Ann Beattie - Secrets & Surprises

I said to Lorna last night that I would tell her a story. It was going to be a fairy tale, all about Patricia and me but disguised as the prince and the princess, but she said no, she didn’t want to hear it, and walked out. Just as well. If it had ended sadly it would have been an awful trick to pull on Lorna, and if it had ended happily, it would have depressed me even more. “There’s nothing wrong with coming to terms with your depression,” the doctor said to me. He kept urging me to see a shrink. The shrink came, and urged me to talk to him. When he left, the chaplain came in and urged me to see him . I checked out.

Lorna visits a third time. She asks whether I heard the phone ringing. I did. She says that — well, she finally answered it. “When you were first walking, one of your favorite things was to run for the phone,” I said. I was trying to be nice to her. “Stop talking about when I was a baby,” she says, and leaves. On the way out, she says, “It was your friend who came over the other night. He wants you to call him. His number is here.” She comes back with a piece of paper, then leaves again.

“I got drunk,” Banks says on the phone, “and I felt sorry for you.”

“The hell with that, Banks,” I say, and reflect that I sound like someone talking in The Sun Also Rises .

“Forget it, old Banks,” I say, enjoying the part.

“You’re not loaded too, are you?” Banks says.

“No, Banks,” I say.

“Well, I wanted to talk. I wanted to ask if you wanted to go out to a bar with me. I don’t have any more beer or money.”

“Thanks, but there’s a big rendezvous here today. Lorna’s here. I’d better stick around.”

“Oh,” Banks says. “Listen. Could I come over and borrow five bucks?”

Banks does not think of me in my professorial capacity.

“Sure,” I say.

“Thanks,” he says.

“Sure, old Banks. Sure,” I say, and hang up.

Lorna stands in the doorway. “Is he coming over?” she asks.

“Yes. He’s coming to borrow money. He’s not the man for you, Lorna.”

“You don’t have any money either,” she says. “Grandpa does.”

“I have enough money,” I say defensively.

“How much do you have?”

“I make a salary, you know, Lorna. Has your mother been telling you I’m broke?”

“She doesn’t talk about you.”

“Then why did you ask how much money I had?”

“I wanted to know.”

“I’m not going to tell you,” I say.

“They told me to come talk to you,” Lorna says. “I was supposed to get you to come down.”

“Do you want me to come down?” I ask.

“Not if you don’t want to.”

“You’re supposed to be devoted to your daddy,” I say.

Lorna sighs. “You won’t answer any of my questions, and you say silly things.”

“What?”

“What you just said — about my daddy.”

“I am your daddy,” I say.

“I know it,” she says.

There seems nowhere for the conversation to go.

“You want to hear that story now?” I ask.

“No. Don’t try to tell me any stories. I’m ten.”

“I’m thirty-two,” I say.

My father’s brother William is about to score a victory over Elizabeth. He puts his foot on the ball, which is touching hers, and knocks her ball down the hill. He pretends he has knocked it an immense distance and cups his hand over his brow to squint after it. William’s wife will not play croquet; she sits on the grass and frowns. She is a dead ringer for the woman behind the cash register in Edward Hopper’s “Tables for Ladies.”

“How’s it going?” Danielle asks, standing in the doorway.

“Come on in,” I say.

“I just came upstairs to go to the bathroom. The cook is in the one downstairs.”

She comes in and looks out the window.

“Do you want me to get you anything?” she says. “Food?”

“You’re just being nice to me because I kiss your piggies.”

“You’re horrible,” she says.

“I tried to be nice to Lorna, and all she wanted to talk about was money.”

“All they talk about down there is money,” she says.

She leaves and then comes back with her hair combed and her mouth pink again.

“What do you think of William’s wife?” I ask.

“I don’t know, she doesn’t say much.” Danielle sits on the floor, with her chin on her knees. “Everybody always says that people who only say a few dumb things are sweet.”

“What dumb things has she said?” I say.

“She said, ‘Such a beautiful day,’ and looked at the sky.”

“You shouldn’t be hanging out with these people, Danielle,” I say.

“I’ve got to go back,” she says.

Banks is here. He is sitting next to me as it gets dark. I am watching Danielle out on the lawn. She has a red shawl that she winds around her shoulders. She looks tired and elegant. My father has been drinking all afternoon. “Get the hell down here!” he hollered to me a little while ago. My mother rushed up to him to say that I had a student with me. He backed down. Lorna came up and brought us two dishes of peach ice cream (handmade by Rosie), giving the larger one to Banks. She and Banks discussed The Hobbit briefly. Banks kept apologizing to me for not leaving, but said he was too strung out to drive. He went into the bathroom and smoked a joint and came back and sat down and rolled his head from side to side. “You make sense,” Banks says now, and I am flattered until I realize that I have not been talking for a long time.

“It’s too bad it’s so dark,” I say. “That woman down there in the black dress looks just like somebody in an Edward Hopper painting. You’d recognize her.”

“Nah,” Banks says, head swaying. “Everything’s basically different. I get so tired of examining things and finding out they’re different. This crappy nature poem isn’t at all like that crappy nature poem. That’s what I mean,” Banks says.

“Do you remember your accident?” he says.

“No,” I say.

“Excuse me,” Banks says.

“I remember thinking of Jules and Jim.”

“Where she drove off the cliff?” Banks says, very excited.

“Umm.”

“When did you think that?”

“As it was happening.”

“Wow,” Banks says. “I wonder if anybody else flashed on that before you?”

“I couldn’t say.”

Banks sips his iced gin. “What do you think of me as an artist?” he says.

“You’re very good, Banks.”

It begins to get cooler. A breeze blows the curtains toward us.

“I had a dream that I was a raccoon,” Banks says. “I kept trying to look over my back to count the rings of my tail, but my back was too high, and I couldn’t count past the first two.”

Banks finishes his drink.

“Would you like me to get you another drink?” I ask.

“That’s an awful imposition,” Banks says, extending his glass.

I take the glass and go downstairs. A copy of The Hobbit is lying on the rose brocade sofa. Mrs. Bates is sitting at the kitchen table, reading People .

“Thank you very much for the cookies,” I say.

“It’s nothing,” she says. Her earrings are on the table. Her feet are on a chair.

“Tell them we ran out of gin if they want more,” I say. “I need this bottle.”

“Okay,” she says. “I think there’s another bottle, anyway.”

I take the bottle upstairs in my armpit, carrying a glass with fresh ice in it in my hand.

“You know,” Banks says, “they say that if you face things — if you just get them through your head — you can accept them. They say you can accept anything if you can once get it through your head.”

“What’s this about?” I say.