by Ann Beattie
“I did a good job,” he said.
“You did, but you made me an outsider, and now I’m stranded, except for you. There’s no one else I can talk to about these things and what they mean.”
Watch children, to remember how to play.
If you take food home from a restaurant, don’t say it’s for “the dog.” Say that you want the bones for “a friend who does autopsies.”
Valentine’s Day is for suckers. Buy real lace, and think of something else to do with it.
Never wear a T-shirt advertising a place in that place.
Asparagus are the best vegetable, but never trim the ends; people cut the fat off steak, don’t they?
Esther Evarts was really Sally Benson—get old New Yorkers and read her.
Look at the Riviera, look at Matisse, look at the Riviera again.
I saw it on the TV news just a week or so after seeing Ben. A man had been pushed under a train coming into the Union Square station. A black woman in a turban was telling the TV reporter about how she tried to stop the pusher, sticking the point of her umbrella in his ribs, when she realized what was about to happen. “Yeah, you just got seconds to try to prevent something, you-know-whud-I-mean?” a young man was saying. “You-know-whud-I-mean?” He was with the woman—her son? A friend? She had the umbrella in hand again, and said that if it had happened at night, she’d have had Mace. “You don’t got but seconds, you-know-whud-I-mean?” the man was saying again. A man in the background bobbed behind their heads, making a heart sign with his fingers and mouthing someone’s name. Another camera got rid of him, focusing from a side angle on the woman and the man beside her.
It was Goodness. Ben, who’d been pushed under the train. An old photograph I recognized as his passport photo was flashed on the screen. The mayor, outside Gracie Mansion, was saying that such actions would not be condoned. More police would be sent into the subways. The dead man was a “humanitarian who offered kindness to many and came to New York City hoping to improve the quality of our lives.” A woman weeping in the crowd was identified as one of the mayor’s secretaries. She’d taken yoga classes from Goodness. The passport photo had disappeared from the screen, and there was footage of Ben—Goodness—wearing a party hat, blowing out a candle. I’d just been able to make out the top of the Dalai Lama’s head on the shirt he wore. The shaky amateur video ended. The mayor answered a reporter’s question by saying that more police would be sent into the subways. Someone had taken the mayor’s elbow and he’d turned away. The secretary could be seen, not quite off-screen, crying.
I’d tried to breathe normally, the way anesthetists tell you to breathe when they clamp a plastic cup over your nose. I had almost been able to feel phantom hands hovering around my head. The news continued. Someone who owned a bodega had been arrested for selling controlled substances hidden in the bottom of devotional candles.
I went into the bathroom and ran water in the sink, splashed some on my face, but made a mess. It streamed down my arms. I closed the toilet lid and sat down. Would it have been a greater shock if we hadn’t seen each other again, or was it less of a shock because I’d seen him? At least I’d known he was living in New York. But where in New York? Near the meditation studio? Near Union Square?
Pushed under a train. The person who had names for his goats, made cheese, and grew herbs. Such a nice person, the people who hired him left him half their property when they died. I’d gone to New York City and taken up with the first person who came along. How could that have been true? What happened to the things I left in Vermont? What book had I been reading that I’d left behind?
I thought about it, and did not call Neil, but looked for the number of one of the doctors I interviewed when I was writing the Chaff script. I had talked to him, a forensic psychiatrist, in his office on Park Avenue. I still had his card. I still had everyone’s card in a big box. Just a few days before, Neil had been rummaging for the name of the plumber. Had Ben lived not far away, near the Union Square stop? Did he have something romantic going with the mayor’s secretary? What was wrong with me—did I think only romance counted? What kind of a romantic life did I suppose I was leading? I remembered that the doctor contacts were all together, a rubber band wrapped around them. And then I remembered his name, and realized I could call Information. The thought was at first exhilarating, then daunting. How would I explain why I was calling? What book had I been reading before I left Ben, in Vermont—something I’d been very involved in … an essay? I’d been frustrated not to be able to continue, meant to buy another copy of the book, but never had. At least, I could not remember that I had. There had also been a green sweater.
