by Mary Robison
“I’d like to see that,” Cleveland said.
“Makeup,” Virginia said, “is just me standing over by that mirror putting on makeup.”
“I can get lost if you want,” Cleveland said.
“Time for me to look busy,” Breevort said.
“Where can I stand to be out of the way?” Cleveland said.
Breevort said, “Anywhere but in front of that camera. Say, do you want to go on today? Do you want to be in the show?”
“Hell, yes,” Cleveland said.
“No,” Virginia said.
“Well, you two hash it out,” Breevort said. “I’m off to the control booth.” He walked away, pushing off the balls of his feet with each step so that his gait moved him in a lively fashion. He looked to Cleveland twice Howdy’s age. His sparse hair was high off his brow, his fleshy face was already seamed with wrinkles, his short body was bottom-heavy.
“That’s a very special young man,” Virginia said.
“Looking at him,” Cleveland said, “I just realized my kids don’t look near as old as they’re supposed to.”
Virginia sent Cleveland through heavy doors and down a hallway. On the cinder-block walls were enlarged black-and-white photographs of local newscasters—one of Virginia. It was an old picture. She had had darker hair, twinkling eyes, painted-on freckles.
Cleveland entered a big room, a cafeteria with long benches attached to long tables. There was an assortment of grown-ups in casual Saturday clothes who sat with children in dresses and suits. Children who weren’t seated were running and yelling and throwing things. A boy Violet’s size was weeping. A man dressed as a clock was at the front of the room, making some kind of announcement.
“Lavatory?” Cleveland called to him. “Hey, Grook, the convenience!”
All the adults and most of the children looked at Cleveland. The clock yelled directions: “Two doors down! On your right!”
The weeping boy repeated the instructions to Cleveland.
A father was in the men’s room, on his knees before a little girl. He was scrubbing at her skirt with a wetted paper towel. The girl looked up at Cleveland, terrified.
“Hi, darlin’,” Cleveland said. “I’m just here to wash up.”
“We’re all through,” the father stammered. He led his daughter to the door. “Mommy’s out of town,” he said.
“See, I told you,” Cleveland heard the little girl say as the door swung closed.
He looked at himself in the mirrors over the sinks. He put on dark glasses, went into a stall, and had some straight warm brandy from a flask. He went back to the mirror. He checked the hall outside—it was empty. Back inside, in the stall, he finished the brandy in the flask.
He headed for the cafeteria. He lurched sideways and had to stop against the wall for a moment. He heard people behind him and got swiftly onto one knee. He pretended he was adjusting the heel of his shoe.
“These damn new shoes,” he said.
14
The racks of overhead lights were blazing whitely. One of the scruffy teenagers pointed a huge camera on wheels at Virginia, who was talking to the man dressed as a clock. Virginia’s guests, the children, were scattered all over the set. The girl in painter’s pants guarded Virginia’s mike cord. The floor manager, a pudgy girl in shorts, was making finger signs. Cleveland stood off with the parents and tried to see over the equipment. They watched a monitor that was on a chair seat far to the side of the action.
“Stay with us through these short announcements,” Virginia said. Her theme music—a bouncy piano piece—came over the studio speakers. Cleveland noticed a second camera pointing at a brightly lit card on an easel. “Be right back,” the card said. The human clock went into some shadows, took a burning cigarette from a person there, and smoked. Virginia, her face a peculiar orange, her eyebrows etched in black, squatted to chat with a little boy who was offering her a blue tablet of gum.
Cleveland moved a parent and walked over a little river of cables to stand next to Virginia.
“Fifteen seconds!” Bobby Breevort’s amplified voice said. On the monitor, a commercial for a doll was winding down.
“Let’s announce our wedding,” Cleveland said.
“Get off,” Virginia said.
Cleveland threw an arm around her. “Let’s tell them all about it. You’re going to be Mrs. Virginia.”
“Please,” she said, and pushed him.
“Five!” Breevort’s voice called.
“Just an idea,” Cleveland said.
