by Ann Beattie
In the city, Har parked in an enormous lot on the West Side. He stopped at a phone to call a woman he knew on Twentieth Street. Her outgoing message said she would be out of town until Sunday night. Har shrugged; he said to Luis that since it was Sunday, she might be back soon.
Several blocks later, he stopped at another phone. “Here,” Har said, taking a quarter out of his pocket. “You listen to the message, and when it’s time to leave a message, say you’re my friend, and that we’ll call later.”
“Why can’t you do it?” Luis said.
Har picked up the phone, deposited a quarter, dialed, and handed the phone to Luis.
“Hello?” a woman’s voice said.
In his surprise, Luis blurted, “Hello?”
“Who is this?” the woman said.
“Har’s friend,” he said. “I’m calling for Har.”
“Harold?” the woman said. “What about him?”
Luis looked quickly over his shoulder. Har was watching a hunchbacked woman driving by in a little motorized car. Her white scarf blew in the wind. “Take it!” Luis whispered, holding out the phone. “Har—she’s on the phone!”
“I was just thinking,” Har said. “The last time we got together, dinner was supposed to be on her, and she stuck me with the bill.”
Luis put the phone to his ear. The woman had hung up; all he heard was the dial tone.
“Who was she?” Luis said, frowning as he hung up.
“Just somebody I knew in college. She calls herself an actress. Did a play at Long Wharf and a detergent commercial. As far as I know, that’s her career.”
“My mother’s best friend is an actress,” Luis said.
“Speaking of which—do you miss them? How come you wanted to come to the U.S. of A.?”
“My parents thought my uncle was moving to Buffalo,” Luis said, hurrying to keep up with Har. “And then when he didn’t go, my father found out about the student exchange program.”
“You know,” Har said, “some adults buddy up to kids and ask them personal questions, but I’ve never liked that. I’ve been along when a guy asks the kid if he’s had sex, or fooled around with drugs. What he drinks. That kind of stuff. But I don’t think that’s anybody’s business. The same way you’re not supposed to needle somebody about their religion. If they bring it up, fine. But that’s another matter.”
“I’m Catholic,” Luis said.
Har looked at him. “I think I knew that,” he said. “I think my parents mentioned going to some Christmas Eve service with you.”
“I don’t go every Sunday,” Luis said. “My mother, I would say, is the only devoutly religious member of our family.”
They had been walking crosstown, on a block where men stood in baggy pants and T-shirts, playing their radios, or clustered to play cards. Har saw a man cleaning his knife blade. He hailed the first cab that passed.
“Tower Records. Near there. I’ll tell you,” Har said to the driver.
“Tower o’ power,” the cabbie said. “Wish I owned stock.”
“Been in a New York cab before?” Har asked Luis.
“Yes. I’ve taken cabs with your parents every time I’ve been here,” Luis said.
“Yeah, they’re getting old. My father used to make it a point of honor to ride the subway. He knows them like the back of his hand. But you get old and tired, it doesn’t matter what you know. That’s when you do what you want, instead of what you know about.”
At the next light, Har told the driver to stop. He gave the driver several wadded-up dollar bills and told him to keep the change. When they got out, they were in front of a store with black mannequins wearing pillbox hats and mannequins painted bright green standing inside piles of hula hoops. Inside, Har headed for the shirt rack. “Look,” he said to Luis. “Every one of these has a name sewn somewhere. These were a big thing in the fifties. You can pick who you want to be.” He pulled a shirt off the rack. ED was sewn over the pocket, and MANDELL’S PLUMBING was stitched in big letters across the back. It was a two-tone shirt, with red in front and white and red stripes in back. “Size large,” Har said. “Looks like I’ve found one right off the bat.”
“Off the bat,” Luis echoed, flipping through the shirts. The one he liked was aqua, with white piping around the sleeves and DAVE sewn with gray thread over the front pocket. DAWSON’S LAWN SERVICE it said on the back.
Har paid for the shirts. Outside, they stuffed the shirts they’d been wearing in the bag. Each bit off the other’s price tag. Har nodded his approval, and they continued their walk.
“I’ve got a friend on East Seventh,” Har said. “His name is Allen Purvis. He’s an actor, too. His show got canceled. Last I heard, he was living on unemployment and writing a novel about an unemployed actor.”
