up the back.

  “The hardest thing about being good isn’t the being good,” Virginia said. “It’s being around people who never make a particle of effort themselves. All they do is try to knock you off course and corrupt you.”

  “That’s true around here,” Lola said. “I get so mad, it can’t be good for me.”

  “Rage is not good for you,” Virginia said. Her eyelids were swollen. “I really don’t need you any more today, dear heart. The rest of what I have to do is just checking color schemes and selecting the garlanding for the room and seeing if this blue would go better with the walls than the green or the pale yellow—for the bridesmaids’ dresses—and ten zillion other details.”

  “I’m available for details,” Lola said. “Holding things up—patterns. I mean, I’m really getting excited about this wedding stuff. Being in on the ground floor and all.”

  Virginia answered with a mighty sob.

  10

  Lola mooned around in the living room. She watched the sopped lawn and driving rain from a front window. She fanned herself with a magazine, then practiced balancing the magazine on her head. She got fed up with that and rapped on Cleveland’s door.

  “It’s open,” he said in a thin voice.

  She found him in his boxer shorts standing uncertainly in the center of the room. He looked frightened.

  “Heart attack, I think,” he said.

  “You? Where? I mean, where does it hurt?”

  “Heart,” he said.

  “Then you’re probably okay,” Lola said. “You can breathe all right?”

  Cleveland took a test breath. “I can’t tell,” he said.

  “How do your arms feel? Your shoulder?”

  “I know what you’re getting at. But Sid Golis was knocked over by his heart, down on the seventh green of the golf course, and I was there. He lived, but he told me later it felt like a crowbar blow on his heart. On his heart.”

  Lola fetched a robe for Cleveland. He put it on, moving gingerly as an invalid. “You’re just guilty about all the booze last night.”

  “It isn’t helping,” Cleveland said. “But I’ve had a warning from a medical man.”

  “So has everyone over twelve,” Lola said.

  “I’m dying.”

  “You’d get better fast if you could see what I just saw. Your bride-to-be in her undies.”

  “That doesn’t matter now,” Cleveland said. “I’m not interested.” His voice was soft and strained.

  “Brand new drawers. Little tiny ones,” Lola said.

  Cleveland grinned. “She is something. Her throat’s sort of old, but the rest of her could pass for thirty-five. Her knees are sort of old, too.”

  “What’s this?” Lola said, pushing fingers into Cleveland’s waist. “What’s all this?”

  “The sauce, Lola, is what it is.”

  “And your hair looks lousy,” she said.

  “It’s thinning,” he admitted.

  “You’re lucky to get that woman, awful-looking thing like you.”

  She left him and got an umbrella from a stand in the foyer. She headed for Howdy’s apartment.

  The door on the landing was open. She climbed the steps. She found everything in the apartment wrecked. The furniture was overturned, the pictures—except for the family portrait—lay dumped on the floor. Broken glass was all over the rug, as was dirt from thrown and tipped-over house plants. Howdy’s junk sculpture was in pieces in a corner. The walls were stripped of everything except a pencil sketch of the first Mrs. Cleveland drawn from an old photograph.

  She found Howdy in his jump suit on the bed.

  “Can you talk about it?”

  “It’s Stephanie,” he said.

  “She cheated on you.”

  Howdy shot off the bed and threw himself at a wall. He sat on the floor and kicked the wall with his shoes until he had made cracks and the start of a hole. He said, “You don’t care. You’re glad.”

  “I don’t care about her. But I care about you. And there’s nothing I can do. Love hurts.”

  “Love hurts,” Howdy said.

  “I’d like to give you a big, sexy kiss,” Lola said.

  He draped an arm over her shoulder. They strolled around the apartment. Howdy stopped and flicked on a recording of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony for them to walk to.

  “Oh, this is good. You did that well,” Lola said as they examined the damage he’d done.

  “You think I did okay?” Howdy said.

