Follies

by Ann Beattie

  “Guy’s nuts,” Tim said.

  Liquid dripped slowly through the IV.

  “You get well,” Van Allan said.

  Tim nodded. “Nuts,” he repeated hoarsely.

  “Van?” Duchais said. “Am I calling too late? I left a couple of messages on the machine, but I thought you might be avoiding me.”

  “No, sir,” he lied. “Sorry I said ‘sir,’ ” he said.

  “When you’re older, you’ll realize relationships take all sorts of weird twists and turns. If things don’t get worked out between parents and children, things can get very odd, indeed. It’s one of the reasons I never wanted to have children.”

  “Listen, the thing is, there’s a job in Special Collections I might take. More regular work and all. I was going to call you.”

  “I’ll double the money,” Duchais said. “What would they pay you at the library? Eight bucks an hour? I’ll pay you sixteen. Then if you’re not happy with the job, you can quit. I should have told you before I pulled that little prank on my mother, but it wasn’t planned. It just happened.”

  “Okay, well, the thing is, I might be happier working in the library and not having a lot of errands, is the thing. I don’t think—”

  “My mother doesn’t come every day,” Duchais said. He added quietly: “Far from it.”

  “Okay, I know, but I’m really not sure about this, you know? I didn’t—” He hoped Duchais would break in, but he didn’t. He said, “I didn’t know whether I should come back and pour more wine, or what. I thought you’d understand. I just went out the back door.”

  “We heard the car drive away.”

  “I’m really sorry. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “It’s behind us,” Duchais said. “Come next Wednesday, and if the job’s not for you, it’s not for you. All I’m requesting is some books from the library, and that you stop for the Herald. You can skip the paper, if it’s too out of the way.”

  There was a pause.

  “Okay,” Van Allan said, picking up a pen. “What are the books?”

  Corinne, Tim’s girlfriend from freshman year, who had transferred to Columbia, was back in town to see her brother. She was staying at the apartment, slightly flustered to be there without Van Allan’s previous knowledge when he returned from school. Corinne had no idea Tim had been hospitalized after he’d mailed her the key, and no idea, either, that in the confusion he’d forgotten to mention her arrival. She couldn’t stay with her brother because the landlord was already trying to evict him for having “transients” in the studio apartment.

  What happened the day after she arrived was pretty bizarre, Van Allan thought—though perhaps not so bizarre if you got caught up in Duchais’s orbit.

  Duchais appeared at the apartment with a peace offering: a box of chocolates from a store that had apparently chosen between manufacturing chocolates or manufacturing gold and decided that chocolates would be more profitable. Van Allan was out running, but Corinne opened the door, and there stood Professor Duchais, who asked if Van Allan was home. She told him where he was, he identified himself as someone Van Allan was doing some work for, and she invited him in. They started talking, and soon Duchais had told her the story of what he continued to call the “prank” he’d pulled on his mother, laughing apologetically about how flipped out Van Allan had been. As a funny story, it was funny. Afterward, Van Allan couldn’t make Corinne understand how upsetting it had been. At any rate, he arrived home winded and sweaty, to find Duchais and Corinne drinking his seltzer, eating chocolates. They were having a very merry time. It was Tuesday night, and perhaps because he hadn’t yet picked up the books with their unpronounceable German titles at the library, perhaps because he was sweaty and out of sorts, he did not smile when he saw Duchais.

  “I never knew my father,” Duchais said, turning serious. “It’s the source of a lot of anger. In no way did I mean to implicate you, Van. I hope Corinne, here, can convince you I’m an okay guy.”

  There was a smear of chocolate at the corner of Corinne’s smile.

  “Apology accepted. But what are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I came to apologize.”

  “Okay, well, apology accepted. I’ve got to jump in the shower and get some work done now.”

  “Are you coming tomorrow?” the professor asked.

  “Yeah, I already told you that. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Duchais stood, holding out his hand. He looked somber. Corinne had wiped the smile off her face. “So, okay,” Van Allan said, shaking the man’s hand. “Tomorrow at three.”

  “You’ll come?” Duchais asked, turning toward Corinne.

