by Ann Beattie
“Oh, Christ, what’s she pulling now?”
“She said she was your mother and she wanted to fix the dinner. I was just doing it to do her a favor. But now there’s not going to be any dinner. She says so herself. I thought I’d call and let you know. Damn. And I wanted to show you my Honda Civic.”
“Oh, Christ. I don’t know what to say.”
“She’s in bed now. Everything’s under control.”
“Okay. I guess there’s nothing I can do. I feel sorry for you, for what that’s worth.”
“I always thought you did. You and your sister are real nice kids. Sometimes I think about what you said—that my own wouldn’t do any better by me—and it’s a consolation. Well, I’d bought olives for you and everything. You remember you wanted them for that New Year’s Day supper we had? Things don’t go in one ear and out the other with me. I got olives and a chablis wine. Taylor chablis. If she had let me make it, it would have been a damn fine meal.”
“I’m sure it would have been. If things get worse, call me.”
“I’m getting hungry,” Pete says, “but I don’t dare cook the chicken, even just for the two of us. That chicken is better left forgotten. I’ll go out and get us a pizza.”
“I’ll drive by on my way to work Monday and take a look at your car. I leave earlier than you do.”
“No. Don’t do that. I want to show you myself.”
“Okay. You show it to me. I’ll see you later, Pete.”
“Promise you won’t drive by and look at it.”
“I won’t. I’ll see you, Pete.”
“Good-bye,” Pete says.
Charles goes back to bed. He sees that Sam is already in bed in his room. He pulls the covers up over himself and falls asleep. He wakes up at five o’clock when the alarm goes off. He gets up, pushes in the button, and goes back to bed. He doesn’t wake up again until midnight, when he gets up to take some aspirin for his throat. The door to Sam’s room is still open. Charles looks in and does a double take. Silently, Sam is screwing Pamela Smith. Charles closes the door. He goes to the bathroom and gets two Excedrin. He sits on the sofa, in the dark, swallowing the water slowly. He does not feel so much like medicating himself as like drowning. The water seems too cold going down; he finds it hard to breathe. He lies back on the sofa, listening to the whispers and creaking mattress in the other room, and falls into a deep sleep.
TEN
Driving home from work on Monday night, Charles notices that it is staying light longer. When he gets home from work he will have nothing to do: Pamela Smith cooks, and Sam does the dishes. They keep the house clean. Pamela Smith has dyed her hair again. Sam has gained a little weight. Charles is sure that they screw all day, although they show no affection for one another in his presence. And he hasn’t seen her in Sam’s bed again. They have to screw all day. What else would they do?
Today when Betty came in to get the typing he was embarrassed not to have called her and asked again for her number, saying that he’d lost it. Worse than that, he was specific about the lie: it blew out the car window. It sounded awful. To cover for that, he blathered on: he was going to call and invite her to a small party he was giving. Then he inquired about her sister: had she found work? No—she married a man and is packing to move to Detroit. “Does the man work in the car industry?” Charles asked. “No, he’s an accountant,” Betty said. He has no idea how to make conversation with Betty. He went back to talking about the party: maybe she could come over a little early to help him get things organized. How is he ever going to get out of this?
Somebody answered his phone when he was at lunch and took a message that Pete called. Is his mother back in the hospital? Surely Pete will call him at home and he’ll find out.
Maneuvering through traffic, he is very tempted to turn around and head for Laura’s. This could be it: a scene with her husband, a fight which he would lose, but maybe Ox would hurt him so badly that he’d go into a coma and never come out of it. He thinks about cutting his wheel sharply to the left, plowing into the car coming toward him. The car passes. It was a middle-aged woman. Good he didn’t kill her. Maybe the next car? It passes. Another middle-aged woman, wearing a hat. A white car, woman inside with a green (green?) hat. He begins to make a game of counting the cars with middle-aged women inside. He counts eight before he tires of the game. When he first started counting there were four cars in a row containing middle-aged women, and he thought, nervously, that the country might have been taken over by middle-aged women while he was working. But the next car was a teen-ager. The next was an old man, the next was a teen-age girl, and there was a car full of nuns. What a silly game.
2001 is playing at the movies. Pete told him a horrible story about how he took Clara to see it, and she screamed when the fetus came on the screen. Pete says that for a long time before seeing the movie she had been worried that she’d go to hell because Susan’s twin died. The reason she thinks this, according to Pete in a whispered late-night phone call, is that she wore a red dress to the funeral. She just wasn’t thinking. She had a gray raincoat over it, but still. He told her it was perfectly all right, and she got out Amy Vanderbilt’s book of etiquette. Amy Vanderbilt How could anyone fall out a window? Of course she jumped. Why don’t they admit she jumped, that knowing you don’t wear red dresses to funerals didn’t make her everlastingly happy? Because they don’t admit anything. Amazing they ever admitted the Pueblo was a spy ship. Now Bucher is growing avocados. Tortured by the North Koreans, he returns to the U.S.A. to grow avocados.
