Secrets & Surprises

by Ann Beattie

  He started to walk ahead of her. She hurried to catch up. She wanted to call after him, “I would have gone!” She was panting.

  “Listen,” he said, “I’m like Gus. I don’t want to hear it.”

  “You mean we can’t even talk about this? You don’t think that I’m entitled to hear about it?”

  “I love you and I don’t love Myra,” he said.

  “Where is she?” she said.

  “In El Paso.”

  “If you don’t love her, why aren’t you divorced?”

  “You think that everybody who doesn’t love his wife gets divorced? I’m not the only one who doesn’t do the logical thing, you know. You get nightmares from living in this sewer, and you won’t get out of it.”

  “It’s different,” she said. What was he talking about?

  “Until I met you, I didn’t think about it. She was in El Paso, she was gone—period.”

  “Are you going to get a divorce?”

  “Are you going to marry me?”

  They were crossing Seventh Avenue. They both stopped still, halfway across the street, and were almost hit by a Checker cab. They hurried across, and on the other side of the street they stopped again. She looked at him, as surprised but as suddenly sure about something as he must have been the time he and his father had found the jewelry in the heart-shaped wooden box. She said no, she was not going to marry him.

  It dragged on for another month. During that time, unknown to her, he wrote the song that was going to launch his career. Months after he had left the city, she heard it on her AM radio one morning, and she knew that it was his song, even though he had never mentioned it to her. She leashed the dog and went out and walked to the record shop on Sixth Avenue—walking almost the same route they had walked the night she found out about his wife—and she went in, with the dog. Her face was so strange that the man behind the cash register allowed her to break the rule about dogs in the shop because he did not want another hassle that day. She found the group’s record album with the song on it, turned it over and saw his name, in small type. She stared at the title, replaced the record and went back outside, as hunched as if it were winter.

  During the month before he left, though, and before she ever heard the song, the two of them had sat on the roof of his building one night, arguing. They were having a Tom Collins because a musician who had been at his place the night before had brought his own mix and then left it behind. She had never had a Tom Collins. It tasted appropriately bitter, she thought. She held out the ring and the bracelet to him. He said that if she made him take them back, he would drop them over the railing. She believed him and put them back in her pocket. He said, and she agreed, that things had not been perfect between them even before she found out about his wife. Myra could play the guitar, and she could not; Myra loved to travel, and she was afraid to leave New York City. As she listened to what he said, she counted the posts—black iron and shaped like arrows—of the fence that wound around the roof. It was almost entirely dark, and she looked up to see if there were any stars. She yearned to be in the country, where she could always see them. She said she wanted him to borrow a car before he left so that they could ride out into the woods in New Jersey. Two nights later he picked her up at her apartment in a red Volvo, with Sam panting in the back, and they wound their way through the city and to the Lincoln Tunnel. Just as they were about to go under, another song began to play on the tape deck. It was Ringo Starr singing “Octopus’s Garden.” Jack laughed. “That’s a hell of a fine song to come on just before we enter the tunnel.” Inside the tunnel, the dog flattened himself on the back seat. “You want to keep Sam, don’t you?” he said. She was shocked because she had never even thought of losing Sam. “Of course I do,” she said, and unconsciously edged a little away from him. He had never said whose car it was. For no reason at all, she thought that the car must belong to a woman.

  “I love that syrupy chorus of ‘aaaaah’ Lennon and McCartney sing,” he said. “They really had a fine sense of humor.”

  “Is that a funny song?” she said. She had never thought about it.

  They were on Boulevard East, in Weehawken, and she was staring out the window at the lights across the water. He saw that she was looking, and drove slower.

  “This as good as stars for you?” he said.

  “It’s amazing.”

  “All yours,” he said, taking his hand off the wheel to swoop it through the air in mock graciousness.

  After he left she would remember that as one of the little digs he had gotten in—one of the less than nice things he had said. That night, though, impressed by the beauty of the city, she let it go by; in fact, she would have to work on herself later to reinterpret many of the things he had said as being nasty. That made it easier to deal with his absence. She would block out the memory of his pulling over and kissing her, of the two of them getting out of the car, and with Sam between them, walking.

