by Mary Robison
“Is cumulative?” Maureen said.
“And so within immediately thirty minute is stung you give this? Prease? Her rungs corrapse if you don’t, okay?”
Maureen put her head in her hands.
“Not to pick any more bellies,” the doctor said. He held up the hypodermic. “Okay?”
20
The village green was a square with trees and lighted globes on iron poles. Cleveland saw fireflies winking over the slatted benches and in the yards of the old homes that bordered the green. He parked his Oldsmobile at a coin meter that was posted with a “Commercial Only” sign, and walked Virginia up the grass. Overhead, the sky streamed with long schools of clouds burning orange in the day’s last sun. A carillon in the dark tower of the Episcopalian church bonged out an evening hymn.
“Flat,” Cleveland said.
“The music?” Virginia said.
“I wouldn’t know about that. I mean the world is flat,” Cleveland said.
Cleveland did a slow turn, and took in the courthouse, the two churches, the old library, the tired houses, the new adobe police station.
“I would say the sky is almost gaudy tonight,” Virginia said.
“Baby doll, this’d be run of the mill for a Texas sunset. When I was a kid, the world was divided in half. The earth part was where you shoved cowshit and where the pigs chewed each other and ate their babies. Everything else was sky. The sky was God’s speech.”
“I like that,” Virginia said.
“Anything with God in it,” Cleveland said.
They walked by some aluminum sheets tacked together into hut shapes. “Bennington Arts Council,” Virginia read from a sign on the ground. “Works by Dina Buzzard.”
“Howdy-type junk,” Cleveland said. He pulled her sleeve and led her away from the sculpture.
“When I was a kid, I made hat bands from snakeskins and leather and sold them for five bucks—a fortune. I killed six snakes one afternoon with my father’s Remington, hung them to rot on a tent-pole setup. I knew I was going to be a millionaire even then. I was Joseph in my third-grade Christmas thing, and I got a standing ovation. I always amazed myself.”
“Are you a millionaire?” Virginia said.
“I went all over Europe in Ordnance Supply—that’s passing out the cannons. It’s a tiny place, Europe, like New York City. People say it’s big, but it’s all closed down and tiny.”
“Are you really a millionaire?” Virginia said.
“I don’t know. Talk to my money man. They’ll tell you, they’ll say, ‘Now, Bob Hope is worth forty million,’ and I say, ‘Yeah? To whom?’ You reach a place, building money, when you realize just that, and it makes you sad. You going to marry me?”
“I think I can. I’ll have to adjust,” Virginia said.
Cleveland said, “That’s right. If it’s any comfort to you, we all adjust every day of our lives. I thought I was sent from the stars. Howdy and Maureen and now you, you’re all showing me I’m just another shithead. I’d marry Lola if she’d have me and if it weren’t crossing the color line. She’s got one foot on earth and the other down deeper than that.”
“She is wonderful,” Virginia said.
“So?” Cleveland said.
“We’ll see,” Virginia said.
21
Chris’s car hurtled down the Cleveland drive, banging and creaking over the potholes, waffling some at the rutted corner.
He got out and tried the garage. He found the sliding glass doors off the patio locked. He pounded the blue front doors. Finally, he took a running jump at the side of the house. He got over Maureen’s balcony railing and came down through the house—to Violet’s bedroom.
Violet had been painted with white ointment. She lay sleeping in her bathing-suit bottom. One of her eyelids was grotesquely swollen, and her left ear was fat under the coat of white. She was brow-knitted, open-mouthed, desperate in sleep.
Chris thought better of lighting his cigarette. He sat gently on the bed, beyond Violet’s feet. He watched. Violet lay cuddled into the stuffed animals that had been arranged around her shoulders.
Chris looked and looked and winced. The right leg was knotty with stings. “And where’s Mom?” he muttered to himself. “This dirty family.”
He tiptoed out and made his way swiftly to his car. From his back seat, he unloaded an oilcloth, a gallon can of gasoline, a plunger-action weed sprayer, rawhide gloves, a stiff cloth hat with fine-mesh netting sewn all around the brim. He took out cans of bug repellent. He sprayed the oilcloth until his nose couldn’t take any more.
