My Life, Starring Dara Falcon

by Ann Beattie

  “You know where it is?” Janey said, snapping out of her haze.

  “I think so. I think it’s the place we parked the time we went to Joe Tecce’s.”

  I had gone into city-driving mode as we crossed the bridge. My driving was something I took pride in. I could also park on a dime.

  “Mom, did you ever find out about the museum of kids?” Pete said.

  Janey smiled. “The museum for kids?” she said. “No. I’m still not clear on what that is. I’ll have to ask Mrs. Hinton. Remind me.”

  “Mom, why do you call her Mrs. instead of her name?”

  “I don’t know her first name,” Janey said. “Do you?”

  “Yeah,” Pete said. “Stanley.”

  We both laughed. It wasn’t the best joke in the world, but he said it so seriously, it cracked us up.

  “Really,” he said.

  She turned to look at him. “Pete, think about it. How could a lady be named Stanley?”

  “I don’t know,” he said crossly. “But that’s her name.”

  “Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe it’s not Bonnie Collingwood; maybe it’s Bud Collingwood,” I said.

  “That’s right,” Pete said, getting into the spirit of it immediately. “And I’m not Pete Warner, I’m Petunia Warner.”

  “Petunia,” I said. “Whatever made you think of that name?”

  “Petunia Pig,” he said.

  “Who shall I be?” Janey said. “Jack Warner?”

  “Petunia Pig and Jack Warner and who’s Aunt Jean? She’s John,” Pete said, in a fit of giggles.

  “Petunia, you will please put on your other sock, as John has just turned into the parking garage,” Janey said.

  It was killing Pete. He was laughing so hard he had to wipe away tears.

  “Wait, wait,” he said. “Who’s Bonnie? I forget.”

  “She’s Bud,” I said, taking a ticket from the machine. “Now put your other sock on.”

  “If I was the real Petunia Pig, I could clomp in with my hooves.”

  “You’re not,” Janey said.

  “And you might have the misfortune of having someone want to pickle your feet,” I said. “Terrible tragedies await pigs.”

  “I don’t want to go,” Pete said, his voice suddenly serious. He was squirming in the backseat.

  “I gave you a choice,” Janey said.

  “Big choice, when Dad can’t talk and if he was out of bed he’d just be down in the basement anyway, and Max slaps my hand when I try to change the channels.”

  “A life of misery,” Janey said.

  “You’ll have fun when you get there. It’s an Italian restaurant. You can get pizza,” I said.

  “I’m not sure,” Janey said. “There might be a special menu.”

  “Why is there a special menu?” Pete said.

  I parked on the second level of the parking garage. When I got out, I opened my arms, silently volunteering to carry Pete. In a car several spaces down, two teenage boys were inhaling deeply from their cupped hands. The car filled with smoke. One looked at us and bent lower; the other continued to sit upright, his eyes slits, his lips pursed. Janey and Pete seemed not to notice.

  “I’m glad your aunt feels like carrying you, because I really don’t,” Janey said, more to herself than to us. I looked over my shoulder to make sure I’d locked the car. Another car came up the ramp, fast, and we moved quickly to one side. “Hold my hand when we cross streets in Boston,” I said to Pete, already anticipating putting him down. Janey trailed behind us. Out of his younger brother’s sphere of influence, Pete became babyish; he wrapped his arms around me at first, then draped them over my shoulders, letting his hands dangle. He turned his head to the side, finally, humming to himself. I felt as close to Pete as I had to Bob a few nights before, our heads together in the dark, pillows cushioning us. My hair touching another person’s hair could make me very sentimental.

  I was thinking that as we went into the restaurant and saw the sign WARNER PARTY, illustrated with a pink cupid pointing an arrow upstairs. My own wedding party had been in my aunt Elizabeth’s living room, catered by a neighbor.

  Janey reached around me and opened the door. Amazingly, per-plexingly, Pete was sound asleep, his dead weight dangling down the front of my body. I felt the urge to protect him—though what was anyone going to do to him here, in the party room? He might be oohed and aahed over a little more, because his helpless sprawl made him seem younger. His uncle Bob, I felt sure, would have no interest in seeing him, however he appeared. Bob only liked girl children. Suddenly that was clear to me: he liked the insufferable Marie; he doted on Drake’s daughter. Would Bob be cold and withholding with a son if we had children? I suspected he would be.

