Chilly Scenes of Winter

by Ann Beattie

Charles always has a moment of apprehension at the checkout counter, even though he has money. He checks his wallet several times while he’s still in the store. Other shoppers probably feel sorry for him, having to economize, poor fellow, but that’s all right. That’s better than putting all his things on the checkout counter and not having the money. He leaves the store and drives home. Sam’s car is out front. Sam is in the shower. He is doing his “singing in the tub” song, but he is quieter than usual. Usually he can hear Sam kicking (Sam has confessed to this), but the legs will not break tonight. Figuring that Sam hasn’t eaten, he unwraps the roast and puts it in a pan in the oven. He opens the can of lima beans and dumps them in a pan. He takes a piece of salami out of the white paper it is wrapped in and rolls it into a little tube, bites into it. It’s very strong. Too strong. He finishes it anyway, goes into the living room and turns the thermostat up, sits down with his coat still on. There is a postcard from Pamela Smith: “The Clocks: Walter Tandy Murch, American 1907–1967.” The message: “Thank you again for being so nice to me. I’ve found a ride to LA Will try to call. P.S.” It takes him a while to realize that there was never an additional message she left off; they are her initials. In fact, it takes that so long to register that he also goes into the bedroom and looks for the thermometer. He can’t find it. He goes back to the living room and looks at the rest of the mail. Kittens are apparently no longer being thrown out in trash cans: there is nothing from the Humane Society. There is a notice that he should make a dentist appointment. There is also a note from Pete: “Mommy (crossed out) Clara suggested I send a note to remind you of your dinner invitation this Sat. We will be eating around seven, unless anything goes wrong with the chicken. I’m going to stuff it. I hope there are no hard feelings. Called the other night, but the line was busy. Clara has been working a nice needlepoint footrest of a poddle that she thinks would be nice to put in front of my chair. Be sure to ask to see it. So far, the baths are at a minimum. I really enjoyed that drink you and Susan had with me. Maybe we can do it again sometime. I’ll see you Sat. Clara suggested that I write. I’ll show her the envelope now.”

  “Hi,” Charles says to Sam.

  “To dispense with formalities, I’m out of a job.”

  “What? When did you find out?”

  “Five o’clock. I was going to work until eight tonight, when they came around and told me that wouldn’t be necessary.”

  “Oh, no. You said you were selling a lot of jackets.”

  “I don’t know. They were very vague. They don’t even do you the favor of saying one specific thing that can stick in your mind for you to brood over.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Collect unemployment as long as I can.”

  “Couldn’t they have switched you to another one of their stores?”

  “I didn’t ask. They actually sent two of them around, probably in case I decided to take one of them on. They were both big.”

  “Those bastards.”

  “I looked around me at the rows of jackets, and I just couldn’t do anything but nod. I guess I’m glad to be out of there. At least for a while I can collect unemployment.”

  “How much will that give you?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “That’s awful, Sam.”

  “Now that I’m out of work I won’t have to pay back the college loan. Maybe I’ll actually have it easier.”

  “It’s a rotten way to have it easier.”

  “I don’t know. What did I do with the money anyway? I just realized going home that I don’t go out on dates any more. I don’t do anything any more.”

  “You sound like Pete.”

  “Pete says he doesn’t do stuff, but he does. He’s always doing stuff for your mother. I used to do stuff for my dog. Now she’s dead.”

  “Don’t start feeling bad about the dog. Why don’t you get yourself another dog? You’d have time to train it.”

  “Great. Get fired, and it gives you time to swat a dog’s ass when it shits in the house.”

  “You get sarcastic every time I tell you to get another dog.”

  “I liked the dog I had.”

  “Go on, get another dog.”

  “Get another girl friend.”

  “Okay,” Charles says. “Touché.”

  Sam slumps in the chair.

  “I’ve got a roast beef in the oven. Maybe we ought to go out and get a bottle of wine and celebrate: your loss of a job, my loss of Laura.”

