Lorrie Moore: The Collected Stories of Lorrie Moore

"Maybe we all drink too much gin," I said.

For a moment there was just silence. "Are you referring to the accident?" said Isabel accusingly. It was a car crash that had severed her arm. A surgeon and his team of residents had sewn it back on, but the arm had bled continually through the skin grafts and was painful — her first dance afterward, before an audience, a solo performed with much spinning and swinging from a rope, flung specks of blood to the stage floor — and after a year, and a small, ineffectual codeine habit, she went back to the same surgeon and asked him to remove it, the whole arm: she was done, she had tried.

"No, no," I said. "I'm not referring to anything."

"So, hey, come on, come on!" said Pat. The switch seemed to have been thrown in her. "Robin's waiting."

"What do I bring?"

"Bring?" Pat and Isabel burst out laughing. "You're kidding, right?"

"She's kidding," said Isabel. She felt the sleeve of my orange sweater, which I was still wearing. "Hey. This color looks nice on you. Where did you get this?"

"I forget."

"Yeah, so do I," said Pat, and she and Isabel burst into fits of hilarity again. I put on shoes, grabbed a jacket, and left with them.

isabel drove, one-armed, to Robin's. When we arrived, the house was completely dark, but the street lights showed once more the witchy strangeness of the place. Because she wrote plays based on fairy tales, Robin had planted in the yard, rather haphazardly, the trees and shrubs that figured most prominently in the tales: apple, juniper, hazelnut, and rose shrubs. Unfortunately, our latitude was not the best gardening zone for these. Even braced, chained, and trussed, they had struggled, jagged and leggy; at this time of year, when they were leafless and bent, one couldn't say for sure whether they were even alive. Spring would tell.

Why would a man focus on her garage when there was this crazed landscaping with which to judge her? Make this your case: no jury would convict.

Why would a man focus on anything but her?

We parked in the driveway, where Robin's own car was still parked, her garage no doubt locked — even in the dark one could see the boxes stacked against the one small garage window that faced the street.

"The key's under the mat," said Isabel, though I didn't know this and wondered how she did. Pat found the key, unlocked the door, and we all went in. "Don't turn on the lights," Isabel added.

"I know," whispered Pat, though I didn't know.

"Why can't we turn on the lights?" I asked, also in a whisper. The door closed behind us, and we stood there in the quiet, pitch-black house.

"The police," said Pat.

"No, not the police," said Isabel.

"Then what?"

"Never mind. Just give it a minute and our eyes will adjust." We stood there listening to our own breathing. We didn't move, so as not to trip over anything.

And then, on the opposite side of the room, a small light flicked on from somewhere at the far end of the hallway; we could not see down it, but out stepped Robin, looking pretty much the same, though she had a white cotton scarf wrapped and knotted around her neck. Against the white, her teeth had a fluorescent ochre sheen, but otherwise she looked regal and appraising and she smiled at all of us, including me — though more tentatively, I thought, at me. Then she put her finger to her lips and shook her head, so we didn't speak.

"You came" were her first hushed words, directed my way. "I missed you a little at the hospital." Her smile had become clearly tight and judging.

"I am so sorry," I said.

"That's O.K., they'll tell you," she said, indicating Is and Pat. "It was a little nuts."

"It was totally nuts," said Pat.

"It was standing around watching someone die," Isabel whispered in my ear.

"As a result?" said Robin, a bit hoarsely. She cleared her throat. "No hugs. Everything's a little precarious, between the postmortem and the tubes in and out all week. This scarf's the only thing holding my head on." Though she was pale, her posture was perfect, her dark-red hair restored, her long thin arms folded across her chest. She was dressed as she was always dressed: in black jeans and a blue sweater. She simply, newly, had the imperial standoffishness that I realized only then I had always associated with the dead. We pulled up chairs and each of us sat.

"Should we make some gin rickeys?" Isabel asked, motioning toward the bags of booze and lime-juice blend.

"Oh, maybe not," said Robin.

"We wanted to come here and each present you with something," said Pat.

"We did?" I said. I'd brought nothing. I had asked them what to bring and they had laughed it off.

Robin looked at me. "Always a little out of the loop, eh?" She smiled stiffly.

Pat was digging around in a hemp tote bag I hadn't noticed before. "Here's a little painting I made for you," she said, handing a small unframed canvas gingerly to Robin. I couldn't see what the painting was of. Robin stared at it for a very long time and then looked back up and at Pat and said, "Thank you so much." She momentarily laid the painting in her lap and I could see it was nothing but a plain white blank.

I looked longingly at the paper sack of gin.

"And I have a new dance for you!" whispered Isabel excitedly.

"You do?" I said.

Robin turned to me again. "Always the last to know, huh," she said, and then winced, as if speaking hurt. She clutched Pat's painting to her stomach.

Isabel stood and moved her chair out of the way. "This piece is dedicated to Robin Ross," she announced. And then, after a moment's stillness, she began to move, saying lines of poetry as she did. "Heap not on this mound / Roses that she loved so well; / Why bewilder her with roses, / That she cannot see or smell?" There was more, and as, reciting, she flew and turned and balanced on one leg, her single arm aloft, I thought, What the hell kind of poem is this? It seemed rude to speak of death to the dead, and I kept checking Robin's face, to see how she was taking it, but Robin remained impassive. At the end, she placed the painting back in her lap and clapped. I was about to clap as well, when car headlights from the driveway suddenly arced across the room.

"It's the cops! Get down!" said Isabel, and we all hit the floor.

"I think they're patrolling the house," whispered Robin, lying on her back on the rug. She was hugging Pat's painting to her chest. "I guess there was a call from a neighbor or something. Just lie here for a minute and they'll leave." The police car idled in the driveway for a minute, perhaps taking down the license number of Isabel's car, and then pulled away.

"It's O.K. We can get up now," said Robin.

"Whew. That was close," said Pat.

We all got back into our chairs, Robin with some difficulty, and there was then a long silence, like a Quaker wedding, which I came to understand was being directed at me.

"Well, I guess it's my turn," I said. "It's been a terrible month. First the election, and now this. You." I indicated Robin, and she nodded just slightly, then grabbed at her scarf and retied the knot. "And I don't have my violin or my piano here," I said. Isabel and Pat were staring at me hopelessly. "So — I guess I'll just sing." I stood up and cleared my throat. I knew that if you took "The Star-Spangled Banner" very slowly and mournfully it altered not just the attitude of the song but the actual punctuation, turning it into a protest and a question. I sang it slowly, not without a little twang. "O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?" Then I sat down. The three of them applauded, Isabel clapping her thigh.

"Very nice," said Robin. "You never sing enough," she added ambiguously. Her smile to me was effortful and pinched. "Now I have to go," she said, and she stood, leaving Pat's painting behind on the chair, and walked into the lit hallway, after which we heard the light switch flick off, and the whole house was plunged into darkness again.