Ann Beattie - Falling in Place

“I appreciate the offer,” Cynthia said.

“It’s wicked to keep it hanging there in its little purple garment bag. I can’t wear it because it reminds me of happier times. I wish I could just put that coat back on, and squirt on some Toujours Moi and fasten my pearl necklace and feel good, the way I did in the old days. My husband’s dead. Two sons, both in Madrid, and a biopsy that fortunately came out benign. Two sons crazy as loons. I put them in their little sleeper suits and read them bedtime stories, and they grew up handsome and smart and ended up with psychiatrists and amphetamine problems and they ran away, both of them, on my money, to Madrid.” She sighed. “Their father’s money. Whatever.”

“I don’t want to take the coat because I’m not sure that I should take something when I don’t know if I’m going to be around or not,” Cynthia said. “This isn’t my idea of living together this summer, that he disappears to Madrid and sends me one one-sentence post card.”

“You’re mad,” Spangle’s mother said. “I’m mad, too. It’s my money and your time. That gives us a common bond. The mouton would give us another one: I’d give a fine present, and you’d be indebted. If the next lump is malignant, I could count on a visit from you.”

“That’s a horrible thing to say. You know I’d come to see you.”

“I think that when called upon, most people fish out a travel brochure.”

“You insisted that he go to Madrid.”

“Oh no. You’re mistaken there. I insisted that he track down his flesh-and-blood brother to bring him back to this country. He has a responsibility to his brother. His brother has followed his example for years. If Peter told him to sniff nutmeg, he sniffed nutmeg. I’m not exaggerating. All of a sudden the Hardy Boys books had a dusting of nutmeg over them.”

“Then grass and drugs,” Cynthia said, finishing the sentence for her.

“Sports cars, grass and drugs. My God: I used to measure out little spoonfuls of medicine and wobble forward to their little-baby mouths with them, and I cut aspirin in quarters , and they grew up and jumped into a sports car and threw away their money on houses they never wanted and women they hardly knew and drugs — they’d try anything. My God: He told me he wanted to go to Bard College because it was a small place — it was so pretty there, and he wouldn’t just disappear in the system. Bard College.”

“I’m sorry,” Cynthia said, “but I’m very tired. I want to hang up and do some things before I have to go to bed.”

“Oh, I know. I’m from another world. What must you think about a woman who grew up getting another pearl for her necklace every Christmas and birthday? I was so embarrassed that the chain filled up so slowly with pearls. I don’t know where I put that thing.”

Cynthia hung up, being careful not to touch the phone with her nails. She was becoming less and less sure that if he came back from Madrid she would even want to see him. Might as well give up on him and do something else. Screw Mary Knapp’s father, who acted at lunch as though he wanted to screw her.

But she was starting to dislike men. She was starting to get very tired of all the hassles they caused, the way they just put themselves in front of you, and suddenly you had a barrier to run around. They were stronger; they did have a different kind of energy. Spangle didn’t have any money, and he’d managed a trip to Spain, while she was teaching five days a week in a hot classroom — teaching boys who thought everything was either funny or pointless. When they were vocal, it was always the boys. And the goddamn magician, that completely crazy, boring, stupid magician who hounded her. If the police weren’t men, she would call the police and try to get them to keep him away from her. She went to the window and looked out. A fat woman was walking a cat on a leash. A man was walking a few paces in front of her, smoking a cigar. She tried to figure out if they were together. A teenage boy in a light-blue leisure suit ran down the street, and the man with the cigar turned to look. Cynthia saw that what she had taken for a man was really a woman — a tall, heavy woman smoking a cigar. The woman with the cigar waited. The woman with the cat caught up with her. They walked down the street together. The magician was nowhere to be seen, but if she went out he would be there. He knew that she was sick of talk about magic, and a couple of nights ago he had switched the topic to health insurance: Everyone should demand national health insurance. He had asked her to have a donut and coffee with him, and she had refused. She had even told him to leave her alone, that she was going to tell her husband that he was bothering her. That didn’t stop him, because obviously her husband wasn’t there. She went into the kitchen and turned on the useless fan. The idea of Spangle as a husband amused her. Once, she had wanted that: Spangle, off stoned in Madrid, who probably thought that he was going to come back and worm his way into her heart again. On the shelf above the sink was a bottle of tequila with a worm in the bottom. She thought that it would be nice to pickle her students: to have rows of canning jars, with little shrunken students inside. She wondered if the magician could help her with that plan. Because he was out there. She was sure that he was out there. If she stepped out he would be there — it would be as simple as holding out a sugar cube to a horse, a pole to a sinking person. If she went out, the magician would come for her.

She drank some Kahlua and felt sorry for herself. She put an ice cube in the glass and drank some more, tilting the glass and knocking the ice cube against the side.

She curled up in a chair in the living room and wrote her sister a letter, an ugly letter that accused her of selling out for money. She asked her sister if she would like a newly tailored mouton coat. There was no danger in writing her sister such a letter, because unless a carrier pigeon came for it, there would be no way to get it to her. There would be no way, because the mailbox was on the street and so was the magician. If she really thought that it would be as simple as her going out and his snapping to her side like a piece of iron to a magnet, she would call the police and let it all happen. But she realized that if she called them, either they would come and the magician would see them and not approach her, or else, inexplicably, he would not be there. Then she, herself, would be perceived as yet another New Haven nut. She reread the letter. It was coherent and true, and if she had the nerve, she would mail it. She had to agree with Spangle’s mother that it was awful to see people throwing their lives away, and her sister was being very one-minded about dedicating herself to a rich, eccentric old man. Cynthia went into the kitchen and poured the last of the Kahlua into the glass. The first drink was all right, but the second and third were candy-sweet. She thought about calling Mary Knapp’s father and asking him to come over with a bottle of gin and a bottle of tonic. He would. She thought he would. She thought that Spangle had no right to have stayed with her so long— he had stayed with her, not the other way around — only to take off, stay away. He could be anywhere, doing anything. And she had to get calls about mouton coats. If she picked up the phone — which was ringing — and it was Tess Spangle again, she was just going to hang up.

It was someone named Bobby, whom she didn’t know, who said he was an old friend of Spangle’s from the Cambridge and Vermont days and wanted to know if Spangle wanted to come to a party at a waterfall in New Hampshire. She told him that Spangle was in Madrid. He told her that he was going to be going to Africa in September. After they had finished talking, he said: “I haven’t called the wrong number, have I? I really wanted to get in touch with Spangle. I haven’t seen him since 1972. Last week I called a wrong number — a restaurant, to make a reservation — and they took my name and number and everything , and I’d never reached the goddamn place. I went to the restaurant and we couldn’t eat dinner. My girlfriend was with me,” he said. “We’re going to Africa together.”