by Ann Beattie
She took a dress the color of moss out of the closet. It was silk, flecked with silver. It had broad, high shoulder pads. Fran wiggled the dress over her head and felt at once powerful and feminine when the shoulder pads settled on her shoulders. She smoothed the fabric in front, adjusting the waist so the front pleat would be exactly centered. The appeal of the dress was all in the cut and the fabric—a much more provocative dress than some low-cut evening wear. The perfect shoes to go with it, simple patent-leather shoes with very high heels, were only a bit too small for Fran’s foot. She twisted her arm and slowly zipped the back zipper. Facing the mirror, she let her hair down and ran her fingers through it, deciding to let it stay a bit messy, only patting it into place. She clipped her bangs back neatly and looked at herself in the mirror. This was the place where Pia often stood studying herself. She smoothed her hands down the sides of the dress, amazed at how perfectly it fit.
Chap came into the house and called for Fran. The timing was too perfect to believe. She would slowly unzip the zipper, let him watch as the dress became a silk puddle on the floor. She would step out of it carefully. Once free, she could run to the bed and he would run after her.
She called to him to come into the hallway and close his eyes.
“I can’t,” he said. “A goddamn bee bit me.”
“Oh no,” she said. She checked her impulse to run down the stairs. “Put baking soda on it,” she called. “Baking soda and water.”
She heard him mutter something. The floorboards creaked. In a second, he hollered something she couldn’t understand. She went halfway down the stairs. “Chap?” she said.
“You don’t know where she’d have baking soda, do you?” he said, slamming drawers.
“There’s some in the refrigerator!” she said suddenly. She had seen an open box in the refrigerator. “Top shelf,” she hollered.
“The mosquitoes aren’t bad enough, I’ve got to get a bee bite,” he muttered.
“Have you got it?” she said.
He must have, because she heard the water running.
“Do you think taking aspirin would do any good?” he said. “Come in here so I can talk to you, would you?”
She stepped out of the shoes and ran into the kitchen. He was leaning against the counter, frowning, the box of baking soda on the drain-board, the bee bite—he had made a paste and then for some reason clapped his hand over the area—on his biceps. His face was white.
“Sit down,” she said, going toward him to lead him to the nearest chair. “It’s okay,” she said reflexively, deciding to be optimistic. Chap always rallied when someone was optimistic. “It’ll be fine,” she said, taking his elbow. “Go into the living room and sit down.”
“I don’t believe this,” he said. “I was finished. I’d shut the mower off. It came right at me and bit me, for no reason.”
They stepped across a fallen postcard and two cloud magnets he had knocked down as he bent to get the baking soda.
“What are you all dressed up for?” he said, frowning as he sank into a chair.
“Take your hand away,” she said. “Let me see.”
“I don’t think baking soda does anything,” he said. He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I haven’t had a bee bite since I was about ten years old. How long is this thing going to sting?”
“I don’t know,” she said. She wiped his sweaty forehead. She dropped her wet hand onto the arm of the chair. She was crouching, looking up at him, wondering if he was just pale from shock.
“What are you doing in that dress?” he said.
“I was going to surprise you,” she said. “I got all dressed up to seduce you.”
He snorted. He closed his eyes again. In a few seconds he opened his eyes and said, “Is that your dress?”
“It’s Pia’s.”
“Pia’s?” he said. “What was the idea? That I’d dress up like Lou and we’d play house?”
She smiled. “I just thought I’d dress up and seduce you.”
“Well, when this fucking pain stops—if it ever stops—why don’t I put on one of Lou’s suits and we can talk about postmodern architecture and politics at the college?”
“And what do I talk about?” she said.
“Whatever Pia would talk about,” he said. A little color was coming back to his face. There was a white smear over the bee bite. So far, it hadn’t swollen.
She sat on the floor, her hand resting on his knee. “Does it feel at all better?” she said.
