by Ann Beattie
Amy, from the salon, stopped in to Daphne’s store from time to time. Daphne knew to put aside any size-nine designer shoes so Amy could see them first. Hearing these things about women’s fashion, he’d felt like a person who had briefly been intrigued by Kayla, who had herself been nothing but an animated mannequin. That mansion she lived in, her indifference to good causes she supported only because she was obliged to—that was part of buying into marriage, Rhinebeck, wine by the case, a babysitter even when you spent the evening at home.
He’d suggested, after taking some measurements and writing down the name of a carpenter who’d also helped him at his own house, that he and Daphne go upstairs. To his surprise, she’d instantly stretched out on the rug in the area they’d been considering partitioning, like an old-fashioned hinged toy that went wobbly when you pushed below the disc it stood on. She, at least, had a sense of humor. He’d rubbed his thumb over her mandala tattoo. If the tattoo artist wasn’t good enough, something that complex could fail to convey at all: spaghetti on a plate; Spanish moss (which was usually filled with mites).
At Bailey, when he’d been a privileged, stupid young man, he’d gossiped along with everyone else about the school nurse’s tattoo. Almost as surprising as the tattoo were Daphne’s navy-blue toenails, bruised, prehensile claws. She’d done them herself and given the money she’d saved to the liquor store, she informed him. She’d proved it by bringing out a bottle of Jameson’s after they’d had sex. He’d ordered a pizza, and paid the delivery guy, who’d all but gone on tiptoes, trying to look at the naked woman in the living room, then he and Daphne had watched TV: Anderson Cooper standing in some war zone, with his characteristic expression that bridged the gap between being reconciled to anything, while still being mildly concerned, wearing a multi-pocketed camouflage vest with neat, empty pockets. Explosions behind him drowned out his voice. It took Ben a while to realize that his cell’s ringing was adding to the noise level. He didn’t take the call, or look at the screen. Daphne, too, ignored it.
“I’m your townie. I’m your demimondaine,” Daphne said. “Like that fancy word? I looked it up when I read it in a book.”
“Not a Stephen King novel, I suspect.”
“No. Some Southern writer who spent about a hundred pages going on about some guy on the eve of his wedding, whose car goes off the road and the local girl, the demimondaine who’s not his fiancée, who was in the passenger seat, disappears into the forest. I was worried it was going to turn into another Scarlet Letter, or something.”
“Does he find her?”
“The townie? Well, his fiancée makes him search for her, of all things, because they can’t get married unless the other one’s found, because she might be dead, or something. She does show up, yeah, but it’s not so easy because her friends all want to protect her.”
“I don’t know that story,” he said.
“Well, let’s admit you haven’t read everything,” she said. “And let’s also admit that except for my current beau, nobody’d be racing around looking for me if I disappeared. They’d think I’d gone to a flea market, or something. I don’t have any women friends. You’re my friend. Imagine that!”
His cell was ringing again. This time, he took it out and looked at it. It was Steve.
“Yeah, Steve. What’s up?” he said.
“If I say to you, ‘Texas,’ what’s the first thing that pops into your mind?”
“Lyndon Johnson.”
“Really? Not all the vast stretches of land, not even horses?”
“Is there a right and wrong answer, Steve? Can we play this game later? I’m involved in something right now.”
“What pops into my mind when you say ‘involved in something’ is sex,” Steve replied. “We’ll talk later.”
But that discussion wasn’t picked up again, though he saw Steve the next day. By then, Ben assumed he’d been given a clue, rather than really having been asked a question. Changing jobs had been much on Steve’s mind. It seemed likely that he’d be going to Texas. And if Steve wanted to play a word-association game, rather than clarifying what he meant to say? That was pure Steve.