  Lola made instant coffee in the kitchenette. “You didn’t get around to the plates and cups in here,” she said. She spun a cake platter at the refrigerator. The plate bounced whole onto the floor.

  “That’s what happened to me too,” Howdy said.

  He tried to right the sofa, couldn’t, and sat on its bottom. He sipped coffee. “I went to pick her up last night. Jack met me in the driveway. I smelled it right away. He took me inside the house—first time I’d ever been in—and there was this big hayseed. Jack introduced him and the guy crushed my hand, shaking it. He was Jeff. Jeff was also waiting for Steph, Jack told me.”

  “I get the picture,” Lola said.

  “When she came out, it was Jeff she went to. I love her,” Howdy said.

  “It gets changed for hate. Real slowly, but it will,” Lola said.

  “I just want to call her up and ask what she thought she was doing,” Howdy said.

  “Don’t do that,” Lola said.

  “Yeah, but I think Jack made her put on that show.”

  “He couldn’t make her,” Lola said.

  “You know what I thought? I thought Jeff could be her brother, and Jack had talked them into this thing for me, to pay me back for pounding him.”

  “That’s really reaching,” Lola said. “Settle down.”

  “I’m seriously considering giving her a call.”

  “Don’t, Howdy,” Lola said.

  11

  She walked in on Maureen, who was in the kitchen, dressed in a slip, talking on the wall phone.

  “What’s the story today?” Lola said. “Why’s the whole family in their B.V.D.s? Bunch of nudists all of a sudden. You know, it’s raining. You could get electrocuted.”

  “Hold it,” Maureen said into the telephone. “Lola, do you notice I’m having a conversation with somebody?”

  “Electrocute yourself,” Lola said. “See if I care.”

  She went to her room and plopped onto her bed. She decided to call up Professor Riley, but before she could dial, she heard the telephone version of Chris’s voice. She listened for a while.

  He was saying, “A rocking chair in there. A pretty big, leafy backyard. There’s two girls about Violet’s age, and a hundred other kids—university people’s kids. I think I have access to a garage.”

  Maureen’s voice said, “Unh.”

  “So,” Chris said. “This kitchen’s not great. But they swore to me there were no roaches.”

  “Um,” Maureen said.

  “Well, I haven’t seen any. And I didn’t find any old boxes of Roach Away in the cupboards. It’s a nice apartment, Mo, if you ever want to come here, especially since your old man’s bringing that evangelist lady into the house. Here you’d have a fr
ee, safe, private, orderly place. That’s before you go to Ireland or if you come back. Or you could think about moving out to start Violet in the university school down here in the fall, which I hear is a really great school. Is that you gulping, Lola? Are you on the line?”

  “It’s me swallowing my incredulity,” Lola said.

  “Hi, Lola,” Maureen said.

  “Hi, Maureen.”

  Chris said, “Well, will you just give it a look, Mo? It is a nice apartment. Maybe you really will like it. You don’t know.”

  “What do you think, Lola?” Maureen said.

  “I just want to use the phone,” Lola said.

  “Please,” Chris said.

  “He sounds safe enough,” Lola said.

  “I’ve been cleaning all week, getting ready, and I haven’t called once, have I, Lola?” Chris said.

  “No, he didn’t call.”

  “So, will you come?” Chris asked her.

  “To look. I’ll come to look.”

  Lola put down the receiver and went into her wide, bright bathroom. She splashed cold water on her face. She washed her hands. She went back to the bedroom and listened on the phone for a dial tone. She dialed Professor Riley’s number. His wife answered.

  “Yes,” Lola said.

  “Yes?” Mrs. Riley said.

  “Yes, this is Lola Turtlidge, one of your husband’s students.”

  “Yes?”

  “A lot of yeses,” Lola said. “I need to talk to Dr. Riley some. About schoolwork.”

