Ann Beattie - Picturing Will

Revisionism set in long ago. As she tells it, although Haveabud conceived of himself as divinely inspired and always pirouetting on the cutting edge, he was really a rather fatuous neurotic whom she successfully manipulated, knowing better than he what the marketplace wanted.

Haveabud. It is amazing to Will that even at Columbia University, where Will is an art historian, Haveabud’s name sometimes comes up, or appears as a footnote in some book or article about contemporary American art. He is in Paris now, reunited with some former painters he once represented whom he turned into performance artists. Apparently, he became something of an overnight sensation abroad. Several years ago, Amanda found a photograph in a magazine of Haveabud, at a fund-raiser in a private home on Avenue Foch. Like all people the media elevate to stardom, Haveabud learned how to smile.

Will still exchanges Christmas cards with Corky, who is a nurse’s aide in Coral Gables.

Wayne has not been heard from since at least fifteen years ago, when he sent Will a postcard from Mexico City.

Wagoner died at sixteen, drowned with another boy when their boat capsized.

Though Will and Amanda were almost two hours late, Jody was not prepared for their arrival. Her distaste for schedules and for doing the expected has become even greater with the passage of time. Looking around the living room, Will reflects that there is not even a particular chair that might be said to be her favorite. Mel has had to fight to keep his old blue chair, though she still threatens to give it away. She alternates between teasing Mel and being so conciliatory that Will can only think her attitude is condescending. (“Darling,” she said to Mel the last time Will and Amanda visited, when he told Amanda, in great detail, about his desperate courtship of Jody, “it’s perfectly all right to be conventional. You know I’ve always found it charming.”)

There is a puppy. After so many years of protesting, Jody is now so fond of the puppy that she takes it into the bathroom with her when she bathes. She is upstairs now, calling downstairs that she will be down momentarily. He can hear water draining from the bathtub. The puppy whining to be let out.

Will goes into the kitchen to get something cold to drink. Mel’s medicine is kept in the refrigerator. He looks away and takes a glass from the shelf. It is a wine goblet, but what does it matter? He shakes the orange juice and pours half a glass. Closing the refrigerator door, he thinks: Florida Sweet. That was the brand Corky bought. Florida Sweet orange juice. He had been so helpless. Helpless in the motel room with Haveabud and Spencer. Helpless when the police led his father away — the beginning of the end of Wayne’s marriage to Corky.

Jody was absent too many times and wanted to hear too few things. If not for Mel, he might have been sent to Florida more often. Years later he found out that when Mel got the call to come get him, Mel was furious, because he had wanted all along to stay in Florida in a motel and wait while Will had his visit. If only that could have happened. If only Mel could have been there in fifteen minutes, instead of the next morning. Corky had clutched him and cried — the two of them alone, in that sad house.

On the other hand, Mel was hardly a hero. He should have made Jody face up to the fact that she was his mother. Or was it to Mel’s advantage that she let him take over? Was that part of the bargain — Mel’s caring for Jody’s child as a condition of marriage?

Years ago Will had started to tell Jody about Haveabud, and she had shushed him. Nothing negative could be said about her manic mentor.

He had been so close to Mel. Why hadn’t he told Mel? Perhaps he had tried, and he had blocked out Mel’s response. Or perhaps — this was the way he remembered it — Mel had been so shaky when he arrived back in Florida that Will realized he should not bring up anything that might cause further trouble.

The dog comes bounding down the stairs, tail swishing, sniffing its way to Will, in the kitchen.

This is what will happen now: Jody will descend the stairs, and soon there will be exclamations about the baby’s beauty and compliments on the dog’s amusing energy. Mel will open a bottle of champagne, and the birthday cake on the kitchen counter will have its three candles lit (one for the last year, one for the next, and one to grow on), and then Jody will make a wish and blow them out.

The rest of the day, though, will not be so predictable. As they take an evening walk, Mel is going to give Will a key, and tell him that there are papers he wants him to know about, in the event anything happens to him. Nervously, Will will put the key in his pants pocket and try to change the subject. “They’re only things I’ve written — not official documents,” Mel will say.

Things he’s written?

Later that night, he will know what those things are. Having opened the locked metal box in the carriage house where he and Amanda always sleep, he will sit on the floor and untie the string around a heavy cardboard envelope. He will flip through a few pages, then read only the first paragraph before sitting in a chair to read more. He will read:

Of course you do not want the child to be a ventriloquist’s dummy, but if there could be a bit more sitting on the knee, a little less of the back of the head and more of the profile as you spoke, that might be all the better. The child that reminds you of your own mortality needs so much tending to — so many wisps of hair brushed off the forehead, so many dollar bills handed out, so many anklet cuffs turned down, so much humming to accompany the soprano-sung solo — that it is almost impossible to decide whether to be as quick-talking as an escaped convict, or as patient as a penitent .

For hours, Will will not put it down. He always knew the care Mel took raising him, but now he will also sense a sort of narcissism difficult to separate, at times, from true involvement: an almost militant desire that things go well, or at least have a rationale, after the fact.

All those years Jody was photographing, Mel was writing.

But what does Mel want? To explain that everything was more difficult than it seemed? To impress with his sensitivity? To have his writing published? Because Jody’s notoriety would certainly mean that such a manuscript would be of great interest.

No. Mel never misled him. If Mel wanted the manuscript published, he would either have said so or have done it himself.

The next day, should he say that he read Mel’s writing? Should he awaken Amanda? Or crawl into bed and nestle against her? Or just sit there with his eyes closed, listening to the breeze blowing through the trees?

With his eyes closed, he remembers a moment earlier in the evening — sees it as if he could at once be part of the scene and also absent himself from it to take a photograph. He smiles at this strange desire. Is the desire to photograph genetically encoded — or at least entirely predictable when parents have young children? Will has his imaginary photograph but knows that others would see him differently.

They would see a young man standing on a wide green lawn. His eyes are quite brilliant when he first looks up. Only when he fixes a more even gaze on you do they gradually become less intense: what most people call kind eyes.

Mel has given the baby a bright red ball. The child holds it, unsure. He looks at his father.

Across the distance, Will smiles and speaks. He nods, holding out his hand.

The child’s knees bend as he does a skittish little dance. Then, holding his arms stiffly, fists behind his hips, he jumps high and lands slightly crouched, looking something the way penguins did before they became extinct.

“Throw the ball,” Will says, smiling in an attempt to persuade the child. “Come on. You have to let go of it sometime. Come on, baby, throw me the ball.”