  “Maybe we should get a bottle of whiskey, too, and finish it off after the celebration.”

  “Come on,” Charles says. “Want to go get some wine?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. I haven’t had a decent dinner for so long I can’t remember.”

  “Your car or mine?” Charles asks.

  “Mine’s okay,” Sam says. He gets up, shakes his head. “I don’t think this is registering yet. I just realized that tomorrow I won’t have anywhere to go.”

  They walk out the front door. The door on the passenger’s side is frozen shut; Sam has to push it open from the inside. The upholstery on the front seats is ripped, and the rug has pulled away from the door and curled up on both sides. There is a crack across the windshield that begins in the middle and takes a ninety-degree turn across Charles’s line of vision. A truck threw a rock into the window. Sam’s insurance didn’t cover it Charles thinks about Pamela Smith talking about marriage as ashes—the wind will blow the ashes away. She should have been a poet. She did write poetry, in college, and then again for the feminist newspaper she wrote for. But that was ugly poetry, poetry about slippery tongues and pendulous breasts. He is glad he didn’t sleep with her when she spent the night.

  “Which one?” Sam says. “The new one on the avenue?”

  “Sure. Whatever’s closest.”

  “Do you have money, by the way? I guess it goes without saying that I’m broke.”

  “Yeah. I’ve got money.” He knows he has thirty-some dollars. If he were going into the grocery store he would already have checked his wallet a couple of times, but this is just a liquor store. He has a twenty and a ten for sure.

  “I actually think I might be doing better temporarily, not having to pay so much money back to that bank for the loan.”

  “Like I said—it’s a great way to do better.”

  “Yeah, I know. Wait until my father hears about this.”

  “Don’t tell him. What’s he got to know for?”

  “I don’t intend to tell him.”

  Sam’s father lives thirty miles away. He has an apartment. Sam’s mother lives in their house, which is only fifteen minutes from where Sam lives. Although sometimes she moves into Sam’s father’s apartment. And sometimes, rarely, Sam’s father shows up at the house. There are always suitcases all over. Sam’s father retired, then went back to work; his mother took a job, then quit, and at last report was thinking about studying to be a beautician. There was a fight about that, and Sam’s father moved out of the house, back to the apartment.

  They should get rid of the house and live together in the apartment and send Sam to law school. Neither one likes him well enough to do it. Sam is their only child. Sam’s mother had a hysterectomy after Sam was born. She tells people that she couldn’t have another child because of a delicate heart She tells them she has had heart surgery. She even buys a salt substitute for her bad heart.

  “What do you hear from him lately, anyway?” Charles asks.

  “He called to say that my mother was over at his apartment I never call her—I don’t know why he’d think I should know.”

  “How long have they been shuttling back and forth?”

  “Eight years, I guess. Maybe a little longer.”

  “What was Christmas like?”

  “Awful, as usual. His sister was invited to dinner, and she showed up at the apartment, and nobody was there. She called from the lobby and made a big thing of it—how they should tell her where they were living. She showed up la
te and everybody was crabby and hungry. It took her about twice as long to get there as it should have. She made a big thing of saying that all the way over she kept thinking that she should just turn around and go back to her apartment and eat alone.”

  “That’s all, though?”

  “Well, every time my mother fixes dinner Eleanor makes her feel bad by saying, if there’s no parsnips, how much she likes parsnips, or if there’s no bread, how much she likes bread. And she pretends I’m still in college and asks how I’m doing there. I don’t know why they invite her.”

  “Is she still working?”

  “Yeah. It’s her last year. She told her boss she was retiring next December and he said, ‘I’ve been in hell so many years I’ve gotten used to it. What will I do without you?’ ”

  “How long has she been there?”

  “Forty years.”

  “Jesus. Imagine typing for forty years.”

