by Ann Beattie
More seriously, what he’d meant to say to the shrink, which he’d expressed all wrong, involved his anger over his father’s generation’s ostensible love of hand-me-downs, when really it was that the stuff came free, which made his sanctimonious father not so different from the hippies he dismissed as “scum.” But complaining about your parents—wasn’t that too much of a cliché? He’d seen the doctor only three or four times.
Two booths down, he saw a cluster of weathervanes. One was of a swooping bird that reminded him of the rabbit chased by the bird of prey.
“Ben!” a tall, familiar-looking man said. “Finding any bargains?”
“Hi,” Ben said.
“Ed Moulton. Guy you bought the tires from,” the man said, extending his hand.
“Right. Of course. How’s it going?”
“My wife made me come. At least there’s free popcorn.”
“Right,” Ben said.
“Car riding good?”
“Very well. Your advice was good, Ed. Smoother ride.”
“Safer,” Ed said.
“That, too,” Ben said, plotting his escape. He put the postcard of Kansas that he’d been examining back in the box—even if he bought it, he’d forget to ever mail it to Gerard—and nodded to Ed to signal goodbye. Ed stuck out his hand. Ben shook it. A firm grip with soft skin, like a pillow-top bed at an expensive hotel.
When Dale came up behind him, he’d been examining images from New Hampshire, hoping to find some old colorized cards—if not of the school, of the Episcopal church, or the farmland surrounding Bailey’s grounds, many of which, including the orchards, had now been developed.
LaVerdere’s house had been the ideal he’d had in mind when he’d spoken to Dr. Minetti. LaVerdere had a small, high-ceilinged place on campus on the second floor of an 1880s building that also housed the registrar’s office, as well as his off-campus house, whose existence was shrouded in mystery. When Ben had first gone to Bailey, he’d heard rumors that LaVerdere’s wife—the same one who was rumored to have died in England—was a recluse in the house (it was obvious what novel everyone had been reading). Sometimes rumors circulated that one of them had been invited there, but it never turned out to be true. Its exact location was also contested, and though Ben himself was rumored to have gone there more than once, all he’d seen—Honor Society students had all seen it—was LaVerdere’s apartment, where he’d had skylights installed. The floors sanded. Over a series of weekends, LaVerdere and Darius had filled the cracks in the plaster and whitewashed the walls.
Framed and hung on the highest wall, where there was still a fireplace but no chimney, was a black-and-white Avedon photograph of Marilyn Monroe in a low-cut evening dress, eyes downcast. The ultimate proof that you could blink and not ruin the shot. Spotlighted, it was the single piece of art. Only someone clueless would have assumed LaVerdere cared about Marilyn. What had they discussed when Ben went alone for tea at LaVerdere’s? He’d understood that Dr. Minetti expected to hear some sad, repressed, halting account of his seduction, though that had never happened, there or anywhere.
That afternoon in LaVerdere’s apartment, he’d had his first taste of lapsang souchong tea, as potent as alcohol, though more like drinking liquid charcoal. Their discussion had been about a play he’d read for class, Hotel in Amsterdam. They’d disagreed about a character’s motivation. He’d felt that he was letting LaVerdere down by failing to understand nuance. You didn’t talk about literature to LaVerdere without realizing your own deficiencies. What LaVerdere wanted wasn’t sexual. Something about the way Ben thought had at first impressed, then disappointed, his teacher: Unless it was as part of the debate team, Ben wouldn’t develop a point. Also, Ben never stood by his interpretations, especially of anything off the page, only understood through inference—though there’d been little LaVerdere disliked more than a person’s simply falling silent. “Venture something, ladies and gentlemen,” LaVerdere often said. “If your knowledge is insufficient, rely on your intuition. How could Shakespeare’s plays be considered great, if the audience wasn’t expected to rely on intuition?”
LouLou, browsing at the booth behind Ben, was listening to the elderly salesperson, who told her—as she wrapped LouLou’s four soufflé dishes—that she could remember when everyone thought electric mixers would replace whisks, though eventually women realized that whisks had their place and required little cleaning.
