1931
by Mary Widmer
“Memories of You” crackled out of the oak Philips in the background. The song ebbed and flowed as the radio fought for reception. Robert O’Mally sat transfixed, barely noticing the music in the background.
His Chuckles were arranged in front of him, lined up side-by-side on the brown coffee table, a pinky space separating them. He arranged them by the order in which they came out of the package and counted. ‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, t-…’ Robert stopped and looked at the candy with uncertainty. He counted again, but this time stuck his finger out and touched each candy piece as he said aloud, “One, two three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, t-…” There was no ten. He reached for the small box the candies had come from, closing one eye and looking hard into the opening with the other. He shook it hard. He stuck his finger deep into the box and felt from corner to corner. There were none.
He stood abruptly, patting down his neatly pressed red and white plaid shirt and khakis. He looked behind himself to the left, then to the right. He raised each of his feet, looking at the bottom of his socks to make sure that he hadn’t stepped on it without realizing. It had to be here somewhere. There were always ten in the box. From the beginning of time there had been ten, so why would they just change it? He dropped to his knees again, picking up each piece of candy to make sure that it wasn’t stuck to the back of the other. It wasn’t. ‘I must have just counted incorrectly,’ he told himself.
He took the two red ones and placed them next to each other, a pinky space apart. Robert did the same for each of the other colors, separating the different colors by two pinky spaces: yellow – 2, black – 2, green – 2, orange – 1. He tried counting them all in order, then every other one to the end of the line and back down. He staggered them and counted, once again. There were still only nine.
“Ma, come here right now,” his alarmed voice rang through the house. She came as quickly as she could. She held her stomach as she walked around the dinner table, her face red and glistening a little. There were thirteen flowers on her dress. Her dark, long hair was in a bun, covered by a white cloth she used as a hair net when she cooked. “Yes, dear?” she replied sweetly.
“Mama, there are only nine. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine,.” He pointed to each one as he said the number.
“Oh, you are getting so good at counting, Bobby. You’re going to be such a good big brother.” She patted his back twice and smiled tiredly.
“Robert, my name is Robert.” He rubbed his back as if to smooth his shirt and clean off anything she had left there. “And no, Mama, this is wrong. There are supposed to be ten. Usually, I count ten. There is an orange one missing.”
“Well, I don’t know, sweetheart. I gave you the box right from the shelf. Maybe you just ate one and forgot.” A buzzer sounded from the kitchen to tell her that dinner was ready. Before she left, she plucked a red Chuckle from Robert’s collection and popped it in her mouth before he could stop her. His heart sank.
‘She must have been lying,’ he told himself. ‘She probably ate it herself.’ Even as he thought it, he felt a guilty realization come over himself. He tried to remember if the box was open when it came into his possession. Robert still couldn’t remember. She had taken the red one, so what would have kept her from taking the orange? But, why would his mother lie to him? Robert felt sick.
* * *
Robert O’Mally heard the Philips click on downstairs. His father and the guests were gathering downstairs. He gathered his five toy cars and arranged them front to back, one pinky space apart, on the blue blanket his mother had knitted for him when he was a baby. He heard his mother’s name mentioned on the other side of the door. There had been 200 people at the funeral. She would have been proud of him for counting that high.
*****
1945
by Elizabeth Sharpe
Robert O’Mally glanced at in the rearview mirror in irritation. He took both hands off the wheel to straighten his dark green helmet in haste. He was consistently fixing that stupid hat. It was forever looking off balance on top of his head.
“O’Mally! Both hands on the wheel, for Christ’s sakes! Didn’t your father teach you anything?”
Robert placed both hands back on the wheel slowly. He enjoyed doing little things like that to show the colonel who was really in charge of Robert O’Mally. He really shouldn’t complain. Robert knew he was very lucky to have this job. Robert knew why he was chosen. He had always stood out in a crowd. Robert always looked neat with everything in order. When the colonel came into his bunk, he was impressed with the order with which Robert kept his items. He always had the best-made bed in his bunk. The sheets were always fitted exactly so they lay tight across the mattress, with a perfect fold at the top. This fold was exactly five inches pulled down, and it lay perfectly flat. His commanding officer at the time always pointed to Robert’s bed to show the others what perfection looked like. This is why the colonel chose him. Robert always had things in perfect order. That was the kind of man the colonel wanted to be driven around by. However, Robert had gotten in trouble several times. He was always wandering off when he was ordered to remain at his post, which usually meant by the car. The dust of Paris always distracted him. It was a constant battle between the dust and Robert. It got on his uniform, boots, gloves, and was forever on the car. Robert would always wander off to find a spout to wash the disgraceful mess off with. He always overestimated the amount of time he had before the colonel would come back and discover him gone. The colonel called it an obsession but he didn’t care.
