The State We're In

by Ann Beattie

  “I’m sure if we still had your assistant, she could find them.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? She miscarried and she’s suffering a major depression. She’s called off her marriage. She should be here, to locate my shoes? Are you suggesting I’m a monster? What if my wife might know where my favorite shoes are? Even if it’s a trivial thing to know.”

  “LuAnne called and said she’d kept down both dinner last night and lunch. She can’t wait to get back here. If you ask me, which nobody ever does, that soccer player wasn’t worthy of her and this is all for the best.”

  “I wonder how other couples talk to each other,” he said. “I really do wonder that. But there’s no way to find out. You can’t believe what you see in the movies or on TV or in books, least of all the so-called reality shows. Maybe Roz Chast has some idea. That’s about the only person I can think of.”

  “I saw a shoe on the back stairs. I have no idea where the other one is. Women don’t misplace their shoes.”

  “Back stairs. Just a minute.”

  She sat on the bed—king-size, at his insistence; separate reading lights, two night tables with identical spherical digital clocks whose alarms chirped a birdcall. She had to set hers at the highest volume; years ago, when she first came to Maine, she’d trained herself to sleep through the sounds of birds and crickets. Now the sputtering, muffler-missing motorcycles that constantly passed by posed a different sort of challenge: how to resist stringing razor wire across the road.

  “Thank you. They were on the back stairs. One shoe was on top of the other.”

  “Women don’t stack their shoes,” she said. “You have a way of turning discussions to the differences between men and women. I don’t really think about that all the time, but I find I always have to talk about it. Going back to your earlier point, Hughes would do anything possible to keep you, and if you said you were sick of so much flying . . .”

  “Hughes and the Genius aren’t on the case the way I am, I agree. Why don’t you call Hughes and say just that? I wouldn’t stop you. I would, however, be angry if it backfired, and he sent me to California more often.”

  “You can have dinner at Perbacco,” she said. “That almost makes it worth it.”

  He looked at his phone. “Text from LuAnne,” he said. “She’s going to bed.”

  “It’s not even four o’clock.”

  “What would you have me do? Text her and tell her to walk around the block and slap her cheeks a few times?”

  “Yeah. And communicate all of that with the smiley symbol and lots of exclamation points,” she said. “I never wanted a king-size bed. The maid hates putting on the sheets. She spends half of her four hours here being exasperated with the bed. Even when she gets the contour sheet on, she keeps staring at it like it’s a field of smoldering embers.

  “Remember the time you forgot your driver’s license and you missed the flight?” she said. “For about a year I was convinced you’d done it on purpose, to come home when I least expected it, to see what I was doing.”

  “Excuse me? Wouldn’t that have required excessive effort, and might that not indicate some paranoia on your part?”

  “Remember what I was doing?”

  “I was really upset. I thought I’d lost both my AmEx and my driver’s license, and I knew I could grab my passport, but I guess, well, I guess I was feeling paranoid, like someone might have slipped the two most important cards out of—”

  “Are you stalling for time because you don’t remember what I was doing?”

  “Jesus! I remember what you were doing. You’d put some grease all over your hair and were sitting stark naked on the front porch wearing nothing but a shower cap, except that you’d dragged out some huge scarf to cover yourself with if anybody walked by, though I don’t know how you could be so sure you’d see them, and you were having a cigarette, the last year you smoked cigarettes.”

  “I was looking at Vogue and drinking a virgin margarita.”

  “Why do you bring this up?”

  “Because what I do is so innocuous. I spend my time thinking about a party at Water Country. I can’t even plan our son’s birthday by myself. I don’t know how to be in the world. How can you stand me?”

  “I chose you out of all the world.”

  “And you keep me by shining that sincere smile on me and constantly implying that men and women are just different, and by managing to convince everybody you’re such a good guy because you made your ex-girlfriend from years ago your assistant, even after she had an affair behind your back with Hughes the second she met him, and furthermore I agree with you. She’s a very capable, nice person.”

  “A one-night stand is not an ‘ex-girlfriend.’ And if we might possibly discuss something else, even though LuAnne is your favorite subject. There’s a book, a novel, by that writer who wrote that story you love about Bruns. I heard about it on NPR. In the novel, the character’s wife is crazed with the desire to have a child and hops a plane when she knows she’ll be fertile and goes to where he and a bunch of friends are gathering because an old friend unexpectedly died—”

  “I still can’t believe that we had that crazy time together and went off to that house you’d rented in Marin because you probably thought you’d take some other girl there—and we found that croquet set in the garage and set it up and played a game naked when it got dark.”

  “I’m quite aware of our history. We’ve now been married for nine, going on ten years. We have a wonderful son. I’m not going to apologize for the next ten years, because apologizing for the first ten has been enough, don’t you think? I was having a panic attack. All I said to you in Marin, which I still don’t think was so crazy, was that we should back off and think about the relationship for a while.”

  “What would you have done if Hughes hadn’t suddenly appeared on the scene and tempted you to work for his company?”

  “I wasn’t looking for a job when Hughes got in touch. Were you under the impression that I was? I was actually trying to cut down my hours and build more time into my schedule for tennis.”

