My Life, Starring Dara Falcon

by Ann Beattie

  I forced myself to sit down and finish typing Mrs. Aldridge’s manuscript. In a funny way, she did have a sense of closure, even though the book clearly concluded nothing. In the last paragraph, she quoted Mr. Aldridge: I like fishing and I like playing the horses, because to me that’s what life is: a game. If you see something for what it is, you might as well announce it, because there’s a lot of billboards out there and there are a lot of TV commercials out there, and when an individual realizes something not a propos of them, it has got to be a good day for humankind. So I shout it from the roof: life is a game.

  With that, Mrs. Aldridge’s book ended. Having it typed had been futile; whatever she meant to accomplish, she had accomplished nothing, and spending my time getting it in shape had been a waste of my time: it would never be published; the handwritten copy would have sufficed. What was to be learned by one random person’s prosaic conclusion that life is a game? I pulled the last page out of the typewriter and added it to the pile. Then I turned the manuscript over and held it. At 172 pages, it was weighty. Feeling depressed by her life with the three husbands, I put the manuscript back on the table and got the orange binder she had left with me weeks before. I carefully centered the manuscript, clamped it in, and, as the last remaining task, put in a fresh sheet of paper and typed: My Life, by Grace Aldridge. Then I cut out the little rectangle of title and author’s name, and slipped it in the pocket on the front of the binder. She had already paid me eighty dollars. Now she owed me eighty-three dollars and forty cents more. I felt uncomfortable about taking her money, but I had kept my part of the bargain. If she had wanted her book typed, there was nothing wrong with having typed it.

  I found her number and dialed. A woman’s voice answered the phone, very tentatively. “Mrs. Aldridge?” I said, though I knew it was not.

  “No” was the quiet reply. “Please say who is calling.”

  “This is Jean Warner,” I said.

  “Jean Warner?” the voice repeated. There was muffled sound. “Jean Warner,” I heard through the rustling.

  “Hello?” A man came on the phone.

  “Hello,” I said. “This is Jean Warner. I’m calling for Mrs. Aldridge.”

  “Are you a close friend?”

  “I’ve done some typing for her,” I said.

  “Oh, the lady who’s typed her book,” the man said. “Cora, it’s the lady who has Grace’s book.” He put his hand over the phone. There was a longer muffled conversation. Then the man said, “This is indeed a very sad day. Grace has passed away.”

  “She died?”

  “She fell down the stairs several days ago and broke her ribs. Before we knew it, she had pneumonia and died, right there in the hospital. This is her cousin Albert. I don’t know if I figure in her book or not. This might be like my speaking to a psychic who already knows everything about me.” When I was silent, he said, “Miss Warner, may I come and get Grace’s book at your convenience?”

  “Uh, certainly, Mr.—”

  “Albert Dane,” he said. “Like the dog.” There was a pause, while I tried to think what to say. “The Great Dane,” he said. “Of course some say the same of Hamlet!”

  When I didn’t laugh, he laughed himself. He continued: “We have just arrived from Athens, Ohio. Here we thought everything was going so well for Grace, and then…Mr. Quill is here with us,” he added. “Mr. Quill,” he said, somewhat louder. I waited, thinking he was calling someone to the phone. “Her intended,” he said.

  “I didn’t know she was engaged.”

  “She was,” her cousin said.

  “I see. Well. She and I didn’t know each other all that well. I was just typing the manuscript for her.”

  Dara’s bleak joke had been right—or almost. She really had been about to marry again. Perhaps it was Dara who was psychic.

  “If you would be so kind as to give me directions to your office—”

  “I work at home,” I said. I gave him the address. He read back what he had written. Again, there was a muffled discussion, and then he asked if he could put his wife back on. In her tiny voice, his wife slowly read my address. I told her it was written down correctly. She began to cry and handed the phone back to Albert.

  “I’ll be over as soon as I can, Miss Warner,” he said. “Thank you very much.”

  I nodded, but couldn’t bring forth one more word. It was just too strange: all of it.

