The Accomplished Guest: Stories

by Ann Beattie

  “Really?” she asked, but her surprise was that he’d seen Nathan. She’d had a huge crush on her cousin when she was a teenager. “What is Nathan doing?”

  “Bankrupt,” he said. “Lives in Florida, which is one of those states where they can’t take your house. He’s trying to open an organic nursery there. I sent him a little something, I admit it. I hope he can climb out of the hole.”

  “Did you know I had a crush on him when I was sixteen or seventeen?”

  “You were fifteen when you met Nathan, and yes, I did. He’s a nice boy, always was. I look back and think he had a breakdown when he was in college, and nobody in the family reacted to it as seriously as they should have. He was self-medicating all that time he was at Berkeley, is the way I see it now. Maybe it was just the times, the fact that he was overshadowed by his brilliant sister. But this latest reversal isn’t going to do him in, I could tell that. He and Bella are still married. They have a rescued greyhound. He sounded pretty good, considering.”

  “I suppose you and Johanna will be visiting, come winter?”

  “You’ve always been inhabited by the green-eyed monster, Lawrence. What if we did visit? Do you think that would mean we care about Nathan more than we care about our own daughter?” A slight pause. “Daughters.”

  “Bankrupt!” she said. “Wow. Nathan with that 160 IQ and that long, curly hair.”

  “Yeah, and some dog racing around looking like a harp with a big nose. He got my e-mail and sent me a picture of the dog by attachment.”

  There was little traffic, at least for Boston. When was he going to thank her for coming? Her father had such good manners. He seemed a little preoccupied by something. She asked outright if that might be so.

  “Lawrence,” he said, a tinge of regret in his voice. He removed one hand from the wheel and took her hand. He held it silently until someone cut them off on the right, and his hands automatically flew back to three o’clock and nine o’clock. Oh, that: life, itself.

  Back at the house, Johanna was waiting in the rocker on the porch. The entire vast porch had been an anniversary present to themselves, covering the front of the house and wrapping around one side. A bit of stage decoration: an enormous fern in a Victorian urn. A historically correct light glowed from either side of the front door. Though her father had been the actor, it was her mother who had a flair for the dramatic. “Lawrence, my most wonderful daughter!” she said, enfolding Lawrence in her arms. “Thank you for coming. It’s a pick-me-up just to see you.”

  “Love you,” Lawrence whispered as she and her mother embraced. A big moth fluttered against the light, making a sound so loud, it sounded amplified.

  “I’ll take these things inside. Your sister went to bed early with a headache. But she’s so looking forward to tomorrow. Her best friend returned, and a drive to Barnacle Billy’s.”

  She watched her mother’s smile instantly subside. Johanna might be able to set stages, but she didn’t have her husband’s ability to act.

  “It’s just a regular headache? Not a migraine?”

  “She hasn’t had a migraine for ages. Knock on wood,” her mother said, knocking on the arm of the rocker. She’d sat down. Lawrence handed her canvas bag to her father, indicating with a slight gesture that she’d keep her purse. He took the bag inside. There were three other chairs on the porch, but only one rocker.

  Lawrence collapsed into a comfortably cushioned wicker chair. “Everything okay?” she asked.

  “We’re luckier than most,” her mother said, avoiding the question, clearly trying to determine a mood of grateful acceptance. She was really at her best at Thanksgiving, but in recent years, because of the difficulty of air travel, Lawrence hadn’t come for Thanksgiving.

  “You don’t look like a person who’s been traveling for hours,” her mother said. “Are those new boots? I’m afraid you’ll be hot in them here, but you can wear any of my shoes you want.” Lawrence smiled, acknowledging all of it: They should be grateful for what they had; the Cole Haan boots were new, and she loved them so much that she’d worn them even though she’d known they’d be too warm; she and her mother had worn the same size shoe for years.

  “Vanity,” Lawrence said, crossing her legs, showing the boot from its buckled side.

  “Have whatever you want,” her mother said. “You work hard for your money. You’re a wonderful person.”

  “But you missed your guess about my marrying John, didn’t you?”

