Ann Beattie - Secrets & Surprises

Going into the house, he noticed that T.W.’s car was in the driveway.

The front door was closed, but when he rapped quietly on it, Francie answered. She was wearing her blue nightgown, and somebody’s plaid shirt in place of a robe.

“My car was stolen,” Freed said.

“What do you mean? Somebody took your car from here?”

“The kid I brought to the party stole it. I’ve got to call the cops.”

“Oh hell,” Francie said. “Do they have to come here? Have I got to have cops in the house?”

“No. I’ll call them from the store and sit there and have a cup of coffee with them while I tell the story.”

“Oh Christ,” Francie said. “Who was that guy, anyway?”

“Somebody who was hitching. I don’t know who he was.”

“What did you pick him up for?” Francie said. When Francie first woke up she was always argumentative.

“Because I’m stupid,” Freed said. “Did you know that T.W. was here in the bedroom?”

“Yeah. He said he was going to come back after he took Katie home.”

“Maybe we ought to wake him up. It’s noon, isn’t it?”

“Go ahead and call the cops,” Perry said. “They’re going to wonder why it took you so long to report it.”

“Good morning,” Francie said to Perry.

“Hi,” he said.

Freed sighed and unzipped his jacket and went to the kitchen phone.

“Maybe you should wait,” Francie called. “Maybe he’ll come back with it.”

Freed came into the living room and sighed and sat down. He and Francie both saw the puddle of red wine that had seeped into the rug at the same time.

“I don’t know why I have parties,” Francie said.

Perry remembered Delores’ phone call, and wondered if there was any point in mentioning it to Francie. Francie went over to the wine stain and looked down at it. “How do you get wine out of a rug?” she said.

“Don’t you transform the wine into blood and the rug into a turnip?” Freed said. “Francie, if you didn’t have such drunken parties, my car never would have been stolen.”

“I guess you should call them,” Francie said. “If he really stole it, he’s not going to bring it back.”

“Delores called last night from Miami,” Perry said. “She was looking for her oak table.”

“What oak table?”

“That one with the wide-board top. You used to have it, didn’t you?”

“I never had it here. I think it was in my room in the house we rented.”

“I think T.W. has that table,” Freed said.

Francie took one of Freed’s Trues and sat down by the stain. She had on black knee socks that were covered in lint, and she sat so that he could almost see between her legs.

“Or maybe I did have it here. Maybe it’s the table I used to stack things on in the kitchen, that Delores took out of here and traded Beth Ann for a chair she wanted. Yeah, that’s what happened to it: Beth Ann has it.”

“Oh goddamn it,” Freed said. “Goddamn it to hell. It’s freezing out and I’ve got to start discussing how my fucking car was stolen with a bunch of New Hampshire cops.”

“Let’s have some music,” Francie said. “Does anybody have a headache, or can we have music?”

The music got T.W. out of bed. He came looking for his shirt, and when Francie had to hand it over, she decided to get dressed herself. Before long they were all dressed, and Freed was down at the store, and Francie and T.W. and Perry were eating eggs Benedict that T.W. fixed and drinking leftover champagne mixed with ginger ale.

“I’ve got to drive all the way to a job in Stowe,” T.W. sighed. “But that’s not until tomorrow.”

Perry looked out the window and saw his own car gone from the drive. Freed had taken it to go to the store after he called the cops. It had started to snow.

“Why don’t we have another party tonight and invite your other set of friends, Francie? There’s food left over.”

“What other set of friends?”

“Just kidding,” T.W. said.

Perry and T.W. went out to the shed and loaded in kindling and wood for the fire.

Nick and Anita came back that night, bringing with them a huge pan of Anita’s fried chicken. Francie got out the last gallon of Chablis and they sat by the fire talking about the snow storm and eating and drinking. T.W. and Freed were talking about architecture. They both knew more than Perry, and he kept entering into their conversation, hoping they could tell him some things he needed to know about fixing his house. He had hired people to fix the heating system, but he was doing the carpentry work himself. It was a large house, oddly shaped because it had been added onto without much thought for aesthetics at least twice, and probably three times. T.W. and his band had been up a lot on the weekends, and T.W. had been a lot of help.

“You lonesome up there in the woods?” Anita asked Perry.

“Sometimes.”

“Ought to come back to the city,” Nick said. (He was kidding; he and Anita lived in a town with a population of three hundred.)

“Bring your dirty pictures out,” Anita said to Francie.

Francie laughed, embarrassed, knowing that Anita meant the canvases.

“Don’t you freeze your butt standing in here naked?” Freed said.

“Maybe I should have asked my other friends,” Francie said to Perry. He smiled at her, no longer interested in T.W. and Freed’s talk about architecture. He was thinking about Francie, in the big house, painting herself.

“Aren’t we an artsy bunch?” T.W. said. “Perry a poet and Anita a photographer and Perry a poet — or did I say that? — Francie a painter …”

Freed moved the jug of wine away from T.W.

“To say nothing of our music maker,” T.W. said, touching his chest. He reached for the jug of wine, but Freed was pouring the last of it in his glass.

“I need it more than you do,” Freed said. “My car was stolen.”

The phone rang and Francie got up to answer it. Perry saw her turn on the kitchen light. Things looked better in the living room, where it was dark except for the fire. The clutter from the party the night before was still all over the room, but sitting and looking into the fire, he could forget about it. He intended to help her pick it up on Sunday, before he left to give Freed a ride to his house in Maine. He looked back to the kitchen, where Francie stood with her back to him, talking on the phone. Sometimes it bothered him that he was just one of the people she liked to have around all the time, although it meant a lot to him that they had all been friends for so long.

As they sat silently they could hear Francie talking on the phone. Perry heard the name Beth Ann twice and concentrated on the log crackling in the fire. He had gotten so he didn’t think about her much, and that day he had had to listen to her spoken about too much.

“That was odd,” Francie said, coming back and sitting next to Perry. “That was Delores’ mother, and she said she wanted me to know that Delores and Meagan were coming to my house — that they had left yesterday in a hurry and had asked her to call. Did Delores say that to you?”

“I think she said she was coming this way, but she didn’t say she was about to leave.”

“And her mother said that Delores is going to live with Carl in New Hampshire. Do you know anything about that?”

“No,” he said.

“We ought to get going,” Nick said. “We’ve got to go to Anita’s mother’s tomorrow.”

Anita groped behind her for her cowboy boots. They were fine boots, her Christmas present, with red roses painted on the sides and pointy toes and high heels.

“You ever want to borrow these, you could add a little kink to your dirty pictures,” Anita said, and Francie smiled in embarrassment. Anita rolled her white wool slacks down over the boots and pushed herself up with a groan. Nick stood with her, holding the pan that had once held chicken but now held bones.