by Ann Beattie
I go to the screen door and wave. She is driving a yellow Mercedes, an old one that’s been repainted, with a license that says “RAVE-I.” The car stalls. She re-starts it and waves. I wave again.
When she’s gone, I go out the back door and walk down the driveway. A single daisy is growing out of the foot-wide crack in the concrete. Somebody has thrown a beer can into the driveway. I pick it up and marvel at how light it is. I get the mail from the box across the street and look at it as cars pass by. One of the stream of cars honks a warning to me, although I am not moving, except for flipping through the mail. There is a CL&P bill, a couple of pieces of junk mail, a post card from Henry in Los Angeles, and a letter from my husband in—he’s made it to California. Berkeley, California, mailed four days ago. Years ago, when I visited a friend in Berkeley we went to a little park and some people wandered in walking two dogs and a goat. An African pygmy goat. The woman said it was housebroken to urinate outside and as for the other she just picked up the pellets.
I go inside and watch the moving red band on the digital clock in the kitchen. Behind the clock is an old coffee tin decorated with a picture of a woman and a man in a romantic embrace; his arms are nearly rusted away, her hair is chipped, but a perfectly painted wreath of coffee beans rises in an arc above them. Probably I should have advertised the coffee tin, too, but I like to hear the metal top creak when I lift it in the morning to take the jar of coffee out. But if not the coffee tin, I should probably have put the tin breadbox up for sale.
John and I liked looking for antiques. He liked the ones almost beyond repair—the kind that you would have to buy twenty dollars’ worth of books to understand how to restore. When we used to go looking, antiques were much less expensive than they are now. We bought them at a time when we had the patience to sit all day on folding chairs under a canopy at an auction. We were organized; we would come and inspect the things the day before. Then we would get there early the next day and wait. Most of the auctioneers in that part of Virginia were very good. One, named Wicked Richard, used to lace his fingers together and crack his knuckles as he called the lots. His real name was Wisted. When he did classier auctions and there was a pamphlet, his name was listed as Wisted. At most of the regular auctions, though, he introduced himself as Wicked Richard.
I cut a section of cheese and take some crackers out of a container. I put them on a plate and carry them into the dining room, feeling a little sad about parting with the big corner cupboard. Suddenly it seems older and bigger—a very large thing to be giving up.
The phone rings. A woman wants to know the size of the refrigerator that I have advertised. I tell her.
“Is it white?” she says.
The ad said it was white.
“Yes,” I tell her.
“This is your refrigerator?” she says.
“One of them,” I say. “I’m moving.”
“Oh,” she says. “You shouldn’t tell people that. People read these ads to figure out who’s moving and might not be around, so they can rob them. There were a lot of robberies in your neighborhood last summer.”
The refrigerator is too small for her. We hang up.
The phone rings again, and I let it ring. I sit down and look at the corner cupboard. I put a piece of cheese on top of a cracker and eat it. I get up and go into the living room and offer a piece of cheese to Hugo. He sniffs and takes it lightly from my fingers. Earlier today, in the morning, I ran him in Putnam Park. I could hardly keep up with him, as usual. Thirteen isn’t so old, for a dog. He scared the ducks and sent them running into the water. He growled at a beagle a man was walking, and tugged on his leash until he choked. He pulled almost as hard as he could a few summers ago. The air made his fur fluffy. Now he is happy, slowly licking his mouth, getting ready to take his afternoon nap.
John wanted to take Hugo across country, but in the end we decided that, as much as Hugo would enjoy terrorizing so many dogs along the way, it was going to be a hot July and it was better if he stayed home. We discussed this reasonably. No frenzy—nothing like the way we had been swept in at some auctions to bid on things that we didn’t want, just because so many other people were mad for them. A reasonable discussion about Hugo, even if it was at the last minute: Hugo, in the car, already sticking his head out the window to bark goodbye. “It’s too hot for him,” I said. I was standing outside in my nightgown. “It’s almost July. He’ll be a hassle for you if campgrounds won’t take him or if you have to park in the sun.” So Hugo stood beside me, barking his high-pitched goodbye, as John backed out of the driveway. He forgot: his big battery lantern and his can opener. He remembered: his tent, the cooler filled with ice (he couldn’t decide when he left whether he was going to stock up on beer or Coke), a camera, a suitcase, a fiddle, and a banjo. He forgot his driver’s license, too. I never understood why he didn’t keep it in his wallet, but it always seemed to get taken out for some reason and then be lost. Yesterday I found it leaning up against a bottle in the medicine cabinet.