“They did sort of have my bathtub, but ugh! The thing had been painted pastel blue, so I’m going to keep my seven hundred bucks,” Dale said, when they met her at the front door. “Tonight I’m going to really enjoy soaking in your tub. Do you have anything girly, like bath salts? I mean, that somebody might have left behind?”
He did not. Had that been a leading question? At her request, they stopped at the drugstore and bought a funny Cinderella container of bubble bath that Dale couldn’t stop admiring. She looked at it lovingly, as if she’d been given an Oscar. LouLou had stayed behind in the car, texting.
“I’m starving,” LouLou said. “But thank you for taking us.”
“There’s a good bottle of wine at the house,” he said. “Dinner might take a while to cook, though.”
It had been in the back of his mind that he might bring up his father’s suicide, the surprising telephone call his sister had had with Elin. Like imagining he’d been on the bus with Jasper, he sometimes now felt like he’d been with Elin when she’d sat in the car, conflicted, not turning on the ignition. For no reason that he understood, his father’s death had been on his mind for days.
“Ben,” LouLou said. “I want to ask you something serious.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“Don’t shut me up when I need to say something important. You don’t realize how much your mood’s affected by Steve and his wife, Ben. Every time we talk, you’ve got something going on with them. It’s great you’re neighborly, and I’ve met Steve—he’s interesting, even if he does give off vibes like he’s the most important person in the room. But do you realize how much you bring them up, how often you’re taking a walk with her, or how preoccupied you are with the next time you’ll play tennis?”
“I’ve been helping him out with his father’s foundation. You know about that.”
“Yeah, sure, you’ve got this job that you also do for Steve, so his father can save the world before he keels over. It’s totally entangled: work, money, the neighbors. You bring Steve’s kid into conversation like she’s your own, how cute she is, how much time you spend with Steve’s daughter and Mommy.”
“There’s something wrong with that?”
“Yeah. You’re not a member of their family.”
“LouLou. You’re jealous.”
“I’m worried.”
“Just stop worrying,” Dale said, running her hand through her hair. “Or go ahead, worry—what do I care? But if Ben mistakes criticism for caring about him, he’s nuts.”
The trees were dark shapes that could have been made with enormous cookie cutters. It was Friday, a day that used to seem significant, that now seemed like every other day. Gin’s miscarriage, the little girl thrust into his arms . . . anyone would understand why he’d bonded with them afterward. But that wasn’t what was bothering her. She was really only interested in Ginny.
“Don’t you think my relationship with the neighbors might be a smokescreen, in terms of your own unhappiness right now, LouLou?”
“He’s a fucking Republican!”
“What?” he said.
“And I’m sure his cheerleader wife shares every belief he has.”
“Steve? Are you talking about Steve? He wrote a check for five thousand bucks to the Democratic campaign!”
“He can’t have. He believes in school vouchers and in never withdrawing our troops from anywhere.”
“That’s insane, LouLou. Wait . . . am I being punked, or s
omething?”
“I’m looking forward to having that wine when we get home,” Dale said. “A relaxing evening, no contention. A warm bath with bubbles popping around me.”
“Women just love Ben,” LouLou said. “Not the way you and I love him, Dale. Half the women at Bailey had a crush on him.”
“The smoke’s getting thicker,” he said.
“You think so? You’re that intent on not talking about your feelings for her?”
“I thought Gin might die. It made me re-evaluate every stupid thing we’d done or talked about. It happens to have been a very bad situation.”
“Okay, we’re circling the truth, but we’re still not looking at it directly.”
“I’m not in love with Steve’s wife, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“You aren’t?”
“What is with her?” Ben asked Dale.
“Can we talk about Ben’s neighbors tomorrow?” Dale asked.
“Yeah, why is this your call, LouLou?” he asked, parking and getting out.
