by Ann Beattie
Lucy was standing in the kitchen doorway. Nicole handed her the phone. A few minutes later Nicole was slumped in a chair on the side lawn. She was painting her toenails.
“Tell me about it,” Nicole said. “Tell me about how great it is that I have a twenty-four-year-old stepfather. That would make him ten when I was born. I’m supposed to call him Daddy? His balls hadn’t dropped when I was born.”
“Nobody said you have to call him Daddy,” Lucy said. She was upset, but she didn’t think it would be a good idea to make Nicole any more upset than she already was. Lucy was remembering Jane’s first marriage, and how she had immediately taken a deep breath and tried to keep their mother calm by pretending that everything was fine. Jane had married the first rich man who proposed. He had saved her from a dreary life as a model, living in a shared studio apartment with another girl, who was studying languages. Jane had become a cliché: the beautiful, intelligent, aspiring New York girl who lives with her expansive ideas in one room, with a full-length mink in the closet and a purebred kitten for company. Lucy had been to the apartment. Jane’s desk was also her makeup table and her bureau drawer. She slept on a thin mattress, folding it so that it would fit partially under the desk and sleeping with her shoulders and head in the kneehole tunnel so that her roommate wouldn’t trip over her if she went to the bathroom during the night. The desk drawer was filled with piles of pastel underwear, boxes of cosmetics, love letters tied neatly together with ribbon. The same drawer held her checkbook, her diaphragm, and four boxes of Joy which had been given to her in exchange for twenty subway tokens by a photographer’s assistant who had been given the perfume by a client. Lucy had been with Jane when she made the exchange. Later, when Lucy lived in New York, too, she understood these trades: the cumulative effect of the desperation—all the things dreamed of and coveted—resulted in an atmosphere in which lesser things meant nothing. Small things were small things: to be shoplifted, given away, swapped for other small things. The two-carat diamond Jane was offered at the end of her first year in the city was no small thing, and she promptly agreed to get married. Her former roommate recited love poems in French, Italian, and Turkish. The Beatles, piped through her mother’s sound system, sang “The Long and Winding Road.” Under her wedding dress, Jane wore a garter she had been given by a man she picked up hitchhiking on the Cape the previous fall, with “Obladi, Oblada” spelled out in rhinestones. She sprayed on the Joy the way woodsmen apply Deep Woods Off. The shoes were Eighth Street pink satin, with three-inch heels. She held tight to Lucy’s hand when she walked out of the bedroom and started down the corridor to the living room of what was by then only their mother’s house. A man played “Here Comes the Bride” on a pump organ that had been brought in for the day. The best man, the groom’s brother, was a retired jockey from Columbus. Jane and Lucy exchanged looks during the ceremony. Lucy had forgotten what those secret looks meant. Her personal secret had been that she did not know what was happening. Why hold herself accountable when her own sister was happy to have everything go up in dust, particularly white dust, inhaled through one nostril? Years later, in nightmares, that organ music still came back to her. Even at the time, it sounded like what would be played in a B movie when someone was drowning. And then Jane’s husband had drowned.
Nicole blew on her toes. “Notice that she’s too much of a coward to have told Grammy,” she said. “And notice that Piggy was too much of a coward to tell me.” Nicole sighed. “I mean, I bust ass so we can have this great life, and she runs off with some kid.”
Except for her vocabulary, Lucy thought, Nicole sounded very much like her grandmother.
“Who is he?” Lucy said, unable to hide her distress.
“He’s not Jimmy Connors, or you would have heard of him.”
The cows had come into the back field and were grazing, swishing their tails and occasionally snapping their heads around, trying to scare off flies. St. Francis was tied up in his spot by the rhododendrons. He was feeling very bad after all the screaming he had had to endure regarding the incident with the sheep.
“Honest to God,” Nicole said, “if you don’t have Brooke Shields’ mother and that set of problems, you’ve got a mother like mine and a whole different mess to deal with.”