  I pulled open cabinet doors in the kitchen, exploring the possibility of eating something else, but I quickly realized that it was just nervous energy that was making me want to eat again. What was the correct thing to do about the book? I had little choice now, since I said I’d give it to them, but what if she had not wanted them to see it? Unlikely, if she told them she’d written it, I supposed. But what if they expected something good? It seemed so sad to be giving them her pointless book. Somehow, I thought, I should have done something to energize the book. I should have functioned more like a real editor, suggesting things. If I’d been at all serious, that is what I would have done. When I was a teenager, my aunt had said over and over that my passivity would be a lifelong habit, and a lifelong curse for everyone else. Had she been right after all? Were the things I did only things to fill time, easily done things that might bring me compliments? If something was difficult, didn’t I shy away from it? But I had contacted Tom Van Sant. I had decided to start a business.

  An hour passed. I dusted, waiting. Then I vacuumed the living room rug. Then I realized that Albert would be in the house for only a few minutes, and that whatever he thought about my housekeeping was unimportant. It was almost half an hour longer before the cab pulled up outside the house. The driver was Chris’s son, who was home from Bard for the summer. He also delivered pizzas at night. He had been among the 1,400 protesters jailed in the Seabrook protest. Chris had been furious at his son for taking part in it. I waved from the doorway, and Derek waved back. Two men were coming up the walkway, the older man’s expression downcast as he walked very slowly in orthopedic shoes, holding a younger man’s arm by the elbow.

  “Miss Warner, how do you do?” the older man said. I assumed he was Cousin Albert. He wore a canvas camouflage hat, held in place with a chin strap. The younger man looked about fifty-five. Dark circles spread under his eyes, and there was a streak of rash under one eye. His eyes were red; I could tell he had been crying.

  “Pleased to meet you. Your help with such an important project meant a lot to Grace,” the red-eyed man said. There it was: a compliment for a job I had only done the minimum on. I felt ashamed, but then almost immediately angry at myself for having expectations that were too high. There was every chance I had responded in terms of someone else’s expectations—my aunt’s. The man interrupted my ruminations when he introduced himself: “Edward Quill.”

  “Like the pen,” Albert said.

  “Please come in,” I said. “I’m very sorry. I mean, I’m just shocked to hear…”

  “I thought falling down the steps was the worst of it, but only a few days later she was dead of pneumonia,” Albert said. “I thought on the way over here, I wonder if they even publish posthumous books.”

  “Of course they do,” Edward said. His arm remained crooked for Albert to hold.

  “They do?” Albert said, looking at me for confirmation.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Fortunately, we have a photo for the book,” Albert said. “She went to the photographer’s studio and had her engagement picture taken.” He squeezed Edward Quill’s arm. Edward Quill nodded, but said nothing. He looked down at the cracked walkway. A dandelion was growing out of a small hole.

  “We mustn’t keep you,” Edward Quill said. “We do thank you very much, though, for all your work. For Grace, you made a dream come true.”

  They followed me into the house. I walked to the kitchen and took the orange folder off the table. I held it out. Edward reached for the folder, then drew back, as if it were hot.

  “Thank you,” Albert sa
id, taking the manuscript. “This is such a great shock to Cora and me. Of course, it’s also a devastating shock to Mr. Quill.” He cleared his throat. “Do we owe you any money?” Albert said.

  In the back of my mind, my desire for payment had won out over any guilt I’d been feeling. I had been hoping one of them would bring up the subject, instead of me.

  “Eighty-three dollars and forty cents,” I heard myself say. I was instantly ashamed that the sum was on the tip of my tongue. And also that I hadn’t rounded it off.

  “That much? I’m afraid I didn’t bring my checkbook,” Albert said.

  Edward reached for his wallet.

  “Please,” I said. “You can send me the money later.”

  Edward extracted his wallet and pulled four twenty-dollar bills from it. “Might that suffice?” he said.

  “I’d ask you to stay for coffee, but I—”

  “Our cabdriver said he knew you,” Albert said. “It means a lot to me that Grace lived in a friendly community.”

  “A pleasure to meet you,” Edward said. One arm remained crooked; his firm hand clamped on Albert’s frail one.

