Ann Beattie - The State We're In

Behind Terry’s ear — at the spot where photographers told you to focus when they made your portrait so you wouldn’t gaze too intently into the lens (which paradoxically made your expression silly, rather than intense), the long-haired Hannah suddenly tossed what turned out to be her last few pebbles into the water, as if they’d been burning her palm. But she was young, and her dramatic moment was over. Next, she withdrew her phone from her pocket, though to Clair’s surprise that, too, was thrown in the air as if it were a hot coal. It flew in a steep arc across the water until it sank. She’d done it so impulsively. Or might she have sensed that she was being observed? It had been Dem’s opinion that you could always sense the photographer’s presence in a great photograph — though he also believed that sometimes what you were seeing was the moment the photographer actually turned his back on what he was seeing, so the image became a record of the photographer’s exit. Terry had a problem on his hands, as he must know. Hannah stood at water’s edge, her bowed head that of a penitent. If she had it to do over again, would she?

“There are Elvis lamps at the auction,” Bettina said. “Also a collection of reptile purses. What do you suppose those are? I assume, alligator bags? There’s a parlor set, which you can bet is so out of fashion it won’t meet the minimum bid, which is fifty-five dollars. You couldn’t get two mani-pedis for that. Get this: there’s no minimum on ‘assorted kitchen implements from Italy,’ including brass measuring cups whose description is written out in Italian, so I can’t make any sense of it, and a chestnut-handle pizza cutter.”

Jocelyn’s mother and — beyond belief! — her boyfriend, Nick, were driving to Maine on Friday and would stay for the weekend at a motel (they had to have that much sex?) and take Jocelyn back with them to the house the bank hadn’t yet repossessed. He’d moved in. Her mother had been seeing this man for almost a year and had never once mentioned him? How was that possible, when her mother was home every night and hardly ever got a phone call? She was lying; she’d just met him. You just had to assume adults lied. Why not say she’d just met the guy? Nobody was going to faint if somebody old had a boyfriend. They were feeling each other up in nursing homes, steering their wheelchairs into each other’s to flirt! Ancient people who ran around the halls at night, jumping into each other’s beds. (She’d found this out during the summer from Zelda’s mother, who was a health aide and who would discuss really gross topics.) The one incentive to go to college was to get out of the house, which she still thought they might lose, because she’d overheard so many of her uncle’s phone calls and he never seemed reassured by them. It would even be better to continue living where she was — her uncle was a nice man now that he was no longer doing gross things for the government, and Bettina was definitely better after she was discharged from the hospital and stopped cramming food down her throat day and night. Jocelyn would have to go with her mother, but she’d be counting the days until she could be on her own. Angie had asked her mother if Jocelyn could live with them, and she’d said certainly not, she had a mother. If that was the kind of logic she was up against, then no: there was no one to save her. She wasn’t going to give the Nick person the satisfaction of banishing her.

Her uncle was shocked by the Big News; he’d phoned her mother way too many times since he found out about her changed situation. Maybe he was warming up to have a heart attack. Somehow he’d been arranging the refinancing of his sister’s house — then this! So where did Raleigh get the money, if neither of them had jobs? Though they tried to keep the information from her, she knew from overhearing Bettina talking to Raleigh at night that one of their credit cards had been canceled, which made Bettina even more haywire about money. Bettina said it would be fun to go to the auction because she’d limit herself to twenty dollars — he could keep it in his pocket; she wouldn’t even bring her purse — and anyway, it would be a pretty drive out into the country and they didn’t just want to sit around and be sad that Jocelyn was leaving. Bettina could be really smarmy when she decided to try to appear brave and heroic; actually, she was guilt-tripping you. They were sad that her mother had picked up some stupid guy and let him move into the refinanced house, that was what they were sad about. They never talked about their own daughter, never said the words Charlotte Octavia (who’d been named for E. B. White’s spider). Charlotte Octavia was living with her boyfriend L’il Co!MOTION in Seattle — and for that, she envied her.

Earlier that day her uncle had met with her teacher because (1) the bitch — which she turned out to be — was insisting that she rewrite the essay she hadn’t given a passing grade to or she wouldn’t graduate, and (2) he couldn’t understand why her grades alternated between Cs and Ds, since it seemed clear to him that her essays had improved. He had no sympathy for her dragging her feet about the final essay, though Jocelyn knew that he thought Ms. Nementhal hadn’t done a good enough job, if — according to her — Jocelyn’s essays never improved, but wasn’t it the teacher’s fault if she didn’t learn how to make them better? Aunt Bettina had made the appointment to talk to Ms. Nementhal; then, feigning dizziness, she’d sent Raleigh in her place. If she’d really been dizzy, it was because of what she’d just found out about her sister-in-law, who was having sex way too soon after a hysterectomy. Her mother had insisted on a time-out, no texting or calls while she was recovering and Jocelyn was in summer school, and now it was clear why that served her purposes so well. Who wanted to be interrupted having sex?

Bettina had gotten her own message and called Raleigh in the middle of his golf game, in tears. Her uncle had turned into an instant liar — though he hadn’t cut his golf game short. “I’m sure she’s got a good reason for having a relationship with him,” he’d said to Bettina as he came through the front door. “People have reasons we can’t always understand, but if we have faith—”

“Stop rationalizing!” Bettina shrieked. “She told me he’d completed a drug rehab program.”

“Well, for a time I was in AA,” he said. “You don’t hold that against me.”

“That has nothing to do with this,” Bettina said. “He was a landlord in New York City, and he lost his entire building, including his own apartment, and when he met her he was staying on a friend’s foldout couch in Queens, engaged to another one of the addicts.”

Raleigh winced. “We shouldn’t be discussing this in front of Jocelyn,” he said. “Another time, maybe you can tell me how you know that.”

“Another time, I’ll try to jump-start your brain, Raleigh.”

“I’m going to Angie’s to write my essay,” she said. “Is everybody okay with that, or would you like me to send flowers and a note of congratulations to Mom?”

“What if you grow up and you’re as ignorant as you are right this minute?” Bettina said. She answered herself: “Then it’s heredity, I suppose, and we can pity you. You’re not going to her house to write any essay. You’ll go down to the beach and smoke pot, or whatever you do. Probably hatch a plan to murder your teacher, or something that will ruin your life, as if your mother hasn’t done enough! What good did that shrink do her, I want to know. Maybe she met the drug addict in his waiting room.”

“We really aren’t the kind of people who talk this way, are we, Bettina? As if we’re better than people who address their problems?” Raleigh ran his hands through his hair. He said, “I think this news just has to settle in.”