“Do you think she loves him?” Lucy asked.
“She hardly knows him. I’ll tell you, she was getting really down because she wasn’t meeting anybody interesting who was straight. She told me she was beginning to think all straight guys were like Piggy. This guy’s some jock.”
“He doesn’t want to be in the movies, at least,” Lucy said.
Nicole rolled her eyes. “Sure he wants to be in the movies.”
“How do you know?” Lucy said.
“Because he got all excited about being an extra. He got to jump out of his seat and catch a baseball in some movie that never got released, and he had a still blown up and hung it on the back of the bedroom door.”
Nicole had been reading magazines. From time to time she had also been reading Pride and Prejudice, but she thought it was too weird. She read a chapter or two, then got back to the news of Princess Di. She was on the cover of this month’s Good Housekeeping, which was on the top of the magazine pile. Princess Di was shown in profile, the hat she wore indistinguishable from a cow pat except for the spray of feathers.
Jane had told Lucy that what she wanted for a wedding present was for her to make the call to their mother. Lucy had offered to send a silver-rimmed salad bowl instead. Jane had gone into gales of laughter. Stoned. She had made the call stoned.
Now, Nicole was walking around the lawn, aimlessly, like a small child. She was squinting in the sun, and the breeze was blowing through her hair. Standing by the car, she looked small—just a pretty little girl in summertime. She could have been happier, but the truth was that her mother’s phone call hadn’t been the only blow; part of her world had ended the day Ralston-Purina and Campbell’s Soup canceled.
Lucy decided that the best thing to do was to let Nicole be alone for a while. She went into the house and dialed her mother. This was really her summer of doing favors for her sister.
“I have something to tell you,” Lucy said when Rita answered. “It’s not terrible, but I don’t think you’re going to think it’s good news.”
“Say it,” her mother said, her voice almost a whisper.
“I don’t really have the details,” Lucy said, “but a few days ago Jane got married, in California.”
There was complete silence on the line.
“She didn’t tell us right away.”
“Who did she marry?” her mother said.
“Well, it’s embarrassing to admit, but I didn’t write his name down when she told me, and I don’t remember.”
“What does he do?”
“I’m not sure of everything that he does, but he’s a tennis player.”
“If that’s the best thing you can start with, I don’t know that I want to know what else he does,” her mother said.
“It’s her life,” Lucy said. “She can take care of herself.”
“She’ll have to, married to somebody who plays tennis.”
“But it’s just that I’m not sure of what else he does.”
“He wants to be in the movies, if he isn’t already. That’s what he does.”
Lucy said nothing.
“She didn’t invite you to this wedding?”
“No,” Lucy said. “She just called us. Nicole was hurt. I wish Jane had given her the option of being there.”
“Jane doesn’t think about anybody but herself.”
“That isn’t true.”
“I’m not going to argue with you,” her mother said.
“She was afraid to call you,” Lucy said. “Are you going to call her and wish her the best when you get yourself together?”
“Give her my best wishes when you speak to her,” her mother said.
“I don’t want to be the go-between,” Lucy said.
“No one wants to star in a movie that’s already been made,” her mother said.
“Please call her.”
“Couldn’t Piggy stop her?” her mother said.
“Piggy gave her away.”
“What does Piggy say about this?”
“I haven’t spoken to him about it.”
“Is she pregnant again?”
“I don’t think so,” Lucy said. “That wouldn’t be any reason—”
“Your sister doesn’t do anything as the result of reason.”
“I don’t think so,” Lucy said. “Is he foreign?”
“No. Apparently he’s a Wasp. She’s sending pictures.”
“Is he an old man?”
“Quite young.”
“I assume that he isn’t well off, or you would have said so.”
“I assumed that if he was, Jane would have told me.”
“What does Piggy say?”
“We-we-we, I want some.”
Her mother was silent.
“I didn’t speak to Piggy.”
