Ann Beattie - The State We're In

They passed Dunkin’ Donuts and followed the road to where it turned at the bend. She’d never been to an auction. In spite of what her aunt had said, her purse was in her lap. She heard her unzip it and take out her glasses to look at the map a second time, then put them away.

“Here we go,” Raleigh said, turning onto a lawn where a teenager with a white flag waved him forward. They bounced through deep ruts, Raleigh holding the wheel tightly in both hands. “Ridiculous,” he muttered. “What do we get for our tax dollars?” Another car in front of them bumped into a parking place, and Raleigh turned in beside it. “Close up the hole!” the boy said, pointing his flag at the other car.

“There’s about three inches between us,” Raleigh said, rolling down the window. “If I parked closer, we wouldn’t be able to get out.” He put his window up again. “Idiot,” he said, under his breath. The boy had walked away and was waving his flag at the next car.

“Are we going to get the parlor set for Jocelyn? And keep it as her dowry?” Bettina asked Raleigh, but he was walking too far ahead of her to hear. Jocelyn slapped a mosquito that was either trying to or had succeeded in biting her ear. “Shit!” she said. “Language,” her aunt said. A young man and his blond girlfriend walked through the space between Jocelyn and Bettina, hurrying across the field toward the auction barn. They joined hands once they’d passed by, and the girl flipped her long blond hair over her shoulder. “Alex!” someone shouted. “Hey, Alex, you’ve got to come see our puppies!”

Alex hollered, “Hey — you don’t care that my mom’s moved to London? You think I care about your puppies? I’m one of those puppies now!”

“What?” the girl said. “Where did she go?”

“She rode off on a coach like Cinderella, only it was C & J. Next auction, we can clean out her room and make money! My dad would totally appreciate help in emptying the house!”

Jocelyn killed two more mosquitoes before they got to the barn, and Bettina gripped the thick handle of her big purse. Jocelyn had rummaged in the purse, but only when her aunt told her to; she wasn’t a creep like some kids who were always stealing money. She’d opened it to get Bettina a Kleenex when she was driving, to see if her lipstick was in there, to fish around for quarters for parking. The purse was nothing but a bag of disappointments. It was stupid to carry things like that. Only old people did it. To the side of the building was a concession stand, and Jocelyn thought, meanly, that if Bettina hadn’t made it clear to her that she shouldn’t spend money on things like overpriced Coke, she’d like one. Her mouth felt tingly; if she tried to throw up now, she’d probably be able to. A big man whose leg had been amputated above the knee rolled himself along, a bright yellow fingerless glove on one hand. The American flag dangled from a pole attached to the back. He wore one slip-on shoe and a black sock. You could see his stomach where his shirt was missing buttons. A little girl was tugging her mother’s hand. “Stop it!” her mother said, pulling her along. “You behave.”

“Hear that? That’s the warning women have gotten through the ages, isn’t it?”

Jocelyn didn’t answer. Inside, the space was divided into two sections with a low wood fence blocking off the area where the auction items were on display. You could tell from a distance that nothing was very special. The building smelled of hay and mildew. Metal chairs were set up in rows. Right now, it looked easy to get a seat near the front. A man came in with a cane, and another man tried to strike up a conversation. The first man kept poking the cane tip toward the closed-off area. Finally he walked away and left the other guy talking to himself, cigarette cupped in his hand. The amputee rolled himself in front of all the chairs and put on his brake. A ceiling fan blew the flag, but otherwise little air circulated in the barn. Why couldn’t they be at a movie? A vampire movie? The mother and child she’d seen earlier moved around the fence and looked but didn’t enter, as if standing behind a rope, waiting for a bouncer to wave them in. One night she’d gone with her friend back home, Rachel, to a disco, but they’d never made it in, and finally they’d gone to a diner and split a foot-long hot dog. Rachel had a bottle of scotch in the car, but of course they couldn’t bring that in. Wouldn’t it be great not to be carded and to be able to afford to eat and drink in a restaurant?

