by Ann Beattie
In the aftermath of the storm, Frank had gotten his truck going. He and Max had come to pick me up. The wild, destructive, but always beautiful storm caused no damage to the business or to any of our houses, but it had provoked a new sense of solidarity. We had all been invited to Barbara’s for the first time in as long as I could remember. I let Frank come for me without telling him that I was the only one he’d be picking up. Bob had been back for one day—a day spent checking things at the greenhouse with Frank and then crawling into bed, exhausted, in his new sweatshirt—but then he’d returned to Drake’s. He’d gotten embroiled in some fight Bonnie and Drake were having; he was going for Louise’s sake, he said, and for the first time since I’d found myself thinking that things were not good between us, I wondered if his brother and sister-in-law were a smoke screen for his seeing someone else.
Frank was surprised Bob had returned to Boston. He also seemed to think that Bob was taking everything in Drake’s household too much to heart. He told me—as if I didn’t know—that Bob had a wife of his own, and a business he was responsible for, and that it might be a good idea to grow up and start functioning again in that context. “He bought a ticket for this ride” was the way Frank put it. I looked at him behind the wheel: he didn’t know anything, I decided; he was as perplexed—maybe more perplexed—than I was. Frank’s idea of Bob’s retreat as a display of immaturity was worth thinking about. Maybe it wasn’t anything personal: maybe this was a form of adolescent rebellion. He’d been made to be responsible all his life.
“I built six snowmen and dressed them in two tons of clothes,” Max informed me as we passed a snow fort on someone’s front lawn. “This whole blizzard was completely cool.”
Max had no idea he’d made a pun. I could see from the flicker of Frank’s smile, though, that he was amused.
“If your uncle Bob was here, maybe he could have contributed his new shirt that says I SURVIVED THE BLIZZARD OF ’78.”
Sand on the roads had turned the white snow to grainy brown slush. Frank was driving carefully, with both hands on the wheel. “Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house we go,” he sang, drowning out the Bee Gees on the radio, singing, “How Deep Is Your Love?”
“You promise that if I go I can see Fantasy Island?” Max said.
“You can get up from the table without even asking permission, and you can race into the TV room and take control of the set, no matter who else might be there. I’ll come and fight for you if necessary,” Frank said.
“Yeah, sure you will,” Max said.
“Janey is trying to teach Max and Pete manners,” Frank said to me. “Notice that in overstating the opposite of what is expected, I am trying to tactfully instill the proper virtues that Janey so applauds.”
“You said I could see it,” Max said. His father’s outburst had confused him.
“You will see it if I personally have to slay a dragon breathing fire in front of the set.” Frank picked up a bottle of Budweiser that was wedged between his seat and the emergency brake. “Sip?” Frank said to me.
“No thanks,” I said.
“Mom wouldn’t like it if she knew you were drinking in the truck,” Max said.
“Your mom thinks Fantasy Island is dumb,” Frank said. “So that goes to show that Mom doesn’t know everything.”
When we got to Barbara’s house, Frank hopped out and opened the passenger door. Max pushed past me and ran toward the house. Frank said to me: “Why he’s got such a hard-on for that midget is beyond me.” He pushed his bottle into the snow. “When it melts, Dowell can complain about how much this neighborhood has declined,” Frank said. “Jesus: Barbara and Dowell. Do you think they do it?”
I put my hand over my face, not wanting to think about it.
“I can envision it better between Ricardo Montalban and pipsqueak, there. Toto, or whatever the hell he’s called.”
Inside, a fire was going. Janey had come directly from work. She’d been at the hospital, where they’d set up a makeshift day-care center during the storm. Joanna was sleeping on the sofa. “Hi, honey,” Janey said to Frank.
“Max gets to watch Fantasy Island. He does, he does!” Frank said, going toward his wife’s open arms.
Max had run into the kitchen without stopping to say hello to his mother. There was some chance, though, that he’d been moving so fast, he hadn’t even seen her. Pete imitated his mother’s behavior and ran to hug me around the knees. Then I hugged Janey. She said: “Sandra and Marie are coming, and she’s bringing her new beau. Can you believe it?”
“I want beer!” Frank said, still imitating Max, as he walked toward the kitchen. “I want beer and TV, and I want to do anything I want to do always!”
