by Ann Beattie
ALSO BY ANN BEATTIE
Distortions
Chilly Scenes of Winter
Secrets and Surprises
Falling in Place
The Burning House
Love Always
Where You’ll Find Me
Picturing Will
What Was Mine
Another You
My Life, Starring Dara Falcon
Park City
SCRIBNER
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2001 by Irony and Pity, Inc.
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Designed by Kyoko Watanabe
Set in Aldine
ISBN 0-7432-1465-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-1169-7
eISBN-13: 978-0-7432-1465-0
For Ruth Danon
Contents
Hurricane Carleyville
The Big-Breasted Pilgrim
Mermaids
Cat People
The Women of This World
The Infamous Fall of Howell the Clown
See the Pyramids
In Irons
Coydog
Perfect Recall
The Famous Poet, Amid Bougainvillea
Perfect Recall
Hurricane Carleyville
CARLEYVILLE left late because of the rain. That morning the phone had finally been disconnected, after a ridiculous argument with the phone company, when the supervisor he was finally connected with agreed to disconnect after asking a series of questions he could not possibly answer. With his credit card, his “code” was his mother’s maiden name, but what security precaution had he come up with a year before for the phone company? What had happened to this country, that a citizen needed a magic word to turn off the telephone? Finally the woman had settled for his social security number, information about other occupants of the house (none, unless you counted the animals), and his assurance that he would put his request in writing and fax it to her before the end of the day. He had a fax, but the thing wasn’t working: it spewed out page after page of blank paper for every incoming page, all marked with a deep black line. The broken machine would be Daley’s problem now.
Hitched together, his moving home was a wonder: truck pulling trailer pulling horse carrier. The cat, Adventure Kitty, rode in the truck’s cabin with Carleyville. That gave Coon, the dog, the use of the trailer—the space shared with the birds and the two chickens, all of which were suspended in a cage he’d improvised from the laundry basket and some nylon netting that hung above the floor, away from Coon’s restless tongue. Secretly, Carleyville hoped that the ride would shake up the birds’ insides enough that they’d stop laying eggs. He’d left two birds with Daley for Daley’s daughter—a sort of early Christmas present—and lost two more, with not bad timing, when they poked their heads far enough outside the cage to peck the paint on an exposed pipe and died (he presumed) of lead poisoning. He and Daley had disposed of them in a backyard burial a few days earlier—Daley had done the digging, because Carleyville was trying to sort out the insurance company’s failure to pay for X rays he’d had taken months ago when, walking across a street in the dark, he’d broken his ankle in a hole down which Alice could have easily tumbled into Wonderland. As the two bird-stuffed Styrofoam cups with plastic tops (left over from Chai tea to go) were lowered into the ground for a decent burial, a rather amazing thing happened: birds making an early migration passed overhead, the long line uninterrupted until they passed directly above, the birds in back suddenly slowing, as if the gap conveyed a symbolic good-bye, a respectful enactment of emptiness, for their fellow birds. Two less critters for Coon to bark at, Daley had commented. And then commented, again, bark at, because in spite of the holistic remedy Carleyville had insisted he try, he still suffered from echolalia.
At the end of the street, where the school bus turned around, Carleyville made his final swing, missing a maple tree by a fraction of an inch, settling for letting the horse bounce around for a few seconds. He was always too attuned to her mental state. The guy who ran the organic farm at the end of the road was nice enough, but a worrier: the whole rig might bust apart, he’d said nervously, inspecting it the night before; the horse could move around enough to get hurt, in his opinion. Finally, he and the guy had exchanged firm handshakes and Carleyville had reminded him that undiagnosed hypoglycemia could cause both sweating and anxiety—Malcolm Curry was a sweatbox, winter and summer—and Malcolm had kidded Carleyville one last time about the pumpkin suicide—a reference to the time a really enormous pumpkin had fallen off the back of a truck in front of Carleyville, providing months of what Malcolm called “punkin’ postmortems”: pumpkin soup, pumpkin flan, manicotti stuffed with pumpkin, pumpkin spice cookies, and of course traditional pumpkin pie. Being a farmer, Malcolm had respect for Carleyville’s appreciation of vegetables. Carleyville would miss him, but not his wife, who stood looking grimly out the kitchen window.
