by Ann Beattie
The radio. Lucy thought about Les and felt like crying—lying in bed next to Nicole and crying until somebody came and did something about it. She took a deep breath and exhaled. She looked at Nicole. Nicole looked very much like Jane at fourteen. She could remember how old they thought they were when they were Nicole’s age—how old, and how misunderstood.
“Is there anything you’d rather do today?” Lucy said.
“I’d rather be left alone. This is my vacation,” Nicole said, the corners of her mouth turned down.
“How about miniature golf?” Lucy said.
“Jesus,” Nicole said. “Next it’ll be a ride on your shoulders and a hot fudge sundae.”
“Come on,” Lucy said, getting up.
“The whole world does what it wants without me,” Nicole said.
“How come you won’t?”
“Because I’m your aunt.”
“I don’t want to go,” Nicole said. “It won’t be any fun.”
“You thought it was fun the other time.”
“I thought it was pretty. I didn’t think it was fun.”
“It is pretty. Come on.”
Nicole didn’t answer. “Come on,” Lucy said, getting up and walking out of the room. “We’ll be waiting for you.”
She went downstairs. Hildon thought that Nicole had no right to sulk. He was dismayed about what she’d done and he was even more dismayed with Lucy because he thought she was ignoring the situation. There were also problems at the magazine: Matt Smith had been calling, wanting to have jokes explained to him. Hildon did not have the time or the heart for it. Who enjoyed explaining a joke? He usually avoided the calls or made up any plausible explanation. Noonan was leaving on the weekend for the West Coast. He hadn’t found a replacement. Many bright, young, half-crazy people had applied. It made Hildon feel old. It made him feel like an anachronism that he thought of so many things for the magazine without even being high. Old, anachronistic, and probably much crazier than those kids. The romance with Antoinette Hadley-Cooper wasn’t going well. She was seeing a lot of other people, and she was either avoiding him or just expecting that he’d stand in line and take his turn like the others. Living with Maureen had become impossible: she had been spending a lot of money on clothes—clothes that were bought from the rack already rumpled and looking as if they had been half inflated with an air pump. They were full of strings and pockets and zippers. The dresses looked like something a person would wear to jump out of an airplane. Maureen was also concerned with her energy. She had been shaking lecithin granules in the spaghetti sauce and serving “shakes” for dinner that were bitter with brewer’s yeast. She dropped seaweed in with yogurt and orange juice in the blender to make salad dressing. He mentioned Adele Davis’ death from cancer. “That’s an old story,” she said. Maureen was studying acupressure, taking an aerobics class, and being counseled by some misogynistic crank who went around giving women instructions on how to be obnoxiously aggressive. Hildon poured himself a glass of orange juice and sat on the sofa hoping to get a laugh out of Lucy’s latest column.
Dear Cindi Coeur,
My problem is that my fiancé loves to dance, and it’s hard to make him be still when I need to have him concentrate. We are going to be married in the fall. He wants us to do the hand jive at our wedding and have break dancing at the reception. He says that dancing is healthy and fun. I love disco dancing, but I’d rather have old-fashioned dancing at my wedding reception than have people down on the floor. It’s going to turn into an all-male thing, because the girls aren’t going to get down in their dresses. Also, we disagree about many important things. I want a water bed, but he wants to buy a trampoline. When we go to the mall, he embarrasses me by popping his joints and doing the splits while I’m buying my trousseau. My mother says that he’s in a world of his own, and that he is a bad bet for marriage, but I really love him. Can you think of anything I can do?
Boxstep Betty
Dear Box,
Many times problems go undetected because of the frantic pace of our world, which we have come to accept as normal. Have your fiancé checked for pinworms. This may be the problem.
Lucy sat on the floor beside Hildon. He smiled and handed her the column. He was in a bad mood, and she didn’t think it was the time to tell him that an agent had called from New York, wanting to represent her. She found it strange to think of herself out there with Hints from Heloise and the Bhagavad-Gita. There was no noise from upstairs. She thought about asking Hildon to go up, just because Nicole knew Hildon less well and his nagging might have some effect.