Robert thought when he got drafted into the Army and they told him he would be going to France that he was destined to be going straight to the front lines. He gagged when he thought of the dirt, the sweat, and, not to mention, his inevitable death. But why worry now? The war was just weeks from almost certain victory for the Allies. They had pushed the Nazis into hiding. Robert had personally lost interest in the whole ordeal about a month after he had arrived and though the war wasn’t quite over, all he knew was he was ready to go home.
Robert missed home—being clean, the food, the smell of his house—to the point where he could easily kill one of those damn Nazis with his bare hands to take a shower more than once a week. This whole situation was making him go crazy. He complained of battle fatigue at the infirmary but they turned him away for more “sick” patients. He didn’t really understand why he was stuck here being the colonel’s chauffeur still. But he dreaded the alternative.
Robert stopped at the corner to let exactly seven people cross the street. There were four males and three females. One female in particular stuck out to him. She had dark, wild, and curly hair, which he found obnoxious, but she moved gracefully, like a skater on ice, which was about the only thing he liked about her. He thought she would benefit from a nice hat…or two. He laughed to himself softly.
“O’Mally!” Colonel Johnson barked, rousing Robert from his daydreams, “take me to that café I like so much. What’s it called? Oh, you know the place. Drive!” Robert didn’t mind all the yelling. He would take that over the front lines any day. He drove to café and executed what was the most perfect parking job, hoping the colonel would notice.
“I shouldn’t be but thirty minutes, Private. Wait here,” called the colonel as he walked to a table and sat down. Robert knew it was not going to be thirty minutes. The old colonel was close to retirement and took his time at whatever he did. Robert wiggled a bit in his seat and got ready for the long, arduous wait.
It was a quaint café in a quaint French village and to all others, it was a beautiful sunny day. But Robert wasn’t like most. He felt the pollution of the tiny town going into his lungs and gagged. He also saw how dirty the jeep was and automatically started looking for a hose to wash it off with. What would people think if they saw him driving around in a dirty car? The thought sent a shiver up his spine. Robert thought briefly of the trouble that he might get in if the colonel found him gone. He glanced at the café and saw the colonel with his back against the wall with his eyes closed. He always got tired after eating his croissant. Robert hated the man’s laziness.
Robert pulled the car next to one of the shops that had a hose protruding from it. If anyone asked what he was doing he would explain it was official business and to leave him to it. It took exactly three turns to get the water flowing at the perfect amount. He rinsed off the dirt from the car, then he pulled a towel he kept in the trunk. Robert started to dry the car off with the towel. He felt a presence over him. Robert looked up to see the same wild haired women crossing the street. She looked different now. Her hair was pulled back. She looked much more groomed, the way he thought a women should look. Robert stood straight and looked her in the eyes. He noticed three freckles on her cheek that formed a prefect triangle.
“This is official business, Miss. Please step away,” Robert said in his deepest voice.
“Oh yes, sorry. I’m Camille,” she said with her eyes glowing.
She explained she was waiting for the bus and didn’t mean to bother. She just was curious as to what he was doing cleaning a car in his uniform. He explained the nature of his official business and she explained she was on her way to work at one of the factories. Robert found her fascinating and had trouble concentrating on the task at hand. Camille talked and talked. She was curious about his life and seemed to really like him. She played with a strand of her hair often and laughed a lot.
The men in his bunk talked about women all the time. Robert always pretended to be deep in thought or reading his book because that kind of talk was nonsense. However, they did talk about women showing these attributes when they liked a man. Robert was the only man around so he was quite sure this was directed at him.
Finally the bus came and it was time for Camille to go. There were exactly twelve other people sitting on the bus. She started to get on but turned around quickly.
“My friends are having a party tonight,” Camille said, writing down an address quickly on the notebook she carried. She handed the paper to him. “I would love it if you came.”