Bobby calls. He fools me with his imitation of a man with an English accent who wants to know if I also have an avocado-colored refrigerator for sale. When I say I don’t, he asks if I know somebody who paints refrigerators.
“Of course not,” I tell him.
“That’s the most decisive thing I’ve heard you say in five years,” Bobby says in his real voice. “How’s it going, Sally?”
“Jesus,” I say. “If you’d answered this phone all morning, you wouldn’t think that was funny. Where are you?”
“New York. Where do you think I am? It’s my lunch hour. Going to Le Relais to get tanked up. A little le pain et le beurre, put down a few Scotches.”
“Le Relais,” I say. “Hmm.”
“Don’t make a bad eye on me,” he says, going into his Muhammad Ali imitation. “Step on my foot and I kick you to the moon. Glad-hand me and I shake you like a loon.” Bobby clears his throat. “I got the company twenty big ones today,” he says. “Twenty Gs.”
“Congratulations. Have a good lunch. Come out for dinner, if you feel like the drive.”
“I don’t have any gas and I can’t face the train.” He coughs again. “I gave up cigarettes,” he says. “Why am I coughing?” He moves away from the phone to cough loudly.
“Are you smoking grass in the office?” I say.
“Not this time,” he gasps. “I’m goddam dying of something.” A pause. “What did you do yesterday?”
“I was in town. You’d laugh at what I did.”
“You went to the fireworks.”
“Yeah, that’s right. I wouldn’t hesitate to tell you that part.”
“What’d you do?” he says.
“I met Andy and Tom at the Plaza and drank champagne. They didn’t. I did. Then we went to the fireworks.”
“Sally at the Plaza?” He laughs. “What were they doing in town?”
“Tom was there on business. Andy came to see the fireworks.”
“It rained, didn’t it?”
“Only a little. It was O.K. They were pretty.”
“The fireworks,” Bobby says. “I didn’t make the fireworks.”
“You’re going to miss lunch, Bobby,” I say.
“God,” he says. “I am. Bye.”
I pull a record out from under the big library table, where they’re kept on the wide maghogany board that connects the legs. By coincidence, the record I pull out is the Miles Davis Sextet’s Jazz at the Plaza. At the Palm Court on the Fourth of July, a violinist played “Play Gypsies, Dance Gypsies” and “Oklahoma!” I try to remember what else and can’t.
“What do you say, Hugo?” I say to the dog. “Another piece of cheese, or would you rather go on with your siesta?”
He knows the word “cheese.” He knows it as well as his name. I love the way his eyes light up and he perks his ears for certain words. Bobby tells me that you can speak gibberish to people, ninety per cent of the people, as long as you throw in a little catchword now and then, and
it’s the same when I talk to Hugo: “Cheese.” “Tag.” “Out.”
No reaction. Hugo is lying where he always does, on his right side, near the stereo. His nose is only a fraction of an inch away from the plant in a basket beneath the window. The branches of the plant sweep the floor. He seems very still.
“Cheese?” I whisper. “Hugo?” It is as loud as I can speak.
No reaction. I start to take a step closer, but stop myself. I put down the record and stare at him. Nothing changes. I walk out into the back yard. The sun is shining directly down from overhead, striking the dark-blue doors of the garage, washing out the color to the palest tint of blue. The peach tree by the garage, with one dead branch. The wind chimes tinkling in the peach tree. A bird hopping by the iris underneath the tree. Mosquitoes or gnats, a puff of them in the air, clustered in front of me. I sink down into the grass. I pick a blade, split it slowly with my fingernail. I count the times I breathe in and out. When I open my eyes, the sun is shining hard on the blue doors.