As they turned onto East Seventh, they crossed the street. Har went into a store that sold lingerie. He took a pair of underpants off a hanger and dangled them from his thumb, considering them. They were lavender lace. Har raised his eyebrows and smiled. The saleswoman took his money and wrapped them in pink tissue paper, then put them in a tiny bag. They were the fanciest panties Luis had ever seen.
A few buildings past the store, they crossed the street again. Luis followed Har up the steps of a brownstone. He rang the buzzer. There was no intercom, so their first sight of Allen Purvis was at the door. He was wearing white shorts and rubber thongs. “Son of a bitch!” he said, throwing the door open. Har spread his arms wide; he kept them above his head as Allen embraced him.
“What have we here?” Allen said. “We have Ed and Dave, I see, come for a visit.” He smiled at Luis.
“This is my adopted son,” Har said. “We thought we’d come by and become characters in your book.”
“Full of surprises, this life,” Allen said. “Do come in.”
They followed him down a corridor to another door, which was already open. “Unbelievable,” Allen said. “What are you doing in town, Har?”
The phone rang. Allen ignored it, clapping Har on the back and steering him toward the front of the apartment. As Luis trailed behind, he saw that Allen’s shorts were split. They had been sewn with red thread.
“Sit down, gentlemen,” he said. “I happen to have a bottle of champagne, courtesy of Mrs. Perry, upstairs, who was deeply indebted to me for watering her plants for two weeks while they cut out half her stomach. Please: sit down and prepare yourselves for pleasure.” Allen turned and almost ran to the kitchen. As he went through the glass beads, he kicked one foot high in the air behind him.
Luis looked at Har. He had expected some sign when Allen went into the kitchen—a wink, or something. Instead, Har sank into a chair, dropping the bag and pushing it aside with his foot. “I seem to be a bit tired,” Har said to Luis.
As Allen returned with a bottle of champagne and three stacked water glasses, Har said, “You know, my friend here is actually an exchange student from Bolivia. He’s been living with my parents in Weston.”
“Really?” Allen said. “Then let’s have a toast to him. You make the toast, Har.”
Har sighed. He watched Allen pop the cork. “In fact, I don’t even have a marriage anymore, let alone an adopted son. Susan’s reunited with her former love. No kidding: he came to Michigan to court her again, got a brain tumor, and we spent three weeks in the hospital, sleeping in chairs. Man is very, very sick. This made clear to her her love for him.”
“To good health,” Allen said, raising his glass.
The phone rang again. This time, Allen went over to where it sat on the floor and turned up the volume control. “Juliette!” he said, pouncing on the phone. “Juliette, my most darling. You’re back from the beach early.”
“The person we called earlier?” Luis said to Har.
“The very,” Har said.
“Juliette. There is a surprise for you, if you come right over,” Allen said.
Har looked at Luis. He rolled his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe it’s time to take off
if Juliette’s coming over.”
“But you were going to see her,” Luis said.
“No, darling. Not recruiting you to play bridge with the woman upstairs. Just inviting you to a celebration, of sorts.”
“Maybe we should get a pizza,” Har said, getting out of his chair. “I’m pretty hungry. How about you?”
“Sure,” Luis said.
“No, darling,” Allen said into the phone. “Nothing nasty at all. A pleasant surprise.”
—
Outside, a bum asked for a quarter, and Har gave it to him. “It’s none of my business,” Har said, “but what do you want to be, Luis?”
“I think I’d like to be an illustrator.”
“Illustrations? Didn’t my mother say something about your going to medical school?”
“My father wants me to be a doctor, but I want to draw. I want to draw things for books. I’m interested in botany.”
“Really?” Har said. “I’ll bet my mother likes that. Nobody in her family is at all visual. She likes Toulouse-Lautrec. Did you know that?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Those damn paintings were nightmares to me when I was a kid. That one of the woman with the blue face? She couldn’t have hung a three-headed monster and scared me more.”
“Whaddya want?” the counterman said. He had on a white shirt and a gold chain with a silver cross dangling from it. There was cross-hatching on the silver. Many people in Bolivia wore such crosses.
“Cheese, sausage, and still more cheese,” Har said.
“Sure you don’t want a fondue?” the counterman said.
Luis leaned against the counter, like Har. “The mother of one of the girls in my drawing group says that a great depression is coming,” Luis said. “She’s a very good watercolorist. She told me that when she was my age, both her parents died, and she was raised by an aunt. The aunt hit her if she saw her drawing, because she thought drawing was a waste of her mind.”