Janey rolled her eyes as he disappeared. “Barbara had some near disaster with string beans,” she said. “She told me my help wasn’t needed, and I’m taking her at her word.”
I sat with her, in front of the fire. Pete had also run off to the kitchen. “Sandra called us last night to inform us that we were expected to be on best behavior with the beau,” Janey said. “I guess she meant she didn’t want any bedpan stories from me.”
“Who is he?” I said.
“Where’s Bob?” she said.
“He’s around so seldom, it even takes a while to do a double-take, doesn’t it?” I said. “Bob’s become the constant companion of Drake and Bonnie, as far as I know. There’s one compelling reason after another why he has to rush to Cambridge at every opportunity.”
She looked at me. “What do you make of it?”
“When I’ve been snowed in for a while and I’m paranoid, or when I’m rational?”
The question hung there. In the fireplace, a glowing ember split in two, sending sparks up the chimney. The airplane, I thought instantly. I thought as little as possible about the airplane. Years ago, I had forced the image of the plane, burning, plunging into the water, from my mind. Elizabeth had bought a book about how to banish thoughts. It sometimes worked, which I had been very grateful for when I was young. The book advised that in place of allowing something unpleasant or anxiety provoking to take hold, you train yourself to immediately substitute another song, or place, or image. If you didn’t want to see a dead seagull, you moved your eyes to the waves; if you did not want to see a plume of fire, you looked at the blue sky above it.
I said to Janey: “I wonder if I find it hard to connect with anybody because I always think I have to look to the next thing.”
“What?” she said.
“Because of the plane crash, Janey. Because back then, when I couldn’t get the image of the burning plane out of my mind, I trained myself to look beyond things, and around things. You can condition yourself to shift your focus. But lately I’ve been thinking that when you’re never directly seeing what’s upsetting, the big shadow of that thing spreads over everything. It’s likely to black out everything, eventually.”
“What got you thinking about that?” she said. “Feeling helpless, because you were snowed in?”
She was talking to me! Even if she was playing armchair shrink, Janey had heard what I’d said. Why was it, then, that I couldn’t answer her—that I couldn’t hazard a guess, or say something else, almost anything else, to keep talking about the crash?
She was looking at me intently. As if one question hadn’t already gone unanswered, she said, “You think Bob has a girlfriend?”
The front door opened and Sandra walked in, holding Marie. The man who had pushed the door open entered quickly, stopping at the edge of the large mat inside the door and removing his boots. He was tall and thin, a blond man in a camel’s hair coat. He seemed to take in everything all at once. His gaze was so riveting I could almost believe he saw the burning plane in the rectangle of the fireplace. Janey jumped up to greet them. The noise awakened Joanna, who started to cry. I went to Joanna. Janey went up to Sandra and her friend. She was trying to take their coats, to say hello to Marie, who had mashed her face into her mother
’s coat, to assure the man that the little snow his boots had tracked onto the mat was nothing to worry about. “I’m Janey Warner,” I heard her say. Then something about snow, and the kitchen. People were already coming out of the kitchen. Marie began to cry. Still in her hat and coat, she turned her head sideways and screamed out a long protest when Barbara reached for her. When the man reached for her, she slapped his hand. This provoked a stern rebuke from her mother, who put her on the floor with a quick thump. Marie looked around quickly, then ran upstairs, taking them two at a time.
“How do you do?” the man said to Barbara, looking nervously after Marie. “I’m Jasper Cismont.”
“How do you do?” Barbara said. “Oh, this snowstorm has gone on so long it’s put everyone’s nerves on edge. Won’t you let Janey have your coats, and she can put them—Janey, dear, can you just put them on the sofa in the TV room?”
Frank switched his beer bottle to his left hand and shook Jasper Cismont’s hand with his right. I came into the hallway, carrying the quieted Joanna. She was wet; she wouldn’t be quiet long.
“Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m Jean.”