After a while—maybe ten minutes, maybe twenty—a truck pulls into the driveway. The man who usually delivers packages to the house hops out of the United Parcel truck. He is a nice man, about twenty-five, with long hair tucked behind his ears, and kind eyes.
Hugo did not bark when the truck pulled into the drive.
“Hi,” he says. “What a beautiful day. Here you go.”
He holds out a clipboard and a pen.
“Forty-two,” he says, pointing to the tiny numbered block in which I am to sign my name. A mailing envelope is under his arm.
“Another book,” he says. He hands me the package.
I reach up for it. There is a blue label with my name and address typed on it.
He locks his hands behind his back and raises his arms, bowing. “Did you notice that?” he says, straightening out of the yoga stretch, pointing to the envelope. “What’s the joke?” he says.
The return address says “John F. Kennedy.”
“Oh,” I say. “A friend in publishing.” I look up at him. I realize that that hasn’t explained it. “We were talking on the phone last week. He was—People are still talking about where they were when he was shot, and I’ve known my friend for almost ten years and we’d never talked about it before.”
The UPS man is wiping sweat off his forehead with a handkerchief. He stuffs the handkerchief into his pocket.
“He wasn’t making fun,” I say. “He admired Kennedy.”
The UPS man crouches, runs his fingers across the grass. He looks in the direction of the garage. He looks at me. “Are you all right?” he says.
“Well—” I say.
He is still watching me.
“Well,” I say, trying to catch my breath. “Let’s see what this is.”
I pull up the flap, being careful not to get cut by the staples. A large paperback called If Mountains Die. Color photographs. The sky above the Pueblo River gorge in the book is very blue. I show the UPS man.
“Were you all right when I pulled in?” he says. “You were sitting sort of funny.”
I still am. I realize that my arms are crossed over my chest and I am leaning forward. I uncross my arms and lean back on my elbows. “Fine,” I say. “Thank you.”
Another car pulls into the driveway, comes around the truck, and stops on the lawn. Ray’s car. Ray gets out, smiles, leans back in through the open window to turn off the tape that’s still playing. Ray is my best friend. Also my husband’s best friend.
“What are you doing here?” I say to Ray.
“Hi,” the UPS man says to Ray. “I’ve got to get going. Well.” He looks at me. “See you,” he says.
“See you,” I say. “Thanks.”
“What am I doing here?” Ray says. He taps his watch. “Lunchtime. I’m on a business lunch. Big deal. Important negotiations. Want to drive down to the Redding Market and buy a couple of sandwiches, or have you already eaten?”
“You drove all the way out here for lunch?”
“Big business lunch. Difficult client. Takes time to bring some clients around. Coaxing. Takes hours.” Ray shrugs.
“Don’t they care?”
Ray sticks out his tongue and makes a noise, sits beside me and puts his arm around my shoulder and shakes me lightly toward him and away from him a couple of times. “Look at that sunshine,” he says. “Finally. I thought the rain would never stop.” He hugs my shoulder and takes his arm away. “It depresses me, too,” he says. “I don’t like what I sound like when I keep saying that nobody cares.” Ray sighs. He reaches for a cigarette. “Nobody cares,” he says. “Two-hour lunch. Four. Five.”
We sit silently. He picks up the book, leafs through. “Pretty,” he says. “You eat already?”
I look behind me at the screen door. Hugo is not here. No sound, either, when the car came up the driveway and the truck left.
“Yes,” I say. “But there’s some cheese in the house. All the usual things. Or you could go to the market.”
“Maybe I will,” he says. “Want anything?”
“Ray,” I say, reaching my hand up. “Don’t go to the market.”
“What?” he says. He sits on his heels and takes my hand. He looks into my face.
“Why don’t you—There’s cheese in the house,” I say.
