Chilly Scenes of Winter

by Ann Beattie

  “Sure I could.”

  “You mean you’re both coming?”

  “Sure,” Charles says. Pete looks surprised. He smiles—the same smile he gave when he came to the hospital to visit Charles and saw his plastic pillow in use.

  “Well, where do you get a drink around here?” Pete asks.

  “I think there’s a place a couple of streets over.”

  “Walk?” Pete says. “Do you mind walking?”

  “No,” they both say.

  “That’s good. My skin’s still crawling.”

  “The place seemed pretty sedate tonight,” Susan says.

  “That woman in the room with Mommy is a dog killer. Cat killer. She had a house full of cats and dogs and killed all of them. I don’t know the details. I said to Mommy, ‘You never know. Keep on the good side of her.’ ”

  They are walking together in stride, Susan breaking step occasionally to keep up.

  “Oh man, when is this winter ever going to end?” Pete says. “This morning, driving down to the hospital I was tempted to take my credit card—did you kids know I have a BankAmericard?—over to the airport and fly to Florida. Three years I’ve been wanting to fly to Florida, get the hell in the sun. I thought to myself, you’re freezing; you’re sixty-three years old and you’ve never done anything exciting in your life.”

  “There’s not much exciting to do,” Charles says. The Paris McDonald’s.

  “Florida, hell, you might not call that exciting, but you know what I mean: to be where it’s warm. It’s colder than I ever remember it here this winter.”

  “I can’t keep up with you,” Susan says.

  “Sorry, honey,” Pete says. They slow down a little.

  “Another thing I thought about was getting a Honda Civic. Your mother thinks the things are too small to ride around in. She says we’ll be killed. I said, ‘What the hell. We don’t have kids. We don’t have any big dog. We can get us a little car.’ You know your mother.” Pete blows his nose, drops the tissue on the sidewalk. “This morning I thought, I’ve got time to go arrange for a Honda Civic on the way to the hospital. I was damned early. Couldn’t sleep. Got up to get breakfast, and it didn’t take me any time to wolf it down. So I thought: do it, Pete. Get a Honda Civic. Hell, I never do anything.”

  “Get the car if it’s important to you,” Charles says.

  “I don’t know.… How do I know if it’s important to me? This morning I really thought I wanted to go to Florida. If I had, I guess I would have.”

  “I think you could use another car, Pete,” Susan says. “Yours is pretty old now. Maybe you could hang onto it and let her drive it.”

  “You think I ought to get a Honda Civic, huh?” Pete says. He pulls another tissue out of his pocket and blows his nose. “I should,” he says.

  The bar they walk into is called The Sinking Ship. Charles remembers that it’s usually crowded with college kids, but most of them are away on vacation, so there’s a strange mixture of businessmen and hippies.

  “This is swell,” Pete says. “You want to sit at a table, don’t you?”

  They move to a table against the wall. There is a framed newspaper picture above the table of Nixon, Bebe Rebozo, and Robert Abplanalp. Charles stands long enough to read the caption. The three are on a boat, it seems. They all look like Mafia characters. A waiter comes to the table.

  “What do you want?” Pete says.

  “Could we split a pizza?” Susan says.

  “Sure we could,” Pete says. “What would you like to drink?”

  “Scotch on the rocks,” Charles says.

  “A glass of red wine,” Susan says.

  “A pitcher of beer for me,” Pete says.

  “Okay. And is that a plain pizza? Mozzarella?”

  “Right,” Pete says. The waiter goes away. His jeans have a small buckle across the back. He has on cowboy boots. The heels are scuffed.

  Pete leans across the table. “Tell me something,” he says to Charles. “What was the worst thing I ever did to you?”

  Charles looks into Pete’s face. Pete has a little broken vein on the side of his nose. Pete has a sharply pointed nose. There is a plaid blue-and-red scarf hanging unevenly around his neck. Pete combs his hair straight back. It is white at the temples, light brown back to his bald spot. Charles’s father was very handsome. He had curly brown hair and a broad chest. When Charles was little, he used to have him stand next to his leg so he could tell how tall he was getting. He died on the bus coming home from work. He would have died in his car, but he left the car with Clara. Tuesday was grocery day. Charles hopes that there wasn’t an embarrassing time for his father before he died—that he didn’t scream in pain, or have to look into any of the other passengers’ eyes. He wanted to ask the policeman who came to the house, but his throat always choked up when he was in the presence of a policeman.

