Why Did I Ever. Mary Robison

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СКАЧАТЬ thing about Mev is she has twice failed the bar exam.

      “You can fail it a third time, though, can’t you?” Hollis asks her.

      Mev says, “No, see, at this point, even to do that, I’d have to brush up and study.”

      31

      In Appletree, she says, “There’s my friend Margaret, over at the orange juice.”

      “Who?”

      “My friend Margaret that lives near me on Southy. I got that angora sweater from her? The one who does the bookmobile. I waved but I guess she doesn’t see me.”

      I’m looking. I say, “The only person anywhere near the orange juice is ninety-two years old.”

      “What about it, Mother?”

      “Nothing,” I say. “Nothing about it at all.”

      Mev always finds friends and they’re always older. They’re people who were born at home.

      32

      She makes herself a part of things—over in the smoke niche fetching Lucky Strikes for that man, now dragging somebody’s Moderow baby crib up to the cashier. Her brother’s the same way. I boarded a subway with him once and he went along the car like a porter, seating people and catching parcels before they spilled.

      And It’s Just My Size

      Hollis reads to me from a dictionary: “‘Oscillate . . . A vibrating motion as things move backward and forward, vary or vacillate between differing conditions and become stronger and weaker.’”

      “Huh,” I say. “Well, but that describes me.”

      34

      “Can I just say something?” he asks, and he starts to. So I remind him that permission to say something is not permission to say anything.

      Therefore, he decides to write down for me in longhand what it is that he has to say. Or, he would like to. He attempts to. First he must test his pen for ink.

      I vacate the room without ever learning if his letter-writing effort is successful.

      All We Do Is Argue

      “I know what you’re thinking,” I say to myself.

      “O.K.,” I say, “What?”

      “It’s that thing in your hand. You’re thinking that it goes someplace.”

      “Then where does it go?” I ask.

      “Well, not up there . . . ,” I say as I’m climbing the stairs.

      “So important to you to be right,” I say, climbing back down.

      36

      Martin, some person I know, has compiled a list of the five hundred best rock singles ever recorded. Number 11 on the list is “Sunny Afternoon” by the Kinks. Or if it’s not number 11, it should be.

      You Decide

      Things break. I head for the hardware.

      I have to walk past my neighbor who’s forever out on the bench here in our yard. The Deaf Lady. She isn’t deaf; a little bit, not very. She won’t tell me why she’s called that. She’ll say, “I’d rather not go into it,” or, “I’d prefer you weren’t involved.”

      The light out here is weird, the day already fading. The Deaf Lady looks as if she can’t locate her doll. “What’s the matter?” I ask her.

      “Just mistakes I make,” she says. “Like I left the kitchen thing burning again. On the what’s-it-called? Not the dashboard.”

      “The oven top. Coil stove. The burners,” I say. “But everybody does that. How long did you leave it on?”

      “Since the other night, I guess, when I was making fudge.”

      I scoot her over so I can sit down. “Well, it’s happened to me,” I say. “Never for days on end, that I recall.”

      “You want to go somewhere and eat?” she asks.

      “Sure.”

      “O.K., good,” she says. “Where do you want to go?”

      “Oh, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. Anyplace is fine.”

      She says, “Then let’s just go to the city dump and eat rats! All we have to do is catch them.”

      38

      We end up at the River Cafe on Science Street. Who works here according to their name tags are Toadstool and Paranoid Phil.

      My Asparagus Tips Casserole has no asparagus.

      “How’re you doing?” the two servers ask me.

      They must mean with this food.

      “You guys are spoiling me,” I say.

      39

      Across from us is the cashier’s counter. There, a girl in a black T-shirt stenciled with the word “Jezebel” is wagging her head at a woman in a muumuu who’s sadly, slowly, reluctantly writing a check.

      Now a squat fellow appears outside the place and squints at the door menu. He wanders off, comes back, reads the menu some more, wanders off.

      Lollipops Are Only for the Kids Who Had Shots

      Most of the movie studios have fired me. The William Morris Agency just fired me. Two of their agents on a conference line regretted that maybe they’ve been holding me back. They’ve fired me so they won’t hold me back anymore.

      Now I couldn’t be happier because here’s what I get to do: Run the bathroom tap water until it’s really cold, plug the tub up and fill it to the brim, and then into the chilly water plunge the Umani Fax Machine, the Sukosonic modem, the 1309 Phone Mail System, the beeper.

      “Good-bye. Go to hell,” I say to them.

      Mercury Brothers is about the only studio I have left. Mercury Brothers and their producer witch, Belinda.

      There Is No They

      “It’ll never change,” Hollis says, beside me in the car. “No matter how long we sit here, it’ll still be a stop sign.”

      Hollis is a Driver’s Ed. instructor. I say, “So this is what it must be like to study under you.”

      He sips noisily to the end of his lime drink, now sends the jumbo paper cup flying from the car window.

      He is just coming up with shit. He says, “At least I made you stop dyeing your hair. That purple shoeshine color or what was it? Remember?”

      “No,” СКАЧАТЬ