“Maybe it’s hard for her, not having any friends around. I think she’s a little jealous of the two of us,” Lucy said.
“Tell her to call some of her friends and cheer herself up.”
“I wonder why she hasn’t,” Lucy said. “That must be it. Edward was sort of her property. They hung out together all the time.”
“I wish I could have taken a swing at that guy before he got out of town.”
“Oh, Hildon. He didn’t do anything.”
“You sound like Nicole.”
“Well,” Lucy said. “She sounds like an adult.”
“She needs an education,” Hildon said. “She ought to have a tutor or something. She’s never learned anything.”
“She’s very bright.”
“She knows lyrics to songs and she knows what people are talking about if they say something dirty and she knows who’s who on television. She doesn’t know anything about the world.”
“Hildy—what is this sudden Puritanical outrage?”
“If you care about the kid, you ought to get her around some people who have a brain.”
“She’s around us,” Lucy said.
“You just proved my point,” Hildon said.
She hit his arm and got up. St. Francis, lying on his side panting in his sleep, opened one eye, saw that nothing was moving that he could kill, sighed deeply, and went back to sleep. Lucy went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. There was some white wine. She poured a glassful and went back to the living room.
Dear Cindi Coeur,
I am a struggling artist, but lately I have had more than my share of struggle within my own family. I am a painter, and recently my wife has begun to eat my art supplies. At first she gnawed the bristles on some brushes. I thought this was a nervous tic, because she had given up smoking and was trying to give up chewing gum. Then, my pastels began disappearing, or I would find stubs of them, wet at one end. I know that for a long time she has eaten bits of charcoal. The other day I saw Burnt Umber smudged at the corner of her mouth. I am worried that this is harmful to her health, but whenever I try to discuss it with her, she pretends that she has accidentally rubbed up against some paint or that she mistook a nub of charcoal for a loose chocolate chip. Do you have any advice about how I can solve this problem? I am now a
Reluctant Rembrandt
Dear Rem,
Forgive me for reciting contemporary cant, but I do believe that we are what we eat, and your wife must believe this also. The problem is simple: she wants to make herself into a work of art. Consider the relationship between palate and palette, and you will immediately understand your wife’s symbolic quest. She obviously feels that you have concentrated too much on your work and not enough on her. It is, of course, a problem with all artists that they tend to become very self-involved. Think about having a romantic evening together regularly, with wine and candlelight. You might take the occasion to admire her, and perhaps suggest that she stand against the wall. When she feels more secure and feels that she occupies at least an equal part in your affections along with your artwork, you can confront her with your findings and tell her that she has been framed.
“I’ll go tell her to call some of her friends, and we’ll take the dog to the falls, okay?” Lucy said.
“Okay,” Hildon said.
She went upstairs. Nicole’s door was closed. The TV was on again. Lucy knocked on
the door.
“What?” Nicole said.
“Are you serious about wanting us to go without you?”
“Yeah,” Nicole said.
“Can I open the door?” Lucy said.
“It’s your house,” Nicole said.
“Nicole—when have I ever said that it was my house, or done things because it was my house?”
“So open the door,” Nicole said.
Desi Arnaz was beaming on the television. The contestant put her hands over her mouth and jumped up and down in her seat. Bells rang, and everyone was screaming at once.
“Are you feeling lonesome?” Lucy said.
“Why would I feel lonesome?”
“Would you like to call some of your friends?”
“What friends?”
“Friends in California. You haven’t talked to anybody in a long time, have you?”
“I don’t know where Jane is,” Nicole said.
Lucy didn’t know what to say. “But you could call some friends,” she said.
“I don’t have any friends,” Nicole said. “If I knew Edward’s phone number, I’d call him.”
“I didn’t say you couldn’t call Edward.”
“Information did. It’s unlisted.” Nicole rearranged her nightgown. “Surprised?” she said. “I was going to call him to apologize for the crazy way everybody acted.”