  One of the last times she saw him, she went to his apartment on a night when five other people were there—people she had never met. His father had shipped him some 8mm home movies and a projector, and the people all sat on the floor, smoking grass and talking, laughing at the movies of children (Jack at his fourth birthday party; Jack in the Halloween parade at school; Jack at Easter, collecting eggs). One of the people on the floor said, “Hey, get that big dog out of the way,” and she glared at him, hating him for not liking the dog. What if his shadow had briefly darkened the screen? She felt angry enough to scream, angry enough to say that the dog had grown up in the apartment and had the right to walk around. Looking at the home movies, she tried to concentrate on Jack’s blunders: dropping an Easter egg, running down the hill after the egg, going so fast he stumbled into some blur, perhaps his mother’s arms. But what she mostly thought about was what a beautiful child he was, what a happy-looking little boy. There was no sense in her staying there and getting sentimental, so she made her excuses and left early. Outside, she saw the red Volvo, gleaming as though it had been newly painted. She was sure that it belonged to an Indian woman in a blue sari who had been there, sitting close to Jack. Sharon was glad that as she was leaving, Sam had raised his hackles and growled at one of the people there. She scolded him, but out on the street she patted him, secretly glad. Jack had not asked her again to come to California with him, and she told herself that she probably would not have changed her mind if he had. Tears began to well up in her eyes, and she told herself that she was crying because a cab wouldn’t stop for her when the driver saw that she had a dog. She ended up walking blocks and blocks back to her apartment that night; it made her more certain than ever that she loved the dog and that she did not love Jack.

  About the time she got the first postcard from Jack, things started to get a little bad with Sam. She was afraid that he might have distemper, so she took him to the veterinarian, waited her turn and told the doctor that the dog was growling at some people and she had no idea why. He assured her that there was nothing physically wrong with the dog, and blamed it on the heat. When another month passed and it was less hot, she visited the veterinarian again. “It’s the breeding,” he said, and sighed. “It’s a bad mix. A Weimaraner is a mean dog, and that cross isn’t a good one. He’s part German shepherd, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Well—that’s it, I’m afraid.”

  “There isn’t any medication?”

  “It’s the breeding,” he said. “Believe me. I’ve seen it before.”

  “What happens?” she said.

  “What happens to the dog?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well—watch him. See how things go. He hasn’t bitten anybody, has he?”

  “No,” she said. “Of course not.”

  “Well—don’t say of course not. Be careful with him.”

  “I’m careful with him,” she said. She said it indignantly. But she wanted to hear something else. She didn’t want to leave.

  Walking ho
me, she thought about what she could do. Maybe she could take Sam to her sister’s house in Morristown for a while. Maybe if he could run more, and keep cool, he would calm down. She put aside her knowledge that it was late September and already much cooler, and that the dog growled more, not less. He had growled at the teen-age boy she had given money to to help her carry her groceries upstairs. It was the boy’s extreme reaction to Sam that had made it worse, though. You had to act calm around Sam when he got like that, and the boy had panicked.

  She persuaded her sister to take Sam, and her brother-in-law drove into New York on Sunday and drove them out to New Jersey. Sam was put on a chain attached to a rope her brother-in-law had strung up in the backyard, between two huge trees. To her surprise, Sam did not seem to mind it. He did not bark and strain at the chain until he saw her drive away, late that afternoon; her sister was driving, and she was in the back seat with her niece, and she looked back and saw him lunging at the chain.

  The rest of it was predictable, even to her. As they drove away, she almost knew it all. The dog would bite the child. Of course, the child should not have annoyed the dog, but she did, and the dog bit her, and then there was a hysterical call from her sister and another call from her brother-in-law, saying that she must come get the dog immediately—that he would come for her so she could get him—and blaming her for bringing the dog to them in the first place. Her sister had never really liked her, and the incident with the dog was probably just what she had been waiting for to sever contact.

