Why Did I Ever. Mary Robison

‘It’s a Grand Old Flag.’”

      “Oh, come on,” says he. “‘It’s a grand old flag, dunt dunt high-flying flag. Dunt dunt duh, dunt dunt duh, dunt dunt duhhh.’”

      23

      There are real and scary sounds from outside my place. They are like a woman running.

      While I have the door opened an inch, trying to see what’s what, Flower Girl my cat skitters out.

      And now the running woman is gone.

      I call 911 but hang up when the operator asks whether I’m phoning from a home or a residence.

      There’s disorder out there under the traffic light. At the intersection, a bread truck has been tipped up onto its nose and then—it would seem—hammered.

      Hollis crowds me for a view through the window.

      I say to him, “See that girl behind everything? In the pink midi-top?”

      I say, “Suppose you were standing next to that girl. You wouldn’t reach out and grab her breasts, now would you?”

      He takes a drink from his bottle of red vegetable juice. Wags his head, no.

      “You’d behave decently toward her and uphold your own personal standards, correct?”

      His head moves, yes.

      I say, “O.K., then let’s start all over at the beginning. Because I still really believe in my heart that men can be educated.”

      “That’s a Roman Meal bread truck,” he says, “that got hit. You want me to go see if I can snick us a couple of loaves?”

      I Should Be Going

      I take a lengthy drive in case there’s some music I want to buy.

      I drive to Montgomery, Alabama—thousands of miles from my home. It’s three or four or five in the morning. All that’s open here is a Wal-Mart and the very best music they’re selling is an old Michael Jackson single, “Blood on the Dance Floor.”

      Which, it turns out, isn’t so bad. Especially if you eliminate the treble.

      The police think it’s bad. Their patrol car slows as they ride alongside me. They shine a light, bark a warning. I click the sound down. They surge ahead. I switch the sound up loud again. The patrol car slows, same flashlight, same warning.

      I’m tempted but I dissuade myself from going through it all a third time. My excuses are just excuses and they are not good enough.

      25

      I get lost driving back and do the same exits and merges for hours and hours. I wonder if an aerial view of me might be fun to watch.

      And now I’ve made an error and there are eighteen-wheelers stopped ahead of me, eighteen-wheelers behind. And not for a great long while will I be released from the lineup for this weigh station.

      Could Stand Here for Hours

      “You need more than just the bangs cut,” says the hair stylist. “You look like Cochise.”

      And I see in the restroom mirror as I’m drawing on lipstick that I don’t want my mouth. I say, “Don’t ever use a straw again. Don’t whistle. Or whisper. Or say ‘What,’ or ‘Who.’”

      27

      I do know some horrible stories. One story about my son may never have an end to it. Or the story will have an end I don’t want to know because it’s horrible. Want to or not, I have to wait, wait, wait.

      28

      Both my kids have flame-glo hair and turquoise eyes. One summer after they had earned all their college degrees, they found work doing the cake displays in a bakery and we had sweets to eat. That was in D.C. or someplace we lived then.

      Mev went on to a job carving wooden forks and spoons. Paulie moved to New York and, I believe, checked skates at the counter in Roller World.

      29

      Here now is Mev, on the walkway, her face fired green from the sun through the trees. She’s standing lopsided, with her arms raised unevenly in question. She asks, “How is it that with red Rit dye, the stuff always comes out that Krishna color?”

      “I’m to blame for that,” I say. “It’s because you’re your mother’s daughter.”

      “Wow,” she says and sits down with me on the concrete bench.

      I say, “Everybody else gets red.”

      30

      The 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