Chilly Scenes of Winter

by Ann Beattie

  “I was thinking about Grandma,” Charles says.

  “I don’t remember her very well.”

  “I remember her smelling things. She always had her nose in the steam from a soup pot, she always thought their cat smelled bad, even when Grandfather had caught it and washed it, she always wore heavy perfume. What do you remember about her?”

  “That her drawers were full of magazines she tied together in bundles and that she never untied the bundles. She always had things tied together. She’d tie two packages of paper napkins together with twine and put it on the kitchen shelf.”

  “She was nice,” Charles says.

  “Yeah. She was very nice. I remember that blue and lavender dress she made me. When it was washed the colors ran and made the lace blue, and she cut it all off and sewed white lace on.”

  Their grandmother died in her seat at a movie theater. There was a special movie about Greece. Men were there to show the movie and talk the audience into going to Greece. Everyone in the audience knew that she had died, and afterwards, their mother heard, more people than the men expected signed up on the spot for the trip to Greece. She was sixty-eight when she died. Their grandfather died two years and one day later. He was crossing the street with a bottle in a brown bag and a loaf of bread in another brown bag when a truck hit him. The truck was full of wheelbarrows that it was on the way to deliver to a hardware store.

  “Almond cookie?” the waiter says, putting down a plate with four cookies on it.

  “Tomorrow we’ve got to go see her, don’t we?”

  “Yeah. I’m not looking forward to running into Pete. He called today and told me I was a son of a bitch.”

  “He did not.”

  “He did. He said that I made him feel guilty. He called back and apologized.”

  “Was he drunk or something?”

  “I guess so. I don’t blame him.”

  “These are good,” Susan says. “Almonds are supposed to keep away cancer.”

  “I thought that was apricot pits.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Susan says, crunching into the second cookie.

  “I saw a picture in a magazine of some Mexican doctor who injects people with apricot-pit extract. People go there and live in trailers and get injections. I hope if I get sick I don’t get crazy like that.”

  “If I had it, I’d do anything. I’d go to Lourdes. I’d do anything.”

  “How the hell did we get started talking about this?”

  “I probably started it. I’m so used to talking about diseases all the time with Mark.”

  “What conclusions has he come to?”

  “You’re not going to be nice to him, are you?”

  “I told you I was. He’s just a jackass.”

  “One of the doctors he knows has a theory that the cells react to music. He’s trying to get a grant to play music to diseased cells.”

  “I’m sure hell get it. There are a lot of jackasses out there waiting to give other jackasses money.”

  “You’re so smart,” Susan says.

  “I’m not so smart. I’m just not a jackass.”

  “Are you sure it’s okay for me to leave?”

  “Sure,” he says. “What color is the Cadillac?”

  “Maroon.”

  “Maroon. Jesus Christ.”

  They pay the bill and leave The Blue Pagoda. It is bitter cold, and nobody is on the street. Charles drives down to the newsstand across from the train station and gets the late paper. A baby is on the cover: “First of 1975.” He looks at the weather forecast, holding the paper near the floor so that the car light shines on it. Snow. He does not want to go back to work. He wants the car to hurry up and get warm. When they get home Sam is still asleep. On the note on the television is written: “Pete called.”

  “I forgot to get him food,” Charles says to Susan.

  “He’s out for the night,” Susan says.

  “Should we try to wake him up to see if he’s alive?”

  “No,” she says. “He’s okay.”

  He is glad Susan is there. She doesn’t tell him what to do much, but sometimes she does, and that makes it easier.

  FIVE

  At lunch time (if only it were eleven again, instead of twelve-thirty) Charles goes alone to a restaurant at the end of the block. He orders a well-done cheeseburger, a salad without dressing, and a Coke. He thinks if he eats salad without dressing that when he eats it with dressing again it will taste good. All of the food is terrible. He oversalts it and is thirsty all day.

  “Gimme a nickel,” a black kid says to him as he walks back to the office, “and I’ll do a somersault in the air for you.”

