by Ann Beattie
We take the subway, and Andrew sits in the crowded car by squeezing himself onto the seat next to me and sitting on one hip, his left leg thrown over mine so that we must look like a ventriloquist and a dummy. The black woman sitting next to him shifts over a little. He stays squeezed against me.
“If Bonnie offers you lunch, I bet you take it,” I say, poking the side of his parka.
“I couldn’t eat any more.”
“You?” I say.
“String bean,” he says to me. He pats his puffy parka. Underneath it, you would be able to see his ribs through the T-shirt. He is lean and would be quite handsome except for the obvious defect of his mouth, which droops at one corner as if he’s sneering.
We are riding on the subway, and Ruth is back at the tiny converted carriage house she rents from a surgeon and his wife in Westport. Like everything else in the area, it is overpriced, and she can barely afford it—her little house with not enough light, with plastic taped over the aluminum screens and the screens left in the windows because there are no storm windows. Wood is burning in the stove, and herbs are clumped in a bag of gauze hung in the pot of chicken stock. She is underlining things in books, cutting coupons out of newspapers. On Wednesdays she does not have to go to work at the community college where she teaches. She is waiting for her lover, Brandon, to call or to come over: there’s warmth, soup, discoveries about literature, and, if he cares, privacy. I envy him an afternoon with Ruth, because she will cook for him and make him laugh and ask nothing from him. She earns hardly any money at the community college, but her half gallons of wine taste better than the expensive bottles Arthur’s business friends uncork. She will reach out and touch you to let you know she is listening when you talk, instead of suggesting that you go out to see some movie for amusement.
Almost every time I take Andrew home Brandon is there. It’s rare that he goes there any other day of the week. Sometimes he brings two steaks. On Valentine’s Day he brought her a plant that grows well in the dim light of the kitchen. It sits on the windowsill behind the sink and is weaving upward, guided by tacks Ruth has pushed into the window frame. The leaves are thick and small, green and heart shaped. If I were a poet, those green leaves would be envy, closing her in. Like many people, he does envy her. He would like to be her, but he does not want to take her on. Or Andrew.
—
The entryway to Bonnie’s loft is so narrow, painted bile green, peeling and filthy, that I always nearly panic, thinking I’ll never get to the top. I expect roaches to lose their grip on the ceiling and fall on me; I expect a rat to dart out. I run, silently, ahead of Andrew.
Bonnie opens the door wearing a pair of paint-smeared jeans, one of Hal’s V-neck sweaters hanging low over her hips. Her loft is painted the pale yellow of the sun through fog. Her photographs are tacked to the walls, her paintings hung. She hugs both of us and wants us to stay. I take off my coat and unzip Andrew’s parka and lay it across his legs. The arms stick out from the sides, no hands coming through them. It could be worse; Andrew could have been born without hands or arms. “I’ll tell you what I’m sick of,” Ruth said to me not long after he was born, one of the few times she ever complained. “I’m sick of hearing how things might have been worse, when they might also have been better. I’m sick of lawyers saying to wait—not to settle until we’re sure how much damage has been done. They talk about damage with their vague regret, the way the weatherman talks about another three inches of snow. I’m sick of wind whistling through the house, when it could be warm and dry.” She is never sick of Brandon, and the two steaks he brings, although he couldn’t come to dinner the night of Andrew’s birthday, and she is not bitter that Andrew’s father has had no contact with her since before the birth. “Angry?” Ruth said to me once. “I’m angry at myself. I don’t often misjudge people that way.”
Bonnie fixes Andrew hot chocolate. My hands are about to shake, but I take another cup of coffee anyway, thinking that it might just be because the space heater radiates so little heat in the loft. Andrew and I sit close together, the white sofa spreading away on either side of us. Andrew looks at some of Ruth’s photographs, but his attention drifts away and he starts to hum. I fit them back in the manila envelope, between the pieces of cardboard, and tie the envelope closed. He rests his head on my arm, so that it’s hard to wind the string to close the envelope. While his eyes are closed, Bonnie whispers to me: “I couldn’t. I couldn’t take money from her.”
She looks at me as if I’m crazy. Now it’s my problem: How am I going to give Ruth the check back without offending her? I fold the check and put it in my pocket.
“You’ll think of something,” Bonnie said softly.
