Secrets & Surprises

by Ann Beattie

“I’m coming. It’s only an hour’s drive.”

  Another hesitation. “Are you sure you want to?”

  “I want to. I don’t have anything I have to do here.”

  Going down the driveway, Perry felt elated. It was the right time, and he knew what he was going to say to Francie. The realization of it, the weight of it, came as inevitably as pressure builds around a diver.

  Francie was talking on the phone to Delores’ mother. She was assuring her that Meagan’s voice was odd only because she was coming down with a cold, and lied that Delores was out but would be back soon.

  Francie hung up and greeted him with “Wait’ll you hear this: Freed and Delores have decided to go away and live together. Carl went to the house and threw firecrackers at the windows, apparently, and scared them to death. Then Carl drove off and they got some things into suitcases. He’s just left his job a week before the term ends and he’s going south, he says, to live with Delores. I hinted that I didn’t want them to come here just now, but they’re coming anyway. I think Delores is cracking up. She was crying and laughing on the phone.”

  “Let’s lock the door and turn out all the lights,” he said.

  “No, I’m just going to tell them that they can spend the night, but that I’m not going to put up with any shit. And if Carl follows them down here and makes a scene, I’m going to call the police.”

  She was too preoccupied for him to ask her to go to bed. He looked at her and looked away. There was a smudge of yellow paint on her cheek she did not know was there.

  “Why don’t we take Meagan and get out of here?” he said.

  “Delores would arrest us for kidnapping.”

  “If she could remember where she left her,” he said.

  She followed him to the living room. It was June, and too warm for a fire, but Francie loved the wood burning, and when the evenings were a little cold, she lit a fire. The fire was dying in the fireplace. He sat on the sofa and patted the cushion for her to sit beside him. There was a big box on the sofa, addressed to T.W. c/o Francie.

  “What’s that?” he said.

  “Worms. Honest to God. He’s going to start raising worms for profit.”

  “What are you doing with the worms?”

  “He had them delivered here because I’m usually home in the day and he’s out of town so often.”

  He put the box of worms on the floor. In this context, how could he talk about going to bed with her?

  “You shouldn’t put up with it,” he said.

  “You know what T.W. said that time about my other set of friends? It was just a joking remark, but he was right: I don’t have any other friends. I know a few other people, but I don’t care anything about them. Sometimes when all of us are together we have good times. I don’t want to make them all go away.”

  “What if you were just with me? What if we did what Freed and Delores are doing?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what if we went away?”

  “Where would we go?”

  He had not thought about where they would go. “You could come live in my house in Vermont.”

  “What would I do with my house?” she said.

  He sat by the fire, staring into the peaks of flames, and looked at her. He saw that she did not want to live with him. She shifted on the sofa and looked somewhere else, embarrassed.

  “You told me before that I was your best friend,” he said.

  “You are. We don’t have to live together because of that, do we?”

  “You don’t even have to speak to me. You can entertain yourself with T.W. and his worms, or you can hold down the fortress while Carl rockets firecrackers at your windows, or you can have a big party and study the Rorschach blots of wine on your rug. You could do most any of those things.”

  “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings,” she said.

  “I’m your best friend, Francie. Say something kinder to me.”

  “I don’t know how to talk,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that I’m either alone and it’s silent here all day, or my friends are around, and I don’t really talk to them.”

  “You can talk to me.”

  “I’ve already hurt your feelings. I don’t want to do anything worse.”

  “Well, what are you holding out that might really do me in? How little do you think of me?”

  Francie drew up her knees and clasped her hands around them. “I want to be a painter,” she said.

  “You are a painter.”

  “I want to be an important painter.”

  He stared at her, waiting for more.

  “I don’t know what I want,” Francie said. “When Anita had her baby I wanted to be a mother. I want to be left alone, but I need to have people around.”

  “When I was a kid my parents made me take dancing lessons, and the boys had to go up to the girls and ask them to dance. I asked, and the girl stomped my foot.”

  “That didn’t really happen.”

  “If I wanted to make you feel sorry for me, I could have thought of something more dramatic.”

  “You mean just live with you in the house?” Francie said.

  “No,” he said.

  Francie heaved out a sigh. “Was that horrible to ask?”

  “No. It’s okay that you asked.”

  “But I mean—do you understand?” Her voice was softer than the crackling fire.

  “No,” he said.

  She let her legs hang down and stroked the top of the box with one foot, looking away from him.

  “I just don’t think of us that way,” she said.

  “Would you think about it for a while?” he said.

  Francie got off the sofa and went to sit by him. “Have I not understood all along?” she said.

  “I love mattresses thrown in attics, Francie.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “I’m sorry I said anything. I can’t keep sitting here being embarrassed.”

  Perry got up. He was tired and hungry, and he knew that he had made a mistake. He went into the kitchen and headed for the refrigerator to see if there was a beer. One of her canvases of herself was propped up in the kitchen, and he looked away from it and went back to the living room with nothing to drink.

  “Forget I said it,” he said. “Are you willing to forget it?”