  Charles gives the kid a quarter. “You don’t have to do a somersault,” he says. The kid flips in the air.

  “That’s amazing,” Charles says.

  “My brother’s working on a double flip,” the kid says, and walks away to accost another man.

  Back at his desk early, Charles puts on his earphones and turns on his cassette player: “Folk Fiddling from Sweden.” After he has listened for a few minutes he dials his number.

  “Hello?” Sam says groggily.

  “I woke you up,” Charles says.

  “Glad you did. I was having nightmares. I dreamed you and I were hunting wolves, and there were so many of them we didn’t know where to start, and if we didn’t start soon …”

  “God, I hope I don’t catch this,” Charles says.

  Sam is panting.

  “Is there anything you want me to bring you back tonight?”

  “Can you get me some Mr. Goodbars?”

  “Mr. Goodbars? They’re no good for you when you’re sick.”

  “Maybe they’ll finish me off and I won’t ever have to go back to work.”

  “I know what you mean,” Charles says.

  “Susan’s doc didn’t show. She’s still here.”

  “Is she disappointed?”

  “Doesn’t act it. I’m not exactly too sensitive to the state of others right now, I guess.”

  “Take aspirin. She’ll bring it to you.”

  “She does.”

  “Well, I’ll see you tonight.”

  Charles hangs up. If Laura isn’t still sick—she can’t still be sick—she’ll be leaving her house in an hour to pick up Rebecca. Lucky Rebecca. If Rebecca grows up to be like Laura she will be a heartbreaker. Maybe he will become like Humbert Humbert and get Rebecca. Because it certainly doesn’t look like he’s going to get Laura.

  A woman from typing comes in to pick up two reports to do for him. The woman has on a blue dress that is unfashionably short and heavy black boots pulled tightly over her heavy legs. But her face is pretty. She was Laura’s friend. He wants to think that she knows all about the two of them, but Laura said that she never told anybody. He wishes she had; then he wouldn’t doubt, as he sometimes does, that it happened at all. He and the woman could exchange secret, knowing glances. Laura, they would both be thinking. She walks out with the piece of paper, and he looks at the big black boots walking across the blue carpet. Laura always dressed beautifully. She had suede boots and several pretty dresses, just a few but very pretty, and she always looked very delicate. Her husband is nicknamed “Ox.” Charles has not gotten back to work, and he has been at his desk for fifteen minutes. He has just cheated the government of five minutes. He cheats it of another two, turning his chair to look out the window, playing a little game and imagining that when he turns around Laura will be there, even though he knows that he would see her reflection in the glass if she were there. Even though she cannot be there, because she is getting ready to go for Rebecca. He wishes he were Rebecca’s father. If he were her father and Laura were her mother they could be a family. They are already a family: Laura, Rebecca, and Ox. He imagines with horror that when he turns around they will all be there, that he will actually have to face that fact. He turns around immediately and looks at the piece of paper on his desk.

  The woman from typing co
mes back. “There should be another piece attached to this,” she says. He sits up a little higher so that he can look down at the boots. They are menacing. He wonders why she wears them. She couldn’t think they’re pretty. He reaches in the bottom of the basket on the comer of his desk. “Sorry,” he says.

  “First day back,” she says.

  “What do you hear from Laura?” he asks.

  “Oh. I had dinner there last night. She went back to her husband,” the woman says knowingly.

  The A-frame. Ox. Maybe more freshly baked bread. So she’s well.

  “What did you have?” He can’t contain his curiosity.

  “Lobster Newburg. It was wonderful. I’ve been trying to lose weight, but with the holidays and that dinner, I’m never going to make it.”

  “You’re going to think this is terrible, but I don’t think I ever knew your name,” he says.

  “Betty,” she says.

  “That’s right,” he says. “I did know it.”

  He’d had no idea what her name was.

  She stands there, smiling. He wants very much to know if she had the orange thing for dessert.

  “I get into work and I become a robot,” he says. “It’s awful.”