I remembered coming back to the apartment with Jan, finding the envelope with the message he was at Tyler’s and the money. What had once seemed an astonishing amount of money. Everything might have been otherwise, if I’d listened to her. She had talked to me so earnestly at dinner about leaving Neil. She’d had faith in my ability to get a job. To do most anything. She’d made me promise I would call the mover the next day. I had walked around the apartment, gone to bed, gotten up again, put on my spike heels and pulled a raincoat over my nightgown and taken a cab to SoHo.
That was where I would begin with the psychiatrist. I would explain who Neil was. That I’d left Ben. First, of course, remind him who I was.
Instead, I called Jan and got her machine. I said, “You were right, I made a big mistake about how I handled things with Ben, and I drove a decent man crazy, I’m sure I did, I promised I’d be with him forever, and he was hit by a train. He’s that man. I know you saw it on the news. Jan, I’m sorry for not being nicer, for putting you in a position where you had to give me advice, then blowing you off. I stayed at your apartment too long, I know it. Neil has never hurt me, you were wrong about that. He can be a mind-fuck, but he doesn’t have a violent bone in his body, unlike some maniacs. I really resented your not coming to the party after we got married, but you were doing what you thought was right, I know that. Okay. Bye.”
The TV screen was dark, though I couldn’t remember having turned it off. The remote control switch had been missing for days. I was sure I’d gathered it up when I’d taken the sheets to the laundry. I should walk to the corner, pick up the sheets, hope that the remote would be there. Instead, I phoned Dr. Fendall and left a message on his answering machine. Almost immediately after I hung up, the phone rang.
“Ms. Costner? Dr. Fendall. I could tell from your message that you’re distressed. Do you think you’d be able to come to my office if I send a cab to your address?”
“Well, yes,” I said. “I’m not doing anything.”
“Good,” he said. “You’re still on West Twentieth? Let me put you on hold for one moment to call a cab, and then you and I can continue talking.”
“I’m a little shaken up. A man I used to live with jumped in front of a train today. I mean, he didn’t jump, he was pushed.”
“Putting you on hold for just a brief moment,” Dr. Fendall said. Muzak began playing: “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.” It took me back to the rain, the walk with Neil, when I hardly knew New York, that bizarre woman sitting on our front steps, exuding hostility, and then her lawyer’s incessant phone calls about money.
At Dr. Fendall’s office, the first thing he told me was how relieved he was to see me; he’d been almost certain that after he’d called the cab, I wouldn’t still be on the line.
Neil had been in Boston that day. He’d left from LaGuardia before I woke up, and would be back that night. We weren’t the sort of couple who checked in with each other during the day. He was interviewing someone at MIT for his new book and having dinner with his old friend Turaj. Dr. Fendall knew my address because he’d kept my business card, too. I suddenly remembered that the book I had been reading in Vermont had been by a man named Perrin, who lived there and farmed his land. I had had a lot of success, quite young, and then had lost my way. My relationship in Vermont was not satisfactory, in large
part because I knew I should be doing more meaningful things. The man I lived with—Ben—had been angry, and what he’d done was mount a pretty ineffectual protest whose primary goal was to make himself more or less disappear.
“You did not have similar views about life?” Dr. Fendall asked.
It was true: I had not personally valued the things he valued. He had been a promising musician (bass: Juilliard. A talent with wind instruments, as well). On occasion, I used both marijuana and cocaine, but drugs did not contribute to my problem. I could usually get to sleep. No—alcohol was not something I thought about before turning in.
“And who is the source of these drugs?”
