Ann Beattie - Love Always

He looked at the screen. In the clutter of his desk drawer, along with pens and postcards, scissors and a bandanna, was a small blue velvet box. The videotape did not show the pink-pearl-and-diamond ring inside — his great-great-grandmother’s engagement ring. He had taken it out of his safe deposit box on the day of the annual staff party at his house, thinking about asking Lucy to marry him. But then he had left it in the drawer, deliberately. If he had the prop, he was sure to go through with the action. He wanted to see what he would do without it, whether he would ask her anyway, or find some way to meet her later, at the office.

He had decided against it that night, so at least he didn’t feel like a coward for not asking Lucy to marry him once Nicole came to live with her. It wouldn’t have been possible for the three of them to be a typical, dreary family anyway. He trusted Lucy, loved the way she could switch gears, the way she would join in when he put on his torn clothes and boots, calling what he engaged in his sexual fast-food fantasies. She was wonderful, but she wasn’t right. She could take an imaginative leap, but only in terms of where she’d go or what she’d do. She wasn’t an emotional chameleon, and that was what he needed.

Myra, lying below him on the rug, was the sound track of the video that didn’t exist. She was telling him that she loved him.

ANN BEATTIE was born in Washington, D.C., and was educated at American University and the University of Connecticut. She has taught at the University of Virginia and Harvard. Love Always is her third novel and sixth book. She now lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.