by Ann Beattie
She swirled a spatula around the side of the bowl and put the bowl on the counter, licking the beaters. She licked them well, then put them in the sink. In about half an hour, Talia would arrive. She must put the cookies in the oven, so the timing would be perfect. She hurried to drop rounded tablespoonfuls on the cookie sheet.
She thought, for the first time: a cookie sheet. What man had one of those? It had been shipped, along with many other kitchen items, and everything had been put away in drawers by the moving men, while she and Kenny stayed at the Hotel Bel Air. He must have lived with someone, though in telling her about the last five or six years of his life he had omitted mention of any serious relationship and said only that he had been lonely, and that he thought he’d never find the woman who was right for him. Still: a cookie sheet…she should try to find out whom he’d dated before her. Kenny had more or less prepared her for Talia’s excessive loyalty to her mother (who had never remarried), explaining that his daughter was “eccentric” and dropping other hints that the meeting might not be all that pleasurable. She supposed she was happy the girl was coming for something less time-consuming than lunch, though she would have preferred to have Kenny there. At dinner, you would have thought. Talia lived with two roommates in Topanga Canyon and worked as a legal secretary. Paula had an image of her as reclusive and unattractive, though that was probably a guarantee that she’d be stunning and slim. How could she be so worried about five pounds? She was ashamed of herself for being so silly. At the same time, she set herself a limit: three cookies. That way, it would look like she was enjoying them, though she wouldn’t eat too many. When Talia left, she would take them immediately to the neighbor (did horses eat cookies?), saving only a few for Kenny.
The doorbell played the first four notes from The High and the Mighty. He’d had to tell her what it was.
She opened the door and put a smile on her face before she saw Talia. Which was just as well, because Talia’s mouth curved wryly, though she did formally extend her hand. A man stood at her side. “Mr. Corcoran,” Talia said. “And I’m me, of course.”
“Talia, come in,” she said, freezing the smile. “And Mr. Corcoran.”
“Mr. Corcoran is one of the partners at the law firm where I work.”
“Something is baking!” Mr. Corcoran said appreciatively, sniffing the air.
“Come in and sit down,” she said, heading toward the living room. Talia was tall and pretty, though her poker face and protruding bottom lip made her seem only strange. She was pouting. That was the way she’d describe Talia later on the phone, when she called her therapist back in New York: pouting. Mr. Corcoran was as nice as Talia was distant. She asked if she should brew some tea, or whether they would like green tea she’d bought at the market, which was cold. “Whatever is easiest, I like both,” he said. Talia said, “Is there any Irish tea?” as Paula went into the kitchen.
“I’m afraid there’s only a box of Earl Grey and the tea I bought—”
“Earl Grey,” Talia said. Paula almost added: please.
“I used to know someone on this road. We had some pool parties at his house, but that was years ago,” Mr. Corcoran said. “I see you have a lovely pool out there. That’s something I miss, living in a high-rise. Beautiful, beautiful view at night, but no pool. There is one, but it’s overrun with children, so I never go.”
“You should go and tell the mothers to control them. Or the au pairs. Forgive me, what was I thinking: au pairs.”
Unsure whom Talia was mocking, Paula picked up the plate of cookies, then put it down, deciding to carry it in with the drinks, on a tray. She took an inlaid tray from a rack under the counter, put water on to boil, and poured two glasses of green tea. She picked up a little bowl of sugar packets and put it on the tray. She put napkins patterned with tiny green frogs on the tray. For the hell of it, she put the pink swan in among the cookies. She looked at the other little animals she’d assembled. She had already begun to feel like lying on her side, herself. She rearranged the swan so it was perkily upright. She carried the tray into the living room.
“What do you think of this furniture?” Talia said. “Do you think furniture like this is part of male menopause?” She was ignoring Paula and asking her employer his opinion. Paula said quickly, “I like it. It’s comfortable.”
“It certainly is,” Mr. Corcoran said. “Isn’t that pretty? You made those, obviously.”
“Yes, the swan, too. I’m creative, don’t you think? I had to be, to read the directions, which were translated into English by someone who didn’t speak the language.”
“Tell me about it!” Talia exclaimed. “They call the office, and if you don’t speak Spanish, forget it.” She shifted in the chair. She said, “Are you planning to work in Los Angeles, or will you be making origami?”
“Talia!” Mr. Corcoran said.
“It was a question,” Talia said.
“She’s her own person! Blunt and to the point!” Mr. Corcoran said. “Well, I’ve never had a better secretary in fifteen years, and as long as she doesn’t find fault with me, it’s to my advantage to look the other way.”
It was the first time it really registered that Talia had brought a lawyer with her. She could no longer pretend to herself that this was a meet-the-bride tea party. The kettle whistled, and she got up immediately, trying to think—which she thought she might do better out of the malevolent girl’s presence.
