Ann Beattie - Falling in Place

“What are you going to talk to Lloyd about?”

“I don’t know. I just drink some vodka and see what happens. It doesn’t do any good to plan what you’re going to say.”

Downstairs in the living room, Angela’s father was sitting in a chair, writing on a legal pad.

“I finished Pride and Prejudice,” Angela said. “We’re going over to Lloyd Bergman’s.”

“Bergman and his Mercedes,” Angela’s father said. “He loses more cases than I do. You tell me what he’s doing with a Mercedes. Besides showing off.”

“Your reverse discrimination is disgusting,” Angela’s mother said. “What’s this sudden love for the common man?”

“I don’t think much of anybody. It’s true. There should be a monarchy,” he said.

“I want you to be home by midnight,” Angela’s mother said.

“Okay,” Angela said. “See you.”

“Bye,” Mary said.

“There they go,” Angela’s father said. “Communicative. Well-educated. Happy. Are you girls happy?”

“Give up,” Angela’s mother said. “Everybody doesn’t have to subject themselves to your cross-examination day and night.”

“And such respect for the law,” Angela’s father said. “Such belief in the power of the law. I’m proud to be a lawyer, in spite of the fact that my family would like me to shut up like I’m some stupid store clerk. As it is, you’ve robbed me blind. If your mother didn’t kick in for her couturier fashions, we’d be starving.”

“I told you not to tell him what blue jeans cost now,” Angela’s mother said to her. “Was I right?”

“All this withholding of evidence,” Angela’s father said.

“Bye,” Mary and Angela said again.

“Goodbye,” Angela’s mother said. “At least you’re not going out to gamble.”

It was a half-mile walk to the Bergmans’ house. Angela had a silver flask with the vodka in it in her purse. It was a tiny purse, on a long strap, and it hung at her waist. The flask made it bulge .

Mary’s eyes hurt. She had looked into the mirror too long, staring as she pulled out hairs. She touched her finger to her brow and it felt swollen .

“Do my eyes look okay?” Mary said .

“Sure. That lavender is nice.”

“It feels like the skin is swollen underneath my eyebrows.”

“So?” Angela said. “It’ll go away by the time we get there.”

“I should have held an ice cube there after I finished. Before I put the make-up on.”

“I thought you didn’t like the way it felt.”

“But I didn’t want to go to the party with swollen eyes.”

“You can hardly tell,” Angela said .

“If they were swollen, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

“You think you’re going to die of this or something?”

“I don’t mean that. I mean, you wouldn’t let me make a fool of myself, would you?”

Angela gave her a disgusted look and shook her head. “Right,” Angela said. “Actually this is a pig party, and that’s why I’m taking you.”

Mary stopped by a wall thick with clumps and swirls of honeysuckle and picked a flower. She sat on the wall, crushing the honeysuckle underneath her. Angela looked at her from the road, sighed and went to where Mary sat. She picked two flowers from the honeysuckle vine and with her free hand pulled her T-shirt out of her jeans so that she could put one flower in each cup of her brassiere .

“I don’t even believe that you’ve got such an insecurity complex,” Angela said. “If you’d feel better if you had a drink, say so.”

“Go without me,” Mary said. “I don’t want to go.”

“I’m going to be really insulted if you don’t come,” Angela said. “I’m going to think that you don’t think I’m your friend.”

Mary twirled the vine through her fingers. She was always in this position: Her father was going to think she wasn’t nice if she didn’t pretend that John Joel was thin; her mother thought she had flunked English just to rebel against her. Now Angela wasn’t going to be her friend if she didn’t go with her .

“If you keep being moody when you grow up, you’re never going to get somebody to live with you,” Angela said. “Maybe if you’d practice smiling, it would help a little.”

Mary was already sure that she wasn’t going to live with anybody. She didn’t want to. She wanted to live alone, and not have to listen to what people expected all the time. She hoped that when she was twenty she didn’t have one friend. She hoped that everybody at the party hated her so she could practice not caring, so people’s opinions wouldn’t matter to her when she was an adult. She would have told Angela what she was thinking, but she couldn’t stand the sound of her own voice. Boys wouldn’t ever like her, because she would never be able to think like Angela. In a million years, she wouldn’t have thought to put honeysuckle in her brassiere. She would never have hidden things working for her, because even things on the surface didn’t work for her. She wished she had worn her own T-shirt, because it was stupid to imitate Angela. Angela was as good as gone, anyway: It was just a matter of time until she was famous, or married to somebody rich. And when she was, Mary wouldn’t be speaking to her anyway .

It was quiet walking along the road — so quiet that she could hear Angela swallowing vodka .

JOHN JOEL and Mary had an easy life. It was too easy, and now both of them were slipping and sliding. Mary had been a bright child, almost all A’s in elementary school, but when she got to junior high, she stopped trying. He could actually remember Louise’s saying that it was a phase. He noticed it in her friends, too — that nearly manic combing of the hair, the chewing gum and talk about music. They disparaged everything, and their talk was full of clichés and code words. He did not envy Mary’s summer school teacher. Mary and John Joel wanted only to avoid things. He had tried to find out what she thought of Vanity Fair . “I’ve been reading it,” Mary had said, sulkily. “I read the damn books. Don’t sweat it.” He had tried not to be antagonistic when he asked.

They had gone to the Chinese restaurant, and Louise tried to get them to order sautéed vegetables along with the rest of their food. He tried to care that it was a good idea, but finally he said, to keep peace, that there were a lot of vegetables in the dishes anyway. Louise stopped talking. He watched out of the corner of his eye as John Joel gnawed on one sparerib after another, thinking, all the time, what a pleasure it was to eat with Nina. He tried again: “Did you feel sorry for Dobbin, did you feel happy that he became a hero?” “I don’t know,” Mary said. “He’s like something out of a soap opera. John Wayne probably would have liked him. If he’d been bloodthirsty on top of being such a goody-goody.” So he switched the conversation to John Wayne, wondering if one other family in America could possibly be having such a Saturday night discussion. He said that he didn’t forgive John Wayne for his position on the Vietnam war, sure that Mary would agree with that. She shrugged. “He’s dead,” she said. As they ate in silence, he noticed that the Muzak was playing “Eleanor Rigby,” followed by “You’re So Vain.”