The State We're In

by Ann Beattie

  “That isn’t Hannah down there throwing rocks in the water, is it?”

  “It is Hannah. My god! I didn’t even see her crouched down there. I’ve known her since she was four days old. Yet you never know another person, do you? That’s the old cliché, at least. She’s always been willful. She’s always felt her way is the right way. What a strange feeling to be spying on her from afar. Sometimes when they’re that age you feel like they’re performing for you, but that’s not what we’re seeing.”

  “No. She has no idea we’re watching.”

  “Look what she’s doing. It’s like tossing coins in a fountain. She’s wishing for good luck, whatever that might mean to her. I don’t see why they didn’t try to find out at least what she was thinking, or if she was suffering in some way. They’ve left it to me, you’re right. Not the sort of parents I’d want to have. Where did she get all those stones?”

  “She’s filled her pockets like Virginia Woolf. She probably scooped them up from the parking lot.”

  He frowned into his empty coffee cup. They had not been offered refills. “Let’s hope she’s not that disturbed by anything,” he said.

  “What time does the bus come in?”

  “She hasn’t told me. There was some question about whether he could get here in time for dinner, or whether she and I should eat alone.”

  “You could call her and ask if it’s been decided.”

  “You wouldn’t mind? I find it so rude when—”

  “Also, Terry, to put you at ease: I know my little stories aren’t anything that can help you. You won’t disappoint me if I read the book and they aren’t in it. There were interviews with Dem—interviewers who came, who asked questions for days, and we knew that the longer someone asks questions, the more likely it is that very little of what you say will appear in print. Dem and I both felt that.”

  “That the sense of the person would be lost, rather than discovered, do you mean?”

  “Exactly.”

  “You know, I’m really going to try to work in the story about signing the money. Everyone likes to read about peculiar actions. Especially ones that aren’t hugely significant. Ones that don’t sum everything up, I mean. Things that just happened because they happened.”

  A stone glinted in the sunlight before plunking into the water where boats bobbed on their moorings. Hannah’s hair was flaxen. It was wavy and thick and caught the light like a yellow, shot-silk curtain. Part of it was gathered back, but the rest was an unruly, gorgeous mess of blond hair. It overpowered everything, including her slim body.

  “I won’t take offense if you call her before our lunch arrives.”

  “All right, then,” he said, taking his phone out of his pocket.

  He scrolled quickly to find her number, but when his thumb pressed the button, he used enough force to push it through the phone. The expression on his face as the phone rang and rang—turned off? Or was she willfully not answering?—was dolorous, filled with intense sorrow in the second before he remembered where he was and raised his eyes and shrugged his feigned dismissal. Then, almost instantly, he turned his head and narrowed his eyes, staring into the distance. Clair glanced quickly over her shoulder to see what he was seeing. It was the waiter, approaching with a huge circular tray. The young man had no more idea how to carry the tray aloft than a blind man would know how to proceed if handed an Olympic torch.

  Behind Terry’s ear—at the spot where photographers told you to focus when they made your portrait so you wouldn’t gaze too intently into the lens (which paradoxically made your expression silly, rather than intense), the long-haired Hannah suddenly tossed what turned out to be her last few pebbles into the water, as if they’d been burning her palm. But she was young, and her dramatic moment was over. Next, she withdrew her phone from her pocket, though to Clair’s surprise that, too, was thrown in the air as if it were a hot coal. It flew in a steep arc across the water until it sank. She’d done it so impulsively. Or might she have sensed that she was being observed? It had been Dem’s opinion that you could always sense the photographer’s presence in a great photograph—though he also believed that sometimes what you were seeing was the moment the photographer actually turned his back on what he was seeing, so the image became a record of the photographer’s exit. Terry had a problem on his hands, as he must know. Hannah stood at water’s edge, her bowed head that of a penitent. If she had it to do over again, would she?