A monkey was playing the drums on television. It was dressed in overalls and a straw hat. The hat fell off as the monkey beat the drums. Loud canned laughter filled the room. The monkey jumped onto one of the drums and started swaying. “Oh no!” someone screamed.
“I know you think we’re boring,” Lucy said. “Why don’t you call some people and talk to them? It’s better than watching this idiocy all day.”
“Who am I gonna call? Blueballs? And hear about how he’s got the hots for Tatum?”
“No. Call somebody you really like.”
“Lucy—I don’t have any friends. You know who I hang out with all the time? Mom and Piggy.”
Lucy tried to think of the names of Nicole’s friends, but she could only remember names she had read in the tabloids. It wasn’t possible that Nicole didn’t have any friends her own age; L.A. was full of kids, even kids who were actors and actresses.
“Boy, you really look weirded-out,” Nicole said, smiling for the first time. “What did you think? That those guys I show up places with were my friends? We just show up together to make each other look good.”
“Are you telling me the truth?” Lucy said. “Don’t you want friends?”
“I don’t need any more hassles,” Nicole said. “You’ve got to do things for friends. They jerk you around. It’s all I can do to keep Piggy cooled out.”
Lucy sat on the bed. “You must at least like some of those guys you’re photographed with.”
“Boy, this really interests you, doesn’t it?” Nicole said. “People don’t have friends when they’re my age and they’re in the business. It’s a thing from your generation that people have friends.”
“You had friends when you were a little girl,” Lucy said.
“Playmates?” Nicole said. “We were just a bunch of kids that our mothers parked together. We got along all right. We had to.”
“I guess I’m naïve,” Lucy said. “I guess that on some level I bought it: the exciting life. That every teenager has an exciting life, I mean. Not just you.”
“Big excitement. Go out to Spago or something and don’t eat anything because you’ll ruin your figure and your skin, and if you drink—you can’t do that in public until you’re almost out of your teens. You just get all dressed up and hang out for a few hours with some kid that’s real vain, or a fag, and then they take your picture and you go home.”
“What do you do around the house?” Lucy said. She suddenly realized that she knew very little about Nicole’s life.
“Exercises and stuff. Watch TV. Deal with the phone. Think about what places you should show up. Read scripts.”
“What does Jane do while you’re doing that?”
“Exercises. She goes out and swims in the pool. She’s got friends, so she talks on the phone. She obsesses about her relationships with guys.”
“Don’t you think that’s boring—what you do?” Lucy said.
“I could jog or go sky diving or stuff like that. Maybe not sky diving because of Piggy. What am I thinking of? You know—it’s just passing time. What does anybody do?”
“But Jane—but it depresses your mother.”
“I don’t know what she’s got to complain about. She’s got Piggy around her little finger.”
“But, I mean, you realize that you’re in a special environment, don’t you? That other fourteen-year-olds aren’t like you?”
“Oh, sure. They eat pizza and hang out at malls and have two-dollar allowances, or whatever they have. Everybody’s just hangin’ out, Lucy. I don’t think people go around having friends. Like, they’ve got to sit still with fifty other people in school listening to stuff all day, so maybe they know those guys better, but they don’t keep them for friends.” Nicole was warming to her subject. She shifted on the bed. “It’s pretty much the way I’m telling you. You know, what would I talk to kids about? We all know the same stuff. I know kids I talk to about movies and what’s happening down at the beach and all that, but I wouldn’t make a phone call to tell them. If you really want to know what somebody else thinks about a movie, you can hear people talking around the lot, or you can read a magazine. You’ve got to have something to talk to people about when you’re thrown together, so you talk about the movies. Or maybe if you’re a guy, you play video games. Talking’s not a very big thing.”
“The kids around here who are your age have friends. They talk to each other. I know they do.”
“I’m not saying that people don’t talk. Look—it’s a small town. You’ve got to act nice around here. These kids are snowed in half the year, right? You can move around L.A. It’s a different thing.”