Lucy waited for her mother to continue. There was a long silence.
“How is Nicole?”
“We’re all as surprised by this news as you are. She’s taking it okay. I think she’s having a pretty good time here—better than I thought she’d have.”
“Are you carrying on with Hildon while she’s there?”
“I don’t carry on with Hildon. He’s my oldest friend. We went out on the Fourth of July with a bunch of people, including Hildon and Maureen.”
“God!” her mother said.
“I know that you like Maureen sight unseen because she’s a wife,” Lucy said.
“To feel sorry for her is not to say that I like her. If she stays married to Hildon, I don’t have much respect for her.”
“How is it this has turned into a conversation criticizing me?” Lucy said.
“I’m glad you realize that it’s criticism, instead of just thinking that I’m commenting,” her mother said. “Unless you or your sister are hit over the head, you act like I’m Dan Rather with the news.”
“You know I’m not going to give up a fifteen-year friendship just to please you,” Lucy said. “Try to be nice to me. I don’t find it easy to break news like this to you.”
“Yes,” her mother said, softening her voice a little. “I can’t understand why your sister pretends to be afraid of me. She does anything she wants, and she knows I have no control over her.”
“How are you feeling? Is your hay fever better?”
“I have new antihistamines, but they make me too sleepy.”
“It is her own life,” Lucy said.
“I feel like she’s just thrown it to the wind,” her mother said. “She was that way when she was a baby, of course. She liked to be bought a balloon so she could let go of the string. She never even cried.”
“Well, she’s married him, and that’s that.”
“I’m going to go lie down,” her mother said. “If the pictures are going to upset me, don’t send them. If you talk to Piggy, tell him that he’d better have something good to say for himself when he calls me.”
“Goodbye,” Lucy said. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” her mother said. “Goodbye.”
Lucy felt sadder than she thought she would when she put down the receiver. She could see it from her mother’s perspective—that almost everything they did was strange and upsetting.
She thought about that as she left the house and drove to meet Hildon at the Hadley-Cooper’s. It wasn’t at all what her mother claimed—that she had conveniently found a sort of all-purpose person, a lover-husband-father in one: it wasn’t that, because Hildon wasn’t dependable. She could depend on him to be there, but she couldn’t guess about his mood, couldn’t change it, whatever it was—Hildon was still an enigma, after all these years. His recent good fortune seemed to have made him crazier instead of more stable.
She had asked Nicole if she wanted to go, knowing that it was safe to ask because, as usual, Nicole was sure to say no. She was going back to the house where she had gone to the party not long ago with Hildon. She was glad to have somewhere to go, because she did not want to think about Jane. Hildon wanted her to see the pond, with the carp swimming in it, and a statue of Richard Nixon in the center, pissing.
At the last intersection before the house, she looked carefully at the map Hildon had drawn, that she had kept crumpled in her glove compartment. She found the unmarked driveway without any trouble, and got out of the car and went to one of the stone pillars. The pinkish stone below the lantern on the left was wired so it could be pushed, triggering a device that would make the iron gate rise so she could drive through. She felt like she was in a James Bond movie as she touched the stone and it moved. The gate rose slowly.
Hildon’s car was in front of the house, in the big circular driveway. The driveway looked enormous, almost empty of cars. He was throwing a yellow tennis ball for a Dalmatian in the field beside the house. The dog ran barking to the car.
“He won’t hurt you. Here, Kissinger!” Hildon called.
The dog raced back to where Hildon stood, and looked up at the tennis ball, eagerly. Lucy got out of the car. It was quite a mansion. The other night, she had not noticed the large holly bushes across the front, or the urns on the front steps with Norfolk Island pines in them. It was an enormous pale gray house—almost silver—with a catwalk across the top.
“They went to North Carolina for the week,” he said. “I have the key. Here’s the key.”
It was an ordinary key; she had expected some more dramatic way to enter the house.
“They went away and left the dog?”
