Love Always

by Ann Beattie

  He had gotten Lucy so completely that it took her months after he had gone to realize that it was so hard to talk about Les because in some sense he didn’t exist. He relied on people to invent him. When he was quiet, she had supposed that he was thoughtful; when he was impervious to other people’s pain, she had admired him for being self-contained and not easily shaken by circumstance. Women adored him, and had always been there for him. He didn’t reject them, but like everyone who required such a thing, he hated both the person who provided it, and himself. It must have been frightening to him that he really liked no one. When he came close to a woman emotionally, he would move away physically. It worked out well for him that any woman he would bother with preferred an emotional revelation to a physical thrill. But these excesses were rare. Now, it was a mystery to Lucy why he had bothered to attach himself to her. Les took it easy on himself. He shadowboxed until he got his equilibrium back, and if he had trouble regaining it, he bounced from one woman to another, staying on his toes.

  And Lucy had no one to tell it to. Just try to tell his colleagues with whom he had been so patient that he didn’t take them seriously, that his good manners were nothing more than condescension. Try telling the lonely women in New York that Les Whitehall was a fraud. Lucy would suddenly become ungrateful or worse, just another pretty, bitter woman, a simple stereotype; and Les—because at the very least everyone would grant that he was complex—would ascend to the category of What We Must Accept Though It Is Inexplicable.

  It shocked Lucy to realize that she could think such a thing. Wanting to be talked out of such ideas, she had even told many of these things to Les, because he was so good at rebuttals, when he could not otherwise rearrange reality. The more convinced she became, of course, the more difficult it had been to even raise these issues. It was, for Lucy, as implausible as walking up to Machiavelli and asking to borrow a dime. Even now she was haunted by remembering the perfect lovemaking, the all-night conversations, the gifts, the cards inevitably signed Love Always, Les. After Les announced that he was in love with one of his students and that he was leaving, she had wandered around their house, rounding up the little notes, reading the closings, trying to revert to the way she had thought at the beginning: that if he had written these words, they must be true. Finally, unsure of what was or ever had been true, she took the coward’s way out: she simply turned it against herself. Night after night in the empty house, she thought bitterly that of course anyone else would have realized that the kiss that lasted forever would naturally become the kiss of death.

  Lately, she had been getting closer to Hildon, because that distracted her from thinking about Les. She knew that he knew this. He knew that she knew. She thought he knew that at some point, probably soon, she would step back. They were always there for each other in times of trouble. When Les left her, it had reinforced something she had known all along, something she always got in trouble when she forgot: that she could not be an exception. Whatever crazy thoughts men had about other people, they would eventually have about her. If they distrusted the whole world and trusted her implicitly, they would come to distrust her; if they were not close to anyone and they attached themselves to her, one day they would just remove themselves. If you demonstrated, day by day, that you were not the person they feared, they would be confused for a while, but gradually they would stop trusting logic and become frightened. Hildon did not think that anyone was a soul mate except Lucy. This meant that one morning Hildon would wake up and realize that he and Lucy were not simpatico. She was afraid because this happened so often—she dreaded it—but the truth was that she did not fear men individually. They sensed this and opened up to her. They talked to her—most men would tell her anything. Even Les had dropped most of his defenses. He had talked to her day after day, night after night. He had given her everything imaginable to figure him out, and when he knew that she had, he left. While she thought she was explaining things, in his mind she was creating chaos: he had secretly wanted her to consider the evidence, and tell him that he was larger than life. He had not been drawn to her rational mind at all; he had been drawn to the idea of proving that she was romantic.

  Hildon hated Les—hated him out of all proportion, even. That was Hildon’s own insecurity: his fear that Lucy would prefer to analyze Les’s angst instead of playing games with him. He might have been right, if Les and all the men like him had not exhausted her. She had actually come to like the way she felt now that she had short-circuited.

  Lucy pulled into the airport parking lot. She had forgotten her sunglasses and the glare had given her a headache. A redwing blackbird flew up and slanted away; it had the trajectory of a bullet, heading for the trees at the side of the parking lot.

