Distortions

by Ann Beattie

“In a house.”

  “How can you afford that? Your grandmother?”

  “I don’t want to talk about how I live. Can we change the subject?”

  “Can we hang up instead, Michael?”

  “Sure,” Michael says. “Good-night, baby.”

  Sam and Carlos are visiting Michael. Carlos’s father owns a plastics plant in Bridgeport. Carlos can roll a joint in fifteen seconds, which is admirable to Michael’s way of thinking. But Carlos can be a drag, too. Right now he is talking to Michael about a job Michael could have in his father’s plant.

  “No more factories, Carlos,” Michael says. “If everybody stopped working, the machines would stop, too.”

  “I don’t see what’s so bad about it,” Carlos says. “You work the machines for a few hours, then you leave with your money.”

  “If I ask my grandmother for money she sends it.”

  “But will she keep sending money?” Sam asks.

  “You think I’m going to ask her?”

  “I’ll bet you wouldn’t mind working someplace in the South, where the women look like Tammy Wynette.”

  “North, South—what’s the difference?”

  “What do you mean, ‘What’s the difference?’ Women in the South must look something like Tammy Wynette, and women up North look like mill rats.”

  Carlos always has very powerful grass, which Michael enjoys. Carlos claims that he puts a spell on the grass to make it stronger.

  “Why don’t you put a curse on your father’s machines?” Michael says now.

  “What for?” Carlos asks.

  “Why don’t you change all the machines into Tammy Wynettes?” Sam asks. “Everybody would wake up in the morning and there would be a hundred Tammy Wynettes.”

  Sam realizes that he has smoked too much. The next step, he thinks now, is to stop smoking.

  “What do you do?” Carlos asks Sam.

  “I sell shoes.” Sam notices that he has answered very sanely. “Before that, I was a math major at Antioch.”

  “Put a curse on that factory, Carlos,” Michael says.

  Carlos sighs. Everybody smokes his grass and pays no attention to what he says and then they want him to put curses on things all the time.

  “What if I put a curse on you?” Carlos asks.

  “I’m already cursed,” Michael says. “That’s what my grandmother says in her letters—that I was such a blessing to the family, but I myself am cursed with ill luck.”

  “Change me into George Jones,” Sam says.

  Carlos stares at them as he rolls a joint. He isn’t putting a curse on them, but he is considering it. He firmly believes that he is responsible for his godfather’s getting intestinal cancer. But he isn’t really a magician. He would like his curses to be reliable and perfect, like a machine.

  Michael’s grandmother has sent him a present—five pounds of shelled pecans. A booklet included with the package says that they are “Burstin’ with wholesome Southern goodness.” They’re the first thing he has eaten for a day and a half, so he eats a lot of them. He thinks that he is eating in too much of a hurry, and he smokes some hash to calm down. Then he eats some more pecans. He listens to Albinoni. He picks out a seed from a pouch of grass that is lying under the couch and buries it in one of Prudence’s plants. He will have to remember to have Carlos say a few words over it; Carlos is just humble when he says he can’t bless things. He rummages through the grass and finds another seed, plants it in another pot. They’ll never grow, he thinks sadly. Albinoni always depresses him. He turns the record off and then is depressed that there is no music playing. He looks over the records, trying to decide. It is hard to decide. He lights his pipe again. Finally, he decides—not on a record but what to eat: Chunky Pecans. He has no Chunky Pecans, but he can just walk down the road to the store and buy some. He counts his change: eighty cents, including the dime he found in Prudence’s underwear drawer. He can buy five Chunky Pecans for that. He feels better when he realizes he can have the Chunky Pecans and he relaxes, lighting his pipe. All his clothes are dirty, so he has begun wearing things that Richard left behind. Today he has on a black shirt that is too tight for him, with a rhinestone-studded peacock on the front. He looks at his sparkling chest and dozes off. When he awakens, he decides to go look for Silas. He sprays deodorant under his arms without taking off the shirt and walks outside, carrying his pipe. A big mistake. If the police stopped to question him and found him with that … He goes back to the house, puts the pipe on a table, and goes out again. Thinking about Silas being lost makes him very sad. He knows it’s not a good idea to go marching around town in a peacock shirt weeping, but he can’t help it. He sees an old lady walking her dog.

