Oh!

by Mary Robison

  “You poor children,” Cleveland said. “How did I raise such fools?”

  Howdy said, “We’ve been planning it, Mo and me.”

  “I want out of here,” Maureen said. “I want out of everything.”

  “There’s no way out of life,” Cleveland said. He slumped into his chair. “Your mother is dead, you two. She’s been dead for years. She had a cancer in her stomach and she wasn’t right in the head. She was never right in the head. You must have known she was sick. She was never a factor in your lives. Praise God, she never wanted to be. She was an insane woman who lost all her teeth. She didn’t go back to Ireland. She went to a mental institution downstate and when I’d visit her she didn’t know who I was. All she ever asked for was Coke and chocolate and cigarettes. Those were the things she cared about, and not either of you. I thought you knew this stuff. I thought you never said anything, but that you knew all about it. If you’d gone to see her, she wouldn’t have known who you were. She would have asked you for a Hershey bar, is all. I thought you were smart enough to figure all this out.”

  A low, growling moan came from outside. Cleveland, Lola, Howdy, Maureen, and Violet turned to look at the window, where Chris had his face mashed against the screen.

  “It’s Dad!” Violet said.

  “I’m trying to fit through these little holes,” Chris said. “But I’m afraid it’s too much of a strain. Do you get it? A strain?”

  4

  The golf shoes were white suede with brown saddles so highly polished they seemed lacquered in the moonlight. Maureen used the chromed spikes on the soles to rake the tenth green. The shoes were her father’s. She shuffled along inside them, leaving scars on the grass behind.

  “Golf is hard,” she said.

  Chris was lying on his side on the ground.

  “Let’s make golf easier,” she said.

  She used the shoes to tear up the cup and make a big hole.

  Chris said, “When you’re done, I think you should rip out that sapling over there.”

  Maureen found the little spruce and tore it out of the ground. She was wrestling with a young birch that was her own height when Chris said, “Why don’t you lay off that particular guy?”

  Maureen stopped fighting the tree. She leaned against it with all her weight and got the tree over on its side.

  Chris rolled over and patted the grass three times. “That’s a pin,” he said.

  Maureen was dirty. Her clothes were torn. There were thorn scratches on her arms and legs. She had marched back and forth over her father’s roses on her way to the golf course. She had twigs and leaves tangled in her hair.

  “You’re overdoing it,” Chris said.

  “Think so? What if your mom just died?”

  Chris rolled over again, and cradled his head in his clasped fingers, face to the stars.

  Maureen headed off for the country club.

  Trotting, Chris caught up with her. She led him to a bike path and they followed it to the swimming pool. Racks of powerful lights blazed down on a temporary stand of bleachers. A crowd of parents in colorful clothes sat shoulder to shoulder waiting for the next event. The green water was still, but it floated wiggling stripes of reflected light neatly divided into four lanes. At the end of each lane, on a numbered wooden box, a boy stood poised to dive.

  “Bang!” Maureen yelled from behind a section of Cyclone fence. One kid hit the water and a lot of angry faces turned in Maureen’s direction. She followed a walk along some practice greens and passed a squadron of rental carts.

  The lounge was open. It was a big empty room with Campbell plaid carpeting, scarlet walls, and framed copies of hunting prints.

  “Judas Priest,” said the bartender as Maureen took a stool and kicked off her shoes.

  “Pernod,” she said.

  “Don’t make me laugh,” the bartender said.

  “Another asshole,” Maureen said.

  Chris took the stool next to hers. He ordered a glass of ice.

  “Is this Mo Cleveland?” the bartender said.

  “I hate an educated bartender,” Chris said.

  The bartender showed Chris a black Louisville Slugger he kept by the rinsing sink.

  “I see,” Chris said. “You want to see mine?”

  “Out,” the bartender said.

  “Not out,” Chris said.

  “Shut up,” Maureen said. “Both shut up.”

  “My name is Bill Death,” the bartender said.

  Maureen took a bottle of bourbon and went to a booth.

  “That can’t be done,” the bartender said. “You can’t take that bottle. Could you get her to bring back the bottle?”