  “What a prig you sound like! Your tennis time! Anybody would think you were vile.”

  “Vile?”

  “I can’t believe what I hear sometimes. Like this is a movie of some stupid rich people’s lives. We’re really sorry the lobstermen can’t afford to live in town anymore, and it’s really too bad about all the businesses going under—or maybe the greenhouse stays open because they sell orchids, which have become the new azaleas around here—and sure, the economy is fucked. But we know all about French wines and fly first class and think about fucking tennis.”

  “You, yourself, have thoughts on tennis?”

  “That it would be better for me than yoga and Pilates and power walks with weights strapped on my ankles. Jesus! We’ve got to watch out.”

  “Okay, you pick up those binoculars and watch out while I’m gone, and if any fashionable sports activities come this way, you hold up a hand and you say, ‘None of that here; I’m not having any kicking, or tackling, or kneeing the other guy in the balls.’ You keep the house safe, use the gun in the drawer if you have to, to keep us safe from sports, which have become terminally fashionable in your mind, I now understand.”

  “What gun in what drawer?”

  “I was kidding. The water pistol Hughes gave Joshua that you confiscated and keep in the kitchen drawer with the steak knives, for some reason. By the way, I was looking for an unmatched sock and opened your night table drawer and saw you had quite a bit of new La Perla. Expensive stuff!”

  “You love to pretend I’m always spending money.”

  “Really, sometimes you say the most ridiculous things. An aversion to tennis! It’s too crazy.”

  “I don’t have an aspersion.” She blinked. Why had she said that? The same way she matter-of-factly corrected Joshua, she now corrected herself. “An aversion,” she said.

  “Then call the coach tomorrow and set up a time.”
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  “You know I’m not going to do that.”

  “You could.”

  “You’d hate it if I was all over your territory. It’s one of the reasons why you left her, isn’t it? Because there wasn’t anything you didn’t do together and agree on?”

  “That question can’t be answered. The way you’ve put it, I mean.”

  “I don’t care if I’m childish,” she said. “I’m trapped in this horrible place with my wicked thoughts and a kid who always mixes up words and uses the wrong one, and no money of my own, and a job that’s just something to pass the time, and only you have the key to the wine cellar.”

  A motorcycle passed by, the sound shaking the house. Then came another.

  “Wine cellar?” he scoffed.

  “Metaphorically speaking.”

  “Okay,” he said. “This is you-know-what, that g word you never want me to say, and I’m not going to say it, I’m just going to give you a hug and hope you snap out of this mood very soon, even if it means you’re starkers on the porch, sipping your nonalcoholic drink that you pride yourself so much for drinking, as if I ever thought you were an alcoholic. So come here and we’ll embrace and even though I’m not saying you-know-what, you know that I’ll be back in three days, and that I love you.”

  She ran into his arms. His travel bag was suspended from a padded strap over his shoulder; it swayed before steadying itself. If he had facial stubble and a tiny lock of dark hair falling over one eyebrow, he could be a Prada ad. Also, if he were twenty years younger. His black Nikes made him look less hip. The rounded toes were all wrong. Their son was still at his playdate. The house would be very empty when her husband left. She squeezed him tightly, mashed her nose against his shirt, which somehow smelled of its color: light, light green. A medium green shirt would have been unthinkable. Might as well wear loafers without socks. Or take out a membership at the Reading Room on the path above the beach—the Reading Room, where the joke was that there wasn’t a book in the entire place.

  They disengaged. He raised a hand. She did the same. From under the bed, the cat poked out his head, then nearly flattened himself to crawl into the room. He walked in a half circle with his tail in the air, white tip flicking. They’d tied a bell to his collar, but the week before she’d found a dead bird in the yard.

  She heard his footsteps on the stairs (or imagined them; they’d been newly carpeted), then the front door clicking shut. She waited to hear the garage door. Okay. She heard the car radio and the sound of gravel under the tires in the driveway, then only the wind that blew up. She went to the window and picked up the binoculars that sat there. She raised them to her eyes, already knowing how bright the pink of the sky would appear, how silver the bottoms of the tree leaves, pale as the underside of a turtle. A turtle some nasty boys flipped over so it would be incapacitated, as they laughed and pointed at its scaly legs clawing the air.

  The cat startled her, brushing her leg. It was feeding time. A bit past it. “Feeling time,” she murmured, then did a double take and corrected herself: “Feeding time. Yes.” His eyes were all bright desire, but he wouldn’t utter a sound. You sometimes heard it other times, but only the most silent of demands was made for the nightly meal. The cat would claw the banister and his bell collar would tinkle if the request wasn’t promptly fulfilled.

  Across the road was a scene she wouldn’t have noticed if the cat’s touch hadn’t made her lower the binoculars from the sky: a doe and her fawn, the mother hovering as the lanky-legged baby led the way, eating something hanging below the low leaves of a bush. The pair was listening, listening, but the doe was listening more keenly. Oh, how sad is it I have to pump myself up with my own importance? she wondered.