As he backed off, his feet fouled in the cables and he nearly fell down. He rejoined the parents, who were giving him polite smiles.
“Hello, again,” Virginia said to the camera. “Before we go to prayer corner—are we all set for prayer corner, today? For a little quiet time? A peaceful time in our busy day? Good. Before we do, I want to say hello to Beth and Megan, who’re getting well in Children’s Hospital. And I want to say hello to Violet, who’s sitting right there.” Virginia pointed at the lens. “And I want to thank her for being so wonderful. Hello, Violet.”
“Hello, Miss Virginia!” Cleveland hollered in a little girl’s voice.
15
I need cooler clothes,” Maureen said, bustling across the kitchen.
“Hold it, hold it, wait,” Lola said. “See this person?” She waved an ice-cream scoop at Violet, who was seated at the table in the breakfast room. Violet wore a beat-up, pointed hat, and her mouth had been circled with lipstick. Arranged around her placemat were cardboard animal cutouts, party napkins, a foil-covered horn. Twisted strips of crepe paper hung from the table.
“Jesus,” Maureen said, “you really went all out.”
“I did my bit,” Lola said. “Now fork over the keys to your daddy’s car. I have research to do at the language library.”
“Research, my Aunt Tillie,” Maureen said. “You’re going on a date in those clothes.” Lola was wearing a mint-green shift, nylons, T-strap shoes.
Maureen took the ice-cream scoop away from Lola and rinsed it clean at the sink. She said, “Violet’s had enough white sugar for one lifetime.”
“Hey, she wants it,” Lola said. “And I always say trust the body. It craves what it needs. Violet’s body craves peanut-butter ice cream.”
“That’s what you’re giving me?” Violet said. “You swore it was lemon.”
“I lied,” Lola said. “We don’t have lemon. I don’t think lemon ice cream exists.”
“She lies all the time,” Maureen said. “But woe be to you if you lie.”
“Criticize away. I just took a huge raise off the boss. Double pay for the quadruple load of work I do, like nurse-maiding your child.”
“See how she lies?” Maureen said, and then to Lola: “Couldn’t you just watch her for one more sec, while I get on my bathing suit or something? Here.” She flipped Lola the car keys and left the kitchen.
Lola dropped the keys into her tall pocketbook, which matched her shoes. She scooped ice cream for Violet and served it in a carnival glass cup.
“Let me get finished with this,” she said. She sat opposite Violet at the table and lowered her eyes to a sheet of lined paper. She picked up her fountain pen.
“You promised lemon,” Violet said.
“Silence,” Lola said. “I’m writing a poem.”
16
Virginia and Cleveland and Bobby Breevort were in the darkened cafeteria drinking milk from small cartons. Cleveland said, “Honey, I’m sorry. I didn’t think they’d pick up my voice. Why not just cut that part out of the tape?”
“Actually, just for your info,” Breevort said, “we have to treat a taped performance as if it were live. We can’t afford to tape over or edit, so even though it doesn’t look like it, we’ve timed everything down to the second. And unless Miss Virginia accidentally bares her chest, or one of the kids spits up on camera, or dies, we just plow ahead and show the thing as is.”
“Well, I didn’t know,” Cleveland said, and Virg
inia stared at her milk. “But listen, I don’t want to be insulting, darlin’, I really don’t, but this ain’t exactly the Old Vic or anything and you weren’t doing Hamlet. Yours is a show that only kids and their parents and preachers’ wives watch and maybe a couple of insomniacs. I don’t see how a granddad saying hello to his Violet or teasing you on camera a little could hurt anything.”
“Well, I think you’re seriously missing the point when you say that,” Bobby Breevort said.
Cleveland said, “People at home watching will be delighted to see someone cutting up a little. Putting some real life in the thing. You ought to cut up more often, I think.”
