1987-Vol23

QUARTO The Literary Magazine of the School of General Studies Columbia University

Volume 23 Spring 1987

Submissions Current and recent General Studies students—including special students and students in other branches of Columbia University who are taking G.S. writing courses—are encouraged to submit to Quarto.

We welcome poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and plays, including excerpts from longer works.

Each submission should be accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope. Please include your name, address, and phone number (optional) on your manuscript.

Manuscripts may be submitted elsewhere while under consideration at Quarto; just notify us of acceptance by another publication.

Executive Editors Jany Sabins Juan Julian Caicedo Clifford Sterling Associate Editors Lorraine Cento Christopher Danzer Yasmin Harwood Robert Hillman Joanna Lapkin David Lehrer Elizabeth Martini Michaela Naton Owen Ranta Jerry Ritter Marie Scott Katherine Sheng Margaret Styne Amada Alcantara Terrero Julie White

Address all submissions and correspondence to: Quarto 608 Lewisohn Hall Columbia University New York, New York 10027

Director, Writing Program J.R. Humphreys Faculty Advisor Geoffrey Young Our thanks to Larry Zirlin of Philmark Lithographies.

® 1987 by Quarto ISSN 0735-6536

QUARTO IS EDITED BY STUDENTS ENROLLED IN LITERARY MAGAZINE EDITING AND PUBLISHING

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1 Contents 9 Dandelions by Meaner Blakeslee 18 My Cat Randall by I. M. Isobe 25 A Crush on Albert Einstein by Elisabetta di Cagno 27 The Screamer by Elisabetta di Cagno 38 Child Bathing with Mother by Pamela Pearce 41 Philip in the Ice Field by Glen Hirshberg 44 Weekend by Joy Parker 53 Papa and the Rock by Catherine Mathis 57 Mother's Choice by Catherine Mathis 64 On Old Broadway by Pamela Krafczek 71 The Voice Lesson by Elizabeth Tippens 78 A Legal Secretary by Frances Snowder 85 The Authors

Claire Watson

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MERMER BLAKESLEE

QUARTO PRIZE THIS YEAR'S QUARTO PRIZE FOR OUTSTANDING LITERARY ACHIEVEMENT IS SHARED BY

Dandelions

MERMER BLAKESLEE FOR

"DANDELIONS" AND I. M. ISOBE FOR

"MY CAT RANDALL" CHOSEN BY ALAN ZIEGLER AND PHYLLIS RAPHAEL FROM THE CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE.

FIRST DAY I DUG OUT 24 of them, second day 16, third day 12. I remembered the numbers. They were always even. And everything was clean, the black marble hearth in front of the fireplace, the tray where her teeth sat. I knew because I cleaned for her, straightened her hall rug — Hastings had brought it back from Persia. Such a good son, she said, would be helping her now, except that he was dead, gone with his father. It was better that way. Boys like their fathers. But they get closer to their mothers, as the years go on, as they get older. She knew, she was ninety.

My mom paid me $2.00 an hour to help her, Mrs. Wooly, outside. She always had such a beautiful garden, Mom said, and it's good for the town. I started May 1st, cleaning out the pachysandra. But then Mrs. Wooly pulled me in, first to undo the top of the new bottle of Italian Lite dressing so she could reopen it when supper came, then to straighten the picture of Mr. Wooly, her husband of sixty-four years, and she lit up saying the numbers. Then it was the lampshade and the rug and I was indoors, with her, fourteen weeks, every day, before and after school. I'd still go outside though to rake the leaves out of the beds, or keep digging the dandelions, 24, 16, 12, 22, always even.

She hated dandelions more than anything in the world. When / worked it, she'd say, there was not a weed, not a weed. She would raise her hand in the air and it looked like a three-pronged garden claw because her ring

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Every year since I was eight, I slept on the porch from April way into October. I couldn't breathe indoors. I only slept inside one night in that time, but that wasn't sleeping, because Monty, my dog, was dying. His legs and belly kept shaking, convulsing, Mom said. He ate bones the day before and they ripped his stomach apart that night and he died. But other than that, I slept outside on the porch floor in my sleeping bag. I didn't even need a mat under me. I was all right because my brother Billy was there and we'd listen to the trucks go by in front of our house and instead of counting sheep, we counted trucks. Across the street was a Shell, Don Cramer's station. The big Shell sign would turn all night and we'd be lit about every two breaths, more yellow than a moon but just that bright.

That's when it started. They were laughing across the street—Crocket was always laughing—it must have been midnight, and they weren't leaving. I wasn't scared but filled with the willies and crept in near my brother. He never had his sleeping bag zipped up all the way so I just got underneath still lying on my bag. He rubbed my belly like Mom used to 'til they left and I went to sleep.

Every night after that we'd sleep like that, unzipped. I'd be on my bag but under his. And then I don't know how it started, Billy rubbed my belly like he always did and then he hit too low one time and started with his fingers, down there, real slow. I just lay there, 1 didn't do anything, though I knew it was real bad. Karen, my oldest sister, had said touching your privates is definitely a sin, and I knew doing it with anyone else, that was even worse. I didn't move. It was my brother committing the sin. But I knew walking to Mrs. Wooly's every morning and then to school that because I didn't want him to stop, I was sinning, too. Still, it wasn't as bad a sin as if I did anything, so I kept on lying there every night pretending I was asleep. He knew I wasn't and I knew he knew and it was our secret. Breakfast was always different after that though no one else saw it.

One night, it was Friday and real late, I couldn't help it, I got all wet. It was like pee but not as much and gooey-er. I closed up inside real quick to stop it and I found out something. Billy's finger was on the outside and I closed up inside and it sent a shot up my belly like when you go up in an elevator and he didn't even know what I had done, that I had done anything. I kept on closing and opening. I was almost happy but it was a bad happy, it was gritty, like sand-paper. But I didn't care anymore. I needed to move. It was getting too hard not to. And now, I could move inside and no one would know I was moving, not even him. The guck dripped into my bag. I kept doing it, closing down like when you have to pee but can't and then I'd open back up and that's about when I started going to Mrs. Wooly's on my own, even on Saturday and Sunday, and when I started counting the dandelions on the way to school.

Sometimes though, Crocket Crote and his gang would race by in their cars, real loud because they didn't have mufflers and sometimes they'd stop at the station and yell back and forth from car to car and then start racing right from there.

I started to see like Mrs. Wooly who saw everything, even lint on the couch smaller than a bug. And Mrs. Wooly's words got sharper. They would come to me out of nowhere, like a chant. "Get under the roots.

Drive straight down with the prong, deep. Get under the roots." Her

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finger and pinky shut back into the palm. She'd rake the air. I hadn't seen a hand that skinny. I was only in seventh grade. I didn't know they could get that way. Mom said it was from gardening, a special kind of arthritis.

Mrs. Wooly hated leaves, too. They'd get caught behind the rhododendron and I'd get them for her. Her neighbors, she'd say, just don't care. I came to care. It came on me suddenly. I'd walk from her house to school, only a quarter mile farther on, and I'd pluck out with my eyes every dandelion I saw and I'd count them, 126, 182,114, 62, all the way to the front door. I liked numbers. I had gotten three periods and I counted the days between them, 42, 65.1 liked even numbers more than odd. That's what got me about the dandelions.

In the morning, I'd drop into her house to empty her commode which smelled worse than any girl's room ever did, and she'd smile her smile that was ninety years old. It would come up almost like a belch from her belly which was tucked under her shoulders and chest because of her stoop, and it would take over her whole body, and then she looked like she had been pretty once. Every single day she'd say, "It's so nice of you to think of me," though I know she knew my mom had made me, though I didn't know if she knew when I switched, when I came because I had to.

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name, too, would come, "Mary Lydia Bentham Sand Wooly, Mary Lydia Bentham S a n d . . . " She had said names were really important, that you always name yourself, even if you don't think you do.

Mrs. Wooly would talk about her last lifetime somewhere in England, and I thought I would have been an animal, a dog wrestling with my brother and hunting woodchuck. I didn't tell her that though. In that house with all the furniture called "pieces" like "eighteenth century Connecticut piece" all so neat and un-sat-upon, those kind of animal thoughts grew tiny. It was a relief. I became very neat, picky-neat. I started lining up the rugs before she'd ask and I'd put the wing chair back just like Mrs. Wooly liked it.

seventy-eight years apart and I emptied her commode.

I still hated the smell but I didn't shy away from it. Instead I leaned into it like you lean into a ball with a bat. Rotting leaves smell exactly the same way except not as strong. When I leaned toward it, it was like an end for me, the end of that move I made inside every night that was all full of sandpaper and that knife that would shoot up my belly and squeal while it ground me down, wore me away.

I didn't want to make a mistake for Mrs. Wooly. I liked how she trusted me. I didn't know for sure if I could be trusted. I thought I could, at least as long as no one knew I had done that moving inside, or as long as I kept it to where no one else could feel it. I wasn't as clumsy in Mrs. Wooly's house. I moved differently, more slowly. I had to. It was crowded. Washing around the commode, I couldn't back up without looking, or I'd back into the walker and tip it over onto a piece. Mrs. Wooly thought everyone, even Florence who she loved and who came every two days, even Florence was careless. Everyone except me. So far.

Mrs. Wooly remembered my grandfather when he was just starting out on his father's farm. She liked Gramp because he was a good father, and she said "father'' with a long " a h " sound so it sounded extra good.

My dad had made his way from the farm up on Mitchell Hollow to being a doctor and her father was a doctor except more famous and so we were as good as sisters. She saw that I started to share the cause against the dandelions and fallen leaves and she felt lighter now. We were sisters

Mrs. Wooly gave me magazines she had already read. When I carried them home against my chest Venture Inward was on top. On the cover, it said "Create Your Own Reality." I didn't know exactly what that meant or how to go about it, what my reality was. Mom always said on Saturdays looking at my room, "You have your work cut out for you." Mrs. Wooly said the same thing about herself and her mom had been dead a long time.

I opened Venture Inward alone in my room although it had nothing dirty in it, I knew that. It had an article on the proof of reincarnation but I didn't read it because my sister was proof enough. She told me it was true, although I couldn't say that to Sister Mary Patrick in Catechism or Mom or Mr. Owens, our guidance counselor. I was happy Mrs. Wooly knew it was true because then, even though I didn't talk to her much, I had less to hide. There were pictures of Egypt and of eyes in pyramids and a picture of an old man named Edgar Cayce. Mom called for me to put away the dishes in the dishwasher and I jumped up saying, "Mary Lydia Bentham..." and stuffed the magazine under my pillow though I knew it wasn't dirty. It was just like when I saw the forsythia that bloomed first on Helen Jacobs' lawn, I plucked it out in my brain before I could tell myself it was a different yellow than the bad dandelionyellow. Now I knew that happinesses were different, too. When the big Shell sign would turn on Billy and me every two breaths and sometimes every three or four, the whole night seemed to bloom in spurts, but it was a weed and it spread by itself, it needed no help, it just grew, I knew it, but I didn't pluck it out, I couldn't, not that.

Mrs. Wooly must have known, too, somewhere down in because she kept saying, "Get the ones that bloomed last night first. They'll spread.

You can't let them go to seed." I grew scared thinking of all the seeds I

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And then she would start again, "Could you, dear, shut the hall window? And while you're out there, could you wind the clock, dear? You have to be very, very careful. I don't trust everybody." I'd start repeating right then "Mary Lydia Bentham.. . " before I even thought about it. It was her great-grandfather's clock and the weights were the size of squashes but pure iron and they hung on thin chains. I didn't want to wind them too hard and make them snap on the way up. I'd often do that at home, push too hard and something would break, a handle off a blue willow cup, and Mom would scream.

Mermer Blakeslee

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had ticked off and watered, how quick the pasture overgrew with burdock after only a year of not mowing. But even Mrs. Wooly couldn't do it. Every morning when I got there, I had to take a frozen chicken wing out of the freezer and put it on the foil in the broiler for her to turn on at noon. She sat in front of her table, hunched over all the cards everyone sent her. She had to sort them into boxes: one to open next Thanksgiving, one to give Miss Schuman who made doilies and stuff for the sick, one for the trash, and one to ''tend to.'' Her "tend to'' pile was always too big and she'd sigh at the work cut out for her that day. She'd still be sitting there when I came back after school, working on her piles.

It took fourteen weeks before I saw Mrs. Wooly get up. I was shocked.

The top of her head came only to my shoulders. She had a huge hump on the top of her back bigger than her head. She leaned into the closet toward a box of envelopes and I got real close to it, the hump. I was breathing on it. It was so big and I wanted to touch it but I felt too young.

I knew it would be as hard as a skull, like a second head grown up in the wrong spot with no eyes, no mouth, no hair. It was pure bone. I saw that.

I wanted to run. I wanted to get out of that house where it was too dark and where I was always so slow and graceful. The smell of her housecoat started to gag me.

I got out but it didn't help. Everything was growing from underneath and no one saw it until it was already there. Even the grass, the green on the lawn just came up in bright patches one morning after a rain. Every spring I try to catch the exact moment, but I never do.

I felt worse every day of the week. I didn't visit Mrs. Wooly once the whole time. I had let Sunday slide by, by accident. And then, I just couldn't get myself to go. It was like trying to jump over a wall of hay or trying to eat one bite of cheese. It became big, bigger than real. I knew that if I just walked through the door, it would be OK, but I couldn't do it. And as the days went by it got worse. Mom didn't push at all. No one said a word. I'd gone there fourteen weeks. Then it happened all at once.

My brother had stayed over at Richard De Long's the night before and this night when he started rubbing my belly under my nightgown, that elevator-knife shot up through my throat first thing. Before he even hit low I was moving inside and then it stopped — the big yellow Shell stopped turning and just glared right on us and filled the whole porch like 14

poison and like sun all bound up together and I couldn't hold it. My insides moved my outside before I knew it—I raised my butt off the floor and my legs flapped open Indian-position and my brother climbed in between them and I knew before he jammed into my inside how it was supposed to be and how rock-hard he'd have to jam to rip me open 'til all that was inside was outside too and I was shot full of a wet heat that spread yellow right into my throat. He stopped pounding and fell against me, and I knew that it was blood as well as guck that got on my sleeping bag and all the yellow turned into fear and I shut my eyes. I didn't want to look. Neither of us moved an inch.

We both acted like we were dead-asleep, though there was electric between us like you'd imagine right before an explosion. Finally—it must have been a couple of hours — I knew Billy was really asleep. I slid out from under him and got up and felt air under my nightgown where I never felt it before.

I needed to run and I ran all the way to Mrs. Wooly's. I ran right up the sidewalk just out of reach of the streetlights as fast as I could run (which is fast since I'm first in my class running-wise) with my nightgown riding right up above my knees. I was all out of breath and there was only a little moon, but I saw it anyway, in the middle of her lawn all bound in by a picket fence, smack in the middle, a pink lump about the size of my brother's dog.

