by Ann Beattie
“Why we are not is because Snell’s is building next to that Mexican restaurant, and it is going to be a greenhouse el primo, my friends, with bargain-basement prices and great accessibility, situated conveniently on U.S. 1.”
“Snell’s,” Barbara said, in a hushed voice. She could have been a religious person receiving the news that the devil was currently standing in the adjacent room. She pressed her fingertips together and brought them to her lips. She stared at Frank.
“When did you hear about that?” Janey said.
“Last Thursday, at the Rotary Club.”
“Is it definite?” Barbara whispered.
“Does a cow say moo?”
“ ‘Riding to the hounds was her first love,’ ” Marie continued.
“Wait a minute,” Bob said slowly. “This is year-round? Not just a summer thing?”
“It’s year-round,” Frank said. “I went into the Mexican restaurant, and they knew all about it. And as coincidence would have it, do you know who one of the investors is in that Mexican restaurant?”
“What Mexican restaurant?” Barbara said.
“Where the good seafood place used to be,” I said. “It’s called Arizona now.”
“ ‘The blare of the trumpet…’ ” Marie droned on.
“Who one of the investors is?” Bob prompted.
“Yeah. It’s our old buddy Van Sant. Back in town with a vengeance. Bought up the property for a song because of an asbestos problem, knocked it down to its rafters, cleaned it all up, and acquired the plot of land next to it for a park for kids to play in. Climb the cactus, or whatever. Then he said, Oh no, maybe what we should have after all isn’t a Ferris wheel with cars hanging off it that look like tacos. Maybe what we should have is a greenhouse—that’s a logical thing to have as an extension of your Mexican restaurant, right?”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute, back up,” Janey said. “You know for a fact that Tom Van Sant is an investor in this restaurant, and that he’s got the land next to it and it’s going to be”—she faltered—“what you say it’s going to be?” she said, weakly.
“I wonder whether this wasn’t inevitable,” Grandma said. “So many new businesses around here, I mean. Those townhouses out in what used to be a farmer’s field. I used to go there to pick my own pumpkin off the vine, not so many years ago, and now I hear it’s a putting green.”
“And would you like to take a guess about who another one of the investors is?” Frank said.
“I honestly don’t think I would,” Bob said.
“Dowell Churnin,” Frank said.
We all looked up, surprised.
“You can’t mean it,” Barbara said.
Frank rolled his eyes toward his mother.
“Oh, dear,” Barbara said.
“Fifty percent some Boston big guy. Twenty-five percent Van Sant; twenty-five percent Dowell Churnin.”
“Then even if we talked to them…” Barbara said, not finishing her sentence.
“Even if,” Frank echoed. “It’s primarily bankrolled by some bastard from Boston, who’s probably advertising for cheap slave labor to clean the windows of his skyscraper even as we speak.”
“Watch your language,” Barbara said, reflexively. There was no chance Marie had heard him, though. Her reading had become monotonous, incantatory: “ ‘Little sister Lee would bend over her paint-by-number painting and work feverishly, intent on finishing the leaping horse before the actual day of the hunt arrived,’ ” Marie read.
“I shouldn’t have brought it up,” Frank said.
“But there it is,” Bob said. He sounded disgusted. He spoke without energy. Yet he was the only one who meant to continue the conversation. “The damn things look really good, too. We were in one a couple of summers ago, remember?” he said, turning to me. I did. The greenhouse had been airy and beautiful, with a Victorian exterior and dark green wicker furniture inside. It was more like being in someone’s spacious garden than in a shop. Chamber music had been playing. I remembered how amused I had been to be lightly sprayed by the timed mist while I admired the violets and the music played. Where the ceiling was not glass, it had been painted to look as if clouds were floating over. On a day filled with real clouds, the effect had been fascinating. Snell’s was a family business that had succeeded to such an extent that now there were franchises.
“Let’s open some presents. What do you think?” Sandra said.
“Just one more of your perfect crepes,” Bob said, rising. “You, Janey? How about one more?”
“Thank you,” she said. Her small smile did not match her tone of voice, which was hushed.