She opened drawer after drawer, looking for a tea ball. She had seen one, but could not remember where. The tea was loose; she had only thought she’d bought tea bags. She opened another drawer, and wondered at the moving men: there were several rolled pairs of socks, and a few corkscrews lay to one side. Jeweled fruit filled the rest of the drawer. This was another hint, she was certain: a cookie sheet; jeweled fruit. She found a strainer and put loose tea in it, poured boiling water through, and decided she was glad that the tea looked weak. She went back to the living room, knowing that Kenny must have recently bought new furniture. That he must have been living with another woman. That Talia was angry with her. Few mysteries remained, though what Mr. Corcoran was there for, she could not have guessed.
“Mr. Corcoran has drawn up some papers pertaining to my share of my father’s estate, which my father thought you should consider,” Talia said. “If you grant the fairness of my inheriting something, you shouldn’t have any problem. Of course we’ll leave them with you to consider at your leisure.”
“I would have waited another few minutes,” Mr. Corcoran said, more to himself than to anyone else. He quickly took a cookie.
“If you think I’m going to ask if you’d like milk, I’m not,” Paula said. She thought it was a fair way to speak to a woman who spoke to her like a dog she needed to scold: Let’s show you this rolled-up newspaper and let you think about it at your leisure, before I smack you. “Do you have any interest in what sort of person I am? Or do you have so much disdain for your father, you think he must have picked just anybody?”
“You’re one of several women he’s ‘picked’ lately, as you put it. And the first one made off with a truckload of my grandmother’s Victorian furniture and a considerable amount of his money,” Talia said.
“Please, please, ladies, please,” Mr. Corcoran said. “This can all be handled much differently. Talia, you don’t realize what your tone of voice sounds like.”
But Talia had grabbed up her little quilted Chanel bag and was on her way out the door.
“You’ll never believe it now,” Mr. Corcoran said, “but she has many nice qualities, she really does. Her father’s involvement with the Argentinean woman…”
She looked at him, glad that at least the awful daughter had left before tears sprang to her eyes.
“I feel like shit,” Mr. Corcoran said. “We talked about this. She wasn’t going to bring it up this way. I can see that you’re a lovely person. Do you think I could go out to the car and talk to her, and maybe we could get to know each other before this subject
is discussed? These are wonderful cookies. I can see you went to great trouble. My daughter made an origami bird in summer camp last year. We’re all decent people here, there’s no reason she should have spoken to you that way.”
But Paula wasn’t listening. Like Paula’s father, Talia had exited because that was what was most convenient, abandoning the other person to helpless frustration. Like her sister Jan, the lawyer had logorrhea. You never got away from your family, she supposed. George had been like her father, and now it seemed Kenny was more like him than she’d realized: secretive, smooth, a coward.
Of course she was crying. The surprise was that for a few seconds, it looked like Mr. Corcoran might join her.
In the restaurant, the lighting was dim. When he knocked on the door, someone opened it a crack and hollered over his shoulder in Chinese. “Sung Ho Lo not open,” the man said, turning back to him. He had a towel thrown over one shoulder. In the room, George could see a bucket and a mop. Another man came through a swinging door and said, “Sung Ho Lo opens twelve o’clock. Thank you.”
“I’m looking for Nicholas Gregerson,” he said.
The two men spoke to each other in rapid-fire Chinese. There was a pineapple-y smell: probably the water in the bucket, rather than food, he thought.
“Thank you come back,” the second man said, moving forward as if to butt him in the chest. The first man grabbed the towel and walked away.
“Nicholas Gregerson?” he said again, nodding his head in the direction of the kitchen.
“Twelve o’clock. Gregerson twelve o’clock.”
“He will be here at twelve o’clock?” George asked.
“Gregerson twelve o’clock,” the man said, moving so close that George did, finally, take a step back. This was the point at which—if he happened to be stupid—he would give the man the business card he didn’t have (that would be a good one: What information could possibly be printed on his business card?) and be simply astonished when he returned and Nicholas had fled.
He took his leave without saying good-bye, trying not to be irritated that the door closed so loudly behind him. The pineapple odor was still in his nose, and he patted his pocket, wishing a tissue might appear. He wiped his thumb quickly against both nostrils and walked to the street, sniffing, looking left, then stepping down. The cab that ran over him was driven by a twenty-year-old Bengali who—had he been born a few generations earlier—would have been a priest in his country. Instead, he was driving a minicab in London, transporting a massively pregnant woman to a doctor’s appointment. On impact, the woman vomited, hitting the Bengali’s neck. Then the woman was screaming, pedestrians were screaming, and two men from a car behind him were racing toward the minicab, with George Wissone, dead on impact, trapped beneath it.
