Burning House

by Ann Beattie

  “I think I’d like some roses. Ones the color of peaches.”

  He clears his throat. All winter, he has little coughs and colds and irritations. The irritations are irritating. At night, he hemms over Forbes and I read Blake, in silence.

  “I meant that could be found in Grand Central,” he says.

  “An éclair.”

  “All right,” he says. He sighs.

  • • •

  “One banana, two banana, three banana, four …”

  “I think you have the wrong number,” I say.

  “Fifteen years, and you still don’t know my voice on the phone.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Hi, Andy.”

  Andy let his secretary use his apartment during her lunch hour to have an affair with the Xerox repairman. Andy was on a diet, drinking pre-digested protein, and he had thrown everything out in his kitchen, so he wouldn’t be tempted. He was allowed banana extract to flavor his formula. The secretary and the repairman got hungry and rummaged through the kitchen cabinets, and all they could find was a gallon jug of banana extract.

  “I got the Coors account,” Andy says. “I’m having a wall of my office painted yellow and silver.”

  The dog and I go to the dump. The dump permit is displayed on the back window: a drawing of a pile of rubbish, with a number underneath. The dog breathes against the back window and the sticker gets bright with moisture. The dog likes the rear-view mirror and the back window equally well, and since his riding with his nose to the rear-view mirror is a clear danger, I have put three shoe boxes between the front seats as a barrier. One of the boxes has shoes inside that never fit right.

  Bob Dylan is singing on the tape deck: “May God bless and keep you always, May your wishes all come true …”

  “Back her up!” the dump man hollers. Smoke rises behind him, from something smoldering out of a pyramid into flatness. The man who runs the dump fans the smoke away, gesturing with the other hand to show me the position he wants my car to be in. The dog barks madly, baring his teeth.

  “Come on, she’ll get up that little incline,” the dump man hollers.

  The wheels whir. The dog is going crazy. When the car stops, I open my door, call “Thank you!” and tiptoe through the mush. I take the plastic bag filled with garbage and another pair of shoes that didn’t work out and throw it feebly, aiming for the top of the heap. It misses by a mile, but the dump man has lost interest. Only the dog cares. He is wildly agitated.

  “Please,” I say to the dog when I get in the car.

  “May you always be courageous,” Dylan sings.

  It is a bright fall day; the way the sun shines makes the edges of things radiate. When we get home, I put the dog on his lead and open the door, go into the mud room, walk into the house. When I’m away for a weekend or longer, things always look the way I expect they will when I come back. When I’m gone on a short errand, the ashtray seems to have moved forward a few inches, the plants look a little sickly, the second hand on the clock seems to be going very fast … I don’t remember the clock having a second hand.

  The third phone call of the day. “Will you trust me?” a voice says. “I need to know how to get to your house from the Whitebird Diner. My directions say go left at the fork for two miles, but I did, and I didn’t pass an elementary school. I think I should have gone right at the fork. A lot of people mix up left and right; it’s a form of dyslexia.” Heavy breathing. “Whew,” the voice says. Then: “Trust me. I can’t tell you what’s going on because it’s a surprise.”

  When I don’t say anything, the voice says: “Trust me. I wouldn’t be some nut out in the middle of nowhere, asking whether I go right or left at the fork.”

  I go to the medicine cabinet and take out a brandy snifter of pills. My husband’s bottle of Excedrin looks pristine. My brandy snifter is cut glass, and belonged to my grandfather. It’s easy to tell my pills apart because they’re all different colors: yellow Valium, blue Valium, green Donnatal. I never have to take those unless I go a whole week without eating Kellogg’s All-Bran.

  A bear is ringing the front doorbell. There are no shades on the front windows, and the bear can see that I see it. I shake my head no, as if someone has come to sell me a raffle ticket. Could this be a bear wanting to sell me something? It does not seem to have anything with it. I shake my head no again, trying to look pleasant. I back up. The bear has left its car with the hazard light flashing, and two tires barely off Black Rock Turnpike. The bear points its paws, claws up, praying. It stands there.

