Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories

  Then last year she asked me—it was in between money times, it was in March, or maybe April—for a radio. A radio, she said, would make a difference to her.

  What she wanted was a little clock radio. She could put it in her kitchen and have it out there to listen to while she was fixing something to eat in the evening. And she’d have the clock to look at too, so she’d know when something was supposed to come out of the oven, or how long it was until one of her programs started.

  A little clock radio.

  She hinted around at first. She said, “I’d sure like to have a radio. But I can’t afford one. I guess I’ll have to wait for my birthday. That little radio I had, it fell and broke. I miss a radio.” I miss a radio. That’s what she said when we talked on the phone, or else she’d bring it up when she’d write.

  Finally—what’d I say? I said to her over the phone that I couldn’t afford any radios. I said it in a letter too, so she’d be sure and understand. I can’t afford any radios, is what I wrote. I can’t do anymore, I said, than I’m doing. Those were my very words.

  But it wasn’t true! I could have done more. I just said I couldn’t. I could have afforded to buy a radio for her. What would it have cost me? Thirty-five dollars? Forty dollars or less, including tax. I could have sent her a radio through the mail. I could have had somebody in the store do it, if I didn’t want to go to the trouble myself. Or else I could have sent her a forty-dollar check along with a note saying, This money is for your radio, mother. I could have handled it in any case. Forty dollars—are you kidding? But I didn’t. I wouldn’t part with it. It seemed there was a principle involved. That’s what I told myself anyway—there’s a principle involved here.

  Ha.

  Then what happened? She died. She died. She was walking home from the grocery store, back to her apartment, carrying her sack of groceries, and she fell into somebody’s bushes and died.

  I took a flight out there to make the arrangements. She was still at the coroner’s, and they had her purse and her groceries behind the desk in the office. I didn’t bother to look in the purse they handed me. But what

  she had from the grocery store was a jar of Metamucil, two grapefruits, a carton of cottage cheese, a quart of buttermilk, some potatoes and onions, and a package of ground meat that was beginning to change color. Boy! I cried when I saw those things. I couldn’t stop. I didn’t think I’d ever quit crying. The woman who worked at the desk was embarrassed and brought me a glass of water. They gave me a bag for my mother’s groceries and another bag for her personal effects—her purse and her dentures. Later, I put the dentures in my coat pocket and drove them down in a rental car and gave them to somebody at the funeral home.

  The light in Amanda’s kitchen is still on. It’s a bright light that spills out on to all those leaves. Maybe she’s like I am, and she’s scared. Maybe she left that light burning as a night-light. Or maybe she’s still awake and is at the kitchen table, under the light, writing me a letter. Amanda is writing me a letter, and somehow she’ll get it into my hands later on when the real day starts.

  Come to think of it, I’ve never had a letter from her since we’ve known each other. All the time we’ve been involved—six months, eight months—and I’ve never once seen a scrap of her handwriting. I don’t even know if she’s literate that way.

  I think she is. Sure, she is. She talks about books, doesn’t she? It doesn’t matter of course. Well, a little, I suppose. I love her in any case, right?

  But I’ve never written anything to her, either. We always talked on the phone or else face to face.

  Molly, she was the letter writer. She used to write me even after we weren’t living together. Vicky would bring her letters in from the box and leave them on the kitchen table without a word. Finally the letters dwindled away, became more and more infrequent and bizarre. When she did write, the letters gave me a chill. They were full of talk about “auras” and “signs.” Occasionally she reported a voice that was telling her something she ought to do or some place she should go. And once she told me that no matter what happened, we were still “on the same frequency.” She always knew exactly what I felt, she said.

  She “beamed in on me,” she said, from time to time. Reading those letters of hers, the hair on the back of my neck would tingle. She also had a new word for destiny: Karma. “I’m following out my karma,” she wrote. “Your karma has taken a bad turn.”