  “I can’t. My imagination is dead. I don’t even dream any more. I was reading that Fritz Perls book over Christmas. Fritz suggests you sit down and ask your dreams why they are eluding you. You know: you set up two chairs and run back and forth.”

  “Tried it?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  Sam double parks in front of the liquor store.

  “Since you’ve got the money …” Sam says.

  Charles goes in and buys a bottle of bordeaux. The man behind the cash register has bushy white hair and eyebrows. He always says the same thing: “Should prove drinkable.” Charles gives him the $5.80 and nods. Then the man asks if he wants a bag. He doesn’t. He walks back to the car. Sam has turned on the radio and “Benny and the Jets” is playing. Charles wonders if that guy in Mendocino is still playing his jew’s-harp and singing that song. He is glad he is not on the West Coast. He is too old for the West Coast. He found his Frisbee in the closet a few weeks ago and didn’t even give it a toss.

  “Pamela Smith was over at my house the other night.”

  “Is that right? I thought she was in California.”

  “She came back for some reason. She was working in a canning factory out there and it freaked her out, so she came back. Then she decided to go back out and not work in a canning factory.”

  “That girl was nuts. Interesting, though.”

  “She’s got a friend out there who’s going to teach her to be a silversmith.”

  Sam shrugs. “Beats selling jackets.”

  “You don’t think there’s any way you could go to law school, huh?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, maybe eventually.”

  “Sure. I’ll marry a rich woman. Actually, even if I had the money, I think my brain has atrophied too much to understand what anybody’s talking about.”

  “You exaggerate.”

  “I got a letter from my landlord last week saying that the rent was going up in March, and I had to read it twice to get it through my head what was being said to me.”

  “He probably wrote it that way on purpose.”

  Sam shrugs. “I don’t know what I’m going to do if this car falls apart. Hear that? If it’s the carburetor I’m okay, but if it’s the engine, I’m sunk.”

  Sinking. Bermuda. The sharks. The fountain.

  “It’s probably the carburetor.”

  “It’s probably the engine.”

  The car turns into Charles’s block. The people in this neighborhood go to bed very early. They are almost all asleep by ten, and some go to bed this early—before eight o’clock. Burglars are always breaking in on sleeping couples.

  “Did you hear if Rod Stewart was dead?”

  “No. Why do you think he’s dead?”

  “Some clerk in Housewares told me that this morning.”

  “Not as far as I know,” Charles says.

  Sam parks. This time Charles’s door sticks from inside and Sam has to go around and pull on it. That doesn’t open it. Charles slides across the seat, tearing it more, and gets out Sam’s side.

  “That’s how it protests its existence. One morning I’ll go out and both doors will be stuck.”

  They go into the house and Charles looks at the roast. It looks like it might be done. He sticks a fork in it. It might or might not be done. He leaves it in, uncorks the bottle of wine, and turns on the heat under the lima beans.

  “This is going to be swell,” Sam says.

  “Yeah. We eat such rotten stuff usually that I’m surprised we’re still alive.”

  “What the hell. You could know everything like Adele Davis and still be dead.”

  “At least she got to take a lot of acid and trip for half a year until she died.”

  “Who’d want to trip for half a year?”

  The hippie drinking milk in the food store?

  “Susan says there aren’t many drugs around any more.”

  “Yeah. Things must really be strange on campus now. Having fraternities and proms and swallowing goldfish again.”

  “What do you think they do to expand their minds now?” Charles says.

  “Get engaged to doctors. I don’t know.”

  “I wonder if she’ll have a formal wedding. The whole bit.”

  “That girl I told you about before—the one in Housewares. She’s keeping her wedding to five thousand bucks, she told me today. She’s compromising and not having matches and napkins.”

  “That’s sad.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe there’s something to it. It just seems silly to me.”

  “My sister seems silly to me.”

  Charles gets napkins and plates out of a cupboard. Sam gets forks and knives. “We don’t need spoons, do we?” Sam always asks that. “No,” Charles says.

