by Ann Beattie
“No thank you. I’m not religious.”
“There’s a bean supper at the firehouse tonight, if you’re staying around.”
“I have to get back. But thanks for mentioning it.”
“So you got married, and your husband died, too? You’re pretty young to be a widow. That must be rough.”
“Life’s unpredictable.”
“I guess so. Nothing ever showed up on Dwayne’s security camera but squirrels and birds, and every now and then a deer walking through. Then here you come, and I’m supposed to be the one to confront you.”
Jane holds out her hand. “Well. Nice to meet you, Cora.”
“Likewise.” Cora’s hand is rough; Jane can barely feel bones through the puffiness. “There’s a gun in my truck, but I never thought of using it once I looked at your face,” Cora says, with a big smile.
Jane’s eyes grow wide.
“I’ll be going, so you can have your privacy,” Cora says. “If it’s not too personal, how come that box is bright blue? Was that his favorite color, or something?”
“Oh, it’s …” Jane does not want to say it is a box she took down from the top of her closet. So she says yes, and I realize, as she does, that I never knew Neil’s favorite color.
Etch opened his door when I came into the hallway.
“Depressing, or okay?”
“Some weird woman drove up and never stopped talking. I didn’t scatter his ashes there. I ended up at a park in Pound Ridge.”
“I didn’t quite get the significance of scattering his ashes where you and that other guy lived, myself. Want to come in for tea?”
“You know, I don’t think I could contend with Kim right now.”
“He’s at the movies with some Filipino he’s got a crush on,” Etch said. He looked at his watch. “For another hour, minimum.”
I went in and sank onto the sofa.
“Green, black, or decaf ?” he said.
“Actually, I’d like some Jack Daniel’s, if you have it.”
“He drank it all. I have a six-pack of Corona, though.”
“Corona,” I said.
“I know our relationship’s been strained,” he said, opening a drawer in the galley kitchen. “I think I’ve already told you that I think his sense of humor is inappropriate a lot of the time. You should only meet the Filipino.” Two bottle caps popped off. “He does what he thinks is a hilarious imitation of Ed McMahon. It comes over him every time he sits on the sofa. The first few times, I thought he was just talking to himself, another psycho.”
“What does he say?”
“He chortles. He expects everybody else is mentally filling in the Johnny Carson part.”
“Thank you,” I said, taking the bottle. He clinked his to mine and sat across from me in the velvet butterfly chair.
“This strange woman in Vermont was who?”
“The wife of the developer, who’s gone bankrupt. She dug a little box she called a ‘time capsule’ out from inside a tree. It doesn’t matter. You’re right. It wasn’t the right place to scatter his ashes.”
“Did you call that guy? The postman?”
“No. I completely forgot.”
“That’s too bad. He’s been so loyal, sending you postcards with news of the town. Would you like some pretzels?”
“No thanks.”
“Could you maybe say that everything’s fine between us, even though Kim is an asshole?”
“Everything’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”
“I had a talk with him last night and he made it pretty clear he’s not leaving me for the Filipino, it’s just about sex. I guess I believed him.”
“You could do a million times better.”
“Straight people always romanticize the romantic potential of queers.”
A police siren started outside. A dog barked through it, and continued after it ended.
“Another friend’s come down with that gay cancer,” he said.
“Really? A good friend?”
“More his than mine,” he said. He looked toward the window. “Oh, bark, bark, bark,” he said. “Yip, yip, yip, yip, yip. By the way, my father’s written me out of his will, but he’s being magnanimous and not evicting me. He’s leaving everything to my sister in Hattiesburg. She remembered to send him a birthday card.”
I kept in contact with Etch when I left New York. He moved to a different building. His father threw him out, after all. He volunteered as a counselor at the Gay Men’s Health Alliance and worked at a men’s clothing store in the old neighborhood, which began getting very gentrified. He adopted a mutt and named him Etch, which caused no confusion because when I left, he started going by his given name, Harold.
I moved into a rented farmhouse in Virginia and spent the next year writing the book on which the movie La Seule Vacance was based. My novel, as you might know, was titled The Only Time We Went Away. Much of the writing came directly from Neil’s notebooks: his observations, his frustration at his inability to express the extent of his love for me (which I had begun to think was deliberate. Writing about it in the notebooks, I mean, knowing I’d find them). I made my character a writer—different from Neil in some ways, but guided by Neil’s information: as he always told me, the French love to think Americans are crazy, and therefore that all American novelists are crazy. We think theirs are sulky; they think ours are a bunch of Maileresque hotheads. The reviews, in the U.S., called the Neil I’d created “a Saturday Night Live Svengali” and “Dr. Doolittle Deconstructed.” The character was “as menacing in his intentions as Jack Nicholson in The Shining.” This was a different take than the French had on the film—though I hadn’t meant it to be anywhere near as funny as they found it. (Which might also express the innermost thoughts of Jerry Lewis, I suppose.) The film, and the book’s subsequent translation into French, provided a great launching pad for the sale of my next novel, for which I also wrote the screenplay—though, in true Hollywood fashion, it didn’t go anywhere the minute Meryl Streep signed on for another project.