“What we try to do, without my being too heavy about it,” Breevort said, “is we offer a professional product. We do a relatively quiet TV show, with an inspirational slant, to compete with all the slam-bang, noisy, awful, violent junk that kids get every other day of the week. I believe we do a gentle show about being gentle. And I think Ginny’s offended because—”
“A professional product,” Virginia said hotly. “He doesn’t seem to understand that this is my job. This is my chosen work. I take it very seriously. I know the good I do, no matter how small he judges it.”
“I don’t say it’s small. I never said that,” Cleveland said.
“He didn’t really say that,” Breevort said.
“Shut up, Bobby. I don’t interfere with his work. I don’t go around wrecking business deals for him. I’ve never denigrated his soda-pop business,” Virginia said, “or cast aspersions on his baby golf empire—both of which do people so much tremendous good.”
“They don’t hurt anyone,” Cleveland said.
“I can’t believe you would interfere so shamelessly with my professional life, or that you would act so childishly just because a camera was around. You’re worse than the little children I have on, who can’t refrain from yelling and waving to friends in the camera.”
“I didn’t do either one,” Cleveland said.
Breevort said, “Really, Ginny, no major harm was done.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Oh, yes, yes, yes.”
17
Cleveland took Virginia from the studio to her condominium, where she showered and changed. Then he took her to a German restaurant. He ordered martinis. He purchased and then puffed on a narrow green cigar that had been displayed in a glass case under the cash register counter. When the waitress arrived with drinks, Cleveland ordered a second round.
“Not for me,” Virginia said.
“Bring them anyway,” Cleveland said.
The waitress moved off.
Virginia said, “I am starving. I won’t sit here starving and watch you fry your brains with that stuff. I’ll leave first.”
“Now let me just tell you something.” Cleveland leaned close. “I won’t be bullied around by a woman—not ever. It happened to me once, and it won’t happen to me again. You either get your fingers out of my habits or you get yourself out of my life.”
“Softer,” Virginia said.
“I’ve got my ways. I won’t apologize for them.”
Virginia sat very straight and forced a smile. “All right. Let’s save it.”
Cleveland bashed the table with his fist. The plates and glasses jumped. The restaurant went silent. “A little order in the court,” he said.
“Are you finished?” she said.
He puffed on his cigar. He chewed an olive. They were quiet for minutes. Their food order of sausages and sauerkraut came.
“Why don’t we just enjoy our food?” Cleveland said.
But he sent his back, saying the meat was burned.
“Don’t wait for me,” he barked at her. “Eat yours if you can.”
“Better,” he said, when the exasperated waitress returned. He put his knife and fork to work. He ate a little and stopped.
“I’m not going to live with your family,” Virginia said.
“What does that mean? Wedding’s off?”
“No, but I’ve had a very different sort of life than you—than they all lead. I like a serene life, without a lot of noise and crowds. I’m not being unreasonable. Maureen is an adult and a mother. She’s too old to be living at home. Howdy needs a life of his own.”
“And you need a big house, and a live-in maid, and a solid income.”
“Let’s try to talk,” Virginia said.
She spent half an hour explaining to him.
“I can’t ask them to go,” Cleveland said. “You may be right about everything, but I can’t ask them to go. Not after their mother left the way she did.”
“You could tell them, not ask them,” Virginia said. “If you want me, you would set them loose.”
“I can’t,” Cleveland said.
18
Walking with their feet sideways, Maureen and Violet went down into the ravine behind Violet’s play yard. They doubled over and charged up the face of the ravine. Maureen made it to the crest while Violet still churned her legs in a spill of loose gravel below. Maureen stepped into a thicket of blackberries. She was carrying a plastic bucket. “Stay away from here!” she called. “It’s prickly.”
Violet went around the tall berry bushes to a monument-like boulder. She climbed it and looked out over a broad sweep of fairway at a water hazard that shone like gun metal in the white sun. She saw a golf cart turn and go the other way. “Can’t I help?” Violet yelled.
“Help, then,” Maureen yelled back. “Get all the mint leaves you can find.”
Maureen worked the branches, holding the bucket to catch the berries.
“These’ll be wonderful,” she said.
