Falling in Place

by Ann Beattie

  Now, in the office, he was thinking again about Provincetown in the off-season: that it would be nice to stride down a sand dune, feel the sand shifting, see it moving into new patterns. Instead, he would be going to the parking garage: walking down the concrete ramp to the cashier, waiting for the black man to bring his car and turn it over to him, then up the ramp, into the traffic, the long drive from New York to his house in Connecticut. And then he would have dinner with them, watching John Joel taking seconds and thirds, and Mary sullen and bored, and Louise—how would she act? He remembered the night in the Chinese restaurant, and how he had tried to get a conversation going with Mary and failed. He wondered what he would try to talk to them about at dinner. It would be a real challenge to be polite and calm. She would never make a public announcement. He would have to wait until John Joel and Mary weren’t in the room, and then let her speak. Then she could say that he should go, and he could admit that he wanted to go. Then she would either be ugly or not be ugly. Either way, he knew that he would not spend the night, but go back to Rye; and in the morning, before she went to work, he would call Nina and tell her.

  Metcalf came into his office, knocking as he walked through the open door.

  “Why does Nick hate me?” he said.

  “What gave you that idea?”

  “He subscribes me to magazines and checks the block where it says they’ll bill you later. He’s one of the best idea men we’ve got, so I pay a hundred bucks a year, probably more, for magazines that come to my house.”

  “Why don’t you cancel the subscriptions?”

  “You admit it?” Metcalf said.

  “No. I just think that if it’s true, you should cancel the subscriptions.”

  “I thought that Country Journal was one of his jokes. I just found out that my son was having it sent to me for my birthday.”

  John nodded.

  “You’re supposed to ask when my birthday is.”

  “When’s your birthday?”

  “Monday. Bring me a present. A gag present. Just bring something. I’m sick of birthdays without cake and ice cream and presents.” Metcalf picked up a pen from the desk and tossed it in the air. “Look at that. A pen that’s not even the company pen. You work better with your own pen. I like that. Are you happy?”

  “I might be going to be happy.”

  “Ask me if I’m happy.”

  “Are you happy, Metcalf?”

  “No. I’m going to be fifty years old.” Metcalf put the pen back on the desk. “I know I’m obnoxious,” he said. “I like to be asked about myself, and nobody ever asks me.” He turned to leave. “You’re my second-best idea man. Does that make you jealous of Nick?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Trying to create a little friction so I’d have a friend of my own,” Metcalf said. “I haven’t invited either of you to the house this summer. You notice?”

  “I noticed.”

  “Ask me why.”

  “Why?” John said.

  “I don’t know,” Metcalf said. “I just don’t feel like having one of my usual summer parties and spending a lot of money on food and liquor just so I can get soused and put everybody on the spot. I’d rather just do it on a smaller basis—walk into your office and toss off an insult or two. You might be going to be happy. Is that what you said?”

  “Yes.”

  “That makes me jealous. I’m not going to be anything but fifty,” Metcalf said. “Take me seriously about the present.”

  When Metcalf left, he closed his eyes and silently prayed that Metcalf would not continue on to Nick’s office and talk the same way. It would take a week to calm Nick down if that happened.

  “When will you find out if you’re going to be happy?” Metcalf said, putting his head back in the door.

  “Tonight.”

  “What do you know,” Metcalf said. “Notice how I don’t ask you what will determine whether you’ll be happy?”

  “I noticed.”

  “Ask me why.”

  “Why didn’t you ask me?” John said.

  “Because I’ve got some manners. Not many, but a few,” Metcalf said. He smiled and went away. John watched the doorway for a long time before he picked up the phone, certain that Metcalf was gone. He called his mother, to say that he wouldn’t be home until late. The new housekeeper, Ms. Amoy, answered the phone. She said that his mother was sunbathing, and she would have to get her. A long time passed, and then his mother’s sleepy voice came on the phone.

  “I’m going to have dinner with Louise tonight,” he said. “I won’t be home until late.”