“Do you know?” LouLou said, in a gentler tone of voice, as they went through the door into the kitchen. “Do you know what I’m going to tell you, because you can read my mind and because nobody on Earth is more attuned to what’s going on with me? You know, don’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re going to say,” he said. “But I strongly suspect I’m not going to want to hear it.”
“Going to bed!” Dale said. “Good night to everyone.”
“It’s so fucking predictable,” LouLou said, collapsing into a kitchen chair. “LaVerdere. He had an affair with Elin.”
He blinked. It wasn’t a blink, but a spasm. His eye had gone out of control, a thing that rarely happened, usually only when he’d played too much tennis, or lifted too heavy a weight. Had this happened when his father was alive?
“Does this come as no surprise?”
“An extreme surprise. He thought it was a good idea to tell you? Why?”
“I’m sorry. I should have found a better way to say it. But he’s had, or he’s having, an affair with her. I didn’t know that in the beginning.”
He sat across from her. He said nothing for a long time. Then he said, “What beginning?”
“When he agreed to be the sperm donor.”
“Now you’re kidding. You’re definitely kidding.”
“We planned to do it through the center. Dale and I, I mean. I wanted it to all be aboveboard, meaning hidden.”
He had no desire to hear more.
“As you know, I wanted you,” LouLou said, her voice softening. “But your saying no, I can totally understand. I can imagine what this sounds like, but he and I talked, and since you said you didn’t want to, I thought maybe he’d donate. It would be the turkey baster . . . you know what I’m going to say, right? But he did have a point about technology being the least reliable part. Listen, Ben, I said no. But now we’re both really determined, I mean Dale and I are. It made me super-aware of my bullshit list, how ridiculous it was to pretend that I could make sure what kind of kid we’d get.” Her hands flew apart. “So now the thing is, he’s gone back to Elin.”
“I can’t take this in.”
“Please say something to help,” LouLou said. “Don’t make me feel like a creep.”
“So let me understand this: He offered to fuck you, but he also mentioned that he’d been having, or was having, an affair with my stepmother? Is that right?”
“In the past,” Dale said, as she walked down the hallway. “They’re not still involved. When she gets like this, chronology goes out the window.”
“And have you given any thought to why he might have agreed, in the first place?” he asked LouLou.
“Of course! Do you think I’m stupid? Because of male pride. Or one-upmanship. He’s invested in screwing you. He’d be screwing you whether his semen got squirted into me with a turkey baster or if he jumped on top. I totally get that.”
“Which is what he proposed to do.”
“It did seem to make more sense. Look, I’m in love with Dale. He’s not under any illusions.”
“Excuse me while I go drown myself,” Dale said. “I don’t think you gave the best possible thought to the way you gave Ben this information, LouLou.”
“Wow,” he said. “And I thought you were just being irrational about my friendship with Gin and Steve.”
LouLou pushed her knuckles into her lips. Dale walked on, carrying the absurd bubble-bath container held high like a torch, her wineglass in the other hand. He waited to hear the bathroom door latch. He waited for water to start running. The house remained silent.
“Ginny looks like me. She could be my sister,” LouLou said.
“Oh, please, let’s not make this about me and Ginny,” he said. “That’s nothing but an attempt to deflect attention from how out of control you are. I can live without Ginny very easily, with her insecurity and her covert demands, and her precious Santa Maria Novella perfume and her secret nips of vodka. But you and me—haven’t we always shared something real? People can live without a friend, though. Because if you thought I’d like to step in where LaVerdere left off? I wouldn’t. I’m not standing on the sidelines, waiting for the next dance.” He gestured. No one stood on the sidelines except the radiator.
It gave him an idea. He walked away and turned on the radio that he’d taken from his father’s study after he died. He’d liked the fact that it turned on with a dial that rotated only between “off” and “on.” There was a sea lion sticker on the front from one of Maude’s decorating fits, running through his house, marking things as if they were going to be in a yard sale. The music was from some Motown group he’d forgotten the name of—not a particularly danceable tune, but he was already doing his best, his hands climbing an invisible ladder, doing fancy footwork.
