The Accomplished Guest: Stories

by Ann Beattie

  “Mom, Grandpa Gerald just called, but I didn’t pick up because I knew you had to get going.”

  Janet hated caller ID, which had simply materialized after she’d had to replace the old phone. To her dismay, after living alone for almost twenty years, she’d developed the habit of running for the phone only to look sadly at the phone even if she was happy to get the call, because seeing the caller’s name made it seem as if they’d already spoken: The name signified an end rather than a beginning.

  “I guess that’s the right thing to have done,” she said. “Where is Steven?”

  “He’s doing what you told him and putting the cake frosting in a plastic container.”

  “We have fifteen minutes to get there, and there might be construction on the bridge again,” Janet said.

  Her daughter lowered the cat to the porch. It ran through its door. Steven came out of the house carrying one of her vinyl bags that seemed handbag-small in his big hands, wearing a white linen shirt, linen Bermuda shorts, and flip-flops, looking harried, as he always did. He had given up smoking for the second time in three months, found that the nicotine patch made him woozy, after which he’d adopted the motions of smoking without a cigarette in his hand. The hand not carrying the bag gripped an imaginary cigarette between the first and second fingers.

  “We’re all packed. Flowers, yes; tablecloths; decorations; extra corkscrew. Okay. You can just put that bag with the cake stuff on the floor, Steven. Ready to roll?”

  Janet’s cell phone rang. She pulled it out of her pants pocket: black linen pants with a sharp crease—her catering pants, with the deep pockets so hard to find in women’s clothes these days. “Hello,” she said without looking at who was calling. Of course it was her father; he had just tried the house phone and moved on to plan B. “Honey,” he said, “I want you to take a deep breath and listen to what I have to say, because I can only say it once.”

  “What’s the matter, Dad?” she said.

  “Law and order got in the way,” he said. “I guess that’s the best way to say it. I was going to Kmart to get your mother’s prescription, and three kids with a bucket came up and wanted to wash my car—why, there was no rinse water there in the middle of the parking lot. But one of ’em wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I put out my arm and told him when I saw a hose, then maybe we could talk, but then the other one, one of the other ones, started dumping sudsy water on the hood of the Chevy, and I saw red. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I grabbed the bucket outta his hand and threw it at him, then sure enough, his father or some adult showed up, and before you know it, there I was in a police cruiser, my car still unlocked, and don’t think those three boys weren’t inside it the second the cops pulled away, but it took a minute to get the police to listen to me, and then they said, ‘Well, we can’t go back now, we’ll get somebody over there to lock your car.’ The handle scraped this kid’s wrist when I grabbed the bucket. What do we need now? Security guards to protect customers going into Kmart to pick up a prescription? If they’d wanted to cut my hair, should I have sat on the hood and let ’em do that, too? So I’m going to have to tell my story to the judge, but right now your mother’s got Doris Miller coming to pick me up and the policeman gave me a cell phone and a doughnut and a mug of coffee, and says his father fought in the Pacific during the war. If your mother calls you, I don’t want you misunderstanding the situation, because as you know, your mother never could keep a story straight, so I only gave her the basic outline.”

  “Dad, no—this is awful. Were you hurt?”

  “I’m not hurt, I’m a six-foot man, or maybe I’m a raging bull, I don’t know, but the only one hurt was the aggressor, even though you and I know that’s not going to make him change his ways.”

  “That’s terrible, just terrible. It’s hard to believe. I really wish you lived closer.”

  “Even with the class of people we’ve got here, it’s a better place to live than that climate you live in, where it’s winter except for three months a year. It would kill your mother.”

  “So, Dad, you’re okay, and you’re having coffee, and everything’s going to work out?”

  “Nothing’s easy. Going on a five-minute errand’s not easy. It makes me so mad, when I get out of here, I’m going to go sit at that new sports bar and watch the game and have a beer, and the hell with everything.”

  “What’s wrong, Mom?” Blair said.

  The cat had come out of the house again and pounced successfully on a field mouse. “Eww,” Blair squealed, seeing it, too. One of Steven’s big hands covered her face, giving her peek room between the fingers. Janet’s phone beeped to signal a low battery.