“But don’t you want to learn things? That’s the thing about friends—you find things out, you …”
“Right. You find out they want to borrow money, or they tell you about their boyfriends. Around here, maybe they tell you about restaurants. There’s not much disagreement about restaurants in L.A.”
“I don’t mean trivia when I say that they can tell you things. I mean that you can bounce ideas off of each other. You have somebody you trust. You help them and they help you.”
“What do I need help with?”
“Whatever you needed help with.”
“If I need something, or I need to find something out, Piggy gets it for me or has somebody find out and tell me.”
“What would you do if Piggy died?”
“Lucy: it’s business. If Piggy dies, there’s another Piggy. This is a whole different system from the way you operate. It’s just different.”
Lucy wondered how much of what Nicole was telling her might be true—how little she might need or desire any closeness with other people. As crazy as it was to envy such an attitude, she did envy it, a little—she had even envied it in Les, whose ability to know when to withdraw was as flawless as having perfect pitch. Unlike Nicole, though, Les had developed his strategy for a reason: he thought he was out of control. That was why he chose his career—so the students would adore him; that was why everything he said was put forth in the best possible light—to insure people’s approval. But all the undeserved adulation and applause only intensified the problem. It made him question himself more, spend time thinking about improving his act so that he wouldn’t be found out. If they didn’t find him out, he didn’t respect them; on the other hand, he was grateful. So when Les left people, he left them warmly. They were surprised that he had abandoned them and had no idea of what had gone wrong. Long after they had picked up the pieces and gone on with their lives, they wrote bewildered notes on their Christmas cards. They called late at night, hardly able to articulate
what was wrong. They kept in touch, because they didn’t understand that the tie was irrevocably broken. He had stayed around so long to give them every chance; he didn’t want to face the fact that they had failed, either. He switched on the answering machine to take care of late night phone calls. He never sent cards or letters. Actually, he did write them but he tore them up. It was a game. He played alone—a very private person, everyone agreed, but they did not discuss it and come to any deeper conclusions. The cardinal rule was that he did not introduce his friends to one another.
Lucy didn’t know what else she could say to Nicole. Somehow, by osmosis, Nicole had to learn how people related to each other and what they did for each other. It really was good that Nicole had gotten away from her environment for a while. Lucy was going to try to have her spend more time with people. She had always thought it was a natural impulse to reach out to people, but Nicole obviously disagreed. In spite of all the activity in her life—all she did and saw, all the travel and things expected of her—Nicole was obviously isolated. Lucy had seen this in adults, but as a fear reaction. It was possible that Nicole was disguising her fears with a mask of coldness, but Lucy didn’t think so. Nicole, amazingly, had the sense that everything was programmed: she knew what she was supposed to do, and she did it; she knew what other people were supposed to do, and if they didn’t do it, they were fired, and people who would do it were brought in. And the sad thing was, Nicole wasn’t even cynical—she didn’t get the mean sense of satisfaction some cynic would get from living in such a world. Nicole wasn’t angry. But she also wasn’t inspired. She was complacent, and Lucy found that scary. There was no smugness about the complacency, so it was hard to try to attack it without seeming to be a flag-waving fool. Lucy was going to have to figure out how to deal with it.
When she went downstairs she was depressed to realize that subconsciously Nicole had gotten to her: there was Hildon, hanging out, and now he’d start talking about how hopeless Maureen was, and expecting help.
She looked at St. Francis, and was pleased—almost gratified—that he was a monster, pure and simple: he lived for fun, and fun meant carnage. He was devious when he meant to be and direct when that was the best course to take. They would take him to the waterfall and he would love it: people to sniff and threaten, wildlife to chase, rocks to bark at in the clear, shallow stream. He could swim in the deep part and get out and shake all over everybody, and it was hard to get mad at him because it was natural. How shocking to think that Nicole’s natural state was to do what she did, with no real pull toward excess or passion or even the belief that something might be fun.