22
In her wet right hand, Maureen was squeezing three fingers of her wet left hand. She rocked on Howdy’s sofa and counted aloud to twenty. She was sweating. Her hairline was damp. The back of her blouse was dark.
Howdy breathed into a brown paper sack. He threw the sack to his sister.
“Breathe into it,” he said.
“Call someone,” she said.
“It’ll pass,” Howdy said. He read his pulse. “Way too fast.”
Maureen read her pulse. “Ditto,” she said.
“What would help?” Howdy said.
“Call someone.”
“Yeah, but who? Oh, God. I’ve got to lie down.”
Howdy got onto the floor. Maureen lay face up on the sofa.
“Welcome to the twenty-first century,” Howdy said.
“We’re being ridiculous,” Maureen said. She rolled off the sofa and did pushups and sit-ups and leg lifts.
Howdy ran in place. He chinned himself on the door frame.
They lay down again, panting. “Poor Stephanie,” he said.
“That ratface,” Maureen said.
“A pitiful person,” Howdy said.
“I’d much rather talk about going to see Mother.”
“Aer Lingus from New York or Boston to Dublin. Under three hundred apiece both ways,” Howdy said.
“She knows we’re coming?” Maureen said.
“I’ve written to her. And I’ve got my money together.”
“It’s all going to happen,” Maureen said. “It’s seemed so half-baked and tentative until now.”
“You’re thinking in the old patterns. We’ve got to learn to live bigger, trust ourselves to take risks. Get into the habit.”
“What on earth did you write in your letter?”
Howdy jumped up and went to a drawer. He read aloud from a carbon copy.
“That’s awful,” Maureen said. “That sounds like a business letter. You signed it, ‘Respectfully, Howard Cleveland.’”
“Well, my tactic was this—I didn’t want to scare her,” Howdy said.
“It sounds like you’re working for the FBI. And you didn’t even mention me.”
“You’re the surprise I was talking about. I only wanted to alert her, keep it simple, not freight it with anything. Me and you, the surprise.”
“Yeah, like a plague,” Maureen said.
“You don’t see my tactic,” Howdy said.
“Oh, Howdy. Why are you so odd? Why does your mind work in such twisted ways?”
“Hey!” he said.
“Well, Jesus. If I got a letter like that from Violet someday, I’d open my wrists without blinking. Not even, ‘Warmest regards,’ or ‘Yours,’ or ‘Affectionately’?”
“I’ll read it again,” Howdy said. “‘Dearest Mother, I’m your son, Howard. I am going to visit Ireland soon. I plan to stop off in Donegal and would like very much to see you. I would appreciate it if you would see me. Perhaps we could have dinner together, or go to the theater. I look forward to seeing you. I have a surprise. . . .’”
“That ‘surprise’ sounds ominous,” Maureen said. “Could be anything, but it doesn’t sound like it could be me.”
“We’re going to have to tell Daddy soon, so we can get her right address,” Howdy said. “I also wrote, ‘I hope this letter reaches you.’”
Maureen said, “Congratulations, Howdy. You started every sentence wit
h ‘I.’ Very revealing.”
“‘You may respond with a letter to the above street address, or telephone me.’” Howdy looked up and said, “And then I, you know, I give our phone number.”
“I know.”
“‘I don’t expect you to call or write, however, and so am writing this letter to alert you to my coming sometime early in September. Respectfully, etc.’”
“Good Christ,” Maureen said. “You creep.”
23
Chris had cut a head hole and draped the sprayed oilcloth over himself like a serape. He wore his gloves and hat and carried the gas-filled weed sprayer. He looked in Violet’s play yard, but he found nothing. He searched for half an hour.
He removed his netted hat and immediately spotted a wasp—it was bumping the end of one of the pipes on Violet’s jungle gym. He watched. It bumped the pipe, circled, bumped again, nudging something like a smear of peanut butter.
