by Ann Beattie
“I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake,” Cheri says.
“You’re Carl and Janey’s daughter,” the woman says. The doubt in her voice, Cheri can tell, has only to do with why Cheri won’t acknowledge this.
“I’m not,” Cheri says: a mere half-lie; she’s Janey’s stepdaughter, maybe, but not her daughter. The woman’s persistence is unnerving, though: she looks friendly, and slightly puzzled, but she keeps eye contact with Cheri. The next thing Cheri blurts out is ridiculous: “I’m her sister,” she says, gesturing toward the dumbstruck Erin. Even though Cheri is tall, Erin towers above her. She is dark, and Cheri is fair.
“Excuse us. Our husbands are waiting,” Erin says.
“Your husbands! But my God—you can’t be married,” the woman says. “Janey told me you were in school. Private school. In Boston. Or Baltimore, did she say?”
Francine. The woman’s name comes back to Cheri. The woman was in Janey’s book discussion group. It’s the woman who was studying ballet, who wore pretty ballet flats she let Cheri walk around in when she was a little girl. What is Francine doing in Maine?
“Excuse us,” Erin says again. Erin takes Cheri’s hand.
“Mama, who are they?” the little girl asks.
“Dorothy,” the woman says, half in answer to the child, half trying, still, to engage Cheri. “Are you afraid I’ll tell them I saw you, and you weren’t in school?”
“Come on, darling. Let’s let these ladies get on with their day,” the man says, putting his arm around Francine’s shoulder.
“Do you want to pet my horse?” the little girl calls to them, when it’s clear they’re really leaving. As if caught in the glare of headlights, Cheri simply stops moving. It’s Erin who turns and pets the horse, murmurs that it’s nice, smiles at the man—he’s their best hope, except for Anders and LaValle, and where are they? Where are the husbands, the two men who would be proof that they’re married women? Erin says, “It’s summer. School’s not in session in the summer.”
Francine seizes on this, as if it’s an admission. “Then,” she says, “you’re afraid I’ll say I saw you here?” Her voice is gentle now.
“Really, darling,” the man says, trying to steer both Francine and the little girl past them, around the corner of the house. The woman almost lets herself be directed away, then stops. “Janey has missed you,” she says. “All you have to do is say the word, and I won’t mention that I’ve seen you. I have the feeling—I get the feeling now that everything isn’t all right.”
“It’s fine,” Erin says.
Cheri nods in agreement with Erin. The little girl has bent over and is galloping her horse through a patch of dry grass, making clicking noises with her tongue as its hooves touch the ground. Then she raises the horse to soar into the air. Showing his frustration, now, the man reaches in his wallet and hands Cheri his card: James Q. Rosenberg, Attorney-at-Law. An address in Amherst, Massachusetts. Fax, telex, phone. “If either of us can help you, please call,” the man says.
“What can you help with, Daddy?” the little girl says. “Do you want to help me get the horse to fly?”
This goes unanswered, but finally, under pressure, Francine smiles a hesitant smile, looks down, and follows the man. Cheri brushes her hair behind her ears, pretends to be busying herself examining a hangnail. Erin is a wreck; she looks after the people as if Bigfoot just stepped into their path, roared, and stomped off.
“What can they do?” Erin says, thinking out loud. “The worst they can do is call them and say they saw us at Hamilton House. They don’t know where we’re staying. There’s no way they can find us.”
“Hamilton House?” Cheri says.
“That’s where we are, stupid. Didn’t you see the sign when we pulled in saying ‘Hamilton House,’ and some date?”
“Jesus, Erin,” Cheri says, exploding with all the rage that has been smoldering since Anders put her down earlier in the day. “Jesus, please forgive me if I didn’t know the name of some deserted house I’ve never seen before that was lived in by somebody I’ve never heard of. I mean, we’re not exactly at the Washington Monument, Erin.”
“I didn’t mean ‘stupid’ as in ‘stupid.’ Don’t get mad at me just because your boyfriend’s a prick.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Cheri says.
“He’s not? What is he? He’s just somebody you happen to hang out with? Somebody you ran into, like you just ran into those people, only he was more like a stray dog, you decided to keep him?”