Robert wasn’t sure what to say, so he nodded quickly and turned his attention back to the car. He could hear the bus doors shut close, and it drove away leaving a trail of dirt. Robert hurried to finish with the car. He felt out of breath and nervous. He wasn’t sure if this feeling was because the colonel would be waiting for him when he returned or a reason completely different all together. She made him nervous. He tried to push her out of his thoughts as he waited for seven chickens to get out of the way of his clean car.
*****
1959
by Luke Peterson
It is so damn cold. Robert pulls his khaki jacket close. The line isn’t moving. Seventeen people were in line when they arrived, seventeen people remain. The line isn’t moving. Wearing her elaborate mink coat, Maureen hums softly to his left in an atonal screech that pierces his thoughts. Free jazz, she had said, is the new thing. Nobody listens to those old Glenn Miller albums anymore.
Twenty-three minutes it took. Twenty-three minutes of misery sitting out in the cold listening to her insufferable humming.
As he enters the dimly lit, smoky club, he is struck by a sharp blast of air through an explosive trumpet from a dark man with wide sunglasses, using all the force of his lungs to bellow out and sustain that insufferable note as the perfectly pretentious cap of the drivel and din he picked up as they were waiting in line. The noise reverberates in his ears as Maureen guides him to their table. Through the acrid smoke he imagines the yellow tint seeping into his clean, finely pressed slacks; once a pair that’d make any man proud, they’d be permanently stained from this dirty hovel of a nightclub.
A steady bass line starts a new set, thump, thump, thump; he feels his foot gently beat time to those wobbling strings. The hazy club with its gaudy, slovenly mob disappears in the calming rhythm of that steady bass… One… Two… One… Two.
A raucous trumpet blasts through his serenity, shifting randomly between high and low notes, brassy, forceful, a capricious rhythm that no man alive could possibly tap his toe to. The rest of the quintet follows in turn, screaming trumpet giving way to tinkering piano, to thumping bass, to pounding drum, to moaning saxophone. He tries to cling to an underlying rhythm but the sporadic notes of the solo belcher distract him. For thirty minutes, a cacophony of pomposity, of personal expression that rarely culminates in a cumulative effort, flogs his delicate ears.
Maureen looks at the trumpet player rapturously. Her enormous emerald collar, apparently designed to embellish that lengthy swan of a neck, swallows the subtleties of what might have been a nice dress. She looks over at him.
“Lighten up, Robbie!”
“Don’t call me Robbie!” he yells back at her, but her mind has returned to the stage. Her aloofness disturbs him; he feels intolerably distant from her. An urge to pull her out of the club and take her home to lie quietly, side by side, on the fresh linen drives him to reach out across the table and grasp her hand. She smiles faintly at his touch. He must be strong for her.
He struggles to find that underlying rhythm, thump, thump, thump, thuuuuuumppp, the bass breaks off again in a freeform expression of musical prowess; his foot sticks to some spilled liquid on the dirty, old, wood paneling that once resembled a floor.
The club surrounds him; sweaty brows consuming yellow drinks, billowing smoke from garish salivating mouths, lipstick stained empty glasses resting in a disorderly relation to empty beer bottles and cheap plastic ashtrays piled high with cigarette butts, cluttering ash laden tables. Thick smoke and sweat choke the already dank air in the windowless club.
“I’m going to go to the restroom!” he shouts to his wife; she ignores him, her eyes glued to that trumpet player, shoulders swaying to the freeform nonsense sputtering out of his spiraled, golden horn.
He struggles through the throng of sweat and dirt towards the restroom. A growing turmoil in his belly grips him as he longs to run out into the street, to cast himself into the river to cleanse his suit of the grease and smoke. Taking out a white handkerchief from his pocket, resisting the urge to wipe his whole suit down, he grabs the restroom door handle, pulls himself into the cloud of yellow light reflecting sickeningly on the green mildewed walls of the men’s restroom.
Two men are chatting before the spit-caked sink and grimy mirror.
“Man, Joey’s cookin’ tonight!” one stammers as the other sparks up what looks like a cigarette but with a sweeter smell than tobacco. “The cat’s like crazy, man.”
Averting his eyes, he steps toward a corner stall, dodging soiled bits of tissue paper, bloodied bandages, and puddles of urine. Struggling to get the last bits of toilet paper off the roll, he covers the lid before taking a seat.