“Some days, I don’t know how anybody survives,” Har sighed.
“Being hit for drawing still makes her very mad,” Luis said.
When their pizza was ready, the man slid it into a box and taped the top closed. Har paid for it, and they walked outside. The man who had asked for a quarter before asked for another. “No can do,” Har said.
“Fuck you!” the man shouted.
The doughy smell of the pizza, mixed with the smell of gasoline as someone tried to start his car at the curb, made Luis a little light-headed. He hurried to keep up with Har.
“You see those beads over Allen’s kitchen door?” Har said, as they walked up the steps to the brownstone. Luis rang the bell. “That’s because when he didn’t have any money, back in the days when he was waiting for calls from his agent, Juliette offered him ten bucks for the door, and he sold it to her. He found the beads in the trash later that week, on Avenue A.” Har shook his head, as if baffled by something. He said: “She wanted to turn her bathtub into a table. She had one of those claw-footed numbers in her kitchen, and she wanted to turn the tub into a table when she wasn’t using it, so she bought the door so she could have a table.”
Luis nodded. Allen Purvis threw open the door.
“Remember Juliette’s table?” Har said to Allen.
“Do I remember the table? I mean, if not for my generosity, there would have been no table,” Allen said.
“She painted the door green, and there were blue Fiestaware plates. It was very fashionable. And she made sushi before anyone ever heard of it. Boy—those were some strange times.”
They went back to the front room. Allen had put out plates and folded squares of paper towels. A Swiss Army knife sat on one of the plates. Allen clicked out a blade and offered it to Har to cut the pizza.
They were finishing their first slices when Juliette rang the doorbell. She came in carrying a bottle of wine and a loaf of French bread. “Harold!” she screamed, when she saw Har. “What is going on here? No word from Harold Winston for two years at least, and here he is in New York City, and…with another gentleman I don’t believe I’ve been introduced to.”
“His adopted son,” Luis said, extending his hand.
“Harold!” Juliette said. “Why do you keep such news from old friends?”
Har shrugged. Outside, someone passed by with a radio. Michael Jackson was squealing. A car screeched away from the curb, and the gasoline fumes began to waft through the window. Reaching for another slice of pizza, Luis thought: I am going to remember this day. Not because it was a typical day, or because anything very important was happening, but because of the way they all seemed to be drifting, as if they, too, were part of the breeze. This day had nothing to do with the way people visited and talked in La Paz; there, people spoke more formally, as if they were interviewing one another.
“This is the last thing I would have expected,” Juliette said, sitting near Har’s feet. “Harold Winston back in town, with his son, and me, sitting by his side.”
“This is the very woman who asked Allen to take his door off the hinges and sell it to her for ten dollars when she lived next door,” Har said to Luis.
“Five,” Juliette said. “I got it on the cheap.”
“You paid me ten,” Allen said.
“Well!” Juliette said, reaching up for Har’s champagne glass. He gave it to her. She took a sip. “Another surprise,” she said. “That Allen, who speaks so often about how cheap I am when my back is turned, tonight asserts that I offered twice the money I did for his kitchen door.”
“We’ve got to get going,” Har said abruptly, as Juliette handed his glass up to him.
“Oh, Harold,” Juliette said. “Isn’t that just like you? So mercurial. So let’s-drop-in-and-stir-up-the-waters.”
Har stood. With great mock seriousness, he said, “Then…can you get along without me?”
As he watched, Luis had a crazy thought. It was only half formed when he reached for the champagne bottle, shook it hard with his thumb over the top, then pointed it at Juliette and let the champagne fly, the white foam shooting out with more force than he would have thought possible.
“Oh God, he is your son,” Allen laughed.
“Apparently,” Juliette said. She was angry, but she looked at Har, not at Luis. “Do you know what this proves?” she said. “It proves that whenever more than one man is present, there’s always competition for my affection. I thought the trouble might only be between you and Allen, Harold, but I see your son has added himself as another potential candidate.”
Luis tried to look as unsurprised as Allen and Har as Juliette slowly unbuttoned her soaked blouse, then let it drop to the floor. She stood there in a white brassiere and a pearl necklace, looking at all of them in turn. She stared at Har until he dropped his eyes, and then she turned to Allen. “What I just said makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it, Allen?” she said, and then he, too, looked away. Luis was the last one to be gazed upon, and in the moments before she shifted her attention to him, he had had time to think. She turned to him, and he reached forward, dipping his hand into the bag and carefully extracting the little package wrapped in pink tissue paper. “For you, Juliette,” he said.