She looks hopeful and sad. She is going to have a baby, too. She knows already that she is going to have a girl. She knows that she is going to name her Ora. What she doesn’t know is that Hal gambled and lost a lot of money and is worried about how they will afford a baby. Ruth knows that, because Hal called and confided in her. Is it modesty or self-preservation that makes Ruth pretend that she is not as important to people as she is? He calls, she told me, just because he is one of the few people she has ever known who really enjoys talking on the telephone.
—
We take the subway uptown, back to Grand Central Station. It is starting to fill up with commuters: men with light, expensive raincoats and heavy briefcases, women carrying shopping bags. In another couple of hours Arthur will be in the station on his way home. The manila envelope is clamped under my arm. Everyone is carrying something. I have the impulse to fold Andrew to me and raise him in my arms. I could do that until he was five, and then I couldn’t do it anymore. I settle for taking his hand, and we walk along swinging hands until I let go for a second to look at my watch. I look from my watch to the clock. They don’t agree, and of course the clock is right, the watch is not. We have missed the 3:05. In an hour there is another train, but on that train it’s going to be difficult to get a seat. Or, worse, someone is going to see that something beyond tiredness is wrong with Andrew, and we are going to be offered a seat, and he is going to know why. He suspects already, the way children of a certain age look a little guilty when Santa Claus is mentioned, but I hope I am not there when some person’s eye meets Andrew’s and instead of looking away he looks back, knowing.
“We’re going to have to wait for the next train,” I tell him.
“How come?”
“Because we missed our train.”
“Didn’t you know it when you looked at your watch at Bonnie’s?”
He is getting tired, and cranky. Next he’ll ask how old I am. And why his mother prefers to stay with Brandon instead of coming to New York with us.
“It would have been rude to leave earlier. We were only there a little while.”
I look at him to see what he thinks. Sometimes his thinking is a little slow, but he is also very smart about what he senses. He thinks what I think—that if I had meant to, we could have caught the train. He stares at me with the same dead-on stare Ray gives me when he thinks I am being childish. And, of course, it is because of Ray that I lingered. I always mean not to call him, but I almost always do. We cross the terminal and I go to a phone and drop in a dime. Andrew backs up and spins on his heel. His parka slips off his shoulder again. And his glove—where is his glove? One glove is on the right hand, but there’s no glove in either pocket. I sound disappointed, far away when Ray says hello.
“It’s just—he lost his glove,” I say.
“Where are you?” he says.
“Grand Central.”
“Are you coming in or going out?”
“Going home.”
His soft voice: “I was afraid of that.”
Silence.
“Ray?”
“What? Don’t tell me you’re going to concoct some reason to see me—ask me to take him off, man to man, and buy him new gloves?” It makes me laugh.
“You know what, lady?” Ray says. “I do better amusi
ng you over the phone than in person.”
A woman walks by, carrying two black poodles. She has on a long gray fur coat and carries the little dogs, who look as if they’re peeking out of a cave of fur, nestled in the crook of each arm. Everything is a Stan Mack cartoon. Another woman walks across the terminal. She has forgotten something, or changed her mind—she shakes her head suddenly and begins to walk the other way. Far away from us, she starts to run. Andrew turns and turns. I reach down to make him be still, but he jerks away, spins again, loses interest, and just stands there, staring across the station.
“Fuck it,” Ray says. “Can I come down and buy you a drink?”
—
More coffee. Andrew has a milk shake. Ray sits across from us, stirring his coffee as if he’s mixing something. Last year when I decided that loving Ray made me as confused as disliking Arthur, and that he had too much power over me and that I could not be his lover anymore, I started taking Andrew to the city with me. It hasn’t worked out well; it exasperates Ray, and I feel guilty for using Andrew.
“New shoes,” Ray says, pushing his leg out from under the table.
He has on black boots, and he is as happy with them as Andrew was with the pennies I gave him this morning. I smile at him. He smiles back.
“What did you do today?” Ray says.
“Went on an errand for Ruth. Went to the Guggenheim.”
He nods. I used to sleep with him and then hold his head as if I believed in phrenology. He used to hold my hands as I held his head. Ray has the most beautiful hands I have ever seen.
“Want to stay in town?” he says. “I was going to the ballet. I can probably get two more tickets.”
Andrew looks at me, suddenly interested in staying.
“I’ve got to go home and make dinner for Arthur.”