It was the third time this month that she had yelled at him because he was too uptight; he was “killing the vibe.” He hated it when she yelled. When they first met she had thought his quirks were cute and his neatness was sophisticated. As her tastes became more erratic with bizarre developments in society, he hobbled along beside her. First there were dim poetry readings with hairy strangers that never showered, followed by pop art exhibitions which said none of what he thought art was supposed to say, and now these jazz clubs.
He stares at a crude phallus etched into the back of the stall door.
“Never again,” he mutters to himself, “this has to stop. I have to control it.”
He takes deep breaths, concentrating on his racing heart…One…Two…One…Two. Maureen is waiting for him. He cannot lose her to this scene, to a beat up jazz musician that sweeps her off her feet while he sits irresolute on a stool in a dirty restroom; her strength completes him, keeps him pressing on when the world closes in. He picks himself up off the stool, locks his jaw into place, and prepares to take his first steps back into the crowded club.
*****
1981
by Lucy Fitzgerald
Robert poured a packet of sugar in his coffee and stirred it with a small black straw before tapping it three times on the rim of the ceramic cup and placing it back onto the paper napkin. The sun was shining outside but the café was dark and cool. Wrapping his hands around the mug, he stared out the street-level window of the small café, watching the hundreds of people on their way to work, school, practice, wherever. All of these people walking right past each other without even seeing one another, as if nothing mattered but where they were going. Robert closed his eyes and tried to slow his heartbeat. Shhh, he whispered to himself. You’re in your booth at the café, and as soon as you talk to Mark, you can go home.
Mark was running sixteen minutes late. Forty-nine taxis had driven past the café, while eight new people had walked through the door and only two had left. Robert felt his heartbeat start to race again.
Fifty taxis. Goddammit.
Mark knew how his nerves had been shot all week since receiving the news about Maureen getting remarried. She had called him herself from Santa Fe to tell him about that dumbass Jerry. I wish she would just leave me alone.
Robert leaned back against the booth and looked up at the molding on the ceiling. There were two hundred and eighteen full squares of antiquated plaster with vine detailing around the corners. He hated the fact that the squares were cut off on the street side of the building, so really there were about two hundred and twenty-nine and a half squares on the ceiling. It was all very unsettling. Robert tried not to think about it.
Finally a taxi pulled up to the curb and a tall man in a dark green blazer got out. He had thick peppered hair and dark sunglasses, and he was carrying a briefcase. He bounced up the sidewalk and into the dark café. Robert secretly envied the coolness with which he operated and wished that he could live Mark’s life for just one careless day.
“Hey, Robert!” Mark called as he removed his sunglasses. “How’re you doing?”
You are eighteen minutes late, Robert thought. “I’m good. How about you?”
“I’m great, just great.” He sat down heavily and immediately pulled out a menu from behind the ketchup. “Hey, sorry I’m running a little late. Had to help the wife pump up the tires in her bike. I tried to tell her to wait until later, but you know, it’s just such a beautiful day out that she just had to get goin’, you know?” He grinned as he scanned the menu, shaking his head. “Yeah, man, women are strange, aren’t they?”
“Yeah, they are,” Robert said quietly.
“So let’s discuss this settlement, shall we?” Mark pulled out a stack of manila folders from his briefcase. “According to these documents, Maureen has assets that we haven’t even tracked down records for yet.” He leaned on his elbows over the table towards Robert. “And do you know who her lawyer is? Well, it’s not even a lawyer, it’s a fuckin’ team of lawyers. I don’t understand this new trend. It’s like people don’t even bother with common decency anymore.”
Mark shook his head and took a drink from his glass of water. “Now, we need to decide how much we can conceivably get our hands on.” He leaned back in the booth. “And when the husband leaves the rich wife, the judge usually doesn’t have much sympathy.”
Robert looked out onto the street again. He realized that he had lost count of the taxis, and his heart began to race once more. “I just want to get this over with,” he said quietly.
Mark was quiet for a moment. “Listen, Robert. How long have we known each other? Thirty-five, thirty-six years? And, man, I’ve never seen you this bad.” He watched Robert for a response but got none. “Just let me do what I do best, and I promise things will turn out okay.”