Chris heard traffic from the faraway interstate. He heard rolling trucks. A plane moaned over in the humid twilight.
The wasp made a figure eight in the air, then zipped away. Another wasp appeared and bumped into the pipe. A third, Chris noticed with a start, crawled over the toe of his boot. There was a whirring, whining sound that faded in and out. Chris put on his hat and followed the first wasp.
The nest was in a far corner of Cleveland’s toolshed, with many outlying bits of nest in the wooden coves all around it. The central dwelling was volleyball-sized, a swollen, delicate contrivance of gray paperlike tissue.
Chris emptied the shed quickly. He flung out tools and toys. He pushed the tractor mower off into the yard.
He was stung three times through his jeans. He was limping when he went back into the shed.
Chris soaked the nest with gasoline. A plume of the misted fuel drifted and condensed on his serape, more collected on his boots. He dropped the sprayer and picked up the can. His wrist tickled between cuff and glove. There were two wasps there which he smashed to paste. A minute later their poison made him think he had broken his arm.
He ran a trail of gas out the door and twenty yards into the lawn. He tossed the can back inside. From his pocket, he took his cigarette lighter.
“Here comes hell!”
He caught fire before the shed did. His oilcloth serape blew a white flame up at his face. He rolled in the high, rain-drenched grass. The explosion came—much louder, much more violent than he had expected. The blaze from the shed went thirty feet into the air and the building snapped and roared.
Chris sat up and chuckled. He watched the toolshed go.
24
World War Three,” Howdy said.
“That was close,” Maureen said.
They hurried downstairs, across the lawn to the house, and ran around the house to the back.
“Holy God!” Howdy said.
“What’s that?” Maureen said.
Chris, draped in the tablecloth and still wearing his bee hat, was limping away from the inferno. He yanked off his gloves and slammed them to the ground.
“He may be dangerous,” Howdy said.
“Are you dangerous?” Maureen called. “Going to blow up the house next?”
Chris threw his hat on the grass. He looked at his wrist. He pulled off the tablecloth and sat down in a squat. His fingers shook.
Howdy said, “Dad’s going to break wide open when he sees this. He’s going to come after you, Chris.”
“I care,” Chris said.
Howdy moved closer to the fire. “It’s beautiful. I’ve got to say that much,” he said.
“You did it this time,” Maureen said. “You did it and tied a ribbon around it. Daddy’ll kill you for this.”
Chris said, “Maureen, what were you and Howdy doing? You left Violet alone? Where were you? Lying in a puddle somewhere talking about Mommy?”
“Of course not,” Maureen said. “Violet is sedated. There’s nothing I could do but watch her sleep.”
“I want Violet,” Chris said. “And I frankly think I could get her. I don’t trust you to be around her. Not you or any of your family. You people are not responsible enough, not mentally or physically or anything.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Maureen said.
“Case in point.” Chris nodded at Howdy, who was smiling broadly at the blaze.
Maureen sighed and nodded. She sat on the grass beside Chris. “You smell very bad,” she said.
“I caught on fire,” he said.
“I’m going to see my mother. Nothing will stop me.”
Chris said, “Not with Violet, you’re not. Unless you want to take me with you. I’ve got the rest of my prize money to pay my way.”
“Fine,” Maureen said.
“Fine,” Chris said. “It’s settled.”
“Yes, it’s settled,” Maureen said. “You’ll come with us. Actually, it’s a good idea because I didn’t really trust Howdy to handle everything.”
Chris said, “The trip could be a honeymoon.”
“Why not?” Maureen said. “Marrying you is no different than not marrying you.”
“Don’t try to act nuts, Maureen. You do it well enough without trying. I swear I can’t keep up with you. Here I am burning up six different ways, and I can’t even tell if you’re serious.”
“Neither can I,” she said, and sighed. “But, Chris? I do admire you for burning down the toolshed. Sometimes, I guess, the admiration I feel for you is love, like. Or maybe not. Anyway, I can’t picture myself with anyone else.”
“You lack imagination,” Chris said. “Don’t you know how come I torched the toolshed?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Maureen said, and sighed again. “It’s a symbol.”