  At the doorway I waved again to Derek, but I didn’t catch his eye. He was playing rock on the radio. I watched as the two men got into the backseat. Edward, helping Albert into the cab, certainly did not look like someone who thought life was a game. He was younger than Grace Aldridge by at least fifteen years, I guessed, and probably would have been able to take good care of her. The music died down; Derek leaned forward, smiled slyly, and gave me the peace sign as the men settled themselves. Squealing the tires, he pulled away so quickly it jolted all of them back against their seats.

  I called Dara. “This has really been a peculiar day,” I said. “Can I invite myself over for a drink before I go grieve with the family?”

  “Mi casa es su casa,” Dara said.

  Just before I left, I decided to take the carbon copy of the book with me to Dara and Tom’s. I had gotten used to the ride; I could almost do it in my sleep. When I got there, and Dara embraced me, and Tom reached into an ice bucket for the champagne, I felt saved. Disproportionately relieved. Being with them seemed like the perfect antidote. It was exactly where I wanted to be, and as we drank, we abandoned any pretense of respect for the dead and began laughing at Grace Aldridge’s book: Dara flipped through to the second husband’s opinions on the garden and read aloud; Tom assumed crazed expressions and shook his finger.

  “Can you imagine being married to that silly fucker?” Tom said.

  “Many women choose unwisely,” Dara said.

  “Oh, they do? How would you know about that?”

  “Tom, I don’t know how to tell you this: on occasion, in my distant past, say, I have chosen men—boys—because of such attributes as curly hair, and a beautiful complexion. I, Dara Falcon, in my youth, chose on the basis of beauty.”

  “She had a crush on somebody named Steven Kamanski, who had dark curly hair and beautiful skin—”

  Dara interrupted: “And he had hair all over his back and zits on his shoulders!”

  The image was horrible. Also, we were all getting a little drunk.

  “Whom did you love for all the wrong reasons?” Dara said to me.

  “I didn’t have a boyfriend in high school. I was a real loner.”

  “After high school, then,” Dara said.

  “Look at Jean,” Tom said. “Does Jean look like the kind of person who would ever make a big mistake?”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “You look—”

  “She looks stable,” Dara said. “She looks, and is, wonderfully stable.”

  I knew they were kidding, but they were making me uneasy. It made me uncomfortable to remember how little I had fit in in high school; in college I had gone on too few dates, and I had gotten together with Bob almost immediately.

  “Let me see,” Dara said, taking the manuscript from Tom and perusing it. “Here we have the revelation that life is a game. Do we all feel that life is a game? Do we perhaps feel it, but also feel reluctant to say it, because life is supposed to be so serious?”

  “It’s never serious when you’re around,” Tom said to Dara. “You’re so lighthearted and easygoing.”

  The idea was so ridiculous that I snorted. Dara’s eyes darted to me, and I took the blame: I took the blame for Tom’s ostensibly harmless joke. But when she spoke, she spoke to Tom, not me. “You don’t know what joy I’m capable of, my love. When I don’t have to grapple with other people’s insecurities, and other people’s problems, I can be quite lighthearted.”

  Tom said nothing and poured more champagne into his glass. He did not offer any to Dara, or to me. She picked up the bottle and poured: first into her glass, then into mine.

  “Where did you get these lovely glasses?” Dara said.

  “You know where I got them. I got them from my mother,” he said.

  “A mother who had a dozen champagne glasses,” Dara said. “Not everyone had a mother who was so lighthearted and easygoing that she had a dozen etched-crystal champagne glasses.”

  “Since she didn’t break any, perhaps they were unused,” Tom said.

  “Oh God, when I think of the things I’ve left behind,” Dara said. I knew that she knew she had been criticized for her cattiness about Tom’s mother, and that she was intentionally ignoring his put-down. She rushed on with her conversation: “A chifforobe in Los Angeles and a black dog in Santa Monica,” Dara said. “If I had a guitar, I could sing about all the things I’ve left behind. Maybe I had champagne glasses myself, and I’ve long since forgotten them.”

  “Dara,” Tom said, “I didn’t know you ever had a dog. I didn’t know you ever had a chifforobe, either, but that’s just a thing. A dog is a dog. What happened to your dog?”

  “I only had it for a week,” Dara said, matching Tom’s seriousness with her tone. “It was a mutt, with a little white comet streaking across one ear. I kept it for a friend of mine who was in acting class with me. Then he got an apartment that would let him have his dog. Exit the dog.”

