Ann Beattie - Falling in Place

NINA HAD once said that he was a coward, and in a way he was relieved that she had said it. It was not a surprise to her now that he was acting this way. Her dismay was all about the situation and did not have much to do with the fact that he wasn’t behaving heroically.

He had reached Louise at the hospital, and he had not been able to lie to her. He told her that he had flipped, and before he could say anything else, she had said, “I can imagine where you flipped to. You flipped. I like that.” She hung up.

He walked a straight line from the telephone to the bedroom. Someone on the street was carrying a radio that was playing “Heart of Glass.” Nina was lying the way he had left her, one leg on the bed, one leg hanging off. He was not crying and she was not crying. He was staring at her and she was staring at him.

“Why didn’t you say something when I opened the door?” she said. “Are you in shock?”

She reached up and felt his forehead when he sat down, and he smiled. Was that how you found out if someone was in shock?

“I should have said something,” he said, sitting beside her on the bed. He remembered the spot of blood on the kitchen counter. Peeling the orange. “I told you, didn’t I?”

“You just got in the car and came here? You came here from the hospital?”

He nodded yes.

“That’s scary. That you’d do that. What were you going to do if I wasn’t here?”

“I knew you’d be here.”

“What if I hadn’t been here last night?”

“What are you trying to tell me?” he said. “You were here last night. I haven’t heard from you that you’re sleeping anywhere else. You’re going to tell me you are?”

“No,” she said. “But it would have been so awful if you had come all this way and I wasn’t even here. And I hate to think that you think I’m so reliable. I keep telling you not to keep thinking I’m perfectly rational and stable.”

“More rational and stable than some people, apparently. He’s ten years old. Ten years old .”

“And that was all he’d say to you? That she was a bitch?”

He shook his head no, and lay down on the bed, on his back. He lay there with his eyes closed and began to re-create Nina’s apartment from memory. You walk in the front door, and you’re in the living room. High ceiling, white walls. A circle of peeling paint on the ceiling, above the radiator. A piece of stained glass, found at a dump in Vermont, repaired, now hung in one of the three windows across the front of the living room: one butterfly wing, blue and gold, one half of the body and head, one antenna, leaded around the edges. A blue sofa. A chair covered in striped blue material, bulging like a hunchback, but so wide that you can sit sideways in it, comfortably. A worn Oriental rug, patched with colorless material that looks like tightly woven burlap; zigzags like lightning, yellow and blue, with a gold, blue and white border of geometrically shaped flowers; and in the middle, parallelograms with designs inside that look like four arrows pointing to the same space — the shape of a cross. A painting of two yellow birds, one facing left, one right, that she liked and he paid too much for, in a junk shop on Third Avenue. Her high school graduation picture, cut out of her yearbook and framed. A watercolor of an egg-plant superimposed on an American flag. Those three pictures, all in a row, on the left-hand wall. The right-hand wall, bare, opening into the kitchen. The kitchen. The shelf over the sink, with mugs and bowls from the Mad Monk pottery store. A bowling trophy of her father’s, 1956, the year his team won a tournament, on the counter next to the sink. Stains in the sink that nothing would remove. Out of the kitchen, back in the living room. On either side of the sofa, stereo speakers raised up on cinderblocks covered with black velvet. A closet door next to the bathroom door. The bathroom. Swedish ivy growing in a pot on the toilet tank, hanging down so you have to know where to reach between the leaves to flush. Black and white tiles. No rug. White shower curtain, white towels, white washcloths. A yellowed swan decal on the mirror. The tiny window above the tub that opens out. Out of the bathroom, back in the living room. The bookshelf, loaded with books and soapstone bookends, almost a dozen pairs of them. In the middle of one shelf, bookends push the books to the left and to the right, and in the space between, little things she has had for years. A hand-painted chocolate cup with a raised gold flower. A small picture, in a frame, of her godchild, Abbie, whom she hasn’t seen for five years. A glass candlestick, too high to hold a candle and still fit in the bookcase. A wooden toy with a weight on the bottom, so that when you lift it and swing the ball, a bear plays a drum. A small metal skunk with a slot under its tail to hold a penny. A post card, framed, of skaters in Central Park at the turn of the century. A lipstick tube, mother-of-pearl, with a pearly rose on top. A tiny red glass vase. Two metal toy soldiers, their faces almost peeled away, standing side by side. A black rubber tarantula. Out of the living room into the bedroom. There are two brown rugs, one on each side of the bed. The rugs look and feel like velvet. There is one window above the radiator, with a bamboo shade and old lace curtain. The other window, in back of the bed, has a shade with thicker bamboo and no curtain. The bed is a mattress on a platform a foot off the floor, and it is covered with an antique quilt with a design that looks like a pinwheel in the center. Two narrow closets, one to the left of the door, one to the right. A brass coatrack heaped with clothes that won’t fit in the closets, brass visible only at the bottom. At night it looks like a tall monster coming to get you: You see sleeves without hands, a coat with no body, a hat tossed on the top tilts forward, but there’s no bowed head inside. Books are piled on the floor, in piles that often topple, next to the coatrack. A big wooden box, almost a foot high, with someone’s initials on it and a broken lock is next to the bed. She keeps tissues inside, a pen, a pad. There is one silver iced-tea spoon in the box. There is a porcelain doll’s arm. A scarf with tiny black flowers. A plastic bag full of grass. Rolling papers. Matches. Miniatures of Drambuie.

He couldn’t imagine, when he first came to the apartment, how she could live in such a small place, how in spite of some pretty or funny objects, she really owned so little. The mugs above the sink, all lined up, were her only glasses. Six small bowls. Two large bowls. A pile of old plates, all different. “What are you doing?” she had said to him. “You’re looking at my plates? Aren’t you supposed to sneak off and look in the medicine cabinet?” He had been a little drunk. A few minutes later, in the bathroom, he had opened the medicine cabinet, or tried to — it was old, built into the wall, and the door was stuck. It had creaked when he pulled, and he had heard her laugh in the other room. He had put a record on her stereo and his hand was shaking and he scratched it. He had kept moving around, expecting something to happen, expecting to find something. It had all looked so unfamiliar. They didn’t have the same books. They didn’t have the same records. They didn’t even take the same patent medicine. In the bathroom, he had gotten the hiccoughs, and he had said that he was going out for a second — he’d be right back. He could remember going into an all-night donut shop and ordering coffee at the counter, so it wouldn’t look suspicious, his opening a pack of sugar. The coffee had come, and while it steamed, he had opened the packet of sugar, poured it out into the spoon, swallowed. He held his breath. No more hiccoughs. The one thing he knew he could count on was that particular cure for hiccoughs. When he took a sip of the hot coffee, he burned his tongue. Swallowing, he had realized that he was more drunk than he’d thought. He had gone to a pay phone at the back of the shop and called Nina. “I’m still welcome back, right?” he had said. “John,” she had said, “where are you? What was that about? Did I do something wrong?” “Don’t make me laugh,” he had said. “I’ll get the hiccoughs.” Standing in a donut shop, staring at two homosexuals piling hand on top of hand on the counter, all four hands in a pile, the bottom hand out, back on top, pulling out, piling up. “You don’t think I’m crazy?” he had said to her. “Crazy?” she had said. “Where are you? I don’t understand. I thought you’d just suddenly decided to leave.” He laughed. No hiccoughs. “What is going on?” she had said.