Secrets & Surprises

by Ann Beattie

  “We don’t know anything about it,” Perry said. “You can have any money we have if you’ll get out.”

  “Where’s your brother’s car?” the boy said to Francie.

  “I don’t—” Francie broke off, not wanting to say that she had no brother. “I don’t know anything about what Freed told you.”

  Francie saw that Perry was staring at something and followed his line of vision. She saw the sofa cushion, sliced down the middle.

  “I wanted to come here and be friendly, but you know, I didn’t think you’d feel friendly toward me. I thought maybe you’d act like you were, and that you might be liberal-minded about the mistake with your friend Freed’s car—particularly if I showed you this—but I thought, you understand—that I wanted your money more than I wanted your friendship. But then I thought I’d serenade you and you’d come downstairs and we might be friendly too. I thought I could explain to you about Freed.”

  Francie looked at Perry, her hands clenched in front of her; the ladylike gesture seemed grotesque in context.

  “I see what you’re saying about Freed,” Perry said.

  The boy smiled what looked like a genuine smile. “Then you understand about the car.”

  “Sure,” Perry said.

  “Do you know that game, ‘Mother May I?’ ” the boy said to Francie.

  She looked again to Perry. He stood there with his arms at his side, his billfold in one hand, the other hand making a fist and releasing it.

  “Does she know the game?” he said to Perry.

  “No,” Perry said. He was wondering why some of their friends who were always around didn’t show up.

  “It’s such an easy game!” the boy said. “I tell you to do something, Francie, and you have to ask, ‘Mother may I?’ before doing it. You lose if you do something without asking permission. You see? It’s a fucked-up game.”

  The boy was the only one who smiled at this.

  “If you want our money, you can have it,” Perry said again.

  “I’m not talking about money now,” the boy said. “I’m talking about a game. If, for instance, you wish to ask, ‘Mother may I give you my money?,’ and then wait for me to give an answer, I might say yes.”

  “Mother may I give you our money?” Perry said quickly. He held out his billfold.

  “I’m not your mother, you blind son of a bitch,” the boy said, and turned his smile into a laugh. “I used to work in a restaurant and carve centerpieces out of ice.”

  “Please,” Perry said. “Take our money and whatever else you want from the house and go.”

  “Why aren’t we playing the game?” the boy said. He seemed to be genuinely puzzled. “Are you too fucked-up to play this game?”

  They stood there silently.

  “I was Freed’s friend, but I’m not good enough to be your friend, am I? Do you think your brother doesn’t like me, Francie, and that’s why the car deal fell through?”

  Perry held out his billfold again.

  “You’re a fucking coward,” the boy said. “I don’t want to see that again.”

  Perry put it in his pocket.

  “Take out the money,” the boy said then.

  Perry removed his billfold and took the money out of it. He couldn’t throw the bills at the boy because they wouldn’t reach him, and he didn’t want to go closer.

  “Say, ‘Mother may I give you the money?’ ”

  Perry didn’t say it. He took a few steps closer and held out his hand. When the boy made no move, Perry said what the boy wanted.

  “No!” the boy said and laughed.

  “Make him get out,” Francie said to Perry.

  “And then you’d be so happy!” the boy said suddenly. “You’d have no money, and one of you would have lost a car, but they’d find the car for you, and I might not even have wrecked it, and you could get more money and you could buy a deadbolt lock for your door—that’s what you’re supposed to have, Francie, not leave your door swinging open.”

  “I didn’t,” Francie said to Perry. She stared at him, wanting him to agree with her.

  “You want to lock your doors,” the boy said. “There are so many crazy people. Your friend, for instance—Freed. I could tell from the way he was acting toward me that you didn’t understand what was going on. I came back to set you straight. I know you probably think I came back to kill you, but the truth is, I decided I needed a car and some money for gas, and I thought I’d turn on the radio while I waited. If you wanted to give me your car keys, Francie, and if you wanted to get your money, I’d be grateful.”

