The Sounds of the Night Coming On

from One D.O.A., One on the Way
Mary Robison

I'm not going to be able to manage with these people and the things they do.
         Collie, for example, my niece, was this morning a little girl, wearing a smock and her carrot hair in two long braids, come to visit her grandmother. Then the grandmother whisked her off and took her someplace where clothes are turned pink and braids chopped and heads shorn and left looking like sprouting pineapples.
         I could smack that grandmother unconscious and roll her out into the yard. She could stay out there a good while, pondering the harm she's done.
         Petal has arrived to pick up the kid.
         She stares straight ahead after experiencing a view of the haircut.
         I say, "Let us sit down here and smoke bags of dope at the dining table."
         The room twinkles around us with snowy linen and crystal-dripping chandeliers.
         "One thing you could do is kill your husband," I say. "He deserves it for being her son."
         "I was already going to, for other reasons," Petal says.
         "Adam?" she asks, halfway changing the subject.
         "Exists," I say with a nod.
         "So, where are they?" she asks. "They should be down here, shouldn't they?"
         I shake my head. "I can't speak for all wives about all husbands. Only for me, about mine. He is far too fucked to participate in the situation."
         The dope is burning a hole in my pocket. I keep offering it but nobody takes it up.
         The room, the chandelier light, the sad face on Petal, the sounds of the night coming on, the smells from the gardens around this palace, my longing, her longing.