  Suddenly conscious of her earrings, dangling pearls, she touched them lightly to still them. She swiveled to see the empty room, the ocean-intense span of blue spread across the huge bed, the dresser mirror allowing her to see behind her to the pink sky darkening above whatever scene had been happening before that was now out of sight. Was September deer season? October?

  Please let the plane not crash, she thought, going weak in the knees.

  This was a habitual thought. More or less like prayer.

  ENDLESS RAIN INTO A PAPER CUP

  It was July, Myrtis’s favorite month since school days, when it would seem the summer still stretched before you, and your tennis shoes were just the right soiled color with your toenails poking up the canvas, and the water had warmed up enough that you could swim in the ocean—though now she lived inland; there was no nearby ocean—and the hummingbirds were busily sucking nectar from the bee balm (red was the only color in the garden). The Fourth of July! Strawberries ripened in July and bathing suits went on sale. She still bought a new one every year to wear in the steam room at the gym; she hadn’t waded into the Atlantic in years, even on visits to Raleigh and Bettina. How she wished her daughter also saw summer as a magical time when the world overwhelmed you with its bounty, but Jocelyn seemed to notice little if anything about the environment in which she lived. She looked myopically at her friends, and from very close distance, they mirrored her expression of incomprehension or boredom, or they laughed about how ridiculous everything was, whether it be a buzzing bee or people working in a community garden. Her former husband’s idea of happiness and harmony with nature had been gambling amid potted plants in Atlantic City casinos.

  She called Raleigh, as she’d promised she would, when she got the results from her blood test. It was late enough at night that Bettina wouldn’t even know she’d called. If she wanted real information about Jocelyn, her brother was a better bet than her sister-in-law, who didn’t really understand young girls and therefore projected even more negativity onto them than was there—if such a thing was possible. Raleigh had met Jocelyn’s teacher and pronounced her “very nice, quite intelligent.” That opinion could be relied on, more or less, factoring in that Raleigh rarely expressed doubts until after the fact, and that he liked young women. He’d been as mystified as the next guy by women when he was young and dating, but now he seemed to think the mere sight of one was as lovely as seeing the first robin of spring. As far as she knew, he’d never strayed in his marriage to Bettina, but who ever knew about such things when few birds and even fewer people mated for life. He picked up on the second ring. She could envision the blinking red button on the phone—an odd phone that flashed but never rang—so that of course he would not know someone was calling unless he was sitting in his study.

  “Good news?” he said. The phone must also somehow indicate the caller’s identity.

  “Inconclusive. I tested positive for antibodies to mono, so at some point I had it. It might have been a year ago when I thought I had flu. The test for Lyme came back okay, but something about it was borderline, and the doctor wants to repeat it in a couple of weeks. How’s my girl? How are you, for that matter?”

  “I’d say she’s doing well. She’s bored here, of course, but I think it’s for the best. So would you say you’re feeling less tired?”

  “I slept from one until four. That’s going to wreck my sleep tonight, but I was just so exhausted, I couldn’t stay awake. All I did today was take the car in for an oil change.”

  He coughed softly, turning his head away from the phone. He said, “I came upon the key to Bettina’s diary. She was out, so I read a few pages.”

  “She hid the key where you could find it?”

  “In the bottom of the Excedrin bottle. Can you imagine? It was on a thin gold chain underneath the last of the pills. She must write in it when I go jogging.”

  “How I envy you being physically fit. Not everybody who has a metal plate in his leg would go running at your age. How are Jocelyn’s essays? Does she put enough effort into them?”

  “They seem to worry her a lot. She certainly doesn’t like writing them. I was that way, myself, back in school. I don’t think that young people like to be obliged to address subjects not of their own choosing.”


  “How are we going to get her to pass algebra? That’s the big question.”

  Raleigh had gotten straight As in high school. It was how he’d gotten into West Point. His former running buddy, who’d recently relocated to Phoenix for the warmer winters, had been his classmate. He missed their twice-weekly runs. Though he’d told no one, there was some possibility he might need an operation on his leg. He was the one who’d bought the big bottle of Excedrin. Bettina had taken most of the pills. “One thing at a time,” he said.

  “What have you been doing other than being physically fit and being Jocelyn’s uncle? We’re all expected to be diverse in our interests and to give back. It’s like we’re all still trying to have a good résumé to get into college, whatever our age. Remember when I feigned interest in old ladies in nursing homes? Now I’m going to be one of them soon.”

  “Today I contributed nothing to any good cause and listened to ‘Across the Universe.’ The Beatles.”

  “I know who sang ‘Across the Universe.’ ”

  Bettina was right; sometimes his sister did sound very much like Jocelyn. He said, “Jocelyn might like to know you called.”

  “I’ll call her in a day or so, when I’m not so headachy.”

  “Why should you have constant headaches? What do they say?”

  “They don’t answer questions like that. They do blood work.”

  “But I’d think that if you asked—”

  “Ha!” she said. “You must have different experiences with those guys than I do. I suppose that’s true. They take men more seriously. That, and you can continue to have your delusions about good communication because you don’t ask questions of doctors or of anyone else, do you?”

  “My training taught me to listen,” he said. “But don’t be ridiculous. Of course I ask questions.”