  “I hate it here,” Betty says. “But I’m lucky to have a job. My sister just graduated from Katy Gibbs, and she’s been looking since before Thanksgiving.”

  “It’s rotten,” he says. “It’s nice if you can have perspective on ft and be glad you’ve got a job.”

  “I just am glad today,” she says. “Most days I come in and hate it.”

  “Is your sister looking for work around here?”

  “In New York. But if she doesn’t find something soon she’s going to have to come live with me. My parents kicked her out. They don’t think she’s trying, because they sent her to college and then to Katy Gibbs and all.”

  “Don’t they read the papers?”

  She shrugs. “I guess I’d better start this,” she says, and turns to leave.

  She’s very nice, Charles thinks. Why couldn’t you like her? He looks down at the piece of paper again and makes a notation on the pad. He has the eerie feeling that when he looks up Laura and Jim and Rebecca will be there. He throws his pen down. He gets up and picks up the pen, goes back to the desk and sits down. Lobster Newburg. That must have been delicious. That cheeseburger was awful.

  He leaves at five-fifteen instead of five-thirty, stopping at the stand on the ground level for two Mr. Goodbars. The man who runs the concession is blind. “What have you got?” he asks.

  “Not Laura” seems like the logical answer. He has got to stop thinking about her. It’s true that he wasn’t that wild for her when he had her. If he ever had her. When he was with her. Once when he was with her they sat at a drugstore having coffee and she gave him a picture of herself. Remember something better he says under his breath. “Two Goodbars,” he says out loud.

  “Thirty-two,” the man says. The man reaches into an open metal box and feels around for the change. The blind man is never wrong. Charles looks at the three pennies. Laura, he thinks. He drops the change in his coat pocket and zips the coat. Tries to zip it. He pulls more slowly. Sure enough, it works. He goes through the revolving door and into the cold. His car is a long walk away. He turns on the cassette player he is holding in his other hand and “Folk Fiddling from Sweden” blares out. It is still playing when he gets to his car. The lock is frozen. He kicks it with his foot. Much to his surprise, the lock turns. He drives to a store and buys a big package of pork chops and a bag of potatoes and a bunch of broccoli and a six-pack of Coke. He remembers cigarettes for Sam when he is checking out, in case he’s well enough to smoke. He buys a National Enquirer that features a story about Jackie Onassis’s face-lift. James Dean is supposed to be alive and in hiding somewhere, too. Another vegetable. Not dead at all. East of Eden is one of his favorite films. He saw it, strangely enough, on television shortly after he and Laura went to a carnival and rode on a Ferris wheel. He felt so sorry for James Dean. Back then he didn’t feel sorry for himself at all. No reason to. Now he feels sorry for himself. Feeling sorry for himself, he gets back in the car and drives home. He thinks about Rebecca’s bird trapped in his glove compartment. At a stop sign he closes his eyes and inhales, hoping to smell Vol de Nuit. Cold air sears through his nostrils. Turning onto his block, he sees the man from Audrey’s party getting out of his car. Charles stops, rolls down his window. “Hey,” he says. “Hi. Hello.”

  “Hello,” the man says. “Cold as a witch’s tit, isn’t it?” The man is wearing a black coat and scarf. He looks menacing.

  “Yeah,” Charles says. “Farmer’s Almanac says we’re in for a big storm the eighteenth.”

  “You were going to come for a drink,” the man says. “Come for a drink.”

  “Okay,” Charles says. “I’ll get over.”

  “Any time,” the man says.

  “Good. Thanks,” Charles says.

  He feels good about that until he realizes that the man’s car was parked far away from either the red brick or the white house with blue shutters and that he still doesn’t know where he lives.

  He runs with the grocery bag from the driveway to the front door. Susan opens it.

  “It’s awful out,” she says. “How did it go?”

  “I got through the day,” he says, then realizes that that was melodramatic. He expects her to inform him that his attitude is wrong, but she doesn’t.

  “How are you?” he says. “Doctor desert you?”

  “No. He’ll be in later tonight. His car broke down.”

