Ann Beattie - The State We're In

“You know, this is a peaceful, functional room,” he said. “More people should have a sanctuary like this. It must bring you pleasure to walk into this room.”

I’d been warned by the accountant to volunteer as little as possible, so I just said, “Yes, it does.”

“Not even a desk phone. A room for uninterrupted time.”

I nodded. That was entirely right. There was a phone in the kitchen and an extension phone in the bedroom that Étienne called an “antique.” She’d told me more than once that if I wanted to get a new phone, she could get good money for my pale blue Princess phone on eBay. I’m not rich, but I don’t have to sell every small thing I have. I give most of it away, or put a few things in my nice young neighbor’s July tag sale. That was not the issue, though. My extension phone was perfectly fine.

“I see that it’s your office,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s certainly just as you said it was. I hope you’re getting good writing done in here. I know you’ve had quite a few poems published in recent years. My daughter is at Sarah Lawrence, and she’s explained to me that poetry writing doesn’t bring in much income. Totally separate from knowing about my seeing you today, I mean. She wants to be a playwright.”

“I think that would be very interesting,” I said sincerely. I tried not to miss any production that wasn’t a musical at Hackmatack Playhouse, in North Berwick. Musicals I can do without. In the evening, I often listen to classical music in the living room. Yancey is soothed by it. Really, nothing is so lovely as a quietly snoring dog and some evening Brahms, as you sit in a comfortably overstuffed chair with your feet on the footstool.

“My house looks like a tornado hit it!” he said. “Your husband drank? My wife drinks. Our daughter could have had a very good scholarship at a nearby college, but she insisted on going away, and I knew exactly why. Last year when I had my appendix out, my wife forgot to pick me up when I was discharged. I had to get a cab home. And do you know what she was doing, that she’d lost track of time? She was having a gin and tonic in the middle of the afternoon, painting our daughter’s bedroom bright yellow, to make it ‘cheerful.’ She just painted whatever area of the wall was available to her. She didn’t move any furniture. She painted around the headboard. It was quite a mess. It made me feel faint when I saw it.”

I knew this conversation would not be taking place if I’d allowed the accountant to come to the house the same day the man from IRS came, but I hate it when people stand there like I’m a young, helpless girl again, and that inevitably happens if two people are present, because one of them is bound to feel sorry for you. I’m seventy-seven years old. I’ve had two poems in quarterlies this year, and I received a personal note of rejection from Paul Muldoon, who said he very much liked an allusion I made in section one of my poem about Galileo. No one has suggested I’m senile.

“So would you consider leaving your wife and moving into this peaceful home and changing your life?” I asked.

He looked startled. “Leave her?” he said. “I don’t think she’d remember to eat if I wasn’t there.”

“All right,” I said. “So I’m not breaking up your marriage today. Think about it, though. I could use some help walking Yancey at night. In March she got skunked. It was terrible, but there’s nothing you can do. I led her into the house and doused her with tomato juice. It’s happened before, so I had some on hand. Still, I made her sleep in the garage, in her old dog bed. I put an extra blanket over her and had to throw it out later, because three cycles in the washing machine didn’t get rid of the smell.”

We walked downstairs. Yancey waited at the bottom. I knew what she was thinking: field, breeze, sticks, little scurrying animals. We all forget the painful parts. The tomato juice.

“I’ve never before had someone invite me to move in!” he exclaimed as he picked up his jacket from the banister. “I thank you for that. And I wish you good luck with your writing. It was a pleasure to see the lovely room you write in.”

“My daughter and her wife drive me crazy, and you would have been good protection,” I said. “You know how it is when there’s a man around the house. People back down when there’s a manly presence.”

He nodded. He said, “If you were to recommend one book of poetry I should read, what would it be?”

“Do you prefer reading older poetry, or are you interested in new poetry?”

“Let’s say newer. Because I’ve never read recent poetry at all. We subscribe to magazines that print poetry, but I skip over it. I’m an equal opportunity idiot, I guess you’d say. I don’t read cartoon captions either.”

“Tell me a little about yourself,” I said. “Sentimental? At all mystical? Do you like a poem that tells a story, or a poem that’s more of an enigma?”

“I liked Robert Frost when I was at VMI,” he said. “I think he would have been the most recent poet we read.”

“And I’ll bet they taught you all wrong. I’ll bet they told you ‘The Road Not Taken’ was about making important choices and exhibiting free will, didn’t they?”

“I don’t really remember. I just remember that my roommate got two days in detention because he didn’t memorize it.”

“Are you Facebook friends now?”

“With Hank? No, he’s not on Facebook. He’s in jail in Delaware. For menacing his ex-wife.”

“My daughter’s wife was stalked by her ex-boyfriend. She says there’s no connection between her coming out and his doing that, but you have to wonder. He was an awful man. He slit her tires once. There’s still a restraining order against him, though they’ve heard he went back to Chicago.”

He shook his head slowly, lips pursed.

“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “He’s not at all like Robert Frost, but I think you might like the poems of James Wright. My favorite poem by him is ‘Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota.’ ” I held on to the banister and sat on the step. Yancey settled on her haunches next to me. When was this man ever going to leave, when was the door going to open with a great heave, when would the vole have to race into its hole, the snake take a break, the rabbit hide by habit, eyes bright and ears perked to the crackle of grass?

I cleared my throat. Reciting poetry while sitting was a little like trying to sing when flat on your back in bed, but I wanted him to hear the poem, and I’d been standing long enough:

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,

Asleep on the black trunk,

Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.

Down the ravine behind the empty house,

The cowbells follow one another

Into the distances of the afternoon.

To my right,

In a field of sunlight between two pines,

The droppings of last year’s horses

Blaze up into golden stones.

I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.

A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.

I have wasted my life.

“Is that really a poem?” he finally said.

“What else would it be?”

“I’ve never heard anything like that. The last line comes out of nowhere.”

“I don’t think so. He could have said that from the beginning, but he gave us the scene so that we’d be seduced, the way he’d been, and then he changed the game on us — on himself — at the last moment.”

“That’s the kind of guy who’d stick a pin in a balloon!” he said. “I mean, thank you very much for reciting that. I’ll get a book of his poetry and write to let you know my reaction.”