Ann Beattie - The State We're In

She slid back farther in the chair, her butt already numb from the metal. As she shifted her weight, she looked over her shoulder and saw her. Ms. Nementhal was several rows back, talking to a pretty woman. She saw her in profile, but Ms. Nementhal didn’t realize she’d been seen. She was busily conversing. She brushed her hair out of her eyes and, with the same hand, slid her arm around the woman’s shoulder. The woman looked at her with a little wry smile, her mouth lipsticked red. It was one of those mouths that seemed to have been delicately placed on someone’s face, like a flower tucked into a lapel. Jocelyn felt a jolt. A real jolt, like what it must feel like to be hit by lightning. That was an exaggeration. It was a tingle, and a simultaneous numbness — so that her butt wasn’t the only thing without feeling. She got it. She absolutely got it. But what were they doing at this stupid auction in the middle of nowhere? How could it be? What could she do to make sure Ms. Nementhal didn’t see her, since she was supposed to be writing her stupid fucking essay? Well, but wasn’t Ms. Nementhal supposed to be preparing for the next day’s class?

People seated around her immediately turned toward the fenced-off area as the lights suddenly dimmed and the Elvis lamps started flashing. Somehow, the bulbs were turning on and off in unison, the retarded cowboy singing another song and flipping a light switch, or using a remote, or whatever he held that made them flash. He was gyrating and singing “Jailhouse Rock.” It was a pretty good imitation. It really was. Her uncle stood there, clapping his hands above his head.

She patted the seat next to her when Bettina appeared at her side. It wasn’t likely, but maybe, maybe she could get out without Ms. Nementhal seeing her. Was she going to say anything about that to her aunt? No, she wasn’t. In a few minutes Raleigh came and sat next to them, stepping over their legs to get to the third seat. Bettina was chattering away, obsessed with her parlor set. “Is it like something you’ve seen before?” Jocelyn said, just to be polite and to have something to say. “What do you think I’ve been saying to you the last five minutes? Do you listen at all? It’s Victorian. It’s almost the exact duplicate of the one my grandparents had when I was much younger than you, if it had rose-colored velvet instead of green!”

The auctioneer took the stand, two younger men with their arms dangling at their sides, wearing overalls, flanking him. He greeted the man in the wheelchair by name, though Jocelyn couldn’t hear what he said. The yellow-gloved hand went into the air to make a gesture somewhere between hello and dismissal. After saying something to the auctioneer, the man started coughing. One of the auctioneer’s assistants looked at him nervously. The coughing went on for quite some time. Then the auctioneer introduced himself: “The auctioneer who needs no introduction! The warm-up act for Mr. Elvis Presley!” He started to speak into the microphone, a maddening, jammed-up sequence of words that crashed like bumper cars, after which everything sorted itself into some kind of sense again, and after the fact you could understand most of what he’d said. He held the microphone like a Popsicle that had started to melt. The words tumbled over each other, the sounds dipping and rising. He joked that people were there for “the head of Elvis,” but that he was going to offer sacrifices galore before they got to “the main body of the auction.” He stood behind a rickety podium. The men at his sides stared straight ahead over the crowd, shoulders back, feet a certain distance apart, hands clasped behind them like soldiers at ease. One of the things Jocelyn remembered about her father was that he’d shown her the positions soldiers took: attention, at ease. She’d liked to stand beside him and copy whatever he was doing. Now, she thought that was an unfortunate thing about men: they were always posturing when they were young, and if they went into the Army, they taught them not only postures but attitude. Like guys needed more attitude.

The assistants only cracked up once, when the auctioneer tried to pronounce a lot of words she finally realized must be Italian. They punched him in his arms and one went down on his knees and raised his arms to the barn roof, in some exaggerated, silent prayer. You could read his mind and understand basically what he was praying for. A lot of people laughed. “And who’s gonna bid, who starts the bid, who’ll give me fif-ty dollars?” he said, holding up an old doll whose hair was a mess, wearing only a top, no bottom. “And who says forty, over there: thirty-five? How can you be so pretty and be so mean? Do I hear thirty, what about twenty? She’s got to go to a good home, who’ll give me a quarter? Over there. And fifty cents? Thank you kindly. Seventy-five. Who’ll go a dollar? Try to buy yourself a hot dog now for only one dollar! If you’ve been to Fenway Park, you’ll know they cost five times that, am I right? Next year, mustard’s sure to be extra! We’re talking small potatoes here, folks, but don’t break my heart and make me think I’m sellin’ potato chips! I see a dollar. There and there, thank you, ma’am, and now we’re at one dollar twenty-five cents. Look at this lovely dolly. Looks to me like she might need a good home. Brush her hair and she’s good to go. One fifty. And one seventy-five. Going once, twice, one dollar and seventy-five cents? Number sixteen.”

Half an hour passed while he sold one piece of junk after another: Crock-Pots, vacuum cleaners, a mirror frame with broken glass held in place with duct tape, a pair of stilts, a board game said to have all the pieces. Things kept going for fifty cents or a dollar. The auctioneer held up what he said were “cast-iron elephant bookends. They say an elephant never forgets, ain’t that right, boys? Well, if it’s only half an elephant I guess it’s already forgotten half its body, but give me your finest bid. Who’s in at thirty dollars? Is that a bid? Twenty-five for these fine elephant fellows, or maybe it’s Mr. and Mrs. and eventually that might get you a third elephant. What will you bid? One dollar? And two! Two fifty! And three! Now we’re rollin’. Four dollars. Don’t quit on me now. Four it is, thank you kindly. And five. The lady with the pink sweater. Five dollars I’ve got, now six. Six? Going for five dollars? Number forty-nine!”

The lights dimmed and the Elvis busts flashed again, though this time some lit up while others stayed off, and for at least the third time, the guy in the cowboy hat did his Elvis impersonation, singing with the microphone almost in his mouth, wiggling his hips and unzipping his fly for a grand finale. You couldn’t see anything. Not even his underwear. Bettina was startled. She reached for Raleigh’s hand, and he took hers, but he was grinning and didn’t look at her. He didn’t want to miss anything.

The Elvis lamps, held up one by one beside the auctioneer as he took bids, did better than anything that preceded them. A man in a tweed jacket one row up rarely lowered his number. Eventually both other bidders dropped away. He didn’t bid on a few of the lamps, but the rest of the time he held his card steady, every now and then jabbing it upward. Once he almost left his seat like a streamer following the ascent of a kite. On the beach, T. G. had flown a kite and she’d liked that he was really into it, he wasn’t trying to be cool. What happened, sometimes, that guys just stopped trying to impress you — or was even that a way of trying to impress? The man with the raised card won almost every lamp, and the auctioneer joked that “there’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight!” “Las Vegas, Nevada!” some woman yelled, putting two fingers in her mouth and giving an earsplitting whistle. A child started to cry, and there was some shuffling of feet and concerned glances as its mother carried it outside. “So that does it for the King, the final curtain,” the auctioneer said. “Iddn that right, boys? Happens to the best of us. Who were those boys in their glitter suits that their lion turned on one of ’em and he never worked again? That great, great act under the big top. We all remember that. Can’t think you’ve made friends with a lion! And now we move on to the piece of resistance, as the Frenchies say. Some mighty fine courtin’ might go on if you get yourself this furniture set, comfy cozy as a La-Z-Boy, and my boys are here to prove it. Sit yourself in that chair you’re bringing up here, Donald, and tell us how comfy it feels. They don’t make ’em like that anymore. Wheels on the legs, in case conversation gets borin’ and you need to make a quick getaway! And who’ll start us off at five hun-dred dollars?”