  I’d like to go to sleep, but what’s the point? People will be getting up soon. Vicky’s alarm will go off before much longer. I wish I could go upstairs and get back in bed with my wife, tell her I’m sorry, there’s been a mistake, let’s forget all this-then go to sleep and wake up with her in my arms. But I’ve forfeited that right. I’m outside all that now, and I can’t get back inside! But say I did that. Say I went upstairs and slid into bed with Vicky as I’d like to do. She might wake up and say, You bastard. Don’t you dare touch me, son of a bitch.

  What’s she talking about, anyway? I wouldn’t touch her. Not in that way, I wouldn’t.

  After I left Molly, after I’d pulled out on her, about two months after, then Molly really did it. She had her real collapse then, the one that’d been coming on. Her sister saw to it that she got the care she needed. What am I saying? They put her away. They had to, they said. They put my wife away. By then I was living with Vicky, and trying not to drink whiskey. I couldn’t do anything for Molly. I mean, she was there, I was here, and I couldn’t have gotten her out of that place if I’d wanted to. But the fact is, I didn’t want to. She was in there, they said, because she needed to be in there. Nobody said anything about destiny. Things had gone beyond that.

  And I didn’t even go visit her—not once! At the time, I didn’t think I could stand seeing her in there. But, Christ, what was I? A fair-weather friend? We’d been through plenty. But what on earth would I have said to her? I’m sorry about all this, honey. I could have said that, I guess. I intended to write, but I didn’t. Not a word. Anyway, when you get right down to it, what could I have said in a letter? How are they treating you, baby? I’m sorry you’re where you are, but don’t give up. Remember all the good times? Remember when we were happy together? Hey, I’m sorry they’ve done this to you. I’m sorry it turned out this way. I’m sorry everything is just garbage now. I’m sorry, Molly.

  I didn’t write. I think I was trying to forget about her, to pretend she didn’t exist. Molly who?

  I left my wife and took somebody else’s: Vicky. Now I think maybe I’ve lost Vicky, too. But Vicky won’t be going away to any summer camp for the mentally disabled. She’s a hard case. She left her former husband, Joe Kraft, and didn’t bat an eye; I don’t think she ever lost a night’s sleep over it.

  Vicky Kraft-Hughes. Amanda Porter. This is where my destiny has brought me? To this street in this neighborhood, messing up the lives of these women?

  Amanda’s kitchen light went off when I wasn’t looking. The room that was there is gone now, like the others. Only the porch light is still burning. Amanda must have forgotten it, I guess. Hey, Amanda.

  Once, when Molly was away in that place and I wasn’t in my right mind—let’s face it, I was crazy too-one night I was at my friend Alfredo’s house, a bunch of us drinking and listening to records. I didn’t care any longer what happened to me. Everything, I thought, that could happen had happened. I felt unbalanced. I felt lost. Anyway, there I was at Alfredo’s. His paintings of tropical birds and animals hung on every wall in his house, and there were paintings standing around in the rooms, leaning against things—table-legs, say, or his brick- and-board bookcase, as well as being stacked on his back porch. The kitchen served as his studio, and I was sitting at the kitchen table with a drink in front of me. An easel stood off to one side in front of the window that overlooked the alley, and there were crumpled tubes of paint, a palette, and some brushes lying at one end of the table. Alfredo was making himself a drink at the counter a few feet away. I loved the shabby economy of that
little room. The stereo music that came from the living room was turned up, filling the house with so much sound the kitchen windows rattled in their frames. Suddenly I began to shake. First my hands began to shake, and then my arms and shoulders, too. My teeth started to chatter. I couldn’t hold the glass.

  “What’s going on, man?” Alfredo said, when he turned and saw the state I was in. “Hey, what is it?

  What’s going on with you?”

  I couldn’t tell him. What could I say? I thought I was having some kind of an attack. I managed to raise my shoulders and let them drop.

  Then Alfredo came over, took a chair and sat down beside me at the kitchen table. He put his big painter’s hand on my shoulder. I went on shaking. He could feel me shaking.

  “What’s wrong with you, man? I’m real sorry about everything, man. I know it’s real hard right now.”