I knew what had happened, I knew the whole thing. They had bloomed and she couldn't sleep and she had made it that far but couldn't get at them, at their roots. She had crumpled over with her fingernails still curled into the dirt under the grass. They were all around her now. More must have bloomed since she collapsed because when I got her up, they made a yellow ring around the spot she had protected with her body.

I carried her into the house. She was lighter than a 100 pound bag of grain. I fell back against her couch holding her. It had become her bed. It was all wet underneath me. She was breathing fast. I sat with her in my lap a long time, until it turned light enough to see her fingernails and the top half of her fingers black with dirt and the grass stains on her pink housecoat. I told her I had changed my name when I was two-and-a-half.

I called myself Marney then and the family caught on and then in school I never said my real name. I said it to her, I whispered it and it didn't 15

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sound at all like me— "Samerna."

Her breathing slowed down. It was very quiet, like a baby's. My arms and thighs were sorer than they'd ever been and so was my inside which felt like it had stitches in it that could break open if I walked too fast. I got my right arm out from under her head and her hump reached the couch first making her neck stick straight up and throwing her head way back. I reached for a pillow behind me to put under her head so she could breathe. Then I got the rest of me out from under her so I could pick the blankets up off the floor and cover her. I put her feet over my thighs so I had a little room to curl up on the other end of the couch. Her left foot fell in limp toward my face. I fell asleep with my neck scrunched against the arm of the couch and woke up cramped but playing baseball in my dream and listening to a cat fight on the neighbor's lawn next door.

Mrs. Wooly was on her pot. I saw her legs. They looked very young but very, very white, paper-white. I felt OK. She knew she'd been on the lawn. Neither of us asked any questions. I got up. There were bits of dirt on the rug and on the couch. I started to pick them up with my fingers.

Mrs. Wooly raised her hand and shook her head like, "Don't bother." I had to get home. She knew that.

I left. I ran toward the back and followed the path by the creek so no one would see me from Main Street. My feet were cold and I had to step on sharp stones before I got to the path. I avoided all the prickers but the dead stuff from the fall stuck up through the green and stuck me over and over. I finally reached the barbed wire fence my dad and I had just checked for holes the Saturday before and slipped into the pasture. It was full of dandelions, blooming. They blurred together in my brain and I didn't count them. My dad had mowed the pasture with the tractor the week before and there were dark green stripes about five feet apart going lengthwise toward the house. I stayed on one of those strips and climbed over the gate instead of opening it. My feet felt good on the lawn grass.

They were green right up to the instep. I reached the porch. The shell sign was still on but didn't give off much light against the morning. Billy was still asleep. He looked peaceful, like the son of a plantation owner we saw in the Gettysburg Museum made of wax and dressed up in a suit.

I crawled into my sleeping bag and zipped it just to my knees so my feet would be warm by the time Mom called. I didn't worry about the 16

green on them, or the red on my bag, or the yellow fading from the porch. Mrs. Wooly wasn't dead. Her bed was still wet when I left. My bag was wet. It had been left open to the dew. Inside it. I was getting warmer and warmer. I fell asleep.

I was in a school bus and there was a lot of fighting. My mom was there. She was still in high-school. Mrs. Wooly and I were in the same grade. We swapped lunches. She hated egg salad, I hated tuna. Neither of our moms knew because we always swapped. Billy was driving. He was a good driver and we felt safe. We were going over a bridge and everybody started looking at the water. It was the Hudson River. Then we were swimming, Mrs. Wooly and I. The water was polluted, greenish-yellow, like a cesspool. We were racing, taking a breath every four or five strokes. She was winning. There was a phone call then and it went out of my dream into the kitchen. Mom answered it.

I could only hear a few words through the window. Her voice sounded deep like the air she was talking in was thicker, watery. I got it suddenly, I knew. She had died. Mom hung up the phone and called for us. My brother and I got up at the same time and carried our bags into the laundry room the way we always did. But it was all different. I knew where his arm was on the door behind me.

I sat down to eat the bowl of oatmeal at my place and asked if I could have egg salad for lunch. Mom seemed surprised but said OK. I finished the oatmeal and walked outdoors in my nightgown into the pasture and started to pick dandelions. The stems are too short for a vase so you have to keep holding them in your hand like a bright flashlight. They look pretty like that, held so they spread into one another, pasted together like a thick carpet. •

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I. M. ISOBE

/. M. Isobe

stay gone now. I had him when I live Aiea side. But all that time stay gone, eh? I wen' let him go atop da mountain. Now he stay wild. More better that way. Cannot keep him here that's why. What I'm goin' do?

Stay cruel, keep him inside all da time. Cannot let him out. Beside, mebbe sometime he get squash on da road. So, I let him go.

My cousin—Roselei—from Waimanalo side, she had da mother. Hoo, da mother, she catch plenny mouses. Bumbye she come pregnant. Then come Randall and all da bruddahs. Stay cute, eh? But Roselei, she ax me if I like one kitten. She no can keep 'em all, eh? Rosie says, Eh, Kimo, probably they be good mousers too, j alike da mother. Probably. I no like say no, eh, so I go look. But I no can choose. All stay so cute. But when I try pick 'em up, all da bruddahs, they run, run. They scared. But not Randall. He wen' come up to me and play fight-fight. Good fun, da kine.

Get scratch, but. So I took Randall home wit' me. Good thing too, eh, 'cause Rosie let all da bruddahs drown.

But Randall, he never grow big, like da mother. I don' know why.

Randall, he like lau-lau, you know. And poi. Eh, I always give him some. You think I no go feed 'em? Yebbudi time I get lau-lau, Randall, he want da butterfish, he want kalua pig. Real greedy, you know. He no like luau leaf, but. And I never hear of one cat that like poi. Poi dog, course. But Randall, he no can eat by himself. So I go feed 'im. You take one-finger poi, eh? And you put some on one finger. And Randall, he come and eat 'em. Stay good, eh? Ono, you know.

One time Randall, he put one mouse inside my bowling shoe. Da bug-

gah, he think it's one big treat or something. Supposed to be one present for me. I had to go tournament ten minutes, eh, so I just took 'em. I never look inside. So I get to da tournament and I try put on my shoes and one mouse fall out. That's da horse's ass, eh? Everybody say, Eh, Kimo, da mouse ma-ke. Why da mouse go die inside your bowling shoe?

Toejams kusai? Deadly, eh? That's why everybody calls me Jams now, instead of James, because of Randall.

Another time Randall, he wen' catch one fighting cock. You ever see one fighting cock? They go for de eyes, eh? They jump, way high, and come down scratching wit' their feet. Their feathers all stan' up. Sometime get gaffs on da chickens' legs, on top da spurs. My neighbor—Old Man Shimazu—he keeps fighting cocks. I see him coming wit' a mad face and I think, Oh-oh, now what. He says, There's one leash law, you know, and I'm goin' call Humane Society. I say, What for you talking like that, Randall's not vicious. But Shimazu, he won' quit. So finally I tell him, Look, you call Humane Society, I call Humane Society. Then what? That's what you want? So he go away mad. And I think, Well, sometime it's more better not for make trouble. Afterward I find out Randall got Shimazu's only cock. So, now he got no cock. All da rest hens. That's some tough.

Later I see Shimazu and he's patting Randall and giving him haupia and I think, So, mebbe he's changed his mind. After all, Randall catches mouses and keeps da mongooses away too you know. That's good for chickens. But that night I hear Randall crying and I find him in a corner.

He was dirty-dirty and all curled up in a ball. All his unko was bloody.

So quick, I took him Humane Society. They say somebody try for poison him, eh? Poor thing. He's so small. I see him and I think, It's sad, yeah?

So I ax them, Mebbe it's more better for Randall to go for sleep. Mebbe it's moemoe time. I don' want him to suffer. But they say, Just try wait, yeah? He'll be alright. So I try go for a walk.

While I stay walking, I try for think. What kine guy poisons a little cat? What kine? Old Man Shimazu, he never keeps his chickens anyway.

He just takes them chicken fight. If they never fight, he makes huli-huli.

If they fight, what, they never live. How you like be scratched to death, eh? Da winners, they ma-ke too. It's sad.

So I'm walking and thinking when all of a sudden one car stops and

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My Cat Randall forP.YN.

MY CAT RANDALL, HE LIKE PLAY wit' kamaboko slipper, eh? But he

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/. M. Isobe

one East Coast haole leans out and says, real slow, Aloha, friend. Jalike I'm mental or something. I says, Hello. And he tells this skinny wahine sitting next to him, Hey, we found us a native that speaks English. Well.

So, this haole fellow, he wants to know where he can get da good stuff. I says, Stuff? So he says, Kona Gold. Maui Wowie. Pakalolo. I tell him, Probably Kona or Maui. Eh, why you laugh? Course I knew about da patch behind Aiea sugar mill. Everybody knows about that. So he, da haole fellow, he drives off.

But, you know, all da Mainland haole folks are like that. My sister— Pu'ulani—she works Sheraton Waikiki, she says all da Mainland haoles ever want is one mai tai. They come from all over—West Coast, East Coast—and they tell her, All my life I've wanted to come to Hawaii and sit under a palm tree on Waikiki Beach with a tall, cool drink. So, she fixes them mai tais and they drink 'em all day. No, yeah, they say WHACK-ickey. Sometime they eat all da cherries and orange slice and orchids, too. Good thing they cut down all da coconuts, eh? Otherwise— ko-tonk! Tourists.

Anyway, so when Randall, he stay okay, I bring 'im home. I never say nothing to Shimazu, eh? Da Buddha-head, he sees me wit' Randall in a box and he never say nothing neither. After that, I took 'im to work wit' me, to Aiea sugar mill. Randall, he like that. He stay inside da factory all day. Plenny mouses, that's why. Mai tai for him. One time, da boss man, Mr. Bond, he see me wit' Randall. He say, Amalu, what you doing wit' that cat. You weird, boy. You know Mr. Bond? He always have one big white bull terrier wit' him. Samson. Shimazu always say that dog make good for fight-fight. But then one time one rat got trapped in da crusher vat. Da rat was so monstah, da fighting dog Samson, he never even bark. Jalike one poi dog, eh? He scared. But Randall, he never.

Garan ba-baran, his hair all stan' up and his eyes get all big and—poom!

—he go after da rat. Got 'im, too. After that, Mr. Bond never say nothing about Randall.

Pau hana time, we stay go home, me and Randall. Sometime I sit on da lanai and watch Randall play. He like play wit' rubber slipper. One time my honey, Naomi Chong, she get kamaboko slippers, eh? She tie one string to one slipper and pull slow, slow in front of Randall. Hoo, his eyes get big. He pounce on da slipper. But Randall, he akamai, too. He 20

never try for 'em when she was wearing. Sometime we drink Primo and watch da rain. Naomi's bruddah—Nimitz—he works for Continental, so sometime we get Coors. But most time we just watch da rain. Aiea side, it always rains every afternoon, some little. When da wind blows, da rain comes rippling jalike white curtains in da sky, jalike banners. After, get rainbow, sometime two-three. Nimitz says Mainland rain never comes like that.

Naomi, she was working Kodak Hula Show and stay living Nu'uanu.

She stay hapa, but da tourists, they cannot tell, I guess. They have one luau, wit' poi in little Dixie cups and roast beef and mash potato. And mai tais. Then, one time Yvonne Elliman ax Naomi if she like go Mainland for do some songs. Chong's Song, eh? Naomi says, It's only for a little, eh? Then I come back, right back to my honey. But, I could tell. She never lie, eh? She just never knew herself. So what else could I do? More better she go, eh? We all, everybody, we must choose for' ourselves. Last time I hear from her was one postcard from Frankfurt am Main. I think she was living with some haole guy.

After that, I was starting class at UH. Castle & Cooke got tuition program for employees, you know. Young Shimazu, he was taking night classes long time. So we stay go together. He was always talking about sugar futures. I ax him, What you mean about sugar futures, jalike Sweet 'n Low? He just laughs and says, No, like stocks 'n bonds. Just joking, I guess. We started going work and UH in my car, so Young Mrs. Shimazu could have da car morning time, evening time, yebbudi time.

Old Mister had had one heart attack, so she was all worried, yeah?

Naturally. It's like one warning.

I was thinking Randall was missing Naomi. No one to play kamaboko slipper wit', eh? So one time I took him up da mountain, on Old Pali Highway. Everything stay cool and peaceful up there. De air is clear and got birds. Da mountain stay green all da way to da top. Get waterfalls and plunge pools. Get mountain orchids. You know, you try take pork over the Pali? Cannot unless it stay wrapped in ti leaves, not even in a car. Pele watches, that's why. The Pali is her place. I put Randall in my backpack and we wen' hiking. We pass one heiau. I put trail mix there for Pele. I think she like that.

From the Pali I try for see Nu'uanu and Aiea same time. Stay hard, 21

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but. And Randall, he no care about that. He likes only natural things.

Most peoples, they stay live in a box. They never smell mountain orchid. They never hear mountain silence. They never know Pele watches.

But me and Randall, we watch da sun go down, slow, slow. Was unreal.

Then we go hurry back to da car, eh? At night get drums, that's why.

Walkers, too, in volcano weather.

That was past time. Then one day at work Mr. Bond says he has one announcement. So, we all come close to hear him. Samson isn't there, but Randall is. Malolo dog. Mr. Bond says, We all know how the island economy has been changing these past few years. There's been a shift from agriculture to tourism, and within agriculture from mono-culture to diversified cropping. All of a sudden I try think fast what Young Shimazu said, about stocks and bonds and sugar futures. But Mr. Bond, he saying, The Aiea sugar mill is the oldest continuously operated mill in the islands. It was the first electric-powered mill. It has the biggest capacity of any U.S. sugar mill. It, and all the many, many fine people who have worked it, has a proud and permanent place in island history.

And this is an historic day, the end of one era and the beginning of another for Castle & Cooke.

There was more speech, but what happened was next week Mr. Bond went to Castle & Cooke San Francisco. He tol' us da company would like, but cannot keep us all on. So they try for do da right thing, eh? But da tuition program, da company housing, all that is pau.

So then I must move, eh? My sister Pu'ulani says, Eh, bruddah, come stay wit' me in Honolulu. So I start packing. But I try for think. What I'm goin' do wit' Randall? Cannot take him Lani's place on Beretania Street. Lani got no place for a little cat. Da landlord give her stink eye about me, eh? I figure, more better let him go atop the Pali. Atop the Pali get mouses and birds. And that way, no mans stay bother him. So Randall, he stay free. So, I put 'im in a box and I tie da box wit' string and I drive to the Pali. And I let him go. Was quiet coming back Aiea.