Bob picked up Janey’s plate and went into the kitchen.
“Lap, lap, lap,” Marie said, as Bob came back into the dining room.
“You want the lap, or you renounce the lap?” Bob said.
“I want to be on it if no one else in the world can ever be,” she said.
“How’s that foxhunt coming?” he said, sitting and pulling Marie onto his lap.
“Who did Lee grow up to be?” she said.
“Who did she grow up to be? A woman who married a prince, I think,” he said. He looked around the table for help.
“I think she married a prince who—I mean, he never presided over anything, did he?” Janey said.
“They’re society people,” I said.
“They say Jackie’s given her money and won’t leave her anything in her will,” Grandma said. “In Boston, they talk about all the Kennedys as if they’re going to march right into the room any minute. They lower their voices when they gossip, but gossip they do.”
“Her husband is a prince? If he saw her sleeping, could he kiss her to make her wake up?” Marie said, from Bob’s lap.
“Let’s talk about something else now, honey,” Sandra said. “It’s your grandma’s birthday.”
“In the living room,” I said, getting up and trying to act cheerful. “You hand Grandma her presents, Marie.”
“You know the prince?” Marie said to me. “Wouldn’t that make her a princess if she married a prince?”
“Marie, really, we aren’t going to keep talking about the Kennedys,” Sandra said.
“I have something to say about the Kennedys! I have something to say on Grandma’s birthday about the Kennedys,” Marie said.
“Then please tell us,” Barbara said, sitting in her favorite chair.
“He got shot and his wife jumped out of the car,” Marie said.
“Indeed,” Sandra said. “Now let us turn our attention to Barbara.”
“Wasn’t that very sad?” Marie said.
All around, we mumbled: Yes, sad; very sad; yes it was.
Frank stood looking out the front window, his hands in his pockets. “Looks like it’s clearing,” he said. “Looks like it’s going to be a nice day after all. Maybe it’s just punishment for my malice that my knee’s acting up this morning. Maybe that’s all it is.”
“What’s malice?” Marie said.
“Having mean thoughts,” Sandra said. “Now let’s concentrate on watching Barbara open her presents.”
Janey said, “Catch!” and threw Barbara a box to get things started. It turned out to contain three boxes of sparklers, which Barbara loved. She promised to use them long before the Fourth of July. Then Marie got in the spirit of things; she jumped off Bob’s lap and began to act as present bearer. She gave Barbara the gift I had brought, edging the big box across the rug with her knee: a pillow with arms, so she could prop up while she read in bed; Drake’s present, sent by way of Grandma, which was a fifty-dollar gift certificate at the local bookstore; Frank’s present—a large cardboard bouquet that stood up like a vase of real flowers—was done so well that, until you were almost on top of it, you were convinced they were real; a photo album from Grandma; from Janey, a box of Estée Lauder dusting powder and cologne; from Frank and Janey’s boys, Max and Pete, who were at school, a box of marzipan shaped like bananas and cherries and orang
e slices; from Marie, a drawing of her grandmother and herself. Marie was much more detailed, and Barbara was in what looked like a pink shawl—nothing I’d ever seen her wear, and probably only an invention so Marie wouldn’t have to draw her customary pleated blouses or her sweaters with lace necklines. It wasn’t a bad likeness. Then came the moment when the rest of the family’s present was given to Barbara. I held my breath, because I was afraid Frank might think kites were frivolous in the extreme. I’d told Janey what we’d gotten Barbara on the phone, and she had said what a good idea kites were, but I could never be sure what Janey did or didn’t communicate to Frank. Drake no longer contributed—why, I had no idea—and Grandma never had, so really it was just a present from two of her sons, their wives, and her daughter.
“Oh, my goodness!” Barbara said. “Did you know how I was fascinated with kites when I was a little girl?”
They were a big hit. If Frank didn’t approve, he didn’t say so. He smiled and took credit.
“So what do you say we get a jump on the weather and go down to the beach and try them out?” Bob said.
“Take the camera and get started on filling the new photo album,” I said.
“The beach? Isn’t it a little early to go to the beach?”