  “In the city?” his mother said.

  “No. In Connecticut.”

  “You’re always in the city. You live in the city. Why didn’t you have her come in and have dinner there?”

  “I didn’t think of it, to tell you the truth. Something she said made me think she wanted to see me there.”

  “It’s your life,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You run around too much. You can afford an air conditioner in your car, and you don’t have one.”

  “How’s Brandt?” he said.

  “Ms. Amoy, as she prefers to be called, is not so cold-blooded when it comes to Brandt. She and Brandt picked berries today, and she let him drop them into the bread mix. He dumped them all in in a pile, after she told him to sprinkle them, and she didn’t criticize him. He’s taken to calling her ‘A,’ whether because she told him to or not, I don’t know.”

  “How are you?” he said.

  “I’m all right. I went to the store today, in my air-conditioned car. I haven’t done much else.”

  “I’ll see you late tonight,” he said.

  “I certainly hope so,” she said. “I like to think of you sleeping. That pleases me as much now as it did when you were a troublesome little child, and I wanted you silent and out of my sight. Now I like to think of you sleeping because I worry that you’ll get sick, leading such a hectic life.”

  “Thank you for worrying about me.”

  “Worry leads to alcoholism,” she said. “If all the ice has melted in my gin and tonic while I’ve been inside talking to you, I’m just going to dump it out. If the ice is still there, then it’s a signal that God meant me to go on drinking it.”

  He hung up, flipped through an artist’s portfolio and wondered whether or not it was deliberate that one long black hair was stretched across two sample layouts on top of the plastic. He lifted the hair off carefully and dropped it to the floor. The person had probably figured that he wouldn’t look through the whole portfolio. He had an idea. He went down the hall, to Amy’s office. Amy had long blond hair she wore in a ponytail. He asked for one of her hairs. She paused a moment, then took the rubber band off and pulled out a hair. She held it out to him.

  “Thank you,” he said, taking it carefully. She pushed her hair behind her ears and put the rubber band around it again.

  “You’re not going to ask why I wanted it?” he said.

  “Jesus,” she said, “what is this? Are you going around in back of Metcalf like his shadow and imitating him?”

  “Oh,” he said. “Metcalf was by?”

  “I will not answer one more question” she said, and turned back to her typewriter.

  He went back to his office and put the hair where the other one had been, then looked through the rest of the portfolio. He wrote himself a note about the artist’s work, put the portfolio to the side of his desk with a note to the secretary to return it. At five o’clock, before anyone else, he left the office. The wise-cracking attendant wasn’t in the garage. Someone else got his car. He got in and wished that he had air conditioning. Out on the street traffic was bumper-to-bumper because of a truck double-parked, and because it was five o’clock. He sat and waited. While traffic slowly filtered through the narrow lane between truck and parked cars, he listened to music on the car radio. He switched the station to the one that gave traffic reports. No bad conge
stion, it seemed. He went back to the music station, and caught the end of “Blue Bayou.” He turned it off when a message for hemorrhoid sufferers came on.

  It had to be that she was leaving him, or asking him to leave her, because why else would she call him at the office and say with that grave tone of voice—that was it, she had sounded grave—that she wanted to see him right away? That night. Tonight. He had been so anxious to face it that he hadn’t even called Nina, as he did every night. He would stop on the way, at a phone. He would just not tell her that it was happening, not until it was all over. He hoped that he and Louise could discuss it tonight, and then the rest of it would be legal technicalities: It would actually be over. The closer he got to the house in Connecticut, the more he doubted it. If she did not want a divorce, though, what could she want on a Tuesday night? What could she want that she couldn’t talk about on the phone?

