A Wonderful Stroke of Luck

by Ann Beattie

  LaVerdere, accepting a refill of sparkling cider from Binnie (his nickname for her: Binnie Mouse), mentioned that his twin sister lived in a town where Carlos Leon had just moved and opened a fitness studio that also offered nighttime tap classes. Property values were expected to rise.

  “Who’s that?” Hailey asked.

  “Madonna’s former personal trainer and the father of her daughter,” LaVerdere answered.

  Aqua caught LouLou’s eye. Who cared about him? LaVerdere had a twin?

  “What are your sister’s interests?” Ben said. He’d learned not to ask what people did. In Europe, it was considered gauche, and when did the United States not take its social cues from France (as his stepmother—who was Swedish—had asked, yet again subtly informing him of something he hadn’t known).

  “Her interests? She has quite a few. She’s a photographer. She develops her own black-and-white prints that she sells at a gallery in Hudson. She sings with an a cappella group. She and her husband make their living as organic farmers.”

  “Cool,” Ben said. “So what things does she enjoy farming?”

  “What does she grow? The vegetables are pretty much the usual suspects, but she’s in the process of getting certified to make goat cheese. She’s working with an Amish man and his sons.”

  “Good deal,” Ben said. He’d finally broken the habit of saying, “Cool.” Next, he supposed, he’d be able to hold a thin china teacup and set it down without breaking the rim of the saucer (because he habitually broke fragile things, the cups and saucers had disappeared and been replaced with mugs). Manners—which his father’s second wife called “protocols”—were All Important. He got that.

  “Have any of you had experience on a farm?” LaVerdere asked. He seemed more relaxed, after putting behind them the case of Dennis Tito. Why did LaVerdere have to have such a wind-up to the pitch, every time they met? Did he think up his topics the night before, then professorially unload them, secretly hoping the issues they raised would soon conclude? For quite a while, Ben had been a holdout, seeing the examples as contrived. It had come as a relief to Ben when he realized the guy was probably just anxious and felt more was expected of him than he was providing. “And you, Hailey?” LaVerdere asked. Hailey was also processing the revelation about another, female LaVerdere. She had one eye and wore a convex eye patch. She was an excellent soccer player who was being recruited by almost every Ivy League college, but what she really wanted was to play the cymbals with Stiff Formaldehyde. She’d already had a baby with Stiff and given it up for adoption.

  She said, “I spent some time on a ranch in Montana.” (She’d told Ben about that; her mother had arranged for her to stay there during the last months of her pregnancy.) “It was owned by a friend of Ted Turner’s. We watched movies in a screening room we helped build out of a storeroom. You know what was being stored? Towers of toilet paper. Our host managed to work Turner’s name into any conversation. We sort of hoped he’d show up, just to give his friend a thrill.”

  “Who was that famous old lady who divorced Ted Turner?” Aqua asked.

  “Jane Fonda,” Ben replied. He knew this because Jane Fonda and his stepmother belonged to the same environmental organization. Her face appeared on every other issue of the increasingly thinner monthly magazine Elin got in the mail.

  “When Hollywood gossip starts, I leave,” LaVerdere said, with a bemused smile.

  “If you go, we might start talking about sex and drugs,” LouLou said.

  “Then you’d be representative of teenagers everywhere, as most of the world chooses to see them,” LaVerdere said over his shoulder. He was headed in Jasper’s direction. LouLou’s specialty was running away, though she stayed put on exam days. Otherwise, she was often AWOL, or grounded for disappearing. She’d made it clear she was biding time until she could move to Brooklyn. She’d written three novels—she maintained that anything over a hundred pages was a novel—and had a plan about getting an agent. Then, supposedly, the pressure would be off, and as a prolific, successful writer, she could figure out what she really wanted to do. Ben had asked her why she didn’t just think harder about what that was (his father continually asked him the same thing). “Because you have to pave the way for yourself and then have a big epiphany and totally do something else to renounce all your childish dreams. It’s what the culture demands.”