“I wish I could go,” Janey said. “Have a good time and tell me how it was.”
“Oh, I don’t know about the beach….” Barbara said.
“Louise and I will be here,” Grandma said. “If she keeps sleeping, I’ll get a nap in, myself.”
“Yes! I want to go to the beach!” Marie said.
“Sure, Mom,” Sandra said. “It’s a great idea. Get some sand between your toes.”
“It’s not summer, darling,” Barbara said, but I could tell by the lack of hesitancy in her voice that she was wavering.
“The beach! Hooray!” Marie said.
We took two cars. Sandra and Marie rode with us, and Frank rode with his mother, which we later realized wasn’t a very good idea because he would probably begin talking about the new greenhouse again, but he had more or less claimed her, getting her jacket, holding it out for her to back into, taking her hat down from the shelf, and then almost pushing her out the front door. The plan was that afterward Bob and I would go back and get Grandma and Louise, who would spend another night at our house, then return to Boston with Bob in the morning. Frank would go directly from the beach to the nursery; we would take Barbara home, and after we all had coffee she would give Janey a ride home and stay to see the boys when they returned from nursery school.
Driving to the beach, I felt sentimental: it was such a nice family; surely a new greenhouse couldn’t ruin very much for such nice, hardworking people, could it? As Grandma said, it was inevitable: the new construction; the public golf course that would be going in before summer’s end. Two years ago, a private club had opened just outside of town. But why had Tom Van Sant decided on a greenhouse? It wasn’t a sure thing in a business sense; why not a more obvious franchise? And I certainly couldn’t believe that, like Frank, whether Frank admitted it or not, he was half in love with plants. Or that, like Bob, he felt a sense of duty toward continuing something just for the sake of continuity. He hadn’t been running a greenhouse in Washington, had he? It was annoying and disappointing, but some part of me took sneaky, nasty pleasure in the fact that in helping to bankroll Snell’s, he had betrayed the family. They were too quick to embrace outsiders; it might teach Barbara a lesson, as well as undercut Bob’s reflexive male solidarity with Tom Van Sant. I remembered the day I first met him—his getting out of his car, examining the azaleas, flirting. Was it possible that he was mulling over a greenhouse back then?
I had it in the back of my mind that if I talked to him…if I talked to him, what? I’d persuade him to give up a business opportunity he’d thought about carefully? Unlikely, but maybe not impossible. If he really had any of the loyalty and sentimentality about the way things were that he professed—if he really saw Dowell as something more than a fellow investor—maybe I could persuade him, in effect, to go away. This was hubris on my part, but it was also the tendency of the errand runner: Oh, sure, I’ll pick up your glasses. Need something from the pharmacy—just call on me. If I’d been thinking about anything but talking Tom Van Sant out of his idea, that impulse was buried so deep I would never have been able to dredge it out. He said he was one sort of person; he’d reached out to our family; Dowell—who, Bob always maintained, was no fool when it came to judging character—had gone to Tom’s house, when he wouldn’t go to any other. That is, unless Dowell was a complete phony, which was exactly the way Dara had presented him.
We were at the beach, parked right in front, in one of the parking places it would be impossible to get in season. It was low tide, so the beach offered a large expanse of sand. In front of us, a man was running with his puppy, and two women walked at the edge of the water arm in arm. A few other people were in beach chairs, or on towels, wearing their wool jackets. The water was gray-blue. You could feel its iciness. I felt myself drawing inward, as the tiny white caps spilled onto shore. Though Frank had left a few moments before us, he and Barbara had not yet arrived.
“Mom, I want to see that dog!” Marie squealed.
“That simply astonishes me, that you would,” Sandra said.
“Because why can’t I have a dog?” she said.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever once given you a reason,” Sandra said. “I’m sure I’ve never stated any reason why you couldn’t have a dog.”
When she said “why can’t I have a dog?” she reminded me of Dara. With Dara, of course, it was studied; with my niece, it was childish enthusiasm. It made me wonder what the line of demarcation was—if there was any way you could measure when overflowing emotion became calculated excess.
