by Ann Beattie
He stood at the water cooler. Two aspirin weren’t going to help. He thought about going down to Nick’s office, but he didn’t know what to say. He took the aspirin and went anyway.
“What’s the matter?” Nick said when he saw him.
“I had lunch with her teacher. Mary’s summer-school teacher. I held her hand—I mean, I shook her hand—and with my eyes closed, it could have been Nina’s hand. I stood there shaking the hand of Mary’s summer-school teacher, and I wanted to go to bed with her.”
“So?” Nick said. Nick put down the piece of paper he had been studying. It was a graph: stalagmites and stalactites on an eight and a half by eleven sheet of paper. “Why do you look so awful?” he said.
“I’ve got a headache. And you know what I think about that? You know the old I’m-too-tired, I’ve-got-a-headache routine?”
Nick opened his top drawer. “If you know so much, Freud, how come you’ve got cancer of the jaw?”
“Jesus Christ. What if this is all some midlife crisis? If I’m just becoming aware I’m losing my youth, and—”
“You were running down how old you were when I came to work here three years ago. Three years ago. You were thirty-seven.”
“You’re only thirty-five now. You want to disbelieve Passages?”
“You’re drunk?”
“I’m not drunk. My head is pounding.”
“You’re talking to me about Passages. Passages. I want to not believe Passages. Correct. You’re in a midlife crisis: correct or incorrect. Okay. This is the stupidest conversation I’ve had all day, and that includes nearly an hour-long conference with Metcalf this morning. This teacher was pretty?”
He sat in the chair across from Nick’s desk. Behind Nick was a Betty Boop clock. Out of her surprised mouth came two black arrows telling the time. Five of three.
“I love it,” Nick said. “In all my youthful innocence, I mean-that you care what the fuck the reason is. You must have gotten along very well with that schoolteacher today.”
John tapped Nick’s paperweight (a picture of Mary Pickford’s house, Pickfair, under glass) against the edge of his desk.
“My head is killing me,” he said. He put down the paperweight. “Thirty-five,” he said. “Did you ever read L’étranger in college?”
“The Stranger, by Albert Camus. I read it,” Nick said. “You can speak English here. You’re among friends.”
Ten
PARKER LIKED to eat as much as John Joel did, but he never had any money, and John Joel got tired of lending him money he knew he’d never see again. He couldn’t very well eat in front of Parker, though, so he ended up buying Parker’s lunch when they were in the city and not stopping for as many snacks as he would ordinarily. Parker hated the hot weather and was always mopping his brow with one of his assortment of Western bandannas. Today it was a wadded-up yellow bandanna to go with the yellow shirt he wore. He let the shirttail hang out of his slacks so that he could lift it every now and then and fan up some breeze. Parker liked to wear cotton shirts instead of T-shirts, and he thought jeans were too hot in the summer. John Joel felt vaguely as if he were with his father. Nobody else his age dressed like Parker. On Fridays Parker took the train into New York to see his shrink on West Fourth Street. Lately John Joel had been taking the train into town with him. There were no hamburgers in Connecticut to compare with New York burgers.
They were on Madison Avenue, where they had gone to pick up a photograph of some relative that Parker’s mother had dropped off to have restored. The man in the store had carefully lifted the tape that sealed the brown package, separated the two pieces of cardboard inside, and revealed to them the enlargement of a picture of a lady in a gray blouse, with buck teeth and a gray-blue flower in her hair—some relative that Parker didn’t know. The original, the man said, was in the envelope. The envelope was taped to one of the pieces of cardboard. The man smiled over the counter at them. “Is there a family resemblance?” he said, cocking his head at Parker. “She’s ugly and I’m fat,” Parker said, fanning his shirt away from his stomach. “What do I owe you?” Parker’s mother had given him a blank check, and he filled in the amount. Earlier in the day he had filled in a check at the railroad station, and then again at the shrink’s. All the cash he had was eight dollars, and since the bus was too hot, that would all go to splitting the cab fare to and from Grand Central.
“She looks like a spitz,” Parker said, the package under his arm.
“A what?”
“That dog. Isn’t it called a spitz?”
A thin black woman with her hair in a bun passed them, pushing a white baby in a stroller. Parker showed her his stomach to shock her, but she didn’t shock. She just kept walking, looking at the wheels of the stroller.
“So when do you get your braces?” Parker said.
“Next week. I don’t know.”
“Then you’re going to have to brush your teeth all the time,” Parker said. “Every time you eat. Otherwise that stuff will get in your braces and putrefy.”
“I don’t care,” John Joel said.
“Putrefy is a good word,” Parker said. “Can we get something to eat?”
“I’m supposed to buy, right?” John Joel said. “Right?”
“Where do you get all your money?” Parker said.
“Mostly from my grandmother. She didn’t use to give us money, but she feels bad that she doesn’t like us. She likes my brother, but he’s a baby. She gives Mary and me money. Not all the time, but maybe every other week or so. She gives Mary more than she gives me.”
