by Ann Beattie
“I can’t believe you’d do that,” Mary said.
“Why not?”
“But you can’t sing.”
“So? I’m taking singing lessons. If you’re pretty, you only have to sing halfway good. I mean, if everybody’s singing together, it’s not like you’ve got to sound like Judy Collins, Mary.”
“I don’t like the way she sounds anyway.”
“Well, then think of somebody you do like, and you don’t have to sing as good as she does. You ought to think about it. There are all-woman bands, you know. I just read about one that played at the Mudd Club.”
“I’m not as pretty as you,” Mary said.
“You’ve got beautiful eyes and beautiful hair. You just don’t spend any time working on yourself. You should take some of my duplicate cosmetics and spend more time learning to make up your eyes.”
“What time is the party?”
“Eight o’clock. I don’t want to get there before eight-thirty, though. And if he’s with another girl when we walk in, we walk out. But I’ll bet he isn’t. I’ll bet he’s waiting for me.”
“How can you be so self-assured?”
“Because I know I look good,” Angela said. “I wouldn’t go over there without any make-up, in this baggy pair of jeans, you know. Did you see the Chemin de Fer jeans my grandmother bought me? I have to lie down to zip them up. Size seven.”
“You showed me. They’re really beautiful.”
“So?” Angela said. “You should get a pair.”
“I wouldn’t look the way you do. You walk right. I don’t know how to walk like that.”
“You think people just know how to walk? You learn to do it.”
“How did you learn?”
“You have to have limber legs. See where that picture’s hanging over there? I stand beside it and kick as high as the bottom of the frame fifty times every night before I go to bed. You have to have really limber legs to wear those jeans, because they’re so tight it’s hard to move in them.”
“I don’t want to go to the party,” Mary said.
“Oh. Great. We sit around half the day waiting for the phone to ring, and I say I’m bringing you, and you decide you don’t want to go. Pluck your other eyebrow.”
“My mother is really going to be mad.”
“If she is, then she’s trying to hold you back.”
“What’s so great about Lloyd Bergman? I can’t understand why you think it’s so cool to get a hickey. He’s not that good-looking.”
“I like the way he looks. He looks like an intellectual.”
“Did you see James Taylor on television?” Mary said. “I don’t know how Carly Simon could be married to him. He has his hair cut like a prisoner. He sings okay, but he looks really old now. Carly’s cool.”
“Should I wear this T-shirt or this one?” Angela said. “The red one’s tighter.”
“Wear that.”
“I guess so.”
“Did you see Bobby Pendergast in his Mr. Bill T-shirt? I wonder if he knows Mr. Bill looks like him?”
“He is so nowhere,” Angela said. “I can’t even believe that Lloyd likes him. I hope he isn’t there tonight.”
“If he is, I’m not talking to him.”
“Well, you shouldn’t,” Angela said. She was putting on a brassiere. “I love brassieres that hook in the front. I think they’re so sexy.”
“Rod Stewart gave all the money he’s earning from that song to some charity,” Mary said.
“God,” Angela said. “Did you see that picture of him at Ma Maison with Alana Hamilton? She’s so beautiful, I can’t even believe she was married to George Hamilton. You know what my mother told me? That he used to go out with the President’s daughter.”
“What President’s daughter?”
“Julie Nixon, I think.”
“I can’t believe that,” Mary said.
“There’s this picture of Julie Nixon and David Eisenhower when they were little kids, standing together. They knew each other all those years. It’s a famous picture. I think Nixon and Eisenhower are both in it.” Angela adjusted her brassiere. “I can’t even believe that people get married without even living with each other. Maybe if you’re the President’s daughter you have to. Then secret service agents live in your house with you. I’d hate that.”
“They do not. They live across the street.” Mary had finished the other eyebrow. “How do I look?” she said. “Can I wear the blue T-shirt if you’re not?”