  “She’s here to visit her brother.”

  “Perhaps all three of you could come. I could fix lunch. I’m sorry I overstepped my bounds.”

  “It just sounds funny,” Corinne said. She brushed her hair behind her ears. She looked questioningly at Van.

  “Okay, look, I’m really feeling on the spot. I said I’d be out on Wednesday, with the books and the newspaper. I’d just as soon leave it that way, if you don’t mind.”

  “With me staying here,” Corinne said.

  “Yes,” he said. “You here. Me at my job.”

  There was an awkward silence. Finally, Duchais spoke. “Well, if you change your mind, please bring along your delightful friend,” he said, beaming at Corinne. His shoulders were slumped as he walked out of the apartment.

  Corinne looked at Van, open-mouthed. “Did I do something?” she said. “What?”

  “You don’t get it that that guy’s creepy?” he said. “A box of chocolates? Was he going to bring roses, too? I’m his sweetheart or something? I went to be his fucking research assistant, and he recruited me for a day to be his houseboy, and he did this very flipped-out thing that wasn’t funny.”

  Corinne raised both hands to hip level and splayed her fingers. “You are so overreacting,” she said.

  “I am? I am? I’m trying to cover for my roommate, I’m putting up his ex-girlfriend, I get home and some flipped-out professor is here yucking it up—”

  “You are being, like, impossible,” Corinne said. She whirled and went into the bedroom. It had already been established the night before that he would sleep on the foldout couch.

  He didn’t go on Wednesday. He called and left a message on the machine saying that he quit. He went to visit Tim, but Tim had been taken for an X-ray and didn’t return during the hour in which Van Allan sat in his hospital room, thinking things over. Finally he wrote a note, saying he’d be back that evening if not before. He thought better of worrying Tim with any specifics of what he still thought of as Duchais’s odd visit; he just underlined the part of the note saying he’d return.

  He stopped for a burger at Anthony’s and looked at the freebie newspaper to see if a movie he’d been waiting to see had opened. It hadn’t, and he was disappointed. Corinne had left the apartment without saying good-bye, apparently tiptoeing past the couch without his having awakened. She had never been his favorite of Tim’s many girlfriends. It was something he couldn’t put his finger on. That she felt entitled to things, he supposed. She hadn’t protested that she’d take the sofa when he volunteered. But maybe he was a petty person. Maybe he didn’t have an adequate sense of humor. Somebody else might have delighted in the weirdness of Professor Duchais’s afternoon. Ed, for example. Ed, who always told such good stories, and who could mimic anyone and anything, including a trash can. He flipped through the paper, eyed a tall blonde girl he recognized as one of the women’s basketball players, who clomped past in her Doc Martens. He had just bitten into his overcooked hamburger when the thought occurred to him that Corinne might have gone to Duchais’s. In fact, he thought, forcing himself to swallow, that must be exactly what she’d done.

  He wiped his fingers and asked for the check. “Something the matter?” the waitress asked. Across the restaurant, the basketball player bit her nails and studied the menu. Why would she go there? he asked him
self, but he was sure she had, driving in the rental car she’d picked up at Dulles. He had never seen the car, but he imagined it to be small and dark, and he also imagined that whatever was happening, it wasn’t good. He told the waitress he needed to be somewhere else and left too much cash. He ran for the bus and got it, and sat in the seat with his heart pounding as it passed down Main Street. He got off two stops short of his apartment and took a shortcut through the backyard of a dead-end street, where the old people yelled if they caught you on their lawn. He ran, and made it to the far side of the parking lot of his apartment in very little time. In a few more minutes, he was in the car, headed west.

  Sting was on the radio, singing about fields of barley. He made a fist and hit the dashboard, then turned the radio off.

  He sped. He barely missed a squirrel in the road, almost forgetting to turn right past Montgomery’s restaurant. He realized he was holding his breath, and forced himself to breathe, remembering, for some odd reason, his mother’s advice, shouted to him when he was learning to swim: “Turn your face to the side and breathe,” skidding on gravel, coming to a stop just short of Duchais’s goose, with its raised wing. Past it, in the driveway, were two cars and a truck with a gun rack. Just before his father left his mother, he had taken him hunting for the first and last time. His father had given him a lecture about the proper cleaning—not handling, cleaning—of a gun, and then he had told him that he was in love with a woman from Puerto Rico.