He called Kayla a few times, hoping to be invited back. He supposed he was doing that because she’d hurt his feelings by wanting nothing from him. On the phone, he made sure not to put pressure on her. He was relieved when she laughed at something he said—though he couldn’t predict what would amuse her. All those years in the debate club, along with all the years afterward trying to forget what he’d learned so he could talk like a human being again. People he met seemed different, as if he’d been whirled around and let go, so that when he landed it took a minute to bring things into focus. The town itself had been whirled around, its land developed, people moving in, the florist out of business, the tombstones in the cemetery cleaned by a pressure washer to look like polished incisors. Some of the new people were witty, communicative. A dance group moved from one of the churches to the annex of the hardware store, which had been transformed to a performance facility, courtesy of an anonymous donor’s money.
Women went to Rick’s in groups and held impromptu arm-wrestling contests. Daphne certainly did whatever she wanted. He experienced the opposite of what was written in magazine articles about the dumbing-down of the culture, in which technology zombies communicated in internet shorthand, emojis having the last frown or smile, like Maude sticking the unicorn “horsie” on Mama. All his sister seemed to care about when she called now was how money could be used to grow more money. It was perplexing, since she had no clear idea about what she wanted to do with the accumulated money. He felt she might circle her pile as it got higher and higher, as in “Jack and the Beanstalk.”
At Kayla’s, and afterward, things had started to seem more like a warped fairy tale, less like life as he knew it, or even the life he’d fled to live in what had once been a slightly scruffy small town in New York State. He’d kicked it around with Steve—not the money part; how life had changed, more generally. Steve simply thought he was wrong and that people had always resisted progress.
“Look at your average tennis court,” Steve had said to Ben in the coffee shop, after their most recent game. “The elite play tennis. Guys who’ve got an afternoon free because they’re so fucking flexible, which is a euphemism for not getting a full-time job even if they’re panting for it like dogs with their tongues hanging out, so they’re able to grab free time, which is only possible if you’ve laid claim to your territory through hard work, sweat, and tears, or maybe tapped into your fucking trust fund—present company excepted—and you can stand outside in the sunshine in your white shorts, banging your catgut-strung racket against your thigh, and not be seen as a fucking faggot, but as a person of privilege, good luck ascendant. Cars slow down to see who’s on the courts.”
Ben called Kayla one last time, but it wasn’t lost on him that he alone instigated contact. Everything had been upbeat those few times they’d spoken, but he’d sensed her pulling back. She’d brought up marriage the first time he went to her house! She was going through what was conventionally called a difficult time. What did he have to offer? (Which had also been his question of Daphne, on the dressing room floor, when she’d asked him not to leave. She’d pretended it was a real question. She’d answered, “Pizza.”) Okay: a large mozzarella with mushrooms was certainly easier than marriage, or even what Tory had mockingly termed “a long-term relationship,” as if he’d find the idea incomprehensible, as if he’d already failed a test.
He threw himself into his work, and the guys in Washington were impressed. Ginny and Maude were visiting Ginny’s parents in Mill Valley. He’d gotten tired of Steve’s needling jokes, intended to level him like a duck brought down with buckshot. Maybe if they stopped playing tennis—if he stopped winning and let Steve cool off—things would improve. Ben decided to pretend to have an injured ankle.
Twenty-one
TRINITY came up on Ben’s phone. He took the call, having no idea who TRINITY was.
“It’s Pierre LaVerdere,” the voice said. “LouLou gave me your number. I hope you don’t mind. Or at least I hope you’re willing to talk to me.”
Trinity. Well, here was another bomb about to be dropped. He’d learned from the master, so better to beat him to the punch. “Listen,” he said. “You were very important to me at Bailey. I appreciate what you did, teaching us how to think and how to express ourselves. But you and LouLou? It puts me in an uncomfortable position.”
“I understand,” LaVerdere said, and Ben remembered that his former teacher had been good at listening sympathetically—sometimes silently, gaining credibility by refraining from offering advice. He could hear music in the background, maybe TV.
“Where are you?” Ben asked.