  “Did you buy the dog dog food?” Tom said. “Take it on walks? Take perfect care of it?”

  Dara studied him for a few seconds. Perhaps she saw, as I did, that he was tipsy. “Yes, darling,” she said evenly. “You’d be amazed at the way I can extend myself. There are depths you can’t even imagine.”

  “Could I imagine things better if I’d been in acting classes?”

  Dara cocked her head to the side. “I don’t know that that helps a person to imagine,” she said. “I think what it helps with is acting.”

  At six-thirty, being very careful not to slur my words, I called Frank and Janey’s and told Frank I wasn’t feeling well. It was true, in a way: the tension between Tom and Dara had not entirely dissipated even as we prepared dinner and opened another bottle of champagne, though we’d laughed together again as Tom read us parts of the manuscript.

  Frank asked if there was anything he could do. “Yeah. Don’t tell them it’s a lie,” I said. There was a slight pause. “Gotcha,” he said. We hung up. That left only the problem of the unwritten note to Bob, but as it turned out, although I’d forgotten to tell him where I was, he didn’t get back until dawn.

  Bonnie Collingwood came to Grandma’s funeral with Drake. She was young—my age, I guessed—and eager to make a good impression. I watched her making the rounds, saying solicitous things to Barbara and to the rest of the family. It wasn’t the easiest of circumstances, being introduced to her boyfriend’s family at a funeral. Drake, who was taciturn when he had to be with the family, was little help to her. I found myself overcompensating for his silence and for the family’s distractedness by talking animatedly to her. What I knew that she didn’t know, of course, was that in a fishing tackle box in our house there was an engagement ring she either would or would not get—and that how she acted at the funeral might contribute to Drake’s decision. I didn’t silently wish her luck because I wasn’t
sure whether joining the family was to anyone’s benefit. Since his kayaking trip—since the night we’d had the fight about the ring, actually—Bob had been remote and withdrawn, and Frank obviously had secrets. Drake was a malcontent who managed to convey, through his imperiousness, that he disdained the family’s ceremonies: the birthdays; the funerals—you name it, and Drake looked down on it.

  Marie, wearing a seersucker dress and a big pink bow in her hair, clung to her mother, making herself apparent with everything she did: taking huge steps when she walked; humming; dancing in front of people. She was trying to obliterate Louise by constantly drawing as much attention to herself as possible. Frail little Louise was no match for her; she held her father’s hand and looked down, as if in a trance. She was obviously hoping the big, pink-bowed whirling dervish would not spin her way.

  Dowell Churnin and Tom Van Sant came to the funeral and stood side by side. It was obviously meant as a gesture of goodwill, but Frank whispered to Bob: “Vultures.” There was much whispering during the funeral: Janey consoling Barbara; Marie, needing desperately to talk to her mother every thirty seconds; Bob, first whispering to me to make sure I had left the back door unlocked for the caterers, then asking me to be friendly to Bonnie, as if I hadn’t already extended myself. The reception afterward was to be at our house; people from Corolli’s were bringing pastries and setting up large coffee servers; they were in the house as we stood by the grave.

  There were about thirty people standing around us: old ladies who had been Grandma’s friends; acquaintances of Barbara’s that I hardly knew. Tom caught my eye and gave me a small, sad smile. This was only the second funeral I had ever attended. The other had been when a friend of my aunt’s died of liver disease. I was ten or eleven then, and I barely remembered what had happened, except that someone—the woman’s husband?—had walked in widening circles around the casket as the minister read a prayer, and then eventually that person had been gone; I had stopped looking at him when my aunt turned my head back toward the minister and the casket the second time, and when I had snuck a look a few minutes later, the man was gone. It had made me afraid of vanishing, too. I was too old to have had such an irrational fear, but something in the way he circled had seemed magnetic, as if I might be pulled into his orbit, farther and farther away from the dead woman, nearer to…what? The park that bordered one side of the wide cemetery, or into some car, away from the place. And it hadn’t seemed entirely frightening, finally: the more I believed it might be true, the more tempting it had been to think of myself vanishing.