  Then he said he was going to fix menudo for me. He said it would be good for what ailed me. “Help your nerves, man,” he said. “Calm you right down.” He had all the ingredients for menudo, he said, and he’d been wanting to make some anyway.

  “You listen to me. Listen to what I say, man. I’m your family now,” Alfredo said.

  It was two in the morning, we were drunk, there were these other drunk people in the house and the stereo was going full blast. But Alfredo went to his fridge and opened it and took some stuff out. He closed the fridge door and looked in his freezer compartment. He found something in a package. Then he looked around in his cupboards. He took a big pan from the cabinet under the sink, and he was ready.

  Tripe. He started with tripe and about a gallon of water. Then he chopped onions and added them to the water, which had started to boil. He put chorizo sausage in the pot. After that, he dropped peppercorns into the boiling water and sprinkled in some chili powder. Then came the olive oil. He opened a big can of tomato sauce and poured that in. He added cloves of garlic, some slices of white bread, salt, and lemon juice. He opened another can—it was hominy—and poured that in the pot, too. He put it all in, and then he turned the heat down and put a lid on the pot.

  I watched him. I sat there shaking while Alfredo stood at the stove making menudo, talking—I didn’t have any idea what he was saying—and, from time to time, he’d shake his head, or else start whistling to himself. Now and then people drifted into the kitchen for beer. But all the while Alfredo went on very seriously looking after his menudo. He could have been home, in Morelia, making menudo for his family on New Year’s day. People hung around in the kitchen for a while, joking, but Alfredo didn’t joke back when they kidded him about cooking menudo in the middle of the night. Pretty soon they left us alone. Finally, while Alfredo stood at the stove with a spoon in his hand, watching me, I got up slowly from the table. I walked out of the kitchen into the bathroom, and then opened another door off the bathroom to the spare room—where I lay down on the bed and fell asleep. When I woke it was midafternoon. The menudo was gone. The pot was in the sink, soaking. Those other people must have eaten it! They must have eaten it and grown calm. Everyone was gone, and the house was quiet.

  I never saw Alfredo more than once or twice afterward. After that night, our lives took us in separate directions. And those other people who were there—who knows where they went? I’ll probably die without ever tasting menudo. But who can say?

  Is this what it all comes down to then? A middle-aged man involved with his neighbor’s wife, linked to an angry ultimatum? What kind of destiny is that? A week, Oliver said. Three or four days now.

  A car passes outside with its lights on. The sky is turning gray, and I hear some birds starting up. I decide I can’t wait any longer. I can’t just sit here, doing nothing—that’s all there is to it. I can’t keep waiting. I’ve waited and waited and where’s it gotten me? Vicky’s alarm will go off soon, Beth will get up and dress for school, Amanda will wake up, too. The entire neighborhood.

  On the back porch I find some old jeans and a sweatshirt, and I change out of my pajamas. Then I put on my white canvas shoes—”wino” shoes, Alfredo would have called them. Alfredo, where are you?

  I go outside to the garage and find the rake and some lawn bags. By the time I get around to the front of the house with the rake, ready to begin, I feel I don’t have a choice in the matter any longer. It’s light out—light enough at any rate for what I have to do. And then, without thinking about it any more, I start to rake. I rake our yard, every inch of it. It’s important it be done right, too. I set the rake right down into the turf and pull hard. It must feel to the grass like it does whenever someone gives your hair a hard jerk.

  Now and then a car passes in the street and slows, but I don’t look up from my work. I know what the people in the cars must be thinking, but they’re dead wrong—they don’t know the half of it. How could they? I’m happy, raking.

  I finish our yard and put the bag out next to the curb. Then I begin next door on the Baxters’ yard. In a few minutes mrs Baxter comes out on her porch, wearing her bathrobe. I don’t acknowledge her. I’m not embarrassed, and I don’t want to appear unfriendly. I just want to keep on with what I’m doing.