  THE REPURPOSED BARN

  “There are Elvis lamps at the auction,” Bettina said. “Also a collection of reptile purses. What do you suppose those are? I assume, alligator bags? There’s a parlor set, which you can bet is so out of fashion it won’t meet the minimum bid, which is fifty-five dollars. You couldn’t get two mani-pedis for that. Get this: there’s no minimum on ‘assorted kitchen implements from Italy,’ including brass measuring cups whose description is written out in Italian, so I can’t make any sense of it, and a chestnut-handle pizza cutter.”

  Jocelyn’s mother and—beyond belief!—her boyfriend, Nick, were driving to Maine on Friday and would stay for the weekend at a motel (they had to have that much sex?) and take Jocelyn back with them to the house the bank hadn’t yet repossessed. He’d moved in. Her mother had been seeing this man for almost a year and had never once mentioned him? How was that possible, when her mother was home every night and hardly ever got a phone call? She was lying; she’d just met him. You just had to assume adults lied. Why not say she’d just met the guy? Nobody was going to faint if somebody old had a boyfriend. They were feeling each other up in nursing homes, steering their wheelchairs into each other’s to flirt! Ancient people who ran around the halls at night, jumping into each other’s beds. (She’d found this out during the summer from Zelda’s mother, who was a health aide and who would discuss really gross topics.) The one incentive to go to college was to get out of the house, which she still thought they might lose, because she’d overheard so many of her uncle’s phone calls and he never seemed reassured by them. It would even be better to continue living where she was—her uncle was a nice man now that he was no longer doing gross things for the government, and Bettina was definitely better after she was discharged from the hospital and stopped cramming food down her throat day and night. Jocelyn would have to go with her mother, but she’d be counting the days until she could be on her own. Angie had asked her mother if Jocelyn could live with them, and she’d said certainly not, she had a mother. If that was the kind of logic she was up against, then no: there was no one to save her. She wasn’t going to give the Nick person the satisfaction of banishing her.

  Her uncle was shocked by the Big News; he’d phoned her mother way too many times since he found out about her changed situation. Maybe he was warming up to have a heart attack. Somehow he’d been arranging the refinancing of his sister’s house—then this! So where did Raleigh get the money, if neither of them had jobs? Though they tried to keep the information from her, she knew from overhearing Bettina talking to Raleigh at night that one of their credit cards had been canceled, which made Bettina even more haywire about money. Bettina said it would be fun to go to the auction because she’d limit herself to twenty dollars—he could keep it in his pocket; she wouldn’t even bring her purse—and anyway, it would be a pretty drive out into the country and they didn’t just want to sit around and be sad that Jocelyn was leaving. Bettina could be really smarmy when she decided to try to appear brave and heroic; actually, she was guilt-tripping you. They were sad that her mother had picked up some stupid guy and let him move into the refinanced house, that was what they were sad about. They never talked about their own daughter, never said the words Charlotte Octavia (who’d been named for E. B. White’s spider). Charlotte Octavia was living with her boyfriend L’il Co!MOTION in Seattle—and for that, she envied her.

  Earlier that day her uncle had met with her teacher because (1) the bitch—which she turned out to be—was insisting that she rewrite the essay she hadn’t given a pas
sing grade to or she wouldn’t graduate, and (2) he couldn’t understand why her grades alternated between Cs and Ds, since it seemed clear to him that her essays had improved. He had no sympathy for her dragging her feet about the final essay, though Jocelyn knew that he thought Ms. Nementhal hadn’t done a good enough job, if—according to her—Jocelyn’s essays never improved, but wasn’t it the teacher’s fault if she didn’t learn how to make them better? Aunt Bettina had made the appointment to talk to Ms. Nementhal; then, feigning dizziness, she’d sent Raleigh in her place. If she’d really been dizzy, it was because of what she’d just found out about her sister-in-law, who was having sex way too soon after a hysterectomy. Her mother had insisted on a time-out, no texting or calls while she was recovering and Jocelyn was in summer school, and now it was clear why that served her purposes so well. Who wanted to be interrupted having sex?

