The Collected Stories of Lorrie Moore (91 page)

You'll never see Jeffrey again, murmurs Tom, you can count on that, the pain on Tom's face, in his chest something enormous and sad, and then he is giving information to the operator and soon there are sirens.

J
have my own room. Someone has sent me flowers. Is it you, Phil, who could it be, thinking of me
?

mr. Fernandez
drops by to see me at St. Veronica's during visiting hours.

Do you realize, he says, that there's a nuclear bomb hanging over each and every one of us like a monster pinata?

I begin to understand his metaphors.

And you go off and do this, he says. Who the hell do you think you are?

I think to myself that this must be the right sort of question, the sort one is supposed to ask.

Pride cometh before the fall, I say, lost, foundering. Sometimes in May.

He leans over and kisses me. Riva, he says. I saw your husband today. He's fine but says he and Jeffrey will not come to see you.

I look out the windows, at gray, gray buildings, and say shit, and then start crying. I am crying, I can't help it.

I brought you a treat, Mr. Fernandez says, holding me with one arm and handing me a cheese danish wrapped in cellophane.

I blow my nose, unwrap the danish, break off part and push it in my mouth. I'm bonkers, aren't I? I ask with my mouth full.

You're unhappy, says Mr. Fernandez. It can be the same thing. You are unhappy because you believe in such a thing as happy.

I stop eating. I feel sick. This danish is too sweetish to finish, I say, a little Scandinavian humor, and fillip the crumbs off the bed-sheets.

I'm going to leave you now. I just stopped by for a minute.

I look at his magic Jesus beard and panic. Please don't go.

I'll stop by tomorrow, he says gently.

Thank you, I say, never more grateful for anything in my whole life.

orderlies roll the days
by me like carts.

Mr. Fernandez visits, but only him. My husband and son are off someplace, walking and trying not to cry.

aging flowers,
daisies when they die look like hopeful hags, their sunny, hatless faces, their shriveled, limp hair. Tulips wither into birdcages, six black stamens inside, each dried to a dim chirp.

The gray buildings fill my windows, my gibbering with salt: Who were you ever? An apoplexy to fill my days, to fill my insomnia with your insomnia, my hard of lard, my long ago husband, sometimes I think I made you up, but sometimes I think you live close, in this city, in my house, buried in the cellar or in paperwork and business trips, rising up at night like a past repast I can wish to death: Please die.

my mother
is two floors above me. It would be humorous, but it's not humorous. We are allowed finally to meet in our bathrobes in the coffee shop downstairs.

Well, I say, quoting Humphrey Bogart in a line to Ingrid Bergman at a table at Rick's: I guess neither one of our stories is very funny.

Riva, she says. Your father was a madman. He used to punch cars and threaten to swallow things. Maybe you inherited his genes.

I like to swallow things, I say.

today is friday.
The nuns are friendlier, my eye flickless, my skin, body, brighter, thinner. I take an afternoon nap and dream bittersweetly that all the friends I've ever had march in here to see how I am.

When I wake up, Sister Henrietta knocks at my door and says a gentleman is here to see you, Riva.

I am disoriented from my dream, quickly straighten my hair, and say, as in the movies, Sister, you can send him in now. I turn to look out the window: the gray buildings of my life, the gray buildings.

And it is Jeffrey who appears in the doorway. He hangs there small and alone. Mom? he squeaks, then steps closer to the bed. He is wearing an oversized Penn T-shirt, twisting and wringing at the bottom of it with one hand. Hi, Mom, he says.

My hips ache. My eyes burn happy sad happy. Nice shirt there, Batman, I say.

He tugs at it. Dad says this is where you went to college, he says, too far away for me to touch his arm.

How have you been doing, Jeffrey? I ask.

I broke my pinata, he says. I just broke it open, he shrugs, gulps, a small wrenching glug, looks at the ceiling. And there was nothing in it, he adds. But there's a circus coming pretty soon. There's gonna be a circus.

He stands there, away from me, afraid, holding his fingers. I am strange to him. Perhaps he thinks I have turned into Gramma.

Mom, are you my friend? he asks, barely audible, his face pale and homeless.

I nod yes.

Are you my mother?

I nod again, smiling, and he thinks about this, then approaches me, reaches and climbs up into my lap, curls into my breasts, clutching my gown, bursts into tears, his face crumpling against me. I want to go to the circus and see the horse people, he cries, wet and red, and I hold him close, warm, in my arms, in this room, and tell him we will go.

'Foes' © Lorrie Moore. First published in the
Guardian
in 2008.

'Paper Losses' © Lorrie Moore. First published in
The New Yorker
in 2006.

'The Juniper Tree' © Lorrie Moore. First published in
The New Yorker
in 2005. Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: Excerpt from 'Epitaph' by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Copyright 1921. World rights assigned to and controlled by the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

'Debarking' © Lorrie Moore. First published in
The New Yorker
in 2003.

Birds of America
(Volume) © Lorrie Moore, 1998. First published in the United States of America in 1998 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. First published in Great Britain in 1998 by Faber and Faber Limited.

Like Life
(Volume) © Lorrie Moore, 1988,1989,1990. First published in the United States in 1990 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited. First published in Great Britain in 1990 by Faber and Faber Limited. Most of the stories in this collection were originally published in somewhat different forms in the following publications:
GQ
: 'Two Boys'.
The New York Times Book Review
: 'Starving Again'.
New York Woman
: 'Vissi d'Arte'.
The New Yorker
: 'You're Ugly, Too' 'The Jewish Hunter'.
Tampa Review
: 'Places to Look for Your Mind'. Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: 'Almost Like Being In Love' words by Alan Jay Lerner, music by Frederick Loewe © 1947 Sam Fox Publishing Co Inc, USA. Sam Fox Publishing Co (London) Ltd, London w8 5 sw (Publishing) and Alfred Publishing Co, USA (Print). Administered in Europe by Faber Music Ltd. Reproduced by permission. All rights reserved. From
A Child's History of Art
by V.M. Hillyer and E.G. Huey, copyright 1933,1951 by D. Appleton-Century Company, Inc.; 1961 by Mercantile Safe Deposit And Trust Co. Used by permission of Dutton Children's Books, A Division of Penguin Young Readers Group, A Member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014- All rights reserved.

Anagrams
(Volume) © M. L. Moore 1986. First published in the United States of America in 1986 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited. First published in Great Britain in 1987 by Faber and Faber Limited.

Self-Help
(Volume) © M. L. Moore 1985. First published in the United States of America in 1985 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. First published in Great Britain in 1985 by Faber and Faber Limited. Some of the stories first appeared in
Fiction International, MSS Magazine
and
Story Quarterly
in the United States.

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