“Milk the cows,” Ray says. “Knead the bread. Stoke the stove. Go to bed.”
Andrew looks up at him and smiles broadly before he gets self-conscious and puts his hand to the corner of his mouth and looks away.
“You never heard that one before?” Ray says to Andrew. “My grandmother used to say that. Times have changed and times haven’t changed.” He looks away, shakes his head. “I’m profound today, aren’t I? Good it’s coffee and not the drink I wanted.”
Andrew shifts in the booth, looks at me as if he wants to say something. I lean my head toward him. “What?” I say softly. He starts a rush of whispering.
“His mother is learning to fall,” I say.
“What does that mean?” Ray says.
“In her dance class,” Andrew says. He looks at me again, shy. “Tell him.”
“I’ve never seen her do it,” I say. “She told me about it—it’s an exercise or something. She’s learning to fall.”
Ray nods. He looks like a professor being patient with a student who has just reached an obvious conclusion. You know when Ray isn’t interested. He holds his head very straight and looks you right in the eye, as though he is.
“Does she just go plop?” he says to Andrew.
“Not really,” Andrew says, more to me than to Ray. “It’s kind of slow.”
I imagine Ruth bringing her arms in front of her, head bent, an almost penitential position, and then a loosening in the knees, a slow folding downward.
Ray reaches across the table and pulls my arms away from the front of my body, and his touch startles me so that I jump, almost upsetting my coffee.
“Let’s take a walk,” he says. “Come on. You’ve got time.”
He puts two dollars down and pushes the money and the check to the back of the table. I hold Andrew’s parka for him and he backs into it. Ray adjusts it on his shoulders. Ray bends over and feels in Andrew’s pockets.
“What are you doing?” Andrew says.
“Sometimes disappearing mittens have a way of reappearing,” Ray says. “I guess not.”
Ray zips his own green jacket and pulls on his hat. I walk out of the restaurant beside him, and Andrew follows.
“I’m not going far,” Andrew says. “It’s cold.”
I clutch the envelope. Ray looks at me and smiles, it’s so obvious that I’m holding the envelope with both hands so I don’t have to hold his hand. He moves in close and puts his hand around my shoulder. No hand swinging like children—the proper gentleman and the lady out for a stroll. What Ruth has known all along: what will happen can’t be stopped. Aim for grace.
THE CINDERELLA WALTZ
Milo and Bradley are creatures of habit. For as long as I’ve known him, Milo has worn his moth-eaten blue scarf with the knot hanging so low on his chest that the scarf is useless. Bradley is addicted to coffee and carries a thermos with him. Milo complains about the cold, and Bradley is always a little edgy. They come out from the city every Saturday—this is not habit but loyalty—to pick up Louise. Louise is even more unpredictable than most nine-year-olds; sometimes she waits for them on the front step, sometimes she hasn’t even gotten out of bed when they arrive. One time she hid in a closet and wouldn’t leave with them.
Today Louise has put together a shopping bag full of things she wants to take with her. She is taking my whisk and my blue pottery bowl, to make Sunday breakfast for Milo and Bradley; Beckett’s Happy Days, which she has carried around for weeks, and which she looks through, smiling—but I’m not sure she’s reading it; and a coleus growing out of a conch shell. Also, she has stuffed into one side of the bag the fancy Victorian-style nightgown her grandmother gave her for Christmas, and into the other she has tucked her octascope. Milo keeps a couple of dresses, a nightgown, a toothbrush, and extra sneakers and boots at his apartment for her. He got tired of rounding up her stuff to pack for her to take home, so he has bought some things for her that can be left. It annoys him that she still packs bags, because then he has to go around making sure that she has found everything before she goes home. She seems to know how to manipulate him, and after the weekend is over she calls tearfully to say that she has left this or that, which means that he must get his car out of the garage and drive all the way out to the house to bring it to her. One time, he refused to take the hour-long drive, because she had only left a copy of Tolkien’s The Two Towers. The following weekend was the time she hid in the closet.
“I’ll water your plant if you leave it here,” I say now.
“I can take it,” she says.
“I didn’t say you couldn’t take it. I just thought it might be easier to leave it, because if the shell tips over the plant might get ruined.”
“Okay,” she says. “Don’t water it today, though. Water it Sunday afternoon.”
I reach for the shopping bag.