Charles stops for gas, sees cashier for transaction settlement, parks in the parking lot next to the gas station, and goes into the store. He has been craving devil’s food cookies. Infantile. He checks his wallet and sees that he has ten dollars. He will have to go to the bank. The lunch at the Greek restaurant set him back seven dollars, and ten will never be enough to get through the week. He walks down the aisle, looking for cookies. He sees the dog food and misses Sam’s dog. There are a lot of dog toys in plastic, too. He wishes that he’d bought more toys for the dog. The dog only had three or four, and she loved them. If anybody poisoned that dog, they ought to burn in hell. They could bum in hell with the North Koreans and former President Nixon. And Mrs. DeLillo, if she really killed all those animals. And the people who do all the things the Humane Society keeps him posted on. He hopes that he does not burn in hell for adultery. He wishes he could be committing adultery now, instead of looking for the cookies in the supermarket. But the devil’s food cookies will be some consolation when he finds them. He intends to rip them open and eat them on the way home. It is nice to know that there will be a good dinner to follow the cookies. He is very glad that Pamela Smith forgot and ate the chicken—he heard about that for hours—and no longer considers herself a vegetarian. (“Oh no!” she said. “Do you know what I did without thinking?” And he was overcome with horror, expecting her to announce that she had stabbed somebody on the New Jersey turnpike and rolled him into a ditch. She’s just crazy enough to forget something like that.) Last night she fixed a platter of vegetables and chicken with spaghetti. She keeps out of the way and doesn’t bother him. She certainly isn’t bothering Sam. He gets the devil’s food (two packages) and a box of vanilla wafers and laments the fact that Hydrox are no longer the same. He gets some Pepperidge Farm Lidos. He puts them all back on the shelf and rechecks his wallet. Yes, that bill he saw was a ten. Is ten dollars enough to buy four packages of cookies? Of course it is. He adds them up in his head, finds that it is plenty. He re-adds. He forces himself to pick up all the cookies again and move away from the cookie counter, where he is lost in calculations.
The rush-hour traffic is subsiding. He puts a devil’s food cookie in his mouth and chews. His mother always told him to bite twice on cookies. Therefore, he always puts the whole cookie in his mouth, no matter what the size. With very large cookies from the bakery, he breaks them in several pieces—which is not the same as biting them. Still, although the bakery
cookies are very good, he prefers the ones he can shove in his mouth all at once.
He turns right and drives down the street that will take him to his block. He should go out at night—go to the movies—do something. Maybe he will suggest that they all go to the movies. He rolls into his driveway, Bob Dylan singing “Like A Rolling Stone.” It feels like every other day. He thinks about Bob Dylan’s children running around on the beach at Malibu. Imagine having Dylan for a father. Imagine if his own father were alive. That would be nice. His father made cookies once a year, at Christmas. Then he and Charles went out looking for cookie tins. They bought some, and covered Crisco cans with wrapping paper for others. He made German cookies with chocolate sprinkles on top that were wonderful—ruined only slightly by the fact that his mother told him to bite twice.
He opens the front door and walks in. There is a copy of The Second Sex on the kitchen counter. He puts the bag of cookies down on top of it and goes into the living room and looks at the thermostat. He takes off his coat and is hanging it up when Sam comes out of his room.
“She’s over at her brother’s,” Sam says. “She said not to wait for her for dinner.”
“Is there anything to eat, then?” Charles says.
“I don’t know. I haven’t looked. I was taking a nap.”
“It was a gray day,” Charles says. “Maybe more snow. It’s getting colder.”
He goes out to the kitchen. There is a box of dried litchi nuts next to a bottle of wine. There’s isn’t much in the cabinets.
“We ought to go out for dinner,” Charles says. “I don’t have any money,” Sam says.
“I’ve got money. Wait a minute—I don’t. I mean, I’ve got six bucks.”
“We can get a pizza,” Sam says. “That’s right. Okay. Do you want to go now?”
“I want to talk to you.”
“What?” Charles says.
“You remember when you closed the bedroom door?”
“Yeah. You want me to leave it open in the future?”
“There won’t be any ‘in the future.’ That’s what I want to talk to you about.”
“Your cock fell off?”
When Charles was a child he read an article about leprosy. He thought that his limbs were going to fall off, go clunk on the sidewalk. He was very young when he read it, and didn’t understand that it was a gradual thing. For a long time he went around expecting to hear a clunk. What a twisted childhood.
“She came into my bedroom that night and wanted to know if I thought it was okay to wake you up and lay you, I said I thought it was a good idea to let you sleep. So she jumped me.”
Charles laughs. “Whisper women’s liberation propaganda in your ear?”
“Seriously.”
“Oh, I believe you.”
“And I wanted to tell you, because I didn’t want you thinking, I mean, I want to apologize if I did you out of anything you wanted.”
“I don’t find her attractive,” Charles says.
“I don’t either. She and I don’t talk about it.”
“Hell, there goes a treasured illusion: that you and Pamela Smith were shaking ass all over my house while I worked.”
“Nah,” Sam says.
“Did you go to get signed up for your money?” Charles asks.
“Yeah, I went down this morning. They suggested jobs I could look for and I said, ‘uh-huh.’ I hinted around that I wanted to work in something related to religion—as a janitor in a church or something like that.”