  Duchais’s driveway was strewn with leaves. The sight of vehicles was reassuring, though he had the sinking feeling that of course one of the cars was hers, and of course he was going to be walking into something he’d give almost anything to avoid. He flashed on his last image of Tim, with his yellow eyes, rasping that Duchais was nuts.

  Twigs were scattered on the front steps. Inside, the house seemed to vibrate with noise. He knocked, though he might have used the doorbell. Hanging beside it was a small, weathered plaque, calligraphically lettered: Ad Infinitum.

  A vacuum was turned off. An elderly lady opened the door.

  “Is Professor Duchais here?” he said. He looked past her to where someone wandered through the house. He saw Kenny, in profile, though Kenny never looked to see who’d come to the door. For a second, he thought the old lady was simply going to close the door in his face. She had that deep a frown. She had powerful arms, and she could easily have slammed the door shut before he could make his way in. Suddenly, the German shepherd moved quickly around the vacuum, no doubt fearing it would turn itself on, and stood by the open door. The dog’s muzzle was whiter than he remembered. Its dull eyes met his.

  “Kenny!” he called into the house.

  At this, the woman simply stepped aside, as did Kryptonite, who took several paces back. “Corinne?” he called. He looked at the cleaning woman again. He said, “Where is Professor Duchais?”

  When the woman pointed to her lips, and then to the side, he understood that she could not speak.

  “Corinne?” he called past her. “Kenny? Duchais?”

  He found Duchais in the study, playing solitaire. He looked up from the card table set under a broken limb of the ficus tree, which was propped against the window ledge at a precarious angle. Clumps of soil were scattered across the floor. On the table was an empty bottle of wine and one of the crystal wineglasses, also empty. It cast a prism of jagged colors across the rug where, dead center, sat the brick. “You said you weren’t coming,” Duchais said. He had on a yellow cashmere sweater and sagging sweat-pants. He was wearing slippers. His mother sat on the sofa, head fallen forward, shoes placed neatly beside her dangling feet. She really did look like a broken doll. Except for Duchais’s having spoken, he might have thought he was in a dream. No one acknowledged his presence, including the dog, who thumped down and closed its eyes.

  “Is Corinne here?” he said, suddenly feeling very foolish.

  “Corinne?” Duchais said, as if he’d asked about a rare species of bird he might have recognized, had he known its name.

  “Corinne. From my apartment. Last night. You invited us to lunch.”

  “Yes,” Duchais said, putting down a card. “But you called and said you quit.”

  “I know that,” he said stupidly. He looked around. Mrs. Duchais’s head had fallen so far forward, it looked as if her neck had been broken. He said, so loudly his voice cracked, “Are you all right, Mrs. Duchais?”

  “We would have had such a nice lunch,” Duchais said. “Walnut chicken salad.”

  Van Allan walked forward and touched the woman’s shoulder. She twitched, and he felt simultaneously relieved and repulsed. He could smell alcohol on her breath. Worse: it was vomit, splashed thickly on the front of her dress. He looked at Duchais.

  “What are you, the morality police?” Duchais said. “She’s been a drunk all her life.”

  “Is Corinne here?” he said. He still had the queasy feeling she was somewhere in the house, though he was slowly realizing that one vehicle must belong to the driver, one to the maid, and one to Duchais.

  The dog flicked open its eyes, then closed them. Oblivious to anyone’s presence, Kenny drifted past with a glass in his hand. He was wearing the old lady’s blue robe, or caftan, or whatever the thing was called. When the vacuum started again, Kenny snapped out of his stupor and threw the glass. The cleaning woman jumped back, her heavy arm raised over her face. “Oh, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Kenny said, pushing past the woman, disappearing around a corner.

  “He has a bit taken, but he’s certainly entitled to his religious beliefs,” Duchais said, moving one card, then another around with his fingertips, as if following the pointer of a Ouija board.