Cary found out about the accident later in the afternoon, when Nicholas—who had gone to the restaurant late, having sat at Starbucks much too long with a friend he’d run into, who had very kindly bought him a grande latte with cinnamon, and two biscotti to dunk—called to say that some man had been hit, that blood was being cleaned up in front of the restaurant, and that if business remained slow, he might be home early. How did she know, even before he repeated what information the Chinese had given about the body, that the person who’d died was the man who’d left the apartment not long before? But she did know. And she remained convinced that it was no accident, that George Wissone’s weird friend had something to do with it, and that her world was about to cave in, because she would somehow be dragged into the mess. Then, and ever after, she did not tell anyone that she had met the dead man. She lived in fear that Max would show up at her door—so much so that she picked a fight with Nicholas and left London that evening for quite a while.
For her part, Nancy Gregerson had no idea whom to call. She could imagine that finding someone might be a lot more difficult than it appeared, though she didn’t think the situation would be complicated because Nicky had done anything drastic, like having plastic surgery. Having no evidence to the contrary, she continued to assume he was in London, unless some woman was involved, and then if the woman left, she could imagine him following her, whether he was wanted or not. What he’d said so long ago was true: she could only assume his relationships would end; she never considered them equal relationships, and it wasn’t likely the right sort of person would be attracted to Nicky in the shape he was in. She waited another couple of weeks for word from George Wissone, blaming herself for not asking approximately when she might expect to hear from him, and then did something she vowed she’d never do: she wrote the girl in London who had sent the letters asking for money. Her note said: “My son’s trouble with drugs has led me to be suspicious of what he says and does, and also to be skeptical of what his friends say and do. I’m sorry if this does you a disservice. If you can give me any substantial information about where Nicky is, I will fly to London and we can discuss remuneration then.” She crossed out remuneration and wrote payment. She did not rewrite the note, which she had written on lined paper she’d torn out of a tablet. She put six stamps on the envelope because she didn’t have time to go to the post office to get it weighed. They were understaffed at work: another pregnancy, with the aide having to take off work months early because of toxemia, and Bonita Villasenor’s angioplasty. Jenny had quit the month before. Her mother had offered to pay for her to go to nursing school full-time if she left her husband, and Jenny had decided to do it. For some time Jenny hadn’t been particularly friendly toward her, but Nancy still missed seeing her in the hallways, and almost anyone besides Osama bin Laden would have been appreciated for pitching in, there was so much work. Any notion that her son might help take care of her in her old age was ridiculous, she knew, but planning for a future she could not anticipate also made less and less sense. The lives of others, Nancy thought. You could spend so much time thinking about them, it subsumed your own life. Not that distractions weren’t welcome. As it was, she often paced restlessly during the night, wondering where Nicky was, increasingly skeptical about whether she had been wise to put her trust in George Wissone.
The more certain she became that the situation in London must be complicated, the more she dreaded that eventually he would return with a videotape, but no Nicky. Perhaps by the time she paid off her credit card bill, he would be back. What amount of money would he ask for if he somehow had Nicky with him? More often, though, she feared that George Wissone had simply absconded. What proof did she have that he’d ever gone to London? Still, she couldn’t believe that he’d left town, just like that, simply because she’d reimbursed him for an airline ticket. He didn’t seem to need money. He dressed well—though she did remember the crappy little car he’d driven. But people were unpredictable about the cars they bought: people who couldn’t afford Mercedes went into debt to buy them; rich people bought Jeeps. She had not thought about the time she’d gone back to the scene of the accident recently, but suddenly the one big tree with the bright light aimed at it came to mind, and she remembered what a creepy feeling the spotlight on something ordinary—something toward which she wasn’t sure her attention should be directed—had given her; except for the verticality of the light, it had reminded her of the much talked about light at the end of the tunnel so many people reported seeing in near-death experiences. She had turned her back and gone on her way, though once seated in the car she had wondered if the light might portend something. For her, or for him? She’d had premonitions of other things that materialized, though maybe everyone had. She’d known that the neighbor’s cat—the long-ago neighbor’s cat—was going to die, and that Nicky was going to be involved. She had noticed the way he looked at it, though she never could account for why Nicky would like a creature or hate it. Images of the crushed turtle no longer came back to her—except momentarily, when she didn’t stop herself from thinking about troubling, gloomy subjects. She had imagined the death of her husband’s wife’s dog, and that hadn’t happened, had it? Though, on the other hand, she had se
en something in Mrs. Sanderson’s eye, and the woman had died soon thereafter. The eyes were known to register bad health. Good doctors always looked into a patient’s eyes.