  “Right. Well, he’s not here now, and he’s not in his office on Saturdays. Can you tell me what it’s about, Lola? So that I can tell him?”

  “Are you a Negro?” Lola said. She slapped herself on the forehead. Mrs. Riley didn’t answer. “I mean, in your husband’s sense of the New Negro?”

  “I don’t understand,” Mrs. Riley said.

  “Me neither,” Lola said. “That’s why I’m calling. I’m trying to write this poetry for my portfolio and it’s supposed to be informed by the consciousness of the New Negro, which is what it says here in my notes. I feel stupid. I don’t know what that means, and it just occurred to me that maybe you could explain it,” Lola said. “In terms I’d understand.”

  “Maurice has his work and I have mine, and we don’t bring it home with us,” Mrs. Riley said. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. None at all. It’s not my field.”

  “What’s your field?” Lola said, and slapped herself again.

  “I’m a doctor of veterinary medicine, and I have a peach pie bubbling over in my oven, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, shit,” Lola said.

  “So I have to go, but I’ll tell Maurice you called about your poetry problem, and then he’ll decide whether to get back to you on his weekend or save it until Monday. You’re a Negro?” Lola heard a smile behind the question.

  “Just on weekends,” Lola said.

  “So you’re one of my husband’s girls?”

  “Oh, I’m just a plain old girl,” Lola said.

  “All right. I think Lola is a very lovely name. I’ll tell Maurice the girl with the pretty name of Lola called. Now I really must go.” Mrs. Riley hung up.

  Lola smiled and walked around her room. Without thinking about it, she began to tidy things up. Without tasting, she bit into a yellow apple that was on her nightstand.

  In the small, formal living room, she found Cleveland, Virginia, and Violet. Cleveland was immaculately dressed in a navy suit, soft white shirt, black wing tips. His face, though, was a vivid pink, his eyes glassy, his hair mussed. He poured and drank champagne from a bottle that he kept in the crotch of his crossed legs. Virginia wore a red gingham check with nine crinolines under the skirt and a starched white apron on top. There were pigtails, tied off with red yarn, above her ears. Violet was sitting on the carpet, silent, pondering.

  “Miss Virginia,” Lola said.

  “We’re doing a taping this afternoon for the show tomorrow morning. I suppose you knew we weren’t live.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “Isn’t she adorable?” Cleveland said. “Did you ever think Ginny could be so adorable?”

  “She’s got nothing to be ashamed of,” Lola said.

  “That’s what I’d say,” Cleveland said. “Good old Miss Virginia. Quite a piece.”

  “I’m sure Violet is interested,” Virginia warned.

  “I’m sick,” Violet said.

  Cleveland jammed his cuff back from his wrist and scowled at his watch. “It’s about time. You nervous?”

  Virginia said, “Lola, I’m surprised you’re still around. Don’t you get away from these maniacs on your free days?”

  “Nothing to do,” Lola said, and shrugged heavily.

  “It’s a good thing you’re here,” Cleveland said. “Maureen took the Saab to visit Chris and left the baby here with me. You’ll have to watch her for us, Lola. But if you don’t complain about it, you’ll get a raise starting Monday.”

  “Big deal,” Lola said.

  Cleveland finished the champagne, drinking the rest from the bottle. Virginia made an angry face at him.

  “A big raise,” Cleveland said. “You can thank Virginia for it.”

  “Double,” Lola said.

  “All right, I’ll double it,” Cleveland said. “Your salary is doubled.”

  “I can’t take you to the studio when you’re like this,” Virginia said.

  Cleveland said, “The old ranger is fit and he solemnly promises to be good around the kiddies.”

  “I can’t go?” Violet said.

  “For the last time, no,” Cleveland said. “Your turn is later this month.”

  “It’s policy, dear,” Virginia said. “We have to be strict. Some days there were fifty children there, all belonging to station people and not one with an invitation. You understand.”

  “I don’t,” Violet said.

  “She does,” Lola said.