Later, Young Mrs. Shimazu came over wit' some huli-huli chicken and she say, You worried about Randall, eh? Shimpai, eh? No worry. He stay okay. But you, look, get huli-huli chicken for you, so you no go cook. So I look at her and I look at da chicken. And she say, Mr. Shimazu, he huli-huli all his chickens. So more better eat 'em, eh? So I 22

ate 'em. Some tough, but. Young Shimazu, he got a job in New York, so da whole family, they stay go wit' him, naturally. Sad, yeah?

After I moved Beretania Street, for long time I cannot sleep nights, only days. Lani's place stay noisy, noisy yebbudi time. Get cars, police siren, next door neighbor never shut up. I try for think or watch TV. Cannot. So sometime I go store before Lani come home from work, get huli-huli chicken from da supermarket. Sometime I go for walks, long time, sit on da curb when I come tired, fall asleep, walk some more.

Pu'ulani never say nothing about that. I think she understand.

So one time I wen' back to da mountain for see Randall. He stay hard to find, but. I seen him once, though. Was raining, cold, cold. Da buggah was all skinny kine, his hair all wet. Stay hungry, eh? But he no like da food I brought for him. He never let me stay near. He come wild, that's why. He just look me long time, hard, hard, jalike he like say something. Then he stay go.

•

GLOSSARY Aiea—former rural area on Oahu, now site of Aloha Stadium, home of the Hula Bowl akamai—smart aloha—greetings, love, friendship, mercy, fond farewell, aloha 'oe, farewell to thee; aloha ali'i, royalist; aloha aina, love of the land Amalu—Kimo's surname Beretania—Britannia Buddha-head—a Japanese person; a Buddhist priest; a crewcut garan ba-baran—nothing to it, of course haole—a newcomer; a new year; a white person hapa—part; racially mixed haupia—coconut cream pudding heiau—a pre-Christian place of worship huli-huli—to turn over and over, e.g., to barbecue; also, to reconsider

23

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kalua pig—a whole pig rubbed with red sea salt and roasted in an imu, an underground oven kamaboka slipper—thick-soled rubber slipper with colorful stripes like kamaboko fish cake Kimo—James kusai—stink lanai—veranda lau-lau—luau, fish, and pork wrapped in ti leaves and steamed luau—young taro greens, a feast food; also, the feast itself mai tai—light rum, dark rum, Triple Sec, Curacao, and grenadine over crushed ice with 151 floated on top, garnished with maraschino cherries, orange slice, pineapple wedge, orchids, paper parasol, etc., served with straws; also, just desserts, poetic justice ma-ke—dead malolo—lazy moemoe—to put to sleep; also, to settle a score Nu'uanu—a suburb of Honolulu ono—delicious pakalolo—idiot weed, marijuana; often grown in sugarcane fields (The) Pali—high pass on Oahu, ancient holy place and battleground pau hana—finish work, quitting time Pele—the volcano goddess poi—(Colocasia esculenta) mashed taro root, a staple food, thinned with water to onefinger, two-finger, etc., consistency, eaten fresh, day-old, two-day-old, and sour poi dog—a barkless breed fattened on poi, a delicacy; also a mutt shimpai—don't worry ti— (Cordyline terminalis) a woody perennial with glossy broad leaves used for ritual purification, "grass" skirts, and cooking UH—University of Hawaii at Manoa unko—excrement volcano weather—high ozone conditions preceding eruptions wahine—woman; female Waimanalo—rural area on Oahu yebbudi—every

24

A Crush on Albert Einstein

I'd take him to Charivari and buy him an Armani suit, one of those knit-silk ties, couple of linen shirts.

I guess we'd go to have his hair styled, no, wait a minute, his hair is IF ALBERT EINSTEIN WOULD COME BACK

perfect.

We'd have it all. I've always liked guys with brains, we'd sit and talk.

I might shop and do dishes and stuff I wouldn't do for any other guy.

I'd watch Gleason reruns on the small SONY in the bedroom and he'd work on the Unified Field Theory in the living room. I think it's important that he think it through again, because it gets so strange and disappointing at the end of the book. You can tell he was a little frustrated with it, and who can blame him, though not yet completely formed, it is perhaps the most advanced thinking ever to have taken place on this planet. I'd have a nice built-in desk made for him with plenty of storage space, not just two metal-file cabinets with a plank of wood on top.

We would walk through Riverside Park and he would patiently explain all the points in The General Theory of Relativity where my thought almost reaches his for a second, then slips down again. I've had maybe four or five minutes, and not at one time, where I understood what he's saying, and those moments feel great.

Now, just because I'd make Albert Einstein coffee doesn't mean I'm shy. I'd argue with him and ask how he sees that point on the ground from which he observes the speeding train. Is there grass, are there cows on the side of the road? And that elevator that rises into infinity, does it

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have an elevator man and one of those nice seats beneath a mirror? How about a brass-framed certificate with the signatures of all the inspectors?

We would make soup together. He would shred the cabbage while I clarify the stock and we could talk about his days in the patent office.

"What was your boss like? Was he jealous of you? Did mass equals energy times the speed of light squared just come to you while you filled out patent forms for inventors? How did it happen, did some guy waltz in with a gizmo that automatically butters bread when it pops out of the toaster and, absent-mindedly, you say, 'very interesting,' meantime you are thinking of the speed of light times itself?"

I'd level with him. I'd tell him he looked scared in that photograph where he holds up his right hand to become a U.S. citizen. "Albert, honey, what's there to be frightened of? I know, I know, bureaucratic minds. But a guy like you shouldn't be insecure. I know what you mean about the Jew in Europe part, but relax, that stuff about nobody being irreplaceable just doesn't apply to you."

The bomb. What's there to say? Should I be sweet and lay off? I'll let him bring it up. I mean, I respect the guy and he's probably gone through some grief about it so why should I be impolite?

"Albert,when you came out with the theory of relativity a reporter said, 'Dr. Einstein, a hundred German physicists are saying that your theory is wrong,' did you really tell him, 'If it were wrong it would only take one.'?"

I judge people by the company they keep and I'd love my friends to see me walking down the street with Albert Einstein. If he is patient, I could help him finish his work. I want to understand it so much that one day I would.

I figure in a couple of hundred years they will have figured out how to keep people alive forever. Albert Einstein probably missed immortality by only a tick in what he liked to call the time-space continuum. Tough break. For me too. He died, alone, and the nurse who sat by his bed didn't understand German, so she didn't get his last words. •

26

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The Screamer for my mother

CLARA WAS SITTING NEXT TO HER FATHER in

the train. They were on their way to Washington and her father was asleep. Clara looked out the window and ignored the six magazines on her lap. She liked being free just to pick up and take a trip with her father again.

Six months had passed since Clara's husband left. Six years earlier they had been married in judges' chambers. The end, like the beginning, was rather unceremonious. She came home on a summer evening and found him sitting in the dark. Inadvertently, she set her briefcase on the chair where the cat lay asleep. The eyes of the startled cat were the only spots of light in the room.

She wore a blue cotton suit and pearls. She sat down, kicked off her shoes and loosened the silk bow at her throat and said, "So, what's going on, another headache?" Her eyes were beginning to get accustomed to the dark and she could make out his slowly shaking head. She said, "If your head's alright may I turn on the light, or what?" He said, "No." The cat jumped on Clara's lap and she decided to stroke it rather than get a drink. She said, "We got the Bio Tech account from Palo Alto. I know you'll be thrilled." He said, "That's nice, Clara, that's really nice." Clara said, "Is it going to be one of those evenings? Can you tell me now so I can prepare myself: call a friend or go to the movies or hem my skirts or something?" In the dark he shook his head. Clara got up, 27

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holding the cat, and started pacing. As she talked the blood rushed faster through her veins. "Look, what do you want? You nixed therapy. You nixed marital counselling. We have the house in New Hampshire rented and paid for all of next month. Why don't we just go there, take it easy and give each other a break?" She was facing him. He didn't answer.

She said, "Look, I'm no stranger to depression. You've been there for me. I'm trying. God knows, I've been trying for six weeks. But I live here too. Just answer me please. Can't we just call a truce and go away and relax, not talk about our relationship, not get heavy or anything?

You can fish all day and I'll read." He said, "I can't do that." She asked, "Which part?" He said, "The truce."

She squeezed the cat and it jumped out of her arms. She walked over to him and turned on the light. The wide pupils of his blue eyes contracted and he covered his face with his hands. He wore a grey and blue plaid flannel shirt and he smelled good. He reached for the switch and turned off the light. Clara put a hand on his shoulder and knelt in front of him and said, "Oh, Christ." He nodded.

She grabbed her shoes and jacket and slammed the door. She heard him yell, "You are always so dramatic. Wait, where are you going?"

She smiled as she waited for the elevator because from the sound of his voice she knew he had not gotten up from the chair.

It was raining and she took a Valium and a cab. She thought, "This is when one goes home to Mother.'' But her mother was dead. She went to Robert's house. Robert was an account executive in the ad agency for which she worked. Robert was a friend. She knew he was gay, he had a kid and was divorced and she never asked any questions. Robert liked that.

Robert was home, thank God. He hugged her and stroked her head.

Billy, Robert's son, came into the foyer holding a Ruble's Cube and said, "Dad, what's this?" Clara took a handkerchief out of her pocket and wiped her face. She patted Billy on the head and said, "You wanna play some poker?"

Robert made her a cheese sandwich and she and Billy played Seven Card Stud, Five Card Draw and she taught him Lowball and Black Mariah. She handed Billy his winnings and said, "Seven bucks must be a lot of money for a nine year old." Billy said, "Not really." Clara took 28

a bite of the sandwich and said, "I'm not supposed to be unlucky at cards." Robert pulled out the sofa bed.

Clara lay in the dark looking at the shadows on the ceiling, then switched on the television and watched Ben Casey—man, woman, birth, life, death, infinity. The silence was broken in the canyon of buildings below by piercing screams. She turned down the volume and went to the window. It was only The Screamer. A short man, in his middle thirties, who wore a tweed coat, no matter what the season, walked down the street and at intervals would stop, put a hand to his ear and scream a string of words, of which "scum bag" and "cocksucker" were the only ones she could ever make out. The Screamer, as her husband had dubbed him, turned up at least once every two weeks. Once they had not heard him for a month or two and Clara had said, "Wonder if The Screamer is all right." She liked The Screamer and the fact that nobody ever bothered him. Once when she was cooking scallops The Screamer screamed and their guests were alarmed. At dinner they speculated about how The Screamer started out. One man said he probably invested in silver futures in 1979.

Once she saw him early in the morning on her way to work and later told her husband, "I saw The Screamer and his coat is dirty and torn.

He's looking more like a street person. Last year he could have passed on Wall Street." Her husband said, "It's obvious he's possessed by demons." He got angry when she laughed. Often she laughed when she found him amusing and he would misunderstand and think he was being ridiculed.

Clara was looking out the window of the train, the Metroliner. Her father still slept. She thought this must be how he will look when he is dead. In the pocket in front of his seat was the obituary page of The New York Times. She got up and tripped over her father on purpose to awaken him. "Do you want some ginger ale or Diet Pepsi or something?" He said, "Yes please," and gave her a twenty dollar bill. She waved it away.

They had been invited to an embassy party and he asked her to wear her mother's black Givenchy from the Forties. As she ordered the drinks she thought, "I can't prepare myself for his death. There is no way to prepare." She thought of her husband and tried to remember his face or one conversation or one afternoon in bed, but all she could remember of 29

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their marriage was the day they sat in the living room watching the window cleaner strapped to the building, straddling a window, looking down distracted by the distant approach of The Screamer.

Getting off the train her father looked so frail pulling his suitcase. She looked in vain for a porter. Her father had booked a suite in a hotel he called "The Plastic Palace." She pulled out the sofa bed and was relieved that she didn't have to sleep in the same bed with her father because she dreaded looking at his profile in sleep and looking at the photo of the woman he placed by his bedside since her mother had died. She made him coffee and straightened his tie and put the studs in his shirt.

The florist delivered the gardenias he bought for her hair. She fastened her pearls, sat on the sofa, picked up the phone and dialed Gwen's mother's number.

Clara and Gwen had been friends since they were twelve. Gwen had disappeared eight years ago and her mother had hired a detective who wrote a report about a woman resembling Gwen living in a religious cult. Gwen's mother phoned Clara from time to time, always in the office. Clara always phoned Gwen's mother when she came to Washington and went to see her. After sixteen rings Clara hung up and dialed information and asked for the number of Clark Traves, Gwen's brother.

He picked up on the first ring. He was asleep. She said, "Clark, did I wake you?" He said, "It's OK, who's this?" "Clara. Clara, Gwen's friend." Clark said, "Oh my God, Clara, where the hell are you?"

He had heard from Gwen three years earlier—only a phone call. He said, "I have two children she's never seen." They decided to have a drink. He worked on a newspaper and got off at midnight. She said, "That's perfect. I'm going to a party, pick me up at my hotel."

The party was wonderful. She got many compliments on the dress.

Her escort, who worked for the State Department, tried on her sapphire ring and let her try on his diamond ring. He sensed that she was tired and uncomfortable and he said, "Let's stand at the bar and check out what everyone is wearing." The woman with the lame shower cap and the Margaret Hamilton shoes got the prize. They laughed and he held her elbow and got her another drink. She went to the ladies' room and saw her father in the next stall. She said, through the wall, "Papa, there's nobody in here, so just quietly zip up and leave quickly, you got the 30

wrong door.'' She held her head up and dropped five dollars into the plate of the startled attendant.

She arrived at the hotel twenty minutes late, on her father's arm. Clark was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt. He kissed her on the cheek. His hair had thinned. Clara had known Clark since she was twelve and he nine. The parking lot was chilly and he let her open the door on her side of the BMW. He took her to the Willard Hotel, but the bar was closed.

They ended up in a bar with loud music. She ordered a glass of milk. He said, "I'm impressed."

They talked. He said, "The good thing about not seeing someone for years is that you only hit the highlights." Clara nodded. Clark's marriage had recently ended and he had three kids. Led Zeppelin's "A Whole Lotta Love" was playing on the juke box. Clark asked, "Remember that?" A man with a basket of roses came to their table.

Clark took two roses, handed her one and said,' 'One for each of us. You want to get out of here?" She nodded.

He starts the car and says, "Do you want to ride around, go to the Lincoln Memorial or something?" She says, "Let's just sit a moment and decide.'' He leans back on the door and looks at her for a long time, then says, "I can't believe we are sitting here. I had such a crush on you for fouryears." She smiles, "That's normal, I mean having a crush on your big sister's friends." He says, "You don't understand, I used to have to hold on to the furniture when you came into the room. I bet you never noticed me." She looks at him and recognizes only the amber eyes of his childhood and thinks he has grown to look like his father who died a few years before. "That's not altogether accurate. I noticed you. You did a hell of a lot for a towel. I saw you come out of the shower all the time after football practice."