  “Hello, little dog,” he says, stopping to stroke it.

  “It’s female,” the old woman says. The old woman has on an incredible amount of makeup; her eyes are circled with blue-bright blue under the eyes, as well as on top.

  “Hello, girl,” he says, stroking the dog. “She’s thirteen,” the old woman says. “The vet says she won’t live to see fourteen.”

  Michael thinks of Silas, who is four.

  “He’s right, I know,” the old woman says.

  Michael walks back around the corner and sees Silas on the front lawn. Silas charges him, jumps all over him, barking and running in circles. “Where have you been?” Michael asks the dog. Silas barks. “Hello, Silas. Where have you been?” Michael asks. Silas squirms on his back, panting. When Michael stoops to pat him, Silas lunges, pawing the rhinestone-studded shirt and breaking the threads. Rhinestones fall all over the lawn.

  Inside, Silas sniffs the rug, runs in and out of rooms. “You old dog,” Michael says. He feeds Silas a pecan. Panting, Silas curls up at his feet. Michael pulls the pouch of grass out from under the couch and stuffs a big wad in his pipe. “Good old Silas,” Michael says, lighting his pipe. He gets happier and happier as he smokes, but at the height of his happiness he falls asleep. He sleeps until Silas’s barking awakens him. Someone is at the door. His wife is standing there.

  “Hello, Elsa,” he says. She can’t possibly hear him above Silas’s barking. Michael leads the barking dog into the bedroom and closes the door. He walks back to the door. Elsa has come into the house and shut the door behind her.

  “Hi, Elsa,” he says.

  “Hi. I’ve come for you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “May I come in? Is this your house? This can’t be your house. Where did you get all the furniture?”

  “I’m staying here while some friends are out of town.”

  “Did you break into somebody’s house?”

  “I’m watching the place for my friends.”

  “What’s the matter with you? You look horrible.”

  “I’m not too clean. I forgot to take a shower.”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean your face. What’s wrong with you?”

  “How did you find me?”

  “Carlos.”

  “Carlos wouldn’t talk.”

  “He did, Michael. But let’s argue at home. I’ve come to get you and make you come home and share the responsibility for Mary Anne.”

  “I don’t want to come home.”

  “I don’t care. If you don’t come home, we’ll move in here.”

  “Silas will kill you.”

  “I know the dog doesn’t like me, but he certainly won’t kill me.”

  “I’m supposed to watch these people’s house.”

  “You can come back and check on it.”

  “I don’t want to come with you.”

  “You look sick, Michael. Have you been sick?”

  “I’m not leaving with you, Elsa.”

  “O.K. We’ll come back.”

  “What do you want me back for?”

  “To help me take care of that child. She drives me crazy. Get the dog and come on.”

  Michael lets Silas out of the bedroom. He picks up his bag of grass and his pipe and what’s left of the
bag of pecans, and follows Elsa to the door.

  “Pecans?” Elsa asks.

  “My grandmother sent them to me.”

  “Isn’t that nice. You don’t look well, Michael. Do you have a job?”

  “No. I don’t have a job.”

  “Carlos can get you a job, you know.”

  “I’m not working in any factory.”

  “I’m not asking you to work right away. I just want you in the house during the day with Mary Anne.”

  “I don’t want to hang around with her.”

  “Well, you can fake it. She’s your daughter.”

  “I know. That doesn’t make any impression on me.”

  “I realize that.”

  “Maybe she isn’t mine,” Michael says.

  “Do you want to drive, or shall I?” Elsa asks.

  Elsa drives. She turns on the radio.

  “If you don’t love me, why do you want me back?” Michael asks.

  “Why do you keep talking about love? I explained to you that I couldn’t take care of that child alone any more.”

  “You want me back because you love me. Mary Anne isn’t that much trouble to you.”

  “I don’t care what you think as long as you’re there.”

  “I can just walk out again, you know.”

  “You’ve only walked out twice in seven years.”

  “The next time, I won’t get in touch with Carlos.”

