Ann Beattie - Picturing Will

“You remember the stuff I told you about Susan’s parents, right? About how they had this foster kid that they used like a servant, and somebody got wind of it and before you knew it, zip, that kid was out of there, and Susan went to her grandmother, and if the father hadn’t drowned, he might be in the slammer today, because—”

“You told me,” Wayne said.

“Which really makes it mysterious, since now we know he’s no great lover of kids, and Susan’s mom’s so sloshed you don’t know on any given day whether she’s gonna make it out of bed, whether that brother of Susan’s really died in his crib, or—”

“This is like a fucking soap opera,” Wayne said.

“It’s her life, Wayne. She showed real get-up-and-go to relocate herself to Florida. Susan’s a devoted family person. When things took a turn for the worse with her grandmother, naturally she got in touch with her sister, and—”

“God rest Susan’s soul,” Wayne said.

Zeke looked at him, puzzled.

“It’s just an expression. God rest her soul if she dies,” Wayne said.

“I don’t think that’s funny,” Zeke said. “Saying something like that, you might bring bad luck to Susan.”

“What’s the grandmother’s story?” Wayne said, knowing that he could derail Zeke.

“Her father was an immigrant from Italy,” Zeke said. “They had five children, and two that died at birth, and the mother …”

Zeke was off and running. Wayne adjusted his hat and smiled to himself. If only dealing with Will could be as easy as dealing with Zeke. Zeke was just like a baby: When you dangled something in front of him, the hysteria would end; fascination would make his eyes widen and bring a big smile to his face. Just dangle the possibility of another story waiting to be told, and Zeke would reach up and touch it — it was all so real to him, it was as though he could touch it — and then, for as long as you could stand to be involved, there would be peace and tranquillity. A reward and a respite.

“The way you feel about Susan,” Wayne said, shaking his head as if a great revelation had dawned on him. “The way you feel, you can probably envision spending the rest of your life with her. Am I right?”

Zeke narrowed his eyes. He cleared his throat. He looked at the bushes they had planted as if Susan might be hiding behind one.

“Well, I don’t know about marriage,” Zeke said. “You know yourself, Wayne, that marriage ain’t so easy.”

“What makes you say that?” Wayne said.

Zeke’s eyes narrowed again, this time to slits. How long had Wayne been putting him on?

Though Corky knew the story all too well, Corinne was telling her, again, about Eddie’s deception: On the day Corinne went to the hairdresser a friend recommended, that same friend lured Eddie to her apartment and jumped into bed with him. Hearing about the situation made Corky uncomfortable enough, but Corinne’s bleak view of women had really begun to depress her. Corinne had almost every woman they knew categorized as a vile, untrustworthy witch. Corinne did not say “bitch” because she had made it a household rule, once the baby was born, that there would be no more swearing. “Witch” seemed an appropriate-enough term, however, because Corinne suspected even the nicest women of manipulating others by putting spells on them. She did not think they literally did this, but she did believe they had terrible powers.

Corinne had just finished discussing her new hairdresser. She grudgingly admitted the woman was a good hair-cutter, but being there earlier in the day had reminded her of women she called bogus big sisters, who would fawn over you by twirling one of your curls into a perfect ringlet when they actually hated your good looks and wished you’d disappear. Women who slipped out of their own high-heeled shoes and begged to slide their foot into your flats weren’t complimenting you on your good taste but expressing symbolically their wish to crush you as they crushed the backs of your shoes. Women were treacherous. They would think nothing of doing anything they pleased behind your back with whatever man you were with.

Corky assumed she was exempt from Corinne’s scenario but wasn’t sure how she had been spared. Perhaps it was because her horror had been so genuine when Corinne first confided in her about Eddie’s dalliance. She had also been horrified that Corinne would use her anger as an excuse to throw out her birth-control pills, though she knew better than to criticize Corinne — especially when she was upset.

Right now Eddie was in Pittsburgh, where he had flown the night before, to act as a pallbearer at his father’s funeral. It pleased Corinne that the Sunday before his father’s sudden death the minister had preached about how transgression could lead to a series of terrible things. She hoped that somehow Eddie connected his father’s death with his afternoon at the witch’s apartment. The minister had been trying to subtly assure the parish that he was a finer person than Jimmy Swaggart, but Corinne hoped Eddie registered the minister’s point about sin and understood that it was his fault their child had been born with jaundice. What did Eddie think, now that the dog had been hit by a car? What about his father’s unexpected death? And was it clear to him why she was no longer interested in sex?

Corinne fanned out a match and dropped it on her saucer. She took a puff of her cigarette and exhaled high above the baby’s head. The baby was in a plastic car seat that was usually in the back of Corinne’s car, but Eddie had taken the car to the airport, and she was always afraid that anything left in a car for any amount of time might be stolen. Ganglia of straps and buckles trailed on the Formica table.

“I want to raise her to trust other women, but the thing is, I don’t trust other women myself,” Corinne said.

“I think it’s harder to raise a girl than a boy,” Corky said. “Harder, but for me it would be much more fun.”

“Well, the thing is, you’ve got to figure out what to tell them and what not to tell them about other women,” Corinne said.

“Just like what husbands have to figure out: what to tell us, and what not to tell us,” Corky said. She instantly regretted joining in with Corinne’s cynicism; she got up and opened a cabinet door. “There’s a real good drink I can make that’s like a sombrero, only with club soda added,” she said.

“Mmm,” Corinne said. “I might as well, because I’ll be up by my lonesome all night anyway, doing the night shift.”

“Have you heard from Eddie?” Corky asked. She was pouring batter into rainbow-striped paper cups. She had bought another muffin tin so she could bake the whole recipe for cupcakes at once. An extra muffin tin could always be useful. For your jewelry, for one thing.

“He told me his mother was all upset because she found his dad’s Christmas stocking, which had been missing for years, in a drawer of his tool chest, stuffed with girlie magazines. She hunted high and low for the stocking, and he always said she had thrown it out by mistake with the Christmas wrapping.”

Corky giggled. She shook her head.

“So I don’t know,” Corinne said. “Things are better between us now that that witch is out of the picture, but I hate to not trust somebody. I talked to the minister and what he says is to trust him: no reason why I should trust him, just that it would be a nice thing to do.”

Corky filled the rest of the paper cups with batter. A few drops landed on the center of the muffin tin; she wiped them off, then ate them. Corinne opened the oven door, and Corky placed the muffin tin beside the other one.

“Christian charity, right?” Corky said.