“I can’t tell,” he said. He briefly touched her hand, then clapped his over the bite again.
“I don’t know what she’d talk about,” Fran said. “She’d say that Anthony wants a new robot. Or she’d tell him about some paper Anthony got a good grade on.”
“Couples aren’t supposed to always talk about their children,” he said.
“But then I don’t know what she’d talk about,” Fran said, puzzled.
“Hey,” he said, “we don’t really have to do this. It’s just a game.”
“I don’t think she wears these dresses,” Fran said softly, running her hand across the skirt to smooth it. “The minute I opened her closet and saw that long row of dresses hanging there so neatly, I had the feeling that she never wore them anymore.”
“What do you think she wears?”
“I don’t know, but it wouldn’t make sense, would it? Most everywhere you go, you can just go as you are. She always looked so beautiful in the city. Remember that until I found out she sewed, I couldn’t understand how she could have so many designer clothes?”
“I always thought you were a little jealous of Pia,” he said. “Which is particularly stupid, because you’re such different types.”
“She’s what American girls want to be,” Fran said. “Very cosmopolitan. Sophisticated. Simple, but beautiful.”
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
“You know what I mean.”
“Take off Pia’s dress and we’ll go to bed and be sophisticated,” he said. “Just let me take a quick shower.”
“Is your arm better?” she said, letting him help her up.
“There!” he said. “That’s good: that’s just what Pia would say in this situation, right?”
She smiled. “I would imagine,” she said.
“Then maybe what Lou needs is to be in pain more often. That way his wife will have something to talk to him about.”
In the same way it came upon Fran that Pia no longer wore elegant dresses, it dawned on Chap that Lou and Pia no longer communicated.
“I don’t want anything to ever happen to you,” Chap said, following Fran up the stairs. He stood in the doorway and watched as she shimmied out of the dress.
“I don’t either,” she said, “but that’s not too likely, is it?”
“No,” he said.
“The question is just what’s going to hit me between the eyes.” She stepped out of the dress as carefully as she intended. She was wearing only panties and Pia’s black high heels. She gave him a coquettish look.
He knew that she only meant to turn aside what he said, but for a split second, he wanted to say something important, so she would wipe the smile off her face. He wanted to say: “Let me tell you what happened to Pia,” though he did not, because Lou had sworn him to secrecy.
They made love before he showered. He closed his eyes tightly and did not open them again until after he climaxed, though the scent of Pia’s perfume almost tempted him to look quickly to make sure it was Fran.
Afterward, he looked at Pia’s green dress on the floor. He ran his finger lightly down Fran’s spine. The smell of sweat intermingled with the perfume. The shade flapped in the breeze, then was sucked against the window screen. How was it that he knew only now—not months before, when he sat beside Lou at the bar or cooked breakfast for him or clapped his arm around his shoulder as he headed off to the hospital—how was it that only now he knew the Brunettis’ marriage had caved in?
“I wa
s always jealous of her,” Fran said, her voice muffled in the pillow. “You were right when you said that.”
(4)
“Mrs. Brikel,” Chap said as he rolled down the window on the passenger’s side of the car. He had just gotten into the car when he looked out and saw her leaving the Laundromat, carrying a white laundry bag.
“Hello there,” she said, raising one elbow instead of waving. The bag was as round as a barrel. Sunglasses were on top of her head. She was squinting in the sun.
“You have a car, I suppose,” he said.
“That’s a long story,” she said, “but my cousin’s boy is coming to get me.”
“I’d be glad to give you a ride,” he said.
“Well, I wonder about that,” she said. She moved her elbow again. Her arm moved away from her body like a bird’s wing stretching. She looked at her watch: a large digital watch. He noticed also that she was wearing pink running shoes with white tennis socks. The shoes were tied with bright red laces. She shifted from foot to foot as she thought about taking the ride.
“Would you be so kind?” she said. “I can go over there by the hardware store to call and save Jay a trip.”
