by Ann Beattie
“All in the past,” Dara said. “Forget it.”
She reached across the table and took my hand. It was the gesture of someone desperate to make up. Or was she apologizing for misleading me about Frank, or was it sadness that she’d provoked sadness in telling me about her teenage pregnancy? I squeezed her hand and nodded; if she wanted me to forget it, I would. “You Light Up My Life” had already been turned into Muzak. It played in the bar, slushy and up-tempo, as we slowly spooned up our desserts.
“You remind me of Franny,” Dara said. “Not that that would make your heart leap, since you don’t know Franny. But when you tilt your head a certain way, sometimes it makes me remember her. What breaks my heart is that what they put her through did something terrible to her. She ran away, and for the longest time, even I didn’t know where she was. She’s in Oregon now, working as a nurse’s aide. She had a drug habit she kicked years ago. She said when she gained more weight and could afford something beautiful to wear, maybe she’d come see me. She might be moving East with her new husband. What I wonder is how much she holds against me. She had some boyfriend who turned her against me years ago, but maybe she thinks differently now. I’d love to have her forgiveness.”
“Forgiveness for what?”
“I was the only one in the family who focused on her, and when I was pregnant, I let her vanish. Living right there in the same room with me, I made her disappear.”
“She was old enough to know you were going through something, wasn’t she? At least she must realize by now.”
“Maybe she does,” Dara said, spooning pudding into her mouth. I could tell she wanted to end the discussion. Out the window, I saw a woman in a red parka walking toward us, her little black dog on a leash. Dara saw her, too.
“What is it that happens to Little Red Riding Hood?” she said. “She gets eaten by the wolf, but what happens before that?”
“She takes Grandma a picnic basket, doesn’t she?”
“That’s right. She’s in charge of the groceries, and then she dies.”
We both laughed. When the waitress brought our bill, we had been sitting at the table for an hour. We’d talked about inconsequential things: the beach; summer memories. I had almost forgotten the present, in which I was obliged to return to work. If Dara herself wasn’t always mesmerizing, being with her still was: sitting in the sunny room, having coffee. Having a friend who always seemed able to suspend time to be with you. Dara’s focus on you, and on the moment, was beamed so directly that you took center stage. Even if the talk was about her life, you were the central focus. I could understand why her sister might have suffered terribly if that attention had been withdrawn. Dara was like a light, and once switched on, she was constant.
On January 20, 1978, two days after Tom Van Sant flew from Boston to Georgia in order to be with Bernie when their child was born, twenty-three inches of snow fell on Boston. During the next few days, people began cross-country skiing on Mass. Avenue. Bob, who had gone for his monthly meeting with Louise’s therapist, was snowed in with his brother’s family. The meteorologists all sounded alarmed. There were constant bulletins on the radio. Snow broke the roof of Snell’s, and before Dowell could get there to repair it, more than three thousand dollars of damage was done. My Volvo was almost buried in the driveway. The plows and sand trucks couldn’t keep up with the incessant snowfall. “I don’t know if even Norman Rockwell could present this in a cheerful way,” Barbara said to me on the phone. Norman Rockwell was her favorite artist. She fantasized that he would do a painting of her marriage to Dowell Churnin. As she’d said to Janey, “I do hope that my dreaming that doesn’t send the poor man to an early grave!” It wasn’t exactly sending Bob and Frank to an early grave, but they were both dismayed. If Drake thought anything at all, I wasn’t aware of it. I had hoped that his wife would urge him to take more of an interest in the family, but it hadn’t happened. I had not seen Bonnie since the wedding party in the North End, and on the rare occasions I phoned, she was subdued and distant. It was as if she’d never confided in me that they’d married. Perhaps it was because I was housebound because of the snowstorm, but when I look back, I realize that that January was the beginning of a period in which I became much more introspective. Left alone, I began to really think about what it would be like to be alone—its advantages, as well as its disadvantages. At the same time, I wouldn’t have traded lives with anyone. Certainly not with Tom or Bernie or Dara, who seemed suddenly to be blown around in a storm they had more or less