  She was twenty minutes early. A man in gym shorts and a long-sleeved, embroidered Greek shirt was talking to his son, who sat on his knee. “You don’t bite,” he said. “It hurts when you bite.” The baby, who knew he was being criticized, lit up with the Smile of the Sprite. He puckered his lips and kissed the air. “That’s right,” the man said. “Kisses, not bites.” The baby shifted on the man’s knee. “What does the cow say?” the man said. “Moo,” the baby said. “What does the doggie say?” “Arby,” the baby said. “That’s right. Arby the dog. But what does the doggie say?” “Woof, woof,” the baby said. The baby leaned into its father’s face. “Cows may noise,” the baby said. The baby arched back, and his father grabbed him around the waist just in time.

  Lucy hadn’t seen Nicole in more than a year. Since Les left, she had not seen anyone but Hildon with any regularity. She was wondering if this was the place to be anymore; it was the place Les had wanted to be. She didn’t even know where Les was. When the plane landed, Nicole was one of the first off. The baby in the white baptismal dress who had once toppled into her lap was now descending the stairs, a bright pink gauze sundress blowing up around her. In spite of all the times she had watched her on television and at the movies, it did not really register that her niece could be a star. It was hard to realize that other people knew Nicole, other people saw her perform. A man in a seersucker jacket was talking animatedly to Nicole. When Lucy held open her arms to catch Nicole, he seemed rather disappointed. The man was clutching an air sickness bag that Nicole had autographed. “Oh, Lucy, it’s so sad—this man’s neighbor has a son, and the son has muscular dystrophy and he has to sit in a wheelchair and wear a helmet, and I’m his favorite actress.” The man smiled and looked apologetic at the same time. He thanked Nicole, backing away, smiling at Lucy, colliding with the man holding the baby as he walked backward. “Boom,” the baby said.

  “Listen,” Nicole said, brushing her hair out of her face, “I hope you’re not going to be really mad. The maid quit. We don’t have a maid. Mom had it all worked out with Piggy that he was going to take St. Francis, but Piggy had to fly to Hawaii. Mom said you wouldn’t die if I brought the dog. Oh, I love the dog so much. He doesn’t cause any trouble. Piggy took us to the vet and they gave poor St. Francis a shot. He’s in a cage. Whether you like it or not, I’ve got him. Mom gave me money to put him in a kennel if it will really upset you, but please say that he can stay with me. Please, please.”

  Lucy tried to take in Nicole’s rush of words. She had brought the dog. Why hadn’t Jane kept the dog? Why did anyone think she would care if Nicole had the dog? Where was the dog?

  “You’re going to think this is really awful, but Mom’s in love. He’s a tennis player, and he’s twenty-five years old, and they’re going to the Inn at Ojai and everything, and Mom just didn’t have anyplace to put poor St. Francis but a kennel where he got gross fleas …”

  “Twenty-five?” Lucy said.

  “Mom said not to tell you—oh, he’s sort of neat. He’s taught me all this stuff about playing tennis. He’s very handsome. He might be twenty-four and he’s going to be twenty-five. This weekend is his birthday, and he was going to introduce me to Chris Evert, but I had my ticket and everything, and they were going to Ojai the n
ext day and everything.”

  Nicole spotted St. Francis’ cage. It was gigantic. She and Nicole had to tug together to pull it off the conveyor belt. “I can do it, oh, let me do it!” Nicole said. She began to unfasten the cage. When the top was lifted, St. Francis shook himself and fell against one side of the cage. Nicole put her arms around his neck. “Oh, I love you, St. Francis. You’re all right. You’re in Vermont now.” The dog’s eyes were bloodshot. He tried to stand, and thumped down again. “Is he ever going to forgive us?” Nicole said.

  That afternoon, as the tranquilizer wore off, St. Francis dug up a rhododendron. For an encore, he treed the neighbor’s cat and killed a frog and dropped it on the doorstep. He peed against the side of the house, under the kitchen window, and ate no dinner. He was the quintessential villainous dog. As Nicole said, he was “a good boy.”