“Go ahead,” he said, turning the button to start the air conditioning. He put the fan on 3. “Leave those here,” he said, as Mrs. Brikel turned away with her laundry bag.
“I guess I will,” Mrs. Brikel said. He pushed open the door and she put the bag on the front seat; as she walked away, he tossed it into the backseat and stood it upright. Looking after her, he wondered if she was as old as he had thought. Perhaps today she looked younger because of her silly shoes, and her slightly disheveled clothes. All the fashions now were supposed to sag and droop. He was glad that except for sleeping in oversize T-shirts, Fran ignored the new look. Fran had always been quite an individual. It was at her insistence that they married, years ago, in a grove of willows. When something stopped being fun, Fran usually found a way to stop doing it. They no longer flew to his brother’s house for Christmas, since his brother remarried and his wife had four noisy cats. Fran had been trying to decide what career she would embark on next for quite a while, but he gave her credit: if she was restless, she hid it well, and she did not think her quandaries should be his.
Mrs. Brikel was hurrying back toward the car. She greeted a boy on a skateboard, then ran the last few steps. This time when he pushed open the door it was cool inside. She sank into the seat and said, “Aah. This has got to be my lucky day. I would have had to wait another half hour even if Jay was coming. It’s the best luck, running into you.”
He decided she was younger than he had thought.
“Today you remember me, right?” he said.
She laughed as if he had made a very good joke. “I guess by now I do,” she said.
“Car in for repairs?” he said.
“No, it’s a long story. I loaned it to a friend who had to go on a trip. Tomorrow night I’ll get it back, but my son was upset he was missing so many clothes, so I headed in to the Laundromat.”
“I’m glad I ran into you.”
“It works out,” she said.
At the rotary, he waited for a sports car to pass in front of him, then quickly accelerated into the circling traffic. Three-quarters of the way around, he turned onto the highway leading to the Brunettis’.
“Small town, I don’t guess you’ve had too much trouble learning your way around,” she said.
“I’ve got a lousy sense of direction, but no—this place hasn’t stumped me,” he said. He touched his neck. “There certainly are a lot of mosquitoes. We’d have gone out for more walks, but it’s impossible.”
There was a pause in the conversation.
“The damp did it,” she said. “I’ve lived here most all my life and I’ve never seen anything like this. Some kinds of bug spray they’re all out of, you know.” She shifted in the seat. “All that rain’s kept my son cooped up for a long time, and that’s not good,” she said. “You might have noticed he was in a very quiet mood when you were at the house the other day.”
“I didn’t expect him to make conversation while the TV was on,” he said.
“Oh, he does,” Mrs. Brikel said. “He gives more of a running commentary than some of those news announcers. When my son starts to think about something, nobody on earth can shut him up. He sees that television as a member of the family—talks back to it, thinks he’s in there as part of the picture some of the time. Worst time of day is when he should go to bed, because you know some stations stay on all night now. There never comes a natural time to go to bed.”
“I didn’t realize that,” he said.
“When the rain did stop, there was an accident out on the road one night. Someone put out flares just past our walkway, and it scared him. Two days later he still wouldn’t go out of the house.”
He thought about the tests he and Fran had gone through, trying to solve their infertility problem. What if she had gotten pregnant and they had been saddled, all their lives, with someone like Mrs. Brikel’s son? You put such thoughts out of your mind unless you were confronted with the possibility. Something about the way Mrs. Brikel talked about her son made him feel the boy’s presence in the car. His eyes darted to the rearview mirror. The big white laundry bag had tipped over.
Mrs. Brikel knocked her feet together. “He picks out my shoes,” she said. “I let him pick out things like that. He found these laces at the Ben Franklin. He’s got them in all his shoes, too. Something appeals to him, he never wants to have it change.”
He didn’t know what to say. He thought that someone more adept would turn the conversation—find a way to move on to something else.