created. In my case, I was still wondering how many things I was responsible for, or even had a part in. I was admitting to myself that in spite of the family, and in spite of Dara’s friendship, I was lonely. Yet it also began to seem like a pattern, that someone would come into my life who had the potential of being a real friend, someone I could really talk to, and then that person would change, put distance, or formality, between us. I was convinced that Janey was saying less and less to me. That earlier, she might have said more about Dara, more about Frank—more about whatever problems she had. Was it Barbara’s consistent, covert message that one should always be discreet that was gradually changing the family dynamic? I felt that I could still say anything to Janey, but I hesitated to do it, because it had begun to seem that she didn’t feel that way about me—that she had decided, consciously or unconsciously, that our relationship had changed. I tried to rationalize, telling myself that she was overwhelmed by the new baby, that her immediate family probably took all her time and energy, but I didn’t quite believe it. What I really thought was that she had retreated, and I didn’t know why. Of course I wondered if it was something I had done (was it possible that she resented my friendship with Dara more than she let on?), or if I had changed myself in some way I didn’t realize. And I suppose I had, a little: I had picked up Bob’s skepticism about Barbara; it was clear that I had long ago abandoned the idea of having any real relationship with Drake—because if truth be told, in spite of his more obvious quirks and limitations, I thought he was a terrible snob. And Bob: Bob seemed to be fighting his own demons; I had done nothing to provoke him, unless having one friend who was outside the family constituted some bizarre disloyalty. It had gotten to the point where Dara was the only person I ever saw who had any spontaneity. She was the only person I would consider pouring my heart out to, though it frightened me that I thought of that so often, yet I thought of it in the abstract. Troubling as it was for me to realize, I couldn’t think what a heart-to-heart discussion with Dara would even consist of. But those few times she had let her guard down with me—the times she had talked about her teenage pregnancy; the time she had admitted that she feared she was losing Tom—I had felt needed, important. Even though, through time, I would come to understand that Dara only infused me with the illusion of importance and power, I might not have articulated that such feelings were important if not for her. Everyone around me, in those years, radiated complacency, or at the very least let it be known that they were coping with things, rather than making any substantive changes. Bob’s sister, Sandra, kept her distance from the family, yet never went far from home; she relied on the fact that while they saw her for the limited, self-pitying person she was, they wouldn’t risk criticism about themselves, so they wouldn’t expect her to do anything about her situation. Drake, who I think basically disliked himself more than anyone else, simply used the family for his convenience. Bob dug his heels in deeper, doggedly determined to persevere in the family business; Frank hid behind his identity as the solid family man, even as he mocked his own seriousness with ironic statements that let you know he was on to his own game. That was what I came to see over time. At first, because they discussed things more—because they were simply younger, and more talkative, and not quite worn out with each other’s routines, I suppose—I had mistaken them for being flexible, and their interaction with one another had seemed, to an outsider, both genuine and admirable. It took me a long while to see that they created a sort of claustrophobic
world in which they kept each other contained—that Barbara’s unspoken fear of the outside world was the guiding spirit.
At the beginning of the storm, many of the phones weren’t working in our part of New Hampshire, Dara and Tom’s among them. Tom called me from Georgia on the twenty-first, to have me relay the information that the child—a boy, born by cesarean—was six pounds, one ounce, his head covered with dark brown hair, and healthy. If I was able to reach Dara before he could, he wanted her to know that. “Am I doing the right thing?” he asked me. “We didn’t exactly discuss what I’d do when the baby was born. I’m—tell her I’m only staying because there’s no way I can get back. Logan’s closed, as I’m sure you know.”
“Yeah,” I said, choosing to respond only to what he said last. “Bob went to his brother’s in Cambridge. He’s snowed in.”
“This is setting a record,” Tom said.
