Why Did I Ever. Mary Robison

I guess the people from the Sexual Crimes Division have relocated him for safekeeping in some other hotel.

      72

      My thoughts about Paulie are a thing, over there, I’ll have to go through and sort sometime. Maybe keep some of it separate.

      73

      Rain batters the trees until they’re slick and dripping. There is certainly, outside, a lot going on.

      74

      And whatever the thing I was looking for, it’s maybe in my hand, mouth, on my fucking head, whatever the thing.

      75

      “I’m at the store,” I say to the ringing phone.

      Nevertheless, Belinda’s revolting voice issues on my brand-new answering machine. “Our edits have been formally delivered. They’re on Lionel Shumacher’s desk,” says she. “Now all we can do is pray.”

      I don’t care what the fuck she’s talking about. And Belinda’s afraid of chain letters. She shouldn’t be allowed to pray.

      Are You Sure You’re All Right

      Daughter Mev lives in a rental, a white house with red shutters and doors. Inside are sunny rooms, gleaming golden hardwood floors.

      “Try this,” she says, giving me a spoon of something to taste from her mixing bowl.

      “Um, I’m not really very—”

      “What, Mother? These eggs are like, from hens who were pets.”

      I say, “There’s Methadone in your refrigerator. Mightn’t it have an effect on the neighboring foods?”

      “You don’t get any of this, changed my mind,” says Mev.

      77

      Now we’re seated on the floor together and I have a hand outstretched as Mev silently, painstakingly brushes my nails with a coppery lacquer.

      There behind her is the stepladder she painted cornflower blue, and stacked on the ladder’s rungs are clay pots in which there’re hearty examples of the cephalopod plants that grow so very well down here in the country’s dumps.

      Mev moved here with a Methadone habit. Over a year ago. After she had spent six months in rehab. Which she disliked.

      Now, weekdays and Saturdays she rides the Amtrak over the pine-woodsy border into Louisiana, where Methadone can be legally obtained. For Sundays she’s given little plastic take-home vials.

      Leave Some for Others

      You don’t want to bother Miss Mev sometimes, she’s a very preoccupied person. Anyway, if she were involved in something, you’d have to tackle and maybe blind her to get her to stop.

      79

      I say to myself, “Whatever it is you think you’re doing right now? Lying on the couch there, doing whatever it is you think? You’re going to have to cut it short, know what I mean?”

      “Stop pestering me,” I say. “I have problems to solve. Be with you soon as I can.”

      But, But, But

      “They’re replaying The English Patient,” says the Deaf Lady.

      She says, “Which I have to confess I like.”

      Hollis has such a look of disdain, she adds, “All right, so I’m a sucker for a love story.”

      “No,” I say, “you most certainly are not. The English Patient is the most profoundly important movie ever made.”

      And when Hollis wants to talk I won’t let him. I say, “You’re only going to say something incorrect about The English Patient!”

      After he slumps off, the Deaf Lady and I relax and spread out on the bench a little. There is a white sky overhead and a flock of screaming birds.

      I’m positive The English Patient is a good movie that I too would enjoy.

      81

      A paperwad pops around in the grass. It blows over my way and catches between my shoes. I snatch it up, undo the crinkled page.

      “What’s it say?” asks the Deaf Lady. She props her chin on my shoulder so she too can read.

      Printed in faint shaky capitals is “you will obey me.”

      “Who in the world . . . ,” I say.

      “Oh, that’s the mailman,” says the Deaf Lady.

      “How so?” I ask.

      “It just is,” she says. “Believe me. Pay no attention. It’s some Freudian nightmare he’s trapped in, you don’t want to know.” She takes the note away from me, wads it back up.

      “Another thing that happened,” she says. “I went to play my Walkman and found a tape stuck in there. It was the soundtrack to Les Misérables. Show tunes? I never listen to that junk.”

      “No, uh-uh, that’s not right,” I say and lower my eyes to look straight into hers. “That didn’t happen to you. That happened to me. Remember my telling you about it? Remember that we decided Hollis was playing a trick? Do you even own a Walkman?”

      “Well, I do, yes,” she says. “However, of everything I’ve been telling you, Olive. I found a strange tape. I had a memory that isn’t my memory. My owning a Walkman is not the astounding part.”

      I have to ask her sometime who is Olive.