“I know you’ve been friends of the Brunettis’ for some time,” she said. “Pia told me she wished she’d planted twice the flower garden when she knew your wife was coming, because your wife was such a lover of flowers.”
He looked at her, slightly puzzled. Perhaps Fran did care about flowers: though she never put flowers in their house, she had picked flowers from Pia’s garden as soon as they arrived. Did she have a favorite flower? He would have to ask her.
“Pia’s coming along real well,” Mrs. Brikel said. “With her trouble lifting her arm, I’m surprised she got in as much of a garden as she did. Wouldn’t you think she’d plant perennials? But she loves the annuals. If I went to that much trouble, I’d like them to spring up again every year.”
“You don’t have a garden?” he said.
“Something of one,” she said, “but my cousin’s boy, Jay, puts in so many things that all summer we eat the overflow.”
“It seems pretty idyllic to a city boy.”
“Have you been in a city all your life?” she said.
He thought about it. “Pretty much,” he said. “Yes. I guess I have.”
“When my son was younger I was in cities quite a lot, taking him to doctors. Waiting in doctors’ offices. My heart went out to Pia when she had to go so many times for all those examinations and treatments.” She looked at Chap. “How does Mr. Brunetti say she is?”
The question surprised him. He had no current information. Except for one call after his visit, when Lou said the doctors had found a drug to lessen the nausea, he hadn’t heard anything. The prognosis—or was it just the hope?—was that after she completed the treatments, she would be all right.
“I don’t know anything you wouldn’t know,” he said.
She nodded and looked down. He hoped she didn’t think he had cut her off. If he had known anything, he would gladly have told her.
“I was very surprised when he called and wanted me to come to Vermont,” he said. “It’s also a little awkward. Not being able to tell my wife.”
“I would imagine,” Mrs. Brikel said.
There was a long silence that made him wish he had put on the radio as they pulled out of the parking lot.
“Of course there’s not a soul on earth who doesn’t have secrets,” she said. “And it’s funny
how one minute something seems the most important thing imaginable to keep hushed up, and a year later it’s something you could tell anyone.”
She was looking out the window. Land was being plowed for another new shopping center. The barbershop near where the land was being plowed would probably disappear—that funny little building with the stripes spiraling down the pole out front.
“May I ask why you mentioned it to me?” Mrs. Brikel said.
“What?” he said. He had been lost in thought about urban sprawl. The way roads leading into towns already looked exactly the same.
“I was wondering why you mentioned to me that you’d been here when Pia was sick.”
“I don’t know why,” he said, then contradicted himself. “I thought you might suddenly remember me and say something in front of my wife.”
Mrs. Brikel nodded. “You know, I only saw you for a few seconds that day in the snow.”
He nodded.
“You were both pretty bundled up. Hats and scarves and all of that.”
“I know,” he said. “It seems crazy to me now, but I thought you were going to remember me. I thought it was better to say something than take the chance.”
“Wouldn’t you have just said I was mistaken?”
“Well, yes, I could have,” he said. “But if I wasn’t thinking quickly…I don’t know.”
“Not that I mind your confidence,” Mrs. Brikel said.
“I don’t know what made me say that,” he said, this time really considering it. “Maybe to acknowledge that I’d really been here. My wife thought I was with my cousin.”
“You said that,” Mrs. Brikel said.
“Did I startle you when I brought it up? I think I was a little startled myself, to be saying it. Or that I said it because something startled me. That’s it: I said it because something startled me.”
Mrs. Brikel smiled. “That something wouldn’t have been my son, would it?”
“No,” he said. It was an instant, immediate response. But then he began to wonder what had startled him.
“The reason I was curious is because Mr. Brunetti has also confided some things in me. Things I never would have known if he hadn’t brought them up. Things that happened in another town, say. Nowhere I’d ever been.” She rubbed her finger on the edge of the dashboard. “If I could say something without you thinking I meant it as personal?”