“I’m going to see it,” Marie called over her shoulder.
“Ask the man first if it’s friendly. Do you hear me?” Sandra called.
“Yes,” Marie called back. She was off and running. Bob had gotten out of the car, camera in hand. He pointed it in the direction of the vanishing Marie, and took the picture.
“Youth disappearing,” he said.
“Oh man.” Sandra sighed. “We really got kicked in the teeth today, didn’t we? What’s so much fun about growing up, anyway?”
“We’ll think of something,” Bob said.
Frank’s car pulled in, and he got out, sipping a beer.
“You talk to your brother about drinking during the day,” Barbara said to Bob. “He doesn’t listen to his mother.”
“Relax,” Frank said to Barbara.
“There’s such a chilly wind,” Barbara said, closing the car door and wrapping her arms around herself.
“The better to fly kites with, my dear,” Sandra said.
“Then out with them!” Barbara said. “You’ve got them, Bob.”
“So I do,” Bob said, and headed for the sand, unwrapping one of the packages. He fiddled with the folded kite for a while, as Sandra hung over his shoulder, offering advice. Barbara watched Marie disappearing in the direction of the man and his dog. Then, suddenly, a kite was launched. Up it went, the long train curving through imaginary tracks, kept aloft by Barbara, Bob, and Sandra. I stood just where the rocks ended, holding the big, deflated carp. Frank stood beside me silently, drinking his beer. Finally, he said: “Son of a bitch. Guy sets up a big homecoming for himself, has us all over for champagne and cake, and what is he getting ready to do but stab us in the back?”
“I’ve never much liked him,” I said, “but if I let on, Bob’s suddenly his best buddy.”
“Yeah,” Frank said, drawing a cigarette out of a pack in his shirt pocket. “He was never really a friend of mine. He and I threw acid on LBJ’s wrinkled old mug one time—a dartboard, down in Dowell’s cellar.”
“The dartboard was for real?”
“One in school, one in Dowell’s cellar. We went over to the cellar, mad because the administration made Dowell take down t
he bull’s-eye in the locker room. I don’t know who had the acid—Billy Riley, or somebody. Dowell was so crazy, he let us throw it. It was gonna eat through his wall, and he didn’t care.” He puffed on the cigarette. “One thing I think now that I didn’t think then: I think that maybe he was one of those functional drunks. He didn’t slur his words or stagger around, but I think he might have had a pretty steady drip of alcohol into his system. The rumor was, anyway, that that’s why his wife left him. That, and because he wouldn’t put his money where his mouth was about the fuckin’ war. Now I think he might have been an alkie: thought one thing one day, saw it differently the next.”
“When did you start smoking again?” I said.
“Could you please do something other than mimic Janey?” he said.
“Listen, I know you’re upset about the greenhouse. But I didn’t think you’d smoked for years.”
“Watch out, you might turn into her,” he said.
“Frank, I’m going to talk to him,” I blurted out.
“ ‘Him’?”
“To Tom Van Sant. It’s worth a try.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Oh?” he said.
“I can try.”
“He always gets women to try with him,” Frank said. “Isn’t that an interesting thing. That is one thing I observe about Mr. Van Sant.”
“What are you saying?”
“You hate to hold a guy accountable for rumors about him when he was seventeen or eighteen. Back then, word was that he got pretty aggressive if he didn’t get his way. He pretty much ruined the would-be academic career of some girlfriend of Janey’s. Either raped her or traumatized her, or whatever he did. His uncle got in the middle of it, and he got sent away.”
“Sent away where?”
“The nuthouse. His uncle and the cops struck some deal with the girl’s parents.”
“If you hold so many things against him, why did you even go to that party?”
“Stupid,” he said. “To prove to Janey I wasn’t a coward, I’d go anywhere.”
“Janey wanted to go?”
“She didn’t want to go; he called and said Barbara was coming and all these other people, and it was a party for Dowell. Janey’s not a hard-ass like me. She wants to think the best of people. I think she went to see if she could think more positively about him.” He threw down the cigarette and ground it under the toe of his shoe.