He says, "If you weren't like my sister I'd make a pass at you." She pauses, then takes his hand and looks into his eyes and says, "Clark, I'm not your sister." He laughs. She says, "Don't get this wrong or anything, but will you just hold me? Nothing more. Just gently hold me."

He said, "Sure."

Clark and Gwen's father had died of cancer. A month before dying he had called Clara. She didn't know he was ill and he never told her. He said, ' 'I just want you to know that I've loved you in my life. I never did 31

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anything about it, but I loved you."

Clara and Clark begin to kiss softly, then they hold each other tighter and slowly open their mouths, gently teasing never coming close enough. Clark traces Clara's lips with his finger as he kisses her deeply.

When they break the kiss she takes his hand and presses her face into his palm. "Oh God," he says, "I could drown in this."

They kiss slowly for an hour or two. He says, ' 'Do you want to go to my house? I want to make love to you." She leans back and says "What's your bed like? Just describe it to me." He says, "God, I want you. It's oak and I have a blue comforter on it." She laughs and says, "Why will I need a comforter?" He says, "Come here." They hold each other's faces. Though he's holding her he says, "Come here. I want to kiss you for each year we've known each other.'' The best one is for age fourteen when his ardor was strongest. She pulls back and says, "I've made a decision. I want to make love to you too, but my father is in the hotel alone. He may wake up and worry. Hey, look, we've steamed the windows of the car." He laughs. "You never went to drive-ins?

What a misspent youth." She says, "Not entirely true. I play pool."

Three men are walking up the street shouting. Clark says, "Don't worry, they're just drunk."

Clark kisses Clara's eyes and then opens his mouth on hers. She asks, "Where did you learn to kiss like that?" He says, "From you, just now." She says, "You're really a romantic, I never knew that." He takes his rose and throws it at the windshield. She laughs and says, "If you want to find a true romantic just get yourself the worst cynic and scratch the surface a little." He says, "That was pretty stupid of me, wasn't it. You sure you won't change your mind about coming home with me?" She puts her head on his lap. He says, "I love your throat."

She closes her eyes and says, "No. I am lying in your arms in a car and my daddy may be waiting up for me. What exquisite luxury. How often again in my life do you think I'll get a chance to say anything like that?"

They kiss good night and she walks into the hotel lobby at five thirty in the morning. The flowers are wilted and her dress is wrinkled. She smiles at the desk clerk and he lowers his eyes. She brushes her teeth and takes off whatever makeup Clark has not licked off her face, and puts the rose in the glass. She takes off her clothes and gets into bed.

32

She looks at the dawn and her father's closed door, She is convinced that he is dead. She doesn't suspect it. She is convinced that he has gasped for air and struggled and called her while she was in the car kissing Clark. She decides to make some strong coffee. If he isn't dead he'll appreciate it. If he's dead, she'll need it.

It takes all her courage to quietly open her father's door. She sees that he is breathing. Why did she open the door quietly? Either he was dead or, as was indeed the case, his hearing aids were on the nightstand, small and vividly flesh-colored, like freshly severed fingertips.

A few hours later he wakes her with a glass of fresh orange juice. He says, "You look like you need this. Have a good time?" She nods and says, "Don't you dare ask me what time I got in." He says, "What for?

Five thirty." He asks her to wear the blue Chanel for the lunch and she puts concealer under her eyes to hide the dark circles.

On the train back to the city she fell asleep happy. Her father covered her with the camel hair coat and ended up reading the Self magazine she had bought at the station. She woke up and grabbed his arm. He told her she looked elegant all weekend and that it's good that she had a good time with her friend. "You needed it. I had hopes for the first evening but you told me he was gay. He seemed perfectly decent to me." She said, "Papa, do they have to wear a dress and come and sit on your lap?"

That night she had dinner with Robert.' 'Where the hell did you go this weekend? Chernobyl?" She smiled, "God, that bad? I discovered necking in cars. On the level of baseball, mom and apple pie." Robert asked, "Does he have a friend? I can see us taking the Metroliner together on Friday evenings. We'll do our nails."

There was a message from Clara's husband on her answering machine and one from Clark. She called Clark back. He said, "Were we dreaming? Is it true? May I come up to see you next Sunday?" Clara said, "Yes. I can't wait." Clark phoned every night that week. He said, "I'm scared because I feel myself falling head over heels in love. I've had a fantasy of having a child with you." Clara said, "Clark, let's just see each other. I don't want to live with a man or get married or anything right now." He said, "I'm afraid because since you were twelve you've been so refined. I've always been kind of a roughneck, and I'm a great 33

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believer in birds of a feather." Clara said, "Give me a break."

On Wednesday Clark said, "How about you coming down here on Friday and staying until Monday?" Clara asked, "What's going on?"

He laughed and said, "I'm upping the ante." She said, "Call me back in an hour.'' When he did she said, "I'll see you two days in New York and raise you four days in Washington in the near future." He said, "I once told you I'm a lousy poker player." She said, "Right."

Thursday night he said, "I got a colleague to do my shift, I can be there Friday night at ten." On Friday night he called and said that he got stuck at work but would get on the 3:00 A.M. train. "I'll be there about seven in the morning and will need a couple of hours sleep. Will you lie next to me and sleep on my shoulder?"

Friday evening Robert and Clara made a big fruit salad and watched All About Eve. She did her nails and he helped her pick out what to wear for the weekend. Robert said, "I'm jealous, why can't I ever meet guys like that?" After Robert left, Clara put henna in her hair and pumiced her elbows and steamed her face. She thought about something Clark said during the week: "I just want to be with you. If you aren't ready for a physical relationship, it's fine. Sure, I want to love you totally, but I'm patient. Let's walk in the park and hold hands." Clara had said, "Oh, I see, you're going to make me beg for it.'' He laughed and said, "On the other hand we could spend a couple of days in bed together.'' Robert said that the best line a guy could ever utter was that he was patient and would wait for you to be ready. Robert said that Clark was in the major leagues.

Robert told Clara to be careful not to hurt Clark. Clara's husband had said that he wanted to come that weekend to sort through books and Clara had said, "No." He said, "Need your space, huh? I see, yeah, I see."

The doorbell rang while Clara was trying to put on enough makeup to look natural in the gray, early morning. She opened the door and Clark kissed her. They went into the kitchen and she drank coffee. He said he never drank coffee. She told him how happy she was to see him. He said he was very tired. She said, let's go to sleep. But she was too excited and happy to sleep. They went to bed. He grabbed her hard and began to make love quickly. She stopped him and kissed his face and said, "What's your hurry? Didn't you want to get some sleep?" He looked at 34

her and asked, "What's wrong?" She said, "Nothing, why?" He grabbed her again and kissed her and it hurt. He then said, "What's wrong, aren't you glad to see me?" She took his hand and pressed her face into the palm and said, "Don't you see how glad I am to see you? I waited for you all week." The third time he asked her, she turned the question around and said, "Is anything wrong with you?" He folded his arms in back ofhis head and stared at the ceiling. He said, "I've fallen in love with another woman." Clara said, "What?" then recouped, laughed and said, "OK, how's that going to affect our weekend?" Clark said, "I can't fall in love with you, that's how."

Clara sat up and said, "Why are you here?" He said, "lesus, you would have been a great litigator. I had no intention of telling you at eight in the morning." Clara said, "When the hell were you going to tell me?" He said, "Later, during the weekend, I guess." Clara said, "But you started to make love." He said, "Yeah, but we didn't go through with it. I was with Bobbie Sue last night and she drove me to the station.

She was crying. She loves me." Clara thought, Bobbie Sue? Her name can't really be Bobbie Sue. She left the room and said, "I think I want to be alone for a while."

She got some more coffee and kept on saying over and over, "I've got to think. I've got to think." He walked out of the bedroom dressed and said, "I guess I'd better turn around and go back." Clara nodded and said, "OK, I understand." Suddenly she pushed him back into the chair and said, "Listen, if you walk out that door we'll never see each other again and you know it. We both feel like shit, so let's talk." He said, ' 'Are you taking me back to the bedroom?" She said,' 'Hell, no. We are going to sit on a sofa and talk about this." He said, "You are very pushy, very demanding." Clara said, "I'm just very confused." Then, on the sofa, he pulled her toward him and she thought, OK, let's go a couple of rounds with Bobbie Sue, what the hell. Clark said, "Do you want me to make love to you?" She didn't answer. He picked her up like Rhett picked up Scarlett and he carried her into the bedroom. She wore black lace and satin lingerie and he said, "God, your body is incredible." She lay on top of him and said, "Now that our little cards are on the table, shall we spend a weekend acting out our sexual fantasies?" He said, "Sure. What do you want?" Clara said, "I want you in the car."

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He began to make love and she let him for a while. He was rushing, and she said, "What's your hurry, got a train to catch?" Then he was saying things like "Take it all, baby," and they sounded hollow, as if they had been said to so many women over so many years. She pushed him away. He became angry and said he was frustrated, but quickly fell asleep. She had a shower and called Robert. She left a note on the bathroom mirror: "Clark, I've gone out for some air and to clear my head.

See you later.''

Robert was wearing a shower cap. He held Clara and said, "I'm giving myself a henna treatment and will have to jump in the shower and rinse in a half hour.'' He made her breakfast. She lay on his bed and he covered her with a comforter. He put on the radio and she said,' 'Well, at least there's Mozart. That alone makes life worth living." Robert said, "No, sweetheart, that's Puccini's Tosca. It says so in the Guide." Clara smiled and said, "Puccini's stock's just gone up. I don't give a fuck what the Guide says, there are only two people who ever wrote like that, Mozart and God." Robert lay next to her and they dozed throughout Cosi Fan Tutte.

Clara then got up and said,' 'I've been gone five hours. I have to go back home and face the music." Robert said, "Honey, face it, he's probably gone."

Clara's door was still locked. She found Clark in the bedroom reading a magazine. He asked, "How was your walk?" She sat on the bed with her coat on and said, "I think it would be best for all concerned if you left." He said, "Why did you let me make love to you?" Clara said, "The truth is that I was angry. I don't need to get laid. I want what you gave me last week and what hurts is I know what you are capable of.'' He said, "You felt fantastic physically." Clara said, "I don't want to be the generic woman." Clark said, "I was frightened by your lack of restraint." She said, "What lack of restraint?" Clark said, "We should at least learn something from this." She said, "OK, so I've learned from you to be restrained." He took her hand and said, "I'm afraid that's all you'll be from now on." She said, "Why should you care?" He shrugged. Then she said, "Look, I just want you to know that for a few hours in my life I loved you. I just want you to know that." He said, "You know what I want from you, I want a photograph of you." She 36

grimaced and he waved his hands in front of his face. "OK, OK, no photo." She said, "I don't have a photograph. Clark, you could have had a lot more than a photo." At the door she kissed him on the cheek and he said, "Take care."

Later Robert came over and made some soup. They watched Hitchcock's Rope. Her husband phoned and, as she paced with the cord, she bumped into a table and knocked down an antique vase of her mother's.

It broke into many pieces. She was crying on the phone. Her husband said what was the big deal, he could fix the vase. Robert went home. She laid out her clothes for work and checked her appointment book. She took a bath and paid some bills. Sitting at her desk she heard screams.

She went to the window and there, walking up the street, was The Screamer, strolling, then pausing, one hand covering his ear, the other clenched in a fist, shaking at the gods, screaming at the top of his voice in the still, autumn night. Clara, reassured, drew the curtains. She thought, The Screamer is well and all is right with the world.

D

37

PAMELA PEARCE

Pamela Pearce

Child Bathing With Mother

SOMETIMES WE WOULD BATHE TOGETHER on warm summer afternoons, my mother and I. And sometimes we would nap together on her big white bed.

I have been playing outdoors in this my fifth August in the suburban town of East Orange, New Jersey. The streets are flat and there is not a lot of traffic in the afternoon. On one side street, kids are playing kickball and in front some dogs are being walked. I come in out of the yard and the sunlight, past the tall trees and past the less tall shrubs that surround the house. I walk over the grey porch and into the final dark coolness of our house on a summer afternoon. It is very quiet and everything is in order. . .the pillows on the couch are fluffed, the sink is cleared of dishes and the cloth on the dining room table is perfectly aligned at each corner. The organdy priscilla curtains are being sucked against the dark screens by the breeze that waits outside the house.

I follow my mother across the carpeted floor to the oak staircase that leads to the second floor. Past the kitchen, I am aware of the bright sunlight outdoors. The noises in the street, the sound of cars putting on their brakes, buses, airplanes soften as we ascend the stairs. She has taken off her shoes and the taut muscles of her calves are at level with my eyes.

She is wearing one of her many cotton skirts and the hem moves from right to left as she places her feet on one step after the other. The wood creaks beneath us. It gets quieter and quieter as we go deeper into the house and I notice her strong hand on the last section of the banister. She tells me to wait in my room while she runs the tub and gets in. She will call me when it is time.

38

I think she is very beautiful with her pale green eyes and brown hair that she ties with a ribbon. I wait in my room and drop my purple shorts and other clothes in a heap near the bed. I hear her walking across the wooden floor in the hallway and hear the rush of water into the tub. I sit on the edge of the bed and wait. I am aware of the sound of trees and birds. The trees sound like paper coins spilling over and over and the noise of the birds is clear and varied—the small delicate yip of sparrows and the frightening shriek of evil blue-jays as they make their way around on a summer afternoon. It is hot in my room even with the breeze. She calls me in. I go and stand in front of her. She tells me that I shouldn't look, to get into the tub behind her. But I have already looked at the square wash cloth she has put between her legs and I have taken a quick look at the breasts I always want to see. They are two large bags of flesh. Her nipples are inverted brown saucers and at the center of each a twist of deep mauve skin stands out. She is very tan and is a shade of mocha in the milky water.

Outside the window, past many of the houses on the street, the ancient beech tree that has Indian markings at the top shakes. Brown-gold leaves glitter in the light. The tree dominates the sky and its silhouette fills the window frame. I stand naked on the cool black floor in the unlighted bathroom. I put one foot into the warm water while I support myself with one hand on my mother's shoulder. I put the other foot in and she motions for me to put my legs over hers. As I slide down I smell her hair which is my favorite thing about her body. It smells like nuts and leaves and a vague perfume that has no name. I ease myself down into the water with my hands on my mother's shoulders and put my legs over hers. I am so small that my feet rest on her knees. She hands me the soap and asks me to wash her back. I dip down and wet my hands trying to grip the large cake of soap and rub it around in circle after circle against her wet back until it glistens with white bubbles and a creamy film. I rub and work my small palms over and over, down her spine, lower on her back and onto her sides until she giggles and her laughter moves upward against the tiled walls. My legs rest on hers and I slip my hands along her arms and along the base of her neck.