  “It’s unfair,” Violet said.

  “What isn’t?” Lola said.

  Cleveland was having trouble getting up from the couch.

  12

  Chris was breathing grandly. His bare chest, back, and shoulders were wet from the humidity. He blotted his face with a flowered towel. He wore flannel bathing trunks.

  The small lobby where Maureen stood was without ornament. It was fragrant in the heat with the sweet perfume of decaying wood and the confusing aromas of past cooking.

  They climbed a flight of steeply graded stairs. On the landing, Chris said, “Here’s home.” He opened a door on a corridor hung on both sides with shadowy old clothes. The passageway was stuffy, the air thick with moth crystals and mold. The light source was a bulb high on the ceiling of the chamber. Chris shoved aside a velveteen curtain at the end of the corridor and brought them into a very small room. There were three tall windows, and a buttoned, built-in couch. In one of the windows roared an air conditioner from Sears.

  Maureen put herself on the window seat and sighed in the refrigerated air. The view was of maple branches, the side of a neighboring house, and on the ravaged brick drive stood her father’s Saab. It was blocking the way of a tiny kid in bib pants who was struggling with a wheel toy.

  There were full bookshelves. They held legal volumes, technical volumes, black-leather notebooks in series. In a stack on the couch were some new paperbacks, each with a neatly torn square of paper marking a page.

  “Well, I like it,” Maureen said.

  Chris turned to the walls and studied them. He touched a crack that led from a stray nailhead. “It will be awfully nice, I think. Private for you and me and Violet. You’re looking doubtful.”

  “That’s because I feel doubtful. Let’s see the rest.”

  The rest of Chris’s apartment was an oblong room a second flight up, with a rocker, several stuffed chairs, a bed on the floor. “This is dying,” Maureen said when she passed a giant avocado plant.

  The dining area had a picnic table and a bench, bot
h behind a hinged and paneled screen. Maureen inspected a framed picture on an otherwise bare wall. “Is this real?”

  “It’s a real oil painting, not a print,” Chris said. “But it’s not the original. It’s a copy. The very first thing I bought with my lottery money.”

  “How odd,” Maureen said.

  13

  I’m Bob Breevort,” said a pear-shaped young man.

  “This is Bobby,” Virginia said.

  “I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance, sir,” Bobby Breevort said, pulling Cleveland’s hand. “I believe, sir, you and I are neighbors, inasmuch as our plantations abut.”

  “You’re the oldest Breevort kid?” Cleveland said.

  “I have that privilege, sir.”

  “You’re Ted Breevort’s boy? Live up Charity Way in the brick French place? And now you work in TV?”

  “He’s very quick, isn’t he?” Bobby Breevort said to Virginia. He gestured to a member of his crew.

  Cleveland said, “Sure. I know you, sure. You came around in drag for trick-or-treat once. That’s you, isn’t it?”

  Breevort winked at Virginia. To her, he said, “He’s a treasure.”

  “That was the best Halloween rigout I’ve ever seen. This kid had me completely buffaloed,” Cleveland said to Virginia.

  “It’s good to see you,” Breevort said. He folded his arms around a clipboard and held it to his chest. “How’s the rest of the family? Howdy?”

  “Howdy’s your age,” Cleveland said.

  “Nice to know he’s keeping up.” Breevort touched Cleveland’s arm and winked at him.

  A girl in painter’s pants joined them. She said, “Bobby, about half the monkeys are here. Curt’s got ’em down the hall for graham crackers. Lights are almost hot enough. Curt’ll do prep in another fifteen. Maybe Ginny should go into makeup.”

  Breevort consulted a stop watch that hung from a long string around his neck. Also around his neck were headphones. The set for Virginia’s show was being assembled by two scruffy teenagers. The brightly colored flats were cracked and taped and peeling. Breevort sent the girl away. “Show-time’s coming. Ginny, you want to go into makeup?”