“Jesus,” Chris said. “Jesus goddamn Christ.”
25
Cleveland stopped at a Frigid Twist for chocolate cones.
Dusty baseball players on racing bikes swept around the parking lot in big circles. One, who had a brown stick of candy stuck in his mouth like a cigar and his fielder’s mitt on his head, yelled, “Hey, homo!” at Cleveland.
Whistling without music between licks at his cone, Cleveland drove off, heading homeward. He savored the quiet cabin of his big automobile. Virginia was sweetly, gently raking his bare steering arm with her pretty nails. She made small, white lines on his tan.
A hook and ladder truck, an ambulance van, and a constable’s car were moving in file out Cleveland’s drive.
“Be calm,” he said to Virginia.
She said, “They aren’t using their flashers, and they’re leaving, not coming.”
“So you can be calm,” he said. “I mean, I guess it’s all burned down already.”
The passenger in the constable’s car, a young man in a cop’s hat, saluted them jauntily.
Cleveland sped up the drive and jogged into the house by way of the kitchen door. Howdy was in the breakfast room, his elbows to either side of a glass of buttermilk.
“Give it to me slow,” Cleveland said.
“Violet’s sleeping. All’s well,” Howdy said.
“Well, sonny, I want you to know I just ran into your guests in the big red trucks.”
“I know. I bet it took some years off you.”
Cleveland said. “You fetch my automatic pistol so I can kill you or somebody once and for all.”
“Chris, you mean,” Howdy said, and then he told his story.
26
Chris was watching television with Maureen. He wore one of Cleveland’s bathrobes and a big, complicated, torn-sheet-and-masking-tape bandage on his raised shin. He said, “I’ll talk,” but Cleveland moved quickly out of the room. Virginia followed him without saying a word. She didn’t glance at Maureen or Chris. Howdy moseyed in from the kitchen, yawning.
“What’s this?” Howdy said, looking at the TV.
“Nothing,” Maureen said.
“Just excrement,” Chris said.
Howdy got down, cross-legged, and watched with them. “Daddy’s
not mad,” he said. “He’s trying to be, but he’s really not.”
“That’s a surprise,” Maureen said.
“Every now and then, your father and I understand each other,” Chris said. “Or at least we have a sort of sympathetic reaction to life.”
“Ha!” Howdy said.
“Makes sense,” Maureen said.
27
Violet looked terrible. The unguent on her ear and eyelid had dried and cracked, making the flesh seem broken in the light that came from the hall. She groaned in her sleep.
Virginia watched without expression.
Cleveland sat on the bed and moved Violet’s limbs, studying them. He brushed a little band of damp hair from her cheek and she whimpered.
“It’s all right,” he said.
She turned onto her back and made a circle with her arms, wanting to be picked up.
Cleveland stroked her forehead until she slept soundly again.
“Not bad,” he said.
“You come with me,” Virginia said. She took him to his bedroom. “I’m so angry I could weep,” she said. “Did you see what I saw? That child—that dear child—stung and distorted even while she sleeps. Where is her mother?”
“You know where Mo is.”
“Yes. Not with her child. Watching TV. She’s hysterical and egocentric and thoroughly irresponsible.”
“Let me get on a light,” Cleveland said.
“No! I don’t want to see your face. This family is a mess. It’s my fault I’m not loving enough or good enough to help here. But I’m not. It’s too big a mess, and too painful for me.”
Cleveland said, “A bad week, is all. You caught us with our pants down.”
Virginia heaved three great courage-giving breaths. “It isn’t the chaos,” she said. “It’s the hopelessness. Your family’s situation is hopeless because there isn’t enough intelligence here. Not one of you can save himself or stop himself from harming the others because you just don’t think. You have lost the habit of thinking.”
“I see,” Cleveland said.
They went silently into the kitchen together. Virginia put a kettle of water on the stove. She worked cupboards and pantry shelves, took down cans and boxes, considered them, and put them back.
“No one’s fault,” Cleveland said. “The wasps.”