“So why does the kid live with her?” Parker said.
John Joel shrugged. “Where do you want to eat? That place?”
“I get sick of hamburgers.”
“That’s what I want, though. So that’s what I’m going to buy you. What did you want?”
“Éclairs.”
“We can get some éclairs. Let’s get a hamburger.”
“Where can we get éclairs?”
“We can even get them at Grand Central. Let’s get a hamburger.”
“Okay,” Parker said.
They went inside. A fan was aimed at the counter, and square glass ashtrays were on top of the napkins so they wouldn’t blow away. There was a sign asking people not to smoke. Parker saw the sign and put his unlighted cigarette back in the pack in his shirt pocket. He smoked Salems. He played with the edge of his napkin, waiting for the man behind the counter to take their orders. He took out a cigarette again and tapped it on the counter but didn’t light it.
“You ought to see the stuff across the street, down at the Whitney Museum,” John Joel said. “I was in there with a friend of my father’s last week. All these plaster people sitting around on subway cars or sprawled in bed. Some of them are naked. Some of them are painted colors.”
“Let’s go there,” Parker said.
“I was just there.”
“So? It’s right down the street.”
“It costs money.”
“Listen: I tell my mother we went to the Whitney and show her the stubs, she’ll give you back the money you paid for both of us to get in, I promise.”
“What do you want to go to an art show for?”
“Why’d you go?”
“I told you. My father’s friend took me there. We were killing some time between the orthodontist and my father meeting us for lunch. My father gets on this thing that I should be escorted around New York.”
“We going or not?” Parker said.
“If your mother’s paying me back, we can go. It’s no big deal. It’s just a pretty weird art show.”
“I want to see the naked plaster people,” Parker said. “Are they real thin?”
“They’re average.”
“Are they fucking?”
“They’re just lying in bed. They’re asleep.”
“But they’re naked, right?”
“What?” John Joel said. “Didn’t you ever see anybody naked in bed?”
“No smoking,” the man behind the counter said.
“What?” Parker said. “I’m tapping out a song that’s going through my head, that’s all. We want a couple of hamburgers.”
“What with them?”
“French fries. Two orders,” Parker said. “Coke for me.”
“Cow juice,” John Joel said. There was a sign on the wall that advertised milk as cow juice.
“What song’s going through your head?” the counterman said. He turned and began filling a glass with ice.
“ ‘Stayin’ Alive,’ ” Parker said. “You see Saturday Night Fever?”
“That show where they do the gag routines,” the counterman said. “Sure I’ve seen it.”
“Uh-uh,” Parker said. “The movie with John Travolta in it.”
“What am I talking about?” the counterman said.
“You’re thinking of Saturday Night Live.”
“Yeah,” the counterman said. “The blonde’s pretty. The one who gives the news. Not any prettier than the one who gives the news for real, though. Some of the stuff’s funny.”
“You know that song?” Parker said. He took out a book of matches and put it on the counter and flipped open the cover with his thumb.
“Nah,” the counterman said. “I don’t go to movies with actors in ’em. I go to see actresses.”
“There were girls in it.” Parker tore out a match.
“What I read,” the counterman said, “it was about John Travolta.”
“Hey,” the other counterman said, turning away from the grill and wiping his forehead on his arm. “You going discoing this weekend, Sal? That what you’re talking about?”
“That’ll be the day,” Sal said.
“ ‘Disco, Disco duck,’ ” the other counterman sang, turning hamburgers on the grill.
“He goes discoing,” Sal said. “Sure. Look at him. Look at him shake. During the day he stands in front of the grill and shakes. Nights, it’s his ass. Show the boys,” he said, and laughed. His laugh turned into a cough.
“I don’t show boys,” the other man said.
“Saturday Night Fever, Saturday Night Live, who keeps it straight?” Sal said. “Two fries, right?”
“You ought to see that movie,” Parker said. “I saw it when it was R-rated. It’s changed now, but there wasn’t that much good stuff to begin with, so it’s pretty much the same.” He had lit the match. He watched the flame burn toward his finger, then blew it out.
“Day I pay to see John Travolta dance,” Sal said.
“Day you do anything you don’t do every other day, I’ll stand up on this grill and do a slow fry. Flatten myself down on this grill like a hamburger and sputter. You going to a disco. I’d like to see that.”
“A priest goes to the disco in the movie,” Parker said.
“A real priest?” Sal said.
“Well—he’s thinking about not being one anymore.”
“He goes back to the church, I bet,” Sal said.
“Nope,” Parker said.
“So what does he do?”
“He drives off. I don’t know what he does. I don’t think they say.”
“So everybody’s still riding off into the sunset. When I went to pictures and I was a kid that’s what they did. Still doing it, huh? Priest doesn’t know what he’s doing. Shit. Quit one thing for another. Day I do that, you better get up on that griddle and melt yourself, Robby. You’ll know the world is in sorry shape the day I do that.”