A veterinarian in SoHo, who seesawed between Ritalin and Seconal, himself. Yes, he was successful. To my knowledge, no one had reported him for anything. My much older husband was in Boston. “Much older husband” made me giggle. Yes, the old man sometimes took drugs with me, but no, neither one of us had ever gone to bed with an alcoholic beverage on the night table. What was so funny? Well, just the idea of being addicted. Me and some old man. I did consider it a happy marriage. We both liked our work, which was similar enough and dissimilar enough that we could bounce ideas off each other and have interesting conversations and not feel like we were invading the other’s territory. Chaff was a title decided on by the director of the movie. It really was a good documentary. The last time I had used drugs? About a week ago, watching daytime TV: a rerun of highlights from The Ed Sullivan Show. I did not consider myself depressed. Lazy, sometimes. I’d left the sheets at the laundry for days, but we had more sheets. Not even calling to see if they had found the remote, though, was lazy. Oh, to me it meant just not getting it together to do much of anything. Headaches were not a problem. Oh, that day, sure—but not usually. Neither I, nor my old husband, wanted children. He’d had a vasectomy. A pre-nup was what I meant by “contract.” Since it seemed to be to my advantage, what the hell. I had, indeed, thought to get my own lawyer. I sometimes listened over and over to a tape of “We Are the World” and tried to figure out whose voice sounded like a knife slicing the air. I wouldn’t do any more research for Neil after I found out he was married. She was younger than he, but older than I. Thirty-five? Maybe older, but she still looked good. I had just seen her that one time. She had been on her way to a lawyer’s. I did notice that people seemed very uninhibited about what they said to me. I would have no trouble believing I was giving out some signal I wasn’t aware of, but what might it be? Recently, it seemed fewer and fewer people talked to me. My friends in the apartment building did, but the psychologist had gotten an office a few blocks away, and Etch, the landlord’s son, had come out of the closet, and for a timid person, some of the people he brought in were downright scary.
“Could we return to Ben and to your relationship?” Dr. Fendall said.
The relationship I’d had in Vermont had lasted a little less than a year. I had been young. I wasn’t old, like my husband, but looking back, Ben and I had been a couple of kids. Marijuana, but no other drugs. My husband thought psychiatrists were witch doctors, and I understood that was defensive. Or arrogant. It was important to him to give the impression he knew things. Important things underlying the things that were verbalized. In the summer Neil and I would be freeloading off some people who’d chartered a yacht, sailing to the Greek Islands. Drugs might or might not be aboard. It would be inappropriate to try to contact the mayor’s secretary if all I really wanted to know was if she and Ben had had a romantic relationship. My husband liked to do things spontaneously—have some fun. He was smart, and he had a good sense of humor. Something of a mystery to me. Well: better someone be mysterious than that the mystery be solved, because you might be stuck with an answer you didn’t want. I would not say that I asked many questions. Yes, he would probably have considered that nagging.
“What were his thoughts on Ben?”
Wouldn’t any response to that be sort of like He knows that she thinks that he doesn’t understand, and she knows that he knows that that’s true, but what he and she don’t know is that their plane is going down? It’s sort of a game: something you’d see in a comic strip, in the bubble above the dog’s head. I couldn’t repeat it; it was just doggerel. A pun! Doggerel! Which certainly did take us far from the initial question.
If it had been a movie I could edit, this is the way the new version would go:
Neil’s wife wore jeans, which fit her well, and flat shoes, which were then so unfashionable, they were fashionable. She smoked Benson & Hedges. There was a book of matches … what restaurant’s logo? Shoulder-length hair. She wore a gold wedding band. She hadn’t gone running out of her Upper East Side apartment without giving thought to how she looked. She said: “I imagine that you knew without knowing. Don’t you think that’s true?”
“Hi, excuse me, I’m in the middle of an emergency,” Raymond, the psychologist, said, opening the gate and sprinting up the steps. I heard his key opening the front door. Her feet were pressed together. My world was about to change. Some poet … Rilke. Rilke had been all for that. Easy for someone else to say that you should change your life. “To be honest, it would be better if you weren’t sitting here ten minutes from now. I’m expecting someone who’s having a very bad day,” Raymond called over his shoulder. The door closed behind him.
