Tell Me Read online

  Praise for Tell Me

  “Mary Robison’s role as a so-called minimalist over the past 25 years or so has been consistently undersung, if not overlooked entirely, in most arguments about the contemporary short story. That seems odd, because almost every short work she wrote first appeared in The New Yorker and stood out as something for anyone interested in contemporary fiction to read and cheer about. But oddness often rules. Her first three story collections have long been out of print … But now connoisseurs of contemporary short fiction don’t have to look any further than Tell Me … for the quirky, pleasurable experience that Robison offers … Robison’s talent for observation makes for microscopic wonders of details.”

  Chicago Tribune

  “Mary Robison’s stories are infused with a quiet menace. The trick of her writing is the way she uses the reader’s own expectations to create that sense of unease. Her stories—published over the years in The New Yorker and now collected in Tell Me—are made of handfuls of moments, put together without benefit of the usual revelatory short story structure … Robison is the rare minimalist whose bare-bones fiction is actually a pleasure to read.”

  Claire Dederer, author of Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses

  “Thirty brief, sharply delineated short stories written over three decades by Robison chronicle emotional dislocation with witty dispassion … Nothing is superfluous, and in the spare sadness of Robison’s prose entire lives are presented.”

  Publishers Weekly

  “Thirty precision-built short stories old and new by a writer who extracts a maximum of meaning and feeling from a minimum of words make for a thrilling collection. Robison’s stories … come at the reader from oblique angles, skittering like a leaf in the wind until, suddenly, everything begins to make quirky but gratifying sense. A deft conjurer of place, Robison is most intrigued with the telegraphic dialogue with which annoyed but loving family members communicate with each other and with the oddball configurations the concept of family can yield. Like Ann Beattie, Robison neatly exposes the pathos beneath the placid veneer of middle-class life, the seeds of chaos in seemingly orderly existences, and finds sweet humor and bemused hope in our stubborn quest for security, even happiness.”

  Donna Seaman, Booklist

  “Robison’s stories always have the rare intimacy of confession, as though after each subtle, blunt detail she expects to be assigned a reasonable penance … Robison is realism in the form of narrative non sequitur.”

  Kirkus Reviews

  ALSO BY MARY ROBISON

  Days

  Oh!

  An Amateur’s Guide to the Night

  Believe Them

  Subtraction

  Why Did I Ever

  One D.O.A., One on the Way

  Tell Me

  30 Stories

  Mary Robison

  COUNTERPOINT

  BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA

  Tell Me

  Copyright © 2002 by Mary Robison

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events is unintended and entirely coincidental.

  Author’s Note: Several of the stories in this volume appear as they did originally in The New Yorker and are in slightly different form from the versions collected in Days and An Amateur’s Guide to the Night. The author is most grateful to the magazine and especially to Roger Angell.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Robison, Mary, author.

  Title: Tell me : 30 stories / Mary Robison.

  Description: Berkeley, CA : Counterpoint Press, [2018] | “Author’s Note: Several of the stories in this volume appear as they did originally in The New Yorker and are in slightly different form from the versions collected in Days and An Amateur’s Guide to the Night. The author is most grateful to the magazine and especially to Roger Angell. “Coach,” “Smoke,” “In the Woods,” “The Help,” “I Get By,” “Daughters,” “Seizing Control,” “Kite and Paint,” “Trying,” “Pretty Ice,” “While Home,” “In Jewel,” “I Am Twenty-One,” “Independence Day,” “For Real,” “May Queen,” “The Wellman Twins,” “Mirror,” “Doctor’s Sons,” “What I Hear,” “Smart,” “Sisters,” and “Yours” appeared in The New Yorker; “Likely Lake” appeared in The Paris Review; “Happy Boy, Allen” appeared in the Mississippi Review; “An Amateur’s Guide to the Night” appeared in Seventeen; and “Your Errant Mom” appeared in “Gentleman’s Quarterly.” — ECIP galley

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017060549 | ISBN 9781640090354

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Short stories.