“It’s amazing,” I said. As soon as I spoke, I remembered, for some reason, having used the word “amazing” about Dara’s performance to Bob. And it was not, he had insisted: it was not amazing. Though even Bob could not argue with me about the astonishing amount of snow.
“You take care,” he said. Our connection wasn’t good; there was crackling over the telephone line, but if we spoke loud enough, we could hear each other. We both said goodbye quickly. I tried to call Dara, right away, before I lost my courage, but got only a beep-buzz. Though I meant to keep trying, I hoped Tom would reach her before I did. I didn’t want to be the first to give her the news.
There was no way I could get to work, which pleased me. Penny called and told me not to come in, and I thanked her earnestly, though I’d never had any intention of trying to go. Barbara called to make sure we were all right, and I didn’t tell her Bob was away. I said we were fine. Janey called and said that the boys were cavorting in the snow and that Frank, whose truck wouldn’t start, was laying linoleum downstairs. She and Joanna were rocking by the fireplace, and she said she wished I could be with them. The hospital was trying to send someone to get her in a four-wheel drive, but she was hoping the person wouldn’t be able to make it. Everybody wanted time out; also, the snow was beautiful. I put Chopin’s études on the stereo and flopped down on the sofa to read the adaptation Edward Quill had done of Grace Aldridge’s book that I’d typed what now seemed a lifetime ago. No cars were moving. No one else called. It didn’t take long to read. By the time I’d listened to Chopin and one side of Bach, I had finished. Much of the manuscript I had typed had been omitted. The characters, besides Grace, were “The Suitor” (Edward Quill had created a role for himself) and “Lady 1” and “Lady 2.” Quill’s dialogue appeared, but there were only two empty pages where the ladies would apparently have lines that would be written in later. What Quill said interested me, because I knew nothing about his relationship with Grace, but it also disappointed me. Quill wrote:
Grace was kind enough to make a provision in her will for money to be allocated for a dramatic performance, as well as a gala celebration in her honor. I can think of no finer celebration than to offer some of her own thoughts as she proceeded through a life that demanded of her new responses, new responsibilities, new respites from life’s challenges. She was a woman of her time in each time she lived. She was an artist who recorded the day’s subtle nuances as they gradually devolved into the pattern that would determine her future. As wife, as widow, as a celebrant of life, Grace’s verve and veracity will be portrayed for you tonight by Miss Dara Falcon, who appeared last season, triumphantly, as Nora, in Ibsen’s masterpiece, A DOLL’S HOUSE.
So Bob had been right; Edward Quill’s association with Grace Aldridge had resulted in his being able to find a vehicle, already funded, for Dara, with whom he was clearly infatuated. Though it couldn’t cost a fortune to put on a play that would require little scenery and few actors, I imagined he could, nevertheless, withdraw whatever he wanted from her estate to boost the career of the next woman with whom he hoped to insinuate himself. This didn’t take into account the obvious, though: Grace Aldridge was in her seventies, and rather plain, while Dara was in her twenties, and gorgeous. How could he possibly assume Dara would be interested in him beyond being interested in what he could do for her?