“Jesus Christ!” Violet shouted.
“What are you saying?” Maureen yelled. She kicked her leg free and dried the sweat on her face.
“Mommy!” Violet screamed.
“What?” Maureen’s heart banged. She pushed down branches to sight her daughter.
Violet screamed, “I’m stinging!”
Maureen trampled foliage, thrashing before her with the plastic bucket. She cleared the thicket and saw her daughter, who was beside the huge stone, spinning, dancing, flapping her hands. The air around Violet was dotted with black. There were wasps stuck on her legs, in her hair, on her face.
“Bees!” Violet shrieked.
Maureen swooped at her in a gallop. She punched at the air and caught up Violet’s flying hand.
“Run!” Maureen screamed. They ran onto the golf course, Maureen howling curses.
A golf cart headed for them. It was pink and was covered with a fringed, gaily striped awning.
“Help!” Maureen screamed.
They sprinted fifty yards and then Violet went down. Maureen heard all the air go out of the little body in a gasp when it hit the turf, chest first. Maureen fell to get herself stopped. Violet rolled on the grass, and then lay on her belly, her mouth working, gulping for breath. Maureen froze in the sprawl of her own fall. She watched her daughter, certain that here and now they were both going to die.
The cart coasted up. The driver was a short man in crazy-quilt trousers.
“Is he sick? What should I do?” the man said. He pulled off his golfing glove and stood over Violet with his hands on his bent knees. “My gosh. What happened to his face?”
“Mommy!” Violet screamed.
Maureen was trying to talk. “Wasps,” she managed.
“No problem,” the man said.
“They wanted to kill us,” Maureen gasped.
“Wasps?” the man said. “The bastards, they hurt like hell, don’t they?”
Violet screamed, “Oh, my legs!”
“Hospital,” Maureen said.
“He’s going to be fine,” the man said. “Let’s load him into my buggy, and take him into the clubhouse, and then get somebody to whip him right over to the emergency room.”
“Goddamn fucking bugs,” Maureen said.
“Don’t get him more upset,” the man said.
“You asshole,” Maureen s
aid. “Will you hurry?”
19
Has arrelgy of insect poison,” the Asian doctor said.
“She—has—an—allergy?” Maureen said.
“Arrelgy, okay?”
They were in a hallway of St. Boniface the Greater. Violet had been loaded onto a high tray, given a syringeful of something white, then wheeled off by deliberate-looking medics.
The doctor touched Maureen’s shoulder and hurried away.
“Will she die?” Maureen called to his back.
She went to the admitting room and helped a blowzy receptionist type up a complicated form. The receptionist sat back in her roller chair and admired the paper, which was tangerine-colored. Maureen asked if the receptionist knew anything about wasp stings.
“I’m sure the doctor does,” the receptionist said. “Have a drink of water.”
Maureen waited an hour in the emergency room. She bummed cigarettes. She paced between fiberglass chairs yoked together by steel rods. She telephoned Howdy.
When he showed up, he hurried into the room right past Maureen, and stormed up to the receptionist counter. “Hey!” he called to the vacant swivel chair.
Maureen made a sharp little whistle.
“Okay,” Howdy said. “I’m here.”
“They say they’re going to keep her awhile,” Maureen said.
The woman next to Maureen sighed.
Howdy said, “I couldn’t find Daddy at the TV station, and they couldn’t find Lola at the library, but I got Chris and he’s meeting us at the house.”
“Lola?” Maureen said.
“The husband always comes apart,” said the woman next to Maureen.
“He’s not a husband,” Maureen said.
“I should have known,” the woman said.
The doctor came out through the mechanical doors. He had some charts on a clipboard, a paper box, a ballpoint pen that he snapped continuously. “Your dotta?” he said.
“My daughter,” Maureen said.
“Prease?” the doctor said.
Howdy got out of his seat and the doctor sat down. He showed Maureen the hypodermic kit in the box. He explained how to use it.
“The poison of wasp build up, okay? Cumurative?”