  Though Ben didn’t personally find Hailey attractive, others did. He preferred LouLou. Jasper had had sex with Hailey and sort of had a crush on her, though the name LouLou Sils made his heart go pitty-pat like every other male’s. The Friday-night beer delivery arrived courtesy of a boyfriend of LouLou’s—this category was vague, because mostly she’d never dated the men in it.

  Ben had attended quite a few cocktail parties during the summer he’d spent at his father’s summer place in New Hampshire—a retreat, as his father called it, apparently thinking it necessary to summer in a more rural location than Hanover (bizarre). Elin, his new wife, rarely appeared at the parties. Ben’s mother and some friends had built the porch the year he was born. He’d been told he’d slept outside in a bassinet under tinkling wind chimes, though all he remembered was later rolling out his sleeping bag and using a cushion from one of the rockers for a pillow. Their mother had been more protective of his sister, Brenda, letting her sleep in their bedroom until she started kindergarten. Now Brenda lived with a roommate in Rhode Island who’d been born missing her pinkie. She wore a finger prosthesis. Their mother had died the year Ben finished third grade. Only recently had Brenda told him that as they were growing up, she’d debated whether his closed door meant he didn’t want to be disturbed, or whether he kept the door shut to avoid their father. How strange to think of Brenda hovering in the hallway before slipping away. What hadn’t occurred to him was to ask what she’d wanted, though that would have been a stupid question. She couldn’t have always wanted the same thing. (LaVerdere: “Observe the woodpecker. We could learn from its single-mindedness. What it does may be industrious, yet in no way mysterious, perhaps because ‘animal’ behavior in animals is viewed differently than compulsion would be in humans, we might assume. But does the woodpecker’s action define it? Do our most concerted and observable efforts define us?”)

  “He just dropped it into conversation that he has a twin. Does that explain anything, do you think?” LouLou asked, when she finally drifted toward Ben.

  “Everything,” Ben said. “The way he looks over his shoulder when he’s walking off. As if that other, ghostly presence remains.”

  “I like it that you’ve taken in so much hippie wisdom that you bring up just to be disparaging,” LouLou said. “You’re right, though. He does look over his shoulder.”

  Darius came up beside LouLou and stood there limply, in his habitual, indifferent puppet-posture, as if his arms were in someone else’s control. Darius was living proof that a person could be smart and entirely lacking a sense of humor. His face had been so pocked by acne, he was scheduled to have a chemical peel after graduation. Phillip Collins’s father was going to do it. Even now that the medicine had started to work and the pimple eruptions had subsided, his face was deeply pocked. His cheeks were always red.

  “Gotta go,” LouLou said immediately. She was usually cooler about her distaste for Darius. Her boots were nice. She looked stylish in her black tights, short white skirt, and the dark-gray hand-knit scarf she wore almost regardless of the day’s temperature.

  Then—appearing more like an apparition than a person—The Man, Mr. C., Jasper’s father, strode across the newly installed, historically correct carpet (that, too, had a nickname: View from the Roller Coaster on LSD). Mr. C. was clasping Eleanor Rule’s hand. As they’d find out later, he’d driven back to Bailey, seen Eleanor—whom he recognized, though he couldn’t remember her name—and asked her if she knew where the Honor Society was meeting. She’d told him and mentioned that she felt guilty for not atte
nding. Together they’d walked across the grass, up the stairs into the building, then entered the meeting room. Neither said anything when all conversation stopped.

  “Dad,” Jasper said.

  “Yes, I am,” The Man said, “and I don’t know where we went off-course. If you wouldn’t mind, Mr. LaVerdere? I’m here to have a conversation with my son.”

  “Drunk,” LouLou exhaled quietly. She hadn’t made her escape soon enough. Hailey touched her eye patch, the way she did when she was nervous.

  “Drunk,” Mr. C. said. “Did someone say I was drunk?”

  LouLou looked at her boots.

  “Glad to see you!” LaVerdere said. “Jasper, your father’s most welcome. We should offer our guest some coffee. Mr. Cabot?” LaVerdere’s hand clasped the wrist of the other behind his back, like an obsequious maître d’. Why those guys liked to look like birds hobbled by broken wings, Ben never understood. Or why Elin loved eating at Beaujolais, though the reservation never seemed to be on the day she wanted, or at the time she preferred. LaVerdere said, with a deferential nod, “Bob Cabot, isn’t that right?”