Cheri is about to scream, to really let go, when suddenly a feeling the exact opposite of rage comes over her. A stray dog isn’t a bad description of Anders. And wait: wasn’t Erin herself saying earlier that it was just as well to be with one person as another, because no one ever came up with the perfect person?
Erin looks sheepish; she can no doubt read Cheri’s mind. What she wonders, though, is what trouble the woman might cause Cheri, whether there isn’t something, anything, they can do to get the woman to entirely erase any memory of them. In a fairy tale; that’s about where that could happen. Or if Anders and LaValle were their bodyguards, maybe: big, threatening types with karate skills or guns. Where are Anders and LaValle? Are they eating alone, rudely, without them, Erin wonders, as she rounds the house. But no: there’s the canvas carryall on a bench. And far, far in the distance—that might be them, of course it’s them, cavorting in the water, naked. Forget the near disaster that almost happened on shore: run off, pups of boundless energy, newfound friends that you are, drop your clothes and splash into the water, swim far out until you’re just two specks.
Side by side, they watch them. Suddenly the day has unexpectedly divided into Us and Them, and Erin and Cheri, still quaking, are sitting on a bench in a place that has once again become totally quiet, except for the occasional call of a bird, or the faint sounds of the men’s voices drifting off the water. Erin, still slightly abject at being snapped at for using one wrong word, reaches into the bag and unwraps a sandwich without offering one to Cheri; instead, she settles the bag between them. Let her fish out her own sandwich, she’s thinking, as she opens the foil and bites into hers.
In the distance, they hear a car door slam. The ignition is turned on. It’s at that point that Erin looks down and sees the horse, jumps up without thinking, drops the sandwich back in the bag, and rushes toward the car, hollering: “Wait!” Cheri, seeing what Erin has scooped up from the dirt just beneath the bench, jumps up and runs alongside, her hair flapping in the breeze, their dual screams resulting in the car’s ignition being switched off. The man is frowning as he looks at them out the slowly lowering window. They’ve arrived at the car together— sisters in spirit, if not in fact—Erin holding the horse above her head like a trophy, bending to hand it through the lowering back window to the surprised and happy child. “Thank you very much,” the man says. “I didn’t know she’d dropped it.”
“Daddy, I got my horse!” the little girl squeals.
Now that we’re heroes, can you please just forget all about us? Erin silently wishes, looking past the man to the woman, sitting in the passenger’s seat, holding the baby.
“Those people,” Cheri says, breathlessly. “Those people you thought I knew. Who are they? Did anything happen? I mean, would a child of theirs being off at school really upset them for some reason?”
Francine looks at Cheri. “Well, they’ve had some bad times recently,” she says. “They separated a few months ago. My friend, though—Janey. I always suspected she was covering for her stepdaughter, or going along with what her husband told her to say, because the daughter ran away. That was the rumor, but no one repeated it to Janey. I think Janey would like to be in touch with Dorothy. I’m sure she always felt closer to her than she does toward her own little boys.”
“Probably that girl should get in touch,” Cheri says.
“I hope she will,” Francine says. “Also, my husband is an attorney, if anyone needs any help. About anything,” she adds
lamely.
“They know I’m an attorney,” her husband says. It’s too halfhearted to really sound grumpy; by now, he’s figured out Francine isn’t mistaken. He nods to the two of them as the window rolls up.
“She’s not going to say anything,” Erin says, watching the car drive away. “You really took a big chance, but you could see it in her eyes: you said you’d get in touch, and she believed you.”
“Somebody who knew them was bound to see me sometime,” Cheri says.
“Well, it’s completely amazing they haven’t seen your face in the magazines after all this time.”
“They don’t read anything but Time.”
“She gets her hair done, doesn’t she?”
“Lucky,” Cheri says. “So far, lucky.”
“I really don’t know what I’d do if our family fell apart,” Erin says, her voice suddenly tremulous. “Because of what? Because of some technicality? I mean, after all this time, what if they found you and made you go back?”
“What are you talking about?” Cheri says. “If he’d hired private detectives, don’t you think I’d have been found? They find everybody, let alone somebody who’s working, who’s got her picture in magazines. His friends must read magazines, don’t you think? You don’t think anyone ever pointed me out? You really don’t think he’d know how to find me?”