  Bettina had gotten her own message and called Raleigh in the middle of his golf game, in tears. Her uncle had turned into an instant liar—though he hadn’t cut his golf game short. “I’m sure she’s got a good reason for having a relationship with him,” he’d said to Bettina as he came through the front door. “People have reasons we can’t always understand, but if we have faith—”

  “Stop rationalizing!” Bettina shrieked. “She told me he’d completed a drug rehab program.”

  “Well, for a time I was in AA,” he said. “You don’t hold that against me.”

  “That has nothing to do with this,” Bettina said. “He was a landlord in New York City, and he lost his entire building, including his own apartment, and when he met her he was staying on a friend’s foldout couch in Queens, engaged to another one of the addicts.”

  Raleigh winced. “We shouldn’t be discussing this in front of Jocelyn,” he said. “Another time, maybe you can tell me how you know that.”

  “Another time, I’ll try to jump-start your brain, Raleigh.”

  “I’m going to Angie’s to write my essay,” she said. “Is everybody okay with that, or would you like me to send flowers and a note of congratulations to Mom?”

  “What if you grow up and you’re as ignorant as you are right this minute?” Bettina said. She answered herself: “Then it’s heredity, I suppose, and we can pity you. You’re not going to her house to write any essay. You’ll go down to the beach and smoke pot, or whatever you do. Probably hatch a plan to murder your teacher, or something that will ruin your life, as if your mother hasn’t done enough! What good did that shrink do her, I want to know. Maybe she met the drug addict in his waiting room.”

  “We really aren’t the kind of people who talk this way, are we, Bettina? As if we’re better than people who address their problems?” Raleigh ran his hands through his hair. He said, “I think this news just has to settle in.”

  “And when it’s settled in and bored a hole in your heart, what then?”

  “It’s so pointless! You’re not going to be able to do anything about it!” Jocelyn said. “Do you think what you say matters? Do you?”

  “This is very distressing,” Raleigh said. “We can only hope we’ve got the story wrong.”

  Jocelyn noticed that his limp was more pronounced as it got later in the day. He went to the best chair and sat down.

  “This is what people’s children put them through, not their sisters,” Bettina said. “This is bad for my health. You’re right. Let her mess up her life, but we’ve got to look out for Jocelyn.” There it was again! The noble, passive-aggressive bullshit.

  “Like how?” Jocelyn said. “Adopt me? Go deeper into debt to send me to college so I can make Cs and Ds?”

  “Your teacher has a strange perspective on what an essay should be,” Raleigh said. “I shouldn’t say this, but she referred me to an essay by Flannery O’Connor about peacocks. Let her admire whatever she wants, but this essay is no masterpiece, let me tell you. It’s slightly witty, but she goes on and on about some peacock walking around in her front yard.”

  Jocelyn burst into tears. “Summer school was just about farming me out so she could have a good time,” she said.

  “Let’s not give up hope,” Raleigh said. “Let’s drive to Myrtis’s and see her and try to talk this through. I think that’s what we should do tonight.”

  “Why?” Jocelyn said. “She doesn’t want to see us, she wants to be with the drug addict.”

  “Please don’t cause us more heartache,” Bettina said. “Jocelyn, if you go over to Angie’s, I want you to promise we won’t get a call from the police telling us you’re smoking pot at the beach.”

  “I don’t do that! I don’t use drugs! How many times do I have to tell you?”

  “Would we all like to go out and get some ice cream?” Raleigh said.

  “Go out, in this state? I wasn’t this upset when they carried me away on a stretcher.”

  “Why don’t you go upstairs and lie down then, Bettina?” He turned to Jocelyn. He was looking at her, but she could tell he didn’t see her. “Do you—” His voice broke. “Maybe we could all go to that auction,” he said. “It’s like some reality show is going on in the living room. I feel like I’ve become a raving idiot in my own house. Worse things than this happen all the time. And don’t ask me what they are.”

