Ann Beattie - Love Always

People’s little secrets. The things they would not even think of as being secrets, until someone, say, asked to borrow an ironing board.

She went over the high bump that led down a steep slope to the newspaper’s parking lot. It was Saturday and there were only two cars in the lot; out of habit, she pulled into her space, facing the Leglan River. Before the paper moved into the big brick building, it had been a medical facility; the doctors’ assigned parking place signs were still there. A friend on the paper who had gone to Disneyland had put a cavorting Minnie Mouse decal over hers. Previously she had been Dr. Trigowski. The water was muddy and almost flooded the banks. It had been a rainy summer. The dampness was still in the air, and the sky still looked like rain.

Nate Wells and Herb Walsh were in the newspaper office. Herb had pulled his chair up to Nate’s desk and was shaking his head, much amused by something, as Myra walked in. Nate held a hand up in greeting and picked up his cigarette from the ashtray (another non-ashtray ashtray: a brick with the center gouged out) and took a puff before continuing with what he was reading. There was a picture on Nate’s desk of his wife and child. His wife had left him and was remarried to Nate’s cousin. His child had gone on a camping trip in the Grand Canyon and never been heard from again. There were also two separate photographs of collies. Nate now lived with two collies. At Christmas he had sent out cards with a photograph of the two collies sitting and facing the camera, one with a red bow around its neck and the other with a green bow. Below the picture was printed Greetings from Our House to Yours.

“Read this, read this,” Herb said, taking the piece of paper out of Nate’s hand. “This woman made up her own press release. This sounds like a story for you, Myra.” Herb loved to be amused. He often brought the Enquirer in to work. He especially liked the test in a recent issue that people could take to find out if their co-workers were space aliens.

Under a line of exclamation points, Bulletin had been written in calligraphy. It was an announcement of the founding of a feminist commune, subtitled Deep Breathing Can Destroy the Enemy . As best Myra could make out, it was a holistic approach to man-hating. Since she found these things more depressing than Herb, she was just about to sigh and hand it back when she caught the list of members. The first name on the list was Maureen Hildon’s. Myra’s eye went back to the text. The leader, Davina Cole, had recently acquired the long-abandoned old post office building, and by September I, would be ensconced with ten other women who wished to save mankind from man. Mankind could best be saved by womankind , but the first step necessary was to recondition through relaxation. Self-awareness = satisfaction . Apparently, through talking to yourself, hyperventilating, and examining your breasts, the enemy could be subverted . Potential members were urged to send a full-length black-and-white photograph or, preferably, negative, and $30 to Davina Cole. Space may be limited , Ms. Cole warned, though psychic sisterhood is expansive . There was a drawing in the lower left-hand corner of a woman with fingertips that looked like talons on her breast (nipple mid-center, like a bull’s eye), and an arrow around the breast, moving counterclockwise. Women now embrace destiny not douche bag , it concluded.

Myra handed it back to Herb, frowning. It was beginning to seem downright lethargic not to tackle the true story of the Country Daze staff. Whatever it was.

Herb fell over in the chair, laughing.

“Uh-oh,” Nate said. “We’ve offended her feminist sensibilities.”

“This is the wife of the editor of Country Daze ,” Myra said, pointing to the piece of paper that Herb was now weeping into, like a handkerchief.

“You’re kidding? His wife belongs to this thing?”

“What do you think I ought to do?” Myra said.

“Infiltrate,” Herb said. “Oh God, look at this thing.”

“Run a side-bar,” Nate said. “Spill the facts and get some shrink to comment.”

“How about Joan Rivers?” Herb said.

“I’m serious,” Myra said. “These people are a lot stranger than they seem.”

“The poor guy,” Nate said. “What can he do about his wife being a lunatic?”

Myra looked at him. He meant it; he felt sorry for Hildon. And if she told him that Hildon was having an affair with Lucy Spenser/Cindi Coeur, he would shrug and say that was nothing. Men really did stick together. That was true.

It suddenly occurred to her that she hesitated to analyze people’s messy lives because that would be hypocritical. When had she analyzed her own? Nothing much was happening in her own life right now. She was waiting for more: a bigger city, a more prestigious job, some romantic involvement. That old, familiar complex that seemed overwhelming — the last thing she’d want to admit to people. It was as though it was a personal failure, a sign of weakness, not strength, to have effectively kept the world at bay. Going to New York would be a way to try to change that.

Herb called her a sissy and said he was going to infiltrate.

She left her piece on the editor’s desk, with a note asking him to call her in the morning to let her know if she could take off at the end of the week.

WHEN she heard the back door close, Nicole turned off the television and sat in the silence of her room. Though she would never let on to Lucy, she thought that she was beginning to figure out what quality Lucy had that she herself lacked. It was difficult to put into words. It was partly what Jane always said: that Lucy was solid. Lucy would make a good actress, because she really had a foundation; she didn’t have to invent one. Piggy always said that Marilyn Monroe was a great actress because people could tell that she was someone underneath, and the more she giggled and pursed her lips, the more real the hidden someone became.

Nicole envied her. She kept her own hours, didn’t have to dress any particular way, didn’t seem to care what people thought about her. Dropouts were interesting to Nicole (that was what her grandmother called Lucy and Jane): they didn’t have a lot of hype surrounding them; they were just out there, like nudists.

She remembered sitting in a screening room with Piggy, watching Marilyn Monroe movies. When Marilyn smiled, Piggy would point out how much sadder that made her look. When Marilyn cried, you knew she was going to pull through. Piggy also had photographs of Marilyn Monroe in an album: when she was half naked she looked ladylike; when she was dressed in a suit she looked like a sex object. Piggy was hoping that Nicole could grow up to be more like Marilyn Monroe. If she didn’t, he wanted her to try to fake it. As far as Nicole was concerned, that was impossible. Even Marilyn Monroe would have found faking it too much of a chore. She thought that a lot of it had to do with how close the camera came in. That made people’s eyes look large, and when people saw big eyes, they assumed that there was depth. It was a trick. It was probably a more interesting world for people who were myopic.

Nicole was feeling sorry for herself. Her mother hadn’t called for days. Edward was back in California. He had been a friend, and look what happened: people butted in. He probably wouldn’t have been around much longer anyway. It wasn’t like she was going to New York with him. He wasn’t Jerry Lee Lewis.