Robert Coover - The Brunist Day of Wrath

“Mom? I’ve decided to come home for the weekend to see you. We’re having a special Friday night supper tonight at the fraternity. One of my profs is a guest. I’ll start down right after. How are you doing?”

“Well, I’m dying, my dear. Other than that I’m just fine.”

“I tried to call last night, but the phone was busy or else just disconnected. I suppose you were asleep?”

“Yes, I am at peace in the Lord, Tommy. My soul has been saved and I rest easy.”

“Where’d you learn to talk like that, Mom? It doesn’t sound like you.”

“It is not me, Tommy, not the me you knew. I have been born again. I didn’t know what that meant. Now I do. I am someone new. I surprise even myself.”

“Mom, what’s going on? Dad seems very upset about something.”

“Oh, you know your father, Tommy. If the world doesn’t go according to plan, his plan, he gets all hot under the collar.”

“Why did the home care nurse get fired?”

“Mrs. Filbert is a pious kind-hearted Christian woman. She has helped me through dreadful times in a way that no one else has and I miss her horribly. He has sent some silly little girl over here today in her place who talks to me like I’m three years old. I think your father did it for spite.”

“He said you did something bad.”

“I followed my own lights, as he likes to say and has done for over thirty years, without concern for me or anyone else. I am preparing to meet my Maker, Tommy, and He spoke to me and directed me to free myself of all earthly encumbrances, and I have been doing so.”

“And me, Mom? Am I an earthly encumbrance, too?”

“All that is body is, Tommy. Not your spirit. Which I love more than you can know and hope to have near me through all eternity. The world isn’t going to last much longer, which means at least you may not have to suffer what I am suffering. But you may not have much time. You must always keep Jesus in your heart, Tommy, and…(No, dear. Not now.)”

“Who’s there with you now, Mom?”

“Groovy, Angie! But, hey, wasn’t Tommy here just last week?”

“He says he simply can’t stay away from me! He’s just crazy about me, Ramona!” Angela knows this because of the way he looks at her, especially when gazing down upon her just before That Moment, his eyes ablaze then with adoration and awe (she is so beautiful! she knows this!) and tenderness and passionate desire. Tommy! She’s so madly in love she’s just wet all the time! “He told me so!”

“Oh, Angie, you’re so lucky! Tommy’s a fabulous hunk! And rich! And you mean you’re really calling from his house?”

“Call me back if you like, and see for yourself. And I’ll be here tomorrow, too.” Tomorrow — Ramona knows this, but she is too stupid and shallow and jealous ever to understand the true deep meaning — she and Tommy will make love in this beautiful house (probably even under this very ceiling: she is calling from the phone in his bedroom, poking about, sniffing at things) which may one day be hers. April 25: She has already marked it on her sacred calendar. She’s desperately close to her period, and that’s scary, but hopefully it will not come until Monday. “Poor Tommy! He’s hurting so! He needs me now.” He’s such a bad boy, though. Last weekend on the way to the motel, a used tampon dropped out on her lap. He made up some wild excuse, saying he’d loaned his car to a fraternity brother up at university who must have put it there as a joke, and he became very sweet in his embarrassment, but all Angela could think was: Did he have sex with a girl during her period? That sounds pretty gross, but if things go wrong this weekend, well, if he likes that, she might give it a try. “I still haven’t got over my own mom passing away, so I know what Tommy’s going through.” Even if Mrs. Cavanaugh is really cranky and always complaining — nothing like her own mom who, even when she was dying, kept wanting to help somehow, and never said a word about her pain or fear, just how much she loved her. Thank goodness the old lady is asleep most of the time, lying there in her wrinkly old gown and plastic shower cap, or else looking through her photo albums with her little wire-framed glasses on the end of her skinny white nose. “When Tommy’s father came to ask me yesterday to help out, it was just such a thrill! Especially when he said he specifically wanted a Catholic home care person. It was like he was reaching out to me, you know? I suddenly felt so much closer to him. He’s a wonderful man, so kind, who has suffered so much, and he’s the best employer in the world. I just love him!” On Tommy’s shelves are his trophies and a personalized bowling ball and some framed photos, including a delicious one in his high school basketball uniform, holding a ball at his hip, which must have been taken about the same time they first did it. “Tommy’s mother keeps asking for the other woman who was here. A Baptist-type nurse who did something bad, I don’t know what.”

“I bet she stole something. Those people are like that.” Angela wants to steal that photo. Maybe tomorrow she’ll ask him for it. He’s so cute! She was just a dumb little kid then, but so was he. They are both so much more mature now. At the bottom of his socks drawer, she finds a stack of men’s magazines and, while Ramona rattles on about the stupidity and immorality of Baptist hillbillies and all the craziness out on the mine hill last weekend, she thumbs through them. She recognizes the poses: Tommy asked her to pose the same way for his Polaroid. She loves him, so how could she say no? It made her feel funny, though, like her skin was not her skin but something she was actually wearing . But she could see it made him awfully excited, and it excited her, too, and she took pictures of him (he is so gorgeous!) and he used a timer to take pictures of them together, making love—“I know one should always keep one’s dignity,” her older friend Stacy Ryder once told her, “but really it’s not much use in a love affair…”—and then he let her tear them all up and burn them after, all except one of them together, just kissing (you can’t see the hands), which she let him keep to remember her by when he was away at college. “My dad said there’s some really sick things going on out there, stuff you wouldn’t believe! And those people are everywhere, the fields are full of them like herds of animals! I even saw somebody this morning who looked just like your brother Charlie, only he was ten years older.”

“That probably was Charlie. He’s back. He’s going bald. He made some bad friends up in the city and I think he got into trouble, but you’d never know it. Swaggering around, snapping his fingers, acting the big cheese. He’s already got into a fight with Dad and eaten up all the food in the house.” She is, she knows, as beautiful as any of these women in the magazines, though she sees that her pubic hair is thicker than most of theirs; she will trim it, maybe make a little design. Tommy would like that.

“Angie, now that things are so cool for you and Tommy, can I have Joey Castiglione?”

“Sure, Ramona. He means nothing to me.” She can be generous; she’s not throwing anything away. Joey would never go for fat Ramona Testatonda. Ramona thinks she’s such a big deal just because her dad is a town cop, but Joey Castiglione will still be waiting for his Angela a hundred years from now. She didn’t let Tommy have his way in everything. She knew how to be both firm and gentle when she had to draw the line, like when he wanted to take a picture of her using the bathroom, for example. Absolutely not, Tommy Cavanaugh. Though he did take a picture of himself up close when he was in her other place and she wasn’t looking — how could she be, on her hands and knees? — which was just too gross. No picture like that in these magazines. She asked her older friend at the bank if she ever let people take pictures when they’re intimate like that, and Stacy said no, so maybe she has gone too far, though Stacy smiled and said anything really is all right when you’re in love. And oh yes, she is! Her whole body is shaking and oozing with it.