  She smiled at him. “Sure,” she said.

  “It’s none of my business,” he said, “but who do you sleep with?”

  “Nobody,” she said.

  That came as a harder blow than the little-girl’s shoe on the top of his foot.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said. “Don’t embarrass me.”

  She looked terrible, as if she was about to cry.

  “Get rid of the worms,” he said. “Let’s get rid of the worms.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Yes. Come on. I’m dumping them.”

  He took the box and went outside. It was just starting to get dark. The sky was deep-purple at the horizon. He pried open the box while Francie watched. The worms were packed in something that looked like straw, but darker brown. When he lifted that out of the big box, Francie stepped back, wincing. You could see the worms squirming in the packing. He pulled it apart into about five gobs and threw them into the bushes. Then he went inside and ripped up the box and threw it into the fire.

  They sat in front of the fire for a long time, neither of them saying anything, until the car came into the drive. They both got up and went to the window and looked out. Delores got out of the car first and came weaving toward the house without waiting for Freed. Perry almost grabbed Francie and stopped her from going to the door.

  “How’s my baby?” he heard Delores say. There was something wrong with her voice. He heard Freed’s voice. The three of them came into the living room. Freed shook his head. “I thought you were in Vermont,” he said. He came over to where Perry stood by the window. Free
d was sweating.

  “What do you think I found?” Delores said. Perry looked at her, forcing a smile. Delores was stoned; her eyes were red, and she wasn’t focusing.

  “I found my table,” Delores said. “I thought it was lost, and Freed had it all the time. It was there in his living room.”

  “I thought all this time that I’d gotten the table from Anita,” Freed said. Then he looked self-conscious because obviously nobody cared how he got the table.

  “Meagan’s sleeping,” Francie said. “She has a cold.”

  “Does she have the hiccups again?”

  “What?” Francie said. “I said she has a cold.”

  “Where’s my poor baby?” Delores said and walked out of the living room toward the bedroom.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Perry said to Freed.

  “I don’t know,” Freed said and hung his head. “Either I’ve always loved Del or I never have.”

  Francie looked disgusted when he said that and walked out of the room to find Delores.

  “What’s the matter?” Freed said. “Why does everybody look so funny?”

  “Freed, you can’t take them out of here like this. Delores is stoned and probably has no idea of what’s going on.”

  “I’m not stoned,” Freed said. “I can’t help it if she got herself smashed.” His clothes smelled of grass, and he kept tugging at his shirt hanging out of his pants but not tucking it in. “Listen,” he said. “This is the end.”

  “The end of what?”

  “It’s just the end! We’re taking Meagan to her grandparents and we’re going to try to have a life. She knows what she’s doing. Don’t insult me by saying she’s just going with me because she’s not in her right mind.”

  “Okay,” Perry said. “You do what you want.”

  “Well, I want to be friends,” Freed said, dipping his hand toward Perry’s. “Aren’t you going to be my friend?”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t your friend, Freed. You do what you want.”

  “Then shake my hand,” Freed said. “You shake it.”

  He shook Freed’s hand firmly.

  “Jesus Christ!” Freed said. “What happens when a handshake doesn’t mean anything?”

  “I shook your fucking hand, Freed.”

  “You like me! Cut it out, Perry. You drove me to fucking Alexandria to get my Pontiac.”

  “It’s okay, Freed. Calm down.”

  “You don’t think she knows what’s going on, do you?”

  “What about Meagan? Are you going to take her when she’s sick?”

  “We’ve got my two pillows in the back seat. She can lie back there. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with it.”

  “Then what’s happening?” Freed said. “You’re acting this way and Carl flipped out and tried to bomb my house. Is it because you’re jealous that I’ve got Delores?”

  “No,” he said. “I just think you’re both upset and you oughtn’t to do this.”

  Delores was standing in the doorway holding Meagan, with Meagan’s head fallen off of her shoulder, and Francie beside her. Freed stood with his back to the fire, tilting the clock on the mantel back and forth absent-mindedly. He tilted it too far and had to turn around and set it back in place.

  “We don’t want to have a fight,” Francie said. “Let’s talk about this some other time.”

  “He doesn’t think we can get to Florida!” Freed said. “What’s he talking about?”

  Nobody sat down. They stood awkwardly until Meagan began to squirm, and then Delores whispered to Francie and the two of them walked out to the car. Freed looked at Perry and didn’t say anything more. He put out his hand, and Perry shook it again, this time taking care not to shake it firmly. Freed mumbled something that Perry couldn’t catch; it sounded as though he was saying “How do you know?”

  Perry sat on the sofa and waited for the inevitable starting of the motor and the car driving away. Francie came in, shaking her head. “I forgot to tell her that her mother called,” she said.

  Perry remembered, suddenly, what T.W. had asked to be reminded of in the car.

  “I feel like a criminal letting them go,” she said.

  “What could you do? They’ll probably wake up in the morning and forget the plan. You can expect one or both of them by tomorrow night.”

  “I don’t want them. I’ve really had it.”