Everyone was clustered around the newcomers, except Dowell, who had stayed in the kitchen. “Dowell!” Barbara called over her shoulder, but his response was barely audible. He did not appear. “My fiancé is basting the lamb,” Barbara said. Her formal tone, for some reason, struck me as the funniest thing I had ever heard. Clutching Joanna, I made a run for the TV room, and Janey. “ ‘My fiancé is basting the lamb,’ ” I repeated to Janey, handing her her wet child, and then threw myself on the coats and buried my face in their scratchy, woolly coldness, laughing.
“Shhh!” Janey said. “She’ll hear you.” She wiggled her finger around inside the baby’s diaper. “Ugh,” Janey said, extracting her finger. “Here—give me the changing bag. Do something useful.”
I stood up and made my eyes bug-eyed, like Barbara’s, imitating the way she stood with her hands crossed.
Janey shook her head and squatted on the floor, laying Joanna out. “Be useful. Unzip the bag, will you?” she said.
“I don’t think I’m a very useful person,” I said. “I mean, think about it: I work a few days a week. My husband avoids me. I don’t cook anymore; I run frozen macaroni in the oven—”
“Ugh,” Janey said, folding the diaper and putting it in another compartment of the changing bag. “Ugh, yuck, phew,” she said. “I need a vacation. If we’re not moving to Florida, I really need a vacation.” She sat on the rug. Joanna raised her legs over her head and smiled.
“ ‘Oh, my goodness,’ ” I said, again imitating Barbara.
Janey finally started to laugh. Frank came in while we were sitting on the floor laughing. He had a beer can in his hand.
“What’s funny?” he said.
Barbara came into the room. She was carrying a scarf, which she placed on top of the pile of coats. “What are you doing in here?” she said. “My gracious, come into the living room where the fire is so nice. Sandra’s gentleman friend is building the fire again. Do go in there while I see what’s keeping Dowell.”
Frank was helping Janey up. Then he reached down for me. We stood there in front of Frank as if we were dolls he’d dressed and put on a shelf. He bent over again, and scooped up Joanna. “Hello, little person who makes baby poo,” he said. He headed off with her toward the kitchen.
“I can’t face it,” Janey said. She sounded utterly exhausted.
“Sandra’s boyfriend looks too serious,” I said. “What are we going to talk to him about?”
We talked to him about computers. Actually, since we knew nothing about them, we listened, and from time to time asked a question. Sandra hung on his every word. She was drinking her favorite drink, a mixture of club soda and orange juice. She sat sideways, looking not at Janey, in the chair, or at me, on the sofa, playing with the repossessed Joanna. Dowell had never come out of the kitchen. Frank had retreated. Bob was smart enough not to have been available for this evening in the first place.
“By the way,” Janey said to me, when Jasper left to get Sandra another orange juice and club soda, “that woman Pete was talking about. You know the woman I told him couldn’t have a man’s name?”
“There are names like Sydney that could be either a man’s or a woman’s name,” Sandra said.
Janey looked at her briefly, then decided to ignore the comment. She said: “Well, it turns out this woman is Southern, and that her name is Staley Hinton. So he was almost right when he said she was named Stanley. You’ve got to be careful when you correct children.” Janey was prattling on because she didn’t know what to say to Sandra. “Sandra,” Janey said, suddenly, “don’t you want to know what we think of him?”
Sandra looked shocked. “Actually, I don’t,” she said.
“Is it serious?” Janey persisted.
“Janey, really,” Sandra said. She looked at the doorway, nervously. “We haven’t slept together yet,” Sandra finally said.
“Do it tonight!” Janey said.
“Well, I don’t know that that’s solved all your problems, Janey,” Sandra said.
“Solved all what problems?”
“Quite frankly, it concerns me that you’ve had a third child,” Sandra said. “I worry that they won’t get the attention they need if you have so many, and if you continue to work.”
“Who are you to talk to me like that?” Janey said.
“If you don’t mind overstepping your bounds, I don’t mind—”
Jasper came into the room. “Do you know that great line from Richard Brautigan?” he said. “ ‘There is some of each of us in the fire.’ ” He handed Sandra her drink. He was drinking a glass of wine.
“I think Brautigan meant that as a joke,” Janey said.
“You’ve read Brautigan?” Sandra said.
“Oh, stop trying to put me in my place,” Janey said. “I have three great kids, and you have one daughter who’s bounded upstairs like a dog.”