  Classification: LCC PS3568.O317 T45 2018 | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017060549

  Cover design by Jenny Carrow

  Text design by Trish Wilkinson

  COUNTERPOINT

  2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318

  Berkeley, CA 94710

  www.counterpointpress.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  with affection,

  for my stepfather, Robert Reiss,

  and for Dr. F. Elizabeth Reiss, my brilliant mother

  Contents

  1. Coach

  2. An Amateur’s Guide to the Night

  3. Smoke

  4. In the Woods

  5. The Help

  6. I Get By

  7. Daughters

  8. Seizing Control

  9. Kite and Paint

  10. Father, Grandfather

  11. Trying

  12. Pretty Ice

  13. While Home

  14. In Jewel

  15. Happy Boy, Allen

  16. I Am Twenty-One

  17. Independence Day

  18. Apostasy

  19. For Real

  20. May Queen

  21. Your Errant Mom

  22. The Wellman Twins

  23. Mirror

  24. Care

  25. Doctor’s Sons

  26. What I Hear

  27. Smart

  28. Sisters

  29. Likely Lake

  30. Yours

  1

  Coach

  1

  THE AUGUST TWO-A-DAY practice sessions were just sixty-seven days away, Coach calculated. He was drying breakfast dishes. He swabbed a coffee cup and made himself listen to his wife, Sherry, who was across the kitchen, sponging the stove’s burner coils.

  “I know I’m no Renoir, but I have so much damn fun trying, and this little studio, that one room, we can afford,” Sherry said. “I could get out of your way by going there, and get you and Daphne out of my way. No offense.”

  “I’m thinking,” Coach said.

  Sherry coasted from appliance to appliance. She swiped the face of the oven clock with her sponge. “You’re thinking too slow,” she said. “Your reporter’s coming at nine, and it’s way after eight. Should I give them a deposit on the studio, or not? Yes or no?”

  Coach was staring at the sink, at a thread of water that came from one of the taps. He thought of a lake place where they used to go, in Pennsylvania. He saw green water being thickly sliced by a power boat—the boat towing Sherry, who was blond and laughing on her skis, her back rounded and strong, her suit shining red.

  “Of course, of course. Give them the money,” he said.

  Their daughter, Daphne, wander
ed into the kitchen. She was a dark-haired girl, lazy-looking, fifteen; her eyes lost behind her bangs. She drew open the enormous refrigerator door.

  “Don’t lean on that,” her mother said.

  “And what are you after?” Coach asked.

  “Food, mainly,” Daphne said.

  Coach’s wife went away, to the little sun patio off the kitchen. He pushed the glass door after her, and it smacked shut.

  “Eat and run,” he said to Daphne. “I’ve got a reporter coming in short order. Get dressed.” He spoke firmly, but in the smaller voice he always used for his child.

  “Yes, sir,” Daphne said. She opened the freezer compartment and ducked to let its gate pass over her head. “Looks bad. Nothing in here but Eggos,” she said.

  “Have Eggos. I did. Just hustle up,” Coach said.

  “Can’t I be here for this guy?” Daphne asked.

  “Who guy? The reporter? Uh-uh. He’s just from the college, Daph. Coming to see if the new freshmen coach has two heads or none.”

  “Hey, lookit,” Daphne said. She blew a breath in front of the freezer compartment and it made a short jet of mist.

  Coach remembered a fall night, a Friday game night long ago, when he had put Daphne on the playing field. It was during the pre-game ceremonies before his unbeaten squad had taken on Ignatius South High. Parents’ Night. He had laced shoulder pads on Daphne, and draped the trainer’s gag jersey—No. ½—over her, and placed Tim … somebody’s enormous helmet over her eight-year-old head. She was lost in the getup—a small pile of equipment out on the fifty, from which warm wisps of air trailed now and then.