It is very quiet in the house and I am not interested in anything but my mother's back in front of me and the sound of the moving trees and the 39

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sounds of a variety of birds. I make cups of my hands and splash water upwards against her shoulders and watch the streams of suds ooze down her skin. I splash and splash until the hair at the back of her neck gets wet and I begin to laugh because I love this play. My mother takes the soap from me and washes her hard ankles and puts her fingers between her toes. The red nail polish is a shock against the white tub and the milky water. She begins to hum "If You Were the Only Boy in the World." I put my arms around her neck and rest my cheek against her wet shoulder and close my eyes and in that darkness love the sound of her humming and the sound of the trees. •

Philip in the Ice Field

PHILIP GOT THE TIP OF HIS BOOT CAUGHT in the top of his footprint

and pitched forward onto his knees. The frozen snow bit his legs. The wind whipped up a white cloud that breezed past him like the skirts of some ghost-woman, running away. "Wrrr-ong," Philip said to the wind. "It was Dad, not Mom. And I doubt even ghosts wear long skirts anymore." He got up. The wind moaned between the houses. "It's not my fault you were wrong." The wind moaned again. "Yeah, fuck you."

He took another step forward and smiled at the crunch as the surface broke, and then the slow soft sinking down to the bottom. There were maybe two months a year when it snowed enough and was cold enough for the yard to get like this. A just-opened jar of peanut butter. A perfect bowl of chocolate pudding, Dad would say, and Philip would say ' 'Wrrr-ong Dad, crunchy peanut butter, because pudding doesn't crunch when you break the surface.'' Philip brought his right foot even with his left and swiveled around to look at his footprints. They looked stamped into the earth. They'd stay there till it snowed again. It made him nervous. Anyone could come out there and trace where he'd been. Trace him all the way back to the woods he'd been walking in. "Poor boy," they'd say then, and shake their sad, stupid little heads like they were dogs wagging their tails. Wagging their tails because they were secretly happy about it all. It gave them something to talk about. Now Philip turned back and looked toward his house. The back porch light was on, spilling a pool of dingy yellow onto the surface of the snow, like it was urinating. Urinating. Philip smiled.

The wind whipped up again as Philip started across the yard. The roar 40

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of the crowd. This was how Gordie Howe must have felt, Philip thought.

Walking out onto the rink at Joe Louis Arena on Gordie Howe day.

Gordie'd never played in Joe Louis Arena. It hadn't been built then. But the crowd was the same, they'd just moved a few blocks down, and when Gordie walked out onto the ice they roared. Philip stopped walking and clapped with his mittens and roared with the crowd, and sure enough Dad popped up out of one of Philip's footprints as if out of a toaster and stood there on top of the ice, too light to break the surface.

He was wearing his wool Detroit Lions hat. He waved. The crowd hushed. "Let'splay," said Philip. His dad nodded and pulled a balled up sock from his pocket and droped it on the ice.

"Got the brooms?" Dad said.

"In the garage. I'll go get them."

Dad shook his head. "You know I can't wait that long." Then he reached his arms out toward Philip, they kept getting longer and longer until they almost covered the six feet separating him from his son, and then he retracted them back to his sides like claws. "You never did like to hug, Philip."

"I'm a teenager," Philip said. His father smiled and dropped back into the earth where he belonged. The crowd roared. Philip turned back toward the house and started walking again. He could see his mom now through the back windows as she moved from the kitchen to the den and back like a wind-up toy going in a circle. She was pissing him off lately.

For the first three months she'd stared at Dad's picture and cried. Now she'd taken to staring at Philip and crying. "You don't have a father," she'd moan.

"I have a father," Philip would say. "He's just dead." He'd go to his room and shut the door, but he'd still be able to hear her sputtering around in the den. Then she'd go to sleep. He was passing the pine tree in the middle of the yard when he caught his foot again and fell and landed in Ellen's miniskirted lap. He rolled over and stared down at his Tiger shirt, his shorts. Summer. He'd been walking alongside the tree, but somehow he'd fallen behind it. He got up and brushed the pine needles off his knees. Ellen was standing now too, with her long dark hair swept over one shoulder and her legs tan as usual from the trips to California to see her dad. "Bet you never thought we'd be back here again," she said.

42

Back here. Behind this tree where the two of them had spent most of their first sixteen years. It was perfect because it couldn't be seen from either of their houses. As if that had mattered at the time. "No, I didn't," he said.

"It's your own fault and I don't feel a bit sorry for you," said Ellen.

Philip said nothing. "You were right, you know. As soon as they started living together again they started fighting. California's great though.

You'd love it. But then you already know that from my letters."

Philip looked away. "I haven't been reading your letters."

Ellen shrugged. "That's why I don't feel sorry for you. You must like feeling this way.'' She paused. ' 'What do you think this tree thinks of us?

I mean, we were here a long time. It must have an opinion."

Philip wasn't sure how to answer. He stared at Ellen's tan legs. He stared at her smile. He'd always made her smile. "It's pining for you," he said. ' 'Oh yeah?" She lifted up her skirt and skimmed her panties down and hung them on the tree. "I never understood why you didn't do this before. I wanted you to, you know?" She reached her arms out toward Philip, they kept getting longer and longer until they almost covered the space between them. I meant to, he wanted to tell her. I did. But it wouldn't have stopped you from going. Dad, Ellen, it wouldn't have stopped you from going. Ellen's arms were about to touch his sides when it started snowing, harder and harder until they were both in drifts up to their knees. "God I hate the cold," Ellen said, and went back to California where she belonged.

Philip looked up toward the back windows, but the kitchen and the den were empty. He'd fallen on the side of the tree after all.He couldn't believe he had a boner. "You're in some serious trouble," he said. The wind moaned. Philip laughed. "Very funny." The wind moaned again.

Philip stamped the rest of the way across the yard to the back porch, laughing, and he was about to open the door when the wind stopped.

"Not you too," Philip said to the wind, and fell backward into the snow.

He thought this was probably what it was like to lie in a grave, except you wouldn't be thinking about it. The wind whipped up and blew white clouds across his face. "You never learn, do you?" he said.

And got up. • 43

JOY PARKER

Joy Parker

Weekend

T H E BABY IS CRYING, GASPING, STRANGLING sobs that go on and on and on. Nothing Naomi does seems to quiet her. She offers her the nipple. Pamela refuses, perversely, pushing it away with an angry red fist.

Naomi carries her from one end of the small apartment to the other, back and forth, there, baby, there. The child screams harder, struggling in her arms.

Naomi's becoming frantic. This can't go on. Pretty soon she'll be crying, too, and then where will she be? There's no one at home to comfort her. Her husband fled this morning, literally fled to the office. After a weekend of shit-soaked diapers, she doesn't blame him. She'd run, too, if there were somewhere to run.

Undressing the child for the third time that morning, she searches her body for physical symptoms, an open safety pin in the thigh, an undiscovered cut, signs of bruising. Nothing. The baby just lies there on the changing table, a ball of pink wax, her stomach moving in and out as she sucks in air to scream. Maybe she'll have to take her to the hospital.

Maybe the child is suffering from some terrible internal injury she can't see.

Naomi tries again with the breast and the child takes it suddenly, cutting off the volume in mid-sob. Her ears ring with the silence. Moving like a tight-rope walker, she eases herself over to the bed and lies down on her side, wrapping the naked baby against her in a blanket. The child whimpers and is still.

Naomi is hungry herself. She was in the middle of making her own breakfast when Pamela began to scream. She thinks of her cold toast sit-

44

ting in the toaster, the eggs for her omelette floating in a bowl, her cup of coffee cooling on the kitchen table.

The phone rings, but she's afraid to get up and answer it. It isn't safe to move when Pamela's in one of her moods. Anything could make her start up again. It's probably only Greg, anyway, calling her up from the office to see how she's doing. Most of the time she's glad to hear from him, grateful for the contact with the outside world. At least once a week, though, she gets hysterical and shouts into the receiver, or cries.

She doesn't know where it comes from on those days. It's as if a madwoman takes possession of her body, pouring out streams of invective she has no control over.

Greg refuses to get angry over the phone. Instead, he soothes her, telling her that he loves her and that he understands. At the office he's Mr. Clean, Mr.Nice Guy Hero who takes care of the baby for his wife after work. If he lost his cool, his secretary might overhear. Her blue Heididoll eyes would snap open in shock and she'd gossip about him with all the other Heidi dolls over their tuna fish sandwiches at lunch time.

Pamela is sleeping. Naomi picks her up carefully and puts her in the crib on top of a couple of open diapers. Then she goes into the kitchen and makes herself more toast and an omelette. She wolfs her food in front of an open women's magazine. It's the only reading material she can concentrate on these days. Between the changing table and the diaper pail, there's no time for great literature. ' 'What kind of woman are you?" the article asks. ' 'Take this easy test and find out. Question 1. Pick the phrase which best describes you: (a) Adventurous. Always ready to take that risk, whether it means changing careers at thirty, or going on safari with that special man. (b) Funloving.

Last seen wading in the fountain in front of the Ritz. The gang calls you when they need someone to organize that ski weekend at Stowe. (c) Creative. Does that green snakeskin belt go with that purple sheath?

You bet it does! (d) Intellectual. You cried when you read The Great Gatsby. Every year you celebrate Sylvia Plath's birthday."

Naomi hesitates between (a) and (d). The phone rings shrilly. She forgot to unplug it and it's too late now. Pamela wakes up and begins to scream.

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Naomi always looks forward to Tuesdays. It's the day the diaper service comes. Manuel, the diaper man, is the only man she's felt any sexual attraction to for the past five months.

She's slept with her husband twice since the birth of their child. It repulses her when he tries to caress her. He's fascinated with her breasts which have grown enormous since she began nursing, the aureoles brown and huge like coffee cups. To Naomi they don't even seem sexy anymore, more like milk machines to which she is, unfortunately, attached.

This morning she puts on a red silk blouse and tucks it into her tightest jeans. She's taken off most of the weight she gained during pregnancy, but the jeans still cut a little in the crotch, titillating her slightly. She lines her eyes with grey and puts on a mauve eye shadow above and below her lashes. Then lipstick, a light shade. She doesn't want to be too obvious.

If the diaper man really made a move on her, she doesn't know what she'd do. It isn't sex she wants so much as just to be desired. What could she do, anyway, with the baby watching? It would probably be the child's first trauma. Years from now, Pamela would be lying on the couch in her analyst's office, trying to interpret the memory of her mother being attacked by a strange man.

The buzzer rings. Naomi goes to answer it. "Who is it?" she says.

"The diaper service."

Naomi buzzes him in and stands in the open door. A few seconds later, he comes up the stairs, carrying the bundles of diapers as if they were packing cases.

The two of them stand eye to eye. He's only five foot six, Naomi's height, but compactly muscular like many Latino men. His eyes sweep her from head to foot.

"Where d'you want them?"

"In the bedroom will be fine." Swaying from side to side, Naomi walks ahead of him down the hall. "Right here," she says, pointing to the bed.

"Right," he says. He grins at her.

Pamela's lying in her crib, on her best behavior for once. The diaper man leans over and tickles her on her stomach.

46

"That's a nice baby you got," he says, looking at Naomi's breasts.

"You gonna have more?"

"Of course," Naomi says. "I think a woman should have as many children as she can."

"Your husband, he's a lucky man. You a beautifuly lady."

The diaper man pauses expectantly and Naomi realizes this is the moment she's been waiting for. Her mouth feels dry and she parts her lips to lick them. All the blood in her brain rushes to her groin.

Suddenly, Pamela lets out a piercing shriek, the kind the heroines in B movies make when they come face to face with the hulking alien. Naomi and the diaper man both jerk as if they were on wires. ' 'I think I got to be goin' now,'' he says, beginning to edge towards the door. He looks like he wants to put his fingers in his ears.

Naomi sees him out and then goes back into the bedroom to pick up Pamela. "I'm going to throw you out the window," she says, "and see if babies can fly."

Naomi is sitting in the living room waiting for her husband. The foam rubber baseball bat is across her knees. Six years ago when they were first married, Greg had brought two of them home, explaining to her how wonderful they were for expressing hostility.

"If I get mad at you," he said, "I can hit you with this as hard as I want and it won't hurt you. If you want to, you can hit me back."

Naomi hears the key turning in the lock. As Greg walks in, she stands up and swings. ' 'Why didn't you call me back?" she screams.' 'I talked to your secretary eight times today and she said you were in a meeting. What kind of fucking meeting lasts all day?"

"What's the matter with you?" Greg is trying to shield his face with his briefcase. His glasses have been knocked across the room.

"I'll tell you what's the matter. The finance company was going to repossess the car by five o'clock today unless we came up with two hundred dollars. When they came to get it, I told them it was in the city with you and that you wouldn't be back until six-thirty."

The buzzer rings. "That's them." Naomi's voice has dropped to a whisper. The bat hangs limply at her side.

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"What did you do with the car?" Greg hisses.

"I dropped it off at the garage and told the mechanic it needed a tuneup. They'll never find it there."

The buzzer rings more insistently, as if someone were leaning on it. In the bedroom Pamela begins to cry.

"What are we going to do?" asks Naomi.

"Nothing," Greg says. "We won't answer the door and they'll go away."

"You told me you took care of this," Naomi says. "I told them all week the check was in the mail. You said we were caught up on all the bills."

"We are," says Greg, "on everything but the car."

The buzzer rings again. Naomi pictures thugs downstairs from the finance company, ready to break her husband's thumbs if he doesn't tell them where the car is.

Greg collapses on the couch. He's still wearing his hat and overcoat.

"Maybe it would be better if we sold the car and got it over with. I don't know if we can afford it anymore."

"But that's my car," Naomi says, "the car that I love. You can't take my car away from me. How will I ever get out of this damn house without my car?" Pamela sobs steadily in the background as if grieving for the car.

"What am I supposed to do?" Greg shouts. "You wanted a child, we got a child. How am I supposed to find the money for everything?"

"Call your father," Naomi says coldly.

"No, you know I swore I'd never do that again." ' 'Call him!'' she shrieks. ' 'This is an emergency!'' She brandishes the foam rubber baseball bat threateningly over his head.

"All right, all right. Put that ridiculous thing down.'' Greg reaches for the phone and begins dialing angrily. "And will you see if you can get our daughter to shut up? She howls every time I call my parents. Just once I'd like them to think we live in a normal household."

Naomi goes out and brings Pamela into the living room. She joggles her on her hip and the baby hiccoughs wetly.'' See Daddy,'' Naomi says, "Daddy's a good boy."