  We were not among the first people there. In fact, champagne had already been poured, and someone was giving a toast; it was just what I’d told Pete would happen, but he’d opted out. A woman wearing a turtleneck under a sundress, with long, untrimmed hair cascading down her back, had stopped Janey to talk to her. Alone, I made my way to the table that was set up as a bar, a white sign above it saying HAPPY MARRIAGE, BON-BON AND DRAKE! with more little cupids trailing away from each side, aiming their arrows into the crowd. The bartender—a man, I thought at first, then realized it was a woman in a tuxedo—smiled at the glued-together duo approaching her and pointed to the ice bucket, in which the bottle of champagne sat. I nodded, and she poured a glass, slowly. She wrapped a white napkin around the stem and passed it to me. I would have taken one to Janey, but there was no way to carry another glass.

  There were about twenty people in the room, all of them about the same age, many of them dressed more in costumes than in formal clothes: dirndls; deliberately sleazy 1940s jackets; cowboy boots. In a far corner of the room I saw Bob, talking to a man and woman who looked so alike they must be brother and sister: the same whitish-blond hair—what Bob called Mary hair, as in Peter, Paul, and. The man had on a long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and he wore a sparkling vest. His companion wore a long skirt that had the same, or similar, swatches puckered in panels down each side. She wore a tiny tube top and a choker on a black velvet band. She was extremely attractive, and Bob was listening to her with rapt attention. The only thing that stopped a knee-jerk jealous reaction was that, like me, Bob had a child pressed against him. Louise was sucking her thumb, eyes wide, peering at something to the side. She saw me approaching but didn’t react. He was bouncing her gently. The man in the vest was laughing at whatever the woman had just said.

  “Oh, here’s my wife,” Bob said, smiling. He continued to smile as I approached. It was a social smile.

  “Is that your little boy?” the woman said, shifting her focus from me to Pete almost immediately.

  “No, that’s my brother’s boy,” Bob said. “Hi, honey,” he said, leaning over to kiss my cheek.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Found it with no trouble?” Bob said.

  “Yes. Thanks.” I looked at the two people again, waiting for an introduction.

  “Jason Moore and his sister, Elise,” Bob said. “My wife, Jean.”

  I shook the man’s hand with my left hand. The woman nodded pleasantly, but didn’t extend her hand.

  “Who came down with you?” Bob asked. He was acting so concerned. He reminded me of Barbara, asking all the perfunctory questions. He reached to his side, where his drink sat on one of the tables. Scotch? Bourbon? He rarely drank.

  “Janey,” I said. “Frank’s throat got worse. It turned out it was strep.”

  “He works too hard,” Bob said. “Everybody works too hard. So what’s new about that.” It wasn’t a question, but the woman said: “Nothing that I know is new about that.”

  “Elise is an attorney,” Bob said. “And I suppose this is as good a time as any to tell you: I’m thinking seriously about applying to law school.”

  Janey had made me inhibited about echoing what people said as a question. I bit my tongue and turned my head slightly, to ind
icate interest. Law school? Where would we get the money? How would he have the time?

  “Only the first year’s hell,” Elise said.

  “That sounds like an interesting idea. I think I might also apply to law school,” I said.

  I had no idea what made me say it. I wanted to say something imitating Bob’s tone of voice, and I’d pulled it off perfectly. But my reaction had been so spontaneous that it made me look like an idiot. Jason frowned, his eyes darting to Bob.

  “Good one,” Bob said to me.

  “No, I really will,” I said. “I think it’s a great idea.”

  Bob looked embarrassed. “Jean hasn’t quite focused on her career yet,” he said.

  No one said anything.

