Distortions

by Ann Beattie

  “Heard any stories about me?” he asks pleasantly when he returns to the house.

  The girl has. She looks at him without speaking. She must be a little afraid of him, though, because she gives a half nod. The girl has brown braids and wears a backless summer dress. He toys with the idea of asking if she wants a lover.

  “It’s your lover,” he calls through the screen door.

  She comes to the door smiling. One of the things she likes about him is his sense of humor. What does she think is funny about his having been her lover?

  She shows him around. She says she is happy in the house. She points out a table she likes. This house is furnished. They had very little furniture in the other house, although that too was “furnished.” He tries to remember the inside of the other house and ends up remembering being her lover. He says nothing about the table she shows him. She asks if he has eaten dinner. Does he want to go out, then, or just listen to some music? Go out. Where will they go? It was always her fault—she was always so quick to be cynical. He thinks about telling her they can go out and throw snowballs so he can watch her face change—so he can notice something familiar about her face. This doesn’t even look like her face. He remembers that she shares the house with three other girls. What do they look like? Maybe one of them was his lover.

  When he drove away from this house the first time he came, he went to a liquor store and bought some bourbon and drank it. She must have guessed that. She once thought he had been drinking when she smelled Lysol in the house. Lysol! If she’s as uncomfortable as he thinks she is, maybe she’ll drink some. She drank, too, but she always had something to say about his drinking.

  The girl with the brown braids calls to them: “Have a good time.”

  She doesn’t approve. He goes across the lawn to where the girl is digging in the garden. He picks up a handful of moist dirt, shapes it into a ball and throws it at the front of her dress.

  “Whose lover am I?” he hollers.

  The girl scrambles, regains her balance and tears off, calling, “You’re her Goddamn lover!”

  Exactly right. He raises his eyebrows questioningly to his lover.

  “You won’t scare me this time,” she says.

  She turns and walks to the car, pulls open the door, and sits down. She leaves the door open for him to close. He does: click. The proper little date.

  “Did you do that to scare me?” she asks. “You won’t scare me any more.”

  “You feel you understand me well enough now to be my lover?” he asks.

  “What is there to understand?” she asks.

  She’s trying very hard to act self-assured. The speeding and changing-lanes trick always gets her. She wants to give in. Why else would she have agreed to see him? He looks at her questioningly again. That unnerves her a little; she repeats her question.

  III

  She suspects her husband, so instead of accomplishing anything, in spite of all the books and articles telling her how she can accomplish everything, she takes a bus downtown and sits in the park across from his office. She once went to a Christmas party at his office. They rode to the top floor. Does he work on the top floor, or is that only where they have parties? It seems as good a place as any to look, because she could not really see him in the building anyway. Sun glints off the glass, so she doesn’t look for too long. She looks up high, then at the door. She does this for about two hours. She doesn’t see her husband. She intends not to do anything so foolish again, but the next day she finds that she has no more work to do, so she drives her car to the bus stop and parks it and gets on a bus. She doesn’t like the downtown traffic. He says she is spoiled, living in the suburbs. He drives downtown every day at rush hour. The park is crowded today, so she goes looking for his car. Foolish, really, because it’s probably in a garage. But she walks up and down several blocks and doesn’t stop doing it until she thinks she might get lost. She doesn’t know her way around the business district well. When she returns to the park it is nearly noon, and she finds a seat next to a man eating his lunch from a bag. He smiles at her. She returns his smile. She wonders if he works with her husband. Was he at the Christmas party? Probably not. She watches the door and once she thinks she sees him, walking next to a short man in a pale-blue suit, but it isn’t him after all when she rises off the bench and can see more clearly. What time does he go to lunch? That night as they eat dinner she asks what time he eats lunch. He says that he never eats lunch at the same time. Today he ate around two.

  “Why do you ask?” he says.

  “That’s why you’re not very hungry,” she says.

  He has eaten almost everything on his plate.

  She skips a day and feels good all day, thinking that she will never do it again. But the next day something tells her that she will see him, so she drives downtown without realizing that she hasn’t stopped at the bus stop, as she usually does. She’s downtown in the traffic before she realizes what she’s done. She’s nervous and twice she gets in the wrong lane and has to wait while everyone makes a left turn, but she finally makes it safely to a parking garage. She’s just nervous, so she goes into a drugstore and drinks a cup of coffee. Then she goes, as usual, to the bench. She thinks that she may not see him after all, because she spent a lot of time tied up in traffic, and then more time at the drugstore. She only waits for an hour, then gives up because he must have already been to lunch. So many people pour out of his building that she might not see him anyway. She goes back to the parking garage and finds that she’s lost the ticket. The attendant calls the manager, who comes out to talk to her. He asks her to describe her car and she’s very upset and can’t think well—she almost describes her husband’s car before she realizes her mistake. “Well, decide what you’d like best, lady,” the manager says, laughing. He thinks it’s funny. He asks how long she’s been and she says two hours. He tells the attendant to charge her for three and walks back into his glass cubicle. She thinks about trying to hit him, but she wouldn’t want to be hit back. If he has a sense of humor like that he might hit a woman. She doesn’t want to make any excuses to her husband. She even tips the attendant.