“Here,” Angela said, draping the T-shirt on the piano stool. “And take a drink of this, too, so that when you show up you say something.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s vodka. What does it look like? It doesn’t have any smell. I read about this model who uses it like an astringent, after her shower.”
“I don’t want any.”
“Oh. So you’re going to go over there and stand around and not say anything. I can’t believe you sometimes.”
“You’re gross. I don’t want any.”
“Do you want it in some orange juice?”
“I don’t want any.”
“Then don’t stand by me when you’re not talking. If you stand there and nobody talks to you, it’s not my fault.”
“If nobody’s going to talk to me, then I’m not going.”
“We’ve got to get going,” Angela said, brushing her hair. “Come on. Or do you think I should put this pineapple barrette in my hair?”
“It’s dumb. You look better without it.”
“These jeans are so cool. My grandmother couldn’t even believe it that people lie down in the fitting room to zip them closed.”
“You’re lucky your grandmother’s cool. My grandmother’s as bad as Lost in the Forest. She’s so senile. I can’t even believe that my father can stand living there with her. Her house is like a museum.”
“My grandmother’s really cool. She used to go to the fights and watch this wrestler called Gorgeous George, who had curled hair. She thought he was so beautiful. And when she was young she lived in Paris for ten years, and sitting in her bathtub she could see the Eiffel Tower. Diane von Furstenberg’s office is in her bathroom. It’s supposed to be really spectacular. I can’t believe she has so much style.” Angela put the brush down. “My mother was talking to my father about how your father doesn’t live at home. She was saying that if he kept losing at Saratoga he ought to go live with his mother. He never would. She lives in Brooklyn and she won’t move, and he says she’s going to be killed. My grandmother who lived in Paris is so neat, and the Brooklyn grandmother is really crazy. She sends Easter cards and makes a big thing of Easter. I don’t even believe that she calls up on Easter, like it’s Christmas or something. She’s not religious, either. She talks about rolling eggs and the Easter bunny and all that stuff. She’s totally weirded-out.”
“What are you going to talk to Lloyd about?”
“I don’t know. I just drink some vodka and see what happens. It doesn’t do any good to plan what you’re going to say.”
Downstairs in the living room, Angela’s father was sitting in a chair, writing on a legal pad.
“I finished Pride and Prejudice,” Angela said. “We’re going over to Lloyd Bergman’s.”
“Bergman and his Mercedes,” Angela’s father said. “He loses more cases than I do. You tell me what he’s doing with a Mercedes. Besides showing off.”
“Your reverse discrimination is disgusting,” Angela’s mother said. “What’s this sudden love for the common man?”
“I don’t think much of anybody. It’s true. There should be a monarchy,” he said.
“I want you to be home by midnight,” Angela’s mother said.
“Okay,” Angela said. “See you.”
“Bye,” Mary said.
“There they go,” Angela’s father said. “Communicative. Well-educated. Happy. Are you girls happy?”
“Give up,” Angela’s mother said. “Everybody doesn’t have to sub
ject themselves to your cross-examination day and night.”
“And such respect for the law,” Angela’s father said. “Such belief in the power of the law. I’m proud to be a lawyer, in spite of the fact that my family would like me to shut up like I’m some stupid store clerk. As it is, you’ve robbed me blind. If your mother didn’t kick in for her couturier fashions, we’d be starving.”
“I told you not to tell him what blue jeans cost now,” Angela’s mother said to her. “Was I right?”
“All this withholding of evidence,” Angela’s father said.
“Bye,” Mary and Angela said again.
“Goodbye,” Angela’s mother said. “At least you’re not going out to gamble.”
It was a half-mile walk to the Bergmans’ house. Angela had a silver flask with the vodka in it in her purse. It was a tiny purse, on a long strap, and it hung at her waist. The flask made it bulge.
Mary’s eyes hurt. She had looked into the mirror too long, staring as she pulled out hairs. She touched her finger to her brow and it felt swollen.
“Do my eyes look okay?” Mary said.