  Bettina whirled around and walked out of the room. The kitchen door did not slam shut because it was a swinging door. Water ran in the sink. Jocelyn looked at her uncle and his eyes met hers. Somehow, the worst of the spell had been broken. Jocelyn felt like vomiting. She went to the sofa and stretched out, kicking off her flip-flops. “Why did this have to happen?” she said. “I don’t want to see her. I don’t. And can you even imagine being in that man’s presence?” Raleigh said nothing. She could hear him breathing deeply. She said, “I don’t even care if you were CIA and she was the Torturer and you’re hiding yourselves like Nazis in Maine and don’t know anybody, because, okay, you know a couple of people, but basically you don’t know anybody. It’s really obvious.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand one thing you just said, Jocelyn.”

  “No?”

  “Did you mean that we had no friends?”

  Now it sounded stupid. Before the golf game, one of his golf buddies had come in for an iced tea. That same morning, someone named Hedda Rae, or something like that, had called to invite them to dinner, and Bettina had lied her way out of it. She admitted she had. “I can’t spend an evening with somebody that boring,” she’d said. Still, Jocelyn thought there was essential truth to what she’d said about their isolation. Truthiness, as Colbert would say. Colbert, who was selling out. How could he? But you weren’t supposed to think about individuals, you were supposed to worry about the planet. The Earth was so fucked. She went into the bathroom and tried to choke up something that wasn’t quite in her stomach, but not in her throat, either. She splashed cold water on her face. She felt horrible.

  Music? When she went back to the living room, Raleigh was standing with his hands in his pockets, jingling change and listening to music: more classical sludge, like whale shit, seen blurrily underwater. Hey—that was pretty good! She gave herself a thumbs-up with her yet-again-gnawed cuticle and sank back into the sofa. Her uncle stood with his back to her, looking out the window.

  “Will anyone come with me to the auction?” Bettina said. She must have gotten different clothes from the laundry room adjacent to the kitchen. Her baggy slacks were wrinkled, but earlier she’d been wearing a skirt. The T-shirt was also different: dark blue, which accentuated her blue eyes. Raleigh looked blankly at his wife. “Sure,” he said quietly, shrugging. “What about you, Jocelyn?”

  This was what was happening? They were going to go to some stupid auction and try to distract themselves, when he no doubt wanted to have a drink and Bettina probably wanted to eat an extra-large pizza? They were so old, so worried all the time, though they tried to make it appear they were in control. “I’ll go,” she heard someone say. She was the one who’d said it.

  “Good,” Raleigh
said. Her aunt said nothing. She picked up the section of newspaper that gave the address of the auction. “We would’ve been able to inspect things for the last half hour, and what have we done but miss our great opportunity?” Bettina said.

  Jocelyn and Raleigh, avoiding looking at each other, got their jackets from the coat hooks in the hallway. In Maine, you learned to always carry a jacket, no matter how warm the evening—and shuffled out of the house with Bettina behind them, making sure the door was locked, pulling the handle three times. It was a signature gesture, as Angie would say. One of Angie’s mother’s signature gestures was to put her face in her hands and cry for several seconds, after which she’d stop abruptly, take eye drops out of her pocket, and tilt her head back, flooding her face with liquid. The day before, Angie had also let drop a convincing detail about her make-out moment with T. G. She said one of her earrings had gotten caught in his arm hair, and she’d cried out, and he’d stopped immediately. Oh god. It was all so ordinary. There was no discharge date for T. G. that her uncle knew. She’d asked him that morning. The youngest son, Ted, was bouncing off the walls, and the parents were going to cave and let him be put on meds, they were so stressed out.

  “The Queen Anne’s lace is blooming,” Bettina said. She turned to Jocelyn, who sat curled in the backseat with her legs tucked to one side. “They often have a little black insect right in the center,” Bettina said. “Did you know that?”

  Did I know I was fucked? Jocelyn wondered, re-forming the question. She lied about having noticed the flowers; she nodded yes, but Bettina rushed on, wanting to overwhelm everyone with how much information she had. She said, “And roses attract Japanese beetles. That’s something everyone knows.”