Greg glares at her unsmilingly.

Each Thursday the Mothers' Group meets, twelve neighborhood women, all with children under the age of a year. The group was formed six months ago as a place for them to talk about their feelings and to pool information on child raising. Lately, Naomi's been discouraged with the tone of the meetings. Last week the group spent two hours discussing the merits of live-in housekeepers versus sleep-aways. Naomi had got drunk and cried all the way home. This week she's determined to speak her mind.

Naomi stuffs Pamela's arms into her new jumpsuit, the purple one with the cats on the pockets. "What a pretty girl you are," she says. She hauls her downstairs, unchains the stroller from the banister, and puts her into it.

A few minutes later they arrive at the brownstone of Felicity Warren, host mother for the week. Before the birth of her twins, Felicity worked in real estate. Her husband still does. The maid answers the door and shows Naomi into the livingroom. Bright quilts on which babies of all sizes lie or sit are spread over the oriental rug. The more ambulatory children stand up in a large playpen filled with toys.

"Hello, Naomi," Felicity says, kissing her limply on the cheek.

The maid offers her sherry and tiny little sandwiches. Naomi wishes she could afford to live in a place this big. A thin, nervous woman named Roberta leans over and taps her on the arm. "I'm so exhausted," she whispers furtively. "The baby hasn't slept more than six hours a night for the last week. I feel like I'm going to collapse."

Naomi looks around the room. Most of the women seem relaxed and cheerful, stunningly dressed in spite of the extra twenty or thirty pounds they've put on since pregnancy. Several of them are discussing real estate.

"If you want to invest in a condominium, I'd say now's the perfect time," Felicity says. "The market will never be better."

"That's true," says another woman. "Jeffrey and I bought the place on Fifth Street for one and sold it for two not three years later.''

"Two what?" Naomi asks. She tosses down her third sherry.

"Two hundred thousand," the woman says cheerfully. "It was a seller's market."

"I'm curious," Naomi says, pursing her lips. "Do any of you ever

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hate your children? Of course, I know we all love them most of the time, but do you ever have moments, maybe even whole days at a stretch, when you just hate them and wish you could kill them?"

The women look frightened. Someone shifts uncomfortably in her chair. "I don't know what you mean," she says.

By Friday night Naomi feels transparent with exhaustion. She hasn't been able to put the baby down for more than ten minutes at a stretch all day, and she's weak with hunger. All she's had to eat since morning is a cheese sandwich and four cups of instant coffee. From the hallway the phone rings. It's Greg calling from the office.

"Hello, I have some bad news for you," he says. "I have to stay late tonight and work on the Davis case. It's going up Monday morning and there's still a lot of ground we have to cover before we're ready."

Naomi sits down on the floor and begins peeling the paint off the baseboards. "I was hoping you'd be home tonight," she says. "Pamela's been a monster all day and I sure could've used the help."

"I'm really sorry, honey," Greg says, "but you know how important this case is to my firm. If I ever want to make junior partner, I have to be available when they want me."

"Well, at least you'll be home this weekend," Naomi says.

There's an uncomfortable pause. "Uh, I was going to save this for tonight, but I might as well tell you now. I have to work all day Saturday, too."

"Oh no," Naomi says faintly. She doesn't think she can bear it. Saturday's the one day of the week that's hers and hers alone. If she can't have Saturday, she'll go to pieces. Parts of her will be lying all over the apartment when Greg gets home.

"Hello, hello? Are you still there?" Greg says.

Naomi tries desperately to think. There must be some logic that can sway him. "But you know we agreed," she says. Her voice comes out funny and high like Minnie Mouse. "I mean, Saturday has always been my day off."

"Baby, please, I'm sorry. Look, it's going to be all right. I promise you it is. Maybe we can get a sitter or something." A voice in the background says something to him. Greg comes back on the line. "I 50

have to hang up now. Will you be okay until I get home?"

"I guess so," Naomi says. She drops the phone into the receiver without saying goodbye. Pamela begins crying in the bedroom and Naomi cries right along with her.

After a few minutes she stands up, her mind marvelously clear, possibly for the first time in months. "We're getting out of here," she tells Pamela. As she throws things into a suitcase, her daughter watches her, and every once in a while Naomi thinks she sees her smile.

An hour later they're on the West Side Highway, the car thrumming calmly beneath them and a tape by Carly Simon in the tape deck.'' An-tici-pa-tion," Naomi sings, and thinks of the French toast with honey her mother's going to serve her for breakfast. She's going to crawl into the bed she slept in as a girl and not wake up till noon. Let her mother take care of the baby.

Naomi looks over at Pamela lolling halfway out of her car seat. She's becoming adept at squirming out of confined places. As should we all, Naomi thinks. She pushes her back in and adjusts the safety strap as well as she can with one hand.

Just then a pair of headlights bounce against her rear-view mirror.

Naomi looks back. A large green car is coming up on her fast. With a shock, she realizes the other car is drifting all over the road, as if the driver is drunk. She tries to speed up, but the other car seems determined to pass her. Pulling all the way over into the right-hand lane, she holds tightly to the wheel. The green car moves to the left. Just as it looks as if the driver will get past her safely, he swerves, sideswiping her.

Naomi nearly panics. Fighting for control, she wants to grab her daughter but manages to keep both hands on the wheel. At the last moment the car straightens out, just missing the guard rails. Pulling off at the first exit, she finds a parking space and unstraps Pamela. As far as she can tell, neither one of them is hurt. It takes a long time for Naomi's hands to stop shaking, but when they do she turns the car around and heads back home.

Sometime past midnight Naomi, stone drunk, hears Greg's key turn in the door. Unable to fall asleep, she's been sitting in the living room 51

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watching a "Star Trek" rerun with the sound turned low so as not to disturb Pamela. Scotty's telling Captain Kirk that the relay circuits are fused and the warp drive is about to blow up the ship.

Greg looks at her in surprise. "Are you all right? I thought you'd be asleep by now.''

Naomi makes her thumb and forefinger into a phaser and points it at her husband. "Zzzzzz," she says. "I've disintegrated you." She starts giggling and suddenly the giggling turns to tears and she slides off the couch and onto the carpet.

"I have some good news for you, honey," Greg says. "I don't have to work tomorrow after all. I got it all done tonight. Isn't that wonderful?"

"Congratulations," Naomi says and cries harder. "Now you can nurse me through my nervous breakdown." She tries to get up and fails, the alcohol finally taking effect on her muscles and reflexes.

Greg kneels down and puts his arms around her. A cloud of bourbon engulfs him. Half lifting, half dragging, he manages to get her into the bedroom and onto the bed.

"You creep,'' Naomi says. ' 'You left me all alone.'' Her arms and legs flop like a ragdoll's as Greg undresses her.

"You're going to have a hell of a hangover in the morning," Greg says. He strips and crawls in next to her, slipping his arm around her waist. The back of his hand brushes against her breast.

"Oh, Manuel," Naomi murmurs and begins to snore. •

52

Papa and the Rock

PAPA COULDN'T HEAR VERY WELL. During World War II, he served on a naval destroyer in the South Pacific. My mother claimed that the guns going off damaged his hearing, but he wouldn't get a hearing aid since that, mother claimed, would damage his vanity.

It's hard to imagine Papa vain. He combed his long gray hair straight back off his forehead and kept it in place with Brylcreem. He wore bifocals in a frame that I never thought was or would be stylish. People now call them nerd glasses. Once he had been a slender athlete, but as he aged his middle thickened, and now he wore a plaid flannel shirt that was thin at the elbows and frayed at the cuffs and faded blue jeans held up by a belt that was an experiment in the tensile strength of leather. Still, he wouldn't wear a hearing aid.

"Papa, get the kind that fits on the back of your glasses like Pastor Harry has," my sister Mary told him. "No one will ever notice it."

"Sweetheart, I wouldn't need a hearing aid if you girls would just speak up and enunciate properly."

"Papa, we do speak up. Mom makes us say 'How now brown cow' to practice. You just can't hear," my oldest sister Pat chimed in.

"That's not true."

"Hey, dad. Do you know why farts smell?" Gigi, my youngest sister asked.

"No. Why?" "So the deaf can enjoy them."

"What's that?"

And on and on it went.

53

Quarto

Catherine Mathis

He did pretty good when he was one on one, but put him in small groups or a place with background noise, and he withdrew or constantly poked us in the ribs asking, "What'd you say? What was that?"

When the whole family gathered at the dinner table, Papa kept quiet. It was too hard for him to keep up with three daughters and a wife who carried on a guerrilla-warfare type of tabletalk in which one person would sabotage a conversation by interrupting with a provocative remark and then retreating to the safety of an offhanded comment to Papa before going on to finish someone else's sentence. His head would bob back and forth like someone watching a tennis match before he finally gave up and mechanically ate dinner staring at his plate, one hand in his lap, the other lifting the fork to his mouth.

It was particularly difficult the Christmas my sister Pat got married.

The family hadn't met her fiance, Steve, and we were consumed with curiosity. The plan was that my sister Mary would have luncheon for Pat and Steve at her house in the country and we'd all get a chance to meet the guy. Pat and Steve were to drive to my parent's house and we'd all drive out to Mary's farm from there. The introductions went fine. Papa heard Steve's name and didn't call him Joe, the name of Pat's exhusband. Pat, Steve, Gigi, and I all piled into one car with Papa behind the wheel. Mother had gone on ahead.

It was December in Minnesota so we donned layers of sweaters. In his huge parka, Papa barely fit behind the wheel. He sported a gray furlined hat with ear flaps. Long brown strings hung from the flaps so Papa could tie the hat under his chin or on top of his head. When he tied the flaps up, the bow looked like a little propeller, and I often imagined Papa taking off into the atmosphere in search of the birds he loved to watch.

When he came in from outside on a cold day, his bifocals would fog over and the combined effect of the propeller hat and Ping-Pong ball eyes made him look like someone just goosed Beaver Cleaver.

But that day it was too cold for exposed skin so Papa wore his hat in a flaps-down position. Covering the ears of a hard-of-hearing driver is not a good idea, and to begin with, Papa was not a good driver. He drove with his hands firmly fixed in the ten and two o'clock positions, his body hunched over the steering wheel, and his eyes fixed straight ahead. The neighbors knew who was driving the family car by the way it moved

down the street. If it traveled slowly and regally over the pavement, Mother sat in the driver's seat. If it lunged spasmatically like a hotshot breakdancer, Papa had the wheel. He liked to jam on the brakes and then hit the accelerator full force making the car jerk and roar, jerk and roar.

Mexico City or Manhattan driving wouldn't have troubled Papa. To his credit, Papa used turn signals when changing lanes, but then he forgot to shut them off once the switch was made. Of course, he didn't hear the constant click, click, click.

Mary lived forty-five minutes of small talk from my parents' house.

Pat and Steve sat in the front with Papa to be closer to the heat. The heater's noise delighted my ears since it meant warm air was on the way to the back seat where Gigi and I sat mouthing comments and gesturing impressions of our future brother-in-law.

"What model is this car, Mr. Mathis?" Steve asked politely.

"What's that you say?"

"What model car is this?"

"At the place on Highway one-fourteen."

"No, no Papa. What model?" Pat said.

"Oh, model. Well, it's a Chrysler. No, it's a Buick."

Gigi and I snickered.

The ride to Mary's took us over back roads past farms, silos and implement dealers. Not very interesting stuff and, anyway, we'd traveled it often. Knowing that Papa would soon exasperate Pat and Steve as a conversationalist, Gigi and I paged through Vogue magazine and ceased paying attention to the conversation in front until I heard Pat say,' 'Papa, there's something in the road." Then we looked up. There was no response from Papa. He didn't hear her.

"Papa?"

I heard the same sounds that I used to hear on Saturday morning cartoons when the Pink Panther landed in a garbage can. Crash! Bam! Boom! Something ripped the belly of the Buick. The car jerked toward the side of the road, slowed down, and finally came to a complete stop.

Silence. Gigi and I stared at each other.

Papa and Steve got out of the car. They looked under the car. They looked beneath the hood. They looked at each other. They did all those things people do when confronted with a mechanical monster they don't

54

55

CATHERINE MATHIS

Quarto

understand. Pat was cringing in the front seat running her knuckles across her teeth and muttering,' 'Papa, Papa. I can't believe you did this.

He's going to think we're nuts. He's going to think we're all crazy."

Since the Buick refused to run, we called a tow truck. Mary picked us up and the luncheon went on as planned, as did the wedding although I'm sure Steve must have wondered what kind of crazy family he was marrying into.

A week and $987.17 later, the car was back on the streets and Papa behind the wheel. He told Mother an expurgated account of the day's events claiming he didn't see the rock in the road, and then we told her the real story by adding that he didn't hear Pat's warning. Of course, they fought. Mother insisted Papa buy a hearing aid while Papa maintained that he couldn't afford one now. Mother retorted that he couldn't afford to be without one. Round and round they went. In the end mother's arguments finally fell on deaf ears. Yet, Papa, in his inimitable way, recognized his foibles.

In my parents' backyard sits a rock. A rather large one at that. On the top, in Papa's distinctive handwriting, it says "This rock cost $987.17!"

D

Mother's Choice

THE CHARACTERS CATHERINE: About 30. An attractive, casually dressed woman.

MOTHER: Late 60's. A small, old, thin pale woman.

THE SETTING A hospital room. No flowers. An IV next to the bed. MOTHER is in the bed wearing a hospital gown. She is awake and facing stage right. The covers are pulled up to just below her armpits. CATHERINE enters from stage left and MOTHER turns to look at her as she enters.

CATHERINE walks over and stands next to the head of the bed.

ACT I, SCENE 1 CATHERINE (She gently puts her hand on MOTHER'S hair as she speaks) Mama? How ya doin?

MOTHER I don't know.

CATHERINE Did you see the doctor?

MOTHER Yes.

56

57

Catherine Mathis

Quarto

CATHERINE Is he coming back?

CATHERINE Mama (gently), we know you're having trouble breathing because of the disease, but did he explain to you what could be done to help you?

MOTHER MOTHER He said I could go home. I want to go home.

Yes. CATHERINE What did he say?

MOTHER He said I was having trouble breathing.

CATHERINE You can go home, Mama, but we have to decide something now. He explained that didn't he?

MOTHER

CATHERINE (Smiling) Did you tell him "No shit Sherlock?"

Yes. CATHERINE He explained your alternatives.

MOTHER Catherine, don't use that word. It's not ladylike.

MOTHER Yes.

CATHERINE CATHERINE You can go on a respirator or you can stay off it and just use the oxygen.

Sorry Ma. MOTHER You know better. I didn't raise you to speak that way.

MOTHER Yes.

CATHERINE I'm sorry. What's he going to do?