  “Dad, I’m on my way to a job, but just as soon as I get home, I’m going to call you. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Next I’m going to read the sports section. One of the officers has been very accommodating, bringing me the coffee and the sports pages. If I was one of those kids, I would have taken the coffee and thrown it in his face and scalded him. I guess it’s clear I’m not that class of person.”

  “Okay, and Mom is okay? This was just routine, your filling—”

  “They think she’s got a headache because she’s going to have to have a root canal, but there’s worry about that because of the heart situation she had the other time, you know? So the doctor phoned in a pain pill prescription, and on Monday this’ll all get sorted out with the cardiologist or the dentist and so forth.”

  “She’s in bed without medicine?”

  “I see Doris now, coming through the door. She looks plenty glad to see me. Well, we’ll get that prescription from somewhere other than Kmart. I’m sure they can switch it over to someplace where you don’t take your life in your hands going to get it.”

  “Dad, I’m glad you’re okay. This will all work out. We’ll talk as soon as—”

  The phone beeped again and she snapped it shut, letting him think they’d been cut off. “Why has Steven gone back in the house?” Janet said to Blair.

  “To pee.”

  “Well, please go get him. We’re supposed to be there now, not standing in the driveway.”

  “I hardly think I should tell him to hurry up. He’s just peeing.”

  “Steven!” Janet called loudly. While Blair looked at her as if she’d turned into Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire, Janet loudly closed the trunk. In a couple of minutes Steven sauntered out of the house, eating a Fudgsicle.

  * * *

  This client was the second wife of some stockbroker disgraced by the SEC, now in “early retirement.” Both of them had had plastic surgery, which, instead of making them look youthful, made their faces look rosy, with high unlined foreheads that seemed oddly blank, like a street sign not imprinted with a word or an image. He was the difficult one; she was only neurotic. He thought Costco frozen appetizers cooked and smothered in expensive and recognizable Stonewall Kitchen sauces were perfectly fine. He put out bottles of homemade seltzer because “everyone wants to cut down on drinking.” (Which he told the guests repeatedly as he circulated among them.) This was the third occasion Janet had catered for them and would probably be the last, since Jeff, the husband, had called after her bedtime to say that they had plenty of toothpicks and plastic glasses. Her food did not need toothpicks, and she had explained to his wife that she did not provide plates, glasses, or flatware—information that was also written in bold type inside the folder she’d left with them.

  The occasion of the party was the next day’s sentencing of Bernie Madoff. As they pulled in, Janet saw a Madoff dartboard leaning on an easel in the yard and their dog peeing against a horseshoe stand that had been altered by the insertion of a short pole with a magazine cover photo of Madoff atop it.

  “Don’t eat anything we’re bringing, even if they offer. Say no to seltzer. Absolutely nothing but ‘No, thank you,’ and we leave the minute we’ve finished setting up, is that clear? We are not their guests, and we are providing the food, we ar
e not circulating.”

  “You’re unbelievable,” Blair said. “Why don’t you lighten up?”

  “Because these people would suck us all into their vortex, where we would stay, answering questions and trying to calm them until the first guests showed up, and then we’d be blocked in and never get out of their driveway.”

  Blair snorted a little laugh. Steven tried to stay out of it, but Janet could see from his expression that he was surprised by the Madoff effigies.

  Dee Dee, the blank-faced, surgery-enhanced wife, came toward Janet, wearing a bizarre costume that looked more like a fancy hat than a dress, with the shoulders squared and crinkly pieces of plastic shooting out beneath the waist like damaged chopsticks. Manolos, what else? “I am frantic!” she said. “The oven won’t turn on. We can’t heat anything. This is going to be a disaster. Do you have a lot of crackers? Maybe we could put some of the hors d’oeuvres in the blender and eat them room-temperature on crackers? Why the fuck won’t the oven heat up?”

  “Let me take a look at it,” Steven said, stepping into her lair, beginning to get sucked in. Suddenly even Blair looked horrified. The back of Dee Dee’s dress was an enormous butterfly, its wings divided by the raised material covering the zipper. Janet did not dare exchange glances with her daughter.