  She doesn’t say anything for a while, and then she says, “Good morning, Mr. Hughes. How are you this morning?”

  I stop what I’m doing and run my arm across my forehead. “I’ll be through in a little while,” I say. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “We don’t mind,” mrs Baxter says. “Go right ahead, I guess.” I see Mr. Baxter standing in the doorway behind her. He’s already dressed for work in his slacks and sports coat and tie. But he doesn’t venture on to the porch. Then mrs Baxter turns and looks at Mr. Baxter, who shrugs.

  It’s okay, I’ve finished here anyway. There are other yards, more important yards for that matter. I kneel, and, taking a grip low down on the rake handle, I pull the last of the leaves into my bag and tie off the top. Then, I can’t help it, I just stay there, kneeling on the grass with the rake in my hand. When I look up, I see the Baxters come down the porch steps together and move slowly toward me through the wet, sweet-smelling grass. They stop a few feet away and look at me closely.

  “There now,” I hear mrs Baxter say. She’s still in her robe and slippers. It’s nippy out; she holds her robe at the throat. “You did a real fine job for us, yes, you did.”

  I don’t say anything. I don’t even say, “You’re welcome.”

  They stand in front of me a while longer, and none of us says anything more. It’s as if we’ve come to an agreement on something. In a minute, they turn around and go back to their house. High over my head, in the branches of the old maple—the place where these leaves come from— birds call out to each other.

  At least I think they’re calling to each other.

  Suddenly a car door slams. Mr. Baxter is in his car in the drive with the window rolled down. mrs Baxter says something to him from the front porch which causes Mr. Baxter to nod slowly and turn his head in my direction. He sees me kneeling there with the rake, and a look crosses his face. He frowns. In his better moments, Mr. Baxter is a decent, ordinary guy—a guy you wouldn’t mistake for anyone special.

  But he is special. In my book, he is. For one thing he has a full night’s sleep behind him, and he’s just embraced his wife before leaving for work. But even before he goes, he’s already expected home a set number of hours later. True, in the grander scheme of things, his return will be an event of small moment—but an event nonetheless.

  Baxter starts his car and races the engine. Then he backs effortlessly out of the drive, brakes, and changes gears. As he passes on the street, he slows and looks briefly in my direction. He lifts his hand off the steering wheel. It could be a salute or a sign of dismissal. It’s a sign, in any case. And then he looks away toward the city. I get up and raise my hand, too—not a wave, exactly, but close to it. Some other cars drive past. One of the drivers must think he knows me because he gives his horn a friendly little tap. I look both ways and then cross the street
.

  Elephant

  I knew it was a mistake to let my brother have the money. I didn’t need anybody else owing me. But when he called and said he couldn’t make the payment on his house, what could I do? I’d never been inside his house—he lived a thousand miles away, in California; I’d never even seen his house—but I didn’t want him to lose it. He cried over the phone and said he was losing everything he’d worked for. He said he’d pay me back. February, he said. Maybe sooner. No later, anyway, than March. He said his income-tax refund was on the way. Plus, he said, he had a little investment that would mature in February. He acted secretive about the investment thing, so I didn’t press for details.

  “Trust me on this,” he said. “I won’t let you down.”

  He’d lost his job last July, when the company he worked for, a fiberglass-insulation plant, decided to lay off two hundred employees. He’d been living on his unemployment since then, but now the unemployment was gone, and his savings were gone, too. And he didn’t have health insurance any longer. When his job went, the insurance went. His wife, who was ten years older, was diabetic and needed treatment. He’d had to sell the other car—her car, an old station wagon—and a week ago he’d pawned his TV. He told me he’d hurt his back carrying the TV up and down the street where the pawnshops did business. He went from place to place, he said, trying to get the best offer. Somebody finally gave him a hundred dollars for it, this big Sorry TV. He told me about the TV, and then about throwing his back out, as if this ought to cinch it with me, unless I had a stone in place of a heart.

  “I’ve gone belly up,” he said. “But you can help me pull out of it.”

  “How much?” I said.