  “I never thought you had to marry at all, unless you were entirely sure you’d found the right one. I just lucked in to your father. I do sometimes regret not going back to school, though.”

  “And he regrets not being Philip Seymour Hoffman.”

  “But your father is so inherently handsome,” Johanna said. She looked up just in time to smile at him as he came out, carrying a tray with three iced teas, big slices of lemon stuck to the rims. None of them took sugar. The sterling-silver iced-tea spoons had belonged to their grandmother and were monogrammed W. As a child, Bett had been spanked for digging in the dirt with one. It was the only time Lawrence could ever remember her mother spanking either of them. But through the years, the spanking had been discussed, and discussed, and discussed. She wished her father had just brought the iced teas without the spoons.

  “I’m here, too!” Bett hollered, descending the stairs. She was carrying a big flashlight, like the ones cops use when they stop your car and come to your window. She shone it in their eyes for painful seconds, first Lawrence’s, then Johanna’s. Their father had escaped the blinding light when she sideswiped him and walked onto the porch in her pink nightgown and navy-blue UGGs that she wore everywhere, in every season. Her braid was lopsided and a lot of hair escaped it. She insisted on doing her own hair.

  “So how about a hug for your sis,” Lawrence said, arm over her eyes, rising.

  “No more hugs, because touching is socially inappropriate,” Bett said. “It’s a hot topic.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Lawrence said, going toward her. But she could tell from her sister’s expression that a hug was unwelcome. She held out her hand. Bett shook it and seemed to throw it down, as if it were a pancake she was flipping from the spatula. Lawrence did have rather small, light hands. She knew to grip firmly, and did, but still you could often see the other person surprised at the inherent lightness of her hands.

  “Did you know that tomorrow is my birthday?” Bett asked.

  “Yes, I did, and your present is in the bag Larry just put inside,” Lawrence said. “Two hints: not a bicycle and not a horse.”

  “Two hints,” Bett echoed. “Not a clown and not a corpse.”

  It was always possible she was joking. Lawrence considered this interpretation more often than she thought their parents did. “Corpse” more or less rhymed with “horse.” Maybe just a bit of wordplay. Bett hated clowns; she wasn’t afraid of them, she hated them, as well as anything that reminded her of them, such as marionettes or children in face paint, or certain mannequins. She’d once had a meltdown on Newbury Street. Belatedly, Lawrence realized that a bicycle, or a unicycle, really, might indeed conjure up some clown at the circus. She was pretty good at getting inside her sister’s head. But why would Bett happily watch motorcyclists? Why did children on bicycles not bother her, though she sometimes shuddered if an adult passed by on a bicycle?

  “I’m afraid we’re out of decaf tea,” Larry said, lowering the tray onto a table, “but would you like something else to drink? Orange juice or seltzer?”

  “Tomorrow’s my birthday, so maybe champagne!” Bett said.

  Alcohol could not be mixed with Bett’s medicine. She was also to avoid caffeine, which meant no chocolate, and chocolate was one of her favorite things. A life without chocolate was impossible, so sometimes Bett enjoyed a bit. What could you do?

  “Orange juice, seltzer?” her father repeated.

  “Harpoon, weather,” Bett said. She took the slice of lemon from the rim of her mother’
s glass and raised her eyebrows, sucked it, cried, “Ew!,” and threw it over the railing.

  “At least it wasn’t a container of Chinese food,” Johanna said dully.

  Larry said nothing. The family counselor, who had lived with the three of them for a weekend several years ago, had made the point to Larry that whatever his wife said was her business, and he helped nothing by correcting her in front of their daughter. Otherwise, Larry would have spoken to Johanna as if she’d been another of their children and instructed her not to be sarcastic, because it “wasn’t attractive.” That was what both daughters had been taught as they were growing up. Not to fidget; not to put a used Kleenex anywhere but in their pocket; not to be ironic or mocking or sarcastic. But still, in her own lame way, Bett had gone on and on and on. For a while, before college, and before she got out into the world more, Lawrence had been so well mannered, she’d seemed like someone out of an Edith Wharton novel. That ended courtesy of weed and cocaine, and resulted in the eventual loosening of a sharp tongue that could make people gasp. Lincoln had thought one day she’d burst through the shell of her body and attack with the frenzy of a comic-book viper.

