!Shockhead Ted!

My parents’ house is about as small as four rooms can get. Five rooms with the attic. They ain’t had their own house til I was already grown. My mother is a washer-woman and it always smells like toasted soap and laundry. Right after I walked in the door my brother Tom got there too, and Ida and Wilbur, his little twin children. They both of ‘em jumped on me.  “You know I know how babies get made,” said Ida first thing. “What is it like after you die?” Wilbur was saying at the same time. Tom disappeared real quick. “Nobody knows what it’s like after you die,” I said, “‘Cause there’s nobody you can ask who’s done it.” I didn’t care to talk about how babies get made. You could ask Reuben Roy what it’s like dying, he’ll tell you that anytime. But he don’t know what it’s like to leave this world of course because he can’t do it, or won’t–I was never sure. “But lots of people figure, in the end, you go to the other people and who've died before you. The ones who love you, you know,” I said. "In heaven." “Like grandpa?” “No,” I said, for our grandpa was a real piece of work. “You’d not go wherever Grandpa is.” Wilbur kissed me on the cheek. Wilbur was a real nice little boy. But he was only doing it because do it real firm your hair will stand on end. Especially if your hair is real fine and not too long, like a little boy’s, say. Ida was sort of saucy, and I could never quite figure how a little person with that much spunk come out of my brother Tom, who would die before he made a fuss. Jemima was on her third frankfurter when she turned to look at me sharp. “If you ever see a glowing girl you have got to keep away from her, you hear me? Promise.” “What,” I said, “like a ghost?” “No, she’ll be alive. If you see a girl alive and glowing green. If it’s a ghost it’s probably fine,” she said. “Ghosts like you, right?” I was pretty sure Reuben Roy liked me. “Promise!” she said. “Alright, yeah, I promise.” “You’re gonna get drunk,” Ida told me. “I don’t think so,” I said. She shrugged and rolled her eyes beside her real significant like whatever you say, Uncle Teddy. It’s not like I was lying. When I was little I never told the difference between drunk people and sober. They was all just big. That’s how it should be. When you’re four. “Oh, we’re six now, Uncle Teddy.” They aren’t scared of me, but sometimes they like to act like it. They know how it gets on my nerves. I was talking to Goldie, Bill’s fiance. Goldie brought the beer. She called Bill ‘babydoll’ and he called her it right back. What was wrong with me that I couldn’t be happy for them? It used to make me happy when I saw people in love. Now it kind of made me mad. It made me want them to go wrong. “There’s this new projectionist,” Goldie was telling me. “At the Arcadian! They say he fixes people up.” “Fixes them up how?” She shrugged. After dinner we went outside. It was blue in the sky but on the ground it was night, and all the yards across you could hear the people out. It was warm and heavy, the bugs were going and everybody talking low. Pearl and Tom had the baby on the grass, trying to get him to roll over. My mother sat on my father’s lap on the porch seat and there they rocked, rocked. Frank and Abby lay kissing loud and slow in the grass beneath the tree. On the edge of the yard where the dirt turned to road dirt I could just about see Bernie, leant cool between the telephone poles. His cigarette lit up twice, then he drifted out into the neighborhood, caught some other shadows. And there I sat between them all, they laughed and it went up my back like nails on a blackboard I felt there again there must be something wrong with me.  I took my plate and went back in. The door sprang shut behind me, and the light in the kitchen buzzed yellow, almost green after the yard.  It looked different when it was still. You could see the bugs clinking on the window glass. Things were more real in here than outside, a little too sober. A dishrag was dripping on the floor. I went to the parlor and nobody was at the table any more, so I took everything good that wasn’t too chewed-on. I had the beer left in the corner of the bucket, you know if you tilted it, wondered where Jemima had got to. I was going to go to the attic where she sleeps and see if she was there, see if she would talk about something. There aren’t electric lights up there. It was kind of soft and black as pitch by halfway up, with rugs all over. I come over the landing and straight in front of me, I couldn’t tell what I was seeing at first. Bill had his shirt off and his back was moving