He looks puzzled. Then he sees the stack of mail on the grass underneath our hands. “Oh,” he says. “Letter from John.” He picks it up, sees that it hasn’t been opened. “O.K.,” he says. “Then I’m perplexed again. Just that he wrote you? That he’s already in Berkeley? Well, he had a bad winter. We all had a bad winter. It’s going to be all right. He hasn’t called? You don’t know if he hooked up with that band?”
I shake my head no.
“I tried to call you yesterday,” he says. “You weren’t home.”
“I went into New York.”
“And?”
“I went out for drinks with some friends. We went to the fireworks.”
“So did I,” Ray says. “Where were you?”
“Seventy-sixth Street.”
“I was at Ninety-eighth. I knew it was crazy to think I might run into you at the fireworks.” A cardinal flies into the peach tree.
“I did run into Bobby last week,” he says. “Of course, it’s not really running into him at one o’clock at Le Relais.”
“How was Bobby?”
“You haven’t heard from him, either?”
“He called today, but he didn’t say how he was. I guess I didn’t ask.”
“He was O.K. He looked good. You can hardly see the scar above his eyebrow where they took the stitches. I imagine in a few weeks when it fades you won’t notice it at all.”
“You think he’s done with dining in Harlem?”
“Doubt it. It could have happened anywhere, you know. People get mugged all over the place.”
I hear the phone ringing and don’t get up. Ray squeezes my shoulder again. “Well,” he says. “I’m going to bring some food out here.”
“If there’s anything in there that isn’t the way it ought to be, just take care of it, will you?”
“What?” he says.
“I mean—If there’s anything wrong, just fix it.”
He smiles. “Don’t tell me. You painted a room what you thought was a nice pastel color and it came out electric pink. Or the chairs—you didn’t have them reupholstered again, did you?” Ray comes back to where I’m sitting. “Oh, God,” he says. “I was thinking the other night about how you’d had that horrible chintz you bought on Madison Avenue put onto the chairs and when John and I got back here you were afraid to let him into the house. God—that awful striped material. Remember John standing in back of the chair and putting his chin over the back and screaming, ‘I’m innocent!’ Remember him doing that?” Ray’s eyes are about to water, the way they watered because he laughed so hard the day John did that. “That was about a year ago this month,” he says. I nod yes.
“Well,” Ray says. “Everythi
ng’s going to be all right, and I don’t say that just because I want to believe in one nice thing. Bobby thinks the same thing. We agree about this. I keep talking about this, don’t I? I keep coming out to the house, like you’ve cracked up or something. You don’t want to keep hearing my sermons.” Ray opens the screen door. “Anybody can take a trip,” he says.
I stare at him.
“I’m getting lunch,” he says. He is holding the door open with his foot. He moves his foot and goes into the house. The door slams behind him.
“Hey!” he calls out. “Want iced tea or something?”
The phone begins to ring.
“Want me to get it?” he says.
“No. Let it ring.”
“Let it ring?” he hollers.
The cardinal flies out of the peach tree and onto the sweeping branch of a tall fir tree that borders the lawn—so many trees so close together that you can’t see the house on the other side. The bird becomes a speck of red and disappears.
“Hey, pretty lady!” Ray calls. “Where’s your mutt?”
Over the noise of the telephone, I can hear him knocking around in the kitchen. The stuck drawer opening.
“You honestly want me not to answer the phone?” he calls.
I look back at the house. Ray, balancing a tray, opens the door with one hand, and Hugo is beside him—not rushing out, the way he usually does to get through the door, but padding slowly, shaking himself out of sleep. He comes over and lies down next to me, blinking because his eyes are not yet accustomed to the sunlight.
Ray sits down with his plate of crackers and cheese and a beer. He looks at the tears streaming down my cheeks and shoves over close to me. He takes a big drink and puts the beer on the grass. He pushes the tray next to the beer can.
“Hey,” Ray says. “Everything’s cool, O.K.? No right and no wrong. People do what they do. A neutral observer, and friend to all. Same easy advice from Ray all around. Our discretion assured.” He pushes my hair gently off my wet cheeks. “It’s O.K.,” he says softly, turning and cupping his hands over my forehead. “Just tell me what you’ve done.”