  She had applauded when the loudspeaker announced her name, and the P.A. voice, garbled by amplification and echo, rang out, “Daughter of our coach Harry Noonan and his lovely wife: Number One-Half—Daphne Noonan!”

  She had stood in the bath of floodlights as the players and their folks walked by when they were introduced—the players grim in their war gear, the parents looking tiny and apologetic in everyday clothes. The co-captain of the team, awesome in his pads and cleats and steaming from warmup running, had playfully palmed Daphne’s big helmet and twisted it sideways.

  From behind, Coach had heard a great “Haaa!” from the home stands as Daphne turned in circles, trying to right the helmet. Her left eye had twinkled out through one earhole, Coach remembered. “God, that’s funny,” the crowd said. And “Coach’s kid.”

  •

  On the sun porch now, his wife was doing a set of tennis exercises. Framed by the glass doors, she twisted her torso from one side to the other between Coach and the morning sunlight. Through the weave of her caftan, he could make out the white image left by her swimsuit.

  “I knew you wouldn’t let me,” Daphne said. She had poured a glass of chocolate milk. She pulled open a chilled banana. “I bet Mom gets to be here.”

  “Daph, this isn’t a big deal. We’ve been through it all before,” Coach said.

  “Not for a college paper,” Daphne said. “Wait a minute, I’ll be right back.” She left the kitchen.

  “I’ll hold my breath and count the heartbeats,” Coach said.

  They were new to the little town, new to Ohio. Coach was assuming charge of the freshman squad; it was a league where freshmen weren’t eligible for the varsity. He had taken the job not sure if it was a step up for him or a risky career move. The money was so-so. But he wanted the college setting for his family—especially for Daphne. She had seemed to begin to lose interest in the small celebrity they achieved in high-school towns. She looked bored at the Noonans’ Sunday spaghetti dinners for standout players. She had stopped fetching plates of food for the boys, some of whom were still game-sore. She had even stopped wearing the charm bracelet her parents had put together for her—a silver bracelet with a tiny megaphone, the numerals 68 (a league championship year) and, of course, a miniature football.

  Coach took a seat at the kitchen table. He ate grapes from a bowl. He spilled bottled wheat germ into his palm. On the table were four chunky ring binders, their black Leatherette covers printed with the college seal, which still looked strange to him. They were his playbooks, and he was having trouble getting the tactics of the new system into his head. “Will you turn off the radio?” he yelled.

  The bleat from Daphne’s upstairs bedroom ceased. A minute later, she was back down in the kitchen. She had a cardboard folder and some textbooks with her. “Later on, would you look at this stuff and help me?” she asked Coach. “Can you do these?”

  He glanced over one of her papers. It was penciled with algebra equations, smutty with erasures and scribbled-out parts. “I’d have to see the book, but no anyway. Not now, not later. I don’t want to and I don’t have time.”

  “That’s just great,” Daphne said. “And Mrs. Math Genius told me ‘Do it yourself.’ Well, I can’t.”

  “Your mother and I got our algebra homework done already, Daph. We turned ours in. That was in 1956. She got an A and I got a C.”

  “Mom!” Daphne called, pushing aside the glass door.

  “Forget it, if it’s the homework you want,” Sherry said.

  “Don’t give in to her,” Coach said. “I know you. The last time, you did everything but go there and take the tests for her, and she still flunked. This is summer school, and she’s on her own.”

  “But I can’t do it,” Daphne said.

  “Besides, I’ve got my own homework,” Coach said, and frowned at his playbooks.

  2

  Toby, the boy sent from The Rooter to interview Coach, was unshaven and bleary-eyed. He wore a rumpled cerise polo shirt and faded jeans. He asked his questions wearily, dragging his words. Twice, he yawned during Coach’s answers. He took no notes.

  “You getting this, now?” Coach said at last.