  “Almost nothing needs heating. You could use a pan on top of the stove to heat just . . .”

  Jeff stood in the kitchen, watching the oven’s digital display register 300, 310, 320.

  “You fixed it. You fixed it!” Dee Dee squealed, so excited that her flapping hand knocked Steven’s shoulder and toppled him lightly into her husband, who reached out his own big hand to say, “Whoa! Whoa! Anybody want a slug of seltzer to celebrate?”

  “No, thanks,” they murmured in unison.

  “Dee Dee,” Janet said decisively, “we are going to set the tables and get out of your way. All I need are a few vases for peonies. You just relax.”

  “Vases?” repeated Dee Dee. Janet might as well have said cauldrons or pieces of abstract sculpture. “Vases,” she intoned, looking into the distance and narrowing her eyes, as if the vases might call to her from wherever they were hiding.

  “They are very, very pretty no matter what you put them in. Short stems. Long. No stems at all, floating. Shall I delegate this task to my daughter, Dee Dee?”

  “How did you fix the oven?” Dee Dee suddenly said to Jeff.

  “I pressed ‘cook,’ ” he said.

  Blair preceded Janet out of the room onto the porch, where the buffet tables were set up. Steven raced past her to help Janet unload the car. “Does she die at midnight?” Steven said as Janet opened the trunk.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Butterflies. Don’t they only live one day?”

  “Don’t make me laugh. Please.”

  There were ants moving around the trunk, though she’d left the peonies out overnight and shaken them thoroughly to avoid just that problem. Steven and Janet flicked them away quickly, without comment. Fortunately, the foil on top of the trays was on tightly. Janet picked up the biggest tray and draped the tablecloths over her arm, the small bag containing the corkscrew and other little things dangling from her wrist. Steven followed, a tray in each hand. Blair, they saw through the window, was in the kitchen with Dee Dee, selecting vases. There were probably fifteen or twenty cut-crystal vases, Janet saw as she poked her head in the kitchen. “No,” Dee Dee was murmuring, “no, no.” The currents of air from the ceiling fan flapped her wings behind her. Mercifully, her husband had disappeared. Outside, the dog was trying to break the neck of his neon-green stuffed barbell, while the big blowup of the as yet unpunctured face of Bernie Madoff looked down on them like Dr. T. J. Eckleburg from his billboard.

  “They’re really celebrating Madoff going to jail? Did he, like, know the guy?”

  “Steven and Blair, please do not talk among yourselves, in case you are overheard. Please get the cake and ask her for a knife to frost it, Blair, and Steven, you could take the cake into the kitchen, please.”

  “I feel like I’m six,” Blair said. She held open the screen door. Unpleasant instrumental music—bagpipes?—played quietly somewhere inside the house. Blair pulled a dead leaf off a hanging geranium, then looked nervously at her mother. “It’s not like I’m already in the Peace Corps and I’m doing something to upset the natives,” she said. Silently, she smoothed the tablecloth with Janet. She reached into the little bag, saw the shells, and polished one on the side of her pants leg. She placed it tentatively on the table.

  “Please get the peonies,” Janet said.

  “Where’d everybody go all of a sudden?”

  “Give thanks,” she said quietly. “And if Steven is having any trouble frosting the cake, help him.”

  “Mom. He worked in a bakery last summer. He knows how to frost cakes. Cupcakes, at least.”

  “Small problem,” Steven said, coming out of the kitchen. “Jeff isn’t feeling good. He wants to see you, Janet.”

  “What? Where is he?”

  “Lying on the sofa. There’s a sofa thing in the pantry. A futon.”

  “Well, where is his wife?”

  “I don’t know. He’s sweating.”

  “He’s sweating? That’s the problem?” But she was already following Steven into the house, through the kitchen, into a side room where, sitting slumped on a pink futon on a frame with quite a few dog toys at his feet, Jeff stared ahead, clenching his teeth.

  “It’s my arm. Pain all up and down my arm.”

  “Where’s your wife? Steven, dial 911 and say you think someone’s having a heart attack. Do you know where your wife is?”

