Ann Beattie - Picturing Will

Jody looked at Mel across the room. He was dressed as a stalk of celery. He had borrowed the costume from a ballerina whose husband was one of the new artists represented by his gallery. BAM popped into Jody’s mind, and she smiled. She didn’t think Mel would turn to ashes. She still was not sure that marrying him and moving to New York was the right thing. Though she would never say it to Mary Vickers, her hesitancy had less to do with the vague feeling that the moment wasn’t right than with the belief that the more she withheld, the more Mel would desire her. She did not think it was necessary to be withholding in a physical way, but she hesitated to talk too much, to have too many discussions. She and Wayne had talked their relationship to death, but when he left, he had taught her an important lesson by leaving unexpectedly and silently. It had been a rude awakening, but later a relief, to find that saying nothing could be the strongest way of communicating — and also the strongest way to flirt: A hesitant shrug or narrowing of your eyes in concentration as you listened could make a man’s heart beat harder. You could honestly say “I don’t know” and have any number of men assume that you only wanted to keep your sphinxlike secrets. From the moment she started studying photographs she had given herself permission to move farther and farther away from Wayne. It had driven him crazy when she taped on the walls photographs of people she did not know. He hated it that she began to submerge herself in a world of nameless faces. He saw himself losing her to a drug called silver halide.

But they stayed lovers. That was the other part of the trick: to get as close physically as the other person wanted. To jump into the tub when they were showering, pull cold champagne from under the bed, announce on the way to dinner with another couple that you were not wearing underwear. If you came through physically, men would give you a lot of time to decide whether you would marry them, because some part of them would foolishly think that you had already chosen.

She stood by one of the narrow, drafty church windows and realized that it would probably be easy to reenter the church some other day, even if it was locked. There might be enough Halloween souvenirs and enough character to the rundown church itself to make photographing the empty interior worthwhile. The church faced west; late afternoon would be the time to come. She unscrewed her camera from the tripod and began to take a few last pictures with the lens wide open, holding the camera above her head, aiming down and guessing about what would make it into the frame.

Mel came up beside her, the leafy celery top hanging down his chest like a pale green jabot.

“I just called the Careys’,” he said. “Will’s on his second pair of fangs. Nothing seems to be winding down over there.”

“Where did you find a phone?” she said, surprised.

“I struck up a conversation with a guy who had a phone in his car.” He nodded toward the door.

“You found somebody with a cellular phone in Charlottesville?”

He shrugged. “You’re the one who’s always telling me it’s not Siberia. If I had my way, we’d be in New York right this minute.” He put his arm around her shoulder. Jody was dressed in 1950s regalia: a crinoline, over which she wore a skirt embossed with a poodle that flashed blue rhinestone eyes; a pink blouse with a silver circle pin; white bobby sox; loafers with bright copper pennies. She had pulled her hair back in a pony tail.

“You know,” Mel said, “you look like the type who wants to party all night but won’t put out.”

“Not true,” she said. “As silly as this seems, it’s work. And if you remember—”

He put his fingers over her lips as Bozo strutted by, honking his bulbous nose. Bozo had acquired a fur cape and a wife who had pushed her eye mask to the top of her head. She was trying to steer Bozo toward the front door, but he was drunk and got away from her, swirling his fur like a bullfighter’s cape as she went toward him.

“I remember,” Mel said.

Before leaving the house, they had had sex in the shower while Will marched his new G.I. Joe (his fourth) around the living-room floor, making it do maneuvers over such obstacles as Mel’s running shoes and his own plastic-wrapped bubble-gum Dracula fangs, which he was to put in his mouth later that night. Will loved Halloween. The costumes and shrill cries at the door for candy that had frightened her as a child had never intimidated him. It was interesting to see what a child feared on his own, what fears were communicated to him, and what he was absolutely fearless about. The first time he tasted a soda he had been as shocked as if he’d drunk acid. He shrank from cats but would pat any dog. Halloween was a breeze, but as a small child he had not wanted the overhead light to be put off when the Christmas tree lights were turned on. Vampires were shocking but fascinating. Joan Rivers would make him run from the room. He loved cap pistols but was afraid of the vacuum. The flamingo night-light was scarier than being left in darkness. Will was afraid to put his face in water but fearless in the seat of a bumper car. He once cried because he looked into a man’s mouth and saw gold fillings and thought he could catch them, like a cold.

The band had switched from rock and roll to the big band sound, and Richard Nixon led King Kong onto the dance floor, both stepping aside to avoid colliding with Bozo the matador, still swishing the fur cape. Here was a roomful of people, Jody thought, most of them parents, behaving as if they were children so out of control they had to be threatened. Monsters that all parents swore existed only in their children’s nightmares cavorted with one another, plotting mischief, entering the den of smoke, uncorking bottles with no regret, even if genies were trapped inside.

Mel smiled at Jody. “Too caught up in this craziness to take pictures?”

“No,” she said. “I was just wondering who’d have a cellular phone in this town.”

“Would you like me to get you one?” he said. “Maybe in lieu of an engagement ring? Keep up with the times?”

She shook her head no.

“A cop,” he said.

“A cop?”

“A private investigator.”

“What are you talking about?” she said.

“That’s who had the phone. A guy who’s a private investigator. He’s doing what you’re doing: taking pictures. But he’s got a tiny hand-held job. Some woman who’s off in Aruba hired him to get a picture of her husband with his lover. At first he thought it was going to be impossible, because everybody was in costume, but he came anyway and got the big payoff because the guy’s in regular shoes. They’re the only shoes the guy ever wears. He said he already had a dozen pictures of the guy and the secretary, and that the guy was always wearing those same black wing-tips.”

“You’re putting me on.”

“Why would I be putting you on? It’s not to my advantage to make this place sound exciting.”

“But how did he happen to tell you that?”

“I went outside on the off chance there was a phone any-where in sight. He was talking on the phone in his car. I hung around, and he let me use the phone. He was happy that he had what he needed and could split.”

“You just walked up and asked if you could use his phone?”

Mel nodded. “What’s so strange about that? I said I wanted to make sure my kid was okay.”

She felt a pang when he said “my kid.” Will really did seem to be as much Mel’s child as her own. He had Mel’s way of sitting with his legs uncrossed, both feet dangling because he could not yet plant them on the floor. He bit his bottom lip when he was concentrating, like Mel. He had Mel’s way of saying no without shaking his head as an accompanying gesture. Both of them often threw their pillows on the floor when they slept. And of course they never drank the right beverage from the right glass. For a drink of water Will would take a tiny glass; for an inch of apple juice he’d reach for a beer glass. It was just the cast of his eyes that sometimes reminded her of Wayne — that way of looking slightly down and to the side, even when nothing important seemed to be happening there.