  “How’s my girl?” Bob finally said quietly to Louise, bouncing her a bit on his hip. He looked at me, eyes narrowed. For a second, I was reminded of the boys smoking marijuana in the parking lot. I could almost smell it: the smell of something at once sour and sweet. The smell of something burning. My eyes must have also narrowed, concentrating on the remembered smell of grass. Years before, at the University of New Hampshire, Bob had once talked me into getting stoned and making love. It seemed like long ago.

  I was rescued by Janey, who said a quick hello to the group and then wanted to know if she should take Pete. I relinquished him with misgivings, and watched Janey head off in the direction of a sofa. “I’m glad she got away from Clair,” Elise said. “The fervor of the recently converted, and all that. Foot reflexology, that is. She also reads auras, says she, and if she has any reason to suspect anyone might be a receptive audience to either subject, she starts right in.”

  “I wonder where the bride and groom are?” Bob said. “Aren’t they supposed to come on time but leave early?”

  “I’m so glad they took the big step,” Jason said. “Though after three failed marriages of my own, the next time around I promise to play Mother May I?”

  “Don’t bother to play it with me. I’m your sister, not your mother,” Elise said. She had perfectly straight, white teeth. A single pearl dangled from the ribbon around her neck. It was a real pearl; there was no mistaking it.

  I was taken aback that someone only slightly older than me had been married and divorced three times. It seemed excessive. Was that stranger, or less strange, than Pete’s friend’s parents divorcing and remarrying?

  “There was something of a problem earlier in the week, but I can’t see how that would affect anything today,” Bob said. “And anyway: he caved in.”

  “You mean about the therapist?” Elise wanted to know.

  “Yeah,” Bob said. To me, he said: “Louise has been losing weight for a while. The doctor called it failure to thrive. They couldn’t find a medical reason, so the doctor recommended a therapist.”

  “A therapist?”

  “Well, Jane, psychotherapy is an idea whose time has definitely come,” Jason said.

  “Jean,” I said. Across the room, Janey was drinking champagne, cornered by the reflexologist and another woman, who was wearing a feed sack with the neck and arms cut out. You could see the printing stamped on it: it was a forty-pound feed sack, gathered at the waist with a gold metal belt.

  “I went along,” Bob said. “It’s a woman—quite good, apparently. She wanted to meet the immediate family.”

  “Liz! Excuse me,” Jason said, turning to grab the arm of the woman passing beside him. “Liz, have you already had the closing?”

  He was gone. In a minute, his sister was also gone, lured away by a very pretty blond woman who crooked her finger and gestured that Elise was wanted elsewhere.

  “Bob—what has been going on?” I said. “You didn’t say anything about this on the phone last night.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea to talk in front of Louise,” Bob said. Of course he was right, but I hadn’t just meant the therapist: I meant all of it. All of it at that moment, and for the past year.

  “How do you know those people?” I said.

  “I know Elise because she worked on Drake’s custody agreement, as did their brother Daniel, who is vacationing in Nepal and couldn’t be here today. I just met Jason once before, in Harvard Square. At Brigham’s, in fact, getting an ice-cream cone.”

  His answer made me calmer. I nodded. If we could talk, what would I say? That I was shocked a child as young as Louise was seeing a therapist? So what if I was shocked. Was it really necessary to say I was shocked every time I was shocked? What was wrong with me, that I felt a compulsion to reveal my thoughts every second? But that was crazy. I didn’t. I hadn’t acted that way in the car with Janey. But maybe that was a problem, too: maybe I romanticized my great relationship with Janey, when increasingly everything between us stayed on the surface, in part because of her fatigue, in part because I had caught Barbara’s reluctance to bring up anything meaningful that might lead to a real discussion, when real discussions were off-limits.

  The bride and groom entered. She was wearing a short suit of satin, or some soft, shiny material: pale pink, trimmed with black lace. She had on very high heels that showed off her chorus-girl legs. She held Drake’s hand and smiled nervously, surveying the room. Drake had on black pants with pleats and wide legs. He wore a white shirt and no tie. His hair had grown longer.

  “Dum dum de dum,” a man near the doorway sang: the beginning of the “Wedding March.”

  “Thank you for joining us. As you know, we got married,” Drake said.