“He loves to work. Sal loves to work,” Robby said.
“Make fun of me,” Sal said. “I like to work. I like heat. That’s it. I thought this was where I’d end up. Sure. What started this, anyway?” Sal said. “Are you cooking today or not?”
“What does it look like I’m doing? Discoing?”
Robby turned back to the grill. Sal wiped his hands on a towel under the counter.
“Maybe there’s something better to do than go across the street,” Parker said.
“It was your idea. I don’t even want to go.”
“Let’s go,” Parker said. “It’s right across the street, I guess.” He squirted a blob of ketchup on the side of the plate. The plate was shiny with grease. He ran the French fry through the grease and salt to the ketchup, pushed it around, and picked it up in his fingers.
“My one grandmother doesn’t send me money because she’s dead,” Parker said. “The one that’s alive sends me stuff, but not money.”
“When did she die?”
“Last summer. Swimming in the Adirondacks. She had a stroke or something.”
“I never thought about a grandmother swimming,” John Joel said.
“What’s yours do?”
“She doesn’t do anything. She takes my brother and the dog to the park sometimes, I think. She reads books.”
“My grandmother had the Kinsey Report on her bookshelf in the kitchen with her cookbooks. It was boring. Just a lot of crap.”
“What’d she keep it there for?”
“Adults don’t think they have to hide anything,” Parker said. “No. I take it back. My father hides things. But nothing as stupid as the Kinsey Report.”
“What does he hide?”
“He’s got pictures hidden. He’s got a dirty deck of cards. I opened what I thought was his fishing box, and it was full of stuff like that. Maybe it isn’t even his. When my grandmother died and my grandfather went into a nursing home he hauled home all kinds of crap. I don’t even think the stuff is his, come to think of it.”
“What did you think when you found it?”
“You sound like my shrink,” Parker said. “Would I have to beg for a milkshake?”
“They’re a dollar ten.”
“Will it do me any good to beg for a milkshake?” Parker had torn two matches out of the book. He pushed them toward each other, head to head.
“Okay. Tell the guy we want two.”
“Garçon,” Parker said to Sal. “Two chocolate milkshakes, please.”
“I was in Paris in World War II,” Sal said. “Give me a sentence in French and I can answer you. Go ahead.”
“I don’t know French.”
“You sounded like you did there, for a minute. What kind of milkshakes?”
“Chocolate,” John Joel said.
“Chocolate malt,” Parker said.
“My brother was in the Philippines,” the counterman said. “Used to get the monkeys drunk as skunks. Leave beer in the cans. Monkeys would swing around, loaded, fall out of the trees. Monkeys were certifiable alcoholics. He brought one home with him, smuggled it in. Drank with him at night. Staggered around the house. There was a lost soul. My brother, I mean. There’s somebody who never figured out what he was going to do and never did it. Spent years drinking with a monkey.”
“Here we go,” Robby said. “Sal: responsible hero of the family.”
Sal put two metal containers under the machine and turned it on. Water ran down the sides of the containers. Parker took out his bandanna and wiped his forehead.
Robby was still standing in front of the grill with his hand over his heart.
“I should disco and get drunk with monkeys. Sure,” Sal said.
“Their milkshakes are ready,” Robby said, pointing.
Sal put two glasses on the countertop—the kind of glasses Coke used to be served in. He poured each glass half full and set the containers on the counter.
“I never spent so much time talking to kids in ten years,” Sal said. “How did we get talking?”
“We’re fat and jolly. People can’t resist us,” Parker said.
“That’s the truth. You won’t dare weigh too much when you’re chasing the ladies, though. Listen to me: I sound like somebody’s father. If I’m somebody’s father, I don’t know about it.”
“You’re somebody’s father, I’ll fry a leg on this griddle,” Robby said. “I’d like to see what you d
o besides work.”
“All this because I wouldn’t close up shop for August. You’d think this was the French Riviera. That he’d do anything worthwhile if I closed for August.”
“My sister’s got a condo in Ocean City. How many times do I have to tell you?”
“Yeah. And a pool that fell through the ground. A swimming pool brought down by carpenter ants.”
“There’s the ocean, you know, Sal.”
“Yeah. I can see it. Full of seaweed. Stay here where the fan’s going.”
“I might quit,” Robby said.
“You’re not going to quit,” Sal said.
Parker tapped his cigarette on the counter. He knew that Sal was watching him, that he was making Sal nervous. Earlier in the day he had tapped the cigarette on his psychiatrist’s table. In front of the sofa the patients sat on, the psychiatrist had a table with magazines on it, as though the patients might tire of talking and just stop and flip through a magazine. As though they were waiting to see the doctor instead of being in the room with him. Some of the old Life magazines Parker thought might be collectors’ items, but he didn’t want to get into that with the shrink. He would rather have spent the hour eating. He had no interest in talking to the shrink about why he wasn’t doing anything all summer.