Inside, amid the clutter of tables and chairs and equipment and bolts of upholstery fabric, a lot of people were taking notes or laughing and talking to one another. At a card table near the back, a woman had you fill out a form attached to a clipboard. For a second, Jocelyn remembered her aunt’s flip-out at the eye doctor’s. At least there had been a medical reason for it. Her mother was just plain crazy. The woman handed out white cards with big numbers written on them with black Magic Marker when you returned the form. The girl Jocelyn had seen earlier — Alex? — was fanning her face with her card while her boyfriend rummaged through tool boxes. He was black-haired, with a tattoo of a rifle piercing a skull on his bulging bicep and sagging pants. He wore unlaced red high-tops. “You gonna bid on the King?” the woman sitting behind the card table asked the guy wearing a cowboy hat, who was standing in front of Alex and her boyfriend. “They all came out of the same house, which I heard belonged to the ex-husband of Lisa Marie Presley!” she said. “Her mother, Priscilla, got to be married to the King, and she ran off with the yoga instructor!”

“Well now, you slept with the King, yourself, in Las Vegas, didn’t you? Wasn’t that what you was telling me the other night, about all that hot sex?”

“Go on!” the woman said, laughing, handing him number 38. “One thing’s for sure, and you’re the living proof of it: we won’t see the likes of him again.”

“There it is! Look!” Bettina said. “Such beautiful green velvet. And notice the delicate carving on the wood. I believe it’s a real Eastlake parlor set. We should get it for you, Jocelyn.”

“I don’t want that shit,” Jocelyn said.

“Language,” her aunt said halfheartedly, walking off to get a number.

“I’ll bet you’re sorry we came,” Jocelyn said to Raleigh. “But hey: it’s a distraction, right? We can try to forget the Nick scumbag exists. And it’s what Bettina wanted to do.”

“That’s true,” he said. “It pleases Bettina. She grew up in Michigan, you know, with her grandfather and grandmother. Her grandmother taught her to love old furniture.”

Raleigh stuck out as not belonging in this crowd. She hoped she did, too. Bettina fit right in. She waved her number at Jocelyn and began to inspect the things close to where she’d gotten her bidding card. Jocelyn hung back, making sure to keep a distance between herself and her uncle. “Loving you, loving you!” the cowboy sang, gesturing toward a dozen or so Elvis lamps, hand over his heart as if he were saying the Pledge of Allegiance. The lamps had no shades. All of them — and there were a lot — were arranged on a long table. A few lampshades lay on the ground behind it. A small bird sat on top of one; it took off quickly toward the top of the barn when people approached. “Light switches work? Can we get some of those Dairy Queen swirled ice cream lookin’, energy-savin’ lightbulbs to come out of the King’s head like snakes do you think?” Cowboy asked.

“I’m going to sit down,” she said to Raleigh. He’d been watching the man who was infatuated with his own voice. He nodded. She took a chair five rows back from the podium, trying to ignore the man in the wheelchair, but the flag kept drawing her attention. She closed her eyes and tried to remember the beach, Cassiopeia, the stars, how really black the sky could be. Her one little thing with T. G., after which Zelda arrived and acted really pissed off about something. Who knew what. That they were sitting in the sand holding hands, just the two of them? Big deal. When she opened her eyes, the guy with the tattoos was pulling out a chair on the opposite side of the aisle, though the girl he’d been with never did join him. Jocelyn stared, more or less because she didn’t know where else to look. The image of the rifle that curved because of the way his muscle bulged was sort of riveting. BLT kept rising up on her toes, trying to wave her over. Jocelyn just wanted the auction to be over. In school, she wanted class to be over. On the beach, she wanted to be back in her room. In her room, she wanted to be in her house — her mother’s house. What was that going to be like, sharing space — sharing her mother — with the drug addict?