“It was good to hear from you after so long. Are you really still worried that you overstayed your welcome in my crappy little apartment? It’s true I had to nudge you out, but I enjoyed having you there for a while. It’s just that you never had any sense you were imposing, so I didn’t think sleeping in a sleeping bag was ever going to get to you. I knew you’d never offer to split the rent—I knew you were going to end up fine and I wasn’t, that was clear from the beginning. If you want to blame yourself for something, what about all the take-out food you never chipped in on? You always just sailed through situations, and that used to really bug me. Everything’s different since I survived chemo. Now I only wish people the best, and if they’re just expressing their nature, so be it. You didn’t ask in your note how I was. It was nice to hear about you, about your books (haven’t read them, I’ll be honest), the house you recently purchased. If you had asked about me, I could honestly say I’ve just survived the worst year of my life. Anyway: onward and upward.”
A final litany, before forgetting:
Invest in Disney.
Never take flowers to a dinner party. Send them beforehand. Also, if you receive flowers, never leave the card out. To everyone else, the sender has to remain a mystery.
When you travel to Europe, never wear a fragrance from the country you’re in. In France, wear perfume made in Italy.
Have sex in airplane bathrooms.
If you can’t stand on your head, which is best, learn to do cartwheels.
Look out for any man who wears more jewelry than a watch. A pocket watch, out of sight, is best. Never have anything to do with a man who has a watch fob.
Don’t have flowers in the house that refer to any myth people might know. No hyacinths. No narcissus.
Never miss a solar eclipse.
Read all of Turgenev and enough Proust to say you’ve read more than you have, so people won’t nag you.
Notice who the cinematographer is. In
the future, see movies based on that.
Wear only raincoats made in England.
Screen calls. Never answer the phone when it rings. It’s only an indication that someone wants to talk to you.
What all men think, that’s different from all women, is that they’re going to the stars.
Don’t use the year of your birth for your cash machine code. Use the numbers that correspond to the first four letters of your astrological sign. If you’re a Leo, double the “o.”
When depressed, look at Halsman’s photographs of people jumping, especially the Duchess of Windsor.
Time changes everything. (Best sung by Merle Haggard.)
Years after I’d left New York, and shortly after I found out my mother died (we had rarely talked on the phone the last few years of her life), I made a second trip to see my stepfather, Carl, in Lexington. He’d moved in with an old army buddy, a widower, to a house in town, where he gardened and belonged to various do-good organizations. We’d never had a close relationship because he’d married my mother the same year I went to college, and he was older, a conservative, so guarded in what he said about homosexuals that it was clear to me he was homophobic. I suspected that in recent years he’d become more of a drinker. He had always been kind to me, though, from arranging for me to see the specialist in New York back when I’d been living with Ben in Vermont and had had my yearlong stomachache, to calling me often after my mother died, to see how I was doing. He’d had a review of my novel, from the Roanoke paper, enlarged and laminated. He sent it to me by UPS, with a gold star pinned to the top. When I called Etch and told him about the gift, he joked that I could hold it horizontally and use it the way Gypsies do, dancing around to distract tourists outside the train station in Rome, while their children pick the tourists’ pockets.
Carl came down the walkway, waving and carrying a pan of what turned out to be burned brownies in his other hand. The oven mitt had transformed his hand into an enormous lobster claw.
“The writer!” he said. “And looking especially nice today.”
When he kissed my cheek, I smelled vodka. I waited while he dumped the burned food into the trash. “Have to be careful, get the lid down tight, the raccoons around here just walk up and toss the cans over,” he said.
We went into the house. It was a Victorian, with high ceilings and stacks of pictures on the walls. Stanley collected old, hand-colored photographs.
“Good to see you,” Stanley said, rising from his chair. He’d been reading the newspaper. The house smelled strongly of burned food. He stepped forward and shook my hand.
“I have something I wish you’d help me with, Carl,” he said immediately, wandering into the kitchen. Carl and I followed. The problem was a box of tea, shrink-wrapped. Stanley had not noticed the plastic and couldn’t figure out how to get it open.
“A couple of old duffers,” Carl said. “But we do okay.”
“Candle snuffers?” Stanley said.
“Duffers. Old duffers,” Carl repeated.
“We’re thinking about a smaller house, less upkeep. Not a bad time to buy,” Stanley said. “I’m donating my collection to the college. Then there’s going to be an auction of some furniture next month.”
Stanley seemed a little unsteady on his feet as he filled the teakettle. “Lost our kettle,” he said. “Took it outside to water, forgot it was there, and it got lifted up by that storm we had and blew right into the neighbor’s car. Made a big dent in the door. Ruined the kettle, too.” He shook his head. “This is a junk store special,” he said. “Boils water as well as the next thing.”
“But it’s almost dinnertime. Won’t you let me take you to dinner?” Carl said. “Stanley, we could all three do with a good meal. A glass of wine, instead of tea?”
“Well now, the problem there is that I’ve got to take my walk for my blood pressure, and I haven’t done that yet.”