“Then what?” Erin says. “He knows, but he doesn’t want you back?”
“As you’d say to me, that’s right, stupid.”
“But she does,” Erin says haltingly.
“Maybe she does,” Cheri says. “Apparently, until recently, she was still living with him. I always wished her good luck, she always kept quiet about what was really going on with me. She knew how he could be; if I was going to get out, I’m sure she thought I was entitled.”
As they walk, a bird lights on the rim of an empty fountain; another swoops down and the two birds hop in, pecking at something, before rising together, in sudden flight.
“Maybe that guy could help you, if you ever needed help,” Erin says.
“Don’t go mushy on me, Erin. Some high-priced lawyer is going to get involved in my wanting to live on my own? Because my father was a bully who made it a point not to rape me or beat me up, just to scream in my face until I started hyperventilating?”
Erin is looking after the car, which is long gone. “He didn’t seem like a bad guy,” she says. “Don’t lose his card.”
“Just what the guys tell you when they’re dying for you,” Cheri says. “‘Don’t lose my card, baby.’ Praying you’ll call. Praying they’ll get laid.”
“So she left him,” Erin says after a long pause. “You must be glad for her sake that she left him.”
“Doesn’t mean that much to me,” Cheri says.
“It doesn’t?”
“I mean, that all seems like such a long time ago. You’re my family now, you know?”
Erin nods. She knows, exactly. Now all they have to do is stick together for one more year plus one month, and it will be too late for the law to do anything about it. In August 1994, when Erin is nineteen years old, Cheri will turn sixteen: no longer a minor, no laws about statutory rape to worry about; no fake ID ever needed again. Can’t buy liquor at sixteen, but Anders and LaValle take care of that anyway. And maybe you can’t get married in every state, but there are some you can get married in at sixteen, places where you show your ID, your real ID it could be then, and they give you a marriage license. The two of them could have a double wedding, elaborate or simple, whatever they chose. Oh, please, time. Please go fast, Erin silently prays. Because Cheri is her best friend in the whole world, and more than anything—or at least as much as she would like the assurance that the four of them will always be together—she would like to think of her as safe.
In Irons
MISS MAY was baby-sitting. Derek was at a Cuban restaurant, breaking up with his girlfriend, Marcia Ryall. Two sips into the first beer, he had blurted it out; by the time he finished the bottle, she had excused herself to go to the bathroom and gone out the front door, instead. That was what a waitress told him, when he finally got up and knocked on the bathroom door and a deep-voiced man told him to hold his horses. “Was she crying?” he asked the waitress. “I didn’t notice,” she said. She noticed a woman, five foot six, with short brown hair and glasses, wearing a white tee-shirt and jeans, but she couldn’t say whether that totally inconspicuous person was crying? He went back to his own uneaten dinner, and Marcia’s. He ate his fried porkchops, as well as her fried plantains, drank her untouched glass of sangria (sweet!), then asked the waitress to put the leftovers in a box. Miss May might want a late-night snack. He bought himself a cigar, but tucked it into his pocket with the toothpick instead of smoking it. That might be his own late-night snack.
He was in the doghouse with everybody: Sallie, his ex-wife; Miss May, his ex-wife’s aunt, who had raised her; his second wife, who was in the process of divorcing him; his girlfriend, who had listened to what he had to say without comment, before excusing herself to go to the bathroom. He was not yet in the doghouse with his daughter, Hillary. Then again, she was four years old: too young for the bathroom trick, even if she’d been inclined. If she said she needed to go to the bathroom, she needed to go to the bathroom. Right now, she was home watching Frasier. Her favorites were Daphne and the dog. Every time Daphne spoke, or the dog came into the room, she would laugh. Her bedtime was usually nine o’clock, but an exception was granted—even by her mother—for Frasier.