  Francie turned toward the backpack that hung from one strap on the doorknob, and the knife whizzed past her shoulder and stuck in the door. Perry was going to dive for it, but the knife was in too deeply; he would never get it out in time.

  “Mother may I?” the boy said.

  Francie sucked in her breath. It was a long time before she spoke, and said, “Mother may I get my money?”

  “I’ll get it,” the boy said. He got up and Francie jumped back, next to Perry. The boy looked at the two of them and nodded politely. He had the Swiss army knife drawn, and as he spoke he began clicking out the parts; Perry looked at the corkscrew snap out. With his free hand the boy groped through her backpack for her wallet, found it and put it in his shirt pocket.

  “Just like that,” the boy said, “I got everything I wanted, and now I can be going. Only I want your assurance that you won’t call the police.”

  “No,” Francie said. “We won’t.”

  “We won’t call,” Perry said, his voice overlaying hers.

  “Do you think you’ll get a bolt for your door, Francie?” the boy said.

  Francie was looking at the sofa cushion.

  “She learns fast,” the boy said to Perry. “She learned the game and she knows what to do now. I’ve actually performed quite a service for you, Francie.”

  The boy’s T-shirt said NATIONAL HOTEL, BLOCK ISLAND, R.I. When he got up to cross the room, the fly fell off his temple. Under the smeared glue Perry could see blood—the fly had been glued there to cover a sore.

  “Of course, I could stay much longer,” the boy said. He paused dramatically. “But I hate to drive in rush hour,” he said.

  Then he was gone. Neither of them moved toward the door. All the time he had been pulling knives out of his pocket, Perry had seen the butt of a gun sticking out of his pants pocket. Except for coming together, neither of them moved again until they heard the car screeching out of the driveway. Then Francie exhaled and he put his arm around her. He noticed for the first time that his hands were trembling. When he locked his fingers together, he could feel the joints vibrating against each other.

  “It’s the first time I ever wanted to be old,” Francie said. “I thought I was going to die.”

  They went to the kitchen to call the police, but the boy had cut the phone cord. The receiver, with a stub of cord, was placed on the top of the refrigerator, in a basket of apples. He had also slashed through one of Francie’s self-portraits, the one that had been propped in the kitchen for months. He had slashed her head until it was unrecognizable, but the body was untouched. Francie put her hand over her mouth when she saw that. And since there was no way to call the police, Perry went back to her.

  “What if Meagan had been there?” she whispered. “And what was he saying about Freed—was there any sense to that?”

  Perry snapped off the radio. For the first time since coming down the stairs and seeing the boy, Francie was crying. She was crying as hard as she had been the night before, when she got to the top of the stairs.

  “All right, let’s take it from the top,” T.W. said, banging a Bic pen instead of a baton on Perry’s table instead of on a conductor’s podium.

  The band started up, perfectly together, until suddenly Roger, swaying back and forth, wearing his Harvard letter sweater and a pair of cut-offs, lifted his trumpet and blared out the first bars of “Young At Heart.”

 
“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,” Borka said. She cupped her hand and pretended to be speaking into a microphone. “And now I’d like to do an old favorite of mine: ‘As Time Goes By.’ ” Borka leaned into her hand again.

  Everybody in the band was convulsed except T.W., who said, “All right, you piss-holes, we get the song down right or we practice all night.”

  Borka stepped back behind the bass. Roger put down his trumpet.

  “Here we go,” T.W. said, tapping the pen.

  The band started playing, perfectly together. Less than ten seconds into the song, Roger picked up his trumpet and loudly blew the beginning of “Young At Heart” again.

  “Oh fuck,” T.W. said, shouting above everyone’s laughter. “Somebody take his pipe away from him.”

  Borka leaned her bass against the wall and lifted the ashtray with the pipe of grass burning in it from the floor and put it on the table by T.W. Roger glared at her.