  5

  EDWARD BARTLETT greeted the morning by stretching through the motions of the Sun Salutation. He had brought his own juicer with him. That morning he had concocted, for the three of them, a mixture of fresh orange juice, lemon, Perrier, ice, bananas and protein powder. With his, he swallowed some vitamins in the shape of Flintstones characters. He washed Fred and Wilma down the alimentary and went out into the backyard to do aerobics. When he finished, he changed from his sweatsuit to his business clothes: khaki cut-offs, Nikes, and a recently purchased T-shirt that said: VERMONT—CAN 339,000 cows BE WRONG?

  Move over, Michelangelo: Edward Grant Bartlett III, born L.A., California, September 1, 1950; B.A. Cal State L.A.; M.F.A. Parsons School of Design; favorite hobby, dirt bike racing; last book read, Foot Reflexology; most admired American, Phil Spector; was (in the service of a major toy manufacturer) about to capture, for all time, on the sketch pad propped on his easel, the likeness of Nicole Nelson. Less than three months from this very day, the foot-high Nicole would be plastic perfect, dressed, boxed, and shipped—suitable toy or objet for any desirous child or dream-struck man who wasn’t into inflatables and who didn’t already have a paper dolly all his own.

  As he sketched, Edward listened, through the earphones of his Sony Walkman, to a tape of conversational Swahili. As she stood in the yard, shielded by a striped beach umbrella, Nicole listened to Duran Duran through her earphones, keeping the beat by tapping the toe of her pink jellies.

  Nicole had been in Vermont for two days, and already Lucy’s life was in a state of chaos. Jane said that only important people had been given the number, and they had been told to call only if it was essential. So far, this morning’s essential calls had come from Nicole’s broker, who wanted to say goodbye before he left for a Club Med vacation on Paradise Island, and Nicole’s agent, P. G. “Piggy” Proctor, who wanted to finalize plans for Nicole’s dangling from the rope of a helicopter with Bobby Blue over the beach at Malibu on behalf of a campaign to raise money for children afflicted with sleep apnea. The last call was a total fluke: a woman selling the World Book encyclopedia.

  Lucy was writing her column. She had pulled a stool up to the kitchen counter. Out the window she could see Nicole under the umbrella. The sun was stronger now; Edward had put on a coonskin cap and rubbed zinc oxide over his nose. He wore sunglasses with rectangular black lenses. He looked clinically insane.

  Dear Cindi Coeur,

  I want to be a nurse, but my boyfriend says that this will embarrass him, because nurses all have a reputation for being loose. He thinks I should be a computer programmer instead. My reason for wanting to be a nurse is that I have juvenile onset diabetes, and becoming a nurse would be a way of thanking the people who helped me all my life and of helping others. I just think my boyfriend has a dirty mind. I told him that if he had a heart attack and went to the hospital, he would be a lot happier to see a nurse than a computer programmer. Our relationship has been horrible since I said this because he thought that I wouldn’t have said it if I hadn’t been thinking about him being dead. Cindi, I never think about anybody or anything being dead. When I was thirteen I got in trouble with my father because I couldn’t face the fact that my goldfish was dead and flush it down the toilet. I know better than to say this to him, though. I need your advice about what I should do with my life.

  Diabetic Debbi

  Dear Debbi,

  Sometimes when you are in doubt about what you should do, it is best, before you act, to imagine the worst possible scenario that could happen. Let’s say that you did become a nurse, and that you were on duty when your boyfriend was brought in with a heart attack. Let’s say that he died, but before he did, he looked up and saw you, and his last words were that you should have become a computer programmer. Can you imagine keeping it together, and just going on to the next bedpan? If you can, proceed with your choice of occupation.