  “We don’t dislike you,” Susan says, patting Pete’s shoulder. It is the first time Charles has ever seen her voluntarily touch him.

  “Neither of you like me much,” Pete says. “What did I ever do that was so awful?”

  “One time when Susan was only about seven years old she made a snowman with some of your wood and …”

  “Okay,” Pete interrupts. “I remember.”

  Pete unfolds a napkin and puts it on his lap. He looks at it.

  “But don’t kids forget about things like that? Forgive and forget and all that?” Pete says.

  The envelope from Pamela Smith, Charles thinks.

  “I forgive you,” Susan says.

  “He doesn’t,” Pete says.

  The waiter puts down the pitcher of beer. He puts a tray on the table and takes Susan’s and Charles’s drinks off it.

  “I guess I’m not making you have a very pleasant time here,” Pete says. “After all this time you went out with me for a drink, and I sit here talking about the past.”

  Maria Muldaur is singing “Midnight at the Oasis.” She offers to be a belly dancer; the person she is singing to can be her sheik. “Maria!” a middle-aged man hollers, raising his beer glass. “Boogie,” he says, bouncing in his chair.

  “Aw c’mon,” Maria Muldaur sings.

  “Boogie,” the man sings, rising again. The man sitting across from him reaches across the table and pushes him down. There is an argument. Charles expects one of the men to come flying at him, but the fight subsides. Once in a bar a man was thrown into his back. He was standing at the bar. He dropped his glass of beer. It went “clunk.” Charles didn’t know what had happened. Now he fears that people will fly into him at bars. He doesn’t stand at the bar any more because that way he has his back to all of them. Once he had a nightmarish vision of a policeman coming at him—crashing into him, actually—telling him he had an inoperable melanoma. He was so scared he froze. When the policeman said his father was dead he froze. Charles adjusts himself in his seat, to reassure himself that he can move all right.

  “How’s college?” Pete says to Susan. “Have some pizza, Charles?”

  “Thanks,” Charles says. The pizza is very good. He thinks about asking Pete to order another. This is very nice of Pete. He wishes he could say something nice to Pete that he felt sincerely. He frowns in concentration.

  “Pizza’s hot, huh?” Pete says.

  “Yeah,” Charles says.

  “I don’t know, Pete,” Susan says. “I can’t figure out what to major in.”

  “Not interested in anything, huh?” Pete says.

  “I sort of like psychology and French, but I don’t know if I want to major in either of them.”

  “No point in it, huh?” Pete says.

  Charles is surprised; Pete sounds like him.

  “A French major wouldn’t do me any good,” Susan says. “Because it’s the only language I know. To be an interpreter you have to know at least three.”

  “Parlez-vous français?” Pete says. “Hell. I used to know French.”

  Pete picks up the last piece of pizza. “I’ll
order another one of these,” he says. “They’re little.”

  “I forget everything,” Pete says, pouring beer into his glass. “I know that on the way in you kids were telling me to do something.”

  “Buy the car,” Charles says.

  “That’s right. Buy a Honda Civic.”

  Connie Francis is singing “Where the Boys Are.” He saw that movie. Yvette Mimieux got raped. He would like to rape Laura. That’s not even true. He would just like to have a cheeseburger at McDonald’s with Laura. For almost half an hour he had not thought of Laura. He tries to switch his thoughts to … what was her name … Betty, to have an erotic vision of Betty. He sees a slightly plump woman in a dress and heavy black boots. He tries to imagine her without the black boots. It is impossible. The black boots will not come off her.

  “I’m here, Connie,” the man who was hollering to Maria Muldaur calls to the ceiling speakers. “Boogie, boogie,” he calls.

  The waiter comes to the table. “Another pizza,” Pete says. “More to drink?”

  “I’ll have another one,” Charles says.

  “A Coke for me,” Susan says.