I made tea—an entire pot of tea, just for myself—cut lemon, and took out my favorite cup and saucer. I put everything on a little tray. When the water boiled, I dropped in three tea bags and carried the tray to the table by the living room sofa. Wind blew snow against the picture window, and I got up on my knees to watch the storm. On the windowsill was a pet rock Bob’s nephews had given him years before, now forgotten and covered with dust. I watched the snow for a while, though the wet, streaked windows made it difficult to see much of anything. I was glad to be safe inside the house, dry, smelling the pleasant aroma of the tea. Yet something was bothering me. It was that I remembered my aunt, my mother’s only sister, Elizabeth, kneeling on the sofa, looking out the window at what she already knew would be emptiness. My parents were not going to return. An unmarried, childless woman herself, she had just inherited me, aged six, after an American Airlines Boeing 707 crashed in New York, in Jamaica Bay, shortly after takeoff. My parents had been to a wedding. They were to have been gone twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours, plus forever. It was only the second time my aunt had ever stayed with me. I knew she didn’t particularly like me, but as my mother had explained when I voiced my concern, she didn’t dislike me either: she just wasn’t familiar with children. She got very familiar with me. When she was not looking out the window for what would never arrive, and when she was not staring into space, she was focused on me—a Dara-like focus. She seemed to think so thoroughly about me that she missed nothing: that it would be good to paint my fingernails pink for my friend’s birthday party; that fabric-covered rubber bands would not break off my hair when the rubber band was removed. When she tucked me in bed, she looked so deep into my eyes, it was as if a myopic person were searching in a mirror for a single hair. She could make fun of her own ineptitude, but if she overlooked a detail—if I had a slightly unravelled hem, or if a minuscule fleck of lint was in my hair—she would become almost frantic. After my parents’ death, I would silently repeat to myself my mother’s words: She just isn’t familiar with children. I thought that by letting her examine me, she would quickly become more familiar. When I finally began to accept the fact that my parents weren’t returning, I wanted desperately for her to like me. Little did I know that she wanted the same thing: she wanted to be on friendly terms with the person she would be living with, unexpectedly, for the next dozen years. She was as willing to spend time with me, to stare at me, as I was to stay close to her side.
The way Dara paid attention to me reminded me of Elizabeth. When Dara had told me that I reminded her of her sister at times, I had thought, for a split second, that that was interesting, because she, too, reminded me of someone. But then I had looked out the window and seen the empty beach, and decided not to tell her my own long, sad story. And then Little Red Riding Hood had come along. And then, and then. My life was as the daughter of my parents, and then.
I had married the first man I ever slept with. Not the only man I ever dated, but the first man I ever slept with, sleeping with only two others before Bob also became the last. I believed strongly in first impressions. Bob maintained that I relied on my intuition, but there was nothing intuitive about it: I understood people in terms of their gestures, how much space they took up, how relaxed they were in their body, as well as whether I could see their soul in their eyes. I would never, ever, verbalize those things to anyone, including Bob, because I thought I would sound conceited: Who was I to see their soul? I had learned the manner of looking from my aunt Elizabeth, but I was different: while her close observations left her still obviously perplexed, some inner desperation had allowed me to actually see clear through to something.
Drinking my tea, the steam rising from the cup, the wind lashing wet snow against the window, I could see
through to nothing, but that didn’t bother me. It only bothered me if it was a person. Janey believed in auras, that there was an aura of illness or health surrounding everyone. I believed in the depth of the eyes. Together, we could have set off for Taos or Topanga Canyon and been a forceful spiritual duo. But I had never said anything to Janey about the way I could look into people’s eyes. I picked up the dusty pet rock. The card with its name lay underneath it, but I left it there. I looked at the small black disks that rolled around its flat, clear plastic eyes: of course the rock’s eyes were dead.
Poor Elizabeth, not marrying until she was forty-four, and then having another man’s half-grown children to bring up. She had moved all the way to Montana. It had been a long time since I’d last seen her. She looked less and less like my mother. From a photograph she sent with her Christmas letter, I saw that she had become pudgy and a little red in the face—high blood pressure, or the Montana weather?—though perhaps she did look like my mother, or at least what my mother would have looked like if she’d lived.
Families. The pathos of families. What I could have told Dara, if I’d decided to open that can of worms.
Bob was very fond of his I SURVIVED THE BLIZZARD OF ’78 sweatshirt. He sometimes slept in it, bare assed, which I found hard to understand, because if you were cold enough at night to wear something on top, why would you want to be naked from the waist down? He had always worn inventive things to bed: a terry-cloth robe, minus the sash; cutoff khakis. Though Barbara had given him several pairs of pajamas, he had only worn one set, once or twice, and then had tossed them all, the other two packages unopened, into the bottom drawer, where the Playboy languished and, again, the flask.