  “Charge it,” Chris said. “She just lost her mother.”

  “I don’t care if she just lost Michigan, get that bottle back from her.”

  “I’m not getting the bottle for anyone,” Chris said.

  Maureen stood up and threw the bottle at the bartender. Chris caught it. “Your problem’s solved,” he said. He poured bourbon into his glass of ice and carried the glass out, trailing Maureen.

  “You can’t take a drink out of this room!” the bartender called. He started after them, gripping his Louisville Slugger.

  The three of them hurried, single file, through the empty lobby of the country club. The bartender, behind Chris, raised his bat.

  5

  Howdy was talking to a curtain in his apartment. “Haven’t I come a long way?” he asked the curtain.

  His kitchen phone rang and Howdy excused himself. He went to the telephone and lifted the receiver and immediately set it back down. “That was no one,” he said.

  “Are you sure that was no one?” he said in a falsetto.

  “Of course I’m sure,” he answered. “Where was I? Oh, yeah, how long a way I’ve come. The last time I lost a loved one—”

  “Stephanie?” he asked in falsetto.

  “Right. When I lost old Steph, I broke this place to pieces, and now I’ve lost someone else and instead of breaking things, I’ve decided to repair all the earlier damage as a constructive way of dealing with grief. I call that coming a long way.”

  The phone rang again. In the falsetto voice, he said, “You’d better get it. That would be the mature thing.”

  He went to the kitchen and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Signoracci,” a girl’s voice said. “Tits.”

  “Yeah,” Howdy said.

  “How do you like it for a first name? New name, new image.”

  “Tits Signoracci?” Howdy said.

  “Sticks in the mind,” she said.

  “It’s clever,” Howdy said with no interest.

  The girl said, “We’re going all the way this time or fuck it. We found a kid from Detroit with a hand-held probe synthesizer. Knocks them on their gourds. He shaves his head, the kid. I shaved mine, too.”

  “Sounds good,” Howdy said.

  “We’ve got like five o’clock shadow, you know? Did I forget our boots?”

  “Bigger boots?” Howdy said.

  “Crueler boots,” the girl said. “Like for kicking in heads. Made in England. We make a fucking good gig. People go nuts.”

  “Which people?”

  Signoracci said, “The audience, man. We did a gig at the Jewish Center.”

  “Now you’re talking,” Howdy said.

  Signoracci said, “You could smell it, man. People were really torn up. I got fucking pulled off the stage.”

  “Maybe I’ll hear you sometime.”

  “Fucking right,” the girl said. “So what are you doing?”

  “Talking to myself and answering back in a different voice.”

  “Yeah, I like to do that all the time,” she said. “I can really get into it. Like, sometimes, I become a guy who’s coaxing myself into doing something knobby.”

  “Yeah,” Howdy said.

  “I really freak, man.”

  “I’ve just wrapped the phone cord around my neck about eight t
imes,” Howdy said.

  “I do that too.”

  “I’m looking at a jar of Hellman’s,” Howdy said. “I’m in my kitchen.”

  “I’m in my bathroom, looking at a box of Light Days.”

  “My mother’s dead,” Howdy said. “I didn’t really think I’d tell you that. Now I’m looking at a bottle of Louisiana Hot Sauce.”

  “I wish you hadn’t told me about your mom. It’s none of my business. I, anyway, don’t believe anybody really dies all the way. That’s just crap.”

  “Who does vocals besides you? The Detroit guy?” Howdy asked.

  The girl said, “Yeah. I mean, he’s doing it. Sounds like nobody I can think of. So you’re handling this thing about your mom and just working it out?”

  Howdy said, “If I dropped to my knees and you screamed into the phone, all the wire around my throat carrying your voice would choke me to death. Maybe there’s a song in that for you.”

  “No, man,” the girl said. “My voice would keep you alive, even if your heart didn’t get oxygen and stuff. It’s just energy. You know, you’re out of the group.”

  “I guessed that,” Howdy said.

  “It’s more like you quit than like I’m saying get out. But this time we’re going for it all. You were holding us back, and we didn’t realize it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Howdy said.