  “I’m set,” Pete says. When the waiter walks away, Pete says, “She wouldn’t come here with us even if she was out of the hospital.”

  “She won’t go to bars?” Charles asks.

  Pete shakes his head. “Anywhere. I tried to get her to take a boat ride this summer. They had a jazz band that played on the boat. You know, just a two-hour boat ride. Drinks and stuff. She locked herself in the bathroom. Said the boat would sink.”

  “Did you tell the doctor about that?” Charles asks.

  “I forgot about it. I’ve told so many stories to so many doctors. I’m always rambling about heating pads all over the house and how my bed pillow’s been missing for six months, and about the look she gets that I can’t describe. I’m always looking into doctors’ faces, trying to do imitations. The last doctor wanted her to go for group therapy. She wouldn’t go. Probably thought the chair would collapse.”

  Susan laughs. Charles smiles. God, I’m glad I don’t live with her, Charles thinks.

  “We ought to work on that,” Charles says. “Group therapy.”

  “She wouldn’t go,” Pete says.

  The second pizza is put on the table. Pete cuts a piece off with a little plastic fork. The tines are bent under. The pizza is very hot.

  “I did an awful thing. When the pillow had been gone for a week, I cornered her. I cornered her in the kitchen. ‘You tell me where that pillow is,’ I said. She started to shake, looking right into my eyes, shoulders going back and forth. I was ashamed of myself.”

  “Ever find the pillow?” Susan asks.

  “No,” Pete says, draining his glass.

  Mick Jagger begins “Wild Horses”: Tiiiiiiired of living …”

  It occurs to Charles that songs are always appropriate. No matter what record is played, it is always applicable. Once, on a date in high school, when he was going to tell his date he loved her, Elvis Presley came on the radio singing “Loving You.” It always happens: politicians are always crooks, records are always applicable to the situation. Charles shrugs off his sweater. Martha and the Vandellas start to sing “Heat Wave.” Charles laughs.

  “I know,” Pete says. “It is funny. A grown man with a messed-up wife, and what does he do but sit around his office stewing all day, then come home and corner her about a pillow.”

  Susan laughs again. She pours some of Pete’s beer into her glass.

  Mick Taylor has left The Rolling Stones. Mick Taylor replaced Brian Jones. Brian Jones is dead. Women all over the world claim to have babies that are his. All the babies look like Brian Jones. Mick Jagger got dumped by Marianne Faithfull (“It is the evening of the day.…”), who took drugs with him, and married Bianca, who walks around with a feather hat and cane. She has expensive jewelry. They have a child. A daughter? Should John Lennon stay in the U.S.A.? John Lennon went to the Troubadour with a Kotex on his head. In reply to the announcer’s query, a girl called to say, “I think John should stay here because he’s such a groovy musician.” “And what do you think about people being denied citizenship because of drug offenses?” The girl hung up.

  Pete is having a very good time. He is smiling and wolfing pizza and looking all around.

  “I hope they don’t change their minds tomorrow,” Pete says. “They always do that at that place.”

  “She was only there once before,” Susan says.

  “One night I took her there. She was home the next night, though,” Pete says. “Then some doctor called. ‘Who discharged your wife?’ he said. He hung up on me.”

  Bob Dylan: “Time will tell just who has fell and who’s been left behind.…”

  Pete reaches in his pocket for his wallet. “Look at this,” he says, handing his BankAmericard to Susan. She turns it over, looks at the front of it again, hands it back. Pete takes a twenty out of his wallet and puts it on top of the tray with the bill. The waiter picks it up.

  “Back into the cold,” Pete says. As they leave, Charles looks back and sees the man who screamed to Maria Muldaur with his hands over his head. His head is resting on the table. Lou Reed is singing: “Good night ladies, ladies good night.…”

  The snow is falling fast now—big wet flakes that probably won’t last.

  “Thanks for having a drink with me,” Pete says. There is a mustache of sauce above his top lip.

  “Thanks for taking us,” Charles says.

  “Yes,” Susan says.

  “I wish I had kids,” Pete says. “You kids are nice. But if I had my own kid it would probably be nuts about me, don’t you think?”