CATHERINE Well, what do you think?

MOTHER You have such terrible language.

MOTHER Well, I could go on a respirator.

CATHERINE Ma, I talked to the doctor. Did you understand what he said?

CATHERINE Yes.

MOTHER He said it was because of the disease, because of ALS. 58

59

Quarto

Catherine Mathis

CATHERINE

MOTHER That's what Jacob Javits has.

Yes. MOTHER

CATHERINE That's right.

Or I could just use oxygen.

CATHERINE

MOTHER I don't like Jacob Javits.

Yes.

CATHERINE Ma, that's not important. You have the same disease, not the same politics. There's a difference.

MOTHER But are there any other alternatives?

(Pause)

MOTHER I didn't like his stand on the Vietnam War.

No, Mama. That's it.

CATHERINE Ma, the war is over and we have to think about other things like what we're going to do.

MOTHER

CATHERINE

MOTHER I want to go home.

CATHERINE Mama, you can go home but first we have to arrange for a respirator.

What I'm going to do.

MOTHER CATHERINE

I don't want a respirator.

What?

MOTHER What I'm (emphasizing the I'm) going to do.

CATHERINE Mother, you'll live longer. You'll be more comfortable.

MOTHER

CATHERINE Well, we have to decide this together.

I can't golf with a respirator.

MOTHER

CATHERINE Mother, you can't golf now anyway, (emphatically) You're in a wheelchair most of the time!

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61

I could go on a respirator.

Quarto

Catherine Mathis

MOTHER Well, I really couldn't if I had a respirator.

MOTHER Katy, I'm tired. I want to go home.

CATHERINE Mother, the respirators they have now are small. They're portable.

Javits still has speaking engagements. For Heaven's sake!

CATHERINE Mama, you will be home. You'll be home with me, and your grandkids.

Everybody will be there.

MOTHER I don't have speaking engagements.

CATHERINE Mother, that's not the point. The point is that without a respirator you won't live very long. Your muscles aren't working anymore. Your diaphragm is a muscle. It makes you breathe. A respirator will do for you what your diaphragm used to do.

MOTHER I don't want a respirator. I want to go home.

CATHERINE Mama, I want you to go home too. But I want you to go home with a respirator. That's what we need to tell the doctor when he comes back.

He'll be here soon.

MOTHER No.

MOTHER Yes. CATHERINE Mama.. . Mama, please...

MOTHER No. CATHERINE You don't have to use it if you don't want to. You could just try it for awhile. You can always send it back.

MOTHER No. I want to go home.

(Silence) CATHERINE Alright Mama. We'll go home.

CATHERINE Yes. He said he would be right back.

MOTHER No. (pause) No respirator.

CATHERINE (Sorrowfully) Ma. Ma, I don't want you to die.

62

63

•

Pamela Krafczek

PAMELA KRAFCZEK

I wasn't in the class when Daniel was doing the Broadway show and weighed 350 pounds.

He now weighs 250 pounds.

On Old Broadway

The show closed about three years ago.

Daniel's been averaging about 35 pounds a year, he explained to me after class one day.

Weight loss, that is.

MOST OF THE PEOPLE in my acting class are professional actors.

Which means they earn their living, or at least a good portion of it, by acting.

A few of us, including myself, are amateurs.

He's going to go after leading man types soon, he told me.

But another guy told me Daniel's been fat all his life.

I, myself, can't say.

But the majority of the class seems to hold him in high regard.

We few have a lot to learn.

He never misses a class, that Daniel.

From the teacher.

But we can learn much from the professionals, as well.

Daniel, for instance, was in the chorus of the original cast of The Pirates ofPenzance, a Broadway show that starred Linda Rondstadt and Kevin Kline.

Daniel might even be considered the unofficial leader of the class because he has the biggest credit.

There are one or two, though, who whisper Daniel only got his big break because he was an oddity—a walking, singing 350 pounds with amateur acting ability.

But then again, none of us misses a class.

We all attend every class.

Religiously.

Take Roger.

He might be considered the other unofficial leader of the class.

Not so much because Roger is a great actor, but because he has the undisputed record for the most consecutive classes.

In fact, no one, even Roger, can remember when he joined.

I, myself, can't say.

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65

Quarto

Pamela Krafczek

Anyway, Roger keeps the books for our teacher so he can attend class for a nominal fee.

He's just been there, they say.

He's a likeable guy.

So Roger keeps the books and keeps coming to class.

And he knows a lot of people in the business.

The class that we all attend.

Producers.

Religiously.

Directors.

And then, of course, there's Ruelle.

Agents.

Ruelle understudied for a part in Zorba The Greek, a Broadway show starring Anthony Quinn.

Managers.

And actually had the lead role in another Broadway show that was unfortunately never produced.

They give him work.

He hasn't gotten any speaking parts, yet.

But he's working up to it, he says.

Someone said that Roger does all his acting stuck in the character of Richard III. That someone is the same guy that made the smart remark about Daniel so it could easily be sour grapes talking.

She's said many times that doing Zorba with Anthony (as she calls Anthony Quinn) was the most fantastic experience in her entire life, even if she was only an understudy.

She's into health food and doesn't drink.

Except, once, though, she helped me finish a bottle of red Italian wine.

It was then that she told me she copied Anthony Quinn's address book.

Except I do have to admit that Roger seems to have this sameness to every character he portrays.

Like it's pretty hard to imagine that Hamlet and Oscar Madison would act in a similar fashion.

Little by little and word for word she copied it, she said.

In his personal dressing room while he was on stage.

Hundreds of celebrities she has access to, says Ruelle.

But I must say, Roger makes them seem like brothers.

Still, I'm an amateur, so I can't really say.

66

Robert Redford on Redford Mountain. Warren Beatty at his California compound. Sophia Loren. And Isabella Rosselini. And Larry—as he is listed—Olivier.

67

Quarto

Pamela Krafczek

And Jackie Kennedy, who was listed under the O's for Onassis, says Ruelle.

He does temp secretarial work and gets killed for feature films and network television whenever he can.

She made me swear that I would never tell anybody.

He was an innocent passerby on last season's "Hill Street Blues" and got 250 dollars for being blasted by a shot gun.

So please, I trust this will not go further.

Anyway Ruelle's into health food and doesn't, for the most part, drink.

He got 350 dollars for a ten second spot as an Arab terrorist on an episode of "The Equalizer."

She's into yoga.

They slaughtered him with a bazooka.

And TM.

Half the night he spent awake rehearsing how to get slaughtered by a bazooka.

And reincarnation.

Half the night before the day they actually shot him.

And tarot cards.

He's been getting a lot of work lately.

And her boyfriend Ken. He's lucky.

And numerology.

He looks like an Arab terrorist.

And Werner Erhard.

Anyway, those are the professionals in our acting class.

And she comes to acting class.

We, of the amateurs, have no experience to speak of.

Religiously.

We come to class.

Ruelle is best friends with Shelley, who also attends class.

And listen to our teacher.

You might remember her from last year's McDonald's commercial.

He's a gray haired man who has a serious face.

She was the one serving the fries.

He talks of O'Neill.

The last of the professional actors in our class is Jordan.

And Miller and Shaw.

He's actually somewhat of a semi-pro, though.

68

69

Quarto

ELIZABETH TIPPENS

He talks of a career our professionals envy.

He talks of "great drama" and the "soul of wit.

Of things I don't even understand yet.

The Voice Lesson

Because I am one of the amateurs.

Who has a lot to learn.

And has no experience to speak of.

I HAVE A SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLAR RED SUEDE DRESS

Who comes to class.

Religiously.

•

70

that I have never had a good time in. It never fails. Victor and I get dressed up to go somewhere and we fight. Why this is so is what I am pondering as I stomp down Broadway to my voice lesson. Norman, my teacher, has a studio in the Ed Sullivan building on Broadway and Fifty-fourth Street. On the rickety elevator ride to the fifth floor I suddenly remember a dream of mine, a dream I dreamed last night. In the dream I was in the red dress, having fun, laughing. I was singing in the dream.

I step from the elevator and there is dark-haired Norman standing tall in the doorway to his suite with one hand propping himself up against the wall and the other resting low on his hip.

"Hi, Beautiful," he says. Norman's eyes are small but make up for their lack of size with an unusual and intense sea-blue color.

"Hi there, Norman," I say business-like. "How are you?"

"Fine, now that you're here."

"Norman, could you at least try not to flirt with me today. I'm deeply not in the mood."

"Problems with your husband what's-his-name?"

"What's-his-name is not my husband."

"So, are you going to marry him or not?" Norman asks as he ushers me into his rooms.

"Today is not a good day to ask that," I say, trailing off and waving my hand around, dismissing the subject from the atmosphere.

Norman says, "Did you hear my Tender Vittles spot, it's being aired now."

71

Quarto

Elizabeth Tippens

"Oh, yeah, I heard that one,'' I say tossing my bag onto the couch and taking my place behind the music stand.

"My 'Pan Am' comes out next month."

"Great," I say.

"Did you hear my 'Mini Mart,' runs all the time."

"Yes," I say. The fact is I don't have a TV set.

Sunlight from big, dirty windows fills the room, making it impossible to hide imperfections; tiny lines and soon-to-be wrinkles. Even though I always rally and somehow get down here for this lesson, and somehow get other places too, it requires time spent with crushed ice in a damp hand towel applied to my burning, swollen eyes. It then requires cool, wet teabags to reduce puffiness. It's crying that does this to my eyes. It's fights with Victor that does this to my eyes. I guess there is no hiding all this from Norman who is searching through stacked-up wire baskets for commercial copy for me to practice.

I'm a vegetarian, but four years ago I bit down real hard into one of those huge hamburgers with layers of buns and lots of sauce and pickles and shredded lettuce, and I got my first commercial. At the moment all I seem to be getting are radio voice-overs for banks on Long Island and theme parks in New Jersey. Phyllis, my agent, says that my type is changing; I'm going from SUZY COLLEGE to YOUNG MOTHER DRIVING THE KIDDIES TO THE LITTLE LEAGUE. Norman and I are working on a new demo tape for me. The new tape will scream, I'm here, I'm here, I'm still here.

Norman is the master, the one with a technique, something to teach, a method for doing this.

"Remember," Norman says, "commercial copy is like a pop song; you can take liberties with the phrasing."

"OK, right," I say, waiting to see what things I'm going to have to say into a microphone today.

"And don't come on like you're above the material, nobody ever got work being superior to the copy.''

"I know that, Norman," I say.

"By the way, I need to change your lesson time next week. My shrink changed my time."

"Fine," I say.

72

No matter what, Norman always works his shrink into the conversation. I guess so I'll think he's a sensitive, troubled person and sleep with him. This is the first time he's brought up his shrink since I mentioned that I went to a shrink of my own and that my shrink was a woman and that I had to go to a woman because on top of everything else I didn't want to always be interpreting, translating life into male terms. It's a culture gap, I said.

Norman props a stack of copy onto the metal music stand in front of the hanging microphone which is hooked up to ultra-sensitive sound equipment.

"OK, Babe, three, two, one.. .blastoff," Norman says in his famous voice, his deep and resonant announcer voice. He sits on a high stool right in front of me, two feet away. He has perfect skin, a little bloated here and there in this merciless daylight, but poreless and tanned. He's too close. He always manages to somehow get too close. He reaches his hand very close to my face to adjust the mike. The white fuzz on my cheek stands on end. His hands are large and smooth-looking, his fingernails clear and unlined.

"OK, I'll give this a shot," I say.

Norman switches on the tape recorder.

Take one. I begin to read the copy. "We've all suffered from menstrual p a i n . . . " "Woah, slow down, Babe. It's not a race," Norman stops me.

Take two. "We've all suffered from menstrual pain.

"Lower, much lower, too close to the mike. Too loud, no volume, forget volume. Remember, equipment picks up shading not volume."

Norman coaches me along.

Take three. "We've all suffered from menstrual pain. . . " "More intense, Babe. "Tell it to a friend."

"We've all suffered from menstrual pain.

"Stop reading, you're reading."

"We've all suffered from menstrual pain, and now there's new.. ."

"Talk to me about it, Babe."

"OK, Norman, we've all suffered from menstrual p a i n . . . " "Terrific, Kid, that's the sound. Keep going."

73

Elizabeth Tippens

Quarto

Norman comes around behind the music stand for a duet, something about aspirin—more people in pain. He throws his arm around my shoulder in a casual way while we play man and wife in need of a pain reliever. I never think of myself as really being attracted to Norman, but when I stand beside him, close enough to smell his breath, it is sweet and cool and a shiver runs across my shoulders.

In between takes I wiggle my shoulders up and down trying to free them from tension. I move my neck gently from side to side to ease the tightness that accumulates there. I have been going to Dr. Ming for accupressure, down on Thirty-fourth Street next door to the welfare hotel where black children hang from the scaffolding looking like spiders. Dr. Ming unblocks nerve passages with the pressure of his small, strong fingers, and we face each other and bow after it is all over.

Norman and I sit down to listen to the playback of the aspirin spot. We sound like a couple who really care about each other. I'm the one with the horrible headache. He's saying, "Try this, Honey, it works great for me." I start listening to the quality of the sound, pretending that the people are speaking a language I don't understand. I'm just listening to hear the emotion between them. I'm wondering if I really need Victor or not; it's just that I've already made up my mind about him. I like his salt and pepper hair, his strong arm muscles, and the clean way he smells, even his sweat smells clean. Victor knows how to wake me up in the morning by waking up my spine first. He walks his fingers up and down my back.

Victor does this perfectly, but Victor is driving me crazy.

Victor is the one who planted the seed about marriage in my mind in the first place. He started saying things like, "Our kids would have the most incredible calf muscles." Victor, not me, is the one who first put my first name together with his last name: Buffy Bornstein. I said I was never going to change my name, and not just because Buffy Bornstein was ridiculous. Victor looked disappointed, as though he thought Buffy Bornstein was the cutest thing he'd ever heard.

Now that the marriage seed has been planted, I want a tomato garden outside on the wrap-around terrace which wraps around Victor's penthouse. I see myself gardening away out there, weeding and pruning and humming, pregnant maybe. I've already got the whole thing landscaped perfectly in my mind. I want fresh tomatoes bursting with juice and 74

seeds, sliced up, on toasted PEPPERIDGE FARM white bread, with salt and pepper and mayonnaise and watercress.

Now every other day Victor comes up with about five really good, solid reasons not to do it. I say, fine, whatever, I'm tired, and we break up, sort of, and I cry and get his shirt all wet and he holds me like it's too hard to let me go, and then there's always more to talk about and then it's back to he wants to get married. I met Victor four years ago, right smack after moving to New York from a small town in North Carolina. There he was, Mr. New York. I looked up to Victor. I admired his optimism; everything, everywhere was always half full. When I first saw his penthouse and the view, I thought, what better view of the world could you ever hope to find.