  He hung up the phone. He took the cord from around his neck and began to assemble his apartment. First, he collected all the shards of broken glass and made a pile of them on top of the television. He turned on the set. He sat down and watched. He watched until he fell asleep.

  6

  The drink,” the bartender said, behind them. “Give me back the drink or I’ll knock it out of your hand.”

  Chris turned and emptied his glass on the bartender and then he hurt him with a left. Maureen sprinted for the doors. Chris caught up with her, and they walked together through the parking lot. They handed a cigarette back and forth. Maureen sprinted off again. This time Chris stayed where he was.

  She kept on the grass because she was barefoot. An hour’s walk took her to a picnic park that ran beside the Skheenough River. The park closed officially at dusk. Maureen stayed in the shadows to avoid prowl cars. Out on the wide slow river, a police boat trawled and now and then played a spotlight over the shore.

  She walked another hour. Her legs gave out and she sat on a bench. She clawed at the bites on her ankles.

  There was a bridge in her view, massive in the dark, that groaned and sang with intermittent traffic. Small craft were tied up in quiet lines at a boat slip.

  From behind her, a voice said, “So what’s your story?”

  A small sun ignited in her face.

  Maureen said, “I want a cigarette.”

  She was given a cigarette and a lighter. She snapped the lighter and saw the patrolman. He was a short, featureless shape in the dark.

  “Have you been attacked?” he said.

  “Death in the family. My mom. Just trying to walk it off.”

  “Walk it off somewhere else,” the patrolman said.

  Maureen started crying in a brand-new way.

  “I’m sorry,” the patrolman said. He withdrew into the shadows. He returned and gave her a folded square of paper, a perfumed towelette.

  “Wash ‘N’ Dry,” he said.

  Maureen mopped her face.

  The park patrolman ran up the aerial on his walkie-talkie and croaked into the box. Most of what he said was numbers. He stood away from Maureen, who smoked the cigarette to the filter.

  A silver car with a side-mounted spotlight came up fast. Its braking back tires scuffed gravel. The driver had a brief conference with the patrolman and then gave Maureen the once-over with his flashlight.

  “It’s home or else,” he said.

  Maureen got into the car, which was immaculate but smelled of fish. The driver spoke into his radio—more numbers—then asked Maureen her address.

  She said, “It’s Eleven Barnstable Court. But you don’t know where that is because it’s a new street just put in for two new houses that were just built. My husband and I just moved in. The way to get there is to go to the River Twin Drive-In. It’s not far from there, and then I’ll walk the rest of the way because the road’s not paved yet and it tears off mufflers.”

  The driver, who was young and wore aviator glasses, drove much too fast for Maureen. They rode in silence, then slid to a stop under the marquee for the drive-in theater.

  “Where do I go?” the driver said.

  “All the way in to the back row.”

  “That’s where you live?”

  “No, but there’s a bunch of trees around a little gully and then on the other side are the new houses. I’m saving you ten minutes doing it this way.”

  The driver sighed, dropped his gear stick, and went through the ticket gate. From a projection booth that looked like a bunker, light sprayed in a fan that trapped insects. On the enormous rectangle, Clint Eastwood clenched his jaw muscles.

  The driver cut his car sideways, into the last row. He threw his spotlight on the border of trees, to a house beyond.

  “See?” Maureen said. “That’s it.”

  The driver said, “That’s an uninhabited house. No one lives there.”

  “It’s pathetic, I know, but we’re just starting out,” Maureen said, and popped open her door.

  She hid among the cars and speakers. She didn’t look back to see if the patrol car stayed or gave up and left. She settled on the ground next to a station wagon loaded with teenage boys. She watched Clint Eastwood squint his eyes.

  “How about a beer?” one of the boys called down to her.

  “Hey, cootie. Hey, roach,” one of the other boys said.

  “Like a beer?” said the first boy again.

  “Idiots,” Maureen said.

  Something flew from the car and landed ten feet from her. It was a beer can.

  “Cootie,” the first boy said.

  “Fucking pipe down,” Maureen said.

