“Who is this to?” B.B. said, frowning at the piece of paper.
“Maddy,” Bryce said.
B.B. was conscious, for the first time, how cold the floorboards were underneath his feet. The air was cold, too. Last winter he had weather-stripped the windows, and this winter he hadn’t. Now he put a finger against a pane of glass in the dining-room window. It could have been an ice cube, his finger numbed so quickly.
“Maddy is your stepsister,” B.B. said. “You’re never going to be able to marry Maddy.”
His son stared at him.
“You understand?” B.B. said.
Bryce pushed his chair back. “Maddy’s not ever going to have her hair cut again,” he said. He was crying. “She’s going to be Madeline and I’m going to live with only her and have a hundred dogs.”
B.B. reached out to dry his son’s tears, or at least to touch them, but Bryce sprang up. She was wrong: Robin was so wrong. Bryce was the image of her, not him — the image of Robin saying, “Leave me alone.”
He went upstairs. Rather, he went to the stairs and started to climb, thinking of Rona lying in bed in the bedroom, and somewhere not halfway to the top, adrenaline surged through his body. Things began to go out of focus, then to pulsate. He reached for the railing just in time to steady himself. In a few seconds the first awful feeling passed, and he continued to climb, pretending, as he had all his life, that this rush was the same as desire.
HAPPY
“Your brother called,” I say to my husband on the telephone.
“He called to find out if he left his jumpsuit here. As though another weekend guest might have left a jumpsuit.”
“As it happens, he did. I mailed it to him. He should have gotten it days ago.”
“You never said anything about it. I told him …”
“I didn’t say anything because I know you find great significance in what he leaves behind.”
“Pictures of the two of you with your mother, and you were such unhappy little boys …”
“Anything you want me to bring home?” he says.
“I think I’d like some roses. Ones the color of peaches.”
He clears his throat. All winter, he has little coughs and colds and irritations. The irritations are irritating. At night, he hemms over Forbes and I read Blake, in silence.
“I meant that could be found in Grand Central,” he says.
“An éclair.”
“All right,” he says. He sighs.
• • •
“One banana, two banana, three banana, four …”
“I think you have the wrong number,” I say.
“Fifteen years, and you still don’t know my voice on the phone.”
“Oh,” I say. “Hi, Andy.”
Andy let his secretary use his apartment during her lunch hour to have an affair with the Xerox repairman. Andy was on a diet, drinking pre-digested protein, and he had thrown everything out in his kitchen, so he wouldn’t be tempted. He was allowed banana extract to flavor his formula. The secretary and the repairman got hungry and rummaged through the kitchen cabinets, and all they could find was a gallon jug of banana extract.
“I got the Coors account,” Andy says. “I’m having a wall of my office painted yellow and silver.”
The dog and I go to the dump. The dump permit is displayed on the back window: a drawing of a pile of rubbish, with a number underneath. The dog breathes against the back window and the sticker gets bright with moisture. The dog likes the rear-view mirror and the back window equally well, and since his riding with his nose to the rear-view mirror is a clear danger, I have put three shoe boxes between the front seats as a barrier. One of the boxes has shoes inside that never fit right.
Bob Dylan is singing on the tape deck: “May God bless and keep you always, May your wishes all come true …”
“Back her up!” the dump man hollers. Smoke rises behind him, from something smoldering out of a pyramid into flatness. The man who runs the dump fans the smoke away, gesturing with the other hand to show me the position he wants my car to be in. The dog barks madly, baring his teeth.
“Come on, she’ll get up that little incline,” the dump man hollers.
The wheels whir. The dog is going crazy. When the car stops, I open my door, call “Thank you!” and tiptoe through the mush. I take the plastic bag filled with garbage and another pair of shoes that didn’t work out and throw it feebly, aiming for the top of the heap. It misses by a mile, but the dump man has lost interest. Only the dog cares. He is wildly agitated.
“Please,” I say to the dog when I get in the car.
“May you always be courageous,” Dylan sings.
It is a bright fall day; the way the sun shines makes the edges of things radiate. When we get home, I put the dog on his lead and open the door, go into the mud room, walk into the house. When I’m away for a weekend or longer, things always look the way I expect they will when I come back. When I’m gone on a short errand, the ashtray seems to have moved forward a few inches, the plants look a little sickly, the second hand on the clock seems to be going very fast … I don’t remember the clock having a second hand.
The third phone call of the day. “Will you trust me?” a voice says. “I need to know how to get to your house from the Whitebird Diner. My directions say go left at the fork for two miles, but I did, and I didn’t pass an elementary school. I think I should have gone right at the fork. A lot of people mix up left and right; it’s a form of dyslexia.” Heavy breathing. “Whew,” the voice says. Then: “Trust me. I can’t tell you what’s going on because it’s a surprise.”
When I don’t say anything, the voice says: “Trust me. I wouldn’t be some nut out in the middle of nowhere, asking whether I go right or left at the fork.”
I go to the medicine cabinet and take out a brandy snifter of pills. My husband’s bottle of Excedrin looks pristine. My brandy snifter is cut glass, and belonged to my grandfather. It’s easy to tell my pills apart because they’re all different colors: yellow Valium, blue Valium, green Donnatal. I never have to take those unless I go a whole week without eating Kellogg’s All-Bran.
A bear is ringing the front doorbell. There are no shades on the front windows, and the bear can see that I see it. I shake my head no, as if someone has come to sell me a raffle ticket. Could this be a bear wanting to sell me something? It does not seem to have anything with it. I shake my head no again, trying to look pleasant. I back up. The bear has left its car with the hazard light flashing, and two tires barely off Black Rock Turnpike. The bear points its paws, claws up, praying. It stands there.
I put a chain on the door and open it. The bear spreads its arms wide. It is a brown bear, with fur that looks like whatever material it is they make bathroom rugs out of. The bear sings, consulting a notebook it has pulled out from somewhere in its side:
Happy birthday to you
I know it’s not the day
This song’s being sung early
In case you run away
Twenty-nine was good
But thirty’s better yet
Face the day with a big smile
There’s nothing to regret
I wish that I could be there
But it’s a question of money
A bear’s appropriate instead
To say you’re still my honey
The bear steps back, grandly, quite pleased with itself. It has pink rubber lips.
“From your sister,” the bear says. I see the lips behind the lips. “I could really use some water,” the bear says. “I came from New York. There isn’t any singing message service out here. As it is, I guess this was cheaper than your sister flying in from the coast, but I didn’t come cheap.”