“What did you do that for?”
“Just off the top of my head.”
“So what did they say?”
“That I can’t get a check for two weeks.”
“That’s nice of them. Do they let you starve for two weeks, or what?”
“I guess they figure I’ve got a lot salted away, making all that money selling jackets.” Sam holds open the door and they go out to Charles’s car.
“Good you headed for that one,” Sam says. “Mine gave out Died.”
“When you were driving?”
“Fortunately, no. Battery’s dead. It just wouldn’t turn over. I took the bus down to unemployment. That was really something. Everyone on the bus looked like a fat person in a sideshow. Except for the ones who were so old they looked like dried leaves.”
“I almost took a bus the other day and decided to walk instead,” Charles says.
“I’d say to avoid them if you can,” Sam says.
“I’m going to the bank tomorrow during lunch, so I’ll remember to bring you some cash. You can pay me back when they come through.”
“Thanks,” Sam says. “No wonder she says you’re so nice. You are nice.”
“You’re my only friend,” Charles says.
“You’re my only friend,” Sam says.
“That’s pathetic,” Charles says. “How did this happen?”
“I don’t know. I just stopped seeing people or they moved or something.”
“You used to have women falling all over you.”
“I did, for a while. I don’t think women like me any more.”
“They don’t like me, either. I think Betty might, but she’s giving up on me. I can tell.”
“They never give up once they’re interested.”
“Yeah, but you haven’t met Betty. She’s very, well, she’s a zombie. I don’t think she thinks about anything much.”
“Sounds like you’d do well to get her, then.”
“What do I want some dumb woman for?”
“To screw.”
“She’s fat.”
“Get her to lose weight. Once you get her you can start talking that up.”
“I wouldn’t know how to tell a woman to lose weight.”
“Find some way and tell her. Tell her now and wait a few weeks before you ask her out.”
“I don’t want to ask her out. I just have no motivation to do it.”
“I think Susan might have something. That the two of us are depressed all the time. Too bad she didn’t tell us what to do about it.”
“She’s nineteen. You’re going to listen to advice from a nineteen-year-old?”
“I don’t know,” Sam says. “Maybe we shouldn’t have cut her off.”
“Sam, she reads those paperbacks about people who relive their childhood by screaming and things like that and she thinks we should try it”
“Screaming?”
“I mean, just as an example. She thinks we should do something that a book tells us to do, something that’s supposedly made everybody else happy.”
“Well, what book would you read?” Sam says.
“I wouldn’t read any book, and you wouldn’t either if you were in your right mind.”
“We don’t encourage each other. You should urge me to try something,” Sam says.
“It’s 1975, Sam. I urge you to try pizza with green pepper, the way I like it.”
“Hell, you’re paying,” Sam says.
“You really are sounding defeated. I thought you couldn’t stand anything but cheese.”
“I’m not complaining. You’re paying.”
“Shit,” Charles says. “I’m going to order it half plain, half with peppers.”
They drive in silence to the restaurant: a small brick pizza house with the Parthenon jutting out over the front door. It’s a good, cheap place. A large pizza is $3.80. If this were a food store, Charles would be in a panic with only six dollars.
“Maybe I should try green pepper,” Sam says. “I should try again and see if I like something like that”
“Why would you try it? You don’t like it. You can have it plain.”
“I want to try green pepper.”
“Jesus. What am I arguing for? What do I care how you eat your pizza?”
“You’re mad at me,” Sam says.
“Well, what am I supposed to think when you suggest we let Susan straighten us out? She’s my kid sister. She’s so straight it’s pathetic. She doesn’t even drink.”
“She screws,” Sam says.
“That’s straight,” Charles says. “Screwing a doctor is straight.”
“Keep your voice down.” The waitress stands at their booth.
“A large pizza, half green pepper, the other half mozzarella only, and a Coke for me. What do you want?”
“A draft,” Sam says.
“One Coke and one draft,” the waitress says. “Thank you.”
“You missed my point before,” Sam says. “I meant that she seems normal and happy. She must know something.”
“She’s nineteen. She doesn’t know shit. You could be happy too, Sam, if you were nineteen in 1975 and you hadn’t had your eyes opened in the sixties.”
“She was alive then.”
“In 1968 she was twelve years old.”
“Oh,” Sam says, “1968 was the best year. That’s the time I was the happiest.”
“In 1965 when ‘Satisfaction’ came out she was nine.”
“Okay, okay,” Sam says.
“The goddamn sixties,” Charles says. “How’d we ever end up like this?”
The waitress brings a Coke and a draft.
“Who gets the Coke again?” she says.
“The clergyman,” Sam says, pointing.
“He stutters,” Charles says. “She wrote me a note explaining that he speaks so haltingly sometimes because he’s swallowing the stutter.”
“C-c-c-clever,” Sam says.
Charles laughs. Even when Sam is down, he is still funny. Sam even used to make his mother laugh. His mother used to laugh at jokes. “It’s not dirty, is it?” she used to ask Sam. “Filthy,” he’d say, and start in. It was never dirty. His mother used to like Sam. Now she never asks about him. Now she doesn’t know what’s going on. She’s her own joke.