  7

  Cleveland spat out the grounds that he had taken in with the last of his last cup of coffee. He slumped, propping his head with fists under cheekbones. He didn’t look up when Chris came in.

  “I’m making breakfast,” Chris said. “You know it’s already four? I’ll sleep in Violet’s room when I’m through eating. I want to be there when she gets up.”

  He found eggs and a package of bacon. “Where’s bread?”

  Cleveland shrugged. “How the hell should I know?”

  “In your own house, you don’t know? Where would you look for butter?”

  “Try the cupboard,” Cleveland said.

  “You’re kidding. You think you keep butter in a cupboard?”

  “Did I say that?” Cleveland said.

  Chris was rooting around in the refrigerator. He found a soup bowl in plastic wrap. “Is this chip dip? What is this orange stuff?”

  “Wake Lola up and ask her,” Cleveland said.

  Chris heated a frying pan and laid in bacon. While it was cooking, he sipped from the bowl of orange food. “Holy God, gazpacho! It’s dynamite!” He swallowed it down, scrambled eggs in the bacon fat, made toast, and a new pot of coffee.

  “Whatever chance I had with my children, I lost last night,” Cleveland said. “I can’t be their father anymore. They don’t want me to be, and I don’t blame them.”

  “They won’t forgive you,” Chris said. “I’d never count on it if I were you.”

  “You have to help them now,” Cleveland said.

  “Don’t need help,” Chris said. “I wish there were some parsley for this soup.”

  “You’re in charge.”

  “Sure,” Chris said.

  “I’m out of it.”

  “That’s for the best,” Chris said.

  “If you’d seen their mother,” Cleveland said.

  “They should have,” Chris said.

  Birdsong came through the window
. Cleveland got slowly to his feet. He walked around in the kitchen, took down a bottle of Scotch, put it away.

  He went far back into the house and sat at the desk in his office for a couple of hours. When the sun was up, he went into his front yard and stood around. After a time, he walked off toward Howdy’s place.

  Howdy’s television was on. He had worked through the night, constructing broken furniture and books and plates into peculiar heaps. Cleveland had to duck under a stretched canvas that Howdy had jammed crosswise into his empty hall. Howdy was in a kind of tent made of bed sheets and clothesline, with coffee table parts for struts.

  “Chris loved your soup,” Cleveland said.

  “Good,” Howdy said.

  “I don’t know,” Cleveland said. He sat, balancing on the edge of the sofa bottom. Howdy had flipped the sofa over again. They sat in silence. Howdy fell asleep in his tent.

  Cleveland reached for the television and turned up the sound. Virginia was on the screen.

  “Who’s done something good for another person?”

  A kid’s voice said, “I took brownies to a lady who’s dying. Like for my mom.”

  “And has anyone ever done something they weren’t supposed to do?” Virginia asked. There was a lot of laughter from the kids. “How do you feel when you do something bad?” Virginia said.

  “When I get punished,” a kid’s voice said, and the shot changed to include the children, “I know my mama’s doing it for my own good.”

  “Let’s talk about dads,” Virginia said. “Have you ever thought about all the things daddies do for us?”

  A voice offscreen that Cleveland recognized as the clock’s said, “I know a thing. They go to work and fight all that terrible traffic.”

  “Aren’t they wonderful?” Virginia said.

  Cleveland looked at his sleeping son.

  8

  Violet, on her way to the bathroom, tripped over Chris, who was asleep on the rug. He righted himself and blinked. He had used a stuffed bear for a pillow, and his neck hurt.

  “Breakfast for you,” he said.

  “Lola’s not around,” Violet said. “Can I have Cocoa Puffs?”

  In the kitchen, Chris took the glass pot from the electric brewer and drank all the rest of the coffee. He smoked a cigarette while Violet ate her cereal. He went with her to her bathroom and supervised the washing of her face, the brushing of her teeth, the combing of her hair. Together they straightened her room, which was a chaos of clothes and toys and midget furniture. He argued with her briefly about which clothes she would wear for the day, advocating shorts and a T-shirt over Violet’s choice of a swimsuit. She yielded to him, and he left her to dress. As he closed the door, he heard her say, “Shit.”