Jonathan Carroll - Uh-Oh City

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appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1992. For the

personal use of those who have purchased the ESF 1993 Award anthology only.

Uh-Oh City

By Jonathan Carroll

Old men ought to be explorers

Here and there does not matter

We must be still and still moving

Into another intensity...

In my end is my beginning.

-- T.S. Eliot, "East Coker"

All right, look at it this way. If her name had been Codruta or Glenyus or

Heulwen, it would have been easier to accept. Some exotic name from the Urals

or Druid country, places where strange events are as common as grass. But no,

her name was Beenie. Beenie Rushforth. Doesn't that sound like a

fifty-year-old golfing "gal" from the local country club? It does to me. A

woman with too loud a voice, too deep a tan, and too much bourbon in her glass

at eleven in the morning. Beenie Rushforth, Wellesley, class of '65.

Even the way she arrived was no big deal, either. Our last cleaning woman

decided to marry her boyfriend and move to Chicago. No great loss. She wasn't

the world's best worker. She was the kind who swept around a rug rather than

under it. My wife, Roberta, is also convinced this woman was taking nips from

our liquor bottles, but that didn't bother me. What does get on my nerves is

paying good money for a clean house, but getting instead secret corners of

dust, and streaked windows in the guest room.

She gave notice, and Roberta put a file card on the bulletin board outside the

supermarket. You know, along with the "lawns mowed/German lessons/portable

typewriter barely used..." signs. The place you check either when you're in

need, or only bored.

We can clean our house well enough, but since the kids left and I was given a

chair at the university, there is more money now than ever before. I want to

use some of it to make life nicer for us. Roberta deserves it.

Throughout my adult life, I have had an uncanny talent for being at the wrong

place at the wrong time. I specifically chose the U. of Michigan graduate

program so that I could study with Ellroy, the greatest Melville scholar

around. Who just happened to die six weeks after I began there. Roberta was

pregnant with our first daughter, Norah, and was having her own tough time.

But she was magnificent. Told me I had a full fellowship to a great school,

and, Ellroy or not, a Ph.D. from the place meant something; so shut up and get

to Work. I did. Three very lean years later, we walked out of there with a

doctorate and two babies in hand. For the next decade, we lived your typical

academic vagabond's life, loading up the VW bus every couple of years and

driving from one end of the country to the other to new jobs. The students

liked me, but my colleagues were jealous. I was writing fast and well then,

and had already knocked out the monograph on Melville's Gnosticism that sent a

lot of people running to their copies of Moby Dick to see what they'd missed.

Then came "Moonlight marines -- a study of the work of Albert Pinkham Ryder

and Herman Melville," which should have made me a famous man, but did not. I

didn't complain. I knew it was good, we were young, had our love, healthy

babies, promise... what else do you need when you're that age? In Minnesota,

we bought our first house and first dog. The sixties were starting to flex

their muscles, so once again I chose the wrong place at the wrong time. Norah

started kindergarten in New Mexico. We liked it there. The dry winters and

long views to the mountains made us happy. The college was disgracefully

conservative, but we had friends there, and life was comfortable.

Everyone was passionate in the sixties; everyone had something "important" to

say about the state of the world. Me, too. I was one of those idiots who let

their hair grow too long and demonstrated loudly against the war. That would

have been fine if we'd lived in New England or California, where it was

fashionable, but the Southwest was full of blind patriots and armament

factories. Besides, the university was a state school, and thus tied

umbilically to the government. Suffice it to say, when I came up for

well-deserved tenure, it wasn't granted.

Desperate, I looked around for another job, but the only one available was at

an agricultural college in Hale, Texas. God forbid you should ever spend time

in Hale. We were there for four of the worst years of our lives. Pay was

miserable, the kids went to a lousy school, and the other people in my

department were Cro-Magnon both in their approach to education and the social

graces. I almost went out of my mind. Single-handedly, I came close to ruining

our marriage with my unforgivable behavior. One horrendous night, Roberta and

I stared at each other across the dining room table. She said, "I never

thought it would come to this." I said, "That's what happens when you marry a

loser with a big mouth." She said, "I always knew you had a big mouth, but not

that you were a loser. Not till now. And a mean one, too."

Unfortunately, it didn't end there, and only because of my wife's patience and

goodwill did we survive. By then I was at wit's end, and the kids were so

scared of my moods that they wouldn't come close unless I ordered them over. A

life that had once been as interesting and rich as a good novel was turning

into a railroad timetable.

Out of the blue, I was offered a position here. The department chairman was an

old acquaintance from Michigan I'd kept in touch with over the years because

we worked in the same field. I will never forget turning to Roberta after his

phone call and saying, "Toots, pack the bags. We're goin' North."

The transition was not easy. Norah was happy in her school, things were far

more expensive in the new town (partially because we never did anything in

Texas, because there was nothing to do), and my teaching load was greater. But

despite things like that, after six months I felt like all my veins and

arteries had come unclogged. We were back in the race.