  When Sam came back to the city, things got no better. He turned against everyone and it was difficult even to walk him because he had become so aggressive. Sometimes a day would pass without any of that, and she would tell herself that it was over now—an awful period but over—and then the next morning the dog would bare his teeth at some person they passed. There began to be little signs that the dog had it in for her, too, and when that happened she turned her bedroom over to him. She hauled her mattress to the living room and let him have his own room. She left the door cracked so he would not think he was being punished. But she knew, and Sam knew, that it was best he stay in the room. If nothing else, he was an exceptionally smart dog.

  She heard from Jack for over a year—sporadically, but then sometimes two postcards in a single week. He was doing well, playing in a band as well as writing music. When she stopped hearing from him—and when it became clear that something had to be done about the dog, and something had been done—she was twenty-two. On a date with a man she liked as a friend, she suggested that they go over to Jersey and drive down Boulevard East. The man was new to New York, and when they got there he said that he was more impressed with that view of the city than with the view from the top of the RCA Building. “All ours,” she said, gesturing with her arm, and he, smiling and excited by what she said, took her hand when it had finished its sweep and kissed it, and continued to stare with awe at the lights across the water. That summer, she heard another song of Jack’s on the radio, which alluded, as so many of his songs did, to times in New York she remembered well. In this particular song there was a couplet about a man on the street offering kittens in a box that actually contained a dog named Sam. In the context of the song it was an amusing episode—another “you can’t always get what you want” sort of thing—and she could imagine Jack in California, not knowing what had happened to Sam, and, always the one to appreciate little jokes in songs, smiling.

  A

  Reasonable

  Man

  S

  he is waiting for the telephone to ring. It has not rung for at least six days, which is most unusual. Usually there would be a wrong number, or some sort of salesman trying to sell something she has never considered buying or that she did not know existed. In fact, it might be more than six days. At first she may not have been conscious that the phone was not ringing. You don’t notice something being absent for a day or two: a mislaid pen, clouds. It may well not have rung for quite some time.

  She tells the man this at dinner, remarking on how unusual it is. The man likes to know exactly why she mentions things because he often cannot follow her. So she is in the habit, now, of mentioning something and commenting on it, explaining why she mentioned it at all. Of course, this is often more trouble than it’s worth, so their dinners are sometimes silent from beginning to end. They are good dinners. She is competent in that area. A home economics major, she fixes dinners that are not only good to eat, but balanced and nutritious. They rarely have colds. They have never had a major illness. Tonight they eat cream of asparagus soup, a salad of beans and pears on chopped lettuce, broiled chicken with mushrooms, a glass of white wine and baked custard.

  “For heaven’s sake,” the man says. “It might have rung when you were out getting groceries. If you had been downstairs, it might have rung and you wouldn’t have heard it.” He raises a single green bean to his lips. She smiles at him. He chews swallows and smiles. Everything he says is logical. She follows perfectly. She does not believe that the phone rang when she was out buying groceries, and anyway, she bought groceries three days ago. She was not downstairs today, or yesterday. She frowns. Did she go down there yesterday? He lifts another piece of food to his mouth. He notices that she is frowning. “You see that, don’t you?” he says. Of course. She understands everything the man says.

  The phone has not rung for seven days—assuming that it will not ring tonight. In a novel she is very fond of the main character tries to bring on her period by sleeping in white, on fresh bed sheets. She tries to think what she could do to make the phone ring. Perhaps make love to the man. That may be a little difficult, though, because he is still at a meeting and will be tired and hungry when he comes home. She will feed him and then seduce him. Another thing she might try, if this doesn’t work, is showering.

  The man comes home. He looks as though he has been in a windstorm. He confirms that it is very windy out. “Look,” he says, pointing her toward the kitchen window. Leaves that they did not rake up during the winter blow across the yard. She is so glad! Usually her procrastination results in nothing good, but there are the leaves, blowing through the air and across the grass, which is already turning green.

  “Didn’t you go out today?” the man asks.

  “No. I didn’t go anywhere. I didn’t have anywhere to go.”

  “But you went out yesterday, I presume.”

  “Yesterday?” (She is not a good liar.)

  He nods again.

