Ann Beattie - Secrets & Surprises

“Did you get a letter from Matthew and Bea yet?” he says.

“Oh, yes, Bea called this morning when you were at work. She said she had to call right away to say yes, she was so excited.”

He remembers how excited Bea was the time she stayed with them in the country house. It seemed more like nervousness, really, not excitement. Bea said she had been studying ballet, and when Matthew told her to show them what she had learned, she danced through the house, smiling at first, then panting. She complained that she had no grace — that she was too old. Matthew tried to make her feel better by saying that she had only started to study ballet late, and she would have to build up energy. Bea became more frantic, saying that she had no energy, no poise, no future as a ballerina.

“But there’s something I ought to tell you,” Penelope says. “Bea and Matthew are breaking up.”

“What?” he says.

“What does it matter? It’s a huge state. We can find a place to stay. We’ve got enough money. Don’t always be worried about money.”

He was just about to say that they hardly had enough money to pay for motels on the way to Colorado.

“And when you start painting again—”

“Penelope, get serious,” he says. “Do you think that all you have to do is produce some paintings and you’ll get money for them?”

“You don’t have any faith in yourself,” she says.

It is the same line she gave him when he dropped out of graduate school, after she had dropped out herself. Somehow she was always the one who sounded reasonable.

“Why don’t we forget Colorado for a while?” he says.

“Okay,” she says. “We’ll just forget it.”

“Oh, we can go if you’re set on it,” he says quickly.

“Not if you’re only doing it to placate me.”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to stick around New Haven.”

“Then what are you complaining about?” she says.

“I wasn’t complaining. I was just disappointed.”

“Don’t be disappointed,” she says, smiling at him.

He puts his forehead against hers and closes his eyes. Sometimes it is very nice to be with her. Outside he can hear the traffic, the horns blowing. He does not look forward to the long drive West.

In Nebraska they get sidetracked and drive a long way on a narrow road, with holes so big that Robert has to swerve the car to avoid them. The heater is not working well, and the defroster is not working at all. He rubs the front window clear with the side of his arm. By early evening he is exhausted from driving. They stop for dinner at Gus and Andy’s Restaurant, and are served their fried-egg sandwiches by Andy, whose name is written in sequins above his shirt pocket. That night, in the motel, he feels too tired to go to sleep. The cat is scratching around in the bathroom. Penelope complains about the electricity in her hair, which she has just washed and is drying. He cannot watch television because her hair dryer makes the picture roll.

“I sort of wish we had stopped in Iowa to see Elaine,” she says. Elaine is her married sister.

She drags on a joint, passes it to him.

“You were the one who didn’t want to stop,” he says. She can’t hear him because of the hair dryer.

“We used to pretend that we were pregnant when we were little,” she says. “We pulled the pillows off and stuck them under our clothes. My mother was always yelling at us not to mess up the beds.”

She turns off the hair dryer. The picture comes back on. It is the news; the sportscaster is in the middle of a basketball report. On a large screen behind him, a basketball player is shown putting a basketball into a basket.

Before they left, Robert had gone over to Cyril’s apartment. Cyril seemed to know already that Penelope was living with him. He was very nice, but Robert had a hard time talking to him. Cyril said that a girl he knew was coming over to make dinner, and he asked him to stay. Robert said he had to get going.

“What are you going to do in Colorado?” Cyril asked.

“Get some kind of job, I guess,” he said.

Cyril nodded about ten times, the nods growing smaller.

“I don’t know,” he said to Cyril.

“Yeah,” Cyril said.

They sat. Finally Robert made himself go by telling himself that he didn’t want to see Cyril’s girl.

“Well,” Cyril said. “Take care.”

“What about you?” he asked Cyril. “What are you going to be up to?”

“Much of the same,” Cyril said.

They stood at Cyril’s door.

“Seems like we were all together at that house about a million years ago,” Cyril said.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Maybe when the new people moved in they found dinosaur tracks,” Cyril said.

In the motel that night, in his dreams Robert makes love to Penelope. When the sun comes through the drapes, he touches her shoulder and thinks about waking her. Instead, he gets out of bed and sits by the dresser and lights the stub of the joint. It’s gone in three tokes, and he gets back into bed, cold and drowsy. Going to sleep, he chuckles, or thinks he hears himself chuckling. Later, when she tries to rouse him, he can’t move, and it isn’t until afternoon that they get rolling. He feels tired but still up from the grass. The effect seems not to have worn off with sleep at all.

They are at Bea and Matthew’s house. It was cloudy and cold when they arrived, late in the afternoon, and the sides of the roads were heaped high with old snow. Robert got lost trying to find the house and finally had to stop in a gas station and telephone to ask for directions. “Take a right after the feed store at the crossroads,” Matthew told him. It doesn’t seem to Robert that they are really in Colorado. That evening Matthew insists that Robert sit in their one chair (a black canvas butterfly chair) because Robert must be tired from driving. Robert cannot get comfortable in the chair. There is a large photograph of Nureyev on the wall across from Robert, and there is a small table in the corner of the room. Matthew has explained that Bea got mad after one of their fights and sold the rest of the living-room furniture. Penelope sits on the floor at Robert’s side. They have run out of cigarettes, and Matthew and Bea have almost run out of liquor. Matthew is waiting for Bea to drive to town to buy more; Bea is waiting for Matthew to give in. They are living together, but they have filed for divorce. It is a friendly living-together, but they wait each other out, testing. Who will turn the record over? Who will buy the Scotch?

Their dog, Zero, lies on the floor listening to music and lapping apple juice. He pays no attention to the stereo speakers but loves headphones. He won’t have them put on his head, but when they are on the floor he creeps up on them and settles down there. Penelope points out that one old Marianne Faithfull record seems to make Zero particularly euphoric. Bea gives him apple juice for his constipation. She and Matthew dote on the dog. That is going to be a problem.

For dinner Bea fixes beef Stroganoff, and they all sit on the floor with their plates. Bea says that there is honey in the Stroganoff. She is ignoring Matthew, who stirs his fork in a circle through his food and puts his plate down every few minutes to drink Scotch. Earlier Bea told him to offer the bottle around, but they all said they didn’t want any. A tall black candle burns in the center of their circle; it is dark outside, and the candle is the only light. When they finish eating, there is only one shot of Scotch left in the bottle and Matthew is pretty drunk. He says to Bea, “I was going to move out the night before Christmas, in the middle of the night, so that when you heard Santa Claus, it would have been me instead, carrying away Zero instead of my bag of tricks.”