She was so surprised, she took it from his hand and opened it. In the few seconds it took her to remove the lavender pants from the tissue paper, and before she burst into wild laughter, Har thought: Oh, what the hell. What was the chance of its working, anyway? The reconciliation with his wife.
THE FOUR-NIGHT FIGHT
The four-night fight began on Father’s Day, June 20, but had nothing to do with the day. Her father had been dead for almost fifteen years; his father had left his mother and moved to Santa Barbara to spend his remaining years—so far, twelve had passed—golfing. Henry was not himself a father.
It had been a beautiful, sunny day. Lavender geraniums were in bloom, bordering the back porch. Inside the porch, yellow and red begonias blossomed, their flowers as large as their leaves. In one of the pots, a plastic parrot’s
one moving wing rotated as the wind blew. The summer before, Henry had gotten the other wing going, but this year he’d done nothing. Neither had he brought home plants for the porch, nor helped weed the geranium bed, to which he had added, against her objections, a dozen blue-black tulips, planting the bulbs the previous fall as she slept. First he refused to enlarge the flower bed. Then, when she did that, he “borrowed” bricks from the border to brace a rickety bookshelf. Then he ordered red tulips, was sent the bruise-colored ones instead, shrugged, ignored her dismay, and planted them while she was asleep. None of these things had anything to do with the fight.
The fight began in early evening, so that properly speaking, it was a four-night, three-day fight. The fight reminded her of hotel package deals: four nights, five days, in sunny Bermuda—but after you struggled to the hotel the pleasure of the first day would inevitably be shot: plane late; luggage delayed; rainstorm slowing the car to the hotel; a long line for check-in. They had taken a trip to Bermuda in October, to celebrate their anniversary. She had wanted to stay in a small hotel, he had insisted on staying at a sprawling resort. Like his father, he loved to golf. She had gone around on her moped alone, while he golfed, and though that might have made her feel bad, it had not, so why pretend to hold a grudge when actually she had quite enjoyed her freedom? She didn’t pretend to hold a grudge. Nothing that happened in Bermuda had anything to do with the fight.
In fact, the reason the fight was so bad was that it snuck up on her. In the seconds preceding the fight, she had been perfectly happy, scooping the center out of a cantaloupe. Henry had become diabetic, so they no longer had cookies for dessert, only fruit. She kept a package of Chips Ahoy hidden behind boxes of Tide in the laundry room, but she’d lost her taste for sweets, suddenly. Or maybe not so suddenly: she’d lost it when the cookies somehow absorbed, like a sponge, the smell of Tide. When she was a child, her mother had put milk of magnesia in chocolate milk to disguise the taste, but all it had done was make her cringe at the thought of plain chocolate milk, and also chocolate ice cream, or chocolate milk shakes. She was even wary of chocolate cake, and sniffed skeptically at Hershey bars. No matter: cookies and chocolate could easily be done without, and a person would be healthier because of it. So there she had been, scooping out the melon, looking forward to a made-for-TV movie the listing had said would be good, when suddenly Henry was standing in the kitchen doorway, looking at her in a peculiar way, contributing nothing toward fixing their dessert, having said not a word about the dinner she had just served….Well: the thing was, the fight, in his mind, had already begun, but she had been slow to understand his sulking, mistaking it for simple fatigue, since before dinner he’d hauled out the trash and sprayed the lid with Clorox so that during the night the raccoon couldn’t simply saunter up to the can and with a swipe of its paw crash the top of the trash can to the ground. Also, he had sawed off the broken limb of the lilac and dragged it into the woods, then gone inside and called his mother to give her some information she needed to pay her taxes. His mother was not the world’s most pleasant person. Also, since it was Father’s Day, she was in a bleaker mood than usual, despising Henry’s father for leaving her and spending his retirement golfing in California. Maybe his mother’s bad mood was contagious. Maybe Henry had done one too many chores. Maybe he harbored a grudge that she had made him spray the trash can with Clorox, which he continued to call “ridiculous,” though it was the one thing that had ever deterred the tenacious, fat, garbage-can-toppling raccoon.