“I’d like to stretch after driving,” I said. “Can we go with you on your walk?”
“Don’t see why not. Walking’s good at any age,” Stanley said. “I might look for my moccasins and do the Daniel Boone. My left heel could feel better.” His front tooth was chipped. There was a little dried blood above his lip, where he’d nicked himself shaving. He examined himself in the hall mirror. “Haven’t seen my shoes, have you, Carl?”
“I don’t believe I have.”
“Well, if I was Ricky Ricardo, this might be the start of something funny,” he said, going up the stairs.
“Do you still watch 24?” I asked Carl.
“Wouldn’t miss it. Every week, Bauer saves the world.”
“Put that young man on Omaha Beach, we’d get a better idea of what he could do, and couldn’t do,” Stanley called over his shoulder.
“I appreciate your coming for a visit on the eve of my birthday,” Carl said. “And I was very happy to receive the subscription to Harper’s magazine, as well. Thank you very much.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Your mother’s death is still quite a shock to me. But Stan and I do pretty well for a couple of old guys. We get along.”
“How do you feel about selling the house?” I said.
“Probably a good time to put it on the market,” he said, not answering the question. “You’re driving back tonight?”
“It’s not a long drive.”
“I can’t argue, after what Stan did the other time.”
Stanley had loaned the neighbor his “extra mattress” for the collie to give birth; he later took it home and put it back on the box spring in the guest bedroom, where I spent the night, wondering what the strange smell was in the room.
“I’m over it,” I said. “It was funny.”
“Stan can get to thinking life goes along the way I Love Lucy does,” he said. “We have a lovely inn in Lexington, you know.” He had walked over to the big hall table, where many daguerreotypes were displayed in frames, along with silver bowls and copper pitchers. Stanley’s shoes sat on top of the sideboard, thick with dried mud and leaves.
“Stanley!” he called. “Found your shoes.”
We took a walk. We walked on the sidewalk, up the steep hill that went past the church, then turned onto a street where a friend of theirs lived. Stanley was taking the man a book. “Tells him what to do with fish rather than deep-fry it,” he said.
Carl and I waited while he went up the walkway and left it in a basket outside the front door.
“Get to be our age, it would be downright unkind to knock at what might be naptime,” he said.
Stanley straggled behind a bit, which was probably his notion of giving me time alone with Carl. Carl said: “Shortly before your mom died, a friend of yours from New York got in contact. Joan? No, Jan. Said you and Neil had broken up before the wedding, and she tried to keep you out of it, but you two both had your minds set on getting married, so there was nothing for it.”
“Jan wrote to my mother?”
“She offered some information about a vitamin or something that makes the side effects of chemo better. I don’t think it was the first time she’d written.”
“She’s only written to me once, in all these years. I wonder why she did that?”
“Don’t know, but your mother appreciated the gesture.”
“You think about her a lot?”
“Oh, I’m well aware that what happened was for the best.”
“You mean, if she was going to drink herself to death, it was good she didn’t have to go on kidney dialysis?”
He hung his head. He finally said, “The doctor told me the liver would go, so that wasn’t such a shock.”
“You took good care of her,” I said.
“She would have done the same.”
“But she didn’t. She always created situations that made you take care of her.”
“You and your mother didn’t get along all that well. Not every child does, just because someone’s a parent. But she was always proud of you. Always happy for your s
uccess. Couldn’t understand why you married that man who ran away, but it was none of our business.”
“I don’t think even if he’d stayed we were all destined to get along.”
“How are you doing, yourself ?” Carl asked.
“Fine.”
“Did he do any military service?”
“What? No. He didn’t.”
“Why is that?”
“Maybe he had some medical problem.”
“Maybe! You don’t know?”
“We never talked about it.”
“And that wife of his just went to Mexico and divorced him?”
“After getting a considerable financial settlement.”
“I usually don’t ask direct questions, because I don’t believe it’s polite, but just this once, out of idle curiosity, what would a ‘considerable financial settlement’ consist of, so an old fogey like me can be shocked?”
“Two million dollars, their condo, and her jewelry. I’m sure she would have gotten the car, but he didn’t believe in buying cars.”
Carl let out a long, slow whistle.
We came over a rise. In a leafless tree at the back of someone’s property, turkey buzzards were roosting, weighing down the branches, flying up when more birds, streaming across the sky, landed. I had never before seen so many. They kept coming, an amazing number of them, circling in the darkening sky.
“Damn buzzards!” Stanley said. “Nothing stops ’em. They used to favor the tree by the Baptist church, and the minister would be out there, blasting an air rifle in the direction of God. That’s the way he put it: ‘Talking to God and begging him to get ’em to go away. Not firing to kill, just having a word with God.’” He smiled. “Looks like a tree in Hell. You could take a picture of that and show it to somebody and tell them that’s what it’s like, that’s trees in Hell, no leaves, no Spanish moss dangling, no pink blossoms, vultures.”
“They’re not,” I said. “They’re commonly assumed to be some kind of vulture, but they’re really descended from storks, and ibis.”
“Ibid?” Stanley said.