  “I could use help with openin’ my presents tonight, ma’am,” Bett said. Her sister was addicted to old TV westerns (Gunsmoke being her favorite) and to Deadwood. Whenever she wanted to be emphatic, she turned her hand sideways and made a gun with her thumb and first finger. She did not, however, point her gun in her parents’ direction any longer. A lot of invisible bullets were fired into the carpet or the porch or even the mattress.

  Larry sang, “I’m an old cowhand, from the Rio Grande . . .” between sips of iced tea. He’d given his lemon to his wife. Lawrence found herself staring at the squeezed lemon floating in her mother’s iced tea, exactly lit by the outdoor light until her mother lifted the glass to drink from it. Her parents were stuck with Bett for the rest of their lives. Still, they had friends, they’d recently found another sitter whom Bett seemed to like (a gay man who was back living with his parents until he began his new job in Buffalo), so they’d resumed going out one night a week. On the other nights, her father attended a book discussion group on Mondays, and her mother volunteered to help the activity director of a local nursing home. The previous Christmas, Larry had been recruited to play an elf who went mad in Santa’s workshop in a play written by the activity director. It had been a huge success. As one of the activities, those who could still write had written him thank-you notes, and they’d wanted to do it. A few notes were attached by funny magnets to the refrigerator, as if it were still the sort of home where the children came back from school with stars on their papers. Make that with a star on her paper. Bett had gone to several schools before the one in Connecticut was found. For those two years, Larry and Johanna had lived alone. They’d joined a gym, gone to the theater in London, Johanna had lost the ten or fifteen pounds she’d gained since her wedding and had bought some beautiful new clothes on Newbury Street. Then the answering machine caught up with them: The school was always calling. Were things appreciably worse, or for some reason did the convenience of the machine, and the quick response they’d get, result in their being called more often? Who knew? But that had been the signal, like the whistle blown at the end of a race, that it was over. School ended, Bett graduated (because everyone did), Bett returned to her old bedroom in the house in Newton.

  “Why don’t you have cowboy boots, if you’re going to wear boots?” Bett asked Lawrence. “They’re much cooler.”

  “I like soft leather,” Lawrence said. “These are the sort of boots you can wear in the evening, too, with a black dress.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have boots like that, I’d have cowboy boots, and then you could kick your toe at people, and cowboy boots are worn more and more now. Who would want to be in a stupid evening dress, anyhow?”

  Lawrence shrugged. The last time she’d worn an evening dress had been at the Corcoran—a Priscilla of Boston knee-length dress that had probably once been some bridal attendant’s, in the most beautiful shade of sea-glass green. She had gotten it for thirty-five dollars on eBay.

  “Mom has corns!” Bett said, pointing to their mother’s black clogs.

  “Mom has a sore toe from running to catch the train in tennis shoes without socks,” Johanna said. She slipped her foot out of her shoe to prove it. There was a small Band-Aid wrapped around her second toe. She’d gotten a pedicure; her toenails sparkled and had been expertly painted pale pink.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I need to check to see if I got a message I’m waiting for,” Larry said. He left his empty glass on the tray. He’d carried it out; one of them could carry it in. From Johanna’s perspective, he was always making a mess (though even she would not have criticized the tray of glasses of iced tea), and she was always having to clean up after him. From his perspective, and he often cited his source (Malcolm Gladwell), people formed first impressions within the first few seconds of meeting you. Why, then, do anything but be yourself? And he was lazy, he did throw his clothes on the floor. Johanna had tried to reason with him: Would he come out onto the stage and act well for the first fifteen seconds, then just wander around, doing any old thing? What did it mean to “be yourself”? But they’d been married for over forty years, and they adored each other. There was that. He kissed the top of his wife’s head as he walked, empty-handed, toward the house.

  “Bring out my present!” Bett called.

  “That’s for tomorrow,” he said.