  St. Francis had hollowed out a gully for himself in the patch of rhododendrons. Earlier, Edward had helped her put a stake in the ground so that they could chain him. He saw Lucy outside, sensed the potential for fun, and beat his tail like an otter. She went over and let him loose. He pawed the ground and ran in circles, then ran to Edward, who was still busily sketching Nicole. St. Francis did a double take when he saw the coonskin cap, obviously hoping to raise the tally on the daily death toll (so far it was at one; another frog). St. Francis sniffed the air in front of Edward, sat down, and looked up admiringly.

  “So what’s the story with that guy Bobby Blue?” Edward said to Nicole, stepping back from his easel.

  “His real name’s Bobby Bluestein. He had his nose done and his cheek bones pushed up. He’s a real mama’s boy. His nickname’s Bobby Blueballs, because he’s never with a girl.”

  Edward smiled. “I like that,” he said.

  “I think Derek McAndrew is cute,” Nicole said.

  “He your fave rave?” Edward said.

  “What’s ‘fave rave’?” Nicole said.

  “They used to say that in the fifties,” Edward said. “It means the guy you’re really crazy about.”

  “Nobody wants to care about a guy that much,” Nicole said. “Nobody’s into that anymore.”

  “Come on,” Edward said. “You think a lot about McAndrew, I bet.”

  “He’s good-looking, but he’s kind of dumb,” Nicole said. “He’s always saying how he’s going to quit the business and become a doctor. Sure he is.”

  Edward went back to his sketching. “So who else besides McAndrew do you like?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Nicole said. She leaned over, running her hands down her shins to her ankles, then straightened up again. “Don’t say any of this to a reporter,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t,” Edward said. “I’m just curious.”

  “McAndrew gets it on all the time,” Nicole said. She looked at Lucy, who was sitting on the grass, patting the dog, looking at her. “Not with me,” she said. “With Kate. She just got canceled from the show. They never ate lunch with anybody. They were always off getting it on.”

  “Come on—she must be forty.”

  “Why do you think she got canned?” Nicole said.

  “What? They didn’t know how old she was when they hired her?”

  “She won’t do anything to make herself attractive,” Nicole said. “I think she’s on some self-destruction kick. The studio sent her to that place in Sweden to get her face done, and she flew all the way over there and freaked out. She came back looking just the same, but she was walking around the set in clogs. Clogs are so gross.”

  “Maybe she thinks she’s found true love if McAndrew wants to get it on with her all the time even though she’s old.”

  “They’re making it because they’re on the show together. A lot of people get hung up on that for a while. I’ll bet now that she’s off the show, he’ll never see her again. I heard he was pretty weirded-out that she didn’t get her face fixed.”

  “You go out with McAndrew?” Edward said.

  “I don’t know. He calls me, and stuff. We’ve gone to a couple of premieres. We don’t really hang out or anything.”


  “Too young for him?”

  “Oh, gag me,” Nicole said. “You know, he’s in a lot of trouble with his agent for hanging around with Kate. I don’t know why they care if it gets out. It’s usually the parents who care if that stuff gets around, but he doesn’t even have any parents. He lives with his brother. His brother’s a real thug. I think he’s dropped too much acid. He got in trouble with the cops for smashing some woman’s face in—just some woman who hit his car from behind out at the beach. Everybody was teasing Derek, saying he wasn’t enough of a star for his brother’s name to make the papers.”

  “You do acid?” Edward said.

  “Acid’s gross,” she said. “Sometimes I like poppers.”

  “Maybe we ought to suggest to the toy manufacturer that they stuff the Nicole Nelson doll’s purse with them,” Edward said.

  Nicole laughed.

  “Who else do you like?” Edward said.

  “How come you don’t tell me who you like?”

  “I don’t go out with anybody famous,” Edward said.

  “Oh,” Nicole said.

  In the house, the phone was ringing. Lucy decided to let it ring. Since Nicole was staying through July, she should have a separate telephone number. All of the people who called from the Coast simply began talking when she picked up the phone. At first she thought they might have mistaken her voice for Nicole’s, but that didn’t seem to be it at all. They simply assumed that she would relay the message—that, like a secretary, she was to pass the word along.