  “Taking off her dress, putting on another one. Can you just . . . can you help me stand up a bit here?”

  “I think you should stay seated, don’t exert yourself. Here’s a pillow”—she thought it was a pillow, but it was a dog toy that squeaked when she wedged it under his shoulder—“here’s, okay, you’re fine, but this could be a heart attack, Jeff.”

  “Cosmic punishment for trashing Bernie,” he said. “I’m going to be really upset if I die on the dog’s bed. Can you help me stand up?”

  “Absolutely not. Move as little as possible. Pain radiating down your arm is a classic symptom of a heart attack, you know that, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know what she’d do without me. She doesn’t even know how to turn on the oven. Now my jaw is getting numb.”

  “Sir, I don’t think there’d be any problem if you took some aspirin, right?” Steven said, but his eyes shot to Janet. He held two white pills in his palm. Blair stood behind him, holding an ornate cut glass vase half filled with water. Everything in the house seemed to be cut glass. “I’m going upstairs to get Dee Dee,” Janet said, “but promise me you won’t stand up. How long did they say, Steven?”

  The sirens in the distance answered her question. Jeff said, “You have to push ‘bake’ and ‘cook.’ Maybe that’s confusing. I try not to lord it over her.”

  “You’re going to be fine,” Janet said, trying to sound reassuring. “Dee Dee?” she called ahead of her.

  She had never been upstairs, but this was where the music was coming from. “Dee Dee, something important,” Janet called. A tiny woman with black hair in a braid and white tennis shoes and a black dress stepped out of a doorway. She looked startled. “No hablo inglés,” she said, averting her eyes.

  “Where’s Dee Dee?” Janet asked, gesturing at the many doorways, sweating profusely herself. The sirens were right outside. There was a clunk she feared might mean her car had been hit. The woman in the hallway gestured to a door at the end of the corridor. Inside, Dee Dee sat with earphones clamped to her ears, humming, wearing a fuchsia lace slip and odd gold gladiator sandals that laced up her calves. A boom box on the windowsill was playing music. Dee Dee actually had a huge perfume bottle she was using like a crazed exterminator, spritzing the air. Her life was about to change profoundly, and this was what she was doing. Janet
faltered, unable to begin. The tiny woman hovered in the doorway.

  “Dee Dee,” she said, stepping forward. “Something has happened. Take off the earphones.”

  Dee Dee pulled them off, and they rested like enormous parentheses around her neck. “The house is on fire, isn’t it?” she said. “Isn’t that what it is?”

  “No, it’s an ambulance. Jeff was having trouble breathing. He’s probably had a heart attack. You need to come right away.”

  Dee Dee scrambled off the green velvet ladies’ chair she was sitting on, stumbling over one of her kicked-off ankle boots. The butterfly dress was facedown on the bed. Frowning deeply, the little brown-skinned woman—could this be an apparition?—opened the closet and walked in, pulling the door shut silently behind her. There was a mirror on the door. Janet looked at herself, stunned: Her hair was wild, bits of wisteria dotting it like confetti in a bride’s hair. From downstairs came sounds of shock and surprise as Dee Dee screamed her husband’s name over and over.

  There was not going to be any party. This was also hardly a circumstance in which she could ask the client to pay the bill. How awful even to think such a thing, but there it was, she had thought it. She checked her watch. If anyone in the world was punctual, there would have been a guest at the house, but no doubt there were at least fifteen minutes to go before anyone besides the ambulance pulled into the driveway. How really awful, Janet thought, that it all struck her as business, or as the degraded version of business, going through the motions; Jeff had had a heart attack, and all she could think of was a checkoff list: Well, we called the ambulance, told his wife. She stared at the closet. The door did not open. She thought about gently tapping on it, reassuring the woman inside that whatever the circumstances, she was not . . . what? Going to report her to the police? Not going to get her into any trouble. But it did not seem the woman spoke English, so how . . . The music reached a paradoxically faint climax; it was the part of the dance where people would have been dancing frantically. On the floor Janet saw again the pair of soft leather ankle-high black boots, very fashionable, near the chair where Dee Dee—now wailing downstairs—had been sitting.