  “Oh, yeah, it’s writing itself. I’m a pro,” Toby said, and Coach was not certain if the boy was kidding. “So you’ve been here just a little while then. Lucky you,” Toby said. “Less than a month.”

  “Is that like a question? It seems less than a month—less than a week. Seems like a day and a half,” Coach said. For the interview, he had put on white sports slacks and a maroon pullover with a gold collar—the school’s colors. He had bought the pullover at Campus World. The clothes had a snug fit that flattered Coach and showed off his straight stomach and heavy shoulders. He and Toby were on either end of the sofa in the living room.

  “And you bought this house—right?” Toby said. He stood up. “Well, believe it or not, I’ve got enough for a couple sticks,” he said. “That’s two columns, among us press men. If you’re going to be home tomorrow, there’s a girl who’ll come and take your picture. Marcia. She’s a drag, I warn you.”

  “One thing about this town, there aren’t any damn sidewalks and the cars don’t give you much room if you’re jogging,” Coach said, getting up, too.

  “When I’m hitching, I wear a safety orange poncho and carry a red flag and paint a big ‘X’ on my back,” Toby said. “Of course, I realize I’m just making a better target for the speeders.”

  “I run down at the track now. It’s a great facility, comparable to a Big Ten’s. I like the layout,” Coach said.

  “O.K., but the interview’s over,” Toby said.

  “Well, I came from high schools, remember. In Indiana and Pennsylvania—good schools with good budgets, but high schools nonetheless.”

  “Yeah, I got where you’re coming from,” Toby said.

  “Did you need to know what courses I’ll be handling? Fall quarter, they’ve got me lined up for two. ‘The Atlantic World’ and ‘Colloquium on European Industrial Development,’ I think it is. Before, I always taught world history. P.O.D. once or twice.”

  “That 381 you’re going to teach is a gut course, in case no one’s informed you. It’s what we call ‘lunch,’” Toby said.

  “It’s in the nature of a refresher course,” Coach said.

  •

  Daphne suddenly came into the room f
rom the long hall. Her dark hair was brushed and lifting with static. Her eyes seemed larger than usual to Coach, and a little sooty around the lashes.

  “You’re just leaving, aren’t you, Buster?” Coach said to her.

  “Retrieving a pencil,” Daphne said.

  “Is your name really Buster?” Toby asked.

  “Get your pencil and scoot. This is Toby, here. Toby, this is Daphne,” Coach said.

  “Nice to meet you,” Daphne said. She slid into a deep chair at the far corner of the living room.

  “Can she hear us over in that county?” Toby said. “Do you read me?” he shouted.

  Daphne smiled. Coach saw bangs and her very white teeth. “Come on, Daph, hit the trail,” he said.

  “I’ve got a joke for her first,” Toby said. “What’s green and moves very fast?”

  “Frog in a blender,” Daphne said. “Dad? Some friends asked me to go swimming with them at the Natatorium. May I?”

  “You must see the Nat. It’s the best thing,” Toby said.

  “What about your class, though? She’s in makeup school here, Toby, catching up on some algebra that didn’t take the first time around.”

  Toby wrinkled his nose at Daphne. “Algebra? Blah! At first, I thought you meant makeup school. Like lipstick and rouge.”

  “I wish,” Daphne said. She slipped her left foot from her leather sandal and casually stroked the toes.

  “She’s a nut for swimming,” Coach said.

  “You’ll be so bored here,” Toby said to her. “Most nights, your options are ordering a pizza or slashing your wrists. Those are the choices of what there is to do.”

  “Yes, sure,” she said, disbelievingly.

  “Take it from Toby,” he said, waving good-bye.

  Coach let Toby out through the front door and watched until he was down the street.

  “He was nice,” Daphne said.

  “Aw, Daph. That’s what you say about everybody. There’s a lot better things you could say—more on-the-beam things.”

  “I guess you’re mad,” she said.

  Coach went to the kitchen, back to his playbooks.