  She sits on the bench the next day from about ten o’clock—only an hour after her husband has left the house—until four o’clock. She stops at a store on the way to the bus stop and buys a pretty blouse. She has to stand on the bus all the way to her car. She’s tired when she gets home. Her husband is already there. He asks where she’s been.

  “Shopping.”

  “That’s why you look so tired,” he says.

  Her husband never has much energy himself, but she has nothing to accuse him with. She will. The next day she plans to stand outside the building, to be there when work lets out, right on the side of the street with the building so she won’t miss him.

  The next day she arrives early—three-thirty. He doesn’t get out until six. She looks through some stores and looks idly for his car, without much hope of seeing it. She goes to the drugstore again and has a cup of coffee and sits in the park when she gets tired of walking. At five o’clock she gets up and crosses the street and leans against the building. To pass the time she examines the chapped spots on the backs of her hands and twirls her wedding band. She reaches in her purse for her comb to comb her hair and feels for the parking ticket. It isn’t there. She searches thoroughly, even bending down to take things out of her purse. She can’t find it. Thinking that she might have dropped it she retraces her path, but it’s not on the ground. She hurries to the garage. There is a crowd of men—mostly men—waiting for their cars to be brought down. She tells the girl in the cashier’s booth that she’s lost her parking ticket. She talks a little too loudly—the girl leans back on her stool to get away from her voice, and several of the men stare at her. The girl calls the manager.

  “Didn’t this happen to you yesterday?”

  “I’m very sorry, but I have to have my car back.”

  “What does your car look like today?”
>
  She describes her car. It is a blue car. Blue. Yes, the roof is blue, too. A four-door blue car, and she can’t remember the make. A Chevrolet. Blue. About three hours ago.

  “Four hours ago,” the manager says.

  Tears spring into her eyes.

  “Three,” she says.

  He shrugs. What is he going to do? He calls an attendant over and tells him to get a blue Chevy. She stands in front of the men, looking up the ramp.

  “Move back,” the manager hollers.

  She backs into a group of men who quickly spread out to make room for her. She waits while six cars are brought. Seven. Eight. Then hers. She gets in without tipping the attendant and heads home, driving much too fast. She’s home before she realizes that yet another day is ruined, and that she’ll have to go the next day.

  “Where were you?” her husband says.

  She’s been crying. She never did find time to comb her hair. She’s empty-handed, so she hasn’t been shopping. What’s the point of it? She’ll never catch him.

  “Where have you been?” she says.

  IV

  He calls this woman, who is not his mother, “Mother.” It is her mother. She has come to stay with them not because of poor health or lack of money, but because she is lonely. She makes no trouble, except for the one annoying thing she does, and doesn’t interfere with their life because she is always in her room. His wife thinks it’s abnormal that she shuts her door after breakfast and does not reappear until dinner. Their son loves his grandmother and spends a lot of time in her room, talking to her, drawing pictures for her, and eating her candy when he gets home from school until dinner. There is no good reason for disliking her, except that he does not believe she has come to live with them because she is lonely. If that were true, why would she stay in her room? But he can’t talk to his wife about it. It makes her think he wants her mother out of the house, and that upsets her. He suspects that it upsets her because her mother is necessary-she takes care of their son after school so his wife does not have to be home at three o’clock. In fact, he has called later in the afternoon several times and Mother has told him she isn’t there. He called yesterday at four o’clock and she wasn’t there, and that was the second time this week. He suspects that she is seeing her lover again. At any rate, he has started seeing his lover again. One of the things that nags at him is that his wife has seen his lover and knows she is rather plain and not very young, but he has never seen his wife’s lover. Perhaps the lover used to come to the house when he was gone, but no longer comes because her mother is there. Perhaps things have not worked out so well for his wife after all.

  He has decided to go home early, to be there when his wife walks in, just to make her uneasy. He takes the afternoon off and buys things at a sporting-goods store he’ll need for his vacation. Then he stops in a gift shop and buys his wife a pretty little enamel box—a gift, to make her uneasy if she’s seen her lover today. The saleslady is all smiles, asks if she should wrap it. He tells her it will have just as much impact in the bag. She frowns a little, in sympathy for the woman whose pretty present will just be handed to her in a bag. She wraps the little box carefully in pink tissue paper. As an afterthought, he stops at the florist’s and picks out a bouquet of assorted flowers for his wife’s mother. Just in case it’s a conspiracy. He goes into a phone booth at the corner and calls his lover to say that he’ll take her to dinner Friday. Not until then? Impossible. She’s a little angry, but she won’t leave him. She has been his lover for years and years. He goes back to the florist’s and sends her a bouquet of assorted flowers. The florist looks at him strangely. The man could at least make a joke of it—instead, he takes it personally that he has come back, that he didn’t complete his business the first time. He decides to find another florist in the future.