  “Everything I’ve done is wrong,” Mr. Cabot said.

  “Let me get you some coffee, Mr. Cabot. What do you take in it?” Eleanor said. She wore a scarf—a scarf not nearly as fabulous as LouLou’s—and red gloves lined with fur that she’d found in town, sticking up on the spikes of a fence. She had a way of finding things, but arriving with The Man had been particularly unexpected. Of course, he’d actually found her. She’d mistaken the alcohol on his breath for aftershave. It never occurred to her he might have been drinking until LouLou said the word. She pulled her gloves off slowly, as if skin were liable to come loose with each finger. Then, as if he’d answered, she strode off to get a mug from the shelf. Hailey’s older sister, who’d also attended Bailey, had made the matching mugs. She’d also left behind painted portraits of a few of the teachers (including the tragically deceased Ms. Niffle, whose snowmobile had crashed into a tree), mobiles made from junk pulled out of people’s trash, and a large sculpted monkey with its chest ripped open, a series of hearts morphing into a small man.

  “Thank you,” Bob Cabot said quaveringly to Eleanor, as she handed him one of the heavy blue mugs. “Thank you for this, and for everything.” His smile was really only a twist of his lips.

  “What’s so fascinating?” LaVerdere asked. “Ladies and gentlemen? Please continue your conversations.”

  “So, when you run away next, LouLou, where will you go?” Aqua asked, loud enough for everyone to hear.

  “Boston, again,” LouLou said. “To continue my affair with a married man.”

  “Bob, they’re being brats,” LaVerdere said. “Pay no attention. May I join you and Jasper in those more comfortable chairs?” He gestured to a jumble of chairs with faded upholstery depicting colliding rectangles. For whatever reason, the caterer and her daughter always hauled the chairs into the corner near the kitchen door when they were setting up and left them there facing every which way, like bumper cars, when the event concluded.

  “Let’s take a walk, Dad,” Jasper muttered.

  “I’ll come!” Ben said, as if the thought had just occurred to him.

  LaVerdere’s eyes darted to Ben.

  “Outta here, time to study,” LouLou said.

  Everyone envied LouLou her hard-soled walk across the floor, out the door.

  “Okay, now we can talk about LouLou!” Aqua said.

  The joke fell flat.

  “Bye,” Hailey said, flapping her hand as if it contained a tiny piece of laundry that needed shaking out. She hero-worshipped LouLou and would do most anything to be her devoted friend—though Hailey didn’t leave; she kept touching the corner of her eye patch and seemed undecided about whether she should stay or go.

  Benson Whitacre, whom Ben had forgotten was in the room, stood near the back, by the window, hiding as much as possible behind the large, potted Norfolk Island pine so that he could talk on his cell phone. Even turned off, cell phones weren’t to be in evidence when they met with LaVerdere—but now Benson was chatting away inaudibly, with impunity.

  “Pierre, why don’t the two of us have a beer?” Mr. C. said, as if he’d just startled awake, his son standing mutely at his side.

  “Sure,” LaVerdere replied. “Campus is dry, of course.”

  “That’s why we’ve got cars!”

  “I’m here,” Jasper said to his father. “I didn’t dematerialize, or anything. The son you came to see? You come in totally unexpectedly, then you and LaVerdere decide to leave and have a beer?”

  “Hey, man,” Ben muttered. “TCE.” It was their personal shorthand for not sweating something: Time changes everything. Instead of saying TCE, Jasper sometimes liked the long form: “You can change the name of an old song, rearrange it and make it swing . . . .” They often listened to that—country music—when they were playing chess or drinking contraband Coors. For some reason, both found the singer’s deep voice funny.

  “My dad holds hands with somebody he barely knows?” Jasper said. “If they want me in boarding school so my mother can suffer in silence, why not forget about me—what’s with showing up to hit on my friends?”

  “He didn’t do anything inappropriate!” Eleanor said.