He wiped his forehead with his forearm and, crossing the kitchen again without looking at LouLou, picked up the roasting pan and shoved the meat back into the refrigerator. Cook for her? Had he once cared what she’d have for dinner? He took down a small glass he often poured his morning orange juice into, one of several that had been left in the cabinet when he moved in. He poured the last of the wine. He said, “We’re still friends, LouLou.” He placed his hand over hers, as she’d done, earlier. “Just not the friends we used to be.”
He slipped off his shoes, turned up the volume, and continued dancing the slow dance he might have had with her if she’d been straight.
Eventually, because she could think of nothing else to do, she got up and moved into his arms to dance.
Nineteen
He reluctantly agreed he would go to the movies the following weekend with Steve, along with Ginny and Hannah. He’d met Hannah before, and a second meeting with Hannah wasn’t going to get anything going. He and she didn’t have much in common except that they were both good-natured about Steve’s kidding. Ginny’s younger sister was definitely second best.
Meanwhile, he went to the gym for the first time in weeks. The new person behind the desk asked him to scan his card, then was flustered when his membership turned out to be valid. He’d said hello to a guy doing free weights who’d helped him the winter before by attaching jumper cables when the battery died in the parking lot. “Hey,” was all the man had to say, sweat dripping off his face in spite of a bandanna wrapped tightly around his forehead. After using the stair-stepper, lifting weights, riding the stationary bike, and doing three sets of pull-downs, he’d left, confused about whether he was exhausted or energized.
He stopped on the way back for a haircut, though he hesitated because he was so sweaty. It was a unisex salon that cost more than it should, where he disappointed them by never wanting a manicure and never buying any products. The magazine selection tended to be unisex, too: The American Scholar (the owner’s husband taught at Bard), The Week. When Amy fi
nished his haircut, she untied the black cape from around his neck, brushing his shoulders with a brush so light, it felt like a thrilling little breeze passing over his neck.
“You stayed away too long,” she chided. She introduced him to her sister, Kayla, who’d been curled in a chair in the waiting area, reading a magazine. He’d assumed she was a client. He stayed for a San Pellegrino and chatted. It was the first time he’d heard Amy’s pronouncement on Arly (who’d loved the salon): “One of those women who thinks she’s complicated just because she complicates other people’s lives.”
Leaving, he tried to remember the last time he’d felt any sexual desire. He wouldn’t pretend the little internal fizzle that sometimes tickled his ribs when LouLou appeared didn’t surprise him, but it wasn’t because he wanted to sleep with her. He especially didn’t want to do that now, though her name detonated a brief, tiny spark. He’d checked some photographs on his cell phone. He didn’t agree that LouLou looked like Ginny. LouLou radiated sleekness; Ginny only seemed skinny. LouLou’s hair was a deep, magnificent brown, Ginny’s was ordinary, though highlighted, as if an invisible light shone from within. They did not have the same nose, even if they had similarly intense eyes.
The day before he was supposed to go to the movie with his neighbors—since LouLou’s objection to his purported infatuation, he’d tried to think of Ginny and Steve as his neighbors—he called and lied. “I screwed up, Gin; I’d already bought tickets to a concert,” he told her. Of course they could do it another time, she said. Hannah had a cold and wouldn’t be coming anyway.
He’d made an alternate plan: He’d be driving to Rhinebeck to get together with Kayla. Her husband had left her and their fourteen-month-old son for another man. That had come up in conversation. Seeing Amy’s sister made a lot more sense than screwing Steve’s sister-in-law. Despite what LouLou believed, he didn’t want to be more involved with Steve’s family. The more he thought about it, the less he thought LouLou got him. She took his friendship for granted. She rarely spent time with him anymore. Before she wanted something from him, she’d fixated on how elusive he was, denying that she—with her ten-hour workdays and her girlfriend—was the one who was withholding.