  It was another day in the life of Professor Duchais, who drank, and whose mother drank, and whose mother’s driver drank. It was very cold in the house. Slowly, Van Allan went from room to room, to satisfy himself that Corinne was nowhere inside. Only the housekeeper was sober, and when he’d arrived at the door, of course she had assumed that he was just another potential drunk.

  He found Kenny in a room with the curtains drawn, and Mary Tyler Moore on the TV, without sound. He was slumped in a chair with his cheek turned against the chair’s back. On the TV sat a framed photograph, spotlit underneath the one keen light in the room, of a young man standing next to a nun, shoulder to shoulder, smiling, their eyes narrowed against the flash. Beside the TV on a bath towel was a dish piled high with dry dog food. Next to that sat a bowl from which rose the odor of alcohol, an inch or so glistening in the bottom.

  “Corinne?” he said, moving from room to room, whispering her name as if the sound itself could lead him to something—though eventually, exhausted and certain she was not there, he continued to think her name, but not speak it. As a boy, he had played a game—would you call it a game?—with himself, after his father left, pretending that he might encounter, if not his father, his father’s ghost. Sometimes, late at night, he got silently out of bed and prowled the house with his finger pointing the way like a gun, and sometimes in the draft kicked up by his heels, he thought he did feel his father’s presence, though everything he’d heard about ghosts led him to believe that they vanished in front of you.

  She was not in the house, and he felt simultaneously relieved and sad—sad because not only had he not found Corinne, but she had not been with Duchais, either. He walked to the front door, down the leaf-strewn steps, across the driveway, and back to his car. It was late October; daylight savings time had ended, and it was cold and it seemed arbitrarily dark, which suddenly angered him. He jabbed his key in the ignition and started the car, pulling on the headlights, registering the dull click of his seat belt. He could not have predicted that years later, when he was a lawyer in Boston, he would return to Virginia for a twentieth class reunion and find himself accompanying his wife on a garden tour, which ended directly across the street from the house where he had wandered as a young man, a place where he had gone to prove to himself that he was the sort of pe
rson who could face difficult things, though instead he had felt like a helpless child in a chilly house, who was nevertheless intent upon saving someone named Corinne, whom he did not even really like.

  There he stood, years later, squinting at the house as the group moved on. He was remembering what a particular person Duchais had been, with his fine sweaters and his special wines and his specific glasses and his old-fashioned oak kitchen cabinet, whatever the thing had been called…. It was a paradox: how vaguely Duchais had lived in a world of specific things. “The Do-chess house,” he heard the blonde, bright-eyed Southern lady say, as she led people in the opposite direction. She doesn’t even know how to pronounce the name, he thought, as the woman dismissed the dilapidated house with a wave of the hand. He could remember that time in his life when he had not known the words for so many things—being in the kitchen, having what would not turn out to be the last sneaked drink of his life, the confusing word rheostat taking form as a little pinprick in his brain, provoking a huge desire in him to run from all his inadequacies, including what, prophetically, turned out to be a not very good sense of humor.

  The front door was shuttered, and the shutters were missing slats. There was no sign of the mailbox, but on the lawn the box-woods had grown higher, oddly discordant because they did not seem to have been planted with any intention of forming a hedge. There was no telling what had become of Duchais and the others. Tim Foxx had recovered from his sickness but died in a freak accident, helping a motorist who’d broken down on the Verrazano Bridge. Van Allan dreamed, sometimes, not of Tim, but of Tim’s eyes, which he’d more than once felt the presence of, those times he stared too long at certain leaves, in autumn.

  “Are you coming?” his wife called back to him.

  He followed behind.

  Tending Something

  CURLED on the sofa in her apartment, Mandy wrote down names, though it seemed silly, because she meant to include the whole gang. Oh, sure, some of the people at the surprise party she was planning for Kathy’s birthday would not be all that happy to see certain other people, though she wasn’t inviting anyone—that was it; that was why she was making the list—she would not invite anyone who couldn’t at least act civil. It made her feel slightly embarrassed and self-conscious to be thinking about people acting properly, but she supposed that was her Southern heritage, and besides: the world could do with a little more civility.