Dangling from the rearview mirror was a tail feather from a bluejay the cat had mauled in the front yard—the yard whose lawn was now much healthier as a meadow—and two or three other trinkets or memorabilia, whatever you’d call them, from moments of adversity that Carleyville had triumphed over or, just as important, had come to terms with. These little mementos included the rubber finger his former girlfriend had left on the bathroom counter one morning, along with her note saying good-bye (was he ever right about not marrying her!), along with a splash of watery ketchup and a big knife from the kitchen, the sight of which almost made him faint . . . yep; more than once he’d picked a real crazy. Imagine doing that when things were going fine between them simply because he’d told her there would be no engagement ring on her finger. Imagine waiting two days, purchasing the finger (apparently), never telling him how angry she was, plotting all the while. This was in June, too: not around Halloween. So good-bye to all that: good-bye, Christie, good-bye, phone company with its sky-high rates, good-bye, landlord from hell. He and the feather and the finger would sustain each other on the ride to Maine, on the way to Jimmy and Fiona’s house.
The truck lost significant power on hills, but that was to be expected. As were the assholes behind him. What did they think? That their flashing lights would send photoelectric vibes, causing the rig to clear the road by ascending directly into the universe, on the principle of The force be with you? Let them try to drive a rig like this. They’d end up a big metal turtle on its back, while he had experience guiding his slithering snake. He had experience, he knew what he was doing, so horns and flashing lights be damned.
He was miles away when he remembered the fish. How had he forgotten it? Probably trying to struggle out with the dog on its leash and his computer in the other hand, plus various odds and ends clamped under his armpit. His thumb had been in the fishbowl, but apparently he had forgotten to pick it up again, once he set it down to close the door. He patted his pocket and felt the cheesecloth he’d brought to put over the top of the fish-bowl, and the rubber band—damn! He’d thought of the rubber band in the middle of the night, then forgotten the whole fish-bowl. Though the maleficent landlord would no doubt be around immediately to find excuses not to refund the
security deposit (he’d probably cut the grass himself and deduct a hefty sum), so, sensitive soul that he was, he would doubtless take the fish.
The force of the rain would not be good for the fish, though if he’d left it under the overhang, everything would be all right. If not, the fish could spend some time dancing in a watery disco.
He used the gauze to wipe the inside of the window, which had fogged up in spite of the defroster being on high. In front of the truck, a squirrel dashed across the road and made it to the other side. Seeing it reminded Carleyville of the days when he and his friends had hunted gophers in Texas, where his grandfather lived: the high-powered slingshots they’d fashioned; the metal bottlecaps—in those days that was all there was; metal, not plastic—launched from slingshots. When his foot suddenly plunged into a gopher’s hole—the same damn foot he broke again, wouldn’t you know, crossing the mothering street—Carleyville’s slingshot had misfired as his friend Timmy turned to see what all the noise was about, bull’s-eyeing Timmy in his right eye. Timmy—wherever he was now. Wherever so many of his buddies were.
Thirteen hours later, Carleyville was so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open. If the radio worked that would have helped, but only the darkened scenery of Erie, Pennsylvania, was there to keep him awake, and it wasn’t exactly tantalizing. Since it was time to let Coon out of the trailer anyway, he pulled into a rest area and hopped out, leaving the window half-down on the passenger’s side because the rain that had chased him from state to state was making sure that the truck windows stayed perpetually fogged. It was colder than he expected, and his legs were stiffer than he thought they’d be. Getting out, he knocked over the water jug he kept next to Adventure Kitty’s cage. He thought he’d screwed the cap back on, but no such luck. Water splashed into the cat’s cage and produced a shriek he had never before heard, and this cat was big on histrionics. “It’s just water,” he said. He lifted the cage and tilted it slightly. Adventure Kitty slid forward. Water splashed to the floor. The cat seemed to be soaked. One paw clawed the mesh of the cage. Time for some TLC. He opened the glove compartment and pulled out one of the catnip sticks he’d made after drying the year’s catnip crop and poked it into her cage. The cat did not sniff the catnip; she only glared at him.