Now every week we go to Pamela, our couple counselor, who has flawless red fingernails and Charles Jourdan footwear. Pamela and my therapist, Wendy, know each other and talk back and forth on the phone about me. Victor asked, "Doesn't that bother you?" "No," I told him, "The whole thing is now in the hands of the professionals."

In Pamela's soft gray office I sit there pulling at loose threads in the thick weave of the sofa, or else I sit with my arms folded over my chest while Victor goes on and on. He goes on and on about the twenty-year age difference and how I might pick up and leave him a couple of years down the line. He tries to get Pamela to lay odds on the success of the relationship: Fifty/fifty, sixty/forty, thirty/seventy. I start to wonder if Pamela does her own nails and whether Charles Jourdan ever has a sale.

Would Pamela ever want to go shopping? How about lunch sometime?

Pamela says, "Buffy, how do you feel about Victor's fears?" and I say, "I can't predict the future.'' What I want to do is jump up on to the sofa and scream out, "Get me off this roller coaster."

I realize that I am on the edge of Norman's chair clutching a handful of sheet music that has been lying on the glass coffee table in front of me.

My hand is holding the music and shaking. I doubt I can let go. I think of how when I met Victor I stopped singing. I started having problems with my vocal chords so I stopped, but I got the big burger commercial so everything seemed all right.

Norman has found some cosmetic soft-sell stuff for me to do. This is my forte. Norman makes me stand up again, and I begin slow and seductive.

75

Quarto

Elizabeth Tippens

"Feel the smoothness, feel the softness. Feel how smooth and soft beauty can be."

"Oooh, good, Babe, that's my girl," Norman says.

I still have the music held tight in my hand down by my side.

"Are you losing weight?" Norman runs his eyes up my leg.

"No, Norman, it's my low stress diet, you drop water weight."

"Well, you're looking good, Kid. OK, once again and make it more wonderful. I bet that's something What's-his-name never has to say to you, make it more wonderful."

In one sudden gesture I push the microphone out of my face and raise my voice to ugly shrillness. "Norman, right now I can't imagine any circumstances under which two people would want to have sex, and that includes you and me, Norman."

Norman whirls around on his swivel stool and turns off the running tape recorder. "Woah, sorry Babe, didn't mean to upset you.

"No, I'm sorry, Norman. I didn't mean to raise my voice and everything."

"Oh, no problem." He swivels back and forth on the stool for a moment and then says. "What if I go downstairs and get us some hot tea with lemon? How would that be, hot tea with lemon?"

"Fine," I say.

"I'm truly sorry, Babe," he says closing the studio door behind him.

I am left alone with the unnatural, soundless sound of no soundwaves in a soundproof room. The sheet music is still attached to my hand. I feel like I might scream or something. I recall last night's dream of singing and wearing the red dress that I have never had a real-life good time dressed in. The background shadows of the dream collect in the forefront and turn out to be three smiling black girls who can really sing. The three of them are wearing beaded dresses that sparkle, shimmy and shake when they do. They're up there on stage and I'm up there with them. We call ourselves THE LITTLE SISTERS, and we're singing out our hit songs. Who are these black girls in a white girl's dream; singing shadows from a long time ago?

blow ripples of my breath onto the surface of my hot tea. Except for this faint sound there is quiet in the room until Norman begins to slowly lift a melody from the keys of the piano. The song he's playing low, in a tinkling, elegant style, turns out to be "Body and Soul." He sings along smoothly and I look around at framed Broadway show posters hanging on the walls. Norman's name stands out on many of them and I remember that Norman was a singer once. He stops singing at the end of the verse and speaks softly above the tinkling of the keys.

"I remember when I was on Broadway in Man of La Mancha. I had a small part and I had these high notes and I was struggling away with them. They just weren't perfect. I knew they could be better, really good. I had a little one bedroom in the West Eighties, and that was in the old days when it wasn't chic. Anyway, I was working away on those high notes and I got so damn depressed that I just lay down on my bed and passed out cold. It was one of those deep sleeps like being drugged, or being in another world. You want to know what I dreamed?"

I nod my head yes.

"I dreamed I had those high notes, I had those high notes inside me.

They were mine to sing."

I squirt my lemon into my tea and take a sip. It feels warm going down.

"Sing me something," Norman says, "I'm dying to hear you sing."

"Oh, Norman, don't ask me to sing. I don't sing anymore."

How can I explain how much more safe it is not to try.

Norman is still underscoring the conversation with "Body and Soul."

He's coming around to the verse again. I hear the words. I feel the words forming in my mouth. I feel my throat open. I breathe and my chest expands. Just for a second I wonder if singing is a reflex, or if it is something you learn and could have forgotten. But I am too late with my thoughts. I am already singing. •

Norman returns with two styrofoam cups each filled with hot water and a steeping tea bag. He hands me my tea and sits down on the bench behind the piano. I lean against the piano like a night club singer and 76

77

Frances Snowder

FRANCES SNOWDER

A Legal Secretary

T H E NEW TEMP AMANDA SEEMED little more than a face in the crowd.

With her graying bun perched on top of her head, overlarge blackrimmed glasses and dowdy clothes, I couldn't imagine she'd ever been a child or a teenager or anything other than what she appeared to be now: an unattractive middle-aged woman. Quiet and shy, she did her work studiously and blended in with the furniture, giving no sign of personal pain or joy. Punctually at 5:00, she would pick up her plain black handbag and disappear only to return the next morning punctually at 9:00 with the same big black bag and in the same shapeless black suit she had been wearing the day before.

I imagined Amanda's home would be an extension of how I saw her— very drab and quiet. She'd have modest printed-cloth chairs, some knick-knacks, a few potted plants on the windowsill and a gray cat. I had this notion of Amanda exactly one week until the Monday she walked away from the office at 5:00 leaving her handbag on the floor beside her desk and our boss sent me after her with it.

Just seconds behind her, I got off the elevator on the ground floor of our building and saw Amanda through the glass windows already out the door and striding across First Avenue. She carried something dangling from her arm where the black handbag usually hung and that must have been the reason she had not missed her bag. I tried to catch up, but she walked faster than I did, her narrow shoulders pumping in time with her long spindly legs. She had gained so much distance in the beginning and my high heels were slowing me down.

Amanda turned the corner at 54th, and when I reached it I thought I

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had lost her until the thin black figure appeared silhouetted against a shocking pink store window display. Her gait at this distance reminded me of a spider. Worrying that she would board a bus or taxi and get away, I quickened my pace, but she kept walking.

Finally, she stopped in front of an elegant old brownstone and flapped her hands. She must have just realized that her handbag was not on her arm with the dangling package. Before I could get close enough to shout, she had lifted both arms and brought them down in a grand gesture like she was conducting an orchestra. At that moment, the bag jerked in my hand. I held onto it with the instincts of a woman in a city of muggers, but no one was anywhere near me. The handbag jerked again as though a living thing were trying to get out of it. I dropped it and watched it skid for a few feet and then lift off airplane-style. Frozen on the pavement, I watched the black wedge fly into Amanda's waiting fingers. She turned, saw me gaping, and appeared right in front of me in a flash.

"How thoughtful of you to bring my purse to me."

I couldn't think of a thing I could say so she put her hand on my shoulder and said, "Do come in for a cup of tea, dear."

The power radiating from her hand through the cloth of my jacket convinced me that I had no real choice. I walked mutely beside her up the steps of the brownstone. She didn't bother making a show of fumbling in her bag for the keys. Amanda just said, "Let me in," quietly and the doors opened for us and closed themselves behind us.

I was wrong about Amanda's apartment. The bright bold colors of a rainbow wall startled me more than the flying handbag and the selfopening doors. I did not know this woman at all. She had a black and white cat that cowered and hissed at me. Amanda set her package and bag down, threw her glasses on the table, and started pulling pins out of her hair as though I were not a relative stranger.

"You're a witch!" I said.

She threw her head back and cackled. The long hair freed of the bun was actually brown. Without her glasses I could tell she was younger than I thought, although not any prettier.

"What are you going to do with me?"

"Give you a cup of tea, dear, as I promised."

"You're going to poison me?"

79

Quarto

Frances Snowder

"Now, now. That won't be necessary. You won't tell anyone about this. All it needs is a tiny spell. Which do you want, herbal or Lipton's?"

"Upton's."

"Greymaulkin."

The tuxedo-marked cat ran over to Amanda, lifted up its head with its pink mouth open to listen attentively.

"Please make us some tea, dear. One Lipton's, one herbal. Put the Lipton's in the guest cup."

Greymaulkin ran into the kitchen.

"Now let's chat, Sara. Is there anything you'd like to ask me?"

"Are you a good witch or a bad witch?"

"Sometimes I'm right and sometimes I make mistakes. I'm only human. Let's say I try to be just."

"You certainly do surprise me. I thought you were a middle-aged woman."

"My disguise. I'm pleased."

"Why are you working at Hess, Low, and Finkelstein?" I could hear the clatter of dishes in the kitchen.

"I need a context." She smiled snaggle-toothed at me. "How can I relate to people without a context?"

"You really don't need to work for money?"

"No. I can abracadabra all the money I want."

"You work as a secretary when you can make gold?"

"It gives me a sense of accomplishment."

The tea kettle whistled in the background. More clattering sounds ensued and the whistling stopped.

"The cat makes tea?" I remarked.

"Familiar spirit, you know."

"I don't know much about witchery."

"I'd be glad to tell you about whatever makes you curious."

"Why does a witch work at a law firm?" I asked. "I'm sorry, I guess that sounds like a joke."

"That's alright," she replied. "It is sort of a joke anyway. I'm really fond of jokes, dear, as long as I'm not the butt of them."

Just then Greymaulkin came out of the kitchen harnessed to a little cart with the tea tray on it.

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"How cute. Is Greymaulkin a he or a she?"

"She.'' Amanda lifted a blue cup and saucer off the tray and handed it to me. Hers was chartreuse green. "Milk, sugar, or lemon?"

I took two lumps of sugar and some cream.

"Where were we? Oh, yes. Why do I work at Hess, Low, and Finklestein?" Amanda meditated. "Well, I'm concerned with justice," she finally said. "A law firm is a good place to begin."

"You want to be a lawyer?" I queried.

"No, I could do that quite easily if that is what I wanted."

"No doubt," I agreed. "It's very good tea."

"Thank you, dear. My main concern is that lawyers are fair. That lawyers do a good job. You've heard about the Salem witch trials?" ' 'They were a long time ago, Amanda. You're not that old are you?''

She threw back her head and cackled. "I'd probably be dead if I were."

"What are you doing to keep lawyers just and fair?" I wondered.

"Looks to me like you're taking dictation and typing letters."

"Look again, Sara." I saw her crooked teeth again. "From now on, I'm sure you will."

"You bet your broomstick," I averred. "Where is it anyway?"

"In the closet."

I looked around at the rainbow-striped walls, modern chrome lamps, and the white leather chair I was sitting in. ''Wow!'' I said.' 'And so are you."

The next day I came into the office early so I could watch Amanda carefully from nine to five. She came in as usual at the stroke of nine, the black bag tucked under her arm. I smiled and waved from my desk. She nodded her head and sat down to work. About 10:30, the firm's most pompous partner, Hess, came by Amanda's desk to pick something up. I watched him getting flustered. The next thing I knew he was lying flat on the floor clutching at his heart while Amanda called the nurse. After the commotion subsided and Hess had been carried away on a stretcher, I asked Amanda what caused Hess to have a heart attack.

"He thinks it's a heart attack, but it isn't. The poor man has gas," Amanda said. "He has an attack every time he gets too critical of someone else's work. I'm inclined to make typos every now and then. No81

r Quarto

body's perfect." She winked.

Later the same day Matt Cornelius, nicknamed Horny Corny, decided to favor me with his attentions. He was leaning over my desk intrusively, suggesting that I should take some dictation in his office sometime.

Amanda walked behind him to the water cooler. All of a sudden Matt clutched his coat over his too-tight pants and hobbled toward the men's room.

"He's losing control of his bladder lately," Amanda remarked within everyone else's hearing. "I heard he wet his pants in a meeting with a client yesterday." I could not help laughing, although Amanda kept her composure as if she really felt sorry for him.

At 5:00 I left with Amanda and we rode the elevator together.

"What will happen to Mr. Hess?" I asked since no one was with us in the elevator car.

"If he doesn't learn from his mistakes, he'll have to be weeded out."

"Do you mean he'll die?"

"People don't die of gas pains. Physical discomfort makes it pretty hard for them to keep working though. He's due to retire soon anyway.''

"And Horny Corny?"

"Who wants a lawyer who wets his pants all the time?"

"I see." The elevator opened and we walked toward the door.

"It's raining," I said in dismay, "and I don't have an umbrella."

"Not to worry," Amanda comforted, "the rain falleth on the just and the unjust, except when I'm around." •

82

The Authors

MERMER BLAKESLEE is a professional ski instructor in the winter months and studies and writes in the off season.

ELISABETTA DICAGNO is Editor in Chief of Hermes, magazine of the Columbia business school. She is a student in J.R. Humphrey's workshop, and teaches at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

GLEN HIRSHBERG, a junior at Columbia College, has been named the 1986 Bennett Cerf Prize winner for Prose Fiction for "Three Days on the Rim," published by Free Flight.

I. M. ISOBE will be graduating in May with a degree in geography. She is a student of Alan Ziegler.

PAMELA KRAFCZEK is a senior majoring in Literature and Writing at Columbia University. She has published several poems and short stories, and has occasionally been employed as a professional actress in New York City.

CATHERINE MATHIS is a former student of Phyllis Raphael. She is a native of Mankato, Minnesota, and plans to tour Alaska in the near future.

JOY PARKER is a freelance writer, and editor of the magazine Blue Light Red Light. Her interests also include dance and avant-garde vocal music, and she has most recently performed with choreographer Mark Mindek at the Dia Foundation. Presently, she is a graduate student in creative writing at New York University.

PAMELA PEARCE has published poetry in Straight Ahead International, and has read from her work at Tompkins Square Library and at Columbia University.

She is on the staff of Pen American Center where she coordinates events and publicity.

Renee Smith

1 FRANCES SNOWDER is the Undergraduate Secretary of Columbia's Economics Department. She formerly worked as an editorial assistant at Viking-Penguin, Inc., and as a publicist for The Harper Junior Books Group, Harper & Row. Originally from Oklahoma, Ms. Snowder has lived in New York for the past nine years.

ELIZABETH TIPPENS lives and writes in Manhattan. This is her second appearance in Quarto. She wishes to express her thanks to J. R. Humphreys, her teacher for the past several years. She is working on a novel.

Renee Smith

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