  He smiled to himself, remembering telling Nina that there were pillars at the base of his driveway. There were no pillars, but at the foot of his driveway was a police car parked sideways, blocking the way. He had been about to turn into the driveway without even thinking, and it had taken a few seconds to register that he couldn’t, and another few seconds to register that the black car was a police car. He got out of his car, but he could only stand and stare. He left the engine running, and reached back in through the window to set his hazard light blinking. If it was anything horrible, she would have told him on the phone. She was calm on the phone. But there was no way that a police car blocking his driveway could mean anything good. He walked around it. Two men with walkie-talkies were in his backyard: men in dark suits, standing back by the tree. They looked at him and didn’t say anything. He said nothing to them. The back door was open. If it was something really awful, and if she had not let on, if she had made him walk into it this way deliberately, he was going to kill her. Then he thought, suddenly: Is she dead?

  A man with a camera was sitting behind his kitchen table. The camera was beside him on the table and the man, with a can of Coke in front of him, was sitting there with his elbows on the table and his hands cupped one on top of the other, and his chin on his hands. “Who are you?” he said, when John walked in.

  “Where’s Louise?” he said. The house was so quiet. So cool, without any air conditioning. He saw a raw chicken, in a roasting pan, on the stove. Plates and glasses and silverware had been pushed aside so the man could lean on the table and drink his Coke. From outside, a buzz from the walkie-talkies droned on, what sounded like a doorbell with a short in it, a doorbell that kept ringing on its one note, maddeningly.

  A policeman came into the room, followed by Tiffy Adamson.

  “Is she dead?” he said to Tiffy. He knew that he had spoken, but he couldn’t hear his words. The man sitting at the table got up, picked up his Coke can, held it.

  “No,” Tiffy said. She sank into a chair across the table from him. He sat in the chair the man had been sitting in, and they faced each other across the table. You sat like this when you visited someone in prison. When you took a seminar in college. When you were at a real estate agent’s buying a house. The policeman stood in back of Tiffy and kept looking over his shoulder.

  “There was a shooting,” the policeman said to John. “She isn’t dead. She’s been taken to the hospital.”

  “Louise?” he said. “I just talked to Louise. Louise shot herself?”

  “No,” Tiffy said. “Louise is all right. Mary was shot.” Tiffy started to cry. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Mary?” he said stupidly.

  “Put your face between your knees,” the policeman said.

  “Do what?” he said.

  “You’re going to faint. Put your head down. Put it down.”

  He put it down. He felt his cheeks prickling. Surely Louise wouldn’t calmly call him when Mary had been shot? That simply wasn’t possible. They were tricking him.

  “Where’s Louise?” he said. It was hard to talk with his head down between his knees. He felt his Adam’s apple pulsing.

  “At the hospital,” Tiffy said. “Do you want me to call them for you? She’s not going to die. They had to operate to remove the bullet.”

  “What bullet?” he said.

  “Put your head down,” the policeman said.

  “John Joel shot her,” Tiffy said. She bit her lip, stared at him. He put his head down. She was the last thing he saw. He saw her face, and it shimmered, and then it slowly started to darken as his face got hotter and hotter. He tried to look at his own hands, holding the edge of the table, knowing that if he could blink, if he could break his stare, that he could also breathe, and if he could breathe he wouldn’t pass out. He thought he heard someone talking to him, faintly, and decided that he was talking to himself. The weight he felt was Tiffy’s hands, one on each shoulder, pushing him down into the chair so hard that he thought he would fall through it to the floor. He was still staring, but at nothing—at the refrigerator, the refrigerator in back of where Tiffy had been sitting. So that the refrigerator was actually the last thing he saw, and then when he opened his eyes the first thing he saw again was Tiffy. He saw a glass of water in front of him, with ice in it. He heard the policeman saying that it could have been worse, and he was confused: Had Tiffy called the hospital, and had he talked to Louise? Had Louise really called him and said only that she wanted him to come home? She hadn’t even insisted that he come.

  He said to Tiffy: “She called me this afternoon. I just talked to her.”

  “She must have called you before it happened,” Tiffy said. Tiffy looked at her watch. “It just happened,” she said. “It didn’t even happen three hours ago.”