What followed was twenty years of mostly interesting days, some horrendous

ones, and a general contentment that is rare. I've noticed few people say, "I

have a good life." It is as if they are embarrassed or ashamed of their lucky

lot, ashamed God permitted them to travel a smooth road. Not I. Five years ago

I realized how blessed I was, and thought it time I began attending church. I

looked around and chose one as simple as could be; a place where one could

give thanks but not get choked in velvet robes and oblique ceremonies that

missed the point. I am fifty-five years old, and believe God is willing to

listen if we speak clearly and to the point. His responses are manifested, not

in immediate answers or results, but in dots everywhere around us that need to

be connected intelligently. I feel that even more strongly now because of

Beenie. Despite Beenie. Bless her. Damn her.

I answered the phone the first time she called. Certain people's voices fit

their looks. Big man, deep voice -- that sort of thing. My first impression of

Mrs. Rushforth was middle-aged, hearty, good-natured. She said she'd seen our

notice on the board and was interested in the "position." I smiled at the

word. Since when had housecleaner become a position? However, we live in a

time when garbage collectors are "sanitary engineers," so if she wanted it to

be a position, O.K. She told me more about herself than I needed to know: she

had grown children, had lost a husband, didn't need the money, but liked to

keep active. I wondered if that was the truth; who cleans houses to keep their

muscles toned? Why not join a gym instead and sculpt a body on gleaming silver

machines? I invited her over to the house the next morning and she readily

accepted. I added another word to my list of her qualities via the sound of

her voice -- lonely. She sounded so eager to come. Before hanging up, she gave

me her telephone number in case something went wrong and I had to cancel the

meeting. As soon as I got off the phone, I went to the telephone book and

looked up Rushforth. I do things like that -- look people up in phone books,

read the small print on contest offers and cereal boxes. Equal parts

curiosity, nosiness, and scholarship. I am used to gathering as much

information as I can on a subject, then culling what I need from it. I didn't

go to the phone book because I was particularly suspicious of this Mrs.

Rushforth. Only curious.

To my great surprise, the only B. Rushforth lived on Plum Hill, a charming and

prestigious neighborhood down near the lake. A cleaning woman who lived there?

Now I was thoroughly intrigued, and so was Roberta after hearing about the

call and my little research.

"Oh Scott, maybe she'll be like Auntie Mame. Rich and eccentric. We'll have

Rosalind Russell cleaning our house!"

Early the next morning, I got a call from a colleague who needed my help

immediately, so I had to leave and miss the meeting with the mysterious

Beenie.

When I returned at lunchtime, Roberta filled me in. "What does she look like?"

"Middle-age, middle-size, a little round, short gray hair. She looks like a

masseuse."

"I thought so. How'd she dress?"

"In one of those bright running suits and complicated sneakers. She's very

friendly, but also very take-charge. Know what I mean? She asked if she could

look around the house before I even offered her the job. Checking out the work

load.

"You did offer it?"

"Yes. Sweetie, she's nice and looks dependable: Any person who lives on Plum

Hill but wants to clean houses to keep busy has got to be at least

interesting, right? And if she turns out to be a good cleaner, too, all the

better."

"True. Bring on the Beenie."

"She starts tomorrow."

My seminar in Hawthorne took up most of the next morning. It's a good class,

full of intelligent students who appear to have a genuine interest in the

work. Generally I come out of there feeling invigorated and happy to be a

teacher. That day a rather heated discussion arose over certain imagery in the

short story "Young Goodman Brown." In the middle of it, one fellow asked

another, "Do you think you'd say all these things if you knew Hawthorne was

sitting in the back of the room? You should hear yourself. Would you be so

confident if you knew the guy who'd written it was listening?"

A good question I'd heard asked in a variety of ways over the years. I was

thinking it over as I walked in our front door and was greeted by the familiar

voice of our vacuum cleaner.

"Anyone home?"

The vacuum kept up its high roar.

"Helllllo?"

Nothing. Then a burst of familiar laughter from the living room. I walked in

and saw Roberta bunched over on the couch, cackling. My wife is a dramatic

laugher -- she'll smack a knee and rock back and forth if the joke's good.

It's easy to amuse her, and a pleasure, too, because she's so appreciative. I

think part of the reason why I fell in love with her in the first place was

that she was the first woman to genuinely laugh at my jokes. Sex is great, but

making a woman laugh can be even more satisfying sometimes.

"You must be Scott. Roberta was giving me the lowdown on you." She was all

gray and silver. Gray hair, gray sweatsuit, gray sneakers. Hands on hips, she

looked me over as though I were a used car. The vacuum was still on and stood

humming by her side. "Beenie?"

"It's really Bernice, but if you call me that, I'll quit. How do you do?"

"Very well. Looks like you two are doing O.K."

"I was telling Roberta about my son."

My wife waved a hand in front of her face as if there were a fly too close.

"You've got to hear these stories, Scott. Tell him the one about the rabbit.

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Jonathan Carroll - Uh-Oh City

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