Oh-Oh City

My mouth. There was something in my mouth, and I liked it. I hummed around it. It was nice against my teeth. Soft.

I walked around wherever I could go. There were people sometimes. They smelled good too. Sometimes they touched me or said things at me or pushed me to be in a place or not in a place. If I didn't like the place, I'd yell. O.K., O.K., OK., they'd say. O.K.

Everything was O.K. and tasted good, and I smelled the world and heard the people making noise. And then there was a BANG, and he came in, and I fell on the floor and yelled because here he was. He hurts me. He yells at me. He takes my arm and pulls it and yells at me. I hate him. I hate him. I hit him. I will hit and hit. That big thing will hurt. Pick it up and hit him, and he'll fall down. He is bad. Sometimes he's soft and puts me under his arm, but he's bad. The others say things to him, but they are scared, too. He yells at them, too. He goes into the room and BAMS! the door. When he's gone, people talk again and are nice. He is bad. I hate. Bad. Hate. Bad. BAM.

"Stop it!"

I don't understand.

"Stop it, A

They yell. I don't understand. The white one comes to me and takes away my mouth thing.

I came to again in my study and understood. For the last minutes, I knew the world through my son's hideously shattered perception. The world through broken glass, fragments of beauty and terror and mystery that exceed all bounds. Disturbing beyond any bounds, truly Hell on earth, was one simple realization: my retarded son hated me. Of all the bizarre bits, scraps, slivers, pieces of our world he could grasp, the only thing he consciously knew was that he hated me. His only truth, the only genuine clearness he knew. I was bad. He wanted me dead.

"Get out of here. Go back to my place and wait for me."

"You told me to clean their house!"

"A

I sat on the floor blinking, a survivor of my own life. I watched the two of them bellow at each other. The gray woman and the young one who might have been her daughter.

"Why don't you let me finish? Let me have him! He deserves it!"

"Get out, A

My son. His mind of stone, or air, clouds you would fall right through to the ground, but he knew how to despise me. Wanted me dead. Was I that bad? Had I been that evil?

"To him, you were, but he doesn't understand things too good, Scott. Come on; let me help you up."

I had no energy. It was fine to be sitting on the floor. I must have fallen there. I wouldn't let her pull me. A

"He hates me. He's capable of doing that. It's astonishing. We thought he had no clear idea of anything. But he's clear enough to hate me."

"I know the feeling kid. When I told my daughter I had cancer, first thing she said, the very first, was had I made a will or not." Beenie left the room and returned with two glasses of grapefruit juice. Handing one to me, she said drink first and we'll talk in a minute. I was so empty and burned out of feeling that I'd have bitten the glass if she'd told me. I sipped, and the bitter, fresh taste of cold juice slid down my throat.

"Hey, don't you remember?" She raised her eyebrows.

"Remember what? Beenie, have I really been so bad? Such a total failure?"

"I'm not talking about that. Don't you remember your glass?" I looked at it and saw a glass. So what? "So what?'

"Don't you remember these glasses?"

I looked again. "No."

"Christmas 1975. Norah wanted to be special and have cocktails before di

"And we threw them in the fireplace after we were finished. I did it first. Even Gerald. He watched what we did, and threw his, too. They were expensive glasses. Roberta was furious, but ended up throwing hers, too. That was lovely. We felt Russian."

"There's been a lot of nice in your life. Ho, you're not such a bad man. You've been bad, but you're not bad. A

"What do I do now, Beenie? How do I win with her?

"You can't. That's the problem. I thought-"

The study door crashed open, and A

But it doesn't. Because I caught a glimpse of it, alive and full of power, I tell you it does not go away. Like any sound ever made, the truth of our lives remains. It is still there somewhere, forever, no matter what our memory tries to do to it.

If I'd been exposed to it longer, I'd've died. As it was, I saw enough in seconds to scald my soul the rest of my life. If I'm not mistaken, in there amongst the other facts and certainties was how long the rest of my life would be.

"A

It was not my place to ask questions at that point, so I kept quiet. Quiet and shaken. Beenie shook her fists a long time, then slowly let them fall. "I'm sorry, Scott."

"Sorry? You saved me!"

"No, I used you." She came over and sat down next to me on the floor. Before she spoke, she balled her hands again and asked, '"Why is this happening?"

"Scott, remember when I told you about the thirty-six people who make up God? At least that part is true. And the other part is, I really am one of them, dumb as I am. The lying begins with you and A

"Years ago, when she was a senior in college, I saw A

"So I told her, and, amazingly enough, she seemed to understand. In the begi

"She killed herself."

It took an instant to crystallize in my mind. "Killed herself? One of the thirty-six killed themselves! How is that possible! God doesn't –"

"No, He doesn't, and that's our problem. We don't understand, either. What's worse, it's happening more than you would think. Once in a while in the past, there'd be a mistake, and something like this would happen – but it was so rare, we paid no attention. But now something's gone very wrong and it's happening more than ever. We have to find out why. So me and a couple of others were told to get these people and bring them back. Try to find out either why they did it, or at least make peace with what caused them to do it. Maybe that way we'll begin to figure out …. " She grimaced, sighed. "Because, you see, they can't be replaced if they do this to themselves-"