  “Shit. This is going to be great.” Sam says.

  Charles lifts the roast out of the oven, puts it on a plate and carries it to the table. He goes back and gets the pan of lima beans, pours most of the water into the sink, and carries the pan to the table. He goes back and turns off the oven and the burner and gets the wine. He takes the wine to the table, where Sam is sitting, then goes to the kitchen for glasses.

  “I should have thought of glasses,” Sam says.

  He brings two thermal mugs (a gas-station giveaway of many years ago) and puts one in front of Sam.

  “Thanks,” Sam says.

  “Sure,” Charles says.

  Sam picks up his steak knife and begins to cut the roast “Thick?” Sam says. “Yeah. Please.”

  Sam begins to carve. “It won’t cut thick,” he says. “Thin is okay.”

  Sam cuts several thin pieces and puts them on Charles’s plate.

  “Thanks,” Charles says. “Lima beans?”

  “Please.”

  Charles lifts the pan closer to Sam’s plate, pushes the lima beans over the rim of the pan with his fork. “Thanks,” Sam says. “Wine?” Charles nods. “Say when,” Sam says.

  Charles says nothing, so Sam fills the thermal mug. He pours some into his thermal mug. “Great wine,” Charles says.

  “It looks good,” Sam says. He lifts his mug and sips. “It is good.”

  Charles spins the bottle to face him so he can read the label.

  “What kind of wine is that?” Sam says.

  “Bordeaux.”

  “French wines are expensive now, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah,” Charles says. “But they’ve never been cheap.”

  “Well,” Sam says. “This is a fine celebration.”

  “I’m glad you like it.”

  “Beats Christmas dinner all to hell. She really had parsnips, to shut Eleanor up. Have you ever tasted a parsnip?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “They’re foul. They smell like Vanish.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Stuff you put down your toilet.”

  “Shut up about the toilet when I’m eating.”

  “Sorry. I was just thinking about those rotten parsnips.”

  “Drop it. I don’t want to think about the toilet when
I’m eating.”

  “More lima beans?” Sam says. “Thanks,” Charles says. “More than that?” Sam says. “That’s fine.”

  Sam dumps the rest on his plate trying, unsuccessfully, to hold back the water with his fork. “Some frozen vegetables taste very good,” Sam says. “These were canned,” Charles says.

  “Oh yeah? Well, they’re very good. There’s plenty of vegetables I don’t mind. Hell. I never eat vegetables any more.”

  “We’re probably going to get scurvy or something. Did you know that when old people have varicose veins it’s the start of scurvy? Malnutrition?”

  “Shut up about disgusting diseases while I’m eating. You don’t hear me talking about the toilet, do you?”

  “Stop mentioning the goddamn toilet.”

  “This is really very good wine,” Sam says.

  “It ought to be.”

  “It was awfully nice of you to fix us this big dinner.”

  “Don’t tell me that. I had to endure a whole night of Pamela Smith telling me what a nice guy I was. I was so bored I forgot to lay her.”

  “You used to lay her, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. I used to.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Sam says. “More roast?”

  “Yeah. I could use some more. It’s a big roast, isn’t it? I never notice weight when I buy them. I just pick them up.”

  “What would Betty Furness say about that?”

  “She’s not the one any more. It’s somebody else.”

  “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, you knew Betty Furness was out.”

  “I’m just smart. Like that girl who said Rod Stewart was dead.”

  “I’m pretty sure he’s not dead. We could put on the news tonight, though.”

  “Yeah. We ought to check. He is a junkie, isn’t he?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Well, he could have died anyway.”

  “Sure,” Charles says.

  “She just sort of worked that information in when she was talking about her wedding. She talks about it all the time to make me feel bad, I think. She always wanted me to ask her out. Somebody told me that.”

  “Why didn’t you ask her out?”

  “Who’s got the money to go on dates? Anyway, I’m too old to go on dates.”