What happened next he had no explanation for: he was reaching for the water jug, its cap silver-dollar bright as it lay on the floor, when he got a stitch in his side and jerked forward, his ribs pressing into the cage. It was like pleurisy, though he no longer had pleurisy. But still, it was that same searing pain. He took a few breaths, then forced his body to right itself, though in the process he knocked over the jug again. He cursed Adventure Kitty—despised her for making what were already pain-filled, unbearable moments even more excruciating. The cat was capable of sending up a sound like a skill saw. Sweating, he kept his hand clamped to his ribs and slowly, awkwardly, bumped out of the truck, lowering one leg, the distance to the ground seeming interminable. As he finally stood on both feet, another car entered and swept over him with its headlights. He turned to block the glare, and as he raised his arm he felt the pain shift into his groin. What the hell! He walked tentatively, the pain gradually easing, toward the cinderblock bathroom. Inside, he glanced in the mirror and saw that he had forgotten to shave. The wasp bite on his cheek gave him the look of a half-painted doll—one of those cutesy crafts fair specials with apple-red cheeks and marble eyes: Grandpa with his mouth puckered like an anus. Those junky crafts fairs where Christie used to try to sell her stained glass—those all-day, exhausting gatherings, where people looked and exclaimed and did not buy, and afterwards you spent too much money consoling yourself with expensive roadside food.
So who should he have been involved with? A lady stockbroker?
He sat on a toilet in one of the stalls, but the pain had passed. Try explaining that to a doctor: sudden, unprecedented pain, and then nothing. Not even a crap. They’d put you through every test in the book. That, or write you off as mental. He decided it had been some bizarre muscle spasm, probably the result of days of packing and hauling cartons to the van, aggravated by tension when the water tipped over. The last of his spring water was now soaking the floor of the truck. Time to get some water to the horse and the dog. Enough of impersonating The Thinker, with his pants around his knees.
Outside, a kid with a white skunk streak in his black hair asked him if he had a match. The kid was sitting on one of those folding stools, like an old-timer at a parade. What the kid thought the spectacle might be, outside the restrooms when it was almost midnight, he couldn’t say. “No, sorry, I don’t smoke,” he said, but the last word was not entirely out of his mouth before he tripped. Too late, he saw in the dark the narrow end of a black guitar case. He stumbled badly but kept himself upright, though for a moment he was almost nose-to-nose with the kid, who looked at him impassively and said nothing. No apology, nothing. Just one of God’s children, out for a pleasant evening of putting invisible obstacles on the ground. Mothering punk: just set up outside a rest area bathroom, kick back with some Absolut Kurant, some Absolut Asshole, stretch your feet. If the guitar case doesn’t do it, maybe the big Nike’d foot will. “You got a problem?” the kid said. Punk, with his dyed hair and his “Just Do It” shoes. Kids were a new breed now: purposeful, in spite of their mock passivity; unflinching. Everybody had become a malcontent with attitude, a mock marine.
He went back to the truck and let Coon out of the trailer. Coon had been staring at him out the window, his golden eyes glinting like a hologram as Carleyville approached. There was a dog with dignity: none of that scratching and whining. He’d had a bad life, had a leg that had healed so poorly after a break he’d gotten before Carleyville found him that he’d saved up and gotten him an operation, wondering whether that experience wouldn’t traumatize the poor beast even further, but Coon had come back from the vet’s a new dog. His loyalty to Carleyville even intensified, though he’d still had to work on him for a year to get the dog to make eye contact.