  He felt sorry for her, and sorry for himself that he wasn’t what she wanted. He thought about what she had told him a long time ago about how she had been a fat kid, and the last one picked to be on teams. Of course it would be important to her to be the center of things. She was slender now, and pretty in spite of her frizzed hairdo. He had thought all the time he was repairing his house that eventually he would have the nerve to ask Francie to live there. He had not thought beyond that—that Francie would say no.

  “Some days I think I’m going to be famous,” Francie was saying.

  He got up and looked out the window. There was a three-quarter moon shining on the pyramid bushes, and he sighed because he suddenly felt that he couldn’t derive power from them or anything else.

  “I’m sure you will,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning, Francie.”

  At the top of the stairs he stepped on a little twisted tube of paint, and orange oozed out on the floorboards. He sat on the mattress and listened to her walking downstairs. He heard her put on the tape of T.W.’s band. He got up and took off his belt and his watch and put them beside the mattress. In a little while he heard her walking again.

  “Listen,” Francie called up the stairs. “I’d like to come live in Vermont.”

  “You don’t have to,” he said.

  “I know it. I want to.”

  He waited to hear her foot on the stairs.

  “Is that all right?” she said. “I can live in Vermont and be a painter.”

  He thought that she sounded like Meagan, who liked to tell stories back to people as well as have them read to her.

  “Okay?” she said. She was climbing the stairs as she spoke.

  “It’s morning,” she said.

  He opened and closed his eyes several times; the crosshatching on the floor drew his attention. He looked at Francie and saw that she was already awake.

  “I think I have bad news for you. I think Carl’s poking around here.”

  “Carl?” he said.

  “I’m not going to answer the door,” she whispered.

  His arm had gone dead stretched under her neck during the night. He withdrew it and put it outside the covers. Lying together, they drifted off to sleep again. They slept for about an hour, until the crosshatching began to slant and grow pale. He heard a noise and woke up.

  “What’s that?” she said.

  “I don’t know. Is Carl hanging around because he thinks Delores is here?”

  She pushed herself up and looked out the window. She didn’t see Carl’s car, or any car but hers and Perry’s.

  “Be quiet,” he said. “Listen.”

  But there was no more noise downstairs. He lay back, waiting for another sound. It came, eventually, in the form of faint radio music.

  “Who’s down there?” Francie whispered to him. She curled into him and didn’t move.

  He was curious now, so he got up and pulled on his jeans. “Hey—who’s downstairs?” he called.

  The radio continued to play.

  Francie got up after him and put on her jeans. She picked up his sweater from the floor and pulled it over her head. Barefoot, they went down the stairs.

  “Carl?” Francie called. It was the first time that Perry was frightened; her voice echoed in the house, and there was no answer, just the radio music. They saw him at the same time, and both drew back a little.

  It was the boy from the party—the boy who had stolen Freed’s car. He had on a stocking cap, but his face, which had seemed unremarkable before, seemed unforgettable now. There was what looked li
ke a large mole on his temple. Perry took one step forward and saw that it was a fly, but not a real fly—a little black plastic fly, with glue smeared underneath it.

  “How did you get in here?” Perry asked. Francie took one step forward to stand beside him.

  “I’m not here. You just think I’m here. You’re sleepwalking.” When he said that last thing, his voice changed from mocking to serious. “This is a very nice house, but I’m not interested in comfortable furniture or nice oil paintings. What I’m interested in is money, and that’s what I haven’t found. Where’s your money, Francie?”

  They were both shocked that the boy knew Francie’s name.

  The boy said, “I have a hunting knife with a fat straight blade, and I have a Swiss army knife with little corkscrews and curved blades. What I don’t have is money, and I know that there has to be money, Francie, because this is a very fancy house you have here.”

  Perry reached in his back pocket and took out his billfold and tossed it at the boy. He did it because he was afraid to walk up to him, and he hoped that money was all he wanted.

  The boy looked inside and saw the money: about forty dollars, although he didn’t count it. He threw the wallet back.

  “Let’s play ‘Mother May I,’ ” the boy said.

  Perry turned to walk for the phone, but stopped. The gleam he saw out of the corner of his eye was the knife: not the Swiss army knife, but the other one—a knife you would use for skinning animals.

  “I know your brother,” the boy said to Francie.

  Perry heard her voice as if it were filtering through something. “You do?” Francie said.

  “And I know your friend Freed better than he told you. I slept with your friend Freed. That’s why I can’t understand his pretending I was just some hitchhiker at your party. He was going to give me the car. The plan was, he was going to buy a car from your brother, and he was going to sell me his car.” The boy’s voice changed. “His car wasn’t worth anything,” he said.

  Francie looked at Perry. He was too frightened to do what he wanted to do and look back at her reassuringly.

  “I don’t understand,” Francie said.

  Perry held out the wallet again but didn’t throw it.

  “Do you think I’m lying?” the boy said. “You didn’t know that he picked me up hitching two days before he brought me here? I was on my way somewhere else, but he took me home with him and then he brought me to your party.”