Ann Beattie - Falling in Place

His mother and Tiffy were talking about his father. He moved to another row, where he wouldn’t hear them. He had found out enough. He had found out they were separated. He suddenly felt sorry for himself, and a little dizzy in the heat: What if they had done it when he was a baby, what if they had given him away, even, and he had been an orphan? It would be nice if they had given Mary away and kept him. Brandt was already gone. He envied Parker for being an only child and wondered what made him so messed up when he didn’t have anybody he had to share things with or be polite to, except his parents. Nobody would put crap in Parker’s bed that he’d roll over on or cut his foot on. If Parker thought it would be fun to have a brother or a sister, he should just spend a day in his house and see how awful Mary was. He had bought Parker two hamburgers and French fries and a Coke and a chocolate milkshake, and Parker had set fire to the ticket stubs. He bent over too far and lost his balance and remembered shoving Parker and not knocking him over. He thought about seeing Parker one more time — maybe waiting until fall and ganging up on him with some of the other kids — and letting him have it. Then Parker would have something to tell his shrink about. Then he could talk about how he was such an asshole that he’d gotten slugged.

“Are you scowling?” his mother said, “or is the sun too much for you?”

“Sun,” he said.

“Do you think we have enough?” she said.

He nodded yes. He thought that Tiffy would want to keep picking, though, and he guessed right. He and his mother started back for the farmer’s porch before Tiffy did.

“What’s the matter?” she said to him.

“Nothing’s the matter. Everybody’s always asking me what I’m doing and how I’m doing and what girls do I like… ”

“Who asked you that?” she said.

What had he said that for? He didn’t want to go into it. “Parker,” he said.

“Normal enough questions, all of them, aren’t they?” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, kicking a rock. “Everything’s normal.”

“Well,” she said, “I wouldn’t say that about Parker.”

“He’s not my friend anyway, so I don’t care.”

“I think he is your friend,” she said. “Why don’t you call him and make up?”

“Make up? He’s an asshole. Parker’s an asshole.”

“I think he’s disturbed, but everybody can make mistakes. Maybe you ought to overlook what he did the other day, if it’s going to bother you so much that he’s not your friend anymore.”

“It doesn’t bother me,” he said.

“It bothers me that I don’t have many friends. Tiffy’s my best friend, and I don’t have a world in common with her. Sometimes I just think she feels sorry for me.”

“Why would she feel sorry for you?”

“What reason would she have for liking me so much? There’s the whole faculty of NYU to talk to if she gets lonesome, and she always knows better than I do what’s going on. She tells me about things. I never tell her about things.”

“You tell her about Dad.”

“Does that bother you? That I talk to people?”

“I don’t care who you talk to,” he said.

“You say that you don’t care so much that I don’t know when you’re serious.” She ate one of the strawberries. “Good,” she said. “I guess it’s cheating to start eating them before they’re weighed, though.”

“Parker’d probably burn them. He’d probably pick them, then try to light them.”

“Strawberries flambé?” she said. “Maybe people just take Parker too seriously.”

“How come you’re on his side all of a sudden?”

“Oh, I’m not really on his side. I just hate to think so badly of him when he’s just a twelve-year-old child. I was pretty strange when I was twelve years old.”

“How?” he said.

“Well, I guess you’d call it being very straight. I wouldn’t let anybody cut my hair. My hair was my proudest possession. And I was very shy and very quiet. I played the piano. Did you know that?”

“What for?” he said.

“What for?”

“Yeah. Did you want to be in an orchestra or something?”

“I never thought about it. I just liked music. My friends all took music lessons. But in those days girls didn’t think in terms of a career, the way they do now.”

“Huh,” he snorted. “Mary with a career.”

“Mary’s very interested in music, actually.”

“Junk music.”

“She likes music. That’s the important thing.”

“I like to think about Mary having a career. She could be a nurse and do mercy killings.”

“If you did some nice things for your sister, she might do some nice things for you.”

“What? Leave me alone?”

“I don’t know what the truth of that is either, John Joel. Do you two really dislike each other that much?”

“I’d just as soon have Parker for a brother as her as a sister.” He ate a strawberry. He wished it were a cookie. “She’s just as crazy as Parker is.”

“You know she isn’t.”

“You don’t know.”

“What don’t I know?”

“Never mind. I’m not ratting on Mary.”

“Why did you say it if you didn’t want me to know?”

He didn’t answer her, because the farmer was on his way out of the house to greet them. “Going to make a pumpkin pie, are you?” he joked, looking at all the containers filled with strawberries.

Tiffy was running to catch up with them. “There’s a little snake in the grass. It’s thin, and had stripes, and it was about this long.” She held her hands apart.

The farmer pretended to be horrified. He spread his arms as wide as they’d go.

“Is it just harmless?” Tiffy said. “It didn’t go away when I was picking, it came toward me, sort of.”

“Friendly,” the farmer said. “Just a grass snake.”

“I was so nervous I left my basket up there.”

“John Joel,” his mother said, “will you go get it for her?”

He took his time going back with the basket, and he swung it and let some of the strawberries fall out. He was thinking that Nick wouldn’t give Tiffy the time of day. He thought Nick was a lot cooler than Tiffy. He wondered, because he liked Nick more than any of his mother’s women friends, if he was a queer. When he got back with the basket, Tiffy was talking to his mother.

“… the role of women in certain fairy tales,” Tiffy was saying. “I guess it’s obvious to people now that most often it’s the women who are monsters or the ones who have to wait for Prince Charming. But I was wondering today what those fairy tales would sound like if even the most evil, stupid women told it from their perspective. Even granting that they were evil. I wonder if a lot of them weren’t evil just because they were so worn down. I can imagine the fisherman’s wife thinking: If he chooses this as his work, then let him have the long days, the cold and the risk. Let him pull with all his might, and instead of coming up with a fat, golden bass, let him snag a sunken tire. Let it be as round as the world, with a great hole in the center.” Tiffy was talking loudly and waving her arms. “If that’s what the man wants, then let him have that.” He handed the basket to his mother.

“Thank you,” Tiffy said, reaching for it. “That was awfully nice of you.”

“How come you’re a feminist and you’re afraid of snakes?”

“What?” Tiffy said, looking embarrassed. “Being afraid of a snake has to do with politics?”

“John Joel,” his mother said.

“What about lunch?” he said. He was tired of waiting for it.

The farmer tipped the berries onto the scale and wrote down how much Tiffy owed on a white pad stained with strawberry juice. He showed her the figure but didn’t read it out loud, as if it were confidential. Tiffy reached into her pants pocket and handed him a ten-dollar bill.