“He has patients,” I said to her.
“He seemed quite impatient.”
“No, he’s a shrink. Psychologist, I mean.”
“Oh. I thought you and I just had very different perceptions.”
“You can have him,” I said. “I don’t want someone who deceived me.”
She ran her hands down her jeans, though they fit her too tightly to have wrinkles.
“My friends were suspicious,” I said, wishing my voice had come out louder. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could talk. “My friends call him, flirting. I guess he’s vain because he has reason to be.”
“Does he ask you what he should do about them? Like it’s your problem? He wants you to think you don’t have real friends. That way he gets more power over you.”
There was the seminary across the street. The trees. The same view I looked at every day. Her ring sparkled less when the sun went behind a cloud. Thereafter, the cloud drifted away, and the sky was blue and empty.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“You’re like him, aren’t you?” she said. “Very tentative about asking a question. Like the question mark’s going to get airborne and stick its hook between your eyes.”
We were looking at each other.
“Lisa,” she said. “And of course I’m so enlightened, I keep my maiden name. Lisa Pauline Haley. And you are Jane Jay Costner. The Jane Jay Costner. I saw your movie after it won the Academy Award. You’re pretty and young and talented. My guess is that Jay was your mother’s maiden name. That you’re Southern. Maybe.” She shook her head. “So I’m sitting on a step in Chelsea, finally done with my husband, and now you don’t want him either.”
She thought she knew everything. She was a version of him. What if I did want Neil? There’d be no reason to tell her, even if it was true.
She said: “Well, it turns out to be his bad day, doesn’t it? But there’s no spark between us. Not him and me—me and you. Am I wrong? If there was, I’d ask you to have coffee.”
“You’re right. I don’t feel at all drawn to you,” I said.
“Maybe it’s jealousy. I have several good friends. It doesn’t matter.”
A boy who had already walked his beagle one way turned and walked in the other direction. I’d never seen the boy or the dog before. I’d heard that James Earl Jones lived on the block, but I’d never seen him, either.
“Did he brush your soft earlobes with his lips, lower his voice to a whisper, nearly hypnotize you? We’d lie in bed almost nose-to-nose, and he’d ask me to recite passages he’d had me memorize. Shakespeare’s sonnets. I’m sure you and I could recite in unison.”
I
shook my head no.
“I don’t believe you,” she said. “Cigarette?”
I shook my head no again.
“You know, if he came along right this minute, he’d try to signal both of us, secretly, that we were the one,” she said.
I was trying to breathe normally. Had I known without knowing? Would she ever go away? “He washed your hands, didn’t he? You couldn’t lie about that. You’d be standing at the sink and he’d come up behind you and pick up the soap and lather his own hands, clasp your little hands in his, and rub them while you laughed. It was a turn-on, wasn’t it?”
“You can have him,” I said again. “He’s all yours.”
“You really never thought he might be leading a double life? I guess it’s possible I wouldn’t have known, either, except that we were married. And also, he had such a need to confess. Did he love you, did he just desire you, did he not even desire you? I’m telling you as … I was going to say ‘friend,’ but I’m not your friend. We haven’t hit it off. Let’s say I’m speaking as his ex-wife. What he understands is money. Protect yourself and make sure you end up with that, if it doesn’t work out.” She looked at me. “I have the same bag,” she said. “He convinced two smart women that purses were embarrassing, but carrying a bag Englishmen fill with trout isn’t.”
Etch and his boyfriend, Kim, got excited if someone watched while they had sex. Kim burned incense and walked around vamping in a white silk robe he’d shoplifted. Then there was the box. The box was a large framed screen, about the size of a television, with wheels. Kim kept it in the closet and took it out when they had sex, tugging it along with a rope. He spent some time angling it exactly the way he wanted it, facing the bed. When it was turned on, the sound system blared the noise of a storm, and lightning flashed across the sky. Apparently, it had once been used in some puppet show. I found it bizarre—more intimidating than a real thunderstorm.