“Bitch!” Sandra said.
It was another half hour before we were called to the table. When we did sit down, I felt sure this was one of the last times we would gather this way—that the storm had brought us together, but that it was not really uniting us. So much of what went on seemed wearisome. Dowell didn’t know what to say to anyone, and Barbara, I finally realized, would have been just as nervous whoever sat at her table. She was accustomed to her nervousness; she fretted about whether Dowell was enjoying his food, worried that the candle wax would drip on the tablecloth. I had never had an adolescent rebellion—I knew better; I had seen what a huge task my aunt had taken on when she took me into her home, and I knew I should be grateful—but sitting at the table that night, I felt peevish and petulant. I was mad at Bob for not being there. I thought Frank was taciturn, and that he rarely did his share to make conversation. Frank was fine one-on-one, but he hated gatherings and let everyone know he was present, but absent. I had given up trying to like Sandra. She was uptight and unpleasant, and I distrusted her boyfriend simply because he liked her. Or maybe he wasn’t that wild about her, if they hadn’t even slept together. I found myself thinking mean things about them, and I also felt mean-spirited toward Marie, who seemed to exist to cause problems, and toward Louise, too, because she had someone to mother her now, yet she’d still taken Bob away from me. I saw the family through the haze of my disappointment. I had glommed on to them because of what they represented, but as time went by it would have been fine with me if all of them except Janey, and maybe Frank, had disappeared, the baby crying and the boys pummelling each other in front of the TV, Marie no doubt hiding under a bed upstairs, as she often did, turned into a big dustball. I was pouting. But so were the others: Frank, going through the motions; Bob, spending his time with the people he chose, rather than suffering through evenings with his family; Sandra, wanting approval, but trying to get it by testing—by being absolutely unlovable. They were all as much cases of arreste
d development as I was. I looked around, glowering at them. Barbara was talking about a book she’d just finished: Angels: God’s Secret Agents, by Billy Graham. Dowell alternated between polite attention and slowly deepening frowns. Frank drank. Sandra chimed in, changing the subject from angels to (surprise) herself. In the kitchen, the boys were at war. In the background, from the TV in the kitchen, Herve Villechaize screamed over and over again that a plane was coming. The dustball sulked upstairs. Barbara wondered aloud whether it might not be true that each of us had his or her own guardian angel.
Dara’s performance as Grace Aldridge happened earlier than expected, at a different theater. Edward Quill resigned from the theater in Portsmouth over a dispute with the board, and in late April opened a theater in a converted barn in Exeter. As master of ceremonies of his own show, he was obviously in seventh heaven. He wore long capes lined in bright colors never found in nature, and glasses with enormous tortoiseshell frames. He wore black cowboy boots and rings on many fingers. He had been well provided for in Grace Aldridge’s will, it turned out. She had inherited stock from her first marriage—stock she might have cashed in and led a different life, though apparently she’d enjoyed being a beetle riding downstream on a leaf (Dara’s image; not mine).
I went alone to opening night. I had gotten my hair done, and wore a new wool-crepe navy-blue dress that cost more than anything I had ever bought. I was being brave. I was the Woman Rejected. In the first big fight Bob and I had after the blizzard, he announced that he wanted children, and complained that I had taken the occasion of my part-time job to distance myself from the family. It didn’t matter that he also had distanced himself. He, at least, had not bought what he called “a flower” from Snell’s greenhouse. He, unlike me, grieved for his dead grandmother—he had just that day placed flowers on her grave and there were no other flowers there and was commuting regularly to Boston, trying to help Louise overcome her anxiety. As he presented himself, he was so chivalrous he might as well have been doing those things while riding a white horse. Perhaps dramatically wearing a long, Edward Quillish cape lined in green velvet, charging forward with his sword (or snow shovel?). He spoke of the maturity that was a necessary prerequisite for parenthood. Of the need to be vigilant about the path one chose in life. It seemed I was a monster not only for not wanting children but for never having suggested we get a dog. In the second fight, he most certainly did not want to find himself married to a wife who was a reluctant mother, and he wondered whether my having suggested we go together to the SPCA, if it was so important to him, was not an indication of where my heart was truly inclined: toward four paws instead of his projected four children.