  “No, bring it NOW!” she said, pointing her finger gun at his back. He turned. The gun was still pointed. He shaped his own hand into a gun and said, with no inflection, “Pow.”

  And then Bett went crazy. She knocked over the little table when she jumped forward, waving her arms as she stomped toward him, Johanna cringing and raising her hand to her mouth before she recovered herself and also got to her feet. “Bett! Bett!” she screamed, though Larry said nothing, only used his arms to shield his face from the blows. He’d been spat on! By his daughter! A first (he would later tell Lawrence). “Stop it immediately!” Johanna said, raising her own arm as she spoke, in case Bett whirled in her direction. Which she did. She didn’t whirl, but she did turn slowly, and look at her mother with incomprehension. “You don’t want it to be my birthday,” she finally said. “There are no plans except the trip tomorrow.”

  “Bett,” Larry said in his super-reasonable voice, “what do you think happens on people’s birthdays? Your sister has come with presents. Your mother and I have a gift for you. We’re taking you to Maine, to your favorite restaurant, for a lobster roll. For ten lobster rolls, if that’s what you want. What do you think happens on other people’s birthdays?”

  “They get cakes made with killer sugar,” she said. “They get ten cakes if they want, and it’s full of sugar and it doesn’t make them crazy, they eat their cake and have it, too.”

  This produced an undisguised look of surprise between Johanna and Lawrence, who now stood at her mother’s side in a show of support. Not in time to have been helpful, but when she’d recovered from the sheer shock of Bett’s attack, she’d gone to her mother’s side as fast as she could.

  “We try to do what’s best for you. You’ve had the conversation about alcohol and sugar and caffeine with the doctor many times yourself, Bett. I repeat: We try to do what’s best for you, even if we are not always right.”

  In the way he said Bett’s name, Lawrence understood that he despised his older daughter. Don’t take it back and say she can have a piece of cake, please don’t, she thought silently. Her wish was granted. He said nothing more, pulled his rumpled but still-tucked-in shirt out of his pants rather than trying to figure out how to neatly retuck it, turned his back, and went into the house. Next, Lawrence thought: Please don’t leave me alone on the porch with the two of them. But it was apparent that Bett was through and their mother unhurt.

  “May I suggest that we forget that happened and sit here and enjoy the lovely weather and
hear what’s new with your sister, Bett? Unless there is anything more you feel you must say?” Johanna asked.

  “I feel I must say that she only came to see you, not to see me,” Bett said. “But now we can hear from the important daughter.”

  “Bett, I’m serious. I want you to avoid that tone of voice,” Johanna said.

  “And I want to go to bed. I’ll see you in the morning,” Lawrence said. She was thinking that she’d go upstairs, find her father at his desk, at his computer, wordlessly squeeze his hand for a few seconds, perhaps bend to touch her forehead to his, all the silent signals they had. That night she might even crawl into her mother’s bed and do spoons. In recent years her mother had taken over the spare bedroom, and now the bed again had its canopy, and the sheets were amazingly white and soft. Larry had been diagnosed with sleep apnea and had to sleep with a breathing mask at night.

  Upstairs, Larry sat with his head on his arms. He heard her footsteps, the upstairs floorboards creaking, but didn’t look up. He was mumbling when she came into the room—then he did look up, red-eyed—and he was saying, “In Greek tragedy, all the battles are summarized, we don’t have to see them onstage: Here’s the way it happened, here’s what the violence consisted of, who fought hardest, who screamed loudest, who died. We exist in our suburban idyll, where everything can also be summarized: We’ve had pretty good fortune, pretty good health; we’ve been married for longer than we’ve known any of our mutual friends; we have a daughter we call ‘troubled.’ No attention must be paid. In fact, please don’t. Those are the facts, sir. Ma’am. Now the action resumes.”

  “You left out your other daughter,” she said, hands planted on his shoulders. She felt suddenly exhausted: the outburst; the travel; maybe going back further than that, her lousy romances; her bad decisions.

  “My other daughter is named for me. I’m really a Larry, though, not a Lawrence. I didn’t inhabit that name even before she was born. I was always a pretty good actor, never a great one. No loss to the stage that that career didn’t work out.”