  I put a chain on the door and open it. The bear spreads its arms wide. It is a brown bear, with fur that looks like whatever material it is they make bathroom rugs out of. The bear sings, consulting a notebook it has pulled out from somewhere in its side:

  Happy birthday to you

  I know it’s not the day

  This song’s being sung early

  In case you run away

  Twenty-nine was good

  But thirty’s better yet

  Face the day with a big smile

  There’s nothing to regret

  I wish that I could be there

  But it’s a question of money

  A bear’s appropriate instead

  To say you’re still my honey

  The bear steps back, grandly, quite pleased with itself. It has pink rubber lips.

  “From your sister,” the bear says. I see the lips behind the lips. “I could really use some water,” the bear says. “I came from New York. There isn’t any singing message service out here. As it is, I guess this was cheaper than your sister flying in from the coast, but I didn’t come cheap.”

  I step aside. “Perrier or tap water?” I say.

  “Just regular water,” the bear says.

  In the kitchen, the bear removes its head and puts it on the kitchen table. The head collapses slowly, like a popover cooling. The bear has a long drink of water.

  “You don’t look thirty,” the bear says.

  The bear seems to be in its early twenties.

  “Thank you,” the bear says. “I hope that didn’t spoil the illusion.”

  “Not at all,” I say. “It’s fine. Do you know how to get back?”

  “I took the train,” the bear says. “I overshot you on purpose—got my aunt’s car from New Haven. I’m going back there to have dinner with her, then it doesn’t take any more smarts than getting on the train to get back to the city. Thank you.”

  “Could I have the piece of paper?” I say.

  The bear reaches in its side, through a flap. It takes out a notebook marked “American Lit. from 1850.” It rips a page out and hands it to me.

  I tack it on the bulletin board. The oil bill is there, as yet unpaid. My gynecologist’s card, telling me that I have a 10 A.M. appointment the next day.

  “Well, you don’t look thirty,” the bear says.

  “Not only that, but be glad you were never a rabbit. I think I’m pregnant.”

  “Is that good news?” the bear says.

  “I guess so. I wasn’t trying not to get pregnant.”

  I hold open the front door, and the bear walks out to the porch.

  “Who are you?” I say.

  “Ned Brown,” the bear says. “Fitting, huh? Brown? I used to work for an escort service, but I guess you know what that turned into.” The bear adjusts its head. “I’m part-time at Princeton,” it says. “Well,” it says.

  “Thank you very much,” I say, and close the door.

  I call the gynecologist’s office, to find out if Valium has an adverse effect on the fetus.

  “Mister Doctor’s the one to talk to about prescription medicine,” the nurse says. “Your number?”

  Those photographs in Life, taken inside the womb. It has ears at one week, or something. If they put in a needle to do amniocentesis, it moves to the side. The horror story about the abortionist putting his finger inside, and feeling the finger grabbed. I think that it is four weeks old. It probably has an opini
on on Bob Dylan, pro or con.

  I have some vermouth over ice. Stand out in the back yard, wearing one of my husband’s big woolly jackets. His clothes are so much more comfortable than mine. The dog has dragged down the clothesline and is biting up and down the cord. He noses, bites, ignores me. His involvement is quite erotic.

  There is a pale moon in the sky. Early in the day for that. I see what they mean about the moon having a face—the eyes, at least.

  From the other side of the trees, I hear the roar of the neighbors’ TV. They are both deaf and have, a Betamax with their favorite Hollywood Squares programs recorded. My husband pulled a prank and put a cassette of Alien in one of the boxes. He said that he found the cassette on the street. He excused himself from dinner to do it. He threw away a cassette of Hollywood Squares when we got home. It seemed wasteful, but I couldn’t think what else to do with it, either.

  Some squash are still lying on the ground. I smash one and scatter the seeds. I lose my balance when I’m bent over. That’s a sign of pregnancy, I’ve heard: being off-kilter. I’ll buy flat shoes.

