Secrets & Surprises

by Ann Beattie

  Donald held the door of the bar open for Alice and Starley. He shook hands with Starley and kissed Alice on the cheek, and then he walked to Starley’s to baby-sit Anita, thinking all the way of the whore’s legs—kissing her scraped shin to make it well.

  An hour later Donald was going out to eat chicken with a kid who had never liked him, his relationship with Marilyn over, the fan belt in Alice’s car squealing. Nothing he had ever done had made his own son like him. Joshua hated him, failed his course to get even with him, no kid ever liked him. He even had trouble making friends with other kids when he was a kid. Starley had been his first close friend. He drove, in the rush hour, brooding, wanting to put the silent Anita out of the car and go back to My Blue Heaven and make the waiter wait on him until he had had all the drinks he wanted.

  Two summers before, the whore in the Howard Johnson’s had asked: “Were you guys in Vietnam?”

  “No,” Starley said. “We’re too old.”

  “Do we act like we were in Vietnam?” Donald asked her.

  “How old are you?” she asked Starley.

  He made her guess. She guessed wrong, by almost ten years.

  “Thirty-five,” he said.

  “You’re his age?” she said.

  Donald nodded.

  They were eating crabs. The crabs came in a black bucket, and the waitress rolled out thick paper on the table and gave them a pile of napkins, but no plates. The whore was having crab cakes, which were very expensive. As they drank beer she drank a Coke. She sipped it through a straw, like a little girl.

  “How old are you?” Donald asked her.

  “Twenty-three,” she said. She looked twenty-seven or-eight.

  “Are you married?” she asked Donald.

  “No,” he said.

  “Are you?” she asked Starley.

  He squinched up his face and waved his hand from side to side—a gesture that meant “so-so.”

  “Do you have kids?” she asked him.

  “One kid.”

  “I’ve got a friend who’s a Vietnamese woman,” she said, “and she told me about soldiers who came into the village who pushed her down and one of them fucked her while the other one held the rifle underneath his friend, touching her asshole.”

  She finished her Coke, sucking in mostly air. Donald thought that maybe she was twenty-three. It was just that she had sweated and not washed her face, and the make-up had caked on her cheeks.

  “If you two want to do it again after dinner, you’ll have to pay me more,” she said. She looked into her empty Coke glass. “I guess it would have been only fair to tell you that before I let you take me to dinner.” She put her finger in the glass and brought out a piece of ice and sucked it. “I just didn’t think of it,” she said. “I honestly didn’t think of it.”

  When it happened, Donald had just recently begun to feel happy—happy for the first time in months. (Marilyn never called; when he called her, she wouldn’t see him. Not any of the four times he called.) It was the first of November—the same day he had half a cord of wood delivered, which was stacked in what used to be a closet in the living room (door now removed). A fire was burning. Getting close to midnight, alone (but there had been someone earlier), having a cup of coffee that would keep him awake, but what the hell—the next day was Saturday—the phone rang. He crossed the room and picked up the phone and heard the voice of a stranger telling him, in a flat voice, that his friend Starley was dead.

  Starley and Alice had been having a party—a party to which Alice had invited her important friends and to which Donald had not been invited—and Starley went out to get ice cubes. They were drinking mint juleps. (This gets crazier: they had all brought beach towels, were sitting around wrapped up in them with the heat turned up, pretending they were Arabs in the desert.) It was nine o’clock, around there, and Starley said they were running out of ice. (Correction: Alice said they were running out of ice, for which she will never forgive herself; yes, she realized that he, too, would eventually have noticed it. But if he had noticed five seconds later—probably one second later—the truck that went out of control would have passed that stretch of street Starley was crossing.) Starley had put on his black jacket and taken Alice’s scarf and, cold as it was, decided that the store was two blocks away, so he’d walk. (Alice, later, was sure that he had opened the door of the Fiat—his car was in the garage—and looked for the key under the floor mat—the one time she had left her key in the kitchen instead of in the usual hiding place. She was sure that he had tried to drive, had not found the key, had then and only then decided to walk. If he had taken the Fiat, he would be alive.)

  The truck, a United Van Lines truck, its brakes not working properly as it came down the hill, and then the ice patch that threw it off course, right into him, on his way to buy ice cubes…

  Donald heard all this when he picked up the phone. He could not really focus on the fact that Starley was dead; he could think only of himself, and the guilt he felt thinking, Hey—he’s dead and I’m alive. The guilt he felt thinking that if he had been invited to the party, he would probably have been the one to go for ice.

  After Donald put down the phone (the anonymous voice having said, two times: “Come to the hospital for what?”) and he was standing there, disbelieving, the memory of the summer before with the whore making him smile and encroaching on his sorrow, the phone rang again. It was the woman who had been at his house earlier. It was Susan with her lovely, soft voice, calling to tell him she loved him. A few seconds after she hung up, wandering through his apartment, Donald was not clear what he had said to her. He knew that he should call her back, but he had no time. He was on the road, sad but full of purpose, an hour after both phone calls, headed for North Miami.