“There’s a caretaker.”
“Who are these people?” she said.
“Just rich people. I changed a flat for Antoinette, and she asked me to come for a drink. She was very attractive, so I thought I would. They’re real Cindi Coeur fans. You’re going to have to come back sometime when they’re here.”
She noticed the inside of the house more this time. The house was traditional enough: a long Oriental runner in the hallway, a winding staircase, cherry furniture, primitive paintings of lumpy children and animals with bows around their necks. She looked at the staircase, and thought of Myra DeVane. Les.
“I’ve got a great afternoon planned,” Hildon said. “There’s some Cakebread Cellars in a cooler in the other room. You’re really going to like the entertainment.”
Hildon gestured to a room at the end of the hallway. Inside, black velvet modular furniture made an L-shape in front of a screen. Hildon gestured for her to sit down. He touched a button and the screen widened. He touched another button and an image came on the screen and seemed to shake itself into focus. Hildon sat beside her and put his arm around her shoulder. She could see his wide smile in her peripheral vision.
And there they were: Lucy and Hildon, standing and talking to Matt Smith. She had expected pornography, and instead she was watching Maureen, in her sarong, pouring a glass of wine. At this point, Hildon removed his arm from around Lucy, sat forward, and poured from their bottle of wine. Maureen was turning to talk to Cameron Petrus. Suddenly there was a quick cut to Lucy, dancing with whoever that silly girl had been. Hildon picked up the remote control switch from the floor. He pushed a button and the videotape stopped. Maureen filled the screen, frowning, her hand almost in front of her face. Hildon released the button. In slow motion, Maureen’s frown deepened and her hand stopped in front of her eyes. That image was there as Hildon opened one button and slid his hand under Lucy’s blouse, cupping his hand around her smooth breast, then moving his fingertips. Between his thumb and first finger, he felt her nipple stiffen.
20
IT was one of the few times in his life Piggy Proctor had a typical response to anything. He stood with his hands at his sides, glanced down quickly as the sheet was pulled back, looked away, and fainted.
He must have talked
himself back to consciousness, because the first voice he heard was his own, saying “Oh no” over and over. He was sitting on the floor. The floor felt like a slab of ice. The doctor was keeping him from falling over by supporting his shoulders. He was standing behind him. Piggy was leaning on the man’s legs, his own legs spread in front of him like somebody lounging in a chair at the seashore.
Tomorrow, if Jane hadn’t been dead, she would have been on the beach in Martinique, honeymooning with her new husband, who had just killed her.
“Mr. Proctor,” the doctor said, stepping back a few inches. “Do you feel able to stand?”
Even the suggestion made Piggy breathless. His heart was racing. “Sure,” he said. “Let’s get this show on the road, right?” He clapped his hands together. They were freezing.
The doctor was standing in front of him, helping him up. It felt like one side of his head had been crushed.
“I thought you were going to be wrong,” Piggy said. “I didn’t come in expecting this.”
“I’m very sorry,” the doctor said. “Will you come into the office and sign some forms? Is there anything I can do?”
He was holding Piggy’s hand like a schoolchild. He was maneuvering him out of the room.
“Who should I call?” Piggy said. “What am I going to do?”
They were in a corridor. Piggy didn’t remember the day outside being anywhere near this bright. He had been at his office, in the middle of getting his weekly Shiatsu massage, when his secretary came in and said that there was an extreme emergency. She was always interrupting him, and although it was for a good reason, Piggy continued to think that the best way to keep her in line was to communicate to her that if she couldn’t think of adjectives, the situation wasn’t desperate. He liked to see her worked up. If he had to be worked up all the time, he liked to have company. He suspected that his secretary had gone back to her Valium addiction; she had a longer and longer string of adjectives every time, but she spoke about the emergencies very dispassionately: “A most urgent, terrible, extremely upsetting problem has arisen,” she had said, then turned and wandered from the room.