Robert kept staring out the window at the people passing by, looking for an answer in the numbers. The sunshine was glinting off the taxis, the skyscrapers, the streets themselves. He had to shut his eyes.
“Do what you have to do,” Robert said as the waitress approached the table. And everything will be okay.
*****
2006
by Irene Herder
“Thirty years ago, I was living in Arabia. I had seventy-eight of the most beautiful women living in my harem. You see, the sultan liked me. But I decided to leave... too much sand and dirt there. It got blown into everything. Made things dirty.”
A nurse smiled slightly and took the small tray of mushy food away from Robert’s place at the central dining table. Robert glanced around. Thirty-six people were wandering around the nursing home halls today. Robert couldn’t remember when he got here. For a moment he saw the world spin slightly, and then he was back to being plain old Robert.
“Benjamin.”
The orderly turned around, “Mr. O’Mally? What can I do ya’ for?”
“Benjamin.”
“Yessir?”
Robert cleared his throat and tried to stand up out of his wheelchair. He was surprised to find his body couldn’t stay upright as easily as it used to. This wasn’t how things used to be.
The orderly eased him back down into his seat, “Now you know, Mr. O’Mally, you shouldn’t be standing up like that all the time. Remember what happened last time we tried that?”
For a moment, Robert strained, Did I fall? Did something happen? What happened? “I think... the last time I remember feeling that much pain in my leg was when I got shot back in Costa Rica, fighting the Eskimos. They weren’t kindly people...” he mumbled off as his story continued. He couldn’t quite remember what it was exactly that he was trying to remember, but he knew that this wasn’t it. The orderly pushed Robert back towards his room.
* * *
Robert was sitting in his wheelchair, staring at the flowers left on his dresser. He had no idea where they had come from, just that they had shown up two days ago. So bright. So cheery. So full of pollen and when they get older the petals fall off. Robert started shaking, “Benjamin! Benjamin! Benjamin!”
The orderly came rushing back into the room with a set of clean sheets to put on Robert’s soiled bed, “Sir! Is something wrong?”
“The flowers! The flowers!”
“Yes sir, what about them?”
Robert turned towards the orderly absolutely terrified, “Don’t you get it, bucko? When they die there they’re going to leave a ring on the wood and also drop all the petals and pollen onto the ground! Get them out of here! Throw them away!”
The orderly sighed and set the sheets down, “Goodness, Mr. O’Mally! You sure scared me a second ago?”
“Son, you don’t know the meaning of scared,” Robert said, his leg beginning to tremor involuntarily. He thought he heard the buzz of planes overhead. It sounded like Paris. The orderly started to pick up the vase of fake flowers.
“You can leave the flowers there, Benjamin. They are pretty.”
“All right, sir. Let me help you get set up for bed in a minute.”
Robert nodded. Something wasn’t fitting in his memory. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He furrowed his brow and concentrated on exactly what part of his memory was failing him. It all went back to the flowers somehow. Were they from Mama? No, she was having a baby and the smell would have bothered her. Maureen? No, she never seemed to like flowers, so why would she give to me? I haven’t seen Camille in years. I wonder... Robert mused things over in his head and decided that it didn’t really matter who they were from, just that someone had thought of him. Somewhere, someone cared about what was important.
The orderly stepped over to Robert’s wheelchair and wheeled it closer to the bed. Slowly but surely, the old man was hoisted into his clean bed. The orderly tucked him under the sheets and propped the head of the bed up in the air.
“Could you do something for me, Benjamin? When you see Mama, could you tell her that it was all my fault...,” Robert slipped away into his own world. “Tell her that I heard everything from my room. Father and the doctor talked about it. Mama? I didn’t count them right... You died cause you took one! The baby didn’t want it... Benjamin? Could you take care of the baby? Make sure Mama knows you have the baby though... to take care of. Could you?”
“Yes sir, I’ll... let her know.”
Robert closed his eyes and smiled, pleased with himself, “Thank you... Tell Mama also that I’m counting real good now, please.” His leg started shaking and his head started twitching back and forth ever so slightly. Robert was asleep.
* * *
The orderly left the room and shut the door. Another orderly walked up to him, “You were working with Old Man O’Mally? Who were you today, Perez?”
“Some kid named Benjamin, I guess.”
“Damn, that guy’s a hoot.”