  “Do you know who I really love?” I say to the dog.

  He turns his head. When spoken to, he always pays attention for a polite amount of time.

  “I love you, and you’re my dog,” I say, bending to pat him.

  He sniffs the squash seeds on my hand, noses my fingers but doesn’t lick them.

  I go in the house and get him a Hershey bar.

  “What do you think about everything?” I say to the dog.

  He stops eating the clothesline and devours the candy. He beats his tail. Next I’ll let him off the lead, right? Wrong. I scratch behind his ears and go into the house and look for the book I keep phone numbers in. A card falls out. I see that I have missed a dentist’s appointment. Another card: a man who tried to pick me up at the market.

  I dial my sister. The housekeeper answers.

  “Madame Villery,” I say. “Her sister.”

  “Who?” she says, with her heavy Spanish accent.

  “Which part?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Madame Villery, or her sister?” I say.

  “Her sister!” the housekeeper says. “One moment!”

  “Madame!” I hear her calling. My sister’s poor excuse for a dog, a little white yapper, starts in.

  “Hello,” my sister says.

  “That was some surprise.”

  “What did he do?” my sister says. “Tell me about it.”

  It takes me back to when we were teenagers. My sister is three years younger than I am. For years, she said “Tell me about it.”

  “The bear rang my doorbell,” I say, leaving out the part about the phone call from the diner.

  “Oh, God,” she says. “What were you doing? Tell me the truth.”

  For years she asked me to tell her the truth.

  “I wasn’t doing anything.”

  “Oh, you were—what? Just cleaning or something?” Years in which I let her imagination work.

  “Yes,” I say, softening my voice.

  “And then the bear was just standing there? What did you think?”

  “I was amazed.”

  I never gave her too much. Probably not enough. She married a Frenchman that I found, and find, imperious. I probably could have told her there was no mystery there.

  “Listen,” I say, “it was great. How are you. How’s life in LA?”

  “They’re not to be equated,” she says. “I’m fine, the pool is sick. It has cracked pool.”

  “The cement? On the bottom or—”

  “Don’t you love it?” she whispers. “She says, ‘It has cracked pool.’ ”

  “Am I ever going to see you?”

  “He put me on a budget. I don’t have the money to fly back right now. You’re not on any budget. You could come out here.”

  “You know,” I say. “Things.”

  “Are you holding out on me?” she says.

  “What would I hold out?”

  “Are you really depressed about being thirty? People get so upset—”

  “It’s O.K.,” I say, making my voice lighter. “Hey,” I say. “Thank you.”

  She blows a kiss into the phone. “Wait a minute,” she says. “Remember when we played grown-up? We thought they were twenty! And the pillows under our nightgowns to make us pregnant? How I got pregnant after you put your finger in my stream of urine?”

  “Are you?” I say, suddenly curious.

  “No,” she says, and doesn’t ask if I am.

  We blow each other a kiss. I hang up and go outside. The day is graying over. There’s no difference between the way the air looks and the non-color of my drink. I pour it on the grass. The dog gets up and sniffs it, walks away, resumes his chewing of the clothesline.

  I’ve taken out one of the lawn chairs and am sitting in it, facing the driveway, waiting for my husband. When the car turns into the drive, I take the clothesline and toss it around the side of the house, so he won’t see. The dog doesn’t know what to do: be angry, or bark his usual excited greeting.

  “And now,” my husband says, one arm extended, car door still open, “heeeere’s hubby.” He thinks Ed McMahon is hilarious. He watches only the first minute of the Tonight show, to see Ed. He reaches behind him and takes out a cone of flowers. Inside are roses, not exactly peach-colored, but orange. Two dozen? And a white bag, smudged with something that looks like dirt; that must be the chocolate frosting of my éclair seeping through. I throw my arms around my husband. Our hipbones touch. Nothing about my body has started to change. For a second, I wonder if it might be a tumor—if that might be why I missed my period.

  “Say it,” he whispers, the hand holding the flowers against my left ear, the hand with the bag covering my right.