up and down, like some flat white fish in the dark, and Goldie, I mean I couldn’t see her but she was laughing, sort of. The door was almost wide open. If he did a thing like that on purpose it would be strange of course but I knew Bill was just stupid. I went back downstairs feeling real sour and Tom was there. He was rooting around in the icebox. He come up with a glass full of ice and smiled fond. Tom was always real tender hearted but unless he was drunk you’d probably never know it. He mostly stands around looking somber, or with a corner of his mouth up just so you know he ain’t mad to be there, and don’t say much. “Hey!” he said. “Want a brandy?” I shrugged. “Sure,” I said. I wasn’t sure you were meant to put ice in brandy, but. He handed me the one he’d made already and got back to chiseling. “Do you know if you can just…go to the hospital?” I asked him. “Like if you ain’t well?” “Like if you want to visit someone who’s in there?” “Sure. I mean. I think you have to go during visiting hours.” “When’s that do you think?” “Couple times a day. Why? Who’s in the hospital?” “Oh,” I said. “You wouldn’t know her.” “Her?” “Just some girl Rose I went to school with. I run into her today.” “And then she went to the hospital?” “Yeah,” I said. I wanted to tell him all about it but Tom can’t keep a secret. I had never been in a hospital before. It was quiet and waxy, lead pipes all over, and all the light was yellow; Rose was pink and yellow, sunk back in her pillow. "Hi Rose," I said. “Ted?” she said all thin. “What are you doing here?” “Well I come to visit. See how you were.” She looked kind of wobbly-grateful, glad to see me maybe. So it was easy to act big. “Can I get you anything?” was all I thought to say, though.  “Like what?” said Rose.  “ Like a…stuffed animal…?” I shrugged. “I don’t know.” I smiled and she started to cry. “Aw," I said. "Don’t cry.” I wondered should I stop smiling. “I’m so sorry," she said. “What for?” “I’m so sorry you had to see it.” “Oh,” I said. “That’s okay.” “Somebody had to see it so they’d know it was me on-purpose,” she was saying. “I’d hate for anyone to go to jail on my account.” “Oh.” I tried to be quick. “Well that’s okay, that’s nice. That’s really smart!” Rose laughed, sort of, but she was still crying. “Is there something you need,” I asked, “Really. Should I get somebody? You want some water?” Was she hurting real bad? “I don’t know. I guess. I need to go to sleep.” “Oh, okay.” I wondered should I stay or go. Go I should think, but she’d be left there all alone, with all the lights on, how could anybody sleep? “I’m so tired,” she said. “Okay, well, I’ll go then. I’ll go, and you just…” I had to think for a long time. She put her arm over her eyes. “Get well.” She sniffed and nodded. I thought she might be smiling almost, which seemed odd. So I left. I got almost to the stairs before I figured I’d be sorry. So I came back in.  “Do you mind if I stay a minute?” I said. “No please!” she said, weeping still. “Please.” I sat back down and I looked out the window, I didn’t want to shame her. It was black night so it was just me looking back, weaving in place like a chopped-up snake. Rose lay quiet, soon enough, looking at the bedframe through her eyelashes. I always thought she looked like an angel in the cemetery, like a china Mother Mary, how the corners of her mouth cut deep. “Rose?” I said, in some while.  “Mhmm?” “Can I ask you a question?” “Okay,” she said, like she was about to be in trouble. God I wanted to pick her up again. I tried to whisper. “Did you really mean it? You know.” “Well,” she said, and lay there a long time looking misty. “Once I jumped I didn’t mean it. The second I jumped I didn’t mean it.” She looked at me like please, I swear. I shrugged. “If you only meant it for...why, if you thought better of it, then you didn’t really mean it, Rose.”  Rose shook her head. She was so pretty. I couldn’t see what she had to go jump in front of a train for. “So–“ I said in a little while. “I just didn’t think I could stand it,” Rose said, or it jumped out of her. She crossed her arms over her ribs, like to press herself down, and shook her head some more. “That’s all. Every day I’m. I’m just. I’m nobody’s favorite personal and, I’ll never be anyone’s, or maybe I will but I probably won’t and why would I be, I, I could just be nothing to nobody never all my life, plenty of people are and I didn’t think I could stand it,” she said, and got high pitched, split like in two voices. “I just didn’t think I could stand it. Maybe I could keep it up for ten years or twenty or fifty but if this is it then I didn’t think I could stand it.”  “Hush,” I said. If I only thought of her, thought like I dropped empty-headed from the ceiling, I could forget myself. She was so flat lying down, just hips and shoulders. Just a long beautiful girl crying like a child. She hurt my stomach where I used to think my heart was.  She covered her face up. “Don’t listen to me. Girls don’t talk like this, Oh God, I don’t know. I don’t know,” she said. “Sorry, I’m not making any sense.” “Look. You’re a pretty girl, Rose,” I told her. “You’re the prettiest girl I know. You’re nice. You’re smart. You’ve got steady work. Anybody in his right mind’d have you.” “Would you?” That made me laugh a little. “Well yeah I would.” “That’s sweet,” she said, all muffled up. “It’s not,” I said. “It’s true.” I stood up. “Rose, would you marry me?” She took her hands off her face, streaming pink. Sniffed. “What?”  I got down on one knee by the bed. I couldn’t hear over my ears and I said it before I could think better.  “Marry me, Rose Sheehan,” I said. She turned her head real slow to look at me. “I mean, if you want to,” I said. My stomach filled, got too much, ran over, then there was nothing in me but the hissing when a record’s done. I was over someplace watching myself edge up on her, like some great retriever dog. “Why?” I saw her ask. “Because,” I said, I heard myself say, “Honest.” I took her wrists. “It’ll be the luckiest day of my life you say yes, come on, Rose.” I was crouching there shivering, holding them. For a minute, then I put them down. “...You can think about it,” I said. She pressed her eyes back in her head and said, “Yeah. Okay,” she said. “Yeah?” I said. “Yes,” Rose cried. “Yes!” I did pick her up, I spun her around. I thought I’d float away, the way the weight dropped out of me, I thought I’d get struck down. Everybody says it ain’t a walk in the park but just like that we skipped to the end and it was over, it was over, it was over. I walked around most of the night, it was a full moon. I could see my shadow sharp on the dirt. It was dawn when I lay down and when I did I couldn’t rest. I didn’t fall asleep but there was one point I was dreaming and I dreamt of Rose. I went down to the mills when they opened. I had to tell my parents and everyone. My feet felt all wrong in my shoes, from all night, but I didn’t care. So I hung about the gate until I saw my brother Tom and then I yelled to him. He weren’t far, but he just looked at me funny. I tried again. “What?” he called out. He was turned against the tide with his lunch pail. I shouted again, he had to’ve heard me. His eyes got big. He got the wits to turn and grab around. “Dad! Dad come quick!” he cried. “Dad, Ted says he’s getting married!” “What? Since when?” said Bill, when I found him. He works for a sign painter and his wife is a real artist, can you imagine. His mouth hung open and his tray was pouring out a little, dark blue. The little ones were in the kitchen, swirled in steam, all doing laundry. “Woah,” said Bernie. “Whatever did she want to marry you for?” His glasses were all fogged up. “Good looks,” I said. “And good loving.” He wrinkled his nose. Ford was sitting in the corner reading some magazine. “No girl’d let you between her legs–” he started saying. Jemima kicked him in the tailbone through the chair. Ford’s a little prick sometimes. But he says he’s gonna join the army and it’ll be alright then. “You’re kidding,” said Jemima. “Nope,” I told her. Jemima screamed and ran in a circle.  “Ma!!” she bellowed, “Ted’s getting married!” “No he ain’t!!” she yelled from upstairs. “I am!!” I yelled. “Stop yelling oh my god,” said Bernie. Mother come banging down.  “What is this! Honest! Married?” she asked me, once she kissed me, “Do I know her, who is she?” Jemima screamed a little more. Started talking about the cake, the flowers. The roses. She don’t ask stupid questions. Nor does Frank. I got to him last. “You’re getting married?” “Yeah.” “To that ginger girl from the post office, what’s her name.” “That’s right,” I said. “Good for you,” he said, still wiping a glass. “Come back,” He thought for a second. “Friday at 7.” I told my dad late in the evening, when he come down from the saloon. “Who is this girl again?” “Rose, Dad. You’ll like her.” My dad was there sitting on the porch. He was rocking in the chair a little, off his foot against a railing, and he was singing high in his throat when I went away. It’s an old song and maybe she’s named after it. Probably not. The song about the bloody saber and how somebody stuck it in Rose Connolly.