  “If you screw us up again, I’m going to stab your eyes out,” T.W. said, holding out the Bic pen to Roger. Roger looked humble. T.W. was in a bad mood because he had agreed to play for a bar mitzvah, on Long Island, and he hated things like that. Nobody in the band wanted to do it either, except that they all needed the money. Halfway through the next song, there was more activity. Dickie was wrestling with Roger. They all turned and saw Roger’s horn lifted in the air. Dickie had gotten it away from him and was handing it to Borka.

  “You’re all a bunch of fucking imbeciles,” T.W. said and threw the pen into the center of the group and slammed out of the house.

  “I got his horn! He’s going to sit this song out!” Dickie called after T.W., but it was no use. The door slammed before Dickie had finished speaking. Dickie sighed and handed Roger his horn back.

  “What’s going on?” Perry said, coming downstairs. Everybody looked at him gloomily, and no one answered. “What?” Perry said.

  “Roger made T.W. mad,” Borka said.

  “ ‘You must remember this,’ ” Roger boomed, a capella.

  “ ‘A kiss is just a kiss,’ ” Borka sang, in an unnaturally high voice.

  Roger picked up his trumpet. He thrust out his hips and raised his horn high, over his head, playing “As Time Goes By.”

  “I think he’s getting not very funny,” Dickie said, brushing past Perry to get a beer in the kitchen. “I think Roger’s acting like a moron.”

  The rest of the band sat slumped on the floor, enduring Roger’s song.

  “All right!” T.W. screamed, rushing back into the house. “On your feet. Roger, you put your horn away and go sit across the room. We’re going to do this practice so we can do the job and get it over with.”

  “Why do we have to play at a circumcision?” Roger said.

  “Shut up, Roger,” T.W. said.

  “I’m going to play ‘As Time Goes By’ at the circumcision.”

  “Go sit in that chair, Roger,” T.W. said, pointing to Perry’s Morris chair. “If we have to tie you into it and stuff your sweater into your mouth, we’re going to do that.”

  Roger skulked off to the chair. Everybody stared at him, and nobody smiled.

  “Now let’s play this fucking song,” T.W. said.

  Perry sighed and wandered into the kitchen to see if there was any meatloaf left over from dinner the night before. There was a small end slice, and he picked it up in his fingers and ate it. He thought about taking part of it to Francie but ate it all himself. For the past several days, not at all distracted by the band, she had been making a sketch for a huge painting she wanted to do of all her friends. They were going to be standing on the canvas holding hands, like paper dolls. It was a realistic painting except that Francie had sketched a horn in place of Roger’s arm, and she had put a fox’s head on T.W.’s body and a chicken head on Borka’s body. T.W. and Borka were sleeping together.

  It was August, and hot in the house. Several of the screens were ripped, and there were a lot of flies buzzing around. At dawn the flies would dive-bomb everybody. The last several nights, Perry had bought the newspaper so he could roll it up and hunt flies.

  Francie had put her house up for sale. Nobody had made a good offer yet, and she was getting anxious for it to be sold: she didn’t feel right about taking Perry’s money, and all the money she had now was what she had made from the sales at the gallery in New York where her show had opened. The show had been a success, and Francie was getting what she wanted—she was going to be famous, all of them were sure. That afternoon a man who was writing about contemporary women artists was coming to Vermont to interview her. She had gone upstairs to sketch because all of them had been teasing her. Roger had said that when the man came, he was going to open the door naked. Perry worried that Roger might really do it now that he was so stoned, but he didn’t say that to Francie. He just listened carefully for the car so he could be the one who opened the door. He figured that if Roger started to throw off his clothes, the band would tackle him.

  On the calendar in the kitchen was penciled: “Miner—Village Voice.” It was hard to believe that someone was coming to interview Francie—that Francie was living in his house, in the first place, and that someone was coming here to interview her. He wanted to stay with her when the interview took place, but she had already told him that she didn’t want him there; she didn’t want any protection and, it was true, she didn’t need any.