  “What would he think if I showed up at his office and went in holding his secretary’s hand? Nobody even knows where he’s living!” Jasper said.

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about,” The Man said.

  LaVerdere steered Bob Cabot in the direction of the door, a single fingertip placed lightly on the man’s shoulder. What was this? LaVerdere updating life on the Sistine ceiling?

  “I’ve gone home!” The Man said adamantly.

  All the students were grouped close together, as if they’d rushed onstage at the end of a Shakespearean play. A line popped into Ben’s mind: Our revels now are ended. The week before, he and Jasper had listened to some famous actor reading from Shakespeare on a CD sent by Jasper’s mother. They’d also eaten small, expensive candy bars she’d included, which had unfortunately melted in the package.

  “Home?” Jasper said to Ben, as if the word had boomeranged to hit him on the head. “Mom let him move in again?”

  “Go for a run before dinner?” Ben asked.

  “Hey, Dad!” Jasper hollered, walking quickly after his father and LaVerdere.

  Binnie came out and began carrying platters back into the kitchen. Hailey pulled a tube of lipstick out of her bag and began deftly coloring her lips without benefit of a mirror. Everybody had parents, so except for the particulars, the incident hadn’t been hugely surprising. Like sheep who suddenly rolled themselves across safety grates all around the world at the same time, maybe Mr. C. had just been the first parent who’d unexpectedly tumbled into their midst in the throes of some existential crisis.

  Ben left, but lingered outside. He did wish his friend had taken him up on the offer to jog. He could go alone. But if he did, and if Jasper changed his mind, he might miss him. “Take action. Stop thinking and take action,” he could almost hear his father saying. It was what he said if you faltered for more than three seconds, trying to impale a wiggling worm on the hook. Elin had been a good influence on his father. She particularly disliked his “Take action” speech and had more or less managed to shut him up by pointing out that rushing to a conclusion didn’t necessarily make that solution the right one.

  The wind was blowing the tops of the oak trees.

  Ben decided he’d wait ten minutes for Jasper, then go to the dining hall and worry about him after dinner. How could he return Mr. C’s beret? Not that it was burning a hole in his pocket. Not like it was money.

  It was cold—that stinging, fall cold that felt the way chalk on a blackboard sounded, even if winter hadn’t begun. This time of year, early September, the temperature plunged in New Hamp
shire after three in the afternoon, though even at the end of August they’d rushed to wear their boots and their down vests at night because they had more style than limp, summer clothes. It was that time of day, twilight—Ben loved that word, twilight—when darkness began to pull itself around you like a shroud.

  Two

  Ladies and gentlemen, today Dr. Ha, though called upon, was unable to speak, so The Powers That Be have decreed that in the absence of the museum’s art adviser, Ms. Alwyn-Black, who is ill, I am to say something about this painting, The Peaceable Kingdom, which has newly arrived at the Harriet G. and Hubert J. Felton Gallery, on permanent loan from the cousin of an alumnus.” LaVerdere turned to LouLou. “Ms. Sils, if you could delay your boot repair until I have finished? Thank you kindly. To continue: It will be obvious that a version of Eden exists before us, where animals antagonistic to one another stand contentedly side by side, a small figure assumed to be the painter, Mr. Hicks, among them. Mr. Hicks was a Quaker, as you may know from the handout photocopied by Tessie. I’ve read a bit about Mr. Hicks, and it seems that in spite of his projected vision of peace and happiness, which makes him a premature hippie—Aqua, you are the perfect audience; thank you—he became pained as the Quaker religion split into factions: what we would call “orthodox,” versus a more rural, conservative faction, with which Mr. Hicks, as a former farmer and sign painter, felt personally affiliated. In his old age, he came to believe that these differing views would not be reconciled. I suspect you will find out that this is a common attitude, one arrived at quite often by anyone who thinks, for example, that in our time the Arabs and the Jews must inevitably reconcile. This interjects a moment of current affairs, meant to jolt you awake, since I won’t assume you have freely gathered here, or that you care about a depiction of lions and sheep, with a conventionally beautiful sky spread overhead. Yes, Ms. Hayashi-Myers?”