  Isn’t this the stereotype of the maniac in the asylum—hands clamped to both ears to … what? Shut out voices? Hear them more clearly? The drink has made me woozy, and all I hear is a hum. He moves his hands up and down, rubbing the sides of my head.

  “Say it,” he’s whispering through the constant roar. “Say ‘I have a nice life.’ ”

  WAITING

  “It’s beautiful,” the woman says. “How did you come by this?” She wiggles her finger in the mousehole. It’s a genuine mousehole: sometime in the eighteenth century a mouse gnawed its way into the cupboard, through the two inside shelves, and out the bottom.

  “We bought it from an antique dealer in Virginia,” I say.

  “Where in Virginia?”

  “Ruckersville. Outside of Charlottesville.”

  “That’s beautiful country,” she says. “I know where Ruckersville is. I had an uncle who lived in Keswick.”

  “Keswick was nice,” I say. “The farms.”

  “Oh,” she says. “The tax writeoffs, you mean? Those mansions with the sheep grazing out front?”

  She is touching the wood, stroking lightly in case there might be a splinter. Even after so much time, everything might not have been worn down to smoothness. She lowers her eyes. “Would you take eight hundred?” she says.

  “I’d like to sell it for a thousand,” I say. “I paid thirteen hundred, ten years ago.”

  “It’s beautiful,” she says. “I suppose I should try to tell you it has some faults, but I’ve never seen one like it. Very nice. My husband wouldn’t like my spending more than six hundred to begin with, but I can see that it’s worth eight.” She is resting her index finger on the latch. “Could I bring my husband to see it tonight?”

  “All right.”

  “You’re moving?” she says.

  “Eventually,” I say.

  “That would be something to load around.” She shakes her head. “Are you going back South?”

  “I doubt it,” I say.

  “You probably think I’m kidding about coming back with my husband,” she says suddenly. She lowers her eyes again. “Are other people interested?”

  “There’s just been one other call. S
omebody who wanted to come out Saturday.” I smile. “I guess I should pretend there’s great interest.”

  “I’ll take it,” the woman says. “For a thousand. You probably could sell it for more and I could probably resell it for more. I’ll tell my husband that.”

  She picks up her embroidered shoulder bag from the floor by the corner cabinet. She sits at the oak table by the octagonal window and rummages for her checkbook.

  “I was thinking, What if I left it home? But I didn’t.” She takes out a checkbook in a red plastic cover. “My uncle in Keswick was one of those gentleman farmers,” she says. “He lived until he was eighty-six, and enjoyed his life. He did everything in moderation, but the key was that he did everything.” She looks appraisingly at her signature. “Some movie actress just bought a farm across from the Cobham store,” she says. “A girl. I never saw her in the movies. Do you know who I’m talking about?”

  “Well, Art Garfunkel used to have a place out there,” I say.

  “Maybe she bought his place.” The woman pushes the check to the center of the table, tilts the vase full of phlox, and puts the corner of the check underneath. “Well,” she says. “Thank you. We’ll come with my brother’s truck to get it on the weekend. What about Saturday?”

  “That’s fine,” I say.

  “You’re going to have some move,” she says, looking around at the other furniture. “I haven’t moved in thirty years, and I wouldn’t want to.”

  The dog walks through the room.

  “What a well-mannered dog,” she says.

  “That’s Hugo. Hugo’s moved quite a few times in thirteen years. Virginia. D.C. Boston. Here.”

  “Poor old Hugo,” she says.

  Hugo, in the living room now, thumps down and sighs.

  “Thank you,” she says, putting out her hand. I reach out to shake it, but our hands don’t meet and she clasps her hand around my wrist. “Saturday afternoon. Maybe Saturday evening. Should I be specific?”

  “Any time is all right.”

  “Can I turn around on your grass or no?”

  “Sure. Did you see the tire marks? I do it all the time.”

  “Well,” she says. “People who back into traffic. I don’t know. I honk at them all the time.”