Ann Beattie - Secrets & Surprises

“Look at that poor son of a bitch,” he said.

The little man was washing his car.

“If Andy could get out more,” Larry said. “If he could get rid of that feeling he has that he’s the only freak … I wonder if it wouldn’t do him good to come spend a week with us.”

“Are you going to take him in the wheelchair to the lab with you?” she said. “I’m not taking care of Andy all day.”

His face changed. “Just for a week was all I meant,” he said.

“I’m not doing it,” she said. She was thinking of the boy, and of the car. She had almost learned how to drive the car.

“Maybe in the warm weather,” she said. “When we could go to the park or something.”

He said nothing. The little man was rinsing his car. She sat inside when their turn came. She thought that Larry had no right to ask her to take care of Andy. Water flew out of the hose and battered the car. She thought of Andy, in the woods at night, stepping on the land mine, being blown into the air. She wondered if it threw him in an arc, so he ended up somewhere away from where he had been walking, or if it just blasted him straight up, if he went up the way an umbrella opens. Andy had been a wonderful ice skater. They all envied him his long sweeping turns, with his legs somehow neatly together and his body at the perfect angle. She never saw him have an accident on the ice. Never once. She had known Andy, and they had skated at Parker’s pond, for eight years before he was drafted.

The night before, as she and Larry were finishing dinner, he had asked her if she intended to vote for Nixon or McGovern in the election. “McGovern,” she said. How could he not have known that? She knew then that they were farther apart than she had thought. She hoped that on Election Day she could drive herself to the polls — not go with him and not walk. She planned not to ask the old lady if she wanted to come along because that would be one vote she could keep Nixon from getting.

At the museum she hesitated by the sculpture but did not point it out to him. He didn’t look at it. He gazed to the side, above it, at a Francis Bacon painting. He could have shifted his eyes just a little and seen the sculpture, and her, standing and staring.

After three more lessons she could drive the car. The last two times, which were later in the afternoon than her first lesson, they stopped at the drugstore to get the old lady’s paper, to save him from having to make the same trip back on foot. When he came out of the drugstore with the paper, after the final lesson, she asked him if he’d like to have a beer to celebrate.

“Sure,” he said.

They walked down the street to a bar that was filled with college students. She wondered if Larry ever came to this bar. He had never said that he did.

She and Michael talked. She asked why he wasn’t in high school. He told her that he had quit. He was living with his brother, and his brother was teaching him carpentry, which he had been interested in all along. On his napkin he drew a picture of the cabinets and bookshelves he and his brother had spent the last week constructing and installing in the house of two wealthy old sisters. He drummed the side of his thumb against the edge of the table in time with the music. They each drank beer, from heavy glass mugs.

“Mrs. Larsen said your husband was in school,” the boy said. “What’s he studying?”

She looked up, surprised. Michael had never mentioned her husband to her before. “Chemistry,” she said.

“I liked chemistry pretty well,” he said. “Some of it.”

“My husband doesn’t know you’ve been giving me lessons. I’m just going to tell him that I can drive the stick shift, and surprise him.”

“Yeah?” the boy said. “What will he think about that?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think he’ll like it.”

“Why?” the boy said.

His question made her remember that he was sixteen. What she had said would never have provoked another question from an adult. The adult would have nodded or said, “I know.”

She shrugged. The boy took a long drink of beer. “I thought it was funny that he didn’t teach you himself, when Mrs. Larsen told me you were married,” he said.

They had discussed her. She wondered why Mrs. Larsen wouldn’t have told her that, because the night she ate dinner with her she had talked to Mrs. Larsen about what an extraordinarily patient teacher Michael was. Had Mrs. Larsen told him that Natalie talked about him?

On the way back to the car she remembered the photographs and went back to the drugstore and picked up the prints. As she took money out of her wallet she remembered that today was the day she would have to pay him. She looked around at him, at the front of the store, where he was flipping through magazines. He was tall and he was wearing a very old black jacket. One end of his long thick maroon scarf was hanging down his back.

“What did you take pictures of?” he said when they were back in the car.

“Furniture. My husband wanted pictures of our furniture, in case it was stolen.”

“Why?” he said.

“They say if you have proof that you had valuable things, the insurance company won’t hassle you about reimbursing you.”

“You have a lot of valuable stuff?” he said. “My husband thinks so,” she said.

A block from the driveway she said, “What do I owe you?”

“Four dollars,” he said.

“That’s nowhere near enough,” she said and looked over at him. He had opened the envelope with the pictures in it while she was driving. He was staring at the picture of her legs. “What’s this?” he said.

She turned into the driveway and shut off the engine. She looked at the picture. She could not think what to tell him it was. Her hands and heart felt heavy.

“Wow,” the boy said. He laughed. “Never mind. Sorry. I’m not looking at any more of them.”

He put the pack of pictures back in the envelope and dropped it on the seat between them.

She tried to think what to say, of some way she could turn the pictures into a joke. She wanted to get out of the car and run. She wanted to stay, not to give him the money, so he would sit there with her. She reached into her purse and took out her wallet and removed four one-dollar bills.

“How many years have you been married?” he asked.

“One,” she said. She held the money out to him. He said “Thank you” and leaned across the seat and put his right arm over her shoulder and kissed her. She felt his scarf bunched up against their cheeks. She was amazed at how warm his lips were in the cold car.

He moved his head away and said, “I didn’t think you’d mind if I did that.” She shook her head no. He unlocked the door and got out.

“I could drive you to your brother’s apartment,” she said. Her voice sounded hollow. She was extremely embarrassed, but she couldn’t let him go.

He got back in the car. “You could drive me and come in for a drink,” he said. “My brother’s working.”

• • •

When she got back to the car two hours later she saw a white parking ticket clamped under the windshield wiper, flapping in the wind. When she opened the car door and sank into the seat, she saw that he had left the money, neatly folded, on the floor mat on his side of the car. She did not pick up the money. In a while she started the car. She stalled it twice on the way home. When she had pulled into the driveway she looked at the money for a long time, then left it lying there. She left the car unlocked, hoping the money would be stolen. If it disappeared, she could tell herself that she had paid him. Otherwise she would not know how to deal with the situation.

When she got into the apartment, the phone rang. “I’m at the gym to play basketball,” Larry said. “Be home in an hour.”