He stopped at In Irons, his favorite bar down by the waterfront. “I suppose that’s some S&M place, where dominatrices rap your knuckles when they put down your overpriced drink?” Sallie had said to him sourly, when he invited her out for a drink several nights before—the night she flew into Key West from Lake Charles with Hillary and Miss May. Sallie no longer lived in Lake Charles; she’d moved to Houston, but she had stopped in Louisiana to round up Miss May, who was expected to be Sallie’s eyes and ears during the week mother and daughter were separated. He’d always liked Miss May and, if truth be told, he’d been a little uneasy about entertaining his daughter for an entire week. Marcia would have helped him, but it seemed dishonest to ask her to take care of Hillary for a week, then dump her, so he’d decided to level with her the first night she could get free from her job. She’d been expecting to meet Hillary at the restaurant. She’d even bought a bracelet for Hillary that spelled out her name in pink painted letters across smooth glistening shells. He didn’t know that. Wouldn’t know it until some time later. He crumpled the cellophane that had been wrapped around his cigar. The cellophane looked sad to him: the cigar animal’s shed skin. He held the cigar to his nose and sniffed. A big bruiser on the barstool next to him shot flame from a lighter in his direction. It was a small silver lighter. One that no doubt had a history.
“Thank you kindly,” he said through clenched teeth, turning the cigar slowly in the flame.
“De nada,” the bruiser said. The man was drinking something the color of brass. On the jukebox, Dean Martin was singing “That’s Amore.” Down the bar, a boy and girl who looked too young to drink were making out, rubbing noses. Their noses were so mobile, it didn’t look as if they contained any cartilage. On the TV over the bar, a weatherman gestured at a map of the United States, across which rolled various streaks and marks: clouds jerkily passing over the northeast, followed by diagonal slashes signifying rain. The weatherman’s pointer dropped to Florida: the big pee-pee (Hillary’s term for male genitalia) of the United States. The state of Florida began to pulsate with excitement, the sun spreading a nimbus that glowed the length of the state. Eighty-five degrees, it said at the tip. Everywhere else, the weather was lousy. In Aspen, where Lolly, his second wife, had relocated with her cinematographer boyfriend, it was snowing—but of course that made everyone very merry in Aspen. He had spoken to her on the phone in November, and she had told him to call back any time he was feeling blue. He supposed he was, thoug
h he wasn’t sure why, since the relationship with Marcia hadn’t been either exciting enough or a good enough fit that it might at least have seemed comfortable. But to just walk off like that. . . . He took out his money clip—a present from Lolly: Scrooge McDuck jumping in the air, looking deranged, money floating all around him. The wad was slim—he had no desire to see if any big bills were at the bottom, or if the best he had was twenties—but he extracted enough to pay for his beer and leave a tip, then walked out, still half expecting that the guy who’d lit his cigar would say something to him, though no one said anything. There was a pay phone around the corner, but he thought: what for? A melancholy call to Lolly, while a nice fire crackled in her fireplace and her two golden retriever puppies ran in circles, the cinematographer probably sitting there in his Eames chair, or whatever the hell it was, his Mission chair, thinking how visual it all was. The guy was eight years younger than she was. All those hair extensions and stomach crunches paid off for Lolly.
Sallie, on the other hand—if he believed what she said— hadn’t dated since their divorce. She hung out with a bunch of rich divorcees in Houston, but the ranks were getting depleted, she complained (he heard this from Miss May), because all the embittered doctors and lawyers’ wives who’d been turned in for this year’s model had become lesbians or, possibly, were playing at being lesbians. Sallie sat in on a Monday-night lesbian poker game, which a priest who’d weaned himself away from blackjack also came to, as well as a ballerina with osteoporosis, who was writing about the group in her memoir. Miss May loved, in particular, to gossip about people she’d never met—and she loved any wisp of tragedy or scandal. By day Sallie worked in an advertising agency, but by night she gambled, when she wasn’t studying foot reflexology with a Mr. Chinn, who went ballistic if anyone wrote his last name with just one “n.” One night a week she, and some woman she worked with drove miles and miles to go bowling. His daughter often imitated her mother’s bowling as she stood in line waiting for him to buy something. She’d bring her clasped hands to her face, take three steps forward, while slowly swinging one arm behind her, then bend her knees deeply to roll the imaginary ball, always declaring a strike and giving a cheerleader leap before returning to his side.