  He was very proud of her. Some days he thought that his importance in life was to take care of other people—that he would be remembered as the person who housed them and looked after them: T.W.’s band was going to be famous, he was sure, and when Miner’s piece came out in the Voice, Francie was going to be interviewed much more, and have more shows. It made him slightly sorry for himself that there was nothing he excelled at. He had done a good job finishing the inside of his house, but there were a lot of people who did good carpentry work.

  He wanted to ask her to marry him now, before she was famous, but he didn’t dare. She had had nothing but withering things to say about marriage since her own marriage had gone bad, and although she liked Nick and Anita, she also thought their togetherness was a little ridiculous. He was embarrassed at what he wanted lately: to have T.W. and the band go away, to have the house to him and Francie, to marry her.

  He went upstairs. She was where he had left her, painting.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  She laughed at him; they both knew he was being petulant, that he was more nervous about the interview than she was. He was standing and admiring the work she had done that day when they heard the car in the driveway. Francie pretended indifference and went on painting. He looked out the window and saw the old Saab pull into the drive, and the man, the interviewer, get out of the car. He had a backpack that he put on, nudging away Perry’s neighbor’s puppy with his foot. The puppy kept yapping, so finally the man bent and patted it. He stood outside his car a minute, stroking the puppy’s ear, not realizing that anyone was watching. He stood there, sizing everything up: the rainbow Borka had painted on the front door, the cars in the drive, the puppy running in circles, the loud music from T.W.’s band. Then he came toward the house, one hand smoothing down his hair in the back, amused—Perry was suddenly sure, from the slight smile on his that he was about to interview someone in a commune.

  Perry turned away from the window to answer the door; the phone rang.

  A

  Clever-Kids

  Story

  T

  he two clever kids are Jane and Joseph. The names alliterate. Our parents planned that—two cute kids with alliterating names, born two and a half years apart.

  The summer that I was five and Joseph was seven and a half he began to tell me the clever-kids stories when we were put to bed. We lived in what had been our grandparents’ house in New Hampshire—a huge barn of a house with high ceilings and rose-splotched wallpaper. My parents moved there when Joseph was four and a half and I was two. He claimed to remember New York City. It was
one of the many things I envied him for: he had been born in a hospital as high as a skyscraper; I had been born in a bed in the house in New Hampshire. When my grandfather died, my parents sold their furniture and my father quit his job, and they moved to the woods of New Hampshire, into the house where our family had spent the summer. My grandmother, after my grandfather’s death, moved to the warmer weather in Georgia and was able to live with a cousin whose husband had died a few years before. My grandmother came to New Hampshire in June and stayed until the first of September.

  The first clever-kids story I remember was about her: the grandmother was chewing gum, and she blew a bubble so big that you could see things in it, like a mirror. The clever kids looked into the bubble and saw a robber coming in the door, and as the grandmother began to breathe in and retract the bubble they saw the robber getting smaller and smaller, but coming closer. The grandmother didn’t see anything because she was squinting, concentrating on making the bubble disappear. Just as the bubble was about to disappear, the clever kids whirled around and overpowered the robber. They took out their guns and shot him dead.

  Nothing about the stories seemed odd to me. That we would have real guns seemed perfectly possible. Anything Joseph said seemed reasonable and likely. He told me that he could fly, and I believed him. Partly it was because when he told me the stories late at night—when he crept into my bed and awed or scared me and then ended the stories in some satisfactory way—he seemed so authoritative that I couldn’t help but believe him. His whispering made the stories more emphatic. The secret ritual of climbing into my bed made them something we shared privately, and things privately shared must be important—and therefore true. When he told me he could fly I didn’t challenge him. I had never heard of Peter Pan, and had never even been to a circus to see the trapeze performers, but I could believe that a person, particularly my brother Joseph, could fly. “Where do you fly?” I whispered. He thought about it. “I fly by the lake,” he said. “I’ve flown on the main beach. One Sunday when it rained and there was nobody around.”