  The drive took several days. The last night before he got there, he slept in a Howard Johnson’s, wanting to indulge all his maudlin instincts and be done with them. But this motel was not like the other one. The only room they had had one twin bed, and the room they had rented on the fishing trip had been much larger, with two double beds. This motel was loud. People in the next room sang along with a singer on television, other people joined them, they had a party. Donald stood staring out the window (no balcony off this room) at the pool, flat and blue, just a little too far away to be inviting, the night a little too cool for swimming.

  From a phone booth on the highway that afternoon he had called his boss. His boss had met Starley at a party at his apartment once, but said he didn’t remember him.

  “I flipped,” Donald said. “It made me realize that while I was alive there were things I had to do. Please don’t fire me.”

  There was static on the line; a bad connection. His boss was placating: of course he wouldn’t fire him, but when did he think—(cars roared by). They hung up, both joking about Florida oranges.

  He had tried to call Joanna from another phone later on, to say he was coming. There was no answer. He tried to call Susan, but of course she was at work, no answer there either. With the back of his arm he wiped the sweat off his forehead. What the hell had his boss been joking about—what was funny about Florida oranges?

  Joanna’s house was only a ten-minute drive from the highway. It was a small pale-green house. The lawn was full of exotic bushes. In front of the house a pink 1955 Cadillac convertible was parked. The upholstery inside was white, in perfect condition. Whose was it?

  He went up the walk and knocked on the doorframe of the screen door. A girl came to the door when he knocked.

  “What do you want?” she said.

  “Does Joanna still live here?”

  “Yeah. Who are you?”

  “I’m Bobby’s father.”

  “What do you mean?” She looked confused. She put her face closer to the screen. Her eyes were large, like Anita’s. She was prettier. Older.

  “I’m his father. I came to visit him.”

  He snapped his arms into his sides. He had been standing there like a bear, leaning forward,
arms away from his body.

  “What does he look like?” she said.

  “He has medium-length brown hair. He has braces. Wait a minute—he was getting braces when I was last here, but I don’t know if he got them. He looks like me. Don’t you see the resemblance?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Come on in.”

  “Who are you?” Donald said. “Where are they?”

  “Bobby’s gone over to a friend’s house. I’m waiting for him to get back. Your wife is playing volleyball.”

  “Where?” he said.

  “Do you know the Orrs?”

  “No.”

  “She’s there.”

  They stood facing each other. She had a cigarette in her mouth and was about to light the filter.

  “It’s to surprise them,” he said. “They didn’t know I was coming.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Wrong end,” he said, reaching out to touch her hand before she could touch the lighted match to the cigarette.

  The television was on, but she had turned down the volume before opening the door. Red Skelton was gesticulating, his face expanding and contracting as if it were made of putty.

  “If you’re going to be here,” she said, “I might as well go.”

  He nodded. She was going down the walk when he remembered about paying her. She turned around when he called after her and cocked her head. “Pay me?” she said. “Joanna’s my friend. I watch Bobby and she watches my daughter.”

  “You have a daughter?” he said.

  “Yes. I have a four-year-old daughter.” She smiled, deciding to be more friendly. “Her father is watching her. They went to the beach. I just live three streets over.”

  She waved. She went out to the car and started it. The radio came on when the car started. It was a fine car: in perfect shape, motor idling quietly, paint sparkling. She waved again. Donald waved. She was gone.

  He walked into the kitchen to look for a drink, realizing that he was not only tired but depressed. Depressed that he didn’t know one friend of Joanna’s and that the one he had just met was by accident. Maybe it wasn’t one of her close friends. How could she be a close friend if she didn’t even know that Joanna had never married. But maybe Joanna had told people she was divorced, for Bobby’s sake. For Bobby’s sake he would have married her, but she wouldn’t do it. They had argued about it, but he couldn’t change her mind. She lived in an apartment in New York with three other girls—a tiny apartment on the East Side. When she was three months pregnant she started bleeding. She called the doctor and he told her to go to bed. She and Donald jogged around Central Park. They danced the Virginia reel in his apartment as best they could, because that apartment was only slightly larger than hers. They sat in a bar and she said, “Everything’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.” The bleeding stopped. They jogged again, every night for a week, running like maniacs. Bobby was born six months later, in Florida. She had gone there because she had friends in Florida, and because he would not stop pestering her to marry him. Bobby was born one week before Donald’s birthday. One of her friends called him at work to tell him. Ironically, after she described the baby, she said, “Everything’s okay.” She told him that Joanna did not want to see him, that when she was ready she would call. No call.