“The Spotted Rick.”
“You are fucking not,” he said. “You came here?”
“It would mean a lot to me if you’d join me at the bar.”
Disarming. A straight shooter. Except that LaVerdere never thought a straight line was the shortest distance between two points. LaVerdere got what he wanted by throwing curveballs. It was no coincidence that he’d found Rick’s, the only bar Ben ever went to. He must have heard about it from LouLou, even if she’d mentioned it only in passing. LaVerdere had a good memory for detail. Ben very much wanted to be able to go back to Rick’s without associating it with LaVerdere.
“Come here instead,” he said, trying not to sound rattled. “Do you already know my address?”
“No,” LaVerdere answered.
He told him the name of the road and explained how to get to his house: Look for a big spherical bush with red berries. If he didn’t see that at the base of the driveway, he was in the wrong place. His neighbor was tired of having to redirect people. There: a significant detail for someone who loved details.
He went into the kitchen to see if there was enough ground coffee (yes). He put the magazines scattered across the table in a pile, placing The New Yorker on top. The cover was stained from where he’d put down his coffee mugs. The overlapping circles made it look like someone with bad aim had gone at it with a cookie cutter. He opened the refrigerator and was reassured to see milk. Coffee was what he’d offer; he had no intention of sitting around drinking with LaVerdere. He didn’t appreciate LouLou’s giving out his number, but if she had, shouldn’t she at least have given him a heads-up? Or maybe it had been Rick. He didn’t know exactly how he’d gotten in touch. Whatever LaVerdere wanted, it didn’t mean Ben had to listen for long. He’d lie about a previous obligation, so he’d have an excuse to walk out of his own house after half an hour. He turned on music—whatever was on the radio. Jazz. Jazz was making a comeback, if it had ever left. It sounded like Miles Davis, but he often made the mistake of thinking Miles was playing when he wasn’t. The kitchen table was a mess from breakfast. It didn’t matter. Men made a mess.
He looked out the window, then moved away. Pathetic. If it had been December, he could have hung his stocking by the fireplace and gone to bed, waiting to hear reindeer landing on the roof. Really—what was LaVerdere doing? Of course he’d had an eye for pretty women. Or was he also thinking about fathering Hailey’s child? Or Aqua’s?
LaVerdere’s hairline was receding. He wore his hair longer, Ben saw, as LaVerdere swung his legs out of the car and stood gazing at the house. An establishing shot, in the movies. What the hell are you doing, Ben asked himself. Why would you invite him here? His lie was going to be that he had a doctor’s appointment—no; that sounded weak—he had an appointment with his lawyer.
“Forgive me, I get it,” LaVerdere said, hands raised in surrender as Ben opened the door before LaVerdere knocked. What a weak chin he had, though with his strong nose and blazing eyes he was still conventionally handsome. LaVerdere was wearing a jacket too thin for the day. He’d remained fit. He wore scuffed Nikes. That had been part of the reverse snobbery at Bailey; though there were no uniforms, the students had been forbidden to wear running shoes except when running. Faculty, therefore, wore them all the time, their footsteps muffled while the students clomped, snow seeping through their soles. Mud, in mud season.
LaVerdere had been in Key West? Walking around in Bermuda shorts? Tevas and tank tops? A Speedo, maybe? A backward baseball cap. Or full Parrot Head regalia. Then back to a job teaching philosophy in New York. Sure, once around the Earth like Puck, a stop here, a stop there—but funny how many times you ended up in the company of your former students.
In the story Daphne described, the townie had simply opened the car door and run. At the gas station on the way to Vermont, he and LouLou had made it a point to keep it together, not to run, though it had been their bad luck that the crazy guy had come back out while they were still standing by the gas pumps. And Tory: the way she punctuated whatever criticism she was delivering to him just as she turned in to a space in the parking lot, so she could get out and slam the door as a grand finale.