  “Carlos was trying to help.”

  “Carlos is evil. He goes around putting curses on things.”

  “Well, he’s your friend, not mine.”

  “Then why did he talk?”

  “I asked him where you were.”

  “I was on the verge of picking up a barmaid,” Michael says.

  “I don’t know how I could help loving you,” Elsa says.

  “Where are we going, Daddy?”

  “To water plants.”

  “Where are the plants?”

  “Not far from here.”

  “Where’s Mommy?”

  “Getting her hair cut. She told you that.”

  “Why does she want her hair cut?”

  “I can’t figure her out. I don’t understand your mother.”

  Elsa has gone with a friend to get her hair done. Michael has the car. He is tired of being cooped up watching daytime television with Mary Anne, so he’s going to Prudence and Richard’s even though he just watered the plants yesterday. Silas is with them, in the back seat. Michael looks at him lovingly in the rear-view mirror.

  “Where are we going?”

  “We just started the ride. Try to enjoy it.”

  Mary Anne must have heard Elsa tell him not to take the car; she doesn’t seem to be enjoying herself.

  “What time is it?” Mary Anne asks.

  “Three o’clock.”

  “That’s what time school lets out.”

  “What about it?” Michael asks.

  He shouldn’t have snapped at her. She was just talking to talk. Since all talk is just a lot of garbage anyway, he shouldn’t have discouraged her. He reaches over and pats her knee. She doesn’t smile, as he hoped she would. She is sort of like her mother.

  “Are you going to get a haircut, too?” she asks.

  “Daddy doesn’t have to get a haircut, because he isn’t trying to get a job.”

  Mary Anne looks out the window.

  “Your great-grandma sends Daddy enough money for him to stay alive. Daddy doesn’t want to work.”

  “Mommy has a job,” Mary Anne says. His wife is an apprentice bookbinder.

  “And you don’t have to get your hair cut, either,” he says.

  “I want it cut.”

  He reaches over to pat her knee again. “Don’t you want long hair, like Daddy?”

  “Yes,” she says.

  “You just said you wanted it cut.”

  Mary Anne looks out the window.

  “Can you see all the plants through that window?” Michael says, pulling up in front of the house.

  He is surprised when he opens the door to see Richard there.

  “Richard! What are you doing here?”

  “I’m so sick from the plane that I can’t talk, man. Sit down. Who’s this?”

  “Did you and Prudence have a good time?”

  “Prudence is still in Manila. She wouldn’t come back. I just had enough of Manila, you know? But I don’t know if the flight back was worth it. The flight back was really awful. Who’s this?”

  “This is my daughter, Mary Anne. I’m back with my wife now. I’ve been coming to water the plants.”

  “Jesus, am I sick,” Richard says. “Do you know why I’d feel sick after I’ve been off the plane for half a day?”

  “I want to water the plants,” Mary Anne says.

  “Go ahead, sweetheart,” Richard says. “Jesus—all those damn plants. Manila is a jungle, did you know that? That’s what she wants. She wants to be in the jungle. I don’t know. I’m too sick to think.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Is there any coffee?”

  “I drank it all. I drank all your liquor, too.”

  “That’s all right,” Richard says. “Prudence thought you’d do worse than that. She thought you’d sell the furniture or burn the place down. She’s crazy, over there in that rain jungle.”

  “His girlfriend is in Manila,” Michael says to his daughter. “That’s far away.”

  Mary Anne walks off to sniff a philodendron leaf.

  Michael is watching a soap opera. A woman is weeping to another woman that when her gallbladder was taken out Tom was her doctor, and the nurse, who loved Tom, spread rumors, and …

  Mary Anne and a friend are pouring water out of a teapot into little plastic cups. They sip delicately.

  “Daddy,” Mary Anne says, “can’t you make us real tea?”

  “Your mother would get mad at me.”

  “She’s not here.”

  “You’d tell her.”

  “No, we wouldn’t.”

  “O.K. I’ll make it if you promise not to drink it.”

  Michael goes into the kitchen. The girls are squealing delightedly and the woman on television is weeping hysterically. “Tom was in line for chief of surgery once Dr. Stan retired, but Rita said that he …”

  The phone rings. “Hello?” Michael says.