  “Well,” Charles says. “Kids are so alienated from their parents now …”

  “It’s too late anyway,” Pete says.

  They break into a trot, Pete taking Susan’s hand to guide her around slick patches. They are all out of breath and shivering when they reach the hospital parking lot. The three lights have been turned off.

  “Well, I’ll be seeing you,” Pete says. “Thanks for having a drink with me.”

  “Good-bye,” Charles says.

  “Thanks again,” Susan says.

  “Hell, if you didn’t have a drink with me, I don’t know what kids would,” Pete says. “I got none of my own.”

  Charles and Susan get in the car and drive away. He should have said something nice to Pete. He finds it impossible to bring himself to say something really nice. What is there really nice to say that wouldn’t just sound foolish? Even the fruit that Pete brought to the house after their father died was always wrong. The time he brought the oranges they had just been sent a crate of oranges from neighbors visiting Florida. Their mother made them take all the oranges out of the refrigerator—there were a lot of oranges—and put them in the crate and hide the crate so Pete’s feelings wouldn’t be hurt. Charles had to sleep with the crate of oranges under his bed. He felt like there was a bomb there. He couldn’t sleep. He tried to tell his mother that the Florida oranges were better; they should just mix Pete’s in with them. The crate stayed under the bed. Every morning they had fresh-squeezed orange juice, and at school, in their lunch box, there was always one and maybe two oranges. Susan got diarrhea. Charles didn’t; he always gave both of his oranges away. He gave them to a Japanese boy. None of the other kids wanted the oranges. They all had cookies. When he pressed them on the Japanese boy he took them without saying anything and put them in his desk. The second day he gave them to the Japanese boy Charles noticed that when the boy opened his desk the two oranges were still there. When there were six oranges the Japanese boy took them all home in a bag. The Japanese boy had no friends. He wouldn’t talk to anybody, even when they talked to him. He’d say hello to Charles, though. He called him “Mister Oranges.” Charles could never get beyond that with him. He asked him to come over to his house and play, and the boy just shook hands. When the oranges stopped coming, no questions were asked. The Japanese boy d
idn’t come back for the sixth grade. Somebody in the class found out that he had gone to Japan.

  Charles had the same teacher for fifth and sixth grades. Her name was Mrs. Witwell. Of course she was called Witchwell, or just Mrs. Witch. This name was given to her when Mrs. Witwell dressed up as a witch at Halloween to pay a call on a friend’s first-grade class. She showed the fifth grade her getup: a long black skirt and blouse, pointed black hat and broom. She had powdered her face white. “The first grade will think I’m a real witch!” Mrs. Witwell said. Her fifth grade believed she was a real witch. The Japanese boy looked terrified.

  Mrs. Witwell came to the funeral parlor. He was embarrassed to have her see him there. She came with an old lady, her mother. The book was signed “Eleanor and Dora Witwell.” It was the same handwriting with which Mrs. Witwell criticized his penmanship. He got up and ran to look at the book when she left. He no longer has any idea what he expected to see.

  He turns into his driveway, surprised that Doctor Mark’s car still isn’t there. He has trouble getting up the driveway; it’s very slippery. After spinning awhile at the bottom, the car finally makes it halfway up, and he settles for that, putting on the emergency brake.

  “That really wasn’t bad with Pete,” Susan says.

  “He does try,” Charles says. “I just don’t feel comfortable with him. I was around him for so many years that I should, but I just don’t.”

  “I hope he goes ahead and buys the Honda Civic,” Susan says. “I think he’s sad. Not to ever get to do anything.”

  “He’s a grown man. There’s no reason he can’t bring himself to do anything. Living with her depresses him.”

  “He ought to get out,” Charles says.

  “Don’t wish that on her,” Susan says. “What would she do?”

  “Plug in the heating pads, drink, read movie magazines. What she does now. I can’t believe she loves him.”

  “It’s hard to tell how she feels,” Susan says.

  “He should corner her and ask her that.”

  “That’s cruel,” Susan says.

  “I know. I don’t know. I feel sorry for them. I feel sorry for everybody,”

  “If you just categorically feel sorry for everyone, it must be something bothering you.”