  Charles feels sorry for him because his car broke down. He does not want to feel sorry for the man.

  “What kind of jackass wouldn’t get rid of a Cadillac anyway?” he says.

  He takes the groceries into the kitchen, then goes to the bedroom to see Sam. Sam is asleep, his feet again out of the covers. This time his fly is hanging open and his pajama top is all bunched up around him. Charles is sure that he is getting pneumonia. He backs out of the room, goes to the kitchen and gets a glass of grapefruit juice.

  “What makes you so sure he doesn’t have pneumonia?” Charles asks.

  “He doesn’t have pneumonia. He was awake for several hours today.”

  Charles is glad she’s still there. He wishes the Cadillac would break apart in the middle.

  “Would you like me to cook these?” Susan asks, taking the pork chops out of the bag.

  He will never have that dessert again. “Sure,” he says.

  “After dinner we’ve got to go see her,” Susan says.

  He had forgotten. “I know,” he says. “Pete call back?”

  “No.”

  “I guess I’ll get it in person then.”

  Charles checks the thermometer: thirty-two degrees.

  “It’s freezing,” he says. He goes into the living room and lies down on the sofa. It reminds him of lying in the hospital bed, no energy to move, his mother sitting at his side, on top of her coat on a chair. The man who shared his room was named somebody-or-other Brownwell. Brownwell, it turned out, had an inoperable melanoma. Charles had no idea what that was, and Brownwell didn’t either, and as hard as he tried not to, hands over his ears, Charles still heard the doctor say “cancer” through the thin screen that was pulled around Brownwell’s bed. It was so depressing there. He’d wake up in the morning and see Brownwell’s head against the pillow; the rest of his body already seemed to have shrunken up, given up, disappeared. Sometimes Charles would raise himself in bed the little he could to make sure that Brownwell was still there below the shoulders. Brownwell sat and stared. Charles’s mother always asked Brownwell if he wanted a glass of water when she came and when she left. Once he did. Charles turns on the couch, trying to get the hospital out of his mind. The sheets were so stiff. Once he woke up a little to see Brownwell, who paced for four days until they discharged him, pacing by his bed. Brownwell stopped to pull Charles’s blanket up. Charles pret
ended to be asleep and lay very still, but it was all he could do to restrain himself because he wanted to reach out and kiss Brownwell’s hand. He almost did kiss his hand. Not because he straightened the sheets, but just because he felt so damn sorry for Brownwell. Every day when the doctor came to see him, Charles waited to hear the word “melanoma.” He hung on the doctor’s every word. “You’re very alert today, that’s a good sign,” the doctor said. Another time, the doctor asked him if his mother was “emotionally disturbed.” He never found out what his mother had done that made the doctor ask. Pete came every night—damn, he should like that man—and brought Playboy and, for some reason, an inflatable plastic pillow he could blow up and put under the one on the bed. Actually, it came in handy. He was too weak to sit up well without calling the nurses to haul him up by his armpits, but with the pillow he was a little higher and could see a little more. Brownwell’s son blew it up for him. The son was a cub scout. Brownwell looked like he could die every night during visiting hours. He looked better when his wife and son left. Charles gets up. He’s going to remember as long as he lies there. He goes out to the kitchen and watches Susan pour Sam’s leftover white wine over the cooking pork chops.

  “I hope she’s not so sedated she doesn’t know us,” Susan says.

  “She fakes that. She almost always knows us.”

  He sits in a chair. The pork chops smell good. He is glad she is there, because he is too tired to cook. He shouldn’t be so tired. He should have a checkup. He doesn’t want to. They will find out he has an inoperable melanoma.

  They eat dinner at the table, even though Charles and Susan told Sam that they should bring a tray to him in bed and bring chairs in for them to sit on to keep him company. Charles was secretly glad to see Sam get up, because that would keep pneumonia away. Nothing would keep inoperable melanoma away, but walking would keep pneumonia away. He shakes his head, trying to clear his mind so he can enjoy dinner.