  “Hi,” Carlos says. “Still mad?”

  “Hi, Carlos,” Michael says.

  “Still mad?” Carlos asks.

  “No.”

  “What have you been doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “That’s what I figured. Interested in a job?”

  “No.”

  “You mean you’re just sitting around there all day?”

  “At the moment, I’m giving a tea party.”

  “Sure,” Carlos says. “Would you like to go out for a beer? I could come over after work.”

  “I don’t care,” Michael says.

  “You sound pretty depressed.”

  “Why don’t you cast a spell and make things better?” Michael says. “There goes the water. Maybe I’ll see you later.”

  “You’re not really drinking tea, are you?”

  “Yes,” Michael says. “Good-bye.”

  He takes the water into the living room and pours it into Mary Anne’s teapot.

  “Don’t scald yourself,” he says, “or we’re both screwed.”

  “Where’s the tea bag, Daddy?”

  “Oh, yeah.” He gets a tea bag from the kitchen and drops it into the pot. “You’re young, you’re supposed to use your imagination,” he says. “But here it is.”

  “We need something to go with our tea, Daddy.”

  “You won’t eat your dinner.”

  “Yes, I will.”

  He goes to the kitchen and gets a bag of M&Ms. “Don’t eat too many of these,” he says.

  “I’ve got to get out of this town,” the woman on television is saying. “You know I’ve go
t to go now, because of Tom’s dependency on Rita.”

  Mary Anne carefully pours two tiny cups full of tea.

  “We can drink this, can’t we, Daddy?”

  “I guess so. If it doesn’t make you sick.”

  Michael looks at his daughter and her friend enjoying their tea party. He goes into the bathroom and takes his pipe off the window ledge, closes the door and opens the window, and lights it. He sits on the bathroom floor with his legs crossed, listening to the woman weeping on television. He notices Mary Anne’s bunny. Its eyebrows are raised with amazement at him. It is ridiculous to be sitting in the bathroom getting stoned while a tea party is going on and a woman shrieks in the background. “What else can I do?” he whispers to the bunny. He envies the bunny—the way it clutches the bar of soap to its chest When he hears Elsa come in, he leaves the bathroom and goes into the hall and puts his arms around her, thinking about the bunny and the soap. Mick Jagger sings to him: “All the dreams we held so close seemed to all go up in smoke …”

  “Elsa,” he says, “what are your dreams?”

  “That your dealer will die,” she says.

  “He won’t. He’s only twenty years old.”

  “Maybe Carlos will put a curse on him. Carlos killed his godfather, you know.”

  “Be serious. Tell me one real dream,” Michael says.

  “I told you.”

  Michael lets her go and walks into the living room. He looks out the window and sees Carlos’s car pull up in front of the walk. He goes out and gets into Carlos’s car. He stares down the street.

  “Don’t feel like saying hello, I take it,” Carlos says.

  Michael shakes his head.

  “Hell,” Carlos says, “I don’t know what I keep coming around for you for.”

  Michael’s mood is contagious. Carlos starts the car angrily and roars away, throwing a curse on a boxwood at the edge of the lawn.

  Imagined Scenes

  “I’ve unlaced my boots and I’m standing barefoot on a beach with very brown sand, ocean in front of me and mountains in the distance, and trees making a pretty green haze around them.”

  “Pretty,” David says.

  “Where would that be?”

  “Greece?”

  When she wakes from a dream, David is already awake. Or perhaps he only wakes when she stirs, whispers to him. He doesn’t sound sleepy; he’s alert, serious, as though he’d been waiting for a question. She remembers last year, the week before Christmas, when she and David had gone out separately to shop. She got back to the house first, her keys lost—or locked in the car. Before she could look for them, headlights lit up the snowy path. David jumped out of his car, excited about his purchases, reaching around her to put the key in the door. Now she expects him to wake up when she does, that they will arrive home simultaneously. But David still surprises her—at the end of summer he told her he wouldn’t be working in the fall. He was going back to college to finish the work for his Ph.D.