  As he thought, she isn’t home. He knocks on her mother’s door. She is surprised to see him and asks if he’s sick. No—just home early. He’s put the flowers in a vase for her, and she seems very pleased. She tells him where to put them. She doesn’t know where his wife is and acts surprised that she’s not in the house. His son? He must be with her. He goes downstairs and waits. He looks at the day’s mail and reads the paper. The house is quiet and very empty; the cars that pass are monotonous. He can understand why his wife wouldn’t want to spend much time in the house. It’s depressing in late afternoon. He doesn’t blame her for not being there, but he blames her for her lover. The bag with the enamel box is at his side.

  She comes in at five o’clock. His son is with her. She’s surprised to see him. His son is happy to see him. His son has a balloon.

  “Where did that come from?” he asks his son.

  “A man in the park gave it to me.”

  “You’re not sick?” his wife asks.

  “Just home early,” he says. He gives her the bag. “For you.”

  She loves the little box. He can’t tell if she’s excited because he might know, or just surprised to see him, happy with the present. She goes into the kitchen.

  “Did you ever see the man in the park before?” he asks his son.

  “No.”

  “How come you got a free balloon?”

  “The man had it.” His son shrugs.

  Late that night the phone rings. As usual, her mother has it on the first ring. She pounces on the phone—no chance for them to get to it first. And, as usual, whoever it is hangs up. That makes her mother nervous. She always opens her door and calls down the stairs that someone called and hung up. He feels like telling her that it was either her daughter’s lover or his own. Neither of them says anything, and the door closes. He has already asked his lover if she calls and hangs up and she has denied it. He suspects her anyway—everyone lies to him. He tells his wife he has run out of cigarettes. Does she need anything from the drugstore? He puts his clothes back on and drives to the drugstore, where there is a phone booth. His lover is angry: she tells him he thinks she is a fool. She has better things to do than call his house. She tells him he is bothering her. So it was his wife’s lover. He buys a carton of cigarettes and drives home. His wife is in her mother’s room; the door is open, but they aren’t talking. Or at least they’re not talking now that he’s coming up the stairs. He’s tired. His mother-in-law must be tired of the calls. His wife must be tired of the depressing house.

  “I was telling her what pretty flowers you brought me,” his mother-in-law says.

  “Who do you think was on the phone?” he asks.

  “Who?” his wife says.

  “That’s right,” he says. “Who?”

  “I don’t know,” his mother-in-law says.

  “Yes, you do,” he says.

  She looks startled. His wife looks at him blankly.

  “You know,” he says.

  “Be quiet,” his wife says. “You’ll awaken Stevie.”

  “He already knows, too.”

  Whether his mother-in-law really knows or not, her expression, looking back and forth between them, makes him think she won’t be staying there much longer. There is, of course, the slim chance that his lover was lying.

  A Platonic

  Relationship

  When Ellen was told that she would be hired as a music teacher at the high school, she decided that it did not mean that she would have to look like the other people on the faculty. She would tuck her hair neatly behind her ears, instead of letting it fall free, schoolgirlishly. She had met some of the teachers when she went for her interview, and they all seemed to look like what she was trying to get away from—suburbanites at a shopping center. Casual and airy, the fashion magazines would call it. At least, that’s what they would have called it back when she still read them, when she lived in Chevy Chase and wore her hair long, falling free, the way it had fallen in her high-school graduation picture. “Your lovely face,” her mother used to say, “and all covered by hair.” Her graduation picture was still on display in her parents’ house, next to a picture of her on her first birthd
ay.

  It didn’t matter how Ellen looked now; the students laughed at her behind her back. They laughed behind all the teachers’ backs. They don’t like me, Ellen thought, and she didn’t want to go to school. She forced herself to go, because she needed the job. She had worked hard to get away from her lawyer husband and almost-paid-for house. She had doggedly taken night classes at Georgetown University for two years, leaving the dishes after dinner and always expecting a fight. Her husband loaded them into the dishwasher—no fight. Finally, when she was ready to leave, she had to start the fight herself. There is a better world, she told him. “Teaching at the high school?” he asked. In the end, though, he had helped her find a place to live—an older house, on a side street off Florida Avenue, with splintery floors that had to be covered with rugs, and walls that needed to be repapered but that she never repapered. He hadn’t made trouble for her. Instead, he made her look silly. He made her say that teaching high school was a better world. She saw the foolishness of her statement, however, and after she left him she began to read great numbers of newspapers and magazines, and then more and more radical newspapers and magazines. She had dinner with her husband several months after she had left him, at their old house. During dinner, she stated several ideas of importance, without citing her source. He listened carefully, crossing his knees and nodding attentively—the pose he always assumed with his clients. The only time during the evening she had thought he might start a fight was when she told him she was living with a man—a student, twelve years younger than she. An odd expression came across his face. In retrospect, she realized that he must have been truly puzzled. She quickly told him that the relationship was platonic.