  Bonnie continued to smile nervously. She towered over him in her shoes, yet she still looked like a dressed-up little girl. I had been even younger than she when I married; I must have looked almost like a child.

  “We apologize for being late,” Bonnie said, but she didn’t project her voice, and only the people closest to the door heard her. “But today is also a party to celebrate Bob’s—Drake’s brother’s—graduation.”

  “A toast!” someone called out.

  “Please—after dinner,” Drake said. He put his arm around Bonnie’s waist and began to look at the place cards on the tables. “I know we’re here. I know we exist,” he said, continuing to peer at the little cards. Bonnie linked her arm with his, teetering a little awkwardly in her high heels. So this was the marriage Barbara didn’t think would last. This was the bride who never knew she might have been given an antique wedding ring. But at least he was taking her on a honeymoon. I had overheard people talking beside Bob and me: Drake and Bonnie were going to some island in the Caribbean.

  “Bob,” I said. My voice was a little hollow. Either my ears had closed slightly, as they sometimes did at high altitudes, or the noise in the room drowned out the word the instant I spoke. I had not said his name as loud as I thought I had. I said it again. He turned, then, from having exchanged some witticism and a shoulder slug with a pink-shirted man passing by. I saw some of the man’s drink slush to the floor. Bob stepped forward, into the puddle. “Yes?” he said.

  The bride and groom sat down, and several people applauded. From somewhere, the lights were dimmed and raised, then dimmed again to a soft glow. Music was playing. It had been playing for some time, but only when people began to move toward the tables was it discernibly music. It had been much too loud before, contributing to the din.

  “Bob, I had the weirdest feeling just now,” I said. “I felt so alone.”

  “That’s silly,” he said, but I could tell from his tone of voice that I had upset him.

  It was spooky. It was a feeling I couldn’t shake. I had suddenly had an image of myself at my own wedding: how nervous I had felt—not because I was getting married, but because I knew I wasn’t, in that one, important moment, happy enough. I had also worried that people could see my uncertainty—even my inability to let go and have fun. I had wanted to smile and laugh, but I had been stiff and self-conscious. My eyes kept darting around the room, noticing pointless things, like the dusty window ledges, ignoring the obvious: the flowers my aunt had ordered; the haze of pastel dresses, and the wom
en with their own smiling faces. It had been such a small wedding, and I had felt so small at it. But why was that confusing day suddenly coming back to me? Would it now come back, always, if I attended any wedding? I sank down in the nearest seat to think my thoughts through. Which must have been what I was doing when Bob, in an insincere, too-polite tone of voice, said, “Jean, dear, that is someone else’s chair.”

  A woman peered over my shoulder. “Would you like to change places?” she said.

  I didn’t answer. Bob was helping me up, steering me toward what he apparently already knew was our table. I caught Janey’s eye. I smiled to see if she would return the smile. Of course she did.

  I had started to change, but I didn’t think of it that way. I thought there was something in the air, or agreed with Barbara—much as I hated to—that we were living in increasingly strange times. Twice in one week I flipped through Passages, by Gail Sheehy. I had seen the book around, and heard about it, but the first time I looked at it was when I found it on Janey’s coffee table the night I babysat Joanna and the boys while she and Frank attended Parent-Teacher Night. It was also in the doctor’s office when I went for the pregnancy test that came back negative. I had my choice of Gail Sheehy, pamphlets on diabetes, or National Geographic. By the time the doctor’s nurse called me in, I was convinced I had more in common with midlife men than with women my own age, which, along with the strongly retained image of a wolf’s eyes staring up at me, had made me happy to flee the waiting room. I accepted the news that I was not pregnant with ambivalence. I had tried to convince myself that having a baby would be an adventure, something that would in many ways at least determine what I did with my life, but in reality, I wasn’t sure I wanted a baby. I knew my marriage wasn’t good, though I worked hard to deny it. Since the wedding celebration and graduation party—since he’d finished up in Boston, actually—Bob and I had been getting along better, but something had happened. Somehow, before I noticed, it had not only happened, but seemed irreversible—so that Bob and I weren’t close, even when we made love, even when we went to lunch, as we had at Arizona.