“I’ll put it back on my windowsill,” she says. She lifts the plant out and carries it as if it’s made of Steuben glass. Bradley bought it for her last month, driving back to the city, when they stopped at a lawn sale. She and Bradley are both very choosy, and he likes that. He drinks French-roast coffee; she will debate with herself almost endlessly over whether to buy a coleus that is primarily pink or lavender or striped.
“Has Milo made any plans for this weekend?” I ask.
“He’s having a couple of people over tonight, and I’m going to help them make crepes for dinner. If they buy more bottles of that wine with the yellow flowers on the label, Bradley is going to soak the labels off for me.”
“That’s nice of him,” I say. “He never minds taking a lot of time with things.”
“He doesn’t like to cook, though. Milo and I are going to cook. Bradley sets the table and fixes flowers in a bowl. He thinks it’s frustrating to cook.”
“Well,” I say, “with cooking you have to have a good sense of timing. You have to coordinate everything. Bradley likes to work carefully and not be rushed.”
I wonder how much she knows. Last week she told me about a conversation she’d had with her friend Sarah. Sarah was trying to persuade Louise to stay around on the weekends, but Louise said she always went to her father’s. Then Sarah trie
d to get her to take her along, and Louise said that she couldn’t. “You could take her if you wanted to,” I said later. “Check with Milo and see if that isn’t right. I don’t think he’d mind having a friend of yours occasionally.”
She shrugged. “Bradley doesn’t like a lot of people around,” she said.
“Bradley likes you, and if she’s your friend I don’t think he’d mind.”
She looked at me with an expression I didn’t recognize; perhaps she thought I was a little dumb, or perhaps she was just curious to see if I would go on. I didn’t know how to go on. Like an adult, she gave a little shrug and changed the subject.
—
At ten o’clock Milo pulls into the driveway and honks his horn, which makes a noise like a bleating sheep. He knows the noise the horn makes is funny, and he means to amuse us. There was a time just after the divorce when he and Bradley would come here and get out of the car and stand around silently, waiting for her. She knew that she had to watch for them, because Milo wouldn’t come to the door. We were both bitter then, but I got over it. I still don’t think Milo would have come into the house again, though, if Bradley hadn’t thought it was a good idea. The third time Milo came to pick her up after he’d left home, I went out to invite them in, but Milo said nothing. He was standing there with his arms at his sides like a wooden soldier, and his eyes were as dead to me as if they’d been painted on. It was Bradley whom I reasoned with. “Louise is over at Sarah’s right now, and it’ll make her feel more comfortable if we’re all together when she comes in,” I said to him, and Bradley turned to Milo and said, “Hey, that’s right. Why don’t we go in for a quick cup of coffee?” I looked into the backseat of the car and saw his red thermos there; Louise had told me about it. Bradley meant that they should come in and sit down. He was giving me even more than I’d asked for.
It would be an understatement to say that I disliked Bradley at first. I was actually afraid of him, afraid even after I saw him, though he was slender, and more nervous than I, and spoke quietly. The second time I saw him, I persuaded myself that he was just a stereotype, but someone who certainly seemed harmless enough. By the third time, I had enough courage to suggest that they come into the house. It was embarrassing for all of us, sitting around the table—the same table where Milo and I had eaten our meals for the years we were married. Before he left, Milo had shouted at me that the house was a farce, that my playing the happy suburban housewife was a farce, that it was unconscionable of me to let things drag on, that I would probably kiss him and say, “How was your day, sweetheart?” and that he should bring home flowers and the evening paper. “Maybe I would!” I screamed back. “Maybe it would be nice to do that, even if we were pretending, instead of you coming home drunk and not caring what had happened to me or to Louise all day.” He was holding on to the edge of the kitchen table, the way you’d hold on to the horse’s reins in a runaway carriage. “I care about Louise,” he said finally. That was the most horrible moment. Until then, until he said it that way, I had thought that he was going through something horrible—certainly something was terribly wrong—but that, in his way, he loved me after all. “You don’t love me?” I had whispered at once. It took us both aback. It was an innocent and pathetic question, and it made him come and put his arms around me in the last hug he ever gave me. “I’m sorry for you,” he said, “and I’m sorry for marrying you and causing this, but you know who I love. I told you who I love.” “But you were kidding,” I said. “You didn’t mean it. You were kidding.”