“So I just hear from you when LouLou decides to give me an earful? It’s good to see you,” he said, grudgingly. He shook LaVerdere’s hand. “Where are you living, Pierre?” It sounded strange to use LaVerdere’s first name, as if he were greeting him in ironic quotation marks.
“Riverside Drive. I left two years after your class graduated. The house is yours, Ben? What a wonderful place. I can’t stand soulless contemporary architecture, either. Is it a good thing, living out of the city?”
For LaVerdere, this was nervous blithering. Buckshot.
“Why are you here?” Ben asked.
“Any chance of a drink?”
He thought about pretending he didn’t have anything, but that seemed foolish. “Scotch or bourbon?” he asked.
“Scotch.”
He felt ashamed when he turned toward the cabinet. He’d caved right away, but he’d also been more unfriendly than he’d intended. That remark about his house, though: It was obvious that these houses announced that their occupants had chosen not to keep up with the times; they were modest old houses that modest, increasingly old people had died in or been forced to leave, but unlike Ben’s aged neighbors, anyone who bought them recently had chosen to live outside the mainstream. That, or they’d manhandled the old structures into the present, hauling in granite and heavy brass light fixtures, like Steve, who’d wished he could afford Westport. The outside world came in, changed, polished, an expensive price tag on all of it. All the so-called natural materials were meant to represent power, as reflected in hard, polished surfaces. His father had died—that was how Ben had had the money to buy it. His father would have approved of his not paying too much for a house. The old man had let his summer house sit on the market for two years before he made an offer, waiting until the price was rock-bottom. But Ben wasn’t going to say anything about what had gone into his decision to buy his house to LaVerdere.
“Ice?”
“Splash of water,” LaVerdere said, taking the glass. He went to the sink, added a trickle of water, stirred with his finger.
“Living room?” Ben said, extending his hand. He remembered Kayla, gesturing the minute he started to sit: better in the living room (“If it wouldn’t seem too controlling”). . . . In some odd way, he felt detached from the house. It had stopped feeling like his. Or it seemed like his house in a dream, only resembling the original.
“Sure,” LaVerdere said, looking around. “Very nice furniture. Much homier than Bailey Academy, which was dependent on the hand-me-downs of benefactors in the process of redecorating. One person tried to get the school to accept an aviary. That’s true. Not that he had one, but he thought he’d have one built on the grounds so Bailey could care for his daughter’s canaries after she went to college. I had to sit through an interminable meeting about that the year I was hired. The meeting might have been longer, but he didn’t find it funny when I suggested he get
a cat instead.”
“People gave the school their furniture? Are you kidding?”
“They did, if we couldn’t persuade them otherwise: too magnanimous; oh, simply couldn’t; better to donate to charity; already full up; couldn’t divert our school from its mission in order to properly take care of a tank of guppies in the best possible way—that sort of thing.”
“You really said that about the cat?”
“Yes. It came to me in the moment, as a solution to terminal boredom. A. E. Housman, whose work I spared you, used to think up insults in advance, to have them ready to add a name to, when the right wrong person came along. Nothing reprehensible about that, I suppose. At least, the pros and cons might have been a good thing to debate.”
Was Housman a poet or a Hollywood director? He didn’t want to ask.
“A couple of things here were left by the previous owner. There’s a consignment store in town”—there had been, before Daphne decided the real money was in vintage clothing—“I got the andirons and the fireplace screen there.”
“Very nice,” LaVerdere said. “When I sold my house—you came there, didn’t you? No? You’d only been to the apartment? Well, when it sold, the contents went with it. But a turtle doesn’t do well without a shell. I should have thought forward.” (Thought forward; yes, that had been a favorite expression of LaVerdere’s. Politicians were so often guilty of not thinking forward. Nixon, taping everything. Bill Clinton, having sex with Monica Lewinsky.)
“Riverside Drive. High ceilings? Gargoyles perched above the entrance, I’m imagining.”
