Ann Beattie - Love Always

When they walked in, Noonan was walking out the door. “You the reporter?” he said to Myra. “I’m Noonan, the one who holds everything together here. Off the record, this man is a Communist and is planning to run for office as a Republican. I’m on my way to lunch or I’d tell you more.” Noonan continued out the door.

The secretary had on earphones. She smiled when Noonan started talking, but did not stop typing. A month ago, when Hildon had gone to bed with Elena, she had not removed her earphones. She had been listening to a tape of a Jerry Lewis Telethon. Hildon noticed that the pig had epaulets of memos, and its stomach was entirely covered with white paper. He cocked his head and read a few of them without removing any, and walked up the stairs, with Myra behind him.

He gestured for Myra to walk into the mailroom. There was a Victorian sofa he and Lucy had bought at an estate sale the year before, and he had brought some lamps from his house — things Maureen didn’t want when she redecorated. It was a comfortable room; sometimes at the end of the day Hildon went there and stretched out and read mail. There were more letters stacked in trays marked “In,” “Out,” and “Coitus Interruptus.” There were several letter openers on the table.

“Make yourself at home,” Hildon said. “Come and get me, or go downstairs and get Elena if you have any questions.”

When Hildon left, she walked to the window and looked out. It was a view of town she hadn’t seen; a few stories higher up, she could have looked down on the domed roof of the bank. She looked into the empty window boxes. A squirrel ran up the trunk of a dead elm, then ran down again, circled the tree, and dashed into an alleyway.

She had only read half a dozen letters in the In basket when she came to one that interested her so much that she read it again, and then transcribed it:

Dear Cindi Coeur,

My problem is my former lover. She writes an advice column for messed-up people, but the joke is, she is very messed up herself. She has never broken the tie — or made a real connection — with the man who is now her boss and longtime on-again, off-again lover. Years ago, I thought that if we left New York and moved to Vermont, they could confront the situation (Vermont is also where he is in hiding from being a serious person) and find out for themselves what was real and what was a delusion. Are they hedonists or masochists? Nothing has made them figure it out, including my leaving. Don’t you miss me? Aren’t you tired of avoiding yourself and of parodying somebody who does care about people’s problems? Now that you don’t have me to analyze anymore, have you spent any time trying to figure yourself out? I’ll tell you one thing: you’re a hard act to follow. Can we see each other?

Love Always, Les

LIKE the heroine of her favorite novel, there were many things that Maureen would never do: drink tequila; give blood; do volunteer work; put into practice what Hildon had taught her about changing a tire; sharpen her own knives; read Proust; bargain for lower prices at the vegetable stand at the end of the day; have oral sex; learn the metric system; snorkel; have a conversation with a Jehovah’s Witness; do acrostics.

She had just done one of those things, and it was the most horrible thing imaginable.

Maureen had decided that she needed to change her life. She had lost her sense of herself, and she had to regain it. It was not that she had been Hildon’s wife too long, but rather that it did not seem that she was anybody’s anything. When she decided to be Matt Smith’s lover, she thought that would spite Hildon, but actually doing something like that was self-destructive: she was only being spiteful to herself.

She did what people always did in the movies when they were having a crisis. She looked in the mirror. Even trying as hard as she could, her face was so familiar to her that she did not know how objective she could be.

She was at least attractive. It might make her prettier if she had her hair streaked, lightened around the face. She might go back to buying and wearing the candy-colored clothes she had liked as a student at Mary Baldwin College. She might affect that southern accent again, slightly. None of it would do any good if she continued to be surrounded by the bizarre, self-indulgent people who had been part of her life since Hildon’s magazine became such a success. But before she could meet new people, she would have to restore her self-confidence. And today, Davina Cole, for a mere $50 an hour, was going to help her to be the best person she could be.

As Davina explained it, her approach was part psychotherapy, part whole body reconditioning, and part assertiveness training.

In preparation for their session, Maureen, as Davina had instructed, had tried to get a good night’s sleep and had had mineral water with orange juice for breakfast and eaten lightly. Davina had had a photograph of Maureen enlarged, cut out, and backed with cardboard. She leaned it against the wall as they talked. This black and white Maureen was almost life size. It was quite eerie, having it there in the living room: Maureen in her sarong, smiling.

“When you look at that, what do you see?” Davina said.

Maureen looked at it a long time. “I don’t know,” she said.

“You see an attractive woman smiling, don’t you?”

“Maybe I look silly.”

“Please don’t think of the statue as ‘I.’ Try to tell me only what you see.”

“I think I see a woman who isn’t especially attractive. Just an ordinary woman.”

“What is the part you think is most attractive?”

Maureen thought about it. The legs were nice; the calves thin and shapely. The hair was long, thick, and rather dramatic. She knew that her eyes were probably her best feature, but the blowup had almost obliterated detail, so that they were oval, muddy pools. “The hair,” she said.

“Good,” Davina said. “Concentrate on that for a few minutes.”

Maureen tried to concentrate on her hair, but her attention kept drifting. She was more worried about Hildon coming home while this was going on than she had been the time she went to bed with Matt Smith.

“Reach up and stroke your hair,” Davina said. “Say out loud: ‘I have lovely, luxurious hair.’ ”

“I have lovely, luxurious hair,” Maureen said, stroking her hands down the sides of her hair.

“Do you believe that?” Davina said.

“Well, of course, many people …”

“We aren’t interested in many people. We are interested in you. Do you believe that this is true of you?”

“Yes,” Maureen said.

“Society has taught us to turn aside compliments, which is wrong enough in itself, but which is very harmful if we take a simple fact to be a compliment. Now, tell me something else about your hair.”

“My hair is long.”

“Your hair, then, is the most impressive thing you notice about yourself; it is luxurious, lovely, and long. That’s very good, and easy to remember, because it alliterates.”

Davina opened a canvas bag she had brought with her. She took out a white towel, went over to the statue, and draped it over the hair.

“Find something else to admire,” she said.

Maureen smiled; with the sarong tied around her and the towel thrown over her hair, it looked like she had just come out of the shower.

“The legs,” Maureen said.

“What about them?”

“They’re shapely.”

“Fine. What else?”

“You mean what else are my legs?”