  Most houses that look small outside are a little larger inside. This one was not. He found rum to drink and walked around the house sipping it. He went from the kitchen back to the living room to the bedroom adjoining it and went in. It was her room. There was no bedspread, and the bed was made with white sheets. He sat on it, realizing how tired he was, then got up and smoothed out the wrinkles. The room was almost empty. There was a wicker chair in front of a big antique mirror, an ugly high white-painted dresser. He walked out and into Bobby’s room. There was a pile of clothes on the floor. On his dresser was a letter. It was addressed to someone named Robert Winter. It could have been anybody. Robert Winter lived in Pennsylvania. Who would Bobby know in Pennsylvania? He looked in the bathroom (Jean Naté on the glass shelf above the sink, a sand dollar, a tube of toothpaste, coiled like a snake), then walked exactly three steps and went back to the kitchen, where he put down his drink because he didn’t want it, and stepped down one step into the living room. He hoped that Bobby would come home first. Then she would be cordial if Bobby was glad to see him. If she came first, there was little chance of her being friendly. On a table by the sofa was a pile of pictures. Most of them were of Bobby, in uniform, playing baseball. There was one of her father hugging Bobby, in the snow, outside his big house in Massachusetts. Probably they had gone there for Christmas. There was one of Joanna in a long yellow skirt and a white blouse, and she was standing stiffly, as she always did in photographs. She looked as if she was going out for a big evening. Who was she going with? Robert Winter?

  “Starley,” he had said, years ago in New York, “Joanna is pregnant and she won’t marry me.”

  “I wouldn’t marry you either,” he said.

  “Why wouldn’t you?”

  “Because I’m a man.”

  “Christ—what are you joking about? This is serious. She’s going to have a baby, and she won’t get married.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You’re sorry she won’t marry me, or what?”

  “What’s the cross-examination?” he said. “I’m sorry about everything.”

  They were walking past the reservoir, where he and Joanna had run the week before.

  “Give her time, she’ll change her mind.”

  He took big steps when he walked. Donald took big steps with him.

  “What do you want to get married for, anyway?” he said.

  Four months later Starley was married to Alice.

  He sat quietly with his hands in his lap until he heard her car in the drive—the VW she insisted on driving, even though he had patiently explained each time he saw her how unsafe a car it was. He fidgeted, not knowing whether to get up and open the door, or just sit there. Either way, he would probably frighten her. While he sat thinking, he lost the opportunity to move. She opened the door a crack, put her head around the corner, and her eyes met his.

  “Oh God,” she sighed. “I wondered why the door was hanging open.”

  Her hair was pulled back in a rubber band. She was carrying a tennis racket. She had on white shorts and a black T-shirt. She wiped her hair out of her face.

  “Okay,” she said. “What are you doing here? I assume it got too cold for you up north.”

  “It did,” he said. “It really did.”

  “Where’s Deena?” she said.

  “Is that her name? The woman with the four-year-old daughter?”

  “She didn’t have her with her, did she? Am I crazy or something?”

  “No, she … she told me. She said she had a daughter. I didn’t know her name.”

  “Deena,” she said. “Now, what are you doing here?”

  She sat in a wicker chair. He thought, If I can still be so attracted to her, I can’t love Susan. If I had reached Susan on the phone, what would I have said?

  “Who’s Robert Wilson?” he said.

  “I don’t know. Who?”

  “Isn’t that his name?” He got up and went to Bobby’s room. He came back. “I mean Robert Winter,” he said.

  “A friend of his who moved to Pennsylvania,” she said. “Did you count the silverware to make sure it was all there too?”

  “Joanna,” he said. He locked his fingers together. “Do you remember Starley?”

  She sighed, obviously exasperated. They had all been constant companions in New York; the three of them—later the four of them—had gone dancing together at night.

  “He died,” he said. “He was run over by a truck.”

  Her mouth came open. She slowly pulled the rubber band out of her hair and rubbed it into a ball between her fingers. “Starley’s dead?” she said. “I just got a letter from Starley.”

  “No you didn’t. What woul
d he write you a letter for?”

  “He wrote me.” She shrugged.

  “What did he write you?”

  “Stay here,” she said. She crossed the room, stepped up, turned into her bedroom.

  “What is it?” he said, following her.

  The letter was about a picture that Starley could get her a print of from the National Gallery of Art. She must have written to ask him if he could get it. At the end of the letter he had written: “P.S. Why don’t you let bygones be bygones and marry him, Joanna? He shacks up with one dreary woman after another, the latest of which dumped him because her fifteen-year-old son wouldn’t do his math homework as long as she had him around.”

  “Imagine thinking that after all this time I’m going to marry you,” she said. “When I knew you I was eighteen years old, and I thought that you were hot stuff. I thought New York was a big, impressive place. I was eighteen years old.”

  Past her, outside the window, was a bush with bright-green leaves and lavender flowers that looked very bright in the half-light.

  “That’s pretty,” he said, pointing over her shoulder. “What kind of bush is that?”

  “Hibiscus,” she said. “But look—what are you doing here?”