  “I don’t think I went out yesterday. No.”

  He sighs heavily. Seducing him will not be easy.

  He brightens a bit at the table when she serves him marinated herring. He likes fish very much. The main course is beef stew, which he also seems to enjoy. They have oranges for dessert, coffee with milk.

  “Tomorrow I guess you’ll be going out to do some errands,” he says. “Would you take my gray suit to the cleaners, please?”

  “Certainly,” she says. She will tell him that she forgot. That will work for one day. But the day after tomorrow she will have to go to the cleaners. That might not be so bad: the phone might ring tomorrow, and then the next day she would have no reason to wait home because the phone would have rung recently. She smiles.

  “Aren’t you going to answer me?” he says.

  “I did answer. I said I would.”

  He looks at her blankly. His eyes are blank, but his mouth is a little tight.

  “I didn’t hear you,” he says, with syrupy graciousness.

  She thinks that she, too, might have a hearing problem. After dinner, alone in the kitchen, she puts down the dish-towel and goes to the phone, puts her ear against it. Shouldn’t it hum like the refrigerator when it isn’t ringing? There is always some slight noise, isn’t there? She’s had insomnia in the past and felt as though there were a war going on in the house, it was so noisy. The faint hum of electrical appliances, the glow in the little box in back of the television when it’s not on. There must be something wr
ong with her hearing, or with the phone.

  The next day she goes to the cleaners. There’s a way to make the phone ring! Go out and leave it and surely it will ring in the empty house. She is not as happy as she might be about this, though, for the obvious reason that she will not have the satisfaction of hearing the phone. Driving home, she tries to remember the last phone conversation she had. She can’t. It might have been with her neighbor, or with some salesman … a relative? If she kept a journal, she could check on this. Maybe now is the time to keep a journal. That way she could just flip back through the pages and check on details she has forgotten. She parks the car and goes into a drugstore and buys a blue tablet—actually it is called a theme book—and a special pen to write with: a black fountain pen, and a bottle of ink. She has to go back for the ink. She has never thought things through. At vacation time the man would stand at the front door saying. “Do you have beach shoes? Did you bring our toothbrushes? What about a hat for the sun? I know you brought suntan lotion, but what about Solarcaine?” She would run to her closet, to the bathroom, take down hatboxes, reopen her suitcase. “And Robby’s raft—did you put that in the trunk?” Yes. She always thought a lot about Robby. He always had the correct clothes packed, his favorite toys included, comics to read in the car. She took very good care of Robby. She does not quite understand why he must live with his grandmother. Of all of them, she took the best care of Robby. She does understand why he is with the man’s mother, but she does not like it, or want to accept it. She has been very honest with the man, has told him her feelings about this, and has not been converted to his way of thinking. She never did anything to Robby. He agrees with this. And she does not see why she can’t have him. There they disagree. They disagree, and the man has not made love to her for months—as long as the disagreement has gone on.

  She is so frustrated. Filling the pen is harder than she thought—to do it carefully, making sure not to spill the ink or put too much in. And what details, exactly, should she write down? What if she wanted to remember the times she went to the bathroom the day before? Should she include everything? It would take too long. And it would seem silly to write down the times she went to the bathroom. The journal is to make her feel better. What would be the point of flipping back through her journal and seeing things that would embarrass her? There are enough things that embarrass her around the house. All the bowls that the man likes so much are a tiny bit lopsided. He agrees with her there, but says no value should be placed on a perfect bowl. Once he became very excited and told her there was no such thing as perfection—it was all in the eye of the beholder. He went on to talk about molecules; fast, constantly moving molecules that exist in all things. She is afraid of the bowls now, and doesn’t dust them. He wants her to dust them—to take pride in them. He talks and talks about the negative value of “perfection.” He put the word in quotes. This, he explained, was because he, himself, did not think in those terms, but it was a convenient word. He left the note on the door one morning before leaving for work, and she found it when she went into the kitchen. She asked about it. It is established that they can ask about anything. Anything at all. And that the other has to answer. She would like to ask him if he has had the phone disconnected. She can ask, but she is frightened to.