“Sure. That lavender is nice.”
“It feels like the skin is swollen underneath my eyebrows.”
“So?” Angela said. “It’ll go away by the time we get there.”
“I should have held an ice cube there after I finished. Before I put the make-up on.”
“I thought you didn’t like the way it felt.”
“But I didn’t want to go to the party with swollen eyes.”
“You can hardly tell,” Angela said.
“If they were swollen, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”
“You think you’re going to die of this or something?”
“I don’t mean that. I mean, you wouldn’t let me make a fool of myself, would you?”
Angela gave her a disgusted look and shook her head. “Right,” Angela said. “Actually this is a pig party, and that’s why I’m taking you.”
Mary stopped by a wall thick with clumps and swirls of honeysuckle and picked a flower. She sat on the wall, crushing the honeysuckle underneath her. Angela looked at her from the road, sighed and went to where Mary sat. She picked two flowers from the honeysuckle vine and with her free hand pulled her T-shirt out of her jeans so that she could put one flower in each cup of her brassiere.
“I don’t even believe that you’ve got such an insecurity complex,” Angela said. “If you’d feel better if you had a drink, say so.”
“Go without me,” Mary said. “I don’t want to go.”
“I’m going to be really insulted if you don’t come,” Angela said. “I’m going to think that you don’t think I’m your friend.”
Mary twirled the vine through her fingers. She was always in this position: Her father was going to think she wasn’t nice if she didn’t pretend that John Joel was thin; her mother thought she had flunked English just to rebel against her. Now Angela wasn’t going to be her friend if she didn’t go with her.
“If you keep being moody when you grow up, you’re never going to get somebody to live with you,” Angela said. “Maybe if you’d practice smiling, it would help a little.”
Mary was already sure that she wasn’t going to live with anybody. She didn’t want to. She wanted to live alone, and not have to listen to what people expected all the time. She hoped that when she was twenty she didn’t have one friend. She hoped that everybody at the party hated her so she could practice not caring, so people’s opinions wouldn’t matter to her when she was an adult. She would have told Angela what she was thinking, but she couldn’t stand the sound of her own voice. Boys wouldn’t ever like her, because she would never be able to think like Angela. In a million years, she wouldn’t have thought to put honeysuckle in her brassiere. She would never have hidden things working for her, because even things on the surface didn’t work for her. She wished she had worn her own T-shirt, because it was stupid to imitate Angela. Angela was as good as gone, anyway: It was just a matter of time until she was famous, or married to somebody rich. And when she was, Mary wouldn’t be speaking to her anyway.
It was quiet walking along the road—so quiet that she could hear Angela swallowing vodka.
Eight
JOHN JOEL and Mary had an easy life. It was too easy, and now both of them were slipping and sliding. Mary had been a bright child, almost all A’s in elementary school, but when she got to junior high, she stopped trying. He could actually remember Louise’s saying that it was a phase. He noticed it in her friends, too—that nearly manic combing of the hair, the chewing gum and talk about music. They disparaged everything, and their talk was full of clichés and code words. He did not envy Mary’s summer school teacher. Mary and John Joel wanted only to avoid things. He had tried to find out what she thought of Vanity Fair. “I’ve been reading it,” Mary had said, sulkily. “I read the damn books. Don’t sweat it.” He had tried not to be antagonistic when he asked.
They had gone to the Chinese restaurant, and Louise tried to get them to order sautéed vegetables along with the rest of their food. He tried to care that it was a good idea, but finally he said, to keep peace, that there were a lot of vegetables in the dishes anyway. Louise stopped talking. He watched out of the corner of his eye as John Joel gnawed on one sparerib after another, thinking, all the time, what a pleasure it was to eat with Nina. He tried again: “Did you feel sorry for Dobbin, did you feel happy that he became a hero?” “I don’t know,” Mary said. “He’s like something out of a soap opera. John Wayne probably would have liked him. If he’d been bloodthirsty on top of being such a goody-goody.” So he switched the conversation to John Wayne, wondering if one other family in America could possibly be having such a Saturday night discussion. He said that he didn’t forgive John Wayne for his position on the Vietnam war, sure that Mary would agree with that. She shrugged. “He’s dead,” she said. As they ate in silence, he noticed that the Muzak was playing “Eleanor Rigby,” followed by “You’re So Vain.”
“Do you like Carly Simon?” he asked Mary.
“God,” Mary sighed. “I feel like I’m at dinner at Angela’s house. Her father is always trying to find out what everybody’s thinking, like we’re all plotting or something. He says that at dinner you ought to fill your head with ideas the way you fill your stomach with food. He actually said that.”
“I just asked if you liked a singer.”
“James Taylor looks really wasted,” Mary said, picking up a sparerib. “I don’t know.”
“If you don’t like eating at Angela’s, why don’t you eat home more often?” Louise said.
“What is this?” Mary said. “You want me to talk, I talked. I said something, and everybody’s jumping on me.” She turned to John. “How was work this week? You say something.”
He hadn’t known what to say. Perhaps: I’ve got to tell you about my lover’s dope-dealer friend who’s got a tongue as fast as a race car at the Indianapolis 500. That’s because he’s on speed, of course. The grass she bought was from Cuernavaca. Very good stuff. I got stoned before I drove out to Rye, and what do you think I saw there? Grandma, drunk as a skunk, out on the lounge all wrapped in mosquito netting. So I went into the house and called Nina—that’s my lover—and I was half laughing and half crying, and I kept saying to her that she had to help me, but she was stoned and sad that I was gone, and it wasn’t a very good call.
“Why do you always have something sarcastic to say about my going to work? Who do you think supports you? It’s not that unusual to have a father who goes to work, Mary.”
“Angela sleeps with people,” John Joel said.
“What did you say?” Louise said.
John Joel lowered his eyes, but he said it again.
“I don’t even believe this,” Mary said. “Like, she’s my best friend, and I’m supposed to sit here and listen to this from the ten-year-old? I don’t even believe that he lies the way he does.”
“Why did you say that?” Jo
hn said.
“Because we were talking,” John Joel said.
“You and Angela were talking?”
“No. The four of us. She said something about Angela’s father, didn’t she? So I just said something.”
“You are so out of it,” Mary said.
“Oh yeah? Parker’s cousin works at the garage and he’s got a car behind his shed he’s restoring, and the door was unlocked, and Angela and Toddie was in there.”
“Were in there,” John said.
“I don’t know if she does or she doesn’t,” Louise said, “but this isn’t what I want to discuss at dinner on Saturday night. Please.”
“Everybody has to talk about just what you want to talk about,” John Joel said.
“You should be nice to us and not speak that way,” John said to John Joel. “Your braces are going to set us back two thousand bucks.”
“I don’t even want them.”
“So what,” Mary said. “You have to have them.” She smirked at John Joel.
Louise turned to John. “Don’t speak to him kiddingly about showing respect for his parents. He should speak to us nicely, damn it, braces or no braces.”
“Everything’s fucked,” he said. “What does it matter the way things should be?”
Louise put her napkin on the table. She refolded it in its original triangle shape. He did not know that Louise knew how to make a napkin cone-shaped. She fitted the napkin into her full water glass, got her purse from the floor and walked out of the restaurant.
“Jesus,” Mary muttered.
“You started it,” John Joel said.
There were little dishes on the table: mustard, duck sauce, dim sum dishes with bits of rice cake, an empty dish where the spareribs had been. And leftover food: a little pork ball in a dark brown sauce, chopped shrimp on lettuce, and the stuffed duck’s foot, which he had ordered out of curiosity. It had indeed been a duck’s foot, with a small ball of something in the claw. The industrious, frugal Chinese. No Chinese would ever be having such a dinner. And this had been an attempt to do something right, instead of taking them on a picnic.