“How you doing, old boy?” Carleyville said. The dog jumped out of the trailer and ran to the trash receptacle and peed for a long time. Carleyville sensed that the punk was watching, but it was too dark to see and he was too tired to get himself more agitated. If sodas didn’t cost a dollar a pop (a pun!) he would have bought himself one, his throat was so dry, in spite of the fact that they screwed up your metabolism. With the dog at his side, he went back toward the restrooms, where there was a water fountain.
“Hey, pooch,” the punk said, as if nothing had previously transpired between them.
Carleyville got a drink from the fountain and put his hand to his throat as he swallowed. It was almost as if the water was hot, it burned so going down. Carleyville tested the fountain with his finger: cold water. Okay: so another unsolvable mystery. Something made him go into the bathroom a second time, to check in the mirror; when he did, he saw that his Adam’s apple was swollen. Allergies, maybe, if he was lucky. Again, he regretted not shaving, but what did it matter at this hour. When he exited, he saw the punk in a sleeping bag, under a tree. He flashed forward to Coon running up to him, raising his leg to piss the last few drops. The fight that would ensue. Then he shook his head—thank God Coon had good sense—and trekked to the rig to begin tending to the horse. She was lucky to be Coon’s best buddy, rather than his dinner. A horse like Cleopatra would have been shipped off to the slaughterhouse if not for him—if not for Malcolm telling him she was about to be Alpo’d by people two farms over—so in spite of the rocky ride, she should still thank her lucky stars. He had a sack of food for her to eat in the trailer, but the dishes were all packed, and there was no telling which box contained the bowls. He took a guess, but the tinny sound he’d heard inside one box turned out not to be metal bowls, but Christie’s trophy cups: trophies she’d won playing golf, that he’d felt bad about leaving behind. Eventually he’d ship them back to her. He settled for scooping food into the dish drainer, which wasn’t boxed. Som
e fell out, but most of it made it to the ground, where he set it down. For the third time he returned to the restrooms, filling a bucket he had left accessible as the dog salivated at his side. “Hey, what am I thinking of?” he said, setting the bucket on the floor of the bathroom. “Thinking of Cleo and not about you, hey, old boy?” The dog lapped up the water until its head was almost stuck in the bucket. “Hey, we don’t want you pissing a river in the trailer,” Carleyville said, lifting the bucket. He refilled it and headed back. He noticed that the punk was no longer under the tree. A thought went through his head that amused him: maybe it had been a space alien, not a real person. Maybe that was why he’d been so strange, perched on his stool outside a bathroom, with his surliness and his skunk hair. There’d been some skit on Saturday Night Live years back about questions to ask to find out if somebody was a space alien; if they couldn’t answer, you knew they were. There was some hilarious scene with one of the actors cornering his mother-in-law, firing off the names of bands, about which, of course, she was completely ignorant. The Butt Hole Surfers. That sort of thing.
Getting ready to spring the horse’s door, he went into a spasm of coughing, with his damned dry throat. It had been Christie’s opinion that he was allergic to animals, but that was just because she didn’t like them. In any case, he was taking an antihistamine.
The chickens had set up a real ruckus as soon as he stopped in the parking lot. The next morning he’d get some food for them—they’d been fed once, for God’s sake. For the moment, he began to assist in the backwards exit of Cleo the Horse. He awoke before dawn, coughing his way to consciousness, and decided to get a jump on the day. The Martian never reappeared—probably off passing for a New York City cop, or whatever it was Martians did to be puckish these days. Carrying a bomb into a stadium, maybe. Cleo had backed right over his hand the night before and it was badly swollen, his knuckles gray-blue with contusions. The hand—wouldn’t you know it would be his right hand—was half again its normal size. If he knew where the contents of